A Surfeit of Lampreys

NGAIO MARSH

CHAPTER 1

Prelude in New Zealand

I

Roberta Grey first met the Lampreys in New Zealand. She was at school with Frid Lamprey. All the other Lampreys went to school in England, Henry, the twins, and Michael, to Eton; Patch to an expensive girls’ school near Tonbridge. In the New Zealand days, Patch and Mike were too little for school. They had Nanny and, later on, a governess. But when the time came for Frid to be bundled off to England there was a major financial crisis and she became a boarder at Te Moana Collegiate School for Girls. Long after they had returned to England the family still said that Frid spoke with a New Zealand accent, which was nonsense.

In after years Roberta was to find a pleasant irony in the thought that she owed her friendship with the family to one of those financial crises. It must have been a really bad one because it was at about that time that Lady Charles Lamprey suddenly got rid of all her English servants and bought the washing machine that afterwards, on the afternoon it broke loose from its mooring, so nearly killed Nanny and Patch. Not long after Frid went to board at Te Moana an old aunt of Lord Charles’s died, and the Lampreys were rich again, and all the servants came back, so that on Roberta’s first visit Deepacres seemed very grand indeed. In New Zealand the Lampreys were a remarkable family. Titles are rare in New Zealand and the younger sons of marquises are practically non-existent.

In two years’ time Roberta was to remember with nostalgic vividness, that first visit. It took place during the half-term weekend, when the boarders at Te Moana were allowed to go home. Two days beforehand, Frid asked Roberta if she would spend the half-term at Deepacres. There were long-distance telephone calls between Deepacres and Roberta’s parents.

Frid said: ‘Do come, Robin darling, such fun,’ in a vague, kind voice.

She had no idea, of course, that for Roberta the invitation broke like a fabulous rocket, that her mother, when Lady Charles Lamprey telephoned, was thrown into a frenzy of sewing that lasted until two o’clock in the morning, that Roberta’s father bicycled four miles before eight o’clock in order to leave at Te Moana a strange parcel, a letter of instruction on behaviour, and five shillings to give the housemaid. Frid always sympathized when Roberta said her people were poor, as though they were all in the same boat, but the poverty of the Lampreys, as Roberta was to discover, was a queer and baffling condition understood by nobody, not even their creditors, and certainly not by poor Lord Charles with his eyeglass, his smile, and his vagueness.

It was almost dark when the car arrived at Te Moana. Roberta was made shy by the discovery of Lady Charles in the front seat beside the chauffeur, and of Henry, dark and exquisite, in the back one. But the family charm was equal to more than the awkwardness of a child of fourteen. Roberta yielded to it in three minutes and it held her captive ever afterwards.

The thirty-mile drive up to the mountains was like a dream. Afterwards, Roberta remembered that they all sang an old song about building a stairway to Paradise, and that she felt as though she floated up the stairway as she sang. The surface of the road changed from tar to shingle, stones banged against the underneath of the car, the foothills came closer and salutary drifts of mountain air were blown in at the window. It was quite dark when they began to climb the winding outer drive of Deepacres. Roberta smelt native bush, cold mountain water and wet loam. The car stopped, and Henry, groaning, got out and opened the gate. That was to be Roberta’s clearest picture of Henry, struggling with the gate, screwing up his face in the glare of the headlights. The drive up to Deepacres seemed very long indeed. When at last they came out on a wide gravelled platform before the house, something of Roberta’s shyness returned.

Long after the Lampreys had gone to England Roberta would sometimes dream that she returned to Deepacres. It was always at night. In her dream the door stood open, the light streamed down the steps. Baskett was in the entrance with a young footman whose name Roberta, in her dreams, had forgotten. The smell of blue-gum fires, of the oil that Lady Charles burnt in the drawing-room, and of cabbage-tree bloom would come out through the open door to greet her. There, in the drawing-room, as on that first night, she would see the family. Patch and Mike had been allowed to stay up; the twins, Stephen and Colin, that week arrived from England, were collapsed in armchairs. Henry lay on the hearthrug with his shining head propped against his mother’s knee. Lord Charles would be gently amused at something he had been reading in a month-old Spectator. Always he put it down out of politeness to Roberta. The beginning of the dream never varied, or the feeling of enchantment.

The Lampreys appeared, on that first night, to scintillate with polish, and the most entrancing worldly-wisdom. Their family jokes seemed then the very quintessence of wit. When she grew up Roberta had still to remind herself that the Lampreys were funny but, with the exception of Henry, not witty. Perhaps they were too kind to be wits. Their jokes depended too much on the inconsequent family manner to survive quotation. But on that first night Roberta was rapturously uncritical. In retrospect she saw them as a very young family. Henry, the eldest, was eighteen. The twins, removed from Eton during the last crisis, were sixteen, Frid fourteen, Patricia ten, and little Michael was four. Lady Charles – Roberta never could remember when she first began to call her Charlot – was thirty-seven, and it was her birthday. Her husband had given her the wonderful dressing-case that appeared later, in the first financial crisis after Roberta met them. There were many parcels arrived that day from England, and Lady Charles opened them in a vague pleased manner, saying of each one that it was ‘great fun’, or ‘charming’, and exclaiming from time to time: ‘How kind of Aunt M.!’ ‘How kind of George!’ ‘How kind of the Gabriels!’ The Gabriels had sent her a bracelet and she looked up from the cards and said: ‘Charlie, it’s from both of them. They must have patched it up.’

‘The bracelet, darling?’ asked Henry.

‘No, the quarrel. Charlie, I suppose that, after all, Violet can’t be going to divorce him.’

‘They’ll have six odious sons, Imogen’ said Lord Charles, ‘and I shall never, never have any money. How she can put up with Gabriel! Of course she’s mad.’

‘I understand Gabriel had her locked up in a nursing-home last year, but evidently she’s loose again.’

‘Gabriel’s our uncle,’ explained Henry, smiling at Roberta. ‘He’s a revolting man.’

‘I don’t think he’s so bad,’ murmured Lady Charles, trying on the bracelet.

‘Mummy, he’s the End,’ said Frid, and the twins groaned in unison from the sofa. ‘The End,’ they said and Colin added: ‘Last, loathsomest, lousiest, execrable, apart.’

‘Doesn’t scan,’ said Frid.

‘Mummy,’ asked Patch who was under the piano with Mike, ‘who’s lousy? Is it Uncle Gabriel?’

‘Not really, darling,’ said Lady Charles, who had opened another parcel. ‘Oh, Charlie, look! It’s from Auntie Kit. She’s knitted it herself, of course. What can it be?’

‘Dear Aunt Kit!’ said Henry. And to Roberta: ‘She wears buttoned-up boots and talks in a whisper.’

‘She’s Mummy’s second cousin and Daddy’s aunt. Mummy and Daddy are relations in a weird sort of way,’ said Frid.

‘Which may explain many things,’ added Henry, looking hard at Frid.

‘Once,’ said Colin, ‘Aunt Kit got locked up in a railway lavatory for sixteen hours because nobody could hear her whispering: “Let me out, if you please, let me out!”’

‘And of course she was too polite to hammer or kick,’ added Stephen.

Patch burst out laughing and Mike, too little to know why, broke into a charming baby’s laugh to keep her company.

‘It’s a hat,’ said Lady Charles and put it on the top of her head.

‘It’s a tea-cosy,’ said Frid. ‘How common of Auntie Kit.’

Nanny came in. She was the quintessence of all nannies, opinionated, faithful, illogical, exasperating, and admirable. She stood just inside the door and said:

‘Good evening, m’lady. Patricia, Michael. Come along.’

‘Oh Nanny,’ said Patch and Mike. ‘It’s not time. Oh Nanny!’

Lady Charles said: ‘Look what Lady Katherine has sent me, Nanny. It’s a hat.’

‘It’s a hot-water bottle cover, m’lady,’ said Nanny. ‘Patricia and Michael, say good night and come along.’

II

It was the first of many visits. Roberta spent the winter holidays at Deepacres and when the long summer holidays came she was there again. The affections of an only child of fourteen are as concentrated as they are vehement. All her life Roberta was to put her emotional eggs in one basket. At fourteen, with appalling simplicity, she gave her heart to the Lampreys. It was, however, not merely an attachment of adolescence. She never grew out of it, and though, when they met again after a long interval, she could look at them with detachment, she was unable to feel detached. She wanted no other friends. Their grandeur, and in their queer way the Lampreys were very grand for New Zealand, had little to do with their attraction for Roberta. If the crash that was so often averted had ever fallen upon them they would have carried their glamour into some tumbledown house in England or New Zealand, and Roberta would still have adored them.

By the end of two years she knew them very well indeed. Lady Charles, always vague about ages, used to talk to Roberta with extraordinary frankness about family affairs. At first Roberta was both flattered and bewildered by these confidences. She would listen aghast to stories of imminent disaster, of the immediate necessity for a thousand pounds, of the impossibility of the Lampreys keeping their heads above water, and she would agree that Lady Charles must economize by no longer taking Punch and The Tatler, and that they could all do without table-napkins. It seemed a splendid strategic move for the Lampreys to buy a second and cheaper car in order to make less use of the Rolls-Royce. When, on the day the new car arrived, they all went for a picnic in both cars, Roberta and Lady Charles exchanged satisfied glances.

‘Stealth is my plan,’ cried Lady Charles as she and Roberta talked together by the picnic fire. ‘I shall wean poor Charlie gradually from the large car. You see it quite amuses him, already, to drive that common little horror.’

Unfortunately, it also amused Henry and the twins to drive the large car.

‘They must have some fun,’ said Lady Charles, and to make up she bought no new clothes for herself. She was always eager to deny herself, and so gaily and lightly that only Henry and Roberta noticed what she was up to. Dent, her maid, who was friendly with a pawnbroker, made expeditions to the nearest town with pieces of Lady Charles’s jewellery, and as she had a great deal of jewellery this was an admirable source of income.

‘Robin,’ said Henry to Roberta, ‘what has become of Mummy’s emerald star?’

Roberta looked extremely uncomfortable.

‘Has she popped it?’ asked Henry, then added: ‘You needn’t tell me. I know she has.’

For twenty minutes Henry was thoughtful and he was particularly attentive to his mother that evening. He told his father that she was overtired and suggested that she should be given champagne with her dinner. After making this suggestion Henry caught Roberta’s eye and suddenly he grinned. Roberta liked Henry best of all the Lampreys. He had the gift of detachment. They all knew that they were funny, they even knew they were peculiar and rather gloried in it, but only Henry had the faculty of seeing the family in perspective, only Henry could look a little ruefully at their habits, only Henry would recognize the futility of their economic gestures. He too, fell into the habit of confiding in Roberta. He would discuss his friends with her and occasionally his love affairs. By the time Henry was twenty he had had three vague love affairs. He also liked to discuss the family with Roberta. On the very afternoon when the great blow fell, Henry and Roberta had walked up through the bush above Deepacres and had come out on the lower slope of Little Mount Silver. The real name for Deepacres was Mount Silver Station but Lord Charles on a vaguely nostalgic impulse had re-christened it after the Lampreys’ estate in Kent. From where they lay in the warm tussock, Henry and Roberta looked across forty miles of plains. Behind them rose the mountains, Little Mount Silver, Big Mount Silver, the Giant Thumb Range, and behind that, the back-country, reaching in cold sharpness away to the west coast. All through the summer the mountain air came down to meet the warmth of the plains and Roberta, scenting it, knew contentment. This was her country.

‘Nice, isn’t it?’ she said, tugging at a clump of tussock.

‘Very pleasant,’ said Henry.

‘But not as good as England?’

‘Well, I suppose England’s my country,’ said Henry.

‘If I was there expect I’d feel the same about New Zealand.’

‘I expect so. But you’re only once removed from England, and we’re not New Zealand at all. Strangers in a strange land and making pretty considerable fools of ourselves. There’s a financial crisis brewing, Roberta.’

‘Again!’ cried Roberta in alarm.

‘Again, and it seems to be a snorter.’

Henry rolled over on his back and stared at the sky.

‘We’re hopeless,’ he said to Roberta. ‘We live by windfalls and they won’t go on for ever. What will happen to us, Roberta?’

‘Charlot,’ said Roberta, ‘thinks you might have a poultry farm.’

‘She and Daddy both think so,’ said Henry. ‘What will happen? We’ll order masses of hens, and I can’t tell you how much I dislike the sensation of feathers, we’ll build expensive modern chicken-houses, we’ll buy poultrified garments for ourselves, and for six months we’ll all be eaten up with the zeal of the chicken-house and then we’ll employ someone to do the work and we won’t have paid for the outlay.’

‘Well,’ said Roberta unhappily, ‘why don’t you say so?’

‘Because I’m like the rest of my family,’ said Henry. ‘What do you think of us, Robin? You’re such a composed little person with your smooth head and your watchfulness.’

‘That sounds smug and beastly.’

‘It isn’t meant to. You’ve got a sort of Jane Eyreishness about you. You’ll grow up into a Jane Eyre, I dare say, if you grow at all. Don’t you sometimes think we’re pretty hopeless?’

‘I like you.’

‘I know. But you must criticize a little. What’s to be done? What, for instance, ought I to do?’

‘I suppose,’ said Roberta, ‘you ought to get a job.’

‘What sort of a job? What can I do in New Zealand or anywhere else for the matter of that?’

‘Ought you to have a profession?’

‘What sort of profession?’

‘Well,’ said Roberta helplessly, ‘what would you like?’

‘I’m sick at the sight of blood so I couldn’t be a doctor. I lose my temper when I argue, so I couldn’t be a lawyer, and I hate the poor, so I couldn’t be a parson.’

‘Wasn’t there some idea of your managing Deepacres?’

‘A sheep farmer?’

‘Well – a run-holder. Deepacres is a biggish run, isn’t it?’

‘Too big for the Lampreys. Poor Daddy! When we first got here he became so excessively New Zealand. I believe he used sheep-dip on his hair and shall I ever forget him with the dogs! He bought four, I think they cost twenty pounds each. He used to sit on his horse and whistle so unsuccessfully that even the horse couldn’t have heard him and the dogs all lay down and went to sleep and the sheep stood in serried ranks and gazed at him in mild surprise. Then he tried swearing and screaming but he lost his voice in less than no time. We should never have come out here.’

‘I can’t understand why you did.’

‘In a vague sort of way I fancy we were shooting the moon. I was at Eton and really didn’t know anything about it, until they whizzed me away to the ship.’

‘I suppose you’ll all go back to England,’ said Roberta unhappily.

‘When Uncle Gabriel dies. Unless, of course, Aunt G. has any young.’

‘But isn’t she past it?’

‘You’d think so, but it would be just like the Gabriels. I wish I could work that Chinese Mandarin trick and say in my head, “Uncle G. has left us!” and be sure that he would instantly fall down dead.’

‘Henry!’

‘Well, my dear, if you knew him. He’s the most revolting old gentleman. How Daddy ever came to have such a brother! He’s mean and hideous and spiteful and ought to have been dead ages ago. There were two uncles between him and Daddy but they were both killed in the Great War. I understand that they were rather nice, and at any rate they had no sons, which is the great thing in their favour.’

‘Henry, I get so muddled. What is your Uncle Gabriel’s name?’

‘Gabriel.’

‘No, I mean his title and everything.’

‘Oh. Well, he’s the Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune. While my grandfather was alive Uncle G. was Lord Rune, the Earl of Rune. That’s the eldest son’s title, you see. Daddy is just a younger son.’

‘And when your Uncle G. dies your father will be Lord Wutherwood and you’ll be Lord Rune?’

‘Yes, I shall, if the old pig ever does die.’

‘Well, then there’d be a job for you. You could go into the House of Lords.’

‘No; I couldn’t. Poor Daddy would do that. He could bring in a bill about sheep-dip if peers are allowed to bring in bills. I rather think they only squash them, but I’m not sure.’

‘You wouldn’t care about being a politician, I suppose?’

‘No,’ said Henry sadly, ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t.’ He looked thoughtfully at Roberta and shook his head. ‘The only thing I seem to have any inclination for is writing nonsense-rhymes and playing cricket and I’m terribly bad at both. I adore dressing-up, of course, but only in funny noses and false beards, and we all like doing that, even Daddy, so I don’t imagine it indicates the stage as a career. I suppose I shall have to try and win the heart of an ugly heiress. I can’t hope to fascinate a pretty one.’

‘Oh,’ cried Roberta in a fury, ‘don’t pretend to be so feeble!’