A Surfeit of Lampreys. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ