The White Shepherd

by Annie Dalton

  Tansy still seemed lost. ‘Was Owen Traherne some kind of artist?’

  ‘A poet,’ Isadora said, impatiently discarding her dog groomer’s business card and a reminder from her dentist. ‘Some say a very brilliant one.’

  ‘I remember Jane talking about it at work,’ Tansy said, perking up. ‘Someone’s making a film! They signed Liam Neeson up to play – Owen Traherne, was it?’

  ‘Found it!’ Isadora slapped a gilt-edged invitation on the table. ‘It’s supposed to be a plus-one, but I’m sure I could wangle you both in.’

  ‘Wangle us in where?’ Anna said nervously, having spotted the alarming words ‘black tie’.

  ‘To the party!’ Isadora said, as if this was obvious. ‘Owen Traherne’s publishers decided to collect all his love poems together in one volume. They’re launching it at the Ashmolean. Kit Tulliver was sweet enough to have me put on the guest list. It’ll be black tie, of course.’ A mischievous gleam came into her eyes. ‘You know, it never ceases to amaze me how even a dull unattractive man looks almost handsome in black tie.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why—’ Anna began.

  ‘If you come with me, I can introduce you to Kit,’ Isadora explained. ‘He and Naomi will have been working closely together on Kit’s book. They must have got to know each other quite well. This is a perfect opportunity to learn more about Naomi! Kit’s wonderfully easy to talk to. So! Will you come?’

  Anna experienced the unpleasant irony of knowing she only had herself to blame for setting yet another social ordeal in motion, even as she ransacked her brain for an excuse not to go.

  ‘That’s a brilliant idea, Isadora!’ Tansy said at once. ‘Plus, I’d be honoured to come to a posh party with you.’ She scanned the invitation. ‘Only, I can’t,’ she said, disappointed. ‘A friend is doing a live set at Marmalade that night, and I promised I’d be there.’

  ‘You’ll come though, Anna, I hope?’ A plaintive note crept into Isadora’s voice. ‘It would be lovely to have your company. It gets so tedious turning up to these things on my own.’

  The thought of being trapped for an evening at the Ashmolean Museum was enough to make Anna hyperventilate. But she knew she couldn’t say no. ‘Sure,’ she said, wishing she sounded more gracious. ‘I’ll come.’

  I don’t suppose dogs are allowed, she thought wistfully. It was a new and surprising thought, but Anna felt as if she could cope with almost anything if Bonnie was at her side.

  SEVEN

  ‘Did I mention that Kit once tried to get me into bed?’ Isadora darted a faintly provocative look at Anna. She had picked Anna up in her ancient Volvo in which a strong smell of petrol mingled with Isadora’s perfume and unmistakable undertones of dog. Not Hero, Anna decided; an elderly infirm dog. With a twinge of alarm, she noticed that Isadora wasn’t wearing her driving glasses as she craned forward over her steering wheel, peering through the white mist that had suddenly descended on the city, blurring oncoming headlights.

  Isadora shot Anna another sparklingly mischievous look. ‘I think he thought it would earn him a better grade. Lord knows he needed one!’ She gave one of her uncontrolled hoots of laughter, and the tank-like Volvo gave another bucking surge, making Anna surreptitiously grip the side of her seat. She belatedly processed what Isadora had told her. ‘Kit Tulliver tried to sleep with you when he was still your student! Seriously?’

  Isadora slowed just in time for a pedestrian crossing. ‘He was rather a naughty boy in those days.’ Anna thought she sounded distinctly fond. ‘There’s a certain kind of undergraduate, I’m sure you know the type, who comes to Oxford solely with the intention of making useful contacts. They go to parties, join all the right societies, not to mention the wrong societies.’

  ‘You mean like the Bullingdon Club?’ Anna said.

  ‘And the rest,’ Isadora said, her nose practically level with the windscreen. ‘The maddening thing about these kinds of students is that they’re often bright enough to coast through their three years here on the minimum of effort. Well, I’ll freely admit that I had Kit and his friend Huw firmly in that category. Huw was Owen Traherne’s son, by the way,’ she added, braking sharply for something that turned out to be a plastic bag. ‘But look at Kit now! His book on the New York Times best-seller list, glowing reviews in all the broadsheets. Time has proved me wrong, and I couldn’t be more delighted!’

  ‘You didn’t, though?’ For once Anna’s curiosity overcame her reticence.

  Isadora looked momentarily blank. ‘Oh, did I sleep with him, you mean?’ She gave another delighted hoot. ‘Certainly not! There is such a thing as ethics you know! Besides,’ she said, a heartbeat later, ‘I was far too preoccupied with Valentin back then to go bedding my students.’ She darted Anna another sparkling look. ‘Valentin was the love of my life. I had other loves, obviously, before and after him. But you know the most wonderful thing about my time with him? He came along when I had utterly given up hope. So ridiculous! I was forty years old, and in my mind I already had one foot in my grave, when actually my best years were still to—’ Isadora broke off, frowning. ‘Now cross your fingers we can find a free space somewhere on St Giles.’

  There were several free spaces, as it turned out. But as the Volvo was without power steering, it needed a lot of energetic manoeuvring before it was finally parked between the lines.

  They set off to walk the short distance to the Ashmolean. Despite, or maybe because of everything that had happened to Anna in Oxford, she still found the city achingly beautiful in all its moods, but that evening with the mist clinging to the ancient golden stone the city seemed more than usually haunting.

  Isadora slid an approving glance in Anna’s direction. ‘You look lovely by the way.’

  ‘I didn’t really know what to wear,’ Anna confessed. She had popped into Whistles on the High Street to hunt for a suitable dress. She’d ended up buying a sharply tailored black tuxedo jacket and a white silk camisole, which she was wearing with black trousers and a pair of stilettos. She had pulled her hair back into a loose chignon and wore the plain silver necklace she resorted to on the rare occasions when she needed to dress up. Her only nod to decadence was her grandmother’s Cartier diamond studs, which she seemed to feel, like cool fire, tingling against her ear lobes.

  Isadora had also dressed up for the launch party. Her exuberant hair had been temporarily tamed with combs, exposing giant chandelier type earrings, and she wore a dressy-looking coat in what looked like patterned brocade. Filtered through fog, the street lighting was too hazy for Anna to distinguish colours, but she caught gleams of metallic thread.

  ‘So did you actually know Owen Traherne?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I met him a number of times,’ Isadora said. ‘With both of us moving in the same Oxford circles it was inevitable we’d run into each other. But I wouldn’t say I knew him or Audrey. Underneath that wild man persona that Owen’s publishers loved to trade on, one felt that he was quite a shy, insecure person.’

  ‘Did you ever meet his wife?’

  ‘Three or four times at the most. Audrey socialized even less than Owen. I remember her coming to a reception we held for Owen when he was professor of poetry. Sadly it was just a few months before she took her own life.’

  They turned right into Beaumont Street, where Anna was dismayed to see several people in evening dress apparently converging on the Ashmolean. As if she divined her urge to run, Isadora hooked her arm through Anna’s.

  ‘What was Audrey like?’ Anna asked, dimly noticing that she was somehow managing to keep walking and talking.

  Isadora thought for a moment. ‘Exquisitely lovely, but utterly elusive – like a beautiful ghost, not quite present. And Owen glued to her side all evening like some grim bodyguard.’

  ‘Someone told me they had a rather tempestuous relationship.’

  Isadora gave an astonished laugh. ‘That’s something of an understatement! Owen and Audrey were the stuff of legends: the brilliant scholarship boy from
the docklands who fell in love with the equally brilliant diplomat’s daughter. No one could see how it worked, yet through everything that happened – Owen’s affairs, all those lost babies, Audrey’s constant illnesses – they never ceased loving each other. And it seemed that nothing would or could ever shake that love.’ Isadora shook her head. ‘Poor man; he never really recovered.’

  While she’d been talking Isadora had been gently steering Anna across the street towards the familiar bulk of the Ashmolean. Light streamed out between the sandstone columns illuminating a small knot of guests chatting beside the museum’s entrance. ‘Thank you so much for coming with me tonight,’ Isadora said, taking a firmer grip on Anna’s arm. ‘Kit’s always inviting me to things, but these days I find it such a bore coming on my own.’

  ‘Nice of him to invite you, though.’ Anna spoke purely out of politeness since she had a horror of ever being invited anywhere.

  ‘I don’t think he does it entirely from gallantry,’ Isadora said with a sigh. ‘The fact is, Kit has been courting me for years.’ She saw Anna’s face and collapsed into laughter. ‘Not for my ageing body, darling! What a thought! You see, at times, my past has been – quite colourful, I suppose, and Kit is desperate for me to spill the beans for a book he’s writing.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘How long shall we give it? An hour? I think definitely no more than an hour, don’t you?’

  The party was being held on the ground floor in the Randolph Sculpture Gallery, a part of the museum that Anna inextricably associated with visits with her school art class. Long and narrow, with a high ceiling, the gallery featured regularly spaced alcoves on either side. These had been painted a deep Georgian red, supplying a warming backdrop to the stark white sculptures displayed within and alongside. Anna had found these statues deadly dull when she was fourteen, and the intervening years had done nothing to change her opinion. It was an odd choice of venue, she thought, for launching a book of erotic love poems.

  Apparently thinking along similar lines, Isadora said drily, ‘That’s the power of Hollywood for you. Not many dead poets get a launch as glittering as this, or live ones for that matter!’

  The gallery was already filling up with people that Anna instantly identified as academics and media types, along with a surprise sprinkling of minor celebs. ‘That’s Richard Curtis,’ she whispered in Isadora’s ear. ‘He makes films?’ she prompted. ‘I think that’s Emma Freud with him.’

  Isadora gave the couple a passing glance. ‘I suppose she could possibly be a Freud,’ she said without much interest. She suddenly gripped Anna’s elbow. ‘Darling, I don’t look too much like some mad old relic do I? No obvious dog hairs? No disgusting bits of spinach between my teeth?’

  For the first time it occurred to Anna that the larger than life Isadora might be suffering her own form of stage fright at the prospect of mingling with her former colleagues. Well-acquainted with panic, Anna knew better than to patronize her. ‘No obvious dog hairs,’ she told her, ‘and if I had detected spinach I would definitely have mentioned it at an earlier point.’ In a less throwaway tone, she added, ‘Actually, Isadora, I think you look impossibly glamorous.’ It was true. The lighting in the museum had revealed Isadora’s earrings to be set with blood-red garnets, the rich reds and browns of her coat interwoven with glints of gold. But it was some attracting quality in Isadora herself, Anna thought, which really drew your eye.

  Isadora seemed to be considering Anna’s compliment. ‘Impossibly glamorous,’ she repeated. ‘I may have to use that for my epitaph.’ She flashed Anna a distinctly gratified smile. ‘Now, shall we grab some of this fizz?’ She swiped two champagne flutes from a passing tray, handing one to Anna, and took a long gulp from her own. ‘Right,’ she said brightly. ‘Now we just have to find Kit!’

  It had seemed like a feasible plan, sitting around Isadora’s kitchen table. Go to the launch party, get Kit alone and ask him to share what he knew about Naomi. But now they were actually here in this crowd of self-important literati, it seemed like the kind of ruse Enid Blyton might have concocted for the Famous Five. Judging from the way Isadora had swiftly downed her champagne, she felt the same.

  Isadora’s slightly hunted expression was suddenly transformed into a beaming smile. ‘Etienne! Quel plaisir de te revoir!’ Towing Anna in her wake, she made her way through the crush towards a wild-haired old man, kissing him enthusiastically on both cheeks, leaving glistening lip-sticked prints. ‘Anna, you must meet my old friend Etienne Clement. He’s Professor of Philosophy at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne.’

  ‘And who is this?’ Professor Clement twinkled down at Anna.

  Isadora completed the introductions then totally confounded Anna by lapsing into French. Anna could hold her own with what she thought of as ‘holiday French’, but not Isadora’s kind of fast fluent excitable French, peppered with what Anna guessed must be the names of rival medievalists.

  Anna didn’t mind; she preferred to be on the sidelines and was happy to assume the role of appreciative audience. She found herself genuinely enjoying Isadora’s delight in her long-lost friend, her giant earrings swinging as she gestured, gestures which were becoming more Gallic by the minute, Anna noticed. Anna sipped at her champagne, politely refusing the various savoury morsels that were being offered around, and was surprised to find her tension ebbing away. She even caught herself imagining telling Kirsty about her evening. Obviously, she’d edit out the tricky detail of how Isadora had come to invite Anna along to the launch in the first place. Oh, we met at a murder scene. Didn’t I say?

  Eventually, an older woman, so elegantly dressed that she could only be Parisian, reclaimed the professor rather forcefully from Isadora and they said their goodbyes.

  Isadora helped herself to a second glass of champagne, and they drifted further into the gallery. She seemed to be getting into her stride, smilingly greeting old acquaintances and lingering to talk to others. A tall black man in his thirties emerged from the crowd, seizing both her hands. ‘Isadora, it’s wonderful to see you!’

  ‘Anna, this is Vincent da Silva, one of my old students,’ Isadora said in such warm tones that Anna could tell that the quite luminously beautiful Vincent had been a special, perhaps brilliant, protégé. ‘I’d heard you’d since sold your soul to the BBC,’ Isadora added, giving him a reproving look. ‘And now that I’ve seen your suit I believe them! Presumably, you’ve got a couple of camera crews tagging along after you somewhere?’

  ‘Just the one,’ he said with a grin. ‘Budget cuts! Yes, we’re collecting footage for a documentary on Owen Traherne.’ He turned to Anna. ‘Were you one of Isadora’s students?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m just a friend.’

  ‘So, what do you think of the choice of venue?’ Vincent gestured at the increasingly crowded gallery. ‘I always think that if these alcoves had more generous proportions and less sculptures they would make a perfect place for assignations!’

  ‘Or assassinations?’ Anna suggested, surprising herself.

  He laughed. ‘You obviously know the academic world quite well!’

  After Vincent went off to find his camera crew, Isadora said in a hoarse whisper, ‘He’s a brilliant and lovely man, but you know he’s as gay as a goose!’

  Anna frowned at her. ‘Why are you telling me that?’

  ‘You responded to him so warmly,’ Isadora explained. ‘You hardly said a word to poor Etienne!’

  ‘Only because I couldn’t keep up with your French,’ Anna told her.

  Isadora looked astonished. ‘Were we speaking French? Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolument,’ Anna said with a grin.

  They had almost reached the far end of the gallery. Blackwell’s book shop had set up a table piled with vibrant blue and gold hard-backed copies of Owen Traherne’s love poems. Publisher’s display cards showed blown-up images of the front cover, alongside soft-focus photographs of Owen with a fragile-looking woman that Anna assumed to be Audrey, interspersed with quotatio
ns from the poems. By an adjoining table a beautifully dressed but rather grim-faced couple hovered in the place traditionally reserved for the author. Smiling people kept coming up to them clutching their copies of the poems, apparently paying their respects to this uneasy pair of VIPs. The woman’s glittering green silk top made her milk-white skin look even paler, Anna thought. She seemed to be avoiding looking at the slight, fair-haired man at her side, though he darted exasperated glances at her.

  ‘That’s Owen’s son, Huw, and his wife, Sara,’ Isadora said. ‘Not the most blissful of marriages, as you can probably tell.’

  ‘They seem to be the guests of honour,’ Anna said.

  ‘Huw and his wife took on running the Traherne Foundation after Owen’s death,’ Isadora explained. ‘Owen left an extraor-dinary legacy – scholarships, bursaries, creative writing centres, a stunningly beautiful retreat in Pembrokeshire, which all need to be administered.’

  ‘Sounds like a full-time job,’ said Anna.

  ‘I think it is. Huw has pretty much dedicated his life to keeping it all running the way his father would have wished.’

  Anna looked at the blown-up photographs of the undeniably charismatic Owen and back to Huw. There was almost no family resemblance, she thought.

  ‘There’s Kit!’ Isadora exclaimed.

  Anna might not have recognized him without Isadora’s prompt. Like the majority of book jacket photographs, Kit’s had been corny and posed, which might have accounted for his expression: chilly to the point of arrogance. In real life he emanated good humour as he chatted to a skinny girl in a black tunic and leggings, who looked as if she might belong to Vincent’s entourage.

  ‘We’ll try to grab him the minute she goes,’ said Isadora.