Tigerlily's Orchids by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online

he had forgotten her.
    What to do? Consult the
sortes
, of course. Where others might have used the Bible or Virgil’s
Aeneid
, Marius had for many years now, sought advice from
Paradise Lost
. Not for a moment did he believe in this or any other means of divination and he was always surprised to find how many others did. But it amused him and he continued to do it for those who asked, though resisting the suggestions of those who wanted him to set up as a fortune-teller and charge for his forecasts.
    Now he picked up the book and opened it as he always did at random. The rules were where his eye first alighted, and though he didn’t believe, he adhered to the rule that there was no point in doing it at all if you cheated. He read, ‘Her long with ardent look his eye pursued / Delighted, but desiring more her stay …’ It could plainly be taken as a reference to the way he had felt about Rosie that night and the day after but it gave him no counsel. Milton, he had found, sometimes simply commented on the seeker’s situation.
    Above his head he heard a familiar sound. Olwen, though having had nothing to eat, had drifted into her after-lunch sleep, the empty bottle sliding off her lap and rolling across the floorboards.
    T hose of the residents whose parents were still alive went home for Christmas – they still called it home – Rose up to Edinburgh, Stuart to Loughton, the Constantines to Katie’s mother in Wales. Marius’s parents were dead as, necessarily, were all those relatives who had left him their furniture.Noor left for the parental mansion in Surrey, Molly to Torquay and Sophie to join her mother, father, three brothers and a sister in Purley.
    Marius was invited to his sister’s vegan Christmas in Aylesbury and had to stay two nights because no trains were running. Duncan Yeardon watched them all go. He made a sort of game for himself, noting who had gone and who stayed. They all went but for Olwen and he saw her hobbling round to Wicked Wine on Christmas Eve in her old black coat and coal-scuttle hat, returning with rather more than usual supplies. Mrs Gamp, he called her. She would be having a party, he decided. A widow, no doubt, with grown-up children and possibly grandchildren. She would have fetched all the requisite food in days before.
    As for him, he would be alone. But he had plenty of food and the house was beautifully warm, a real treat. In time he would get to know more people now he had been invited to that gay man’s house-warming party.

CHAPTER FOUR
    C oming so soon after his return from Loughton, his mother’s call had thoroughly unsettled him. Stuart now wished he hadn’t answered the phone when it rang. He had told her repeatedly he didn’t want a job. Not yet he didn’t. Wasn’t he taking a gap year?
    â€˜Oh, darling, something exciting,’ she had said. ‘Daddy’s friend Bertram Dixon says he may have something for you if you’d like to phone his secretary and arrange a time for an interview. Daddy says it’s a marvellous opportunity for you.’
    â€˜I don’t want a job with Bertram Dixon or anyone else,’ Stuart had said, but now he was in a dilemma of doubt. Should he have dismissed the offer just like that? Could he afford to? He had only been at Lichfield House since October and all the time his money was gushing away. ‘Haemorrhaging’ was the word he had read somewhere. When he had come into his legacy, putting half of it into this flat and investing the rest so that he had the interest to live on had looked an ideal lifestyle. Since then, the bank rate had fallen and fallen, much of his stock attracted no more than one and a half per cent. He was drawing on his capital at an alarming rate and Claudia didn’t help. Walking down Heath Street after their lunch, she had pulled him after her into a jeweller’s where she had expected him to buy her a necklace, reduced in