Night Train to Memphis Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘Oh, dear, I’m fussing, aren’t I? I promise I won’t do it again. Come along, Vicky, you and I will lean on one another.’
    She didn’t need assistance; she was a lot steadier on her feet than I was. I stumbled along beside her, grateful for the uneven terrain and the heat and the need for haste, since they
offered an excuse for the fact that I couldn’t seem to take a deep breath. From behind me I heard a murmur of voices and a soft, silvery laugh.
    The bus was one of those modern monsters, air-conditioned and enormous. As soon as we had settled ourselves an attendant came round with a tray. ‘Mineral water?’ he inquired softly.
‘Orange juice? Mimosa?’
    It occurred to my numbed brain that mimosas had alcohol of some kind in them. Champagne? Who cared? I grabbed one and tossed it down.
    Jen had taken the seat next to mine. Several rows ahead I saw the familiar outlines of a neatly shaped skull covered with fair hair. Mary’s head wasn’t visible over the back of the
seat. She was so tiny.
    Have I mentioned I am almost six feet tall?
    Maybe it was the alcohol that cleared my head, but I doubt it; the damned thing was mostly orange juice. I turned to Jen – Guinevere? He had told me that was his mother’s name. I had
assumed it was a joke.
    ‘Guinevere,’ I said experimentally. My voice seemed to be working.
    She didn’t question my knowledge. I suppose she thought she’d told me. She couldn’t possibly remember everything she said, she had been talking non-stop. Her chin lifted
proudly. ‘We are an old Cornish family. Tre, Pol, and Pen – you know the rhyme? Names beginning with those syllables distinguish the Cornishmen. There is a tradition that Arthur himself
was our remote ancestor. My father’s name was Gawain, his father’s name was Arthur. On my mother’s side . . .’
    ‘Mother’s side,’ I repeated, to show I was paying attention. I waved at the steward. Guzzling my second mimosa, I lost the next few sentences.
    ‘. . . only a distant connection with Egypt, really. So, when I decided to marry, I chose a cousin in order to carry on the family name. Poor Agrivaine. I didn’t see a great deal of
him; he was always running off to some war or other.’
    ‘Agrivaine?’
    ‘That was what I called him. He had been christened Albert, and I believed his friends referred to him as – as Al. So common! It was he who insisted on calling our son John. I wanted
to name him Percival or Galahad.’
    I choked on my drink. Jen gave me a hearty slap on the back. Her brow clouded. ‘Oh, dear, I hope I didn’t offend the dear boy. Men are so sensitive about weakness, you know, and I
promised myself I would stop fussing over him, especially now that he has a wife to look after him, but he was so ill last winter . . . A skiing accident, and then pneumonia. He seems quite fit
now, but I worry.’
    ‘Skiing accident,’ I repeated, like a parrot. I guess it could have been described that way. John wasn’t the world’s greatest skier, and he had fallen flat on his already
damaged face while he was trying to reach the spot where a very unpleasant individual was about to do unpleasant things to me before finishing me off permanently. However, the worst of his injuries
had resulted from the hand-to-hand fight that followed his arrival and from the avalanche that had followed the fight. I had not known about his subsequent illness, but I wasn’t surprised to
hear of it. If he had stayed in bed for a few days instead of sneaking off the first time I left him alone . . .
    Fortunately Jen didn’t notice my abstraction; she was perfectly happy to carry the conversation. I sat slugging down champagne and orange juice while Jen went merrily on, telling me how
she had feared her dear boy would never settle down – ‘he is so attractive to women’ – about the whirlwind courtship – ‘he didn’t bring her to meet me
until a few weeks ago’ – and about their insistence that she join them