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erates all, since no one, two or three of the four can take the
blame alone. But that is to avoid the obvious. What was obvious
was that Cyril had with malice aforethought driven Stan up the
wall, and that Stan, as a consequence, had whether deliberately
or not murdered Saskia, his wife.
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On the other hand, I rather liked Claire, who, I think, rather
liked me. She saw it as her duty not only to attend to Cyril's
wants and his health, the two duties not always in tandem, but
to restrain him, whenever she could, from the grosser of his
eccentricities. Unlike her husband, she was not a bigot, and she
spoke with pride of a remote Sephardic ancestor, a disciple of
Spinoza and descendant of Montaigne. But she was in thrall to
Cyril's genius and fiercely protective of his privacy and calm.
She was also devastated by the inroads of a disease on him, a
disease she recognised, but which he daffed cavalierly and fool-
ishly aside.
More than eighty winters had besieged his brow. This former
nurse, much younger than her husband, was prepared for what
old age would impose upon him. But his had been a vigour that
belied his years and a sinewy strength that melted her loins. Now
he could no longer control the tremor of his fingers on her
breast or get out of their Land Rover without her assistance. All
Claire wanted was Cyril's happiness, and she supposed that my
presence at his introduction to his lordly peers was necessary to
it. Very well, then. For her sake I went.
We were an embarrassingly small support group. Apart from
me, there were Claire, of course, and her Cousin Bette, whom
I had once before met and who owned a successful restaurant
in Avignon, La Grenouille Farcie; what might be designated 'the
St-Bonnet-du-Gard crowd', represented today by Timothy, who
has always been a sucker for ceremony, and Basil Mudge, the
former jockey, who had missed becoming Sir Basil Mudge by a
nose, a friendly government falling on the very day he had
announced his retirement. I began to feel a trifle sorry for Cyril.
Was our small group not even a coterie the best and the most
that Claire could summon to bear witness to her husband's ele-
vation?
The ceremony began. Black Rod and Garter King of Arms
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led the procession into the Chamber, a kitschy Victorian notion
of ancient architectural splendour, numerous lords in attendance.
They were followed by Cyril, but Cyril in a wheelchair, pushed
along with impressive coordination by his two sponsors. I glanced
questioningly at Claire. She nodded, and then shook her head:
yes, she implied, this is what she had warned me to expect. Only,
she hadn't.
We saw them from the rear as they approached the Woolsack;
the three of them were wearing the required parliamentary
gowns and the weird parliamentary hats. At the Woolsack, Cyril
was supposed to kneel and present his Writ of Summons to the
Lord Chancellor. Of course, being in a wheelchair he was spared
this requirement and the Lord Chancellor rose from his throne
to take the Writ from him. Garter King of Arms, still spry, hopped
over and handed the Lord Chancellor Cyril's Letters Patent of
Creation. The Reading Clerk then read out the contents of these
documents and Cyril, 'solemnly affirming' rather than swearing
the Oath of Allegiance, signed the Test Roll. He was spared the
journey to the bench appropriate to his rank and the silly busi-
ness of rising from it three times, each time doffing his hat and
bowing to the Lord Chancellor. Instead, the Lord Chancellor
rose once more from his throne and shook hands with Cyril.
What cheerful words he uttered were inaudible to us. The
Chamber mumbled its approval.
The initial procession then reversed itself, making for the exit.
It was then that I got a proper look at Cyril. The angle of his
head favoured his left side. His tremors were quite evident. He
looked older than Methuselah and much frailer. His deteriora-
tion had been swift. It was hard for me to maintain my animus.
There was a cruel irony, I thought, in conferring the rank of life
peer on a man whose fife was clearly almost over, a man who
wobbled on the very edge of the grave.
But we were granted one glorious moment of the familiar
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Cyril before he disappeared beneath our angle of vision. He
sneezed, and a thick, yellow-green squirt of snot traced a pas-
sage from his left nostril to the corner of his mouth. He lifted
his arm and with the sleeve of his ceremonial gown wiped him-
self clean. Then he looked up at us and grinned grotesquely, his
new upper teeth having left his gums and fallen onto his lower
hp. The trembling thumb that he had hefted in sign of victory
was now seconded to his mouth. He disappeared from view.
I need not have concerned myself about the meagre turnout
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