What a Carve Up! Read Online Free Page B

Nurse Gannet from her cocoa-induced stupor.
    ∗
    Downstairs, the dinner party is by now well advanced. The guests have whetted their appetite with a light soup (stilton and steamed pumpkin) and have made short work of their trout (poached in dry Martini with a nettle sauce). While waiting for the third course to arrive, Lawrence, who is seated at the head of the table, excuses himself and leaves the room; on his return, he stops to have a few words with Mortimer, the guest of honour, who is seated at the centre. Lawrence’s intention is to make a discreet inquiry into the condition of their sister.
    ‘How d’you reckon the old loony’s bearing up?’ he whispers.
    Mortimer winces, and his reply has a reproving tone: ‘If you’re referring to Tabitha, then you’ll find that she’s behaving herself perfectly. Just as I said she would.’
    ‘I saw you both having a bit of a chinwag this afternoon on the croquet lawn. You looked rather serious, that’s all. There wasn’t anything up, was there?’
    ‘Of course not. We’d just been for a walk together.’ Mortimer sees an opportunity to change the subject at this point. ‘The gardens are looking magnificent, by the way. Especially your jasmine: the scent was quite overpowering. Wouldn’t mind learning your secret, one of these days.’
    Lawrence laughs cruelly. ‘Sometimes I think you’re as bats as she is, old boy. There’s no jasmine in our garden, I can vouch for it. Not even a sprig!’ He glances up and notices a huge silver tureen being carried in at the far end of the dining room. ‘Hello, here comes the next course.’
    ∗
    Midway through her saddle of curried hare, Rebecca hears a diffident cough at her side.
    ‘What is it, Pyles?’
    ‘A word in private, if I may, Mrs Winshaw. It’s a matter of some urgency.’
    They withdraw into the transverse corridor and when Rebecca returns, a minute later, her face is pale.
    ‘It’s the children,’ she tells her husband. ‘There’s been some silly accident in the nursery. Hilary’s hurt her hand. I’m going to have to take her to the hospital.’
    Mortimer half-rises from his seat in panic.
    ‘Is it serious?’
    ‘I don’t think so. She’s just a bit upset.’
    ‘I’ll come with you.’
    ‘No, you’ll have to stay here. I doubt if I’ll be much more than an hour. You stay and enjoy your party.’
    ∗
    But Mortimer does not enjoy his party. The only aspect of it which he was enjoying in the first place was the company of Rebecca, upon whom he has come to depend more and more in the last few years as a means of shielding himself from his hated family. Now, in her absence, he is forced to spend most of the evening in conversation with his sister Olivia; dry, sour-faced Olivia, who is so implacably loyal to the Winshaw pedigree that she even married one of her own cousins, and who now drones on remorselessly about the management of her estate and her husband’s impending knighthood for services to industry and the political future of her son Henry who has at least been clever enough to see that it’s the Labour Party which offers him the best prospect of a cabinet position by the age of forty. Mortimer nods tiredly throughout her monologue, and takes an occasional glance at the other faces around the table: Dorothy shovelling food into her mouth; her sheep-faced fiancé sitting morosely beside her; Mark’s ratty, calculating eyes maintaining their restless vigil; sweet, bewildered Mildred telling some shy anecdote to Thomas, who listens with all the frosty indifference of a merchant banker about to withhold a loan from a small businessman. And there, of course, is Tabitha, sitting erect at the table and not saying a word to anyone. He notices that she consults her pocket watch every few minutes, and that more than once she asks one of the footmen to check the time on the grandfather clock in the hallway. Otherwise, she sits perfectly still and keeps her eyes fixed upon Lawrence. It’s almost