The Grave Maurice

Suddenly, Jury thought of Maurice and sat up. Maurice needed to tell someone the truth about what he’d done.

With the receiver cradled between ear and shoulder, Jury hurriedly went through his address book, found the Ryder number and punched it in. The phone rang several times before someone got to it.

The voice, Jury was fairly certain, was Vernon Rice’s.

“It’s Richard Jury. Sorry, it’s a little late, but it’s important. I just wanted a word with Maurice, if he’s around.”

On Rice’s end, dead silence.

“Vernon?”

“Yes, I’m here. Sorry.” He cleared his throat as if that might get his voice working again. “I’m afraid this is…”

The voice just trailed off. Something must be seriously wrong. “Nell. Has something happened to her?”

“No. It’s not Nell.” Vernon tried again to clear his throat. “It’s Maurice. There was an accident. Maurice is dead.”

The words hit Jury one two three, as if he’d been clubbed. He got up, felt dizzy, sat down again. He could think of nothing to say as he shook and shook his head as if Vernon Rice could see he was reacting to this news. He couldn’t find his voice to ask what had happened. He sat staring at the listing picture of the horses gathered at the white fence.

Vernon inferred that Jury was having trouble and told him briefly what had happened. “Maurice was out earlier jumping Aqueduct over those walls-you know, Hadrian’s walls-and Aqueduct, well, who knows exactly what happened? Maurice was thrown, must have vaulted against the stone. Nell started looking for Aqueduct when she found the stall empty. She found the horse, unharmed. Then she found Maurice.”

Nell had to be the one to find him. Jury shut his eyes.

“Do you want to talk to her?”

“No, not now. Maybe tomorrow. That poor lad.”

“Yes. He went just the way his dad went. God.”

Jury held the dead receiver for a long time before he put it back, got up and went over to the picture and set it straight. He didn’t think he would ever be able to tell himself why. Where had he got it, this gentle scene? A hand on each side of the picture, as if either to imprison or protect it, he leaned against the wall and looked at the water-color of the horses at the fence. As far back as he could remember, he’d had it. He leaned his head against a fisted hand and his face so close to the glass he could make out only an amorphous white, brown, black. He wondered why he’d never paid any attention to it until the other night, and felt as people will feel a sense of loss that comes from neglect-the call you didn’t make, the book you didn’t read, the woman you didn’t kiss. Why did he feel that place, that pasture so infinitely desirable but inaccessible? Freedom, was that it?

Maurice, unless he’d known there at the end, would never know.

Jury turned and looked at the table near the window where sat his old turntable and records and felt himself spinning out of control. He could feel himself sobbing, but as if the sobs were those of another person, the arm another’s arm that shot out and swept the magazines, the keys, the heavy ashtray off the table. He retrieved the ashtray and hurled it against the bookshelves, where it landed and bounced onto the rug.

The door flew open.

“Super!”

Carole-anne rushed in and up to him and threw her arms around him as if to contain the fury. Then she pushed him down on the sofa, keeping her arm around his shoulders as if afraid to take away this support, fearful he might erupt.

Stone sat at his feet and whimpered. For Stone, that was out of control. Jury put his hand on the Lab’s head. “Sorry,” he said.

“Oh, Stone don’t mind. All the times he’s put up with Stan raging around.”

Stan Keeler raging?

“I should have gone with you. I could use a few lashings of his guitar.”

“Well, right now what you need’s a lashing of tea.” But she hesitated, not wanting to take her arm away. She moved her face back, frowned in question.

“I’m okay.”

She patted his shoulder and went toward the kitchen, stopping first at the record player and looking through the records. She took one from its sleeve, put it on and continued to the kitchen as the twangy voice of Willie Nelson sang of all the girls he loved before.

Pots and pans were rattling around and suggested more than tea was being prepared. Soon he heard the spit of something hitting grease.

Willie Nelson. Now he remembered where he’d gotten that recording. It was Carole-anne who’d walked in with it when Jury’s old fiancee, Susan, had been in the flat. Carole-anne had put it on and told Susan it was “their” song. Carole-anne in a Chinese red silk dress with “their” song was a force to be reckoned with, and Susan lost the reckoning. He listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen and the voice singing along with Willie Nelson.

She came out of the kitchen holding a plate and a cup. “Why’re you laughing?” A ton of relief was in her voice.

My God, he had been, hadn’t he? “I was remembering my old fiancee, Susan.”

“You don’t want to go wasting your time on old girl-friends. Here drink this”-she handed him a mug of tea-“and eat this.” She handed him a plate of fried eggs, sausages and a wedge of fried bread.

Carole-anne sat down across from him in his armchair and smiled.

Jury noticed that she had asked why he was laughing, but would not ask why he was crying. He knew she would love to hear why, but she would not ask.

Jury lifted his plate as if to toast her and said, “Shades of Little Chef.”

FIFTY-THREE

“He died just like his dad,” said Nell, seated limply in one of Vernon Rice’s metal-spoked, punishing-looking chairs as if she needed some hard and abrasive punishment because she hadn’t stopped Maurice from trying to jump those walls.

Vernon handed Nell a glass of mineral water and Jury a whiskey. He said to her, “Does that-” and he stopped.

Nell’s look implored him to say the right thing. “What?”

As if there were any right thing, thought Jury.

They all looked down into their glasses. No one spoke. After a full minute of silence, Jury asked Nell what he supposed Vernon had meant to ask but drew back from because it sounded insensitive. “Does that bother you? The similarity? Maurice certainly knew he shouldn’t have been jumping walls after dark. Not only putting himself in danger, but also the horse.”

“Of course it bothers me. And Maurice knew better than to do what he