Surfeit of Lampreys (6 page)

“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.”

“H'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.

“Hullo, 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 overexcited.”

“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, were 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 to 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 thoughts returned to Deepacres and she wanted the Lampreys. More than anyone 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 carry-over 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 secretary-ship 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 race-course 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. 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 wholeheartedly.”

“I don'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 also 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 sweetner 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 brassiere 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 old 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. Gremball,” said Henry.