‘My dear, what on earth has that to do with it?’
‘Nothing I know. I remember calling on her once, I can’t imagine why, and she practically had one on the doormat in front of me. I was just drawing a deep breath to scream for help when your aunt came out and whisked her away.’
‘How awkward for you,’ Miss Crevy said.
‘Yes, wasn’t it? But you see what I feel about all this is that it’s too insane to stay here and the only thing to do is to go back home, unpack all over again and forget until to-morrow morning that we ever thought of going abroad to-day.’
‘But, good heavens!’ Evelyna said, ‘what about the tickets?’
‘Well, if Max wants us to come he can send us some more. We might just as well face it,’ he said, ‘we shall never see either of them again this evening, they’re making whatever it is up upstairs and it will take hours. It’s hopeless now, I know it is. And then half the suburbs are stranded down below. As things are now and with the government we have to-day, don’t laugh, it’s a serious thing, they are bound to evacuate them before they run our boat train.’
‘Alex,’ said Evelyn, ‘you’re being absurd.’
‘But are you comfortable here?’ he said, ‘have you ever in your life known such a frightful afternoon? We ought to be at Calais by now you know. And by the way, Where’s Julia?’
‘She’s upstairs with Max, isn’t she?’ said Miss Crevy.
‘No,’ she said, ‘Amabel’s with him.’
‘Well, couldn’t they both be there?’
‘Not possibly,’ he said.
‘Well, all I know is Am went in there,’ she said, pointing to that bedroom door, ‘and I know she’s still there.’
‘She went in to change into her fur coat and then they both went up. Evelyn and I saw them,’ said Claire. ‘I don’t know where Julia can have got to.’
‘I don’t care where anyone is,’ Alex said, ‘what I want is to go home.’
‘Then why don’t you go?’ Miss Crevy said.
‘I can’t, can I? Here are all you girls with no one to look after you, Robert is always in the bar; I can’t possibly go,’ he said, and smiled, amused. ‘What would you do without me?’
‘Really, Alex,’ Claire said, ‘you must be more careful. Why are you in such a state? And that’s no reason for you to be rude.’
‘I’m sorry if I was, but don’t you see there’s no point in just one of us having enough and going off, we want to make a gesture and all go home and enjoy ourselves for a bit after the frightful time we’ve had.’
Miss Crevy said: ‘You mean no one would miss you if you went alone.’
‘If you like, if you like,’ said he. ‘No, what I want is that we should make a demonstration.’
‘And what’s the use of that?’ Miss Henderson said, and turning out an enormous handbag she began counting over their tickets and reservations.
‘You’ve got the tickets?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why then the whole thing’s simple, all we’ve got to do is to take them with us wherever we go to have a party, because we must have one to make up for all this, and make them come to us instead of waiting endlessly for them.’
‘I can’t do it,’ said Claire. ‘I couldn’t go away and leave my poor Auntie May.’
‘Really, Claire, that’s fabulous,’ he said. ”First you want to leave her behind when she’s got no one but you and a maid who has fits, and then when it’s a question of our all dropping her home you say you couldn’t leave her.’
‘Alex, you’re being impossible, darling.’
‘No, but why not do as I say and we’ll all take her back.’
‘She’s too ill to be moved,’ Miss Henderson said.
‘Well, then leave her here then as you said at first. I take back what I said about those two old ghouls though they do sit like vultures round the dying—’
‘Alex!’
‘All right, I’m sorry—’
‘No, Alex, it’s not enough.’
‘All right—’
‘Not enough to just say you’re sorry every time.’
‘Well then,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Where is Robert?’ said Claire.
‘What we want is,’ said Miss Crevy, ‘is for you to leave us alone.’
‘Even so you can’t want to stay here.’
‘I don’t know why not.’
‘Oh come on,’ he said to Claire, ‘it’s a bad business all round, but don’t let’s suffer it in silence or in this sort of discomfort.’
‘I’m sorry, Alex, but I can’t do anything.’
‘Evelyn,’ he said, about to appeal to Miss Henderson when Julia came in looking rather mad.
‘My dears,’ she said panting, ‘they’ve broken in below, isn’t it too awful?’
Alex laughed. ‘It would be too late,’ he said. Everyone else asked questions together.
‘Why, all those people outside, of course,’ said Julia, ‘and they’re all drunk, naturally. But what are we to do?’
‘Who told you?’
‘That man your Robert sent to find Thomson, Claire.’
‘Oh, my dear, I shouldn’t believe anything he said.’
‘No, well he did seem rather odd about it and there you are. But what are we to do? Where’s Max? Someone ought to tell him. Oh, what are we to do?’
‘Now, Julia,’ Alex said, ‘there’s nothing to get all worked up about—’
‘No, darling, there really isn’t,’ said Claire, and he went on:
‘There’s nothing to do, they won’t come and kill us in our beds because we aren’t in bed.’
She turned away and stamped her foot at this, and Evelyn said: ‘Now, Alex—’
‘No, seriously,’ he said, ‘they’ll stay down by the bar if any have got in and they’ll be got out of it in no time.’
‘Oh, but then they’ll come up here and be dirty and violent,’ and she hung her handkerchief over her lips and spoke through it like she was talking into the next room through a curtain. ‘They’ll probably try and kiss us or something.’
‘I’d like to see them try,’ said Miss Crevy.
‘Now, Julia,’ Alex said, ‘you aren’t in Marseilles or Singapore. You know an English crowd is the best behaved in the world. You’ll be quite all right here.’
She turned round. She was beside herself.
‘Where’s Max?’ she said. ‘I must see him.’
‘And where’s Robert?’ Claire said, afraid for Julia.
‘Max is upstairs with Amabel, darling.’
‘Oh no, Alex, how revolting,’ she said, and gave herself away. She blushed with rage. ‘You mean to say she’s taken him upstairs just when this has happened.’
‘Oh, Julia my dear, do listen to me,’ Alex said. ‘Don’t let it all run away with you.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, and became quiet with anger.
‘It’s this,’ he said, changing his ground. ‘Please don’t think these people are violent or anything, because they aren’t.’
‘And how d’you know?’
‘Because they never are, they never have been in hundreds of years. Besides, if they have broken in as you say, well here we are inside and we can’t hear a word. I mean, if they were breaking in down below we should hear shouts and everything. Robert would have come up to warn us. Really, you know, I don’t think it can have happened. What I do say is it all proves we should never have stayed when we saw how bad this fog was.’ He spoke to them all. ‘That’s all I’ve been getting at,’ he said, ‘and anyway it’s obvious we can’t get out now if we wanted to.’
‘Oh, why not?’ said Julia.
‘But, darling,’ Evelyn said, ‘for the very reason that all these people haven’t got in, because it is all so locked up that not a soul can get in or out.’