Not yet
Frequently during those days they were to be seen walking hand-in-hand the short distances from their rooms in Holywell Street to the King's Arms, or the Turf Tavern ('Find Us If You Can!'), where in bars blessedly free from juke-box and fruit-machine Shelly had quickly acquired a taste for real ale and a love for the ambience of the English public house.
Occasionally the two of them ventured further afield in and around Oxford; and one evening, just before Christmas 1994, they had taken the No. 2 bus from Cornmarket up to another King's Arms, the one in the Banbury road, where amid many unashamedly festive young revellers Cornford watched as his (equally young) wife, with eyes half-closed, had rocked her shoulders sensuously to the thudding rhythm of some pop music, her black- stockinged diighs alternately lifted and lowered as though she were mentally disco-dancing. And at diat point he was conscious of being the oldest person in the bar, by about twenty years; inhabiting alien territory there; wholly excluded from the magic circle of die night; and suddenly sadly aware that he could never even begin to share the girlish animality of die woman he had married.
Comford had said nothing dial evening.
Nor had he said anydiing when, diree months later, at die end-of-term Gaudy, he had noticed, beneadi die table, die left hand of Julian Storrs pressed briefly against Shelly's right thigh as she sat drinking rather a lot of
DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR
Madeira, after drinking rather a lot of red wine at dinner, after drinking rather a lot of gin at the earlier reception .!. her chair perhaps unnecessarily close to the Senior Fellow seated on her right, the laughing pair leaning together in some whispered, mutual, mouth-to-ear exchange. Perhaps it was all perfectly harmless; and Cornford sought to make little of it. Yet he ought (he knew it!) to have said a few words on that occasion -lighdy, with a heavy heart.
It was only late in die Michaelmas Term 1995 that Cornford finally did say something to his wife ...
They had been seated one Tuesday lunchtime in the Turf Tavern, he immediately opposite his wife as she sat in one of the wooden wall-seats in die main bar, each of them enjoying a pint of London Pride. He was eagerly expounding to her his growing conviction dial die statistical evidence concerning the number of deadis resultant from die Black Deadi in 1348 had been wildly misinterpreted, and dial die supposed demographic effects consequent upon that plague were - most decidedly! - extremely suspect. It should all have been of some interest, surely? And yet Cornford was conscious of a semi-preoccupied gaze in Shelly's eyes as she stared over his left shoulder into some more fascinating area.
All right. She
He'd diought litde of it.
COLIN DEXTER
And had drunk his ale.
They were about to leave when a man, in his early thirties or so, walked over to them - a tall, dark, slimly built Arab with a bushy moustache. Looking direcdy into Shelly's eyes, he spoke softly to her:
'Madame! You are the most beautiful lady I see!'
Then, turning to Cornford: 'Please excuse, sir!' With which, picking up Shelly's right hand, he imprinted his full- lipped mouth most earnesdy upon die back of her wrist.
After the pair of them had emerged into the cobbled lane that led up again into Holywell Street, Cornford stopped and so roughly pushed his wife's shoulder dial she had no choice but to stand diere facing him.
'You - are - a - bloody - flirt! Did you know diat? All the time we were in diere - all die time I was telling you-'
But he got no further.
The tall figure of Sir Clixby Bream was striding down towards diem.
'Hell-o! You're both just off, I can see that. But what about anodier litde snifter? Just to please me?'
'Not for me, Master.' Cornford trusted diat he'd masked die bitterness of his earlier tone. 'But if... ?' He turned to his wife.
'No. Not now. Anodier time. Thank you, Master.'
Widi Shelly still beside him, Cornford walked radier blindly on, suspecting (how odierwise?) diat die Master had witnessed die awkward, angry scene. And then, a few steps later - almost miraculously - he felt his wife's arm link with his own; heard die wonderful words spoken in
DEATH IS NOW MY NEIGHBOUR
her quiet voice: 'Denis, I'm so very sorry. Do please forgive me, my darling.'
As the Master stooped slightly to pass beneath the entrance of the Turf Tavern, an observer skilled in the art of labiomancy would have read the two words on his smoothly smiling mouth: 'Well! Well!'
CHAPTER FOUR
Wednesday, 7 February
DISCIPLE (weeping): O Master, .1 disturb thy meditations.
MASTER: Thy tears are plural; the Divine
Will is one.
DISCIPLE: I seek wisdom and truth, yet my
thoughts are ever of lust and die necessary pleasures of a woman.
