The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn

CHAPTER ONE

WHILST THE OTHER four took their seats in the upstairs lounge of the Cherwell Motel, he walked over to the bar and ordered the drinks: two gins and tonics, two medium sherries, one dry sherry — the latter for himself. He was very fond of dry sherry.

'Put them all down to the Foreign Examinations Syndicate, will you? And we shall be having lunch. If you can tell the waiter we're here? Sitting over there.' His north-country accent was still noticeable, though less so than it had been.

'Have you booked a table, sir?'

He enjoyed the 'sir'. 'Yes. The name's Quinn.' He grabbed a handful of peanuts, took the drinks over on a tray, and sat down with the other members of the History Committee.

It was his third Revision meeting since joining the Syndicate, and there were several others fixed for later in the term. He sat back in the low leather chair, drained half his sherry at a gulp, and looked out at the busy lunch time traffic along the A40. This was the life! A jolly good meal to come, wine, coffee — and then back for the afternoon session. Finish with a bit of luck about five or even earlier. The morning session had been a concentrated, unremitting slog; but they'd done well. Question papers covering the periods from the Continental Crusades to the English Civil War had now assumed the final and definitive form in which they would appear before the following summer's Advanced-level History candidates. Just the five papers left, from the Hanoverians to the Treaty of Versailles; and he felt much more at home with the recent periods. At school History had been his favourite subject, and it was in History that he had won his exhibition to Cambridge. But after prelims he'd changed over to English, and it had been as an English teacher that he had been subsequently appointed to the staff of Priestly Grammar School, Bradford, only twenty-odd miles from the Yorkshire village in which he was born. Looking back on it, he realized how lucky the switch to English had been: the advertisement for the post with the Syndicate had stressed the need for some qualification in both History and English, and he'd realized that he might stand a pretty good chance, although even now he couldn't quite believe that he had landed the job. Not that his deafness.

'Your menu, sir.'

Quinn had not heard the man approach, and only when the inordinately large menu obtruded itself into his field of vision was he aware of the head waiter. Yes, perhaps his deafness would be slightly more of a handicap than he'd sometimes assumed; but he was managing wonderfully well so far.

For the moment he sat back, like the others, and studied the bewildering complexity of permutations on the menu: expensive — almost all the dishes; but as he knew from his two previous visits, carefully cooked and appetizingly garnished. He just hoped that the others wouldn't plump for anything too exotic, since Bartlett had quietly mentioned to him after the last jollification that perhaps the bill was a little on the steep side. For himself, he decided that soup of the day, followed by gammon and pineapple would not be beyond the Syndicate's means — even in these hard days. A drop of red wine, too. He knew it would be red wine whatever happened. Many of them drank red wine all the time in Oxford — even with Dover sole.

'We've got time for another drink, haven't we?' Cedric Voss, Chairman of the History Committee, passed his empty glass across the table. 'Drink up, men. We shall need something to keep us going this afternoon.'

Quinn dutifully collected the glasses and walked over to the bar once more, where a group of affluent-looking executives had just arrived and where a five-minute wait did nothing to quell the vague feeling of irritation which had begun to fester quietly in a corner of his mind.

When he returned to the table, the waiter was taking their orders. Voss, after discovering that the cherries were canned, the peas frozen, and the steak delivered the previous weekend, decided that he would revise his original ideas and go for the escargots and the lobster, and Quinn winced inwardly as he noted the prices. Three times his own modest order! He had pointedly not bought a second drink for himself (although he could have tossed another three or four back with the greatest relish) and sat back rather miserably, staring at the vast aerial photograph of central Oxford on the wall beside him. Very impressive, really: the quads of Brasenose and Queen's and—

'Aren't you drinking, Nicholas, my boy?' Nicholas! It was the first time that Voss had called him by his Christian name, and the irritation disappeared like a lizard's eyelid.

'No. I er—'

'Look, if old Tom Bartlett's been griping about the expense, forget it! What do you think it cost the Syndicate to send him to the oil states last year, eh? A month! Huh! Just think of all those belly-dancers—'

'You wanted wine with your meal, sir?'

Quinn passed the wine list over to Voss, who studied it with professional avidity. 'All red?' But it was more a statement than a question. 'That's a nice little wine, my boy.' He pointed a stubby finger at one of the Burgundies. 'Good year, too.'

Quinn noted (he'd known it anyway) that it was the most expensive wine on the list, and he ordered a bottle.

'I don't think one's going to be much good, is it? With five of us—'

'We ought to have a bottle and a half, you think?'

'I think we ought to have two. Don't you, gentlemen?' Voss turned to the others and his proposal was happily approved.

'Two bottles of number five,' said Quinn resignedly. The irritation was nagging away again.

'And open them straightaway, please,' said Voss.

In the restaurant Quinn seated himself at the left-hand corner of the table, with Voss immediately to his right, two of the others immediately opposite, and the fifth member of the party at the top of the table. It was invariably the best sort of arrangement. Although he could see little of Voss's lips as he was speaking, he was just about near enough to catch his words; and the others he could see clearly. Lip-reading had its limitations, of course: it was of little use if the speaker mumbled through unmoving lips, or held a hand over his mouth; and absolutely useless when the speaker turned his back, or when the lights went out. But in normal circumstances, it was quite wonderful what one could do. Quinn had first attended lip-reading classes six years previously, and had been amazed to discover how easy it was. He knew from the outset that he must have been blessed with a rare gift: he was so much in advance of the first-year class-that his teacher had suggested, after only a fortnight, that he should move up to the second-year class; and even there he had been the star pupil. He couldn't really explain his gift, even to himself. He supposed that some people were talented in trapping a football or in playing the piano: and he had a talent for reading the lips of others, that was all. Indeed, he had become so proficient that he could sometimes almost believe that he was in fact 'hearing' again. In any case, he hadn't completely lost his hearing. The expensive aid at his right ear (the left was completely nerve-less) amplified sufficient sound at reasonably close quarters, and even now he could hear Voss as he pronounced the benediction over the escargots just placed before him.

'Remember what old Sam Johnson used to say? "The fellow who doesn't mind his belly can't be trusted to mind anything." Well, something like that.' He tucked a napkin into his waistband and stared at his plate with the eyes of a Dracula about to ravish a virgin.

The wine was good and Quinn had noticed how Voss had dealt with it. Quite beautifully. After studying the label with the intensity of a backward child trying to get to grips with the Initial Teaching Alphabet, he had taken the temperature of the wine, lightly and lovingly laying his hands around the bottleneck; and then, when the waiter had poured half an inch of the ruby liquid into his glass, he had tasted not a drop, but four or five times sniffed the bouquet suspiciously, like a trained alsatian sniffing for dynamite. "Not bad,' he'd said finally. 'Pour it out.' Quinn would remember the episode. He would try it himself next time. 'And turn the bloody music down a bit, will you,' shouted Voss, as the waiter was about to depart. 'We can't hear each other speak.' The music was duly diminished a few decibels, and a solitary diner at the next table came over to express his thanks. Quinn himself had been completely unaware that any background music was being played.

When the coffee finally arrived Quinn himself was feeling more contented, and a little befuzzled. In fact, he couldn't quite remember whether it was Richard III on the First Crusade or Richard I on the Third Crusade. Or, for that matter, whether either Richard had been on either Crusade. Life was suddenly very good again. He thought of Monica. Perhaps he would call in — just for a second — before they started the business of the afternoon. Monica. It must have been the wine.

They finally arrived back at the Syndicate building at twenty minutes to three; and whilst the others were making their leisurely way back to the Revision Room upstairs, Quinn himself walked quickly along the corridor and gently knocked on the furthest door on the right, whereon the name plate read. MISS M. M. HEIGHT. He tentatively opened the door and looked in. No one. But he saw a note prominently displayed beneath a paperweight on the neatly cleared desk, and he stepped inside to read it. 'Gone to Paolo's. Back at three.' It was typical of their office life together. Bartlett never minded his staff coming and going just when and how they liked, so long as their work was adequately done. What he did insist upon, however (almost pathologically), was that everyone should keep him informed about exactly where they could be found. So. Monica had gone to have her comely hair coiffured. Never mind. He didn't know what he would have said, anyway. Yes, it was just as well: he would see her in the morning.

He walked up to the Revision Room, where Cedric Voss was leaning back in his chair, his eyes half-closed, an inane grin upon his flabby, somnolent features. 'Well, gentlemen. Can we please try to turn our attention to the Hanoverians?'