“Make a good exit out of that, if you can,” said Henry unkindly to Frid.
Could it possibly, Robin pondered confusedly, be no longer than forty hours ago that she packed this little suitcase in her cabin? Time, she thought, meant nothing at all when strange things were happening. It was incredible that she had slept only one night in England. The bottom of the suitcase was littered with small objects for which she had not been able to find a place: the final menu card of the ship, with signatures that had already become quite meaningless, snapshots of deck sports, a piece of ship’s notepaper. They belonged to a remote experience but for a fraction of a second Roberta longed for the secure isolation of her cabin and thought of how in the night, sometimes, she would listen contentedly to the sound of the ship’s progress through the lonely ocean. She packed the suitcase, trying to keep her head about the things she would need and wondering how long she would have to stay with the Lampreys’ mad aunt in Brummell Street. There were sounds of activity next door in Charlot’s room and presently Roberta heard the door open. A dragging, clumsy footstep sounded in the passage and the nurse’s voice, professionally soothing: “Now, we shall soon be home and tucked up in our own bed. Come along, dear. That’s the way.” Then that deep grating voice: “Leave me alone. Where’s Tinkerton?” And Tinkerton: “Here, m’lady. Come along, m’lady. We’re going home.” Roberta heard them pass and go out to the landing. She had fastened down the lid of her suitcase but was still sitting on the floor when the curtains of her improvised room rattled and, turning quickly, she saw Henry.
He wore a great-coat and scarf and in his hands he held a small heap of clothes.
“Oh, Robin,” Henry said, “I’m coming to Brummell Street instead of Nanny. Do you mind?”
“Henry! I don’t mind at all. I’m terribly glad.”
“Then that’s all right. I asked Alleyn. He seems to think it’s in order. I’ll just pack these things and then we’ll get a taxi and go. Mama has rung up Brummell Street and told the servants. Tinkerton has told Aunt V.”
“What did she say?”
“I don’t think she was particularly ravished at the thought. Patch is having nightmares and Nanny isn’t coming.”
“I see.”
Henry looked gravely at Roberta and then smiled. There was a quality in Henry’s smile that had always touched Roberta and endeared him to her. He made a comic family grimace, winked, and laid his finger against his nose. Roberta made the same grimace and Henry withdrew. With an illogical singing in her heart she put on her own overcoat and hat and took her suitcase out into the passage to wait for Henry. This time last night they had been dancing together.
It was not very pleasant crossing the landing where a policeman stood on guard by the dark lift but Henry lightened the situation by saying; “We’re not fleeing from justice, officer.”
“That’s quite all right, sir,” answered the policeman. “The Chief Inspector told us all about you.”
“Good night,” said Henry, piloting Roberta down the stairs.
“Good night, sir,” said the policeman and his voice rang hollow in the lift well.
Roberta remembered her last trip down the stairs when she went to fetch Giggle and Tinkerton and how like a nightmare it had seemed. Now the stairs seemed a way of escape. It was glorious to reach the ground floor and see the lights of traffic through the glass doors. It was splendid when the doors were opened to breathe the night air of London. Henry took her elbow and they moved forward into a blinding whiteness that flashed and was gone. A young man came up to Henry and with a queer air of hardened deference said: “Lord Rune? I wonder if you would mind?”
“I’m afraid I would, do you know,” said Henry. “Taxi!”
A cruising taxi drew up at once but before they could get in there was another flash and this time Roberta saw the camera.
Henry bundled her in and slammed the doors, keeping his face turned from the window. “Damn!” he said. “I’d forgotten about Nigel’s low friends.” And he yelled the address through to the driver.
“Lord Rune,” said Roberta’s thoughts. “Henry is Lord Rune. The Earl of Rune. Press-men lie in wait for him with cameras. Everything is very odd.”
She was awakened by Henry giving her a little pat on the back. “Aren’t you the clever one?” he said.
“Am I?” asked Roberta. “How?”
“Tipping us the wink about what you’d told Alleyn.”
“Do you think that policeman noticed?”
“Not he. You know I didn’t exactly enjoy lying to Alleyn.”
“I hated it. And, Henry, I don’t think he believes it — about your Uncle G. promising the money.”
“ ’More do I. Oh well, we could but try.” He put his arm round Roberta. “Brave old Robin Grey,” said Henry. “Going into the witch’s den. What have we done to deserve you?”
“Nothing,” said Robin with spirit. “Without the word of a lie you’re a hopeless crew.”
“Do you remember a conversation we had years ago on the slope of Little Mount Silver?”
“Yes.”
“So do I. And here I am still without a job. I daresay it would have been a good thing if Uncle G. had lived to chortle at our bankruptcy. It would take a major disaster to cure us. Perhaps when the war comes it will do the trick. Kill, as they say, or cure.”
“I expect you’ll manage to slope through a war in the same old way. But don’t you call this a major disaster?”
“I suppose so. But you know, Robin, somehow or another, although I feel very bothered and frightened, I don’t, inside myself, think that any of us are bound for the dock.”
“Oh don’t. How can you gossip away about it!”
“It’s not affectation. I ought to be in a panic but I’m not. Not really.”
The taxi carried them into Hyde Park Corner. Roberta looked up through the window and saw the four heroic horses snorting soundlessly against a night sky, grandiloquently unaware of the less florid postures of some bronze artillerymen down below.
“We shan’t be long now,” said Henry. “I can’t tell you how frightful this house is. Uncle G.’s idea of the amenities was a mixture of elephantine ornament and incredible hardship. The servants are not allowed to use electricity once the gentry are in bed so they creep about by candlelight. It’s true, I promise you. The house was done up by my grandfather on the occasion of his marriage and since then has merely amassed a continuous stream of hideous objets d’art.”
“I read somewhere that Victorian things are fashionable again.”
“So they are, but with a difference. And anyway I think it’s a stupid fashion. Sometimes,” said Henry, “I wonder if there is such a thing as beauty.”
“Isn’t it supposed to exist only in the eye of the beholder?”
“I won’t take that. There are eyes and eyes. Fashion addles any true conception of beauty. There’s something inherently vulgar in fashion.”
“And yet,” said Roberta, “if Frid dressed herself up like a belle of 1929 you wouldn’t much care to be seen with her.”
“She’d only be putting her fashion back eleven years.”
“Well, what do you want? Nudism? Or bags tied round the middle?”
“You are unanswerable,” said Henry. “All the same…” and he expounded his ideas of fashion, giving Roberta cause to marvel at his detachment.
The taxi bucketed along Park Lane and presently turned into a decorous side-street where the noise of London was muffled and the rows of great, uniform houses seemed fast asleep.
“Here we are,” Henry said. “I think I’ve enough to pay the taxi. How much is it? Ah yes, I can just do it with the tip. So that’s all hotsy-totsy. Come on.”