The Seventh Sinner - Elizabeth Peters [5]
“No. I’m not going to talk about them, either.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Jacqueline, glaring, “I have been talking about them and to them and with them and at them for twenty years. This is the first summer they’ve been on their own. I think they’ve survived my tutelage in fairly good shape, but I don’t want to talk about them. Change the subject. Where are the other members of your secret society?”
Andy pointed dramatically.
“Peace, break thee off, look where they come,” he misquoted.
Jean thought she would never again walk up that hill so unself-consciously. The café provided a fine vantage point for a critical observer.
Small and slight and serious, Ted looked like a sixteen-year-old, with his heavy glasses and short, “square” haircut. But the long white scar on his forearm was the result of a bayonet cut acquired during the Six Days’ War, and Ted was already respected in academic circles for his research on rock-cut tombs. He was a true sabra, a native-born Israeli; his father, a high-ranking government official and a hero of the 1948 war, lived in Tel Aviv. That was about all they knew of Ted’s family history; he talked a blue streak about everything else, but not about himself.
Dana talked of very little else. In the first weeks after she joined the group the others heard so many references to hunting, and servants, and lawn tennis that they began to get suspicious. Finally Andy made a sarcastic comment about the upper classes, and Dana took the hint. When she forgot herself, her accent was strongly reminiscent of the Beatles’ dulcet tones—straight Liver-pudlian—and Jean imagined that betrayed Dana’s real background.
Someone had told Jean once that she and Dana looked enough alike to be sisters. Her first reaction had been pleasure. A literal physical description could fit both girls—straight brown hair, dark eyes, round face, turned-up nose. They were approximately the same height, five feet five inches, but Dana weighed ten pounds more than Jean’s one hundred and nine. This should have been a plus for Jean; she gained weight easily, and fought a constant battle with the pasta which is Italy’s contribution to a limited student budget. But she had to admit Dana’s extra poundage was distributed in the best possible way. The rest of Dana’s features weren’t particularly attractive; her complexion was rather muddy and her mouse-brown hair had none of the beauty of Ann’s red-gold halo. Yet Dana exuded sex appeal, and Ann…
Social life requires a certain degree of hypocrisy. While these thoughts occupied her mind Jean greeted the newcomers and watched with a tight social smile as Dana wedged herself into a chair between Michael and Andy. Gino appeared with a tray and distributed cups. He was visibly sulking, and slammed most of the cups down with his usual heavy hand; but Jacqueline’s cappuccino was placed before her with delicate care.
José lifted his cup from the swimming saucer.
“Always my cup is the most mistreated,” he announced gloomily. “Clearly Gino is anticlerical. Possibly a Communist.”
“One need not be a Communist to be anticlerical,” Ted said. “One must only be logical.”
“My favorite adversary,” the priest explained to Jacqueline. “You have perhaps noticed what a catholic group we are?”
“Catholic with a small c,” Dana explained patronizingly.
“But of course. Catholic, with a capital C, Protestant, Jew, pagan—”
Andy bowed mockingly.
“And apostate,” José concluded, with a nod at Michael, who went on sketching.
“You need a Moslem,” Jacqueline said.
Andy let out a shout of laughter.
“I don’t know who and what you are, lady, but you make a great straight man. You keep feeding me cues. Only I’ve already used the best line. All I can say is—brace yourselves. Here he comes.”
Jean turned her head. Midway up the hill she saw the figure to which Andy pointed.
“It