Oxford Blood (24 page)

'Nothing so crude as a spy,' went on Jamie. 'At least according to Marigold Milton. Perhaps a report here, a mission. Greece in the late fifties - an interesting place. It was odd the way Tiggie came along, and the mysterious Jones was married and killed off all in a short space of time.'

'You think he never existed?'

'That's what everyone thought at the time. It was fiction, a graceful fiction, to have this child by her lover and bring her up, but not unduly challenging the Oxford authorities by unmarried motherhood. To which place she now returned. And settled down. Little Antigone at her knee.'

'Is this when she meets Proffy? Proffy we know was in intelligence in the war - he's never made any secret of it. As a scientist he was much in demand. There may have be
en a connection there.' J
emima was aware of a strange unaccountable feeling of disappointment. This meant that Proffy, father of so many, was also Saffron's father. Why was she disappointed? Why was she surprised? It was surely the logical explanation, had always been the most logical explanation of Saffron's parentage, given that Eugenia was his mother. She already knew that the blood groups fitted.

'I guess so. She certainly met him. Sooner or later he must have replaced the original married lover and become the new obsession. The only thing about that is that Proffy didn't marry her, Eugenia. Why did he wait, except out of sheer absent-mindedness and then marry Eleanor some time later?'

'No time off?' Jemima had to cross-question Jamie if she was to establish the truth of Eugenia's movements throughout 1964. But she had no intention of confiding to him the reason for her interest; that would be altogether too much jam, too irresistible for Jamie, too unfair to Saffron himself. 'No intervening love affair?'

'No new love affair that I could discover. A change of pattern. After all she was married, well, widowed by now. A small child. But there was time off. One more year taken off, or six months perhaps to write a book. But the book never appeared.'

Jemima tried not to show her relief, or her excitement.

'And that year was?'

'Nineteen sixty-four or nineteen sixty-five. Around then.'

'Jamie, you're an angel,' cried Jemima with a warmth which surprised both of them. 'If only I was ten years younger and at Oxford.'

'Oh Jemima, you're absolutely no use to me,' said Jamie Grand in mock horror. 'W.H. Auden is the least of your demands. So what's it all about? I'll have some more of this excellent Puligny Montrachet while you answer,' he added.

'Oh gossip, Jamie, gossip. Just gossip ancient and new.' And Jemima called the waiter.

Jemima was still in a good humour, and in a state of excitement when she walked back to her flat from Monsieur Thompson's. Midnight greeted her with a reproachful rub round the legs and shot savage looks at his cat bowl - which happened to be full, having been filled to bursting by Mrs B. Midnight however never failed to imply that there could be yet further supplies or fresher supplies of food, if Jemima really cared.

As Jemima went to scratch him, the telephone began to ring.

It was from a call-box.

'Jemima,' began Cherry in an urgent voice. 'I think I've found something very odd. You see, slogging my way through the Joneses, and a fertile lot they were, I fear, it suddenly occurred to me we were looking in the wrong place.' 'Not London?'

'London all right. But not births. Deaths not births. One child died, right? The real St Ives baby died. And the false baby was put in his place. So there had to be a death certificate for the real baby. Only it would be under the false name. Are you with me?'

'My God, Cherry, I
am
with you!'

'So listen to this, Jemima. I then went through the death certificates at the same time. Male babies called Jones. Not at all difficult. No luck at Marylebone, but when I got to Kensington, guess what I found?'

'One dead male baby called Jones. Who died on or about twenty-eighth October and was born shortly before.'

'No. Not one dead male baby called Jones. One dead male baby called Saffron. Saffron Jones, to be accurate. Born on twenty-sixth October and died on twenty-eighth October 1964. Mother's name Eugenia Jones. Now guess the father's name.'

'You're the investigator. You tell me.' Jemima held her breath.

'Ivo Charles,' said Cherry in a voice of triumph, 'Ivo Charles, as in Ivo Charles Iverstone, Marquess of St Ives in the big red peerage. Ivo Charles. Get it?'

Into the silence came the pip, pip sounds of the call-box phone and Jemima was left gazing at the instrument in her hand as the harsh burr of disconnection eventually replaced them.

18

Your Father

'My father!' said Saffron uncertainly as though trying out the words for the first time. Then he repeated with more strength: 'My father. My father.'

Finally Saffron laughed. 'This is ridiculous, isn't it? What you're saying, quite simply, is that my father - the father I've known all these years, Ivo Charles, Marquess of St Ives, is actually—'

'Your father,' completed Jemima in her turn. 'Your naturally biological father. As well as in a weird kind of way, also your adopted father. I've worked it out now. The birth certificate, or rather the birth certificate and the death certificate, thanks to that genius Cherry Bronson Investigator, began the unravelling.

'It goes like this,' she continued. 'There were two babies. One was your mother's, I mean Lady St Ives' baby, this is getting confusing but you know who I mean—'

'It's definitely too late to think of Eugenia Jones as my mother,' said Saffron firmly. 'Go on.'

'This baby dies at birth on the twenty-eighth of October, but is smuggled a way by Nurse Elsie, and buried under the name of Jones -Saffron Jones, as it happens. They used
your
real date of birth and its own date of death for the certificate. Then there's the true Saffron Jones -that's
you
- who was born to Eugenia on the twenty-sixth of October and substituted for the dead baby. So it - he - you grew up as Lord Saffron.'

'Both of them my father's sons.' Now Saffron sounded almost angry. 'The most shocking thing about all this, more shocking than anything else you've told me is that my father, the most upright man in Britain as he is famously regarded, my father had an affair, a long long affair with Eugenia Jones. Including when my mother was having a last desperate stab at having a baby.'

He stopped.

'Oh Tiggie. Oh Christ, poor Tigs - is what you're saying that Tiggie was my sister?'

Jemima nodded. 'Your full sister. I thought at first she was your half-sister. But now I think that there was never any Jones, ever. Just a hidden love affair. And a child. And then - perhaps when the affair was nearly over, another child.'

'Christ.
It's unbearable. The hypocrisy of it.'

They were in Saffron's rooms at Rochester. A huge poster-size picture of Tiggie, panda eyes and all, taken by some fashion photographer Jemima guessed, gazed down at them. Someone - Saffron? - had written
rip
underneath it.

The room had a desolate feel to it. There was a pile of unopened letters and notes on the table and some books. None of the invitations on the mantelpiece looked particularly recent, nor were there any empty champagne bottles to be seen; the cricket bat still reposed in the corner of the room with the tennis rackets and the squash rackets. They were neatly stacked, and did not look as if they had been in recent use. The sight of an enormous golfing umbrella, open and sodden, spread across the hearth rug reminded Jemima that outside the Hawksmoor quad was equally desolate, with driving squalls of cold rain, of the sort that Cy Fredericks for one would never believe could belt down in Oxford in June as the summer term reached its climax.

What were they to do if it rained throughout Commem week? Could even the legendary skill of Spike Thompson create idyllic punting on the river, the balm of a summer night, the rising luminosity of an Oxford dawn when rain was beating down on all parties concerned? 'No long shadows', had been Cy Fredericks' firm instructions. Like King Canute, Cy Fredericks might have to bow to the inexorable force of the English climate.

Saffron, hunched in a
T
-shirt bearing some message of vaguely revolutionary - or perhaps satirical - import, and torn white track-suit trousers, bare feet (his soaking sneakers put to dry by a small smoking fire) now looked merely depressed as well as angry. The resemblance to Eugenia Jones that fatal weekend at Saffron Ivy, was marked. And his height came from his father. The B blood and the A blood. Ah well, thought Jemima, at least he gets his brains from his mother. A for aristocratic blood and B for brains. She still found it irresistible to think in terms of blood grouping.

On the other hand one could hardly suggest that Lord St Ives had no brains, no intelligence, no cunning, no shrewdness
...
She wanted to tell Saffron about her recent lunch with Lord St Ives then decided against it. Saffron had enough to bear, enough to sort out.

Lord St Ives had responded to her invitation to lunch with his usual enchanted - and enchanting - courtesy. In spite of Jemima's determination not to be put in thrall by the old fox's charm, as she put it to herself, she found herself believing that her invitation had totally transformed a rather dim day at Saffron Ivy.

'How delightful
...
we never did get to know you
...
tragic weekend
..
. how
is
my son? I assume you've seen him at Oxford since the funeral that is.'

'I will be seeing him.'

'Good, good
...
Such an admirable influence.' The flattering phrases flowed on, then: 'Gwendolen would so much like to meet you again' -but I didn't ask her, thought Jemima in a panic - 'however, as you know, she never comes to London these days
...
Her health, alas
...
Another time at Saffron Ivy
...
When you feel ready
...'

Curiously, Lord St Ives showed no signs of asking Jemima what the lunch was about. It was only when Jemima suggested Le Caprice that Lord St Ives exhibited some degree of interest. Le Caprice was convenient for what she conceived to be his Mayfair/St James's/Whitehall orientation and she wanted to be on her ground not his.

'Le Caprice? The smartest restaurant in London! That does sound exciting. I expect my son goes there. Ah no, alas. Please excuse the selfishness of an elderly man, Miss Shore, but I'm afraid I must insist on being the host at this luncheon. For one thing it's much too late for me to learn to be paid for by a lady; I should be in the most dreadful state throughout, wondering what I dared eat and drink without ruining you. No, I'm sure your salary is enormous. But secondly you must indulge me and allow me to be seen with a pretty woman somewhere where it will add enormously to my prestige. What a fillip it will give to my reputation to be seen with you!'

Lord St Ives suggested Wilton's. Jemima, feeling out-manoeuvred, agreed.

As smoked salmon followed by lamb cutlets (Lord St Ives) and dressed crab (Jemima) were brought with a stately courtesy equal to Lord St Ives' own, by waitresses like ageing family nannies in white overalls - here at last were the traditional retainers of her dreams - Jemima wondered desperately whether the whole lunch would pass without her being able to step out of this warm bath of politeness.

In the end it was Lord St Ives who turned the topic of conversation from a mixture of gardening and Tory politics ('what kind of roses do you suppose Mrs
‘I
. admires? Huge strong-growing hybrid teas, I fear') to something more personal. First he waved on the raspberries:

'Yes, yes, you must - raspberries for Miss Shore, a nice large helping and lots of cream. Some Stilton for me.'

Then he looked at her directly. She thought for the first time that Lord St Ives had a very sad face in repose. She still could not see Saffron's features in his, Saffron having the full mouth of his mother, Lord St Ives the narrow mouth beneath the straight nose of the crusader. But those mannerisms which she had once thought 'nurture not nature' and the figure, the long legs and narrow shoulders, all these Saffron had inherited from his father.

'My son, Miss Shore,' said Lord St Ives in a gentle voice, 'I think you want to talk about my son. He
is
my son, you know.' 'I do know that - now.'

'But you doubted it.' There was a long pause. Then Lord St Ives went on, still in the same quiet tone: 'Nurse Elsie, Miss Shore. A very indiscreet woman, at least when she was dying. She told my wife she had seen you. Without saying why: just that you were interested in her story. Gwendolen passed it on to me. I - shall we say I held myself in readiness, Miss Shore? Then things began to fall into place. Your interest in Saffron, for example. Other things: that conversation about blood groups at dinner; altogether too pat, too convenient. Am I correct?'