Giant’s Bread. Агата Кристи

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       CHAPTER 8

      The friendship with Sebastian Levinne prospered and throve apace. Half the zest of it lay in the secrecy that had to be adopted. Vernon’s mother would have been horrified if she had guessed at anything of the kind. The Levinnes would certainly not have been horrified—but their gratification might have led to equally dire results.

      School time passed on leaden wings for poor Joe, cooped up with a daily governess, who arrived every morning, and who subtly disapproved of her outspoken and rebellious pupil. Joe only lived for the holidays. As soon as they came, she and Vernon would set off to a secret meeting-place where there was a convenient gap in a hedge. They had invented a code of whistles and many unnecessary signals. Sometimes Sebastian would be there before time—lying on the bracken—his yellow face and jutting out ears looking strangely at variance with his knickerbocker suit.

      They played games, but they also talked—how they talked! Sebastian told them stories of Russia—they learnt of the persecution of Jews—of Pogroms! Sebastian himself had never been in Russia, but he had lived for years amongst other Russian Jews and his own father had narrowly escaped with his life in a Pogrom. Sometimes he would say sentences in Russian to please Vernon and Joe. It was all entrancing.

      ‘Everybody hates us down here,’ said Sebastian. ‘But it doesn’t matter. They won’t be able to do without us because my father is so rich. You can buy everything with money.’

      He had a certain queer arrogance about him.

      ‘You can’t buy everything,’ objected Vernon. ‘Old Nicoll’s son has come home from the war without a leg. Money couldn’t make his leg grow again.’

      ‘No,’ admitted Sebastian. ‘I didn’t mean things like that. But money would get you a very good wooden leg, and the best kind of crutches.’

      ‘I had crutches once,’ said Vernon. ‘It was rather fun. And I had an awfully nice nurse to look after me.’

      ‘You see, you couldn’t have had that if you hadn’t been rich.’

      Was he rich? He supposed he was. He’d never thought about it.

      ‘I wish I was rich,’ said Joe.

      ‘You can marry me when you grow up,’ said Sebastian, ‘and then you will be.’

      ‘It wouldn’t be nice for Joe if nobody came to see her,’ objected Vernon.

      ‘I wouldn’t mind that a bit,’ said Joe. ‘I wouldn’t care what Aunt Myra or anybody said. I’d marry Sebastian if I wanted to.’

      ‘People will come and see her then,’ said Sebastian. ‘You don’t realize. Jews are frightfully powerful. My father says people can’t do without them. That’s why Sir Charles Alington had to sell us Deerfields.’

      A sudden chill came over Vernon. He felt without putting the thought into words that he was talking to a member of an enemy race. But he felt no antagonism towards Sebastian. That was over long ago. He and Sebastian were friends—somehow he was sure they always would be.

      ‘Money,’ said Sebastian, ‘isn’t just buying things. It’s ever so much more than that. And it isn’t only having power over people. It’s—it’s being able to get together lots of beauty.’

      He made a queer un-English gesture with his hands.