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