Colin Dexter - The Remorseful Day

So I often hook my foot over the side of the mattress.

You what?

Sort of anchors me to my side of the bed.

Double bed?

Not unknown is it, for a married couple? People can share the same bed but not the same thoughts old Chinese saying.

Still makes me jealous.

Idiot!

Everybody gets a bit jealous sometimes.

Not everybody.

Not you, nurse?

Ive just learned not to show it, thats all. And its none of your business in any case.

Sorry.

How I hate men who say sorry!

I promise not to say it again, miss.

And will you promise me something else? To be a bit more honest with yourself and with me?

Scouts honor!

I cant believe you were ever in the Scouts.

Well, no, but...

Shall I test you?

Test me?

Would you like me to jump into bed with you now?

Yes!

Youre quick on the buzzer.

Next question?

Do you think Id like to jump into bed with you?

Id like to think so.

What about the other patients?

You could draw the curtains.

What excuse...?

You could always take my blood pressure.

Again?

Why not?

We know all about your blood pressure. High very high especially when Im around.

Its those black stockings of yours.

Youre a stocking-tops man!

Nice word, isnt it stocking-tops?

If only you werent stuck in this bloody ward!

I can always discharge myself.

Not a wise move, good sir not in your case.

What time are you off duty?

Half-eight.

Whatll you do then?

Off home. Im expecting a phone call.

Youre trying to make me jealous again.

After that, I suppose Ill just poke the thingummy, you know, around the four channels.

Five, now.

We dont get the new one.

What about Sky?

In our village, satellite dishes are most definitely discouraged.

You could always take a video home.

No need. Weve got lots of videos. You should see some of them you know, the sex ones.

You watch that sort of thing?

When Im in the mood.

Whens that?

Most of the time.

And even if you arent in the mood?

Oh yes! They soon turn anybody on. Havent you seen some of these Amsterdam videos? All sorts of bizarre things they get up to.

I havent seen them, no.

Would you like to?

Im not quite sure I would, no.

Not even if you watched them with me?

Please, nurse, am I allowed to change my mind?

We could arrange a joint viewing.

How how bizarres bizarre?

Well, in one of em theres this woman about my age lovely figure wrists tied to the top of the four-poster bed ankles tied to the bottom...

Go on.

Well, theres these two young studs one black, one white

No racial discrimination, then?

and they just take turns, you know.

Raping her...

Youre so naive, arent you? She wouldnt have been in the bloody video, would she, if she didnt want to be? There are some people like her, you know. The only real sexual thrill they get is from some sort of submission you know, that sort of thing.

Odd sort of women!

Odd? Unusual, perhaps, but...

How come you know so much about this?

When we were in Amsterdam, they invited me to do some porno filming. Frank didnt mind. They made a pretty good offer.

So you negotiated a fee?

Hold on! I only said this particular woman was about my age

and had a lovely figure.

Would you like to see if it was me?

One condition.

Whats that?

If I come, you mustnt hook your foot over the side of the mattress.

Not much danger of that.

Stay with me a bit longer!

No. Youre not my only patient, and some of these poor devilsll be here long after youve gone.

Will you come and give me a chaste little kiss before you go off duty?

No. Im shooting straight back to Lower Swinstead. I told you: Im expecting a phone call.

From... your husband?

You must be kidding! Franks in Switzerland for a few days. Hes far too mean to call me from there even on the cheap rates.

Another man in your life?

Jesus! You dont take me for a dyke, do you?

Youre an amazing girl.

Girl? Ill be forty-eight this Thursday.

Can I take you out? Make a birthday fuss of you?

No chance. According to your notes, youre going to be in at least till the end of the week.

You know, in a way, I wish I could stay in. Indefinitely.

Well, I promise one thing: as soon as youre out, Ill be in touch.

Please! If you can.

And youll come and see me?

If you invite me.

Im inviting you now.

Apart (of course) from Wagner, apart from Mozarts compositions for the clarinet, Schubert was one of the select composers who could occasionally transport him to the frontier of tears. And it was Schuberts turn in the early evening of Wednesday, July 15, 1998, when The Archers over a bedroom-slippered Chief Inspector Morse was to be found in his North Oxford bachelor flat, sitting at his ease in Zion and listening to a Lieder recital on Radio 3, an amply filled tumbler of pale Glenfiddich beside him. And why not? He was on a few days furlough that had so far proved quite unexpectedly pleasurable.

Morse had never enrolled in the itchy-footed regiment of truly adventurous souls, feeling (as he did) little temptation to explore the remoter corners even of his native land, and this principally because he could now imagine few if any places closer to his heart than Oxford the city which, though not his natural mother, had for so many years performed the duties of a loving foster parent. As for foreign travel, long faded were his boyhood dreams that roamed the sands round Samarkand; and a lifelong pterophobia still precluded any airline bookings to Bayreuth, Salzburg, Vienna the trio of cities he sometimes thought he ought to see.

Vienna...

The city Schubert had so rarely left; the city in which hed gained so little recognition; where hed died of typhoid fever only thirty-one.

Not much of an innings, was it thirty-one?

Morse leaned back, listened, and looked semicontentedly through the French window. In The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde had spoken of that little patch of blue that prisoners call the sky; and Morse now contemplated that little patch of green that owners of North Oxford flats are wont to call the garden. Flowers had always meant something to Morse, even from his schooldays. Yet in truth it was more the nomenclature of the several species, and their context in the works of the great poets, that had compelled his imagination: fast-fading violets, the globd peonies, the fields of asphodel... Indeed Morse was fully aware of the etymology and the mythological associations of the asphodel, although quite certainly he would never have recognized one of its kind had it flashed across a Technicolor screen.