Oxford Blood by Antonia Fraser Read Free Book Online Page A

the usual large number,' he said quite crossly. ‘I don't know why people always expect me to have that kind of information at my fingertips. You should ask Eugenia if you're really interested.'
    'Eleanor,' put in Tiggie, blinking her panda eyes. Jemima realized she was trying hard not to giggle. 'Eugenia is my mother. Eleanor is your wife.'
    'Eleanor, I thought I said Eleanor. You confused me, Antigone.' 'And Proffy, you have eight children.' 'Exactly, the usual large number.'
    'Amid the wonders of Professor Mossbanker's philoprogeniture, one question remains,' remarked Saffron in his habitually languid manner. 'Am I going to open this champagne here or am I going to carry Jemima  Shore heroically back up the staircase to my rooms? A terrifyingly macho thought, but I might impress you, Jemima, and then we could re-create it for television. It would do wonders for my image, a little tarnished at the moment: you know, the monkey lord, Greystoke and all that, so sweet.'
    Jemima smiled coldly. She had the feeling she looked much as the professor had done a few moments ago when asked the exact number of his children.
    The next thing she knew, Saffron had whisked her up in his arms and was carrying her quite fast back up the steep staircase. He was surprisingly muscular: Jemima, slim as she was, was tall. Saffron's languid manner and pale complexion were something of a delusion. Besides, there had been some sporting equipment about in his rooms, otherwise more noted for the smell of expensive Rigaud candles and the sight of empty champagne bottles. Jemima had noticed a cricket bat in a corner (was it quite the season, this icy spring?), a tennis racket and a couple of squash rackets.
    'I boxed for my school,' murmured Saffron in her ear. 'I always thought it would come in useful.'
    Back in his rooms, Jemima sat down on another sofa - a more elegant one this time, covered in dark green velvet with a lot of patchwork cushions - and gazed up at him. Yes he could have been a boxer, once you got over the illusion of effeminacy, or perhaps decadence was a better word. Saffron's shoulders were not particularly broad but he was tall and wasn't that nose slightly flattened out? It was certainly not the perfect aristocratic shape of her imagination.
    Then from her new position on the sofa, she saw something she had missed on her previous visit. Standing on the table beside her was a framed photograph, a family group. The background was a large country house, late Elizabethan - Saffron Ivy itself. The figure of Lord St Ives, so familiar from the newspapers, was easy to recognize, and the woman next to him with her hand on the head of a large dog was presumably his wife. But what attracted Jemima's attention was the figure at the end of the row, a figure dressed in nurse's uniform; allowing for the time lapse and the harrowing conditions under which she had visited her at the Hospice, she was almost sure that she was gazing once more at the features of Nurse Elsie Connolly.
    'Oh, that,' said Saffron carelessly, 'that's my parents' Silver Wedding. I was four at the time - the happy afterthought. Very happy, at least for them. Look, there's my cousin Andrew Iverstone - you know, the famous Fascist beast, looking sick as mud at my mere existence. Sixteen years later he still hasn't forgiven me for being a boy. And Cousin Daphne.'
    'Who's the other boy holding your hand? He looks a little older.'
    Saffron sounded even more cheerful. 'Oh that's my cousin, Jack Iverstone, Cousin Andrew's son. He would be looking forward to getting the lot if it wasn't for me. He's at Oxford too, as a matter of fact. In his last year.'
    'And does he hate your guts as well?'
    'Christ, no. Jack doesn't hate anyone's guts. He's a member of the SDP and it doesn't go with gut-hating. Pure reaction against Cousin Andrew of course. With parents like that, you would be a member of the SDP.'
    Jemima forbore to say that she had indeed flirted with the possibility not so many