A Surfeit of Lampreys. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ 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? СКАЧАТЬ