The Affair of the Thirty-Nine Cufflinks Read Free Page A

lips, who was lounging artistically back on the sofa, displaying very long and shapely legs, clad in black stockings of the purest silk, went on: 'It's chiffon, the palest shade of blue, with these delicious little pleats . . .' She prattled away, but Gregory wasn't listening. He gazed out of the window over the roofs of St. John's Wood to the famous Father Time weather vane of Lord's Cricket Ground, just a few hundred yards away. Useful, at least in the summer. If anybody should happen to see him in the neighbourhood, it provided the perfect excuse. Watching cricket was something nobody objected to a Member of Parliament doing; it was almost expected.
    He was a heavily built man of about fifty with closely cropped grizzled hair, a florid complexion, the beginnings of a double chin and a neatly trimmed moustache, which he fondly believed gave him a military appearance. He always refused to talk about his war experiences, leading many people to assume he must have had a good record. In fact, he had been rejected because of flat feet, and had spent the whole of 1914 to 1918 in a Whitehall office.
    He turned round and surveyed the chicly furnished, ultramodern sitting-room of the flat, with its sharp angles and chromium fittings. 'Strewth, but this place was costing him a fortune. How long would he be able to keep it up? Or Poppy, for that matter? He was going to have to do something about it. But what? Poppy was such a clinger. And she wouldn't forgive easily if he just dumped her. He had to keep her sweet. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for that damned letter he'd written her. What a fool he'd been! Tipsy at the time, of course, and in those days he'd been really smitten by her, but that was no excuse. He had to get out of this entanglement soon. But how?
    '. . . and it was only ten pounds - well, guineas, actually. It would really suit me.'
    Gregory dragged himself back. 'I'm sure you'd look absolutely breathtaking in it, my sweet. We must certainly think about getting it for you, er, sometime.'
    'Sometime?' There was a suspicious edge to her voice.
    'Yes, Christmas perhaps.'
    ' Christmas ?' This time the voice was an octave higher. 'But that's months and months away. And this is a summer dress!'
    'But you've got dozens of summer dresses. And look so perfectly ravishing in all of them.'
    Poppy gazed at him, a disconcertingly acute and appraising expression in her large violet eyes. 'Greggy, you're not getting hard up, are you?'
    'Good lord, no! Whatever gave you that idea?'
    'You haven't bought me anything nice for weeks and weeks.'
    'Well, I am a bit short of the ready just now. But it's just a temporary thing. Hold up in funds, lots of expenses, have to take the old woman to Monte later this month, as I explained.'
    'You've never taken me to Monte Carlo.'
    'I know, my sweet, and I'd like nothing better, believe me. But we did have that weekend in Brighton a month ago.'
    'That was no fun, not with you peering over your shoulder all the time, in a blue funk in case someone recognised you.'
    'Well, I do have to be careful, sweetheart. I mean if we were seen together, it would cause the most awful scandal in my constituency. I've explained what a provincial backwater it is, and how narrow-minded they are there. Any hint of what they'd call impropriety could cost me my seat. Do you know what my majority was last time?'
    'Five hundred and sixty-eight,' Poppy said in a bored voice.
    'Oh. Then you can see how easily I could be kicked out.'
    'Would it really matter if you were? You seem totally fed up with it half the time, and there's all these late-night sittings and asking questions you know the answers to already and having to write letters to all those silly little constituents. And you're never going to get into the Government, are you? You're always going to be a back-bencher.'
    'I say, that's a bit below the belt. Besides, it's not true. One of the Whips was only saying to me a month ago that the Prime Minister's always