The Birthday Present Read Online Free PDF Page A

house.
    Sandy got up at seven-thirty, leaving his wife, Erica, and his boy and girl asleep. He made himself a cup of tea, ate a piece of bread and marmalade, and left the house. The bodyguard had returned to his flat, but he came downstairs again when he saw Sandy coming, said good morning to him, and stood at a distance with his dog while Sandy got into the Rover. It wasn't when he turned on the ignition but when the engine started that the car blew up.
    Flying metal and glass struck the bodyguard. Apparently, he didn't move but just stood there as if turned to stone. The dog, covered with blood and trembling, began to howl. The bodyguard stayed frozen there until Erica Caxton came running screaming out of the front door and then he ran to her, crying, “Don't look, don't look,” but there was nothing to see if she had looked, only metal and glass and bits of clothing and blood, blood everywhere. The children, aged fourteen and sixteen, slept through it all.
    I T WAS THE lead item in all the news programs that day and the lead story in all the Sunday papers and Monday's papers. An hour after it happened the IRA announced in their usual way that they were responsible. Ivor was very upset. I could say disproportionately upset, but perhaps not. Sandy Caxton was fifteen years older than Erica and, though not quite his contemporary, had been a friend of John Tesham's since before Ivor and Iris were born. Ivor and his parents went to the funeral, but I stopped Iris going as she wasn't well and she was relieved that I had.
    The funeral was a highly emotional affair, attended bymost of the country's great and good. Among the coffin bearers were three Cabinet ministers and two university vice-chancellors. Though May, it was a bitterly cold day, a north wind driving the rain and the trees in the little village churchyard swaying and lashing their branches like angry arms, as Ivor put it. They played “The Dead March” in
Saul,
this being Sandy's favorite piece of music, and it seems he was particularly fond of the story of Saul, Samuel, and the Witch of Endor. There's no accounting for tastes. Why, incident ally, do we always talk about Handel arias and other music being “in”
Saul
or
Theodora
or whatever it is, when they are “from” if it's works by Mozart, say, or Beethoven? Nobody has ever been able to tell me.
    Ivor came up to Hampstead after the funeral, accepted a stronger drink than usual, brandy with a splash of soda, and said in gloomy tones that he was so depressed by what had happened that he felt like postponing or even canceling the birthday present. But he couldn't do that. He'd fixed it up with Hebe to see her on Friday the eighteenth and arranged things with Lloyd and Dermot.
    Iris said surely he'd be better by that time, it was nearly two weeks off. And it was only his usual assignation with Hebe, wasn't it, apart from its taking place in our house and her being fetched by car?
    “Not quite usual,” Ivor said, putting on his secretive look but not the little smile this time. “There will be complications. But I'll tell you all about it when it's over.”
    “Not
all
about it, I hope.”
    “You know what I mean,” Ivor said, using a phrase I'd never heard from him before, his use of which I put down to his feeling low.
    He didn't stay long but went off to Old Pye Street in a taxi, saying he had a lot of paperwork to get through beforethe following morning. After he'd gone Iris said, “I do wonder about this Hebe, this mystery woman. What do you think she says to her husband when she goes off on these jaunts? Does she tell him she's going to the cinema? I should think she must do, because I can't think of anywhere else a
respectable
young woman with a husband and a child could go to on her own. I mean, could
say
she was going to on her own.”
    I said I supposed she might say she was going somewhere with a friend. To have a meal, for instance, or even to a club.
    “Then the friend must be an accomplice.