Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell Read Free Book Online Page B

vintage. He suggested that the Colle Albani sounded like a decent little wine. Confirming, by a similar surreptitious glance, that it was two hundred lire less than anything else available, I concurred in his choice.
    “Comfy little billet, this,” said the Major. I did not dispute it—the standards of the Cytherea seemed to me to be luxurious. “Been in worse quarters than this in my time, I can tell you, m’dear,” he continued, undiscouraged by my agreement. “I remember the troopship I went on to Tripoli in ’48—”
    From this starting point, he launched adroitly into an epic of military reminiscence, beginning shortly after the Second World War and ending—no, I fear it has no ending, or, if it does, that I have not yet heard it. It included a number of anecdotes designed to illustrate the proposition that the Major had “always been a bit of a japester.” There was one, as I recall, about hijacking a tramcar in Alexandria in ’49 and another about the introduction of a goat into the nurses’ quarters in Limassol in ’52.
    I began to be very worried about Desdemona. We are given to understand that Othello’s courtship of her consisted almost entirely of stories beginning “When I was stationed among the Anthropophagi—” or “I must tell you about a funny thing that happened during the siege of Rhodes.” The dramatist Shakespeare would have us believe that she not only put up with this but actually enjoyed it: can that great connoisseur of the human heart really have thought this possible?
    “And what do you do now, Bob?” I asked, several eternities later, hoping for a change of subject.
    He told me that on leaving the Army he had found himself with a few bits and pieces which he had picked up as souvenirs here and there on his travels. Thinking that these objects might be of interest to the public, he had been inspired to invest his gratuity in the purchase of a junk shop in Fulham. (He used the expression “junk shop” as if referring modestly to a rather superior antique-dealing establishment: I suspect that it is, in fact, a junk shop.) Some of his friends had also found themselves with bits and pieces similarly picked up here and there in the course of their military careers: these had been added to his stock in trade. The bits and pieces proving more valuable than expected, the business had prospered. I would think it, he said, a funny job for an old soldier, but it suited him. He now reverted to reminiscence, telling me of various pranks and japes by which the bits and pieces had been acquired.
    “I suppose we ought to ask old Eleanor Frostfield to join us for coffee,” said the Major, as the meal drew at last to its close. “Bit of a bore running into the old girl, but I’d better do the dutiful.”
    Eleanor Frostfield proved to be the armour-plated matron. I had noticed no sign of any acquaintance between her and the Major; but they know each other, it seems, in the way of business, Eleanor being the owner, by inheritance from a deceased husband, of a firm of art and antique dealers.
    I fell in very cordially with his suggestion, for it seemed to me that any invitation to Eleanor must in all courtesy be extended to the two young men at the same table. In the end, since it hardly seemed kind to exclude the remaining pair of Art Lovers, all seven of us adjourned to the terrace together. In the course of arranging this, it was discovered that the beautiful young man was Ned; that his broad-shouldered friend was Kenneth; that Eleanor was Mrs. Frostfield; that the pretty blonde girl was Marylou Bredon; that the young man with her was her husband Stanford; that the Major was Bob to his friends; and that I was Julia Larwood. I already knew, of course, that I was Julia Larwood, and the others, I dare say, also knew who they were; but there is presumably some sense in which the sum of human knowledge was increased.
    The Major, once our coffee had arrived, tried to go on telling me about a