Blood Rules Read Online Free PDF

night?” “Dad!”
    “Whoops, sorry, I forgot.” They had nearly reached the cashier and Colin was fumbling for his boarding pass. “Never did get around to telling you about the birds and the bees, did I?”
    Then it happened. Two Arabs thrust their way past them, causing Colin to stagger. His heel slipped on the polished floor and he fell awkwardly. The bottle of malt fell from his hands, and although protected by a cardboard case he could tell from the sound that it had smashed.
    “Sorry,” one of the Arabs disdainfully offered, over his shoulder. “Plane to catch.”
    “And you think I haven’t?” Colin shouted as he hauled himself vertical again. “My God, you people should be lynched!” The Arabs, tossing large denomination banknotes at the cashier, paid no heed; until, that is, Colin raised the soggy cardboard case and said, “To the health of General Ariel Sharon.”
    The Arab who had pushed him swung around at that, and Colin read the murder in his eyes, but his companion clasped his arm and muttered in his ear, until the first Arab turned away, relegating Colin to a realm beneath contempt.
    Colin went to collect a replacement bottle. “That wasn’t like you,” Robbie said as he returned. “A bit … over the top, wasn’t it?”
    “A bit.” Colin heaved a deep sigh. “That’s how I met your mother,” he said. “In a roughhouse with Arabs.”
    Robbie, seeing the valley suddenly materialize before him, took one deep breath, spread his wings, and soared. “Tell me!”

JULY 1969: OXFORD
    “F OREGONE conclusion,” Mark Stamford observed gloomily. “Don’t know why they bothered to viva you. You’ll stay on to do the BCL, of course?” “
    Haven’t decided.”
    Two young men were walking by the river near Oxford, up Marston way, on a weekday afternoon of sun and puff-ball cloud. There was no one else about. The bank became difficult here, overgrown with high reeds and prone to sink into bog where the ground looked firmest, but Colin Raleigh knew the path. A loner by nature, he’d often sought out this tranquil stretch of river. Mark was the nearest he had to a friend at Oxford, but even so, it was unusual for him to invite anyone on these solitary tramps. Today, however, he wanted advice.
    “I don’t know about staying on for a BCL,” Colin went on. “I buggered up the trusts paper in finals, you see. Completely misread one whole question.”
    “Oh, come on! You got a
first!
As everyone knew you would.”
    Colin shrugged irritably. He hadn’t dragged Mark up here to discuss what everybody knew.
    “Anyway,” he said, “I scraped through, and I’m fucked if I know what to do next.” He plucked a long reed and threw it on one side, as if it had offended him and he were obeying some hitherto unpublicized biblical injunction about it. “What do you think I should do?”
    “Oh, the higher degree, without question. Even if you opt for the bar later, it can only stand you in good stead. But you won’t, will you—you’ll teach.”
    “Christ. ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t—’ ”
    “Sit up half the night drinking vintage port, having no thought for the morrow. Let’s not be
too
quick to reject that, shall we?”
    “Yes, but imagine it,” Colin exploded. “Spending the next forty years stuck in the Bodleian Library, churning out textbooks.”
    “What do your parents think? Oh, your father’s dead, didn’t you once tell me?”
    Colin nodded. He’d scarcely talked about his parents to anyone since arriving in Oxford. “Do you know Andrew Smythe?” he asked.
    “History bod, isn’t he?”
    “That’s him. He was on my staircase for two years. About once a year he’d mutter something about going off to visit relatives in Winchester for the weekend; then one day I found out he meant his parents. Which about sums it up in my case too.”
    “Mother difficult, is she?”
    Colin just grunted. “At least she can’t stop me living my own life now,” he said after a