Extrait
The sick . . . they see to with great affection, and let nothing at all pass concerning either physic or good diet whereby they may be restored again to their health.
When Wexford came downstairs in the morning his nephew had already left for work and the women, with the fiendish gusto of amateur dieticians, were preparing a convalescent's breakfast. It had been like that every day since he arrived in London. They kept him in bed till ten; they ran his bath for him; one of them waited for him at the foot of the stairs, holding out a hand in case he fell, a lunatic smile of encouragement on her face.
The other--this morning it was his nephew's wife, Denise--presided over the meagre spread on the dining-room table. Wexford viewed it grimly: two circular biscuits apparently composed of sawdust and glue, a pat of unsaturated fat, half a sugarless grapefruit, black coffee and, crowning horror, a glass dish of wobbly pallid substance he took to be yoghourt. His own wife, trotting behind him from her post as staircase attendant, proffered two white pills and a glass of water.
"This diet," he said, "is going to be the death of me."
"Oh, it's not so bad. Imagine if you were diabetic as well."
'Who," quoted Wexford, "can hold a fire in his hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?"
He swallowed the pills and, having shown his contempt for the yoghourt by covering it with his napkin, began to eat sour grapefruit under their solicitous eyes.
"Where are you going for your walk this morning, Uncle Reg?"
He had been to look at Carlyle's house; he had explored the King's Road, eyeing with equal amazement the shops and the people who shopped in them; he had stood at the entrance to Stamford Bridge football ground and actually seen Alan Hudson; he had traversed every exquisite little Chelsea Square, admired the grandeur of the Boltons and the quaint corners of Walham Green; on aching feet he had tramped through the Chenil Galleries and the antique market. They liked him to walk. In the afternoons they encouraged him to go with them in taxis and tube trains to the Natural History Museum and Brompton Oratory and Harrods. As long as he didn't think too much or tax his brain by asking a lot of questions or stay up late or try to go into pubs, they jollied him along with a kind of humouring indulgence.
'Where am I going this morning?" he said. "Maybe down to the Embankment."
"Oh, yes, do. What a good idea!"
"I thought I'd have a look at that statue."
"Saint Thomas More," said Denise who was a Catholic.
"Sir Thomas," said Wexford who wasn't.
"Saint Thomas, Uncle Reg." Denise whisked away the unsaturated fat before Wexford could eat too much of it. "And this afternoon, if it isn't too cold, we'll all go and look at Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens."
But it was cold, bitingly cold and rather foggy. He was glad of the scarf his wife had wrapped round his neck, although he would have preferred her not to have gazed so piteously into his eyes while doing so as if she feared the next time she saw him he would be on a mortuary slab. He didn't feel ill, only bored. There weren't even very many people about this morning to divert him with their flowing hair, beads, mediaeval ironmongery, flower-painted boots and shaggy coats matching shaggy Afghan hounds. The teeming young, who usually drifted past him incuriously, were this morning congregated in the little caf6s with names like Friendly Frodo and The Love Conception.
Theresa Street, where his nephew's house was, lay on the borders of fashionable Chelsea, outside them if you hold that the King's Road ends at Beaufort Street. Wexford was beginning to pick up these bits of with-it lore. He had to have something to keep his mind going. He crossed the King's Road by the World's End and made his way towards the river.
It was lead-coloured this morning, the twenty-ninth of February. Fog robbed the Embankment of colour and even the Albert Bridge, whose blue and white slenderness he liked, ha
