NGAIO MARSH

SURFEIT OF LAMPREYS

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

Surfeit of Lampreys first published in Great Britain by Collins 1941

Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works

Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1941

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Source ISBN: 9780006168102

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344550

Version: 2016-09-08

DEDICATION

For SIR HUGH & LADY ACLAND

with my love

For the one since he has helped me so often with my stories and for the other since she likes stories about London

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

CHARACTERS IN THE STORY

I. PRELUDE IN NEW ZEALAND

II. ARRIVAL IN LONDON

III. PREPARATION FOR A CHARADE

IV. UNCLE G.

V. MIKE PUTS THE POT ON

VI. CATASTROPHE

VII. DEATH OF A PEER

VIII. ALLEYN MEETS THE LAMPREYS

IX. TWO, TWO, THE LILY-WHITE BOYS

X. STATEMENT FROM A SMALL BOY

XI. CONVERSATION PIECE

XII. ACCORDING TO THE WIDOW

XIII. THE SANITY OF LADY WUTHERWOOD

XIV. PERJURY BY ROBERTA

XV. ENTRANCE OF MR BATHGATE

XVI. NIGHT THICKENS

XVII. MR FOX FINDS AN EFFIGY

XVIII. SCENE BY CANDLELIGHT

XIX. SEVERED HAND

XX. PREPARATION FOR POVERTY

KEEP READING

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

CHARACTERS IN THE STORY

Roberta Grey

Lord Charles Lamprey

Lady Charles Lamprey

Henry Lamprey. Their eldest son

Friede Lamprey (Frid). Their elder daughter

Colin and Stephen Lamprey. Twins. Their second and third sons

Patricia Lamprey (Patch). Their second daughter

Michael Lamprey (Mike). Their youngest son

Mrs Burnaby (Nanny). Their nurse

Baskett. Their butler

Cora Blackburn. Their parlour-maid

A Ship’s Passenger

Stamford. A commissionaire

The Lady Katherine Lobe. Aunt to Lord Charles

Gabriel, Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune (Uncle G.). Elder brother to Lord Charles

Violet, Marchioness of Wutherwood and Rune (Aunt V.). His wife

Giggle. Their chauffeur

Tinkerton. Lady Wutherwood’s maid

Dr Kantripp. The Lampreys’ doctor

Sir Matthew Cairnstock. A brain specialist

Dr Curtis. Police surgeon

Detective-Inspector Fox. Of the Central Branch, Criminal Investigation Department

Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn. Of the Central Branch, Criminal Investigation Department

Detective-Sergeant Bailey. A finger-print expert

Detective-Sergeant Thompson. A photographic expert

Police-Constable Martin

Police-Constable Gibson

A Police Constable who has read Macbeth

Detective-Sergeant Campbell. On duty at 24 Brummell St

Nigel Bathgate. Watson to Mr Alleyn

Mrs Moffatt. Housekeeper at 24 Brummell Street

Moffatt. Her husband

Mr Rattisbon. Solicitor

A Nurse

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!’

‘I’m not pretending, alas.’

‘And don’t be so affected. Alas!’

‘But it’s true, Robin. We are feeble. We’re museum pieces. Carryovers from another age. Two generations ago we didn’t bother about what we would do when we grew up. We went into regiments, or politics, and lived on large estates. The younger sons had younger sons’ compartments and either fitted them nicely, or else went raffishly to the dogs and were hauled back by the head of the family. Everything was all ready for us from the moment we were born.’

Henry paused, wagged his head sadly and continued:

‘Now look at us! My papa is really an amiable dilettante. So, I suppose, would I be if I could go back into the setting, but you can’t do that without money. Our trouble is that we go on behaving in the grand leisured manner without the necessary backing. It’s very dishonest of us, but we’re conditioned to it. We’re the victims of inherited behaviourism.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘Nor do I but didn’t it sound grand?’

‘I think that perhaps you got it a bit wrong.’

‘Do you?’ asked Henry anxiously. ‘Anyway, Robin, we shan’t last long at this rate. A dreadful time is coming when we shall be obliged to do something to justify our existence. Make money or speeches or something. When the last of the money goes we’ll be for it. The ones with brains and energy may survive but they’ll be starting from a long way behind scratch. They say that if you want a job in the city it’s wise to speak with an accent and pretend you’ve been to a board school. A hollow mockery, because you’ve found out the moment you have to do sums or write letters.’

‘But,’ said Robin, ‘your sort of education –’

‘Suits me. It’s an admirable preparation for almost everything except an honest job of work.’

‘I don’t think that’s true.’

‘Don’t you? Perhaps you’re right and it’s just our family that’s mad of itself without any excuse.’

‘You’re a nice family. I love every one of you.’

‘Darling Robin.’ Henry reached out a hand and patted her. ‘Don’t be too fond of us.’

‘My mother,’ said Robin, ‘says you’ve all got such a tremendous amount of charm.’

‘Does she?’ To Robin’s surprise Henry’s face became faintly pink. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps if your mother is right, that may tide us over until Uncle G. pops off. Something has got to do it. Are there bums in New Zealand?’

‘What do you mean? Don’t be common.’

‘My innocent old Robin Grey! A bum is a gentleman in a bowler hat who comes to stay until you pay your bills.’

‘Henry! How awful!’

‘Frightful,’ agreed Henry who was watching a hawk.

‘I mean how shaming.’

‘You soon get used to them. I remember one who made me a catapult when I was home for the holidays. That was the time Uncle G. paid up.’

‘But aren’t you ever – ever –’

Roberta felt herself go scarlet and was silent.

‘Ashamed of ourselves?’

‘Well –’

‘Listen,’ said Henry. ‘I can hear voices.’

It was Frid and the twins. They were coming up the bush track and seemed to be in a state of excitement. In a moment they began shouting:

‘Henry! Where are you-oou? Henry!’

‘Hallo!’ Henry shouted.

The manuka scrub on the edge of the bush was agitated and presently three Lampreys scrambled out into the open. The twins had been riding and still wore their beautiful English jodhpurs. Frid, on the contrary, was dressed in a bathing suit.

‘I say, what do you think?’ they cried.

‘What?’

‘Such a thrill! Daddy’s got a marvellous offer for Deepacres,’ panted Frid.

‘We’ll be able to pay our bills,’ added Colin. And they all shouted together: ‘And we’re going back to England.’

CHAPTER 2
Arrival in London
I

Now that the last trunk was closed and had been dragged away by an impatient steward, the cabin seemed to have lost all its character. Surveying it by lamplight, for it was still long before dawn, Roberta felt that she had relinquished her ownership and was only there on sufferance. Odd scraps of paper lay about the floor, the wardrobe door stood open, across the dressing-table lay a trail of spilt powder. The unfamiliar black dress and overcoat in which she would go ashore hung on the peg inside the door and seemed to move stealthily, and of their own accord, from side to side. The ship still creaked with that pleasing air of absorption in its own progress. Outside in the dark the lonely sea still foamed past the porthole, and footsteps still thudded on the deck above Roberta’s head. But all these dear and familiar sounds only added to her feeling of desolation. The voyage was over. Already the ship was astir with agitated passengers. Slowly the blackness outside turned to grey. For the last time she watched the solemn procession of the horizon, and the dawn-light on cold ruffles of foam.

She put on the black dress and, for the hundredth time, wondered if it was the right sort of garment in which to land. It had a white collar and there was a white cockade in her hat so perhaps she would not look too obviously in mourning.

‘I’ve come thirteen thousand miles,’ thought Roberta. ‘Half-way round the world. Now I’m near the top of the world. These are northern seas and those fading stars are the stars of northern skies.’

She leant out of the porthole and the sound of the sea surged up into her ears. A cold dawn-wind blew her hair back. She looked forward and saw a string of pale lights strung like a necklace across a wan greyness. Her heart thumped violently, for this was her first sight of England. For a long time she leant out of the porthole. Gulls now swooped and mewed round the ship. Afar off she heard the hollow sound of a siren. Filled with the strange inertia that is sometimes born of excitement Roberta could not make up her mind to go up on deck. At last a bugle sounded for the preposterously early breakfast. Roberta opened her bulging handbag, and with a good deal of difficulty extracted the two New Zealand pound notes she meant to give her stewardess. It seemed a large tip but it would represent only thirty English shillings. The stewardess was waiting in the corridor. The steward was there too and the bath steward. Roberta was obliged to return to her cabin and grope again in her bag.

Breakfast was a strange hurried affair with everybody wearing unfamiliar clothes and exchanging addresses. Roberta felt there was no sense of conviction in the plans the passengers made to sustain the friendships they had formed, but she too gave addresses to one or two people and wrote theirs on the back of a menu card. She then joined in the passport queue and in her excitement kept taking her landing papers out of her bag and putting them back again. Through the portholes she saw funnels, sides of tall ships, and finally buildings that seemed quite close to hand. She had her passport stamped and went up to B. deck where the familiar notices looked blankly at her. Already the hatches were opened and the winches uncovered. She stood apart from the other passengers and like them gazed forward. The shore was now quite close and there were many other ships near at hand. Stewards, pallid in their undervests, leant out of portholes to stare at the big liner. Roberta heard a passenger say, ‘Good old Thames.’ She heard names that were strange yet familiar: Gravesend, Tilbury, Greenhithe.

‘Nearly over, now, Miss Grey,’ said a voice at her elbow. An elderly man with whom she had been vaguely friendly leant on the rail beside her.

‘Yes,’ said Roberta. ‘Almost over.’

‘This is your first sight of London?’

‘Yes.’

‘That must be a strange sensation. I can’t imagine it. I’m a cockney, you see.’ He turned and looked down at her. Perhaps he thought she looked rather small and young for he said:

‘Someone coming to meet you?’

‘At the station, not at the boat. An aunt. I’ve never met her.’

‘I hope she’s a nice aunt.’

‘I do too. She’s my father’s sister.’

‘You’ll be able to break the ice by telling her that you recognized her at once from her likeness to your father –’ He broke off abruptly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve said something that’s … I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Roberta, and because he looked so genuinely sorry she added: ‘I haven’t got quite used to talking ordinarily about them yet. My father and mother, I mean. I’ve got to get used to it, of course.’

‘Both?’ said her companion compassionately.

‘Yes. In a motor accident. I’m going to live with this aunt.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can only repeat that I do hope she’s a nice aunt.’

Roberta smiled at him and wished, though he was kind, that he would go away. A steward came along the deck carrying letters.

‘Here’s the mail from the pilot boat,’ said her companion.

Roberta didn’t know whether to expect a letter or not. The steward gave her two and a wireless message. She opened the wireless first and in another second her companion heard her give a little cry. He looked up from his own letter. Roberta’s dark eyes shone and her whole face seemed to have come brilliantly to life.

‘Good news?’

‘Oh yes! Yes. It’s from my greatest friends. I’m to stay with them first. They’re coming to the ship. My aunt’s ill or something and I’m to go to them.’

‘That’s good news?’

‘It’s splendid news. I knew them in New Zealand, you see, but I haven’t seen them for years.’

Roberta no longer wished that he would go away. She was so excited that she felt she must speak of her good fortune.

‘I wrote and told them I was coming but the letter went by air-mail on the day I sailed.’ She looked at her letters. ‘This one’s from Charlot.’

She opened it with shaking fingers. Lady Charles’s writing was like herself, at once, thin, elegant and generous.

‘Darling Robin,’ Roberta read, ‘we are all so excited. As soon as your letter came I rang up your Kentish aunt and asked if we might have you first. She says we may for one night only which is measly but you must come back soon. She sounds quite nice. Henry and Frid will meet you at the wharf. We are so glad, darling. There’s only a box for you to sleep in but you won’t mind that. Best love from us all. Charlot.’

The wireless said: ‘Aunt ill so we are allowed to keep you for a month. Hurrah darling so glad aunt not seriously ill so everything splendid love Charlot.’

The second was from Roberta’s aunt.

‘My dearest Roberta,’ it said, ‘I am so grieved and vexed that I am unable to welcome you to Dear Old England but alas, my dear, I am prostrated with such dreadful sciatica that my doctor insists on a visit to a very special nursing home!! So expensive and worrying for poor me and I would at whatever cost to myself, have defied him if it had not been for your friend Lady Charles Lamprey, who rang me up from London which was quite an excitement in my hum-drum life to ask when you arrived and on hearing of my dilemma very kindly offered to take you for a month or more. At first I suggested one night but I know your dear father and mother thought very highly of Lady Charles Lamprey and now I feel I may with a clear conscience accept her offer. This letter will, I am assured, reach you while you are still on your ship. I am so distressed that this happened but all’s well that ends well, and I’m afraid you will find life in a Kentish village very quiet after the gaiety and grandeurs of your London friends!!! Well, my dear, Welcome to England and believe me I shall look forward to our meeting as soon as ever I return!

With much love,

Your affectionate

AUNT HILDA

PS – I have written a little note to Lady Charles Lamprey. By the way I hope that is the correct way to address her! Should it perhaps be Lady Imogen Lamprey? I seem to remember she was The Hon. or was it Lady, Imogen Ringle. I do hope I have not committed a faux pas! I think her husband is the Lord Charles Lamprey who was at Oxford with dear old Uncle George Alton who afterwards became rector of Lumpington-Parva but I don’t suppose he would remember. Aunt H.

PPS – On second thoughts he would be much too young! – A.H.’

Roberta grinned and then laughed outright. She looked up to find her fellow-passenger smiling at her.

‘Everything as it should be?’ he asked.

‘Lovely,’ said Roberta.

II

As the distance lessened between wharf and ship the communal life that had bound the passengers together for five weeks dwindled and fell away. Already they appeared to be strangers to each other and their last conversations grew more and more desultory and unreal. To Roberta the ship herself seemed to lose familiarity. Roberta had time even in her excitement to feel as if she was only there on sufferance and because she had so much enjoyed her first long voyage she was now aware of a brief melancholy. But only a ditch of dirty water remained and on the wharf a crowd waited behind a barrier. Isolated individuals had begun to flutter handkerchiefs. Roberta’s eyes searched diligently among the closely packed people and she had decided that neither Henry nor Frid was there, when suddenly she saw them, standing apart from the others and waving with that vague sideways sweep of the Lampreys. Henry looked much as she remembered him but four years had made an enormous difference to Frid. Instead of a shapeless schoolgirl Roberta saw a post-débutante, a young woman of twenty who looked as if every inch of herself and her clothes had been subjected to a sort of intensive manicuring. How smart Frid was and how beautifully painted; and how different they both looked from any one else on the wharf. Henry was bare-headed and Roberta, accustomed to the close-cropped New Zealand heads, thought his hair rather long. But he looked nice, smiling up at her. She could see that he and Frid were having a joke. Roberta waved violently and in sudden embarrassment, looked away. Lines had been flung to men on the wharf. With an imperative rattle, gang-planks were thrown out and five men in bowler hats walked up the nearest one.

‘We won’t be allowed ashore just yet,’ said her friend. ‘There’s always a delay. Good Lord, what on earth are those two people doing down there? They must be demented! Look!’

He pointed at Henry and Frid who thrust out their tongues, rolled their eyes, beat the air with their hands and stamped rhythmically.

‘Extraordinary!’ he ejaculated. ‘Who can they be?’

‘They are my friends,’ said Roberta. ‘They’re doing a haka.’

‘A what?’

‘A Maori war-dance. It’s to welcome me. They’re completely mad.’

‘Oh,’ said her friend, ‘yes. Very funny.’

Roberta got behind him and did a few haka movements. A lot of the passengers were watching Henry and Frid and most of the people on the wharf. When they had finished their haka they turned their backs to the ship and bent their heads.

‘What are they doing now?’ Roberta’s friend asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered nervously.

The barrier was lifted and the crowd on the wharf moved towards the gangways. For a moment or two Roberta lost sight of the Lampreys. The people round her began laughing and pointing, and presently she saw her friends coming on board. They now wore papier-mâché noses and false beards and they gesticulated excitedly.

‘They must be characters,’ said her acquaintance doubtfully.

The passengers all hurried towards the head of the gang-plank and Roberta was submerged among people much taller than herself. Her heart thumped, she saw nothing but the backs of overcoats and heard only confused cries of greeting. Suddenly she found herself in somebody’s arms. False beards and noses were pressed against her cheeks, she smelt Frid’s scent and the stuff Henry put on his hair.

‘Hallo, darling,’ cried the Lampreys.

‘Did you like our haka?’ asked Frid. ‘I wanted us to wear Maori mats and be painted brown but Henry wanted to be bearded so we compromised. It’s such fun you’ve come.’

‘Tell me,’ said Henry solemnly, ‘what do you think of dear old England?’

‘Did you have a nice voyage?’ asked Frid anxiously.

‘Were you sick?’

‘Shall we go now?’

‘Or do you want to kiss the captain?’

‘Come on,’ said Frid. ‘Let’s go. Henry says we’ve got to bribe the customs so that they’ll take you first.’

‘Do be quiet, Frid,’ said Henry, ‘it’s all a secret and you don’t call it a bribe. Have you got any money, Robin? I’m afraid we haven’t.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Roberta. ‘How much?’

‘Ten bob. I’ll do it. It doesn’t matter so much if I’m arrested.’

‘You’d better take off your beard,’ said Frid.

The rest of the morning was a dream. There was a long wait in the customs shed where Roberta kept re-meeting all the passengers to whom she had said goodbye. There was a trundling of luggage to a large car where a chauffeur waited. Roberta instantly felt apologetic about the size of her cabin trunk. She found it quite impossible to readjust herself to these rapidly changing events. She was only vaguely aware of a broad and slovenly street, of buildings that seemed incredibly drab, of ever-increasing traffic. When Henry and Frid told her that this was the East End and murmured about Limehouse and Poplar, Roberta was only vaguely disappointed that the places were so much less romantic than their associations, that the squalor held no suggestion of illicit glamour, that the street, Henry said it was the Commercial Road, looked so precisely like its name. When they came into the City and Henry and Frid pointed uncertainly to the Mansion House or suggested she should look at the dome of St Paul’s, Roberta obediently stared out of the windows but nothing she saw seemed real. It was as if she lay on an unfamiliar beach and breaker after breaker rolled over her head. The noise of London bemused her more than the noise of the sea. Her mind was limp, she heard herself talking and wondered at the coherence of the sentences.

‘Here’s Fleet Street,’ said Henry. ‘Do you remember “up the Hill of Ludgate, down the Hill of Fleet”?’

‘Yes,’ murmured Roberta, ‘yes. Fleet Street.’

‘We’ve miles to go still,’ said Frid. ‘Robin, did you know I am going to be an actress?’

‘She might have guessed,’ said Henry, ‘by the way you walk. Did you notice her walk, Robin? She sort of paws the ground. When she comes into the room she shuts the door behind her and leans against it.’

Frid grinned. ‘I do it beautifully,’ she said. ‘It’s second nature to me.’

‘She goes to a frightful place inhabited by young men in mufflers who run their hands through their hair and tell Frid she’s marvellous.’

‘It’s a dramatic school,’ Frid explained. ‘The young men are very intelligent. All of them say I’m going to be a good actress.’

‘We’ll be passing the Law Courts in a minute,’ said Henry.

Scarlet omnibuses sailed past like ships. Inside them were pale people who looked at once alert, tired, and preoccupied. In a traffic jam a dark-blue car came so close alongside that the men in the back seat were only a few inches away from Roberta and the Lampreys.

‘That’s one of the new police cars, Frid,’ said Henry.

‘How do you know?’

‘Well, I know it is. I expect those enormous men are Big Fours.’

‘I wish they’d move on,’ said Frid. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if we fell into their hands one of these days.’

‘Why?’ asked Roberta.

‘Well, the twins were saying at breakfast yesterday that they thought the only thing to be done was for them to turn crooks and be another lot of Mayfair boys.’

‘It was rather a good idea, really,’ said Henry. ‘You see Colin said he’d steal some incredibly rich dowager’s jewels and Stephen would establish his alibi at the Ritz or somewhere. Nobody can tell them apart, you know.’

‘And then, you know,’ added Frid, ‘if one of them was arrested they’d each say it was the other and as one of them must be innocent, they’d have to let both of them go.’

‘From which,’ said Henry, ‘you will have gathered we are in the midst of a financial crisis.’

Roberta started at the sound of that familiar phrase.

‘Oh, no!’ she said.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Henry, ‘and what’s more it’s a snorter. Everybody seems to be furious with us.’

‘Mummy’s going to pop the pearls this afternoon,’ added Frid, ‘on her way to the manicurist.’

‘She’s never done that before,’ said Henry. ‘This is the Strand, Robin. That church is either St Clemence Dane or St Mary le Strand and the next one is whatever that one isn’t. We’d better explain about the crisis, I suppose.’

‘I wish you would,’ said Roberta. In her bemused condition the Lampreys’ affairs struck a friendly and recognizable note. She could think sharply about their debts but she could scarcely so much as gape at the London she had greatly longed to see. It was as if her powers of receptivity were half anaesthetized and would respond only to familiar impressions. She listened attentively to a long recital of how Lord Charles had invested a great deal of the money he still mysteriously possessed in something called San Domingoes and how it had almost immediately disappeared. She heard of a strange venture in which Lord Charles planned to open a jewellery business in the City, run on some sort of commission basis, with Henry and the twins as salesmen. ‘And at least,’ said Frid, ‘there would have been Mummy’s things that she got out of pawn when Cousin Ruth died. It would have been better to sell than to pop them, don’t you think?’ This project, it appeared, had depended on somebody called Sir David Stein who had recently committed suicide, leaving Lord Charles with an empty office and a ten years’ lease on his hands.

‘And so now,’ said Henry, ‘we appear to be sunk. That’s Charing Cross Station. We thought we would take you to a play tonight, Robin.’

‘And we can dance afterwards,’ said Frid. ‘Colin’s in love with a girl in the play so I expect he’ll want her to come whizzing on with us, which is rather a bore. Have you asked Mary to come, Henry?’

‘No,’ said Henry. ‘We’ve only got five seats and the twins both want to come and anyway I want to dance with Robin, and Colin’s actress isn’t coming.’

‘Well, Stephen could take Mary off your hands.’

‘He doesn’t like her.’

‘Mary is Henry’s girl,’ explained Frid. ‘Only vaguely, though.’

‘Well, she’s quite nice really,’ said Henry.

‘Charming, darling,’ said Frid handsomely.

Roberta suddenly felt rather desolate. She stared out of the window and only half-listened to Henry who seemed to think he ought to point out places of interest.

‘This is Trafalgar Square,’ said Henry. ‘Isn’t that thing in the middle too monstrous? Lions, you see, at each corner, but of course you’ve met them in photographs.’

‘That building over there is the Tate Gallery,’ said Frid.

‘She means the National Gallery, Robin. I suppose you will want to see one or two sights, won’t you?’

‘Well, I suppose I ought to.’

‘Patch and Mike are at home for the holidays,’ said Frid. ‘It will be good for them to take Robin to some sights.’

‘Perhaps I could look some out for myself,’ Roberta suggested with diffidence.

‘You’ll find it difficult to begin,’ Henry told her. ‘There’s something so cold-blooded about girding up your loins and going out to find a sight. I’ll come to one occasionally if you like. It may not be so bad once the plunge is taken. We are getting a very public-spirited family, Robin. The twins and I are territorials. I can’t tell you how much we dislike it but we stiffened our upper lips and bit on the bullets and when the war comes we know what we have to do. In the meantime, of course, I’ve got to get a job, now we’re sunk.’

‘We’re not definitely sunk until Uncle G. has spoken,’ Frid pointed out.

‘Uncle G.!’ Robin exclaimed. ‘I’d almost forgotten about him. He’s always sounded like a myth.’

‘It’s to be hoped he doesn’t behave like one,’ said Henry. ‘He’s coming to see us tomorrow. Daddy has sent him an SOS I can’t tell you how awful he is.’

‘Aunt V. is worse,’ said Frid gloomily. ‘Let’s face it, Aunt V. is worse. And they’re both coming in order to go into a huddle with Daddy and Mummy about finance. We hope to sting Uncle G. for two thousand.’

‘It’ll all come to Daddy when they’re dead, you see, Robin. They’ve no young of their own.’

‘I thought,’ said Roberta, ‘that they were separated.’

‘Oh, they’re always flying apart and coming together again,’ said Frid. ‘They’re together at the moment. Aunt V. has taken up witchcraft.’

‘What!’

‘Witchcraft,’ said Henry. ‘It’s quite true. She’s a witch. She belongs to a little black-magic club somewhere.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

‘You may as well, because it’s true. She started by taking up with a clergyman in Devon who had discovered an evil place on Dartmoor. It seems that he told Aunt V. that he thought he might as well sprinkle some holy water on this evil place but when he went there, the holy water was dashed out of his hands by an unseen power. He lent Aunt V. some books about black magic and instead of being horrified she took the wrong turning and thought it sounded fun. I understand she goes to the black mass and everything.’

‘How can you possibly know?’

‘Her maid, Miss Tinkerton, told Nancy. Tinkerton says Aunt V. is far gone in black magic. They have meetings at Deepacres. The real Deepacres, you know, in Kent. Aunt V. is always buying books about witchcraft, and she’s got a lot of very queer friends. They’ve all got names like Olga and Sonia and Boris. Aunt V. is half-Rumanian, you know,’ said Frid.

‘Half-Hungarian, you mean,’ corrected Henry.

‘Well, all central-European anyway. Her name isn’t Violet at all.’

‘What is it?’ asked Roberta.

‘Something Uncle G. could neither spell nor pronounce so he called her Violet. A thousand years ago he picked her up in Budapest at an embassy. She’s a very sinister sort of woman and quite insane. Probably the witchcraft is a throw-back to a gypsy ancestress of sorts. Of course Uncle G.’s simply furious about it, not being a warlock.’

‘Naturally,’ said Frid. ‘I suppose he’s afraid she might put a spell on him.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past her,’ said Henry. ‘She’s a really evil old thing. She gives me absolute horrors. She’s like a white toad. I’ll bet you anything you like that under her clothes she’s all cold and damp.’

‘Shut up,’ said Frid. ‘All the same I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right. Henry, do let’s stop somewhere and have breakfast. I’m ravenous and I’m sure Robin must be.’

‘It’ll have to be Angelo’s,’ said Henry. ‘He’ll let us chalk it up.’

‘I’ve got some money,’ said Roberta rather shyly.

‘No, no!’ cried Frid. ‘Angelo’s much too dear to pay cash. We’ll put it down to Henry’s account and I’ve got enough for a tip, I think.’

‘It may not be open,’ said Henry. ‘What’s the time? The day seems all peculiar with this early start. Look, Robin, we’re coming into Piccadilly Circus.’

Roberta stared past the chauffeur and, through the windscreen of the car, she had her first sight of Eros.

In the thoughts of those who have never visited them all great cities are represented by symbols; New York by a skyline, Paris by a river and an arch, Vienna by a river and a song, Berlin by a single street. But to British colonials the symbol of London is more homely than any of these. It is a small figure perched slantways above a roundabout, an elegant Victorian god with a Grecian name – Eros of Piccadilly Circus. When they come to London, colonials orientate themselves by Piccadilly Circus. All their adventures start from there. It is under the bow of Eros that to many a colonial has come that first warmth of realization that says to him: ‘This is London.’ It is here at the place which he learns, with a rare touch of insolence, to call the hub of the universe, that the colonial wakes from the trance of arrival, finds his feet on London paving stones, and is suddenly happy.

So it was for Roberta. From the Lampreys’ car she saw the roundabout of Piccadilly, the great sailing buses, the sea of faces, the traffic of the Circus, and she felt a kind of realization stir in her heart.

‘It’s not so very big,’ said Roberta.

‘Quite small, really,’ said Henry.

‘I don’t mean it’s not thrilling,’ said Roberta. ‘It is. I … I feel as if I’d like to be … sort of inside it.’

‘I know,’ agreed Henry. ‘Let’s nip out, Frid, and walk round the corner to Angelo’s.’

He said to the chauffeur: ‘Pick us up in twenty minutes, will you Mayling?’

‘Here’s a jam,’ said Frid. ‘Now’s our chance. Come on.’

Henry opened the door and took Roberta’s hand. She scrambled out. The voyage, the ship, and the sea all slid away into remoteness. A new experience took Roberta and the sounds that are London engulfed her.

CHAPTER 3
Preparation for a Charade
I

The Lampreys lived in two flats which occupied the entire top storey of a building known as Pleasaunce Court Mansions. Pleasaunce Court is merely a short street connecting Cadogan Square with Lennox Gardens and the block of flats stands on the corner. To Roberta the outside seemed forbidding but the entrance hall had lately been redecorated and was more friendly. Pale green walls, a thick carpet, heavy armchairs and an enormous fire gave an impression of light and luxury. The firelight flickered on the chromium steel of a lift-cage in the centre of the hall and on a slotted framework that held the names of the flat owners. Roberta read the top one: ‘No. 25 & 26, Lord and Lady Charles Lamprey. In.’ Henry followed her gaze, crossed quickly to the board and moved a chromium steel tab.

‘“Lord and Lady Charles Lamprey. Out,” I fancy,’ muttered Henry.

‘Oh, are they!’ cried Roberta. ‘Are they away?’

‘No,’ said Henry. ‘Ssh!’

‘Ssh!’ said Frid.

They moved their heads slightly in the direction of the door. A small man wearing a bowler hat stood on the pavement outside and appeared to consult an envelope in his hands. He looked up at the front of the flats and then approached the steps.

‘Into the lift!’ Henry muttered and opened the doors. Roberta in a state of extreme bewilderment entered the lift. A porter, heavily smart in a dark-green uniform and several medals, came out of an office.

‘Hallo, Stamford,’ said Henry. ‘Good morning to you. Mayling’s got some luggage out there in the car.’

‘I’ll attend to it, sir,’ said the porter.

‘Thank you so much,’ murmured the Lampreys politely, and Henry added, ‘his lordship is away this morning, Stamford.’

‘Indeed, sir?’ said the porter. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Up we go,’ said Henry.

The porter shut them in, Henry pressed a button, and with a metallic sigh the lift took them to the top of the building.

‘Stamford doesn’t work the lift,’ explained Henry, ‘he’s only for show and to look after the service flats downstairs.’

In three days, photographs of the Pleasaunce Court lift would appear in six illustrated papers and in the files of the criminal investigation department. It would be lit by flash lamps, sealed, dusted with powder, measured and described. It would be discussed by several millions of people. It was about to become famous. To Roberta it seemed very smart and she did not notice that, like the entrance hall, it had been modernized. The old liftman’s apparatus, a handle projecting from a cylindrical casing, was still there but above it was a row of buttons with the Lampreys’ floor, the fourth, at the top. They came out on a well-lit landing with two light green doors numbered 25 and 26. Henry pushed number 25 open and Roberta crossed a threshold into the past. The sensation of Deepacres, of that still-recurrent dream came upon her so poignantly that she caught her breath. Here was the very scent of Deepacres, of the scented oil Lady Charles burnt in the drawing-room, of Turkish cigarettes, of cut flowers and of moss. Our sense of smell works both consciously and subconsciously. About many households is an individual pleasantness of which human noses are only half aware and which is so subtle that it cannot be traced to one source. The Lampreys’ house smell, while it might suggest burning cedarwood, scented oil, and hot-house flowers, was made up of these things and of something more, something that to Roberta seemed the very scent of their characters. It carried her back through four years and, while the pleasure of this experience was still new, she saw in the entrance hall some of their old possessions: a table, a steel engraving, a green Chinese elephant. It was with the strangest feeling of familiarity that she heard Lady Charles’s voice crying:

‘Is that old Robin Grey?’

Roberta ran through the doorway into her arms.

They were all there, in a long white drawing-room with crackling fires at each end and a great gaiety of flowers. Lady Charles, thinner than ever, was not properly up and had bundled herself into a red silk dressing-gown. She wore a net over her grey curls. Her husband stood beside her in his well-remembered morning attitude, a newspaper dangling from his hand, his glass in his eye, and his thin colourless hair brushed across his head. He beamed with pale myopic eyes at Roberta and inclined his head forward with an obedient air, ready for her kiss. The twins, with shining blond heads and solemn smiles, also kissed her. Patch, an overgrown schoolgirl in a puppy-fat condition, nearly knocked her over, and Mike, eleven years old, looked relieved when Roberta merely shook his hand.

‘Such fun, darling,’ said all the Lampreys in their soft voices. ‘Such fun to see you.’

Presently they were all sitting before the fire, with Charlot in her chair, and Henry in his old place on the hearthrug and the twins collapsed on the sofa. Patch hurled herself on to the arm of Robin’s chair, and Frid stood in an elegant attitude before the fire, and Lord Charles wandered vaguely about the room.

‘Dear me,’ said Henry, ‘I feel like Uriah Heep. It’s as good as the chiming of old bellses to see Robin Grey in the flesh.’

The twins murmured agreeably and Colin said: ‘You haven’t grown much.’

‘I know,’ said Roberta. ‘I’m a pygmy.’

‘A nice pygmy,’ said Charlot.

‘Do you think she’s pretty?’ asked Frid. ‘I do.’

‘Not exactly pretty,’ said Stephen. ‘I’d call her attractive.’

‘Really!’ said Lord Charles mildly. ‘Does Robin, who I must say looks delightful, enjoy a public dissection of her charms?’

‘Yes,’ said Roberta. ‘From the family, I do.’

‘Of course she does,’ shouted Patch dealing Roberta a violent buffet across the shoulders.

‘What do you think of me?’ asked Frid, striking an attitude. ‘Aren’t I quite, quite lovely?’

‘Don’t tell her she is,’ said Colin. ‘The girl’s a nymphomaniac.’

‘Darling!’ murmured Lady Charles.

‘My dear Colin,’ said his father, ‘it really would be a good idea if you stick to the words you understand.’

‘Well,’ Frid reasoned, ‘you may thank your lucky stars I am so lovely. After all, looks go a long way on the stage. I may have to keep you all, and in the near future, too.’

‘Apropos,’ said Henry, ‘I fancy there’s a bum downstairs, chaps.’

‘Oh no!’ cried the Lampreys.

‘The signs are ominous. I told Stamford you were out, Daddy.’

‘Then I suppose I’d better stay in,’ muttered Lord Charles. ‘Who can it be this time? Not Smith & Weekly’s again, surely? I wrote them an admirable letter explaining that –’

‘Circumstances over which we had no control,’ suggested Stephen.

‘I put it better than that, Stephen.’

‘Mike,’ said Lady Charles, ‘be an angel and run out on the landing. If you see a little man –’

‘In a bowler,’ said Henry and Frid.

‘Yes, of course in a bowler. If you see him, don’t say anything but just come and tell Mummy, darling, will you?’

‘Right oh,’ said Mike politely. ‘Is he a bum, Mummy?’

‘We think so but it’s nothing to worry about. Do hurry, Mikey, darling.’

Mike grinned disarmingly and began to hop out of the room on one leg.

‘I can hop for miles,’ he said.

‘Well, run quietly for a change.’

Mike gave a Red-Indian call and began to crawl out. The twins rose in a menacing fashion. He uttered a shrill yelp and ran.

‘Isn’t he Heaven?’ Lady Charles asked Roberta.

‘There’s the lift!’ Colin ejaculated.

‘It’ll only be Mike t-taking a run down and up,’ said Stephen. ‘I understand that Mike’s playing with the lift is rather unpopular.’

‘I bet it’s the bum,’ said Colin. ‘Has Baskett been warned? I mean he may just lavishly show him in.’

‘If Baskett doesn’t know a bailiff’s man,’ said Lord Charles warmly, ‘after having lived with us for fifteen years, he is a stupider fellow than I take him for.’

‘There’s the bell!’ cried Lady Charles.

‘It’s all right,’ said Henry. ‘It’ll only be Robin’s luggage.’

‘Thank Heaven! Robin, darling, you’d like to see your room, wouldn’t you? Frid, darling, show Robin her room. It’s too tiny and absurd, darling, but you won’t mind, will you? Actually it was meant for a hall, but Mike and Patch turned it into a sort of railway station, so we’re delighted to have it made sane again. I really must dress myself but I can’t resist waiting to hear the worst about the bum.’

‘Here’s Mike,’ said Frid.

Mike came back, still hopping on one leg, and singing:

‘Hallelujah, I’m a bum!

Hallelujah, bum again!

Hallelujah, give us a hand up to –’

‘Shut up,’ said Stephen and Colin. ‘What do you mean? Is he there?’

‘Nope,’ whispered Mike. ‘Only her luggage.’

‘Don’t say “her”,’ said Stephen.

Mike began to hop up and down in front of the twins singing:

‘Two, two the lily white boys

Clothed all in green, oh.’

Colin took him by the shoulders and Stephen seized his heels. They swung him to and fro and flung him, screaming with pleasure, on the sofa.

‘Lily white boys!’ yelled Mike. ‘I bet she doesn’t know which is which. Do you?’ He looked engagingly at Roberta.

‘Do you – Robin?’

The twins turned to her, and raised their eyebrows.

‘Do you?’ they asked.

‘I do when you speak,’ said Roberta.

‘I hardly stammer at all, now,’ said Stephen.

‘I know, but your voices are different, Stephen. And even if you didn’t speak I’d only have to look behind your ears.’

‘Oh,’ said Mike, ‘it’s not fair. She knows the secret. Stephen’s old mole. Old moledy Stephen doesn’t wash behind his ears, yah, yah, yah!’

‘Let’s go to your room,’ said Frid. ‘Mike’s turning mad dog, and the scare seems to be over.’

II

Roberta liked her room which was in 26. As Lady Charles had told her it was really the entrance hall but a heavy curtain had been hung across it making a passage, through which the others would have to go to reach the real passage and their bedrooms. Frid showed her the rest of 26 which was all bedrooms with Nanny Burnaby living in the ex-kitchen where she could make the cups of Ovaltine that she still forced the Lampreys to drink before they went to bed. Nanny was sitting by the electric stove which she had converted into a sort of bureau. Her hair had turned much greyer. Her face was netted over with lines as if, thought Roberta, each good or ill deed of the young Lampreys had left its sign on that one face alone. She had been playing patience and received Roberta exactly as if four days instead of four years had gone by since their last meeting.

‘Nanny,’ said Frid, ‘things are gloomy. We’re up the spout again and there’s liable to be a bum at any moment.’

‘Some folk will do anything,’ said Nanny darkly.

‘Well, I know, but I suppose they rather want their money.’

‘Well, his lordship had better pay them and be done with it.’

‘I’m afraid we haven’t got any money at the moment, Nan.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Nanny.

She looked at Roberta and said, ‘You don’t grow much, Miss Robin.’

‘No, Nanny. I rather think I’ve finished. I’m twenty now, you know.’

‘Same age as Miss Frid and look how she’s shot up. You need nourishing.’

‘Nan,’ said Frid. ‘Uncle Gabriel’s coming tomorrow.’

‘Hm’m,’ said Nanny.

‘We hope he’ll pull us out of the soup.’

‘So he ought to with his own flesh and blood in need.’

Henry looked in at the door. By the singular scowl Nanny gave him, Roberta saw that he was still the favourite.

‘Hallo, Mrs Burnaby,’ he said. ‘Have you heard the news? We’re in the soup.’

‘It’s not the first time, Mr Henry, and it won’t be the last. His lordship’s brother will have to attend to it.’

Henry looked fixedly at his old nurse. ‘If he doesn’t,’ he said, ‘I think we’ll really go bust.’

Nanny’s hands, big-jointed with rheumatism, made a quick involuntary movement.

‘You’ll be all right, Nan,’ added Henry. ‘We fixed you up with an annuity, didn’t we?’

‘I’m not thinking of that, Mr Henry.’

‘No. No, I don’t suppose you are. I was, though.’

Nanny put on a pair of thick-lens spectacles and advanced upon Henry.

‘You put your tongue out,’ she ordered.

‘Why on earth?’

‘Do as you’re told, Mr Henry.’

Henry put out his tongue.

‘I thought so. Come to me before you go to bed this evening. You’re bilious.’

‘What utter rot.’

‘You’ve always shown your liver in your spirits.’

‘Nanny!’

‘Talking a lot of rubbish about matters that are beyond your understanding. His other lordship will soon send certain people about their business.’

‘Meaning us?’

‘Stuff and nonsense. You know what I mean. Miss Robin, you’d better take a glass of milk with your lunch. You’re over-excited.’

‘Yes, Nanny,’ said Roberta.

Nanny returned to her game of patience.

‘The audience is over,’ said Henry.

‘I’d better unpack,’ said Roberta.

‘Leave out your pressings,’ said Nanny. ‘I’ll do ’em.’

‘Thank you, Nanny,’ said Roberta and went to her room.

Now she was alone. The floor beneath her feet seemed unstable as though the sea, after five weeks’ domination, was not easily to be forgotten. It was strange to feel this physical reminder of an experience already so remote. Roberta unpacked. The clothes that she had bought in New Zealand no longer pleased her but she was too much preoccupied by the affairs of the Lampreys to be much concerned with her own. During the last four years Roberta had passed through adolescence into womanhood. The emotional phases proper to those years had been interrupted by tragedy. Two months ago when the languors and propulsions of adolescence had not yet quite abated, Roberta’s parents had been killed, and a kind of frost had closed about her emotions so that at first, though she felt the pain of her loss, it was with her reason rather than with her heart. Later, when the thaw came, she found that something unexpected had happened to her. Her affections, which had been easily and lightly bestowed, had crystallized, and she found herself indifferent to the greater number of her friends. With this discovery came another; that in four years her heart was still with an incredible family now half the world away. Her thought returned to Deepacres and she wanted the Lampreys. More than any one else in the world she wanted them. They might be scatter-brained, unstable, reprehensible, but they suited Roberta and she supposed she suited them. When her father’s sister wrote to suggest that Roberta should come to England and live with her, Roberta was glad to go because, by the same mail, came a letter from Lady Charles Lamprey that awoke all her old love for the family. When it became certain that she would see them again she grew apprehensive lest they should find her an awkward carryover from their colonial days, but as soon as she saw Henry and Frid on the wharf she had felt safer, and now, as she put the last of her un-smart garments in a drawer that already contained several pieces of a toy railway, she was visited by the odd idea that it was she who had grown so much older and that the young Lampreys had merely grown taller.

‘Otherwise,’ thought Roberta, ‘they haven’t changed a bit.’

The door opened and Lady Charles came in. She was now dressed. Her grey hair shone in a mass of small curls, her thin face was delicately powdered, and she looked and smelt delightful.

‘How’s old Robin Grey?’ she asked.

‘Very happy.’

Lady Charles turned on the electric heater, drew up a chair, sat in it, folded her short skirt back over her knees and lit a cigarette. Roberta recognized, with a warm sense of familiarity, the signs of an impending gossip.

‘I hope you won’t be too uncomfortable, darling,’ said Lady Charles.

‘I’m in Heaven, Charlot, darling.’

‘We do so wish we could have you for a long time. What are your plans?’

‘Well,’ said Roberta, ‘my aunt has offered very nicely to have me as a sort of companion, but I think I want a job, a real job, I mean. So if she agrees, I’m going to try for a secretaryship in a shop, or failing that, an office. I’ve learnt shorthand and typing.’

‘We must see what we can do. But of course you must have some fun first.’

‘I’d love some fun but I’ve only got a tiny bit of money. About £200 a year. So I’ve got to start soon.’

‘I must say I do think money’s awful,’ said Lady Charles. ‘Here are we, practically playing mouth-organs and selling matches, and all because poor darling Charlie doesn’t happen to have a head for sums. I’m so dreadfully worried, Robin. It’s so hard for the children.’

‘Hard for you, too.’

‘Well, if we go bankrupt it’ll be rather uncomfortable. Charlie won’t be allowed on a racecourse for one thing. There’s one comfort, he has paid his bookmaker. There’s something so second-rate about not paying your bookmaker and the things they do to you are too shaming.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘I think they call out your name at Sandown and beat with a hammer to draw everybody’s attention. Or is that only if you are a mason? At any rate we needn’t dwell on it because it’s almost the only thing that is not likely to happen to us.’

‘But, Charlot, you’ve got over other fences.’

‘Nothing like this. This isn’t a fence; it’s a mountain.’

‘How did it all happen?’

‘My dear, how does one run into debt? It simply occurs, bit by bit. And you know, Robin, I have made such enormous efforts. We’ve lived like anchorites and put down one thing after another. The children have been wonderful about it. The twins and Henry have answered any number of advertisements and have never given up the idea that they must get a job. And they’ve been so good about their fun, enjoying quite cheap things like driving about England and staying at second-rate hotels and going to Ostend for a little cheap gamble instead of the Riviera where all their friends are. And Frid was so good-natured about her coming-out. No ball; only dinner and cocktail parties which we ran on sixpence. And now she’s going to this drama school and working so hard with the most appalling people. Of course the whole thing is the business of Charlie and the jewels. Don’t ask me to tell you the complete story, it’s too grim and involved for words to convey. The gist of it is that poor Charlie was to have this office in the City with buyers in the East and at places like the Galle Face Hotel at Colombo. He was in partnership with a Sir David Stein, who seemed a rather nice second-rate little man, we thought. Well, it appears that they had a great orgy of paper-signing and no sooner was that over than Sir David blew out his brains.’

‘Why?’

‘It seems he was in deep water and one of his chief interests had crashed quite suddenly. It turned out that Charlie had to meet a frightful lot of bills because he was Sir David’s partner. So many, that we hadn’t any money left to pay our own bills which had been mounting up a bit, anyhow. And there’s no more coming in for six months. So there you are. Well, we must simply keep our heads and take the right line with Gabriel. Charlie wrote him a really charming telegram, just right, do you know? We took great trouble with it. Gabriel is at Deepacres and he hates coming up to London so we rather hoped he’d simply realize he couldn’t let Charlie go bust and would send him a cheque. However, he telegraphed back: “Arriving Friday, six o’clock. Wutherwood,” which has thrown us all into rather a fever.’

‘Do you think it’ll be all right?’ asked Roberta.

‘Well, it’s simply so crucial that we’re not thinking at all. Never jump your fences till you meet them. But I’m terribly anxious that we should take the right line with Gabriel. It’s a bore that Charlie loathes him so whole-heartedly.’

‘I didn’t think he ever loathed anybody,’ said Roberta.

‘Well, as far as he can, he hates Gabriel. Gabriel has always been rather beastly to him and thinks he’s extravagant. Gabriel himself is a miser.’

‘Oh dear!’

‘I know. Still he’s a snob and I really don’t believe he’ll allow his brother to go bankrupt. He’d crawl with horror at the publicity. What we’ve got to do is decide on the line to take with Gabriel when he gets here. I thought the first thing was to consider his comfort. He likes a special kind of sherry, almost unprocurable, I understand, but Baskett is going to hunt for it. And he likes early Chinese pottery. Deepacres is full of leering goddesses and dragons. Well, by a great stroke of luck, one of the things poor Charlie bought with an eye to business is a small blue pot which was most frightfully expensive and which, in a mad moment, he paid for. I had the really brilliant idea of letting Mike give it to Gabriel. Mike has quite charming manners when he tries.’

‘But, Charlot, if this pot is so valuable, couldn’t you sell it?’

‘I suppose we could, but how? And, anyway, my cunning tells me that it’s much better to invest it as a sweetener for Gabriel. We’ve got to be diplomatic. Suppose the pot is worth a hundred pounds? My dear, we want two thousand. Why not use the pot as a sprat to catch a mackerel?’

‘Yes,’ said Roberta dubiously, ‘but may he not think it looks a bit lavish to be giving away valuable pots?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Lady Charles with an air of dismissal, ‘he’ll be delighted. And anyway if he flings it back in poor little Mike’s face, we’ve still got the pot.’

‘True,’ said Roberta, but she felt that there was a flaw somewhere in Lady Charles’s logic.

‘We’ll all be in the drawing-room when he comes,’ continued Lady Charles, ‘and I thought perhaps we might have some charades.’

‘What!’

‘I know it sounds mad, Robin, but you see he knows we’re rather mad and it’s no good pretending we’re not. And we’re all good at charades, you can’t deny it.’

Roberta remembered the charades in New Zealand, particularly one that presented the Garden of Eden. Lord Charles, with his glass in his eye, and an umbrella over his head to suggest the heat of the day, had enacted Adam. Henry was the serpent and the twins, angels. Frid had entered into the spirit of the part of Eve and had worn almost nothing but a brassière and a brown paper fig-leaf. Lady Charles had found one of the false beards that the Lampreys could always be depended upon to produce and had made a particularly irritable Deity. Patch had been the apple tree.

‘Does he like charades?’ asked Roberta.

‘I don’t suppose he ever sees any, which is all to the good. We’ll make him feel gay. That’s poor Gabriel’s trouble. He’s never gay enough.’

There was a tap at the door and Henry looked in.

‘I thought you might like a good laugh,’ said Henry. ‘The bum has come up the back stairs and caught poor old Daddy. He’s sitting in the kitchen with Baskett and the maids.’

‘Oh, no!’ said his mother.

‘His name is Mr Grumble,’ said Henry.

III

During lunch Lady Charles developed her theory of the way in which Lord Wutherwood – and Rune – was to be received and entertained. The family, with the exception of Henry, entered warmly into the discussion. Henry seemed to be more than usually vague and rather dispirited. Roberta, to her discomfiture, repeatedly caught his eye. Henry stared at her with an expression which she was unable to interpret until it occurred to her that he looked not at but through her. Roberta became less self-conscious and listened more attentively to the rest of the family. With every turn of their preposterous conversation her four years of separation from them seemed to diminish and Roberta felt herself slip, as of old, into an attitude of mind that half-accepted the mad logic of their scheming. They discussed the suitability of a charade, Lady Charles and her children with passionate enthusiasm. Lord Charles with an air of critical detachment. Roberta wondered what Lord Charles really felt about the crisis and whether she merely imagined that he wore a faintly troubled air. His face was at no time an expressive one. It was a pale oval face. Short-sighted eyes that looked dimly friendly, a colourless moustache and an oddly youthful mouth added nothing to its distinction, and yet it had distinction of a gentle kind. His voice was pitched rather high and he had a trick of letting his sentences die away while he opened his eyes widely and stroked the top of his head. Roberts realized that though she liked him very much she had not the smallest inkling as to what sort of thoughts went on in his mind. He was an exceedingly remote individual.

‘Well, anyway,’ Frid was saying, ‘we can but try. Let’s fill him up with sherry and do a charade. How about Lady Godiva? Henry the palfrey, Daddy the horrid husband, one of the twins Peeping Tom, and the rest of you the nice-minded populace.’

‘If you think I’m going to curvet round the drawing-room with you sitting on my back in the rude nude –’ Henry began.

‘Your hair’s not long enough, Frid,’ said Patch.

‘I didn’t say I’d be Lady Godiva.’

‘Well, you can hardly expect Mummy to undress,’ said Colin, ‘and anyway you meant yourself.’

‘Don’t be an ass, darling,’ said Lady Charles, ‘of course we can’t do Lady Godiva. Uncle G. would be horrified.’

‘He might mistake it for a Witches’ Sabbath,’ said Henry, ‘and think we were making fun of Aunt V.’

‘If Frid rode on you, I expect he would,’ said Patch.

‘Why?’ asked Mike. ‘What do witches ride on, Daddy?’

Lord Charles gave his high-pitched laugh. Henry stared thoughtfully at Patch.

‘If that wasn’t rude,’ he said, ‘it would be almost funny.’

‘Well, why not do a Witches’ Sabbath?’ asked Stephen. ‘Uncle G. hates Aunt V. being a witch. I dare say it would be a great success. It would show we were on his side. We needn’t make it too obvious, you know. It could be a word charade. Ipswich for instance.’

‘How would you do Ips?’ asked Colin.

‘Patch could waggle hers,’ said Henry.

‘You are beastly, Henry,’ stormed Patch. ‘It’s foul of you to say I’m fat. Mummy!’

‘Never mind, darling, it’s only puppy-fat. I think you’re just right.’

‘We could do Dulwich,’ said Stephen. ‘The first syllable could be a weekend at Deepacres. Everybody yawning.’

‘That would be really rude,’ said his mother seriously.

‘It wouldn’t be far wrong,’ said Lord Charles.

‘I know, Charlie, but it would never do. Don’t let’s get all wild and silly about it. Let’s just think sensibly of a good funny charade. Not too vulgar and not insulting.’

There followed a long silence broken by Frid.

‘I know,’ Frid cried, ‘we’ll just be ourselves with bums in the house. It could be a breakfast scene with Baskett coming in to say: “A person to see you, m’lord.” You wouldn’t mind, would you, Baskett?’

With that smile demanded by the infinite courtesy of service, Baskett offered Frid cheese. Roberta wondered suddenly if Baskett thought the Lampreys as funny as she did. Frid hurried on with her plan.

‘It really would be a good idea, Mummy. You see, Baskett could bring in the bum, and we could all plead with him and Daddy could say all the things he really wants Uncle G. to hear. Robin could do the bum, she’d look Heaven in a bowler and a muffler. It would seem sort of gay and gallant at the same time.’

‘What would be the word?’ asked Patch.

‘Bumptious?’

‘The second syllable’s impossible,’ Colin objected.

‘Bumboat?’

‘Too obvious.’

‘Well, bumpkin. The second syllable could be about relations. We could actually have Uncle G. in it. Robin could be Uncle G. His coat and hat and umbrella will be in the hall ready to hand. We’d all plead with her and say:

“Your own kith and kin, Gabriel, dear fellow, your own kith and kin.”’

‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ said Stephen, ‘but you’ve forgotten the “p”.’

‘It could be silent as in –’

‘That will do, Frid,’ said Lord Charles.

CHAPTER 4
Uncle G.
I

On the morning after her arrival Roberta woke to see a ray of thin London sunshine slanting across the counterpane. A maid in a print dress had drawn the curtains and put a tray on the bedside table. Dream and reality mixed themselves in Roberta’s thoughts. As she grew wide-awake she began to count over the wonderful events of the night that was past. In the hour before dawn she had been driven through London. She had seen jets from hose-pipes splayed fan-wise over deserted streets, she had heard the jingle of milk carts and seen the strange silhouette made by roofs and chimney pots against a thinning sky. She had heard Big Ben tell four of a spring morning and the clocks of Chelsea answer him. Before that she had danced in a room so full of shadows, abrupt lights, relentless music, and people, that the memory was as confused as a dream. She had danced with Colin and Stephen and Henry. Colin had played the fool, pretended he was a Russian, and spoken broken English. Stephen with his quick stutter had talked incessantly and complimented Roberta on her dancing. She had danced most often with Henry who was more silent than the twins. He said so little that Roberta, in a sudden panic had wondered if he merely danced with her out of a sense of hospitality and regretted the absence of the person called Mary. In those strange surroundings Henry had become remote, a sophisticated grandee with a white waistcoat, and a gardenia in his coat. Yet, when she danced with him, behind all her bewilderment Roberta had been aware of a deep satisfaction. Now, lying still in her bed, she called back the events of the night and so potently that though her eyes were still open she had no thought for the sunlight on her counterpane but anxiously examined the picture of herself and Henry. There they were, moving together among a shadowy company of dancers. He did not wait to see if Stephen or Colin would ask her to dance, but himself asked her quickly and danced on until long after the others had gone back to their table. There was a sort of protective decisiveness in his manner that pleased and embarrassed Roberta. Perhaps, after all, he was only worried about the financial crisis. ‘Heaven knows,’ thought Roberta, ‘it’s enough to worry anybody but a Lamprey into a thousand fits.’ She realized that the crisis lay like a nasty taste behind the savour of her own enjoyment. It was not discussed during that dazzling evening until they got home. Creeping into the flat in the half-light, they found Nanny’s Thermos of Ovaltine and sat drinking it round the heater in Roberta’s room. Henry laughed unexpectedly and said: ‘Well, chaps, we may not be here much longer.’

Frid, very elegant and pale, struck a tragic attitude and said: ‘The last night in the old home. Pause for sobs.’ There was a brief silence broken by Stephen.

‘Uncle Gabriel,’ Stephen said, ‘has s-simply g-got to stump up.’

‘What if he won’t?’ Colin had asked.

‘We’ll bribe Aunt V. to bewitch him,’ said Frid. She pulled her cloak over her head, crouched down, and crooked her fingers and croaked:

‘Weary sen’nights, nine times nine,

Shall he dwindle peak and pine.’

The twins instantly turned themselves into witches and circled with Frid round the heater.

‘Double, double, toil and trouble,

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.’

‘Shut up,’ said Henry. ‘I thought you said it was unlucky to quote Macbeth?’

‘If we gave Aunt V. the ingredients for a charm,’ said Colin, ‘I expect she’d be only too pleased to make Uncle G. dwindle peak and pine.’

‘They’re awkward things to beat up in a hurry,’ said Frid.

Stephen said: ‘I wonder what Aunt V.’s friends d-do about it. It must be rather dull to be witches if you can’t cast murrains on cattle or give your husband warts.’

‘I wish,’ Roberta cried, ‘that you’d tell me the truth about your Aunt V. and not go rambling on about her being a witch.’

‘Poor Robin,’ Henry said. ‘It does sound very silly, but as an actual fact, and if her mind is to be believed, Aunt V. has taken up some sort of black magic I imagine it boils down to reading histories of witchcraft and turning tables. In my opinion Aunt V. is simply dotty.’

‘Well,’ Frid said, ‘let’s go to bed, anyway.’ She kissed the air near Roberta’s cheek and drifted to the door. ‘Come on, twins,’ she added.

The twins kissed Roberta and wandered after Frid.

Henry stood in the doorway.

‘Sleep well,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Henry,’ said Roberta. ‘It was a lovely party.’

‘For once,’ said Henry, ‘I thought so too. Good night, Robin.’

Roberta, as she watched the sun on her counterpane, reviewed this final scene several times, and felt happy.

II

The visit of Lord Wutherwood was prejudiced from the start by the arrival of Lady Katherine Lobe. Lady Katherine was a maiden aunt of Lord Charles. She was extremely poor and lived in a small house at Hammersmith. There she was surrounded by photographs of the Lamprey children to whom she was passionately devoted. Being poor herself, she spent the greater part of her life in working for the still-poorer members of her parish. She wore nondescript garments; hats that seemed to have no connection with her head, and grey fabric gloves. She was extremely deaf and spoke in a toneless whispering manner, with kind smiles, and with many anxious looks into the faces of the people she addressed. But for all her diffidence there was a core of determination in Lady Katherine. In her likes and dislikes she was immovable. Nothing would reconcile her to a person of whom she disapproved, and unfortunately she disapproved most strongly of her nephew Wutherwood, who, for his part, refused to meet her. At Christmas she invariably wrote him a letter on the subject of goodwill towards men, pointing out his shortcomings under this heading and enclosing a blank promise to pay yearly a large sum to one of her charities. Lord Wutherwood’s only reply to these communications was an irritable tearing across of the enclosures. For his younger brother Lady Katherine had the warmest affection. Occasionally she would travel in a bus up to the West End in order to visit the Lampreys and beg, with a gentle persistence, for their old clothes or force them to buy tickets for charitable entertainments. They were always warned by letter of these visits, but on this occasion Lady Charles, agitated by the crisis, had forgotten to open the note, and the only warning she had was Baskett’s announcement, at six o’clock in the evening, of Lady Katherine’s arrival.

The Lampreys and Roberta had assembled in the drawing-room to await the arrival of Lord Wutherwood. They were unnaturally silent. Even Mike had caught the feeling of tension. He stood by the wireless and turned the control knob as rapidly as possible until told to stop, when he flung himself moodily full length on the hearthrug and kicked his feet together.

‘There’s the lift,’ cried Lady Charles suddenly. ‘Mike, stay where you are and jump up. Remember to shake hands with Uncle Gabriel. Sprinkle some “sirs” through your conversation, for Heaven’s sake, and when I nod to you, you are to give him the pot.’

‘Mike’ll break it,’ said Patch.

‘I won’t,’ shouted Mike indignantly.

‘And remember,’ continued his mother, ‘if I suggest a charade you’re all to go out and come back quietly and do one. Then, when you’ve finished, go out again so that Daddy can talk to Uncle Gabriel. And remember –’

‘Can’t we listen?’ asked Patch.

‘We’ll probably hear Uncle G. all over the flat,’ said Henry.

‘And remember not to mention witchcraft. Uncle G. hates it.’

‘Ssh!’

‘Can’t we be talking?’ Frid suggested. ‘You’d think there was a corpse in the flat.’

‘If you can think of anything to say, say it,’ said her father gloomily.

Frid began to speak in a high voice. ‘Aren’t those flowers over there too marvellous?’ she asked. Nobody answered her. In the distance a bell rang. Baskett was heard to walk across the hall.

‘Lovely, darling,’ said Lady Charles violently. She appealed mutely to the children who stared in apprehension at the door and grimaced at each other. Lady Charles turned to Roberta.

‘Robin, darling, do tell us about your voyage home. Did you have fun?’

‘Yes,’ said Roberta, whose heart was now thumping against her ribs. ‘Yes. We had a fancy-dress ball.’

Lady Charles and Frid laughed musically. The door opened and Baskett came in.

‘Lady Katherine Lobe, m’lady,’ said Baskett.

‘Good God!’ said Lord Charles.

Lady Katherine came in. She walked with short steps and peered amiably through the cigarette smoke.

‘Imogen, darling,’ she whispered.

‘Aunt Kit!’

The Lampreys kept their heads admirably. They told Lady Katherine how delighted they were to see her and seated her by the fire. They introduced Roberta to her, and teased her gently about her lame ducks, and with panic-stricken glances at each other, asked her to remove her raincoat.

‘So nice to see you all,’ whispered Lady Katherine. ‘Such luck for me to find the whole family. And there’s Michael home for the holidays and grown enormously. Patricia too. And the twins. Don’t speak twins, and let me see if I can guess. This is Stephen, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, Aunt Kit,’ said Colin.

‘There! I knew I was right. You got my note, Imogen, darling?’

‘Yes, Aunt Kit. We’re so pleased,’ said Charlot.

‘Yes. I wondered if you had got it because you all looked quite surprised when I walked in. So I wondered.’

‘We thought you were Uncle Gabriel,’ shouted Mike.

‘What dear?’

‘Uncle Gabriel.’

Lady Katherine passed a grey fabric finger across her lips. ‘Is Gabriel coming, Charles?’

‘Yes, Aunt Kit,’ said Lord Charles. And as she merely gazed dimly at him he added loudly: ‘He’s coming to see me on business.’

‘We’re going to have some charades,’ bawled Mike.

‘I’m very glad,’ said Lady Katherine emphatically. ‘I wish to see Gabriel. I have written to him several times but no response did I get. It’s about our Fresh Air Fund. A day in the country for a hundred children and a fortnight in private homes for Twenty Sickly Mites. I want Gabriel to take six.’

‘Six Sickly Mites?’ asked Henry.

‘What, dear?’

‘Do you want Uncle Gabriel to take six sickly mites at Deepacres?’

‘It’s the least he can do. I’m afraid Gabriel is inclined to be too self-centred, Charles. He’s a very wealthy man and he should think of other people more than he does. Your mama always said so. And I hear the most disquieting news of Violet. It appears that she has taken up spiritualism and sits in the dark with a set of very second-rate sort of people.’

‘Not spiritualism, darling,’ said Charlot. ‘Black magic.’

‘What, dear?’

‘Magic.’

‘Oh. Oh, I see. That’s entirely different. I suppose she does it to entertain their house-parties. But that doesn’t alter the fact that both Violet and Gabriel are getting rather self-centred. It would be an excellent thing for both of them if they adopted two children.’

‘For mercy’s sake, Aunt Kit,’ cried Charlot, ‘don’t suggest that to Gabriel.’

‘Don’t suggest anything,’ said Lord Charles. ‘I implore you, Aunt Kit, not to tackle Gabriel this afternoon. You see –’ he peered anxiously at his watch and broke off. ‘Good God, Immy,’ he whispered to his wife, ‘we must do something. She’ll infuriate him. Take her to your room.’

‘Under what pretext?’ muttered Charlot.

‘Think of something.’

‘Aunt Kit, would you like to see my bedroom?’

‘What, dear?’

‘It’s no good, Mummy,’ said Frid. ‘Better tell her we’re bust.’

‘I think so,’ said Lord Charles. He bent his legs and brought his face close to his aunt’s.

‘Aunt Kit,’ he shouted. ‘I’m in difficulties.’

‘Are you, dear?’

‘I’ve no money.’

‘What?’

‘There’s a bum in the house,’ yelled Patch.

‘Be quiet, Patch,’ said Henry. His father continued. ‘I’ve asked Gabriel to lend me two thousand. If he doesn’t I shall go bankrupt.’

‘Charlie!’

‘It’s true.’

‘I’ll speak to Gabriel,’ said Lady Katherine quite loudly.

‘No, no!’ cried the Lampreys.

‘Lord and Lady Wutherwood, m’lady,’ said Baskett in the doorway.

III

Roberta knew that the Lampreys had not reckoned on Lady Wutherwood’s arrival with her husband, and she had time to admire their almost instant recovery from this second and formidable shock. Charlot met her brother and sister-in-law halfway across the room. Her manner held a miraculous balance between the over-cordial and the too-casual. Her children and her husband supported her admirably. Lady Katherine for the moment, was too rattled by the Lampreys’ news of impending disaster to make any disturbance. She sat quietly in her chair.

Roberta found herself shaking hands with an extremely old couple. The Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune was sixty years of age but these years sat heavily upon him and he looked like an old man. His narrow head, sunken between high shoulders, poked forward with an air that was at once mean and aggressive. His face was colourless. The bridge of his nose was so narrow that his eyes appeared to be impossibly close set. His mouth drooped querulously and the length of his chin, though prodigious, was singularly unexpressive of anything but obstinacy. His upper teeth projected over his under lip and hinted at a high and narrow palate. These teeth gave him an unpleasingly feminine appearance increased by his chilly old-maidish manner, which suggested that he lived in a state of perpetual offence. Roberta found herself wondering if he could possibly be as disagreeable as he looked.

His wife was about fifty years of age. She was dark, extremely sallow, and fat. There was a musty falseness about the dank hair which she wore over her ears in sibylline coils. She painted her face, but with such inattention to detail that Roberta was reminded of a cheap print in which the colours had slipped to one side, showing the original structure of the drawing underneath. She had curious eyes, very pale, with tiny pupils, and muddy whites. They were so abnormally sunken that they seemed to reflect no light and this gave them a veiled appearance which Roberta found disconcerting, and oddly repellent. Her face had once been round but like her make-up it had slipped and now hung in folds and pockets about her lips which were dragged down at the corners. Roberta saw that Lady Wutherwood had a trick of parting and closing her lips. It was a very slight movement but she did it continually with a faint click of sound. And in the corners of her lips there was a kind of whiteness that moved when they moved. ‘Henry is right,’ thought Roberta, ‘she is disgusting.’

Lord Wutherwood greeted the Lampreys without much show of cordiality. When he saw Lady Katherine Lobe his attitude stiffened still further. He turned to his brother and in a muffled voice said: ‘We’re in a hurry, Charles.’

‘Oh,’ said Lord Charles. ‘Are you? Oh – well –’

‘Are you?’ Charlot repeated. ‘Not too much of a hurry, I hope, Gabriel. We never see anything of you.’

‘You never come to Deepacres when we ask you, Imogen.’

‘I know. We’d adore to come, especially the children, but you know it’s so frightfully expensive to travel, even in England. You see we can’t all get into one car –’

‘The fare, third class return, is within the reach of most people.’

‘Miles beyond us, I’m afraid,’ said Charlot with a charming air of ruefulness. ‘We’re cutting down everything. We never budge from where we are.’

Lord Wutherwood turned to Henry.

‘Enjoy your trip to the Côte d’Azur?’ he asked. ‘Saw your photograph in one of these papers. In my day we didn’t strip ourselves naked and wallow in front of press photographers but I suppose you like that sort of thing.’

‘Enormously, sir,’ said Henry coldly.

There was a slight pause. Roberta felt uncomfortably that Charlot’s plan should be amended and that they should leave the field to Lord Charles. She wondered if she herself should slip out of the room. Her thoughts must have appeared in her face for Henry caught her eye, smiled, and shook his head. The Wutherwoods were now seated side by side on the sofa. Baskett came in with the sherry.

‘Ah, sherry,’ said Lord Charles. Henry began to pour it out. Charlot made desperate efforts with her brother-in-law. Lady Katherine leant forward in her chair and addressed Lady Wutherwood.

‘Well, Violet,’ she said, ‘I hear you have taken up conjuring.’

‘You couldn’t be more mistaken,’ said Lady Wutherwood in a deep voice. She spoke with a very slight accent, slurring her words together. After each phrase she rearranged her mouth with those clicking movements and stealthily touched away the white discs at the corners. But in a little while they re-formed.

‘Aunty Kit,’ cried Frid, ‘will you have some sherry? Aunt Violet?’

‘No thank you, my dear,’ said Lady Katherine.

‘Yes,’ said Lady Wutherwood.

‘You’d better not, V.,’ said Lord Wutherwood. ‘You know what’ll happen.’

Mike walked to the end of the sofa and stared fixedly at his aunt. Lord Charles turned to his brother with an air of cordiality. ‘It’s a sherry that I think you rather like, Gabriel, don’t you?’ he said, ‘Corregio del Martez, ’79.’

‘If you can afford a sherry like that –’ began Lord Wutherwood. Henry hurriedly placed a glass at his elbow.

‘Aunt Violet,’ asked Mike suddenly, ‘can you do the rope trick? I bet you can’t. I bet you can’t do that and I bet you can’t saw a lady in half.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Mike,’ said Patch.

‘Mikey,’ said his mother, ‘run and find Baskett, darling, and ask him to take care of Uncle Gabriel’s chauffeur. I suppose he’s there, isn’t he, Gabriel?’

‘He’ll do very well in the car. Your aunt’s maid is there, too. Your aunt insists on cartin’ her about with us. I strongly object of course, but that makes no difference. She’s a nasty type.’

Lady Wutherwood laughed rather madly. Her husband turned on her. ‘You know what I mean, V.,’ he said. ‘Tinkerton’s a bad lot. Put it bluntly, she’s damn well debauched my chauffeur. It’s been goin’ on under your nose for years.’

Charlot evidently decided that it would be better not to have heard this embarrassing parenthesis. ‘Of course they must come up,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Nanny will adore to see Tinkerton. Mikey, ask Baskett to bring Tinkerton and Giggle up to the servants’ sitting-room and give them a drink of tea or something. Ask politely, won’t you?’

‘Okay,’ said Mike. He hopped on one foot and turned to look at Lady Wutherwood.

‘Isn’t it pretty funny?’ he asked. ‘Your chauffeur’s called Giggle and there’s a man in the kitchen called Grumble. He’s a –’

‘Michael!’ said Lord Charles, ‘do as you’re told at once.’

Mike went out, followed unostentatiously by Stephen who shut the door behind him. Stephen returned in a few moments.

‘I wish you’d tell me, Violet,’ said Lady Katherine, ‘what it is you have taken up. One hears such extraordinary reports.’

‘She’s dabblin’ in some damn-fool kind of occultism,’ said Lord Wutherwood, turning pale with annoyance.

Roberta noticed that when he stopped speaking his upper teeth closed firmly on his under lip causing his whole mouth to settle down at the corners in an expression of maddening complacency.

‘Gabriel,’ said his wife, ‘believes in what he sees. Nothing else. He thinks himself fortunate in that. He is not so fortunate as he supposes.’

‘What the devil d’you mean?’ demanded Lord Wutherwood. ‘Don’t look at me like that, V., I don’t like it. These friends of yours are makin’ a damned unpleasant woman of you. Of all the miserable footlin’ crew! What d’you think you’re doin’ huntin’ up a parcel of spooks? A lot of trickery. I’ve told you before, I’ve a damn good mind to speak to the police about the whole affair. If it wasn’t for draggin’ my name into it –’

‘You had better be careful, Gabriel. It is not wise to sneer at the unseen.’

‘The unseen what?’ asked Lady Katherine who had caught this last phrase.

‘The unseen forces.’

Lord Wutherwood made exasperated sounds and turned his back.

‘What sort of forces?’ persisted Lady Katherine against the combined mental opposition of the Lampreys.

‘Do you seek,’ asked Lady Wutherwood with a formidable air of contempt, ‘to learn in a few words the wisdom of all the ages? A lifetime is too short to reach full understanding.’

‘Of what?’

‘Esoteric Lore.’

‘What’s that?’

Charlot suddenly made a bold dash into this strange conversation, and Roberta with something like terror saw that she had decided on the line she would take with her sister-in-law. Evidently it was to be a line of gentle banter. Charlot leant towards Lady Wutherwood and said gaily: ‘I’m as bewildered as Aunty Kit, Violet. Is esoteric lore the same as – what? Witchcraft? Don’t turn into a witch, darling.’

Lady Wutherwood stared at Charlot. ‘It’s a great mistake,’ she said in her deep voice, ‘to laugh at necromancy, Imogen. There are more things in Heaven and earth –’

‘I suppose there are, Violet, but I don’t want to meet them.’

‘The Church,’ said Lady Katherine in her loudest whisper, ‘takes a firm stand in such matters. I imagine you know, Violet, that you are in danger of –’

The Lampreys all began to talk at once. They talked persistently, not raising their voices but overpowering their guests with a sort of gentle barrage. They seemed by tacit agreement to have split into two groups, Frid, Patch and their mother tackling Lord Wutherwood, while Henry and the twins concentrated on his wife. Lord Charles, nervously polishing his eyeglass, stood aside like a sort of inadequate referee. The scene now developed in accordance with the best traditions of polite drawing-room comedy. Roberta was irresistibly reminded of the play she had seen the previous night and, once possessed of this idea, it seemed to her that the Lampreys and their relations had begun to pitch their voices like actors and actresses and to use gestures that were a little larger than life. The scene was building towards some neat and effective climax. There was perhaps a superfluity of character parts and with Lady Katherine Lobe smiling and nodding in her corner the eccentric dowager was not lacking. Partly to dispel this idea and in the hope that she might be of some service to the cause, Roberta moved to Lady Katherine who, true to family form, instantly began to confide in her, saying that she had heard most disquieting news of Violet and asking Roberta if she thought the Lampreys would rather she went away as poor Charlie must be given a free hand with Gabriel. All this was fortunately uttered in such a muffled aside that Roberta could hear no more than half of it. Lady Katherine was too insistent, however, for Roberta to divide her own attention and she had no idea of what went forward between the Lampreys and the Wutherwoods until she heard Frid say: ‘No, Uncle Gabriel, I shall be bitterly humiliated if you don’t ask us to do one for you.’ Roberta saw that Lord Wutherwood looked slightly less disagreeable. Frid was presenting herself as a lovely and attentive niece.

‘I’m so glad you agree with me,’ whispered Lady Katherine. ‘There is no doubt at all, in my mind, of our duty to these poor things.’ Roberta did not know if she spoke of the Lampreys, of ailing children, or of Jewish refugees, in all of whom she seemed to be passionately interested. Frid had refilled her uncle’s glass. Lady Wutherwood was droning interminably to Henry and the twins who appeared to be enraptured with the recital. Charlot suddenly broke up this comparatively peaceful picture by making the much discussed announcement.

‘Children,’ she said gaily, ‘Frid’s been telling Uncle Gabriel about your charades. Do you think you could do a very quick rhyming charade now, for Aunt Violet and Aunt Kit and Uncle Gabriel. Don’t take ages deciding what to do, just do the first thing that comes into your heads. We’ll give you a word. Out you go.’

‘Come on, Robin,’ said Henry.

Robin, full of misgivings, followed the Lampreys into the hall.

CHAPTER 5
Mike puts the pot on
I

‘This is a mistake,’ said Henry gloomily as soon as he had shut the door. ‘Obviously Uncle G.’s in a foul temper and we won’t improve it by cutting capers in front of him. I must say he’s a loathsome old man.’

‘Well, let’s compromise,’ said Frid. ‘We won’t do one about bums. Let’s do one about witchcraft. Uncle G. will like that because he’ll think it’s making nonsense of Aunt V. and Aunt V. will be interested if we do it well enough.’

‘She’s quite m-mad, you know, poor thing,’ said Stephen. ‘D-don’t you consider she’s mad, Colin?’

‘Stark ravers,’ said Colin. ‘Where’s Mike?’

‘Talking to Giggle about toy trains, I think. He’s better out of this.’

‘Let’s get going,’ said Patch. ‘Mummy said we were to hurry.’

The door opened and Charlot looked out. ‘It’s to rhyme with “pale”,’ she said loudly and then lowering her voice she hissed: ‘It’s “nail”. Don’t do either of the other things. Too risky.’ The door shut and Charlot called from the other side: ‘Hurry up!’

Frid made a helpless gesture. ‘Well, there you are,’ she said. ‘No bums and no witches and the word is “nail”. Evidently Mummy wants us to get it right at the first stab. What shall we do?’

‘Bite our nails?’ suggested Patch.

‘Put a nail in Uncle G.’s coffin,’ said Henry viciously.

‘Nailing our colours to the mast?’

‘I know,’ said Frid. ‘We’ll do Jael and Sisera.’

‘What did they d-do?’ asked Stephen.

‘Something with a nail. What was it, Robin?’

‘Didn’t Jael hammer a nail through Sisera’s head?’

‘That’s right,’ said Colin. ‘Well, we can be clever and do wail and hail and Jael all at once. A compound charade.’

The Lampreys threw open the door of their enormous hall cupboard and began to dress themselves up.

‘I’ll be Jael,’ said Frid, ‘and Henry can be Sisera and the twins guards and Robin a faithful slave.’

‘What am I?’ demanded Patch, putting on Lord Wutherwood’s bowler.

‘Another faithful slave. Wait a moment.’

Frid ran down the passage towards the kitchen. Roberta could hear her shouting: ‘A skewer, Baskett, a skewer! We’re doing a charade. Quick!’

‘Did Jael make love to Sisera,’ asked Colin, ‘before he slew her?’

‘Jael’s the female,’ said Stephen.

‘Oh. Give me that ghastly scarf, will you. Is it Uncle G.’s?’

‘Yes. I want it for a loin cloth.’

‘I’m going to be a Circassian slave,’ said Patch.

‘This is most frightfully bogus,’ said Henry, taking two yachting caps out of the wardrobe. ‘I can’t tell you how much I object to cavorting in front of these repellent people. You could use yachting caps as breastplates, Robin. There’s some string.’

‘Thank you. Aren’t you going to dress up, Henry?’

Henry hung a pair of field glasses round his neck. ‘I shall play it modern,’ he muttered. ‘Colonel Sisera Blimp.’ He drew a pair of fur-lined motoring gloves over his hands.

Frid came back with a long silver-plated skewer.

‘Be careful how you muck about round my head with that thing,’ said Henry.

‘I want a hammer.’

‘Use your boot. Let’s get it over.’

‘In you go, Robin and Patch. Take that rug and hold it like a tent. You, too, twins. Say how beautiful I am,’ ordered Frid, ‘and wonder if the day has been Sisera’s.’

Robin, Patch and the twins entered the drawing-room unnoticed. Their audience was sitting with its back to the door.

‘We’ve begun,’ said Patch loudly. ‘I wonder how the battle went. Dost thou know if the day is Sisera’s?’

‘Nay,’ said Stephen.

‘Dost thou?’

‘Nay,’ said Colin.

‘And thou?’ continued Patch, irritably, to Robin.

‘Nay, I wot not,’ said Robin and she added hurriedly: ‘how beautiful Jael is!’

‘She is like the new-blown moon,’ agreed Patch.

‘Lo,’ said Colin, ‘here she comes.’

‘How beautiful she is!’ said Stephen.

Frid made an entrance. She had removed her stockings and shoes and had hitched her dress up with scarves. She carried the skewer in her sash and a shoe in her hand. She shut the door and leant against it in a dramatic manner.

‘That’s my scarf,’ said Lord Wutherwood. He turned his back on the charade and began talking in a low querulous voice to his brother.

‘I am a-weary with watching,’ said Frid. ‘Praise to Allah the day is ours. Ho, slaves!’

Patch and Robin threw themselves on their faces. The twins saluted.

‘Lie down, O Jael,’ said Colin abruptly.

Frid crawled into the tent. ‘I am a-weary unto death,’ she repeated.

‘Here comes S-S-sis-sis –’ began Stephen.

‘Hist!’ shouted Patch, coming to his rescue. ‘I hear footsteps. Stand to!’

‘Stand!’ said the twins.

The door opened and Henry came in. He wore a solar topee and his gauntlet driving gloves. He had turned up his trousers to resemble shorts. He focused his field glasses on the audience and said: ‘An arid desert, by Gad!’

‘’Tis Sisera,’ said Frid. ‘Lure him hither, slaves.’

Roberta and Patch made winning gestures. Henry watched them through his field glasses. When they drew nearer he seized Roberta by the arm. ‘A damn’ fine girl, by Gad,’ he said.

‘Come hither, O Sisera,’ invited Roberta uneasily. ‘Come to yonder tent.’

Henry was led to the tent. Frid writhed on the carpet and extended her arms. ‘Do I behold the valient Sisera?’ she asked. ‘All hail, O Captain.’

Henry was dragged down to the floor. A rather confused scene took place in the course of which Frid gave him a few lines from Titania’s speech to Bottom and he began to snore.

‘Vengeance is mine,’ observed Frid. ‘Quick, the nail.’ She drew the skewer from her sash and hammered it into the carpet behind Henry’s head. Henry yelled, gurgled, and lay still.

‘Wail,’ muttered Frid. The twins, Patch and Roberta wailed loudly.

‘That’s all,’ said Frid. ‘Were we right? It was a compound charade.’

Charlot and Lady Katherine clapped their hands. Lord Wutherwood glanced at them with annoyance and resumed his conversation. Lady Wutherwood stared out of the window with lack-lustre eyes.

‘And now tidy up the mess,’ Charlot ordered, ‘I want to show Aunt Violet and Aunt Kit how we fitted into 26. Where’s Mike?’

‘We’ll find him, Mummy,’ said Frid. ‘Come on, chaps. That’s that.’

II

When they returned to the hall Roberta saw that the Lampreys were in a family rage. Henry and Frid were white and the twins and Patch scarlet with fury. Roberta wondered if these reactions were the natural consequences of their own complexions, if fair people were always more choleric than dark ones. Henry, she saw, was the angriest. He walked off down the passage calling ‘Michael!’ in a voice that brought Mike running. ‘Your mama is asking for you,’ said Henry.

‘I’ve lost the pot,’ said Mike. Henry turned on his heel and came back into the hall. He picked up rugs and hats and slung them indiscriminately into the cupboard.

‘That was a howling success, wasn’t it?’ said Frid. ‘Did either of them so much as glance at us, do you happen to know?’

‘They’ve got the manners of hogs,’ said Patch violently.

‘Uncle Gabriel,’ muttered Stephen slowly, ‘is without doubt an old –’

‘Shut up,’ said Colin.

‘Well, isn’t he?’

‘I hope Mummy’s pleased,’ said Henry. ‘She’s seen us make as big fools of ourselves as can reasonably be expected in one afternoon.’

‘It’s not Mummy’s fault,’ murmured Colin uncomfortably.

Mike came in looking scared. ‘I can’t find the pot I’ve got to give Uncle Gabriel,’ he said. His brothers and sisters paid no attention, Roberta hunted helplessly round the littered hall. Mike, looking anxious, wandered into the drawing-room.

‘Shut that d-door,’ said Stephen.

Patch hurled Lord Wutherwood’s bowler to the far end of the hall.

‘Don’t be a fool, Patch,’ said Henry. Colin picked the bowler up and pretended to be sick into it. The others watched him moodily.

‘This has been great fun for Robin,’ said Henry. ‘We’re sorry our relations are so bloody rude, Robin.’

‘What does it matter,’ said Roberta.

Henry stared at her. ‘You’re quite right,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter. But if any of you think that noisome old treasure-trove in there is going to hand us two thousand pounds, you’re due for a disappointment. Daddy could go bankrupt six times over before his charming brother would help him.’

‘You th-think we’re for it then?’ asked Stephen.

‘I do.’

‘We’ll wiggle out,’ said Frid. ‘We always have.’

‘Wolf, wolf,’ said Henry.

‘Why? I don’t see it.’

‘Let’s get out of this,’ suggested Patch. ‘Mummy’s going to take the aunts into 26, isn’t she?’

‘Let’s go into the dining-room,’ said Frid.

Colin reminded them of Mike and the Chinese vase and wondered vaguely if they ought to look for it. Stephen said Lord Wutherwood could be depended upon to take the vase and go away without offering them any assistance. Frid and Henry said they thought the gesture with the vase should be attempted.

‘Was it wrapped up?’ asked Roberta suddenly.

‘Yes. Mummy bought a smart box for it,’ said Patch.

‘Then I know where it is. It’s in her bedroom.’

‘There let it lie, say I,’ said Stephen

‘But if Charlot wants it?’

‘Robin,’ said Frid, ‘be a darling and go into the drawing-room. Hiss to Mummy where the pot is and then if she wants it she can send Mike.’

‘All right,’ agreed Roberta, and returned nervously to the drawing-room. She managed to give Charlot the message.

‘Where’s Mike?’ murmured Charlot.

‘Didn’t he come in here?’

‘Yes, but he’s wandered away.’

‘Shall I find him?’

‘No, never mind.’

As Roberta made for the door she heard Charlot say brightly: ‘Come along, Violet, come along, Aunt Kit, we’ll leave the boys to talk business.’ Roberta hurried through into the dining-room where she found the Lampreys lying close together on the floor with their heads to the wall.

‘Lock the door,’ they whispered.

Roberta locked the door. Henry moved slightly and invited her with a gesture to lie between Frid and himself.

‘What’s this in aid of?’ asked Roberta.

‘Ssh! Listen! Get closer.’

Roberta now saw that this part of the wall consisted of a boarded-up door which evidently had at one time opened into the drawing-room. The Lampreys were listening at the crack. The voices of Lord Charles and his brother could be clearly heard above the comfortable sounds made by the drawing-room fire.

‘I’d better not,’ breathed Roberta diffidently.

‘It’s all right,’ said Frid in her ear. ‘Daddy wouldn’t mind. Ssh!’

‘– so you see,’ said Lord Charles’s voice, ‘it’s been a series of misfortunes rather than any one disaster. The jewellery and objets-d’art idea seemed a capital one. I really couldn’t foresee that poor Stein would shoot himself, you know. Now could I?’

‘You go and tie yourself up with some miserable adventurer –’

‘No, no, he wasn’t that, Gabriel, really.’

‘Why the devil didn’t you make some inquiries?’

‘Well, I – I did make a good many. The truth is –’

‘The truth is,’ said Lord Wutherwood’s voice edgily, ‘you drifted into this business as you have drifted into every conceivable sort of blunder for the last twenty years.’

There was silence for a moment, and then Lord Charles’s voice: ‘Very well, Gabriel. I’ll take that. It’s quite useless in my predicament to offer excuses. I readily confess that the sort of explanation I have to make would seem ridiculous to you.’

‘And to anyone else. I may as well tell you at the outset that I can’t do anything about it. I’ve helped you twice before and I might as well have thrown the money into the sea.’

‘We were extremely grateful –’

‘Is it too much to suggest that you might have shown it by pullin’ yourselves together? I told you then that you should recognize the fact that you were a man with a small income and a large family and should cut your coat accordingly. It’s preposterous, the way you live. Butlers, maids, cars, bringin’ gels out, doin’ the season, trips here, gamblin’ there. Good God, you ought to be livin’ like a – like a clerk or something! Why haven’t you got some post for yourself where you earned a wage? What are those three boys doin’?’

‘They’ve tried extremely hard to get jobs.’

‘Nonsense. They could have gone into shops since they’re not qualified for any professions. I said when they were at school that they ought to face the facts and work for professions!’

‘We couldn’t afford the University.’

‘You could afford half a dozen white elephants. You could afford to traipse about the world in luxury liners, you could afford to take that place in the Highlands, entertain, and God knows what.’

‘My dear Gabriel! The amount of entertaining we do!’

‘You dribble money away. Why don’t those gels run the house? Plenty of gels one knows are doin’ that sort of thing. Domestic.’

‘Frid’s going on the stage.’

‘Yah!’ said Lord Wutherwood. ‘Was that display she treated us to just now a sample? Showin’ her legs and droopin’ about in other people’s scarves like a dyin’ duck in a thunderstorm!’

Roberta felt Frid go rigid with hatred. Stephen and Colin thrust their fists into their mouths. Patch snorted and was savagely nudged by Henry.

‘– I may tell you, Charles, that I’m plaguily hard pressed myself. Deepacres nearly kills me keepin’ it up. I’m taxed up to the gullet. Looks as if I’ll have to put down the London house. You don’t know the calls there are on me in – well, in my position. When I remember what it’ll end in I sometimes wonder why the devil I take the trouble.’

‘What do you mean, Gabriel?’

‘I’ve no boy of my own.’

‘No.’

‘And to be frank with you I don’t imagine Deepacres is likely to survive the treatment of my heirs.’

‘You mean Henry.’

‘Oh, you’ll outlive me, no doubt,’ said Lord Wutherwood.

‘Then you mean me?’

‘Put it baldly, I mean the pair of you.’

There was a long pause. Roberta heard the fire in the next room settle down in the grate. She heard the breathing of the young Lampreys and the flurried ticking of a carriage-clock on the dining-room mantelpiece. When Lord Charles at last broke the silence, Roberta felt her companions stir a little as though something for which they had waited was about to appear. Lord Charles’s voice had changed. It was at once gentler and more decisive.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I can promise you neither Henry nor I will do much harm to Deepacres. We might possibly care to let other people share its amenities occasionally. That’s all.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was thinking of your regard for Deepacres and wondering if after all it amounts to very much. As you say, one day it will be Henry’s. Yet you are content to let him go down with the rest of us.’

‘If he’s got any guts he’ll make his way.’

‘I hope he will. I almost believe I am glad to go bankrupt without your aid, Gabriel. I’ve had to ask you for money. No doubt you would say I’ve come begging for money. You choose to refuse me. But please don’t plead poverty. You could perfectly well afford to help me but you are a miserly fellow and you choose not to do so. It is not a matter of principle with you, I could respect that, it is just plain reluctance to give away money. I hoped that your vanity and snobbishness, for you’re a hell of a snob, would turn the balance. I was wrong. You will go away bathed in the vapours of conscious rectitude. I doubt if you have ever in your life been guilty of a foolish generous action. Everything you have said about us is true; we have dribbled money away. But we’ve given something with it. Imogen and the children have got gaiety and warmth of heart and charm; overrated qualities perhaps, but they are generous qualities. Indeed there is nothing ungenerous about my undisciplined children. They give something to almost everybody they meet. Perhaps they cheat a little and trade a little on their charm but I don’t think that matters nearly so much as being tight-lipped monsters of behaviourism. They are full of what I dare to call loving-kindness, Gabriel, and that’s a commodity I don’t expect you to understand or applaud.’

‘Oh Daddy!’ whispered Frid.

‘That’s a damned impertinent stand to take,’ said Lord Wutherwood. ‘It’s as much as to say that people with a conscience about money are bound to be bores.’

‘Nothing of the sort, I –’

‘You’re as good as puttin’ a premium on dishonesty. It’s the way people talk these days. “Charm!” Plenty of scamps have got charm; wouldn’t be scamps if they hadn’t, I dare say. Where’s this lovin’-kindness you talk about when it comes to lettin’ down your creditors?’

‘Touché, I’m afraid,’ muttered Henry.

‘If I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Lord Charles, ‘nothing would have induced me to ask for your help.’

‘You won’t get it.’

‘Then, as I fancy the Americans say, it is just too bad about my creditors. I rather think the poor devils have banked on you, Gabriel.’

‘Insufferable impertinence!’ shouted Lord Wutherwood, and Roberta heard the angry sibilants whistle through his teeth. ‘Skulking behind my name, by God! Using my name as a screen for your dishonesty.’

‘I didn’t say so.’

‘You as good as said so,’ shouted Lord Wutherwood. ‘By God, this settles it.’

The scene which had hitherto maintained the established atmosphere of drawing-room comedy, now blossomed agreeably into the more robust type of drama. The brothers set about abusing each other in good round terms and with each intemperate sally their phrases became more deeply coloured with the tincture of Victorian rodomontade. Incredible references to wills, entails, and family escutcheons were freely exchanged. Lord Charles was the first to falter and his brother’s peroration rang out clearly.

‘I refuse to discuss the matter any further. You can drag yourself and your fool of a wife and your precious brood through the bankruptcy court. If Deepacres wasn’t entailed I’d see that you never got a penny of Lamprey money. As it is –’

‘As it is you will no doubt re-write as much of your will as is not covered by the entail.’

‘I shall do so, certainly.’

‘You’re a delightful fellow, Gabriel! I wish to God I’d left you alone.’

‘You appear even to make a failure of the noble art of sponging.’

This, as Roberta and the Lampreys afterwards agreed, was the climax. Lord Charles and his brother in unison began to speak and in a moment to shout. It was impossible to understand anything but the fact that they had both lost their tempers. This lasted for perhaps fifteen seconds and stopped so abruptly that Roberta thought of a radio knob turned off in the midst of a lively dialogue. So complete was the ensuing silence that she heard a far door open and footsteps cross the drawing-room carpet.

Mike’s voice sounded clearly: ‘Uncle Gabriel, this is a little present from all of us with our love.’

Roberta and the four Lampreys sat on the dining-room floor and gaped at each other. Next door all was silence. Lord Charles had merely said: ‘Michael, put that parcel down, will you, and come back later.’

The brothers had moved away and their following remarks were inaudible. Then Lord Wutherwood had marched out of the room, not neglecting to slam the door. Lord Charles had said: ‘Run away, Mike, old man,’ and Mike had hopped audibly to the door. Everything was quiet. Lord Charles, only a few inches away, must be standing motionless. Roberta wondered if he still looked after his brother, if he was white like Frid and Henry, or scarlet like Patch and the twins. She wished with all her heart that he would make some movement and pictured him staring with an air of blank wretchedness at the door his brother had slammed. The silence was unendurable. It was broken at last by a step in the passage outside. The dining-room door-handle rattled and Henry walked across and turned the key. The door opened and Mike stood on the threshold. He looked doubtfully at his brothers and sisters. ‘I say, is anything up?’ he asked.

‘Not much,’ said Henry.

‘Well, any way, I bet something’s up,’ Mike persisted. ‘I bet Uncle G.’s in a stink about something. He looks absolutely fed up and he and Daddy have been yelling blue murder. I say, do you know Giggle’s fixed up my Hornby train? He’s absolutely wizard with trains. I bet he could –’

‘Mike,’ said Henry. ‘Did Mummy tell you to give the pot to Uncle Gabriel?’

‘What? Oh. Well, no. You see Giggle and I were trying my Hornby in the passage and it goes absolutely whizzer now because –’

‘The pot,’ said Stephen.

‘What? Well, I saw it through Mummy’s door so I just –’

A distant voice yelled ‘Violet!’

‘Who’s that?’ asked Frid.

‘It’s Uncle G.,’ explained Mike. ‘He’s in the lift. Giggle had his coat off because he says –’

‘I’d better go to Mummy,’ said Frid. ‘She may be in difficulties with the aunts. Come on, Patch.’ They went out.

‘What is the matter with Uncle G.?’ asked Mike with casual insistence.

Stephen looked at him. ‘If you must know,’ he said violently, ‘Uncle Gabriel is –’

‘Never mind that,’ said Colin. ‘Come on out of this, Step. We need air.’

‘I think we had better go and talk to Father,’ said Henry. ‘It’s beastly to leave him alone in there. Come on you two.’

The three boys went out together. Roberta was left in the dining-room with Mike.

‘I suppose you’re not interested in Hornby trains,’ said Mike with an unconvincing air of casualness.

‘I’d like to see yours,’ said Roberta.

‘We could play with it now, of course. It’s in the passage in 26. That’s if you’d like it.’

‘Aren’t there rather a lot of people about?’ hedged Roberta lamely. ‘I mean, aunts and people.’

‘Well, of course I could bring it here. I’m allowed. Shall I, Robin? Shall I bring my Hornby in here?’

‘Yes, do.’

Mike ran to the door but there he hesitated. He looked rather a solemn pale little boy. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact I think Uncle Gabriel’s pretty ghastly.’

‘Do you?’ said Roberta helplessly.

A tall figure in chauffeur’s uniform appeared in the passage behind Mike.

‘Oh, hallo, Giggle,’ cried Mike.

‘Beg pardon, Miss,’ said Giggle. ‘Beg pardon, Master Michael, but I’ve got to go. There’s that coupling – I’ve got it fixed. His lordship’s in a hurry, so if you –’

‘I’ll come with you, Giggle,’ said Mike warmly.

They disappeared together. Roberta heard Mike’s eager voice die away. ‘Violet!’ yelled the distant voice again. She heard the groan of the lift. Roberta waited.

The tick of the carriage-clock came up again. In a distant part of the flat a door banged. The lift groaned once more. Outside, far beneath the windows and reaching away for miles and miles, surged the ocean of sound which is the voice of London. People were talking, now, in the room next door: a low murmur of voices.

Roberta felt lonely and irresolute and, for the moment, isolated from the calamity that had befallen her friends. She felt that wherever she went she would be hideously in their way. Perhaps if she played trains with Mike it would be a help. Mike was taking a long time. Roberta took a cigarette from a box on the sideboard and hunted about the room for matches. At last she found some. She lit her cigarette and leant over the window-sill. She became aware of a new sound. It came up through her conscious thoughts, gaining definition and edge. It was a thin blade of sound, sharp and insistent. It grew louder. It was inside the building, an intermittent horridly shrill noise that came closer. A hand closed round Roberta’s heart. Someone was screaming.

CHAPTER 6
Catastrophe
I

When Roberta realized that this intolerable sound was on the landing, close at hand, part of the flat itself, she was filled with a strange irresolution. Someone was screaming in the Lampreys’ flat and there didn’t seem to be anything for Roberta to do about it. She was unable to feel the correct impulses and run helpfully towards the source of these unpleasing noises. No doubt the Lampreys were doing that. Roberta, with a leaping heart, could only stand and wonder at her behaviour. While she still hung off on this queer point of social procedure, someone pounded down the passage. Without conscious volition Roberta followed. She was just in time to see Baskett’s coat-tails whisk round the corner. As she passed the drawing-room Henry ran through the hall from the landing. The screaming stopped suddenly like a train whistle.

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