A Surfeit of Lampreys

‘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.’