Ngaio Marsh - A Surfeit of Lampreys

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.’