Death of a Peer (2 page)

“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 daresay, 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 job? What can I do in New Zealand or anywhere else for a 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. Carry-overs 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 son’s compartments and either fitted them nicely or else went taffishly 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 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?”

“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’re 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!”

“Hullo!” 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 jodpurs. 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.”

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 open 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.

The wireless said:

The second was from Roberta’s aunt.

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. 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-debutante, 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 anyone 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 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-mache 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 gangplank 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 nose were pressed against her cheeks; she smelt Frid’s scent and the stuff Henry put on his hair.

“Hullo, 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 remeeting all the passengers to whom she had said good-bye. 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 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 that 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 sentence.