Cavalier Case (13 page)

It must now be about five o'clock in the afternoon. The shutters of her Holland Park flat had already been drawn when Dan and jemima arrived back from lunch; that was something the prudent Mrs. Bancroft usually did when she left at noon, as a barrier against the encroachment of the western sun high over the trees in the park. The hot weather had returned. Outside, Jemima knew that the sun was battering away at the shutters, high over the trees of Holland Park, without penetrating the secure womb-like dusk of the interior.

It was another happy coincidence, at least from Jemima's point of view, that
Don Giovanni
(Thomas Allen, naturally, as the Don) happened to be
in situ
on her CD player.

"A new experience." When was it exactly that Dan had said that? And did he mean listening to
Don Giovanni
? (Unlike the more socially craven Home Secretary, he had been frank enough about his usual reaction to the opera: "I'm afraid I associate it with long and boring evenings planning what I'm going to have for dinner but of course I know I'm wrong.") Or did he perchance mean making love to the sound of an aria? But perhaps the presence of
Don Giovann
i of all things on her CD was not quite such a coincidence after all; for why should Jemima find herself moodily playing this particular CD, late at night and alone, if not in some way brooding on the presence of Handsome Dan Meredith, that latter-day Don in her life . . .

The one thought which Jemima wanted to keep resolutely from her at the present time was where last night's encounter with Cass Brinsley fitted into all this. There was a sense in which Dan's move had been all too perfectly timed; as though his sportsman's instinct had instructed him exactly when to strike the blow, serve the ball, or whatever other ridiculous sporting metaphor she chose to come up with. That was the sense in which Dan Lackland had made his not-so-casual suggestion of lunch the very morning after Jemima had learnt that Cass was seeing his ex-wife—no, darn it, his
wife
, Flora Hereford, again on a regular basis.

"Does it make a difference?" Cass had asked carefully at dinner. "It shouldn't." It was so irritatingly predictable of him, Jemima thought at the time, that he should cook her a carefully studied ethnic meal—in this case Vietnamese, a new departure. Cooking ethnic, was always a confessional gesture with him. There had been a famous Thai dinner which absolutely proved to her that he had had a fling with Flora Hereford. She could write a thesis on the culinary efforts of Cass Brinsley in relation to his amatory exploits, or projected exploits.

"No, of course it doesn't. Why should it?" was what Jemima actually replied with equal care, her poise annoyingly shattered when she stabbed herself with one of the chopsticks Cass had thoughtfully borrowed from their local Vietnamese restaurant. When she recovered, she went on to speak with a greater degree of honesty than either of them had shown in the previous exchange: "On the other hand, if you were thinking of settling down again in, your favourite phrase ... a proper relationship . . . now that surely would make a difference."

"You know, Jemima, I don't think anything in this world would really make a difference to how I feel about you." Cass sounded suddenly very sad. It was that sadness, more than anything he had actually said—including the fact that he had not answered her question—which told Jemima the truth. Not now, not immediately, not even very soon perhaps, but sometime in the future Cass would 'settle down" again—very probably with the girl to whom he was still married: the girl whom he had left "because I just could not get you out of my system: it wasn't fair to her." Cass had told her that only the other night; up till then Jemima had fondly imagined, the wish being rather to the thought, that there had been some basic lack in Flora Hereford herself.

Had he now
got
Jemima out of his system? Should she start feeling that famous allegedly feminine feeling of being "used" in relation to the events of the last reconciliatory few weeks? Honesty, another of Jemima's strong qualities along with curiosity, compelled her to admit that this would be a ludicrous suggestion. There had been no using on ether side between Cass and herself, only pleasure freely given, freely taken. The truth was that his nature was as inexorably "settled," or atleast prone to look for commitment, as hers was "free," or at least shrinking back from commitment. How ironical that in this way, but in no other, they reversed the traditional male/female roles! At least she, Jemima, was doing the world a favour by not settling down since the results were not likely to be satisfactory for either party.

And yet, and yet . . . Was it always to be so? Sad in her turn, Jemima recalled her favourite romantic melody from
Arabella: "Aber der richtige
. . . One day the right man—if there is one for me in all this world—will suddenly appear. He will stand before me and look at me and I at him, and there will be no doubts or questions . . ."It was of course the Straussian equivalent of "Some day my prince will come," but what was wrong with the plot of
Snow White
anyway?

It was in her public nature to accept defeat—if that was what it was—gracefully. Certainly there was a kind of defeat in the fact that Cass would no longer tolerate the easy sliding relationship of recent weeks, the relationship preferred by Jemima: Cass with whom she had everything in common, every taste (including how, when and where to make love), her Cass . . . That was no way to think about it all. Far better to be good-mannered and philosophical. A quick peck on the cheek to Cass at the end of the evening and she was gone from his flat, if not quite as yet from his life. (Dramatic statements were to be avoided at all costs, the one thing she had learned that distinguished the sophisticated thirty-year-old woman from the passionate twenty- year-old girl. ) Cass had not asked her to stay—and she of course would not have stayed if asked.

None of this
really
explained, did it, the presence of Dan Lackland in or rather on her bed one late afternoon on a hot summer's day; something of which her cat Midnight for one, with his usual strong belief in territorial rights, certainly disapproved. He stalked into the bedroom, surveyed Dan, still with Jemima in his arms, and then, black tail held high, stalked out again. For one thing no one could possibly pretend that Dan Lackland was "
der richtige
" for Jemima Shore, which once again was a delightfully fancy way of expressing the dear old concept of Mr. Right; not even Jemima herself.

That left open the question of why Jemima had brought Dan back to her flat in the first place, following a rather long lunch—rather too long—at the most expensive neighbourhood restaurant, the Kingfisher. (That had been Dan's suggestion: Jemima would have happily settled for the Plantaganet's local, the trendy and delightful River Cafe. But Dan had murmured something about "his own backyard"—not that the River Cafe was anybody's yard.) The lunch had one ostensible purpose and one covert one—leaving quite apart the whole question of seduction and whose purpose that was.

The covert purpose was to explain away—if it could be explained away—the highly embarrassing eruption of Babs Meredith into the Plantaganet Club and the scene which followed. Even if the word "murderer" had not been publicly shouted, the scene was embarrassing enough in its own right, and could hardly be ignored given that Little Mary had duly gone to town on the whole subject under the following titillating headline: 'THE CASE OF A VERY CAVALIER DAN'. Although the exact wording of Babs' shouted imprecation was obviously not repeated, readers were otherwise reminded of all the previous sensational details comprising the Cavalier Case, before being imparted the latest development.

"That bloody woman!" was Dan's only spoken comment on the Plantaganet affair to Jemima. For a moment she actually thought he was referring to his ex-wife—but for Babs, as opposed to Little Mary, Dan was back using his special tender tone. "She has her problems, but then don't we all? You know, when she
hasn't
had a drink, or taken too many of her pills, or both, Babs can be the most charming woman, so its not fair to judge her by her behaviour when the drink's in her, she'll say anything and frequently does—"

His covert purpose accomplished—his ex-wife was a paid-up alcoholic, alternately hooked on tranquillisers, whose utterances must be gracefully ignored—Dan Lackland changed the subject.  As it happened, Jemima had two important appointments coming up with regard to her own unofficial investigation of the Cavalier Case. One was with the Taynfordshire police. The other was with Babs Meredith in her Ladbroke Grove flat. Under the circumstances, she did not try to dissuade Dan from dropping the topic of his first wife. The ostensible purpose for the lunch was to discuss the Cavalier Celebration. This had now officially replaced the Decimus Ghost programme as the topic which drew them together. Since Cy Fredericks was cruising off the coast of Turkey in Baby Diamondson's yacht—whence periodic and generally incomprehensible telecommunications proceeded—the whole ghost series had still never been officially cancelled. On the other hand the disappearance of its cameraman, Spike Thompson, to shoot a highly lucrative Californian commercial for the ecology called "Back Green for Life" (known to his friends as "Back Greenbacks for Spike") was hardly insignificant. 

Jemima, who frankly now had nothing else to do with her summer, the Decimus programme and Cass Brinsley having disappeared more or less simultaneously, was thus delighted, if slightly surprised, when Dan formally invited her to enact the role of Lady Isabella Clare in the Celebration. She did not wish to spend her summer thinking about Cass—with whom she had been contemplating a Paxos holiday in September—and this new role would help her to do that; besides, playing the part would also enable her to pursue her investigation from the inside as well as the outside.

"I accept!" said Jemima hastily before he could change his mind. It only occurred to her afterwards that she was thus supporting the establishment of the Lackland Court Country Club: but then it was too late to change her mind, wasn't it?

"Lucky Decimus! With you as Lady Isabella." Dan toasted her with a second glass of champagne (it seemed at the time to Jemima mere politeness to agree to a second): "You've got exactly the right colouring and we're copying the dress from the portrait, though we'll spare you the lamb." 

But I haven't got the Page Three figure for that Restoration
decolletage
, thought Jemima, well, not quite. But, I expect I'll manage somehow.

Then Dan Lackland began to describe the casting of the rest of the parts. Acting, it turned out, was not of the essence. The actual narration of a text written by a historian—not, she noted, Zena Meredith—would be done by a professional actor.

"We think someone like Jeremy Irons would do the trick," explained Dan Lackland. "He'd look good in the Cavalier clothes, sweeping off a plumed hat and all that romantic bit. You need a bit of style for that and I gather he went to a public school. Someone else suggested Bob Hoskins but we weren't quite sure about his accent, the plumed hat element. What do you think?"

"They're both very good actors," replied Jemima. It was her private opinion that neither of these stars would actually be available for a one-night
son-et-lumiere
production in Taynfordshire, in aid of a new country club, regardless of their education; but you could never tell.

"But we're not really bothered about that," Dan went on, "because I gather you can always get hold of one at the last minute."

"An actor, you mean?"

"Yes. Apparently they never really know their plans in advance. It's not like the tennis circuit."

Once again Jemima, while suspecting that Jeremy Irons and Bob Hoskins did generally know their plans in advance, forbore to comment. He'll end up with someone like my old friend Charles Paris, she thought; and that will teach him.