Bones of the Buried Read Free

met those of her son which opened wider than might have been thought possible.
    ‘Oh Christ! Oliver, darling, it’s not what you think. We were just . . . we were just talking.’
    The boy had still not said a word but his mouth hung open and the pupils of his eyes were dilated. He looked from his mother to his friend and back again. Then he turned and ran down the
corridor sobbing. Stephen, white-faced, turned to the woman in the bed who now seemed not the desirable sex siren he had just made love to so violently but a middle-aged woman with lines under her
eyes and bleached hair showing dark at the roots. ‘I’d better get dressed and go after him,’ he mumbled.
    ‘Oh Christ,’ she said again. ‘Oh Christ!’ Wearily, she let her head fall back upon the lipstick-stained pillow.

 
Part One

 
1
    It was good to be home. Lord Edward Corinth lay in his bath splashing himself contentedly with an enormous yellow sponge. Now and again he put it on his head and let the water
dribble over his eyes and ears to lubricate his brain, which felt arid and infertile after the transatlantic crossing. He had disembarked from the Normandie at Southampton, along with the
other English passengers, at seven o’clock the previous morning, and reached his rooms in Albany six hours later. His man, Fenton had grilled him a chop, which he washed down with half a
bottle of Perrier-Jouet and then, overcome with lassitude, he had strolled round to the hammam in Jermyn Street. Steamed, scrubbed and massaged within an inch of his life, he had slept in his
cubicle for an hour. Then, feeling a little restored but as weak as a newborn lamb, he had tottered round to his club in St James’s. There, he hid himself away in a corner unable to face
social intercourse and had Barney, the smoking-room waiter, bring him potted shrimps, scrambled eggs, angels on horseback, along with a weak whisky and soda. After which he had snoozed in his chair
for half an hour and then crawled back home. He toyed with a pile of letters which lay on his desk but could not face opening any of them and was in bed not much after nine.
    This morning he had awoken refreshed but still curiously reluctant to face the world, despite having looked forward for so long to seeing his old friends and revisiting old haunts. In the six
months he had been away, an era had ended with the death of the King on January 20th. The new King, Edward VIII, with his film-star good looks and easy charm, was hugely popular, to judge from what
he read in the papers, but he was mistrusted by the ‘old guard’ who suspected he lacked his father’s sense of duty. They did not like his friends either. In New York, Edward had
heard disquieting rumours concerning his lady friend, Mrs Simpson, a divorcée of dubious morals. It looked as though 1936 would prove to be an interesting year.
    He submerged himself in the rapidly cooling water until only his aquiline nose showed above the surface like the periscope of a submarine. He suspected that Dr Freud, whose works he had been
perusing on the boat coming over, might mutter something to the effect that his bath provided a womb into which he could retreat when in need of comfort and reassurance, and it was true that just
the sight of this huge, ornate iron bath, standing foursquare in the centre of the room on massive gilt claws, had always aroused in him a most profound sense of well-being. The United States
– well, New York – seemed to assume its denizens preferred showering to lying in a soup of bath salts and soap, and the Normandie – beyond criticism in every other respect
– boasted baths which, to be enjoyed, demanded amputation at the knees. Luxurious though that great ship was, the next time he crossed the Atlantic he promised himself a berth on the Queen
Mary , which was about to set out on her maiden voyage. All the talk on the Normandie had been of this new Cunard liner whose launch demonstrated that the economic