went back to Corfu, they generally stayed with us for the holidays. So I suppose we’d seen a good deal of each other. But I’m afraid I didn’t like her much—you will think, perhaps, Professor Tamar, that I ought not to say so?”
He smiled again his malicious Byzantine smile, as if mocking the convention which he imputed to me. His eyes were not dark, as his coloring led one to expect, but a bright clear shade of blue—the color of lapis lazuli.
“My dear boy,” I answered, “I am an historian—my profession largely consists of speaking ill of the dead.”
“You see,” he went on, as if feeling after all some need to justify himself, “there was nothing she seemed to like. She didn’t like sailing or dancing or having lunch in the taverna or anything else the rest of us did. But if we didn’t take her with us, she complained of being left out. And if we did, she just kept saying how miserable she was until we had to take her home again.”
“Irritating,” I said. “One should think it fortunate, no doubt, that your cousin’s death is not a deep personal loss—at least to you. I fear it must have been so to your aunt and grandmother—they brought her up, I believe?”
“My grandmother is very old, Professor Tamar, and used to people dying. And Aunt Jocasta has been controlling her feelings for so long, I’m not sure she has any left to control. They brought up Deirdre, after all, because they could hardly avoid it: her parents died in a car accident, you know, and her father had no relatives. But of course they never cared about her in the way they do about Millie.”
For Jocasta, no doubt, it was a natural preference: to favor a daughter’s child above a sister’s is a customary inclination. I remembered, moreover, that her daughter had died in the same accident as Deirdre’s parents—if she blamed them for it, her feelings towards their child could hardly be unequivocal. But the girl’s grandmother, it seemed, without these motives, had also regarded Camilla as entitled to be preferred—as though she were marked by priority of inheritance to be the favorite of affection as well as fortune.
“You think, then, that there was no one,” I said, “who was much affected by your cousin’s death?”
“My mother was rather upset, I think. She was quite fond of Deirdre—at least, she tried to be. Poor Mama—she believes that if one loves people they become lovable: nothing disillusions her.” The malice of his smile was qualified by an indulgent tenderness. “And she was upset, of course, about the way it happened. She was the last person Deirdre talked to, and she had to give evidence about it at the inquest. It was all rather horrid for her.”
A lizard lying motionless in the warm sunlight was startled by some over-sudden movement of my hand, and disappeared with the swiftness of mercury through a crack in the weather-marbled stone. I wondered how far I might venture to pursue my questions without seeming more than idly curious.
“No doubt it is always disagreeable,” I said, “to be required to give evidence in court. One may be asked questions one would prefer not to answer, for some reason quite unconnected with the case in hand. I speak generally, of course—I do not imagine there was anything which your mother would not have wished to tell the Coroner.”
“As you say,” said the boy, as if the thought amused him, “there’s always something. She wouldn’t have wanted, for example, to tell him about the row between Rupert and my father.”
As one might have expected, it had been about politics.
In the cause of family harmony, Dorothea had sometimes in previous years coaxed one or more of her children to attend Rupert’s Boat Race luncheon party and present an appearance of amiability; but this, I gathered, was the first occasion that her husband Constantine had been among the guests. The poet, in recent years, had been very little in England, and the two men had
He smiled again his malicious Byzantine smile, as if mocking the convention which he imputed to me. His eyes were not dark, as his coloring led one to expect, but a bright clear shade of blue—the color of lapis lazuli.
“My dear boy,” I answered, “I am an historian—my profession largely consists of speaking ill of the dead.”
“You see,” he went on, as if feeling after all some need to justify himself, “there was nothing she seemed to like. She didn’t like sailing or dancing or having lunch in the taverna or anything else the rest of us did. But if we didn’t take her with us, she complained of being left out. And if we did, she just kept saying how miserable she was until we had to take her home again.”
“Irritating,” I said. “One should think it fortunate, no doubt, that your cousin’s death is not a deep personal loss—at least to you. I fear it must have been so to your aunt and grandmother—they brought her up, I believe?”
“My grandmother is very old, Professor Tamar, and used to people dying. And Aunt Jocasta has been controlling her feelings for so long, I’m not sure she has any left to control. They brought up Deirdre, after all, because they could hardly avoid it: her parents died in a car accident, you know, and her father had no relatives. But of course they never cared about her in the way they do about Millie.”
For Jocasta, no doubt, it was a natural preference: to favor a daughter’s child above a sister’s is a customary inclination. I remembered, moreover, that her daughter had died in the same accident as Deirdre’s parents—if she blamed them for it, her feelings towards their child could hardly be unequivocal. But the girl’s grandmother, it seemed, without these motives, had also regarded Camilla as entitled to be preferred—as though she were marked by priority of inheritance to be the favorite of affection as well as fortune.
“You think, then, that there was no one,” I said, “who was much affected by your cousin’s death?”
“My mother was rather upset, I think. She was quite fond of Deirdre—at least, she tried to be. Poor Mama—she believes that if one loves people they become lovable: nothing disillusions her.” The malice of his smile was qualified by an indulgent tenderness. “And she was upset, of course, about the way it happened. She was the last person Deirdre talked to, and she had to give evidence about it at the inquest. It was all rather horrid for her.”
A lizard lying motionless in the warm sunlight was startled by some over-sudden movement of my hand, and disappeared with the swiftness of mercury through a crack in the weather-marbled stone. I wondered how far I might venture to pursue my questions without seeming more than idly curious.
“No doubt it is always disagreeable,” I said, “to be required to give evidence in court. One may be asked questions one would prefer not to answer, for some reason quite unconnected with the case in hand. I speak generally, of course—I do not imagine there was anything which your mother would not have wished to tell the Coroner.”
“As you say,” said the boy, as if the thought amused him, “there’s always something. She wouldn’t have wanted, for example, to tell him about the row between Rupert and my father.”
As one might have expected, it had been about politics.
In the cause of family harmony, Dorothea had sometimes in previous years coaxed one or more of her children to attend Rupert’s Boat Race luncheon party and present an appearance of amiability; but this, I gathered, was the first occasion that her husband Constantine had been among the guests. The poet, in recent years, had been very little in England, and the two men had
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