The English Assassin by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online Page A

see.”
    “It sounds attractive.” Much against her better judgement she responded to his caress.

NYE
    Ironmaster House was built of grey stones. It was Jacobean, with the conventional small square-leaded windows, three floors, five chimneys, a grey slate roof. Around its walls, particularly over the portico, climbed roses, wistaria and evergreens. Its gardens were divided by tall, ornamental privet hedges; there was a small lawn at the front and a larger lawn at the back. The back lawn ran down to a brook which fed a pool in which water lilies were blooming. In the middle of the lawn, a water-spray swept back and forth like a metronome, for it was June and the temperature was 96°†F.
    From the open windows of the timbered sitting room it was possible to see both gardens, which were full of fuchsia, hydrangeas, gladioli and roses all sweetening the heavy air with their scent. And among these flowers, as if drugged, groggily flew some bees, butterflies, wasps and bluebottles.
    Inside the shadowy house and seated on mock Jacobean armchairs near a real Jacobean table sat Major Nye in his shirtsleeves; two girls, one fair and one dark; and Major Nye’s wife, Mrs Nye, a rather strong-looking, weather-beaten woman with a contemptuous manner, a stoop and unpleasant hands.
    Mrs Nye was serving a sparse tea. She poured from a mock Georgian, mock silver teapot into real Japanese porcelain cups. She sliced up a seed cake and slid the slices onto matching plates.
    Major Nye had not bought Ironmaster House. His wife had inherited it. He had, however, worked hard to support the place; it was expensive to run. Since leaving the Army and becoming Company Secretary to the Mercantile Charitable Association, he had lost his sense of personal authority. Many of his anxieties were new; he had previously never experienced anything like them and consequently was at a loss to know how to cope with them. This had earned him the contempt of his wife, who no longer loved him, but continued to command his loyalty. One of the girls in the room was Elizabeth, his daughter. He had another daughter, Isobel, who was a dancer in a company which worked principally on ocean-going liners, and he had a small son who had won a chorister’s scholarship to St James’ School, Southwark, a school reputed to be unnecessarily brutal but, as Major Nye would explain, it had been the only chance “the poor little chap had to get into a public school”, since the major could not afford to pay the kind of fees expected by Eton, Harrow or Winchester (his own school). In the army Major Nye had rarely had to make a choice; but in civilian life he had been given only a few choices and most of his decisions had been inevitable, for he had his duty to do to his wife, her house, and his children. During the summer they usually took a couple of paying guests and they also sold some of the produce of their market garden at the roadside. Mrs Nye was seriously considering selling teas on the lawn to passing motorists.
    Major Nye had to work solidly from six in the morning until nine or ten o’clock at night all through the week and the weekend. His wife also worked like a martyr to help keep the garden and the house going. Her heart was weak and his ulcer problems were growing worse. He had sold all his shares and there was a double mortgage on the house. Because he was insured, he hoped that he would die as soon as his son went up to Oxford in ten years’ time. There were no paying guests at the moment. Those who did turn up never came for a second year; the atmosphere of the big house was sad and tense and hopeless.
    Elizabeth, the dark-haired girl, was large-boned and inclined to fatness. She had a loud, cheerful voice which was patronising when she addressed her father, accusing when she spoke to her mother and almost conciliatory when she talked to the fair-haired girl with whom, for the past nine months, she had been having a romantic love affair. This affair had never