Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave (9 page)

“Exactly!” Professor Redding beamed at her; for a moment Jemima did glimpse his charm. There was indeed something quite boyish about him, now that he had
dropped his pomposity on the subject of the Wine Committee. “Sir Patrick Spens it is. And what a tragic tale, eh? A lesson for us all. One moment there he was drinking the blude-red wine in Dunfermline town with the King and all. The next moment he had foolishly set off: to bring back his master’s bride. Only to bump into a spot of bad weather on the way home. Weather rather like tonight, I fancy!”

It had been an unusually storm-tossed October; persistent rain had made it virtually impossible for Jemima to glimpse anything of the university town as she drove through. The setting of Mallow was said to resemble that of Stratford, with its medieval bridge under which flowed another rather less famous river Avon. If the weather cleared up, Jemima might inspect the charms of Mallow properly in the morning. She knew that Claire, ever-generous where her belongings were concerned, would lend her the car. In the meantime the Professor was intoning once more:

The Professor gave due Scottish relish to the whole passage, but the word “gurly” in particular caused him to roll his tongue round it with zest. “And so they all drowned,” he finished with a flourish. “That’s for setting off after a glass or two of red wine.”

“What is your point exactly, Alec?” The middle-aged, rather plump lady in the black crêpe evening dress had a formidable air; her spectacles at least were firmly on her nose. Jemima consulted her seating plan. Ah yes, formidable indeed. This was the celebrated Dr. Elena Kirkus: the mere sight of her name at the head of a review was enough
to send aspiring young scholars’ hearts into their boots. “Apart from letting us all admire your Scottish accent, an unsuspected talent, I must admit.”

“Elena! Now you think I’m trespassing on your literary territory, I can see. Would I do that?
Far
too frightened; look what happened to poor Paddy here. But enough of that. What is my point, you ask. No point.
No
point at all.” The Professor lowered his glass at long last. “I was merely seeking instruction. What kind of wine would they have been drinking in fourteenth-century Scotland? As a wine buff, I am always full of curiosity on these arcane matters.”

“French wine, of course, imported French wine,” said Paddy Mayall after a pause. “If not exactly Chambertin. I congratulate you on this, by the way, Alec. And the Pouilly-Fuissé earlier, for that matter.” Paddy Mayall cleared his throat. Jemima had the impression he was speaking slightly reluctantly.

“And so a fourteenth-century Scottish king drank French wine!” Professor Redding sounded even more jovial now that he had at last got the answer to his question. He sipped at the wine in question.

Paddy Mayall looked in the direction of Dr. Kirkus. His expression was almost apprehensive. Since she said nothing, he cleared his throat again and continued. “Thirteenth-century, by the way, not fourteenth. The ballad may be based on the voyage of a Scottish princess who went to marry the King of Norway in 1281 … Margaret of Scotland … King Eric … a good many of her train did drown on that occasion …” Now Paddy Mayall began to warm to his theme. “People do sometimes think in error that it was her daughter the so-called Maid of Norway. Now she
did
die on her way back to Scotland—twelve ninety, I think you’ll find—but there was no drowning
involved … so that on the whole the evidence does suggest …”

To her shame Jemima’s attention began to wander away during this little lecture, back to the ever-present anxiety of her speech. So that she missed the immediate preamble to the incident which followed, while witnessing the drama itself. What Jemima saw was the auburn-haired Mrs. Mayall picking up her own glass, full or full enough, of red wine, and throwing the contents across the table at the Professor. His white shirt front—like most of the men present, he was wearing a dinner jacket—suddenly revealed an enormous dark red stain; it looked as if he had been shot in some melodramatic amateur theatrical. Nor did Mrs. Mayall’s accompanying words exactly undo this impression.

“That’s for your bloody red wine!” she shouted, in an unmistakably genuine Scots accent. Then Marie Mayall scrambled to her feet and half-ran, half-stumbled from the high table and out of the dining hall.

Professor Redding, mopping his shirt with his handkerchief—which merely ruined the latter without cleaning the former—was left exclaiming in what sounded like genuine amazement, “What did I say? What did I do?”

Paddy Mayall, his handsome face flushed with embarrassment, got up, sat down again, and began, “Alec, I’m frightfully sorry—” Of those other diners near enough to have taken in what had occurred, Claire Donahue kept repeating “Oh God” in an apparently helpless manner, followed by, “Should I? Should I go after her, do you think?” But she sat still, Jemima noticed, and she noticed also that Paddy Mayall had fixed Claire with an uncommonly determined stare. No, Claire was not to follow.

It was left to Dr. Kirkus to say with dignity but in a voice of unmistakable reproach, “Alec, how could you? How
could you be so tactless? Even cruel. And I thought you were fond of poor Marie.”

Marie Mayall did not come back. A series of the diners at the high table left the hall during the rest of the meal with, Jemima suspected, the intention of persuading her to return. That might have been arguably less embarrassing than the sight of her empty place, especially since the college servants continued to plonk down portions of food there, before removing them untouched. Unlike the excellent wine, the food was rather tasteless; there was also a remarkable number of courses—or was it just the thought of the speech ahead which made Jemima feel the meal was endless? On the other hand who could tell how Marie Mayall would have behaved if she
had
chosen to return … Her face during her outburst had exhibited a degree of passion quite surprising in a woman at first sight shy and even withdrawn beneath her curtain of long, loose hair.

Paddy Mayall was the first to leave the hall, when his wife showed no sign of coming back. He came back a short while later without public comment. But he arched his eyebrows in the direction of Claire, who as Jemima’s sponsor was seated on her left. (Mallow did not necessarily alternate the sexes in its high-table seating plan, considering that to be an old-fashioned formality.) Jemima thought that this time Paddy Mayall was silently commanding Claire to go after his wife, as previously he had adjured her silently to stay. Sure enough, Claire murmured in Jemima’s ear, “Marie’s awfully highly strung, as no doubt you’ve noticed. She’s probably lurking in the Ladies in floods of tears.” And she too left the hall.

Ten minutes later, Claire returned alone. Professor Redding was the next one to go, and stayed away the longest: his shirt, sopping wet and still pinkish in part, showed signs of a prolonged but clumsy repair job when he came back.
There was a little extra buzz of conversation from the students in the body of the hall at his return.

“Serve him right, the little stoat,” said a student sitting at the table directly below, loud enough for Jemima at least to hear. The wine-throwing incident had certainly not passed unremarked, if its cause was not understood. For one thing, Jemima Shore’s presence at the dinner—a face so familiar from television—concentrated attention upon the high table. Opinions varied, and were hotly argued on both sides, as to whether she looked older/younger/sexier/not so sexy as she did on the box. (Jemima might have been wryly amused to learn that not one single person speculated as to what she might be about to say in her speech.)

Of Jemima’s immediate neighbours, Dr. Kirkus was the last to depart and the last to come back. She took the opportunity of the brief break before the speeches to stump from the hall, a heavy but dignified figure. Dr. Kirkus was the one to sort out the errant Mrs. Mayall, if anyone could: of all those present, she exuded moral authority. But her mission too was unsuccessful. She simply handed Paddy Mayall a piece of paper.

“Marie’s gone home,” said Dr. Kirkus. “She left this for you.”

Jemima watched Paddy Mayall unfold the note and then crumple it: this time he reddened with what looked like anger. Jemima felt Claire’s attention wandering away from her. They were supposed to be discussing the question of depth in television documentaries: it was already a slightly artificial conversation because Jemima was by now beginning to rehearse her speech in her mind. Since she would touch on the same subject, she was reluctant to pre-empt her arguments.

Paddy Mayall’s mouth framed the words: “Marie’s taken the car.”

“My God,” exclaimed Claire aloud, interrupting Jemima’s polite response about viewers’ attention-span. “I just hope she’s going to be OK driving.”

“Had she drunk so much?” Jemima added drily. “I rather thought the famous glass was full.”

“Normally Marie doesn’t drink, so she drives home. I don’t know about tonight. She was in such an odd state. But it’s a terrible road at the best of times, and in this weather! Dark and very twisty. Miles away from Mallow—they really shouldn’t live so far out, but Marie insisted—” In her nervous state, Claire was beginning to babble.

There would be a time for all this, Jemima decided, when the great speech was safely accomplished. One way or another it could not be long now.

How would she start? “
Professors
, Ladies and Gentlemen”—sudden panic, how many professors were there actually present beyond Professor Redding? She must find out at once. Jemima began to search the seating plan earnestly for academic titles and for the time being forgot about Marie Mayall.

It was in this manner that she did not learn what it was that had so upset Paddy Mayall’s wife until some time after the dinner was over. Elena Kirkus told her about it as they gathered in the Senior Common room after dinner for coffee and further drinks. Jemima by now felt the unnatural
bonhomie
of one who has been reprieved from execution—or rather, has been executed and found it did not hurt. Although her speech had been neither the best nor the worst she had ever made—after all that—it was, thank heaven, over. (And she must remember to accept no such nerve-racking invitations from old friends in future, she told herself sternly.)

“You see, poor Marie actually
comes
from Dunfermline,” Dr. Kirkus was explaining. “Or more to the point, her father
did. He was the man who built up all those stores from scratch. What are they called? Dunfermline Macgregor, something like that.” She mentioned the name of a famous Scottish chain. “Money! Yes indeed,” thought Jemima, “there must certainly be plenty of that about in Marie’s family.”

“You could certainly call him a king in modern terms. In any case, all that was really very close to home, the wine, the drowning and the rest of it. For a clever man, Alec can be
remarkably
imperceptive.” Dr. Kirkus frowned; Jemima had a sudden vision of what it must be like to present an ill-prepared essay to Dr. Kirkus.

“The drowning—” Jemima prompted her. With her speech over, she found her curiosity about her fellow diners resurging.

“It made banner headlines at the time. A guest who drank too much and drowned on his way home. The party was at Marie’s father’s place on or near a river in Scotland. A bridge featured, I know that. Too much was drunk all round, whisky as well as wine, no doubt, but everyone remembered the wine because the young man who drowned had a bottle of wine with him in his car. He had taken it from the house. There was some sort of crash before the drowning, so that there was wine, red wine, everywhere when the police found him. And blood. Mixed.” She paused. “I’m afraid that particular detail sunk into the public consciousness. The blude-red wine, as Alec so unfortunately phrased it.”

“No wonder she was upset.”

“Marie’s father was much criticized at the time—and afterwards—for letting the young man go, let alone take a bottle of wine. I think the whole matter preyed on his mind. He died not long afterwards. The position he had
built up—all lost as he saw it. Marie inherited everything of course.” Dr. Kirkus sighed.

“Was he really so much to blame?”

“Who can tell? Difficult to control the young.
We
know that all right.” She gestured round her, although there were in fact no students present in the Senior Common Room. “It wasn’t helpful that the young man had been a kind of suitor of Marie’s, I gather, and the old man didn’t like him very much.” Another sigh. “But Alec of all people to bring that up! He is very interested in wine, we all know that; rather boringly so, sometimes, dare I say it? But that was carrying an interest altogether too far. Alec—whom I had seen as Marie’s protector in a way, since his own wife died, or at least supporter. In her not altogether happy situation. I’m sure you understand what I mean.” Dr. Kirkus looked significantly towards Claire and Paddy, now having a conversation in the other corner of the room, which was all too visibly intimate. Claire looked particularly pretty, animated; she had the air of persuading Paddy to something.

“Marie and Paddy married shortly after her father’s death. He was a postgraduate student up there: that’s his field, Scottish studies of sorts. Too soon perhaps for either of them. It meant that Marie never went on with her own work: a pity, there’s a proper intelligence there. And they really are such different characters. She’s very reserved: that wine-throwing, so public, is quite a new departure. As for Paddy, I’m fond of him, but I’ve come to the conclusion his mind is essentially lightweight.”

For all the pleasantness of her tone, Dr. Kirkus did not fail to make it clear that the word “lightweight” was, in her vocabulary, one of extreme moral disapproval. Inwardly, Jemima quailed: that kind of judgment took her back all too rapidly to Cambridge and certain dons she had known
there. Had her speech been lightweight, she wondered. Could anything to do with television be other than lightweight in the opinion of Dr. Kirkus (who had, by the way, alone among the diners, not congratulated Jemima upon her performance)?