“Uncle James hates him, anyway.”
“Barbara!”
“Lunch, Agnes,” said a quiet voice on the other side of the fence. “You’re late again.”
“Coming, dear. Please go on ahead with Daddy, Barbara,” said Mrs. Claire.
Dr. Ackrington bucketed his car down the drive and pulled up at the verandah with a savage jolt just as Barbara reached it. She waited for him and took his arm.
“Stop it,” he said. “You’ll give me hell if you hurry me.” But when she made to draw away he held her arm in a wiry grasp.
“Is the leg bad, Uncle James?”
“It’s always bad. Steady now.”
“Did you have your morning soak in the Porridge Pot?”
“I did not. And do you know why? That damned poisonous little bounder was wallowing in it.”
“Mr. Questing?”
“He never washes,” Dr. Ackrington shouted. “I’ll swear he never washes. Why the devil you can’t insist on people taking the shower before they use the pools is a mystery. He soaks his sweat off in my mud.”
“Are you sure…?”
“Certain. Certain. Certain. I’ve watched him. He never goes near the shower. How in the name of common decency your parents can stomach him…”
“That’s just what I’ve been asking Mummy.”
Dr. Ackrington halted and stared at his niece. An observer might have been struck by their resemblance to each other. Barbara was much more like her uncle than her mother, yet while he, in a red-headed edgy sort of way, was remarkably handsome, she contrived to present as good a profile without its accompaniment of distinction. Nobody noticed Barbara’s physical assets; her defects were inescapable. Her hair, her clothes, her incoherent gestures, her strangely untutored mannerisms, all combined against her looks and discounted them. She and her uncle stared at each other in silence for some seconds.
“Oh,” said Dr. Ackrington at last. “And what did your mother say?”
Barbara pulled a clown’s grimace. “She reproved me,” she said in a sepulchral serio-comedy voice.
“Well, don’t make faces at me,” snapped her uncle.
A window in the Claires’ wing was thrown open, and between the curtains there appeared a vague pink face garnished with a faded moustache, and topped by a thatch of white hair.
“Hullo, James,” said the face crossly. “Lunch. What’s your mother doing, Ba? Where’s Simon?”
“She’s coming, Daddy. We’re all coming. Simon!” screamed Barbara.
Mrs. Claire, enveloped in a dark red flannel dressing gown, came panting up from the pools, and hurried into the house.
“Aren’t we going to have any lunch?” Colonel Claire asked bitterly.
“Of course we are,” said Barbara. “Why don’t you begin, Daddy, if you’re in such a hurry? Come on, Uncle James.”
As they went indoors, a young man came round the house and slouched in behind them. He was tall, big-boned, and sandy-haired, with a jutting under lip.
“Hullo, Sim,” said Barbara. “Lunch.”
“Righto.”
“How’s the Morse code this morning?”
“Going good,” said Simon.
Dr. Ackrington instantly turned on him. “Is there any creditable reason why you should not say ‘going well’?” he demanded.
“Huh!” said Simon.
He trailed behind them into the dining-room and they took their places at a long table where Colonel Claire was already seated.
“We won’t wait for your mother,” said Colonel Claire, folding his hands over his abdomen. “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Huia!”
Huia came in wearing cap, crackling apron, and stiff curls. She looked like a Polynesian goddess who had assumed, on a whim, some barbaric disguise.
“Would you like cold ham, cold mutton, or grilled steak?” she asked, and her voice was as cool and deep as her native forests. As an afterthought she handed Barbara a menu.
“If I ask for steak,” said Dr. Ackrington, “will it be cooked…”
“You don’t want to eat raw steak, Uncle, do you?” said Barbara.
“Let me finish. If I order steak, will it be cooked or tanned? Will it resemble steak or biltong?”
“Steak,” said Huia, musically.
“Is it cooked?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. I shall have ham.”
“What the devil are you driving at, James?” asked Colonel Claire, irritably. “You talk in riddles. What do you want?”
“I want grilled steak. If it is already cooked it will not be grilled steak. It will be boot leather. You can’t get a bit of grilled steak in the length and breadth of this country.”
Huia looked politely and inquiringly at Barbara.
“Grill Dr. Ackrington a fresh piece of steak, please, Huia.”
Dr. Ackrington shook his finger at Huia. “Five minutes,” he shouted. “Five minutes! A second longer and it’s uneatable. Mind that!” Huia smiled. “And while she’s cooking it I have a letter to read to you,” he added importantly.
Mrs. Claire came in. She looked as if she had just returned from a round of charitable visits in an English village. The Claires ordered their lunches and Dr. Ackrington took out the letter from Dr. Forster.
“This concerns all of you,” he announced.
“Where’s Smith?” demanded Colonel Claire suddenly, opening his eyes very wide. His wife and children looked vaguely round the room. “Did anyone call him?” asked Mrs. Claire.
“Don’t mind Smith, now,” said Dr. Ackrington. “He’s not here and he won’t be here. I passed him in Harpoon. He was turning in at a pub and by the look of him it was not the first by two or three. Don’t mind him. He’s better away.”
“He got a cheque from Home yesterday,” said Simon, in his strong New Zealand dialect. “Boy, oh boy!”
“Don’t speak like that, dear,” said his mother. “Poor Mr. Smith, it’s such a shame. He’s a dear fellow at bottom.”
“Will you allow me to read this letter, or will you not?”
“Do read it, dear. Is it from Home?”
Dr. Ackrington struck the table angrily with the flat of his hand. His sister leant back in her chair, Colonel Claire stared out through the windows, and Simon and Barbara, after the first two sentences, listened eagerly. When he had finished the letter, which he read in a rapid uninflected patter, Dr. Ackrington dropped it on the table and looked about him with an air of complacency.
Barbara whistled. “I say,” she said — “Geoffrey Gaunt! I say.”
“And a servant. And a secretary. I don’t quite know what to say, James,” Mrs. Claire murmured. “I’m quite bewildered. I really don’t think…”
“We can’t take on a chap like that,” said Simon loudly.
“And why not, pray?” his uncle demanded.
“He’d be no good to us and we’d be no good to him. He’ll be used to posh hotels and slinging his weight about with a lot of English servants. What’d we do with a secretary and a manservant? What’s he do with them anyway?” Simon went on with an extraordinary air of hostility. “Is he feeble-minded or what?”
“Feeble-minded!” cried Barbara. “He’s probably the greatest living actor.”
“Well, he can have it for mine,” said Simon.
“For the love of heaven, Agnes, can’t you teach your son an intelligible form of speech?”
“If the way I talk isn’t good enough for you, Uncle James…”
“For pity’s sake let’s stick to the point,” Barbara cried. “I’m for having Mr. Gaunt and his staff, Sim’s against it, Mother’s hovering. You’re for it, Uncle, I suppose.”
“I fondly imagined that three resident patients might be of some assistance to the exchequer. What does your father say?” He turned to Colonel Claire. “What do you say, Edward?”