'Kate tells me you are a jockey, Mr York.' She said it as if it were as dubious as a criminal record. 'Of course I am sure you must find it very amusing, but when I was a gel it was not considered an acceptable occupation in acquaintances. But this is Kate's home, and she may ask whoever she likes here, as she knows.'
I said mildly, 'Surely Aubrey Hastings and Geoffrey Bennett were both jockeys and acceptable when you were – er – younger?'
She raised her eyebrows, surprised. 'But they were gentlemen,' she said.
I looked at Kate. She had stuffed the back of her hand against her mouth, but her eyes were laughing.
'Yes,' I said to Aunt Deb, with a straight face. 'That makes a difference, of course.'
'You may realize then,' she said, looking at me a little less frigidly, 'that I do not altogether approve of my niece's new interest. It is one thing to own a racehorse, but quite another to make personal friends of the jockeys one employs to ride it. I am very fond of my niece. I do not wish her to make an undesirable- alliance. She is perhaps too young, and has led too sheltered a life, to understand what is acceptable and what is not. But I am sure you do, Mr York?'
Kate, blushing painfully, said, 'Aunt Deb!' This was apparently worse than she was prepared for.
'I understand you very well, Mrs Penn,' I said, politely.
'Good,' she said. 'In that case, I hope you will have an enjoyable stay with us. May I give you some more tea?'
Having firmly pointed out to me my place and having received what she took to be my acknowledgement of it, she was prepared to be a gracious hostess.
She had the calm authority of one whose wishes had been law from the nursery. She began to talk pleasantly enough about the weather and her garden, and how the sunshine was bringing on the daffodils.
Then the door opened and a man came in. I stood up.
Kate said, 'Uncle George, this is Alan York.'
He looked ten years younger than his wife. He had thick well-groomed grey hair and a scrubbed pink complexion with a fresh-from-the-bathroom moistness about it, and when he shook hands his palm was soft and moist also.
Aunt Deb said, without disapproval in her voice, 'George, Mr York is one of Kate's jockey friends.'
He nodded. 'Yes, Kate told me you were coming. Glad to have you here.'
He watched Aunt Deb pour him a cup of tea, and took it from her, giving her a smile of remarkable fondness.
He was too fat for his height, but it was not a bloated-belly fatness. It was spread all over him as though he were padded. The total effect was of a jolly rotundity. He had the vaguely good-natured expression so often found on fat people, a certain bland, almost foolish, looseness of the facial muscles. And yet his fat-lidded eyes, appraising me over the rim of the teacup as he drank, were shrewd and unsmiling. He reminded me of so many businessmen I had met in my work, the slap you-on-the-back, come-and-play-golf men who would ladle out the Krug '49 and caviar with one hand while they tried to take over your contracts with the other.
He put down his cup and smiled, and the impression faded. 'I am very interested to meet you, Mr York,' he said, sitting down and gesturing to me to do the same. He looked me over carefully, inch by inch, while he asked me what I thought of Heavens Above. We discussed the horse's possibilities with Kate, which meant that I did most of the talking, as Kate knew little more than she had at Plumpton, and Uncle George's total information about racing seemed to be confined to Midday Sun's having won the Derby in 1937.
'He remembers it because of Mad Dogs and Englishmen,' said Kate. 'He hums it all the time. I don't think he knows the name of a single other horse.'
'Oh, yes I do,' protested Uncle George. 'Bucephalus, Pegasus, and Black Bess.'
I laughed. 'Then why did you give a racehorse to your niece?'
Uncle George opened his mouth and shut it again. He blinked. Then he said, 'I thought she should meet more people. She has no young company here with us, and I believe we may have given her too sheltered an upbringing.'
Aunt Deb, who had been bored into silence by the subject of horses, returned to the conversation at this point.
'Nonsense,' she said briskly. 'She has been brought up as I was, which is the right way. Gels are given too much freedom nowadays, with the result that they lose their heads and elope with fortune hunters or men-about-town of unsavoury background. Gels need strictness and guidance if they are to behave as ladies, and make suitable, well-connected marriages.'
She at least had the grace to avoid looking directly at me while she spoke. She leaned over and patted the sleeping dachshund instead.
Uncle George changed the subject with an almost audible jolt, and asked me where I lived.
' Southern Rhodesia,' I said.
'Indeed?' said Aunt Deb. 'How interesting. Do your parents plan to settle there permanently?' It was a delicate, practised, social probe.
'They were both born there,' I answered.
'And will they be coming to visit you in England?' asked Uncle George.
'My mother died when I was ten. My father might come some time if he is not too busy.'
'Too busy doing what?' asked Uncle George interestedly.
'He's a trader,' I said, giving my usual usefully noncommittal answer to his question. 'Trader' could cover anything from a rag-and-bone man to what he actually was, the head of the biggest general trading concern in the Federation. Both Uncle George and Aunt Deb looked unsatisfied by this reply, but I did not add to it. It would have embarrassed and angered Aunt Deb to have had my pedigree and prospects laid out before her after her little lecture on jockeys, and in any case for Dane's sake I could not do it. He had faced Aunt Deb's social snobbery without any of the defences I could muster if I wanted to, and I certainly felt myself no better man than he.
I made instead a remark admiring an arrangement of rose prints on the white panelled walls, which pleased Aunt Deb but brought forth a sardonic glance from Uncle George.
'We keep our ancestors in the dining-room,' he said.
Kate stood up. 'I'll show Alan where he's sleeping, and so on,' she said.
'Did you come by car?' Uncle George asked. I nodded. He said to Kate, 'Then ask Culbertson to put Mr York's car in the garage, will you, my dear?'
'Yes, Uncle George,' said Kate, smiling at him.
As we crossed the hall again for me to fetch my suitcase from the car, Kate said, 'Uncle George's chauffeur's name is not really Culbertson. It's Higgins, or something like that. Uncle George began to call him Culbertson because he plays bridge, and soon we all did it. Culbertson seems quite resigned to it now. Trust Uncle George,' said Kate, laughing, 'to have a chauffeur who plays bridge.'
'Does Uncle George play bridge?'
'No, he doesn't like cards, or games of any sort. He says there are too many rules to them. He says he doesn't like learning rules and he can't be bothered to keep them. I should think bridge with all those conventions would drive him dotty. Aunt Deb can play quite respectably, but she doesn't make a thing of it.'
I lifted my suitcase out of the car, and we turned back.
Kate said, 'Why didn't you tell Aunt Deb you were an amateur rider and rich, and so on?'
'Why didn't you?' I asked. 'Before I came.'
She was taken aback. 'I- I- er- because-' She could not bring out the truthful answer, so I said it for her.
'Because of Dane?'
'Yes, because of Dane.' She looked uncomfortable.
'That's quite all right by me,' I said lightly. 'And I like you for it.' I kissed her cheek, and she laughed and turned away from me, and ran up the stairs in relief.
After luncheon – Aunt Deb gave the word three syllables – on Sunday I was given permission to take Kate out for a drive.
In the morning Aunt Deb had been to church with Kate and me in attendance. The church was a mile distant from the house, and Culbertson drove us there in a well-polished Daimler. I, by Aunt Deb's decree, sat beside him. She and Kate went in the back.