“We could think about it more than we do,” Moira protested idly. “We have three cars. Two cars make sense. What’s the use of three?”
“It’s no good keeping up appearances unless you keep up a good appearance. I can’t keep up appearances with a motor bike. Moira tells me I’m having a financial crisis. I remember having a financial crisis in Persia. I left it with forty-two thousand owing. I paid back every penny, except what I owed the Persians. Money! I never think of it.”
Hester accepted her tea. She wanted to turn the cup over and see if the price was written on the bottom. Joe looked at her, grinning.
“Twenty-five shillings each, about, these cups cost,” he said.
“Uncle Joe, you are clever,” Hester said admiringly. “How did you know what I was thinking?”
“It’s a parlour trick,” Moira said contemptuously. “He can always tell when people are wondering what something cost. That’s the kind of thing they often wonder, in this house. They don’t ask about the Shropshire Fergusons, nor even the Berlin branch of the family. It’s always what it cost.”
“But I wasn’t thinking how much the cup cost,” Hester protested. “I – I—”
“You were thinking, perhaps, I would like it to be known how good our cups were,” Joe said. “You come here,” he added in a voice of immense sorrow, “to see how the rich live. You are a welfare worker in reverse. But you come to the wrong place, my child. We don’t live as the rich do. We are the little pigs who have built our house of paper money, and one day the wolf comes and he huffs and he puffs and he blows our house down. So inside the house we must tell ourselves we are very happy. But when the house is blown down, what can I do? Only one thing. I can drive a car. Perhaps when you are buried you look round on your way to the churchyard, and find I am driving the hearse.”
Hester began to laugh. She liked Joe and the blasts of energy that came from him. Moira looked sulky and bored. It was possible she had heard the joke before.
“I wanted to ask you, Uncle Joe, is Harry really your nephew?” Hester said cautiously.
Joe swallowed his tea and crashed the cup on the table. He was as dismal as if he were staring through a series of empty cinemas. Moira looked at him angrily.
“Harry came back to the London flat one night with Joe and said he was his nephew,” she explained coolly to Hester.
“It was true. For the night, he was a relation,” Joe said.
“And he was going next day. But he was very interested in music. We have a Hi-Fi in London,” Moira went on. “It’s too loud for the country.”
“I don’t even know what Hi-Fi is,” Hester said.
“You have a kind of horse-trough filled with sand and a box of knobs for the gramophone records,” Joe explained. “You hear every sound, even the tears rolling down the conductor’s cheeks. After you have Hi-Fi there is nothing else, absolutely nothing, but to go out and hear the concert when it’s played. But Harry likes this Hi-Fi noise. He plays records every day. Carried away on the space-ship to the music of the spheres, he explains to me. But he’s not carried away. He’s anchored on the sofa. Why do I have this Hi-Fi, perhaps you ask? With my connections, how can I ask my friends to hear a clockwork gramophone?”
“You see, Harry spent the first few days just listening to Hi-Fi,” Moira said, beginning to smile. “It seemed rude to interrupt him.”
Joe scowled. “Then I begin to tell him, you’d like to go soon, Harry. This very evening, he says, but the banks are closed, can you cash a cheque? A very small cheque, Harry, I tell him. A very small cheque indeed. How much is it worth to me to get rid of Harry? Ten pounds, perhaps, I think, but he makes it twenty. He is about to go. Suddenly it is raining. His coat is at the cleaner’s, he tells me, and he’ll have to stay the night after all. So what happens?” He stopped, scowling at Hester.
Hester smiled sadly. She wanted to leave, but it was hard not to hear everything about Harry.
“What happens?” he repeated. “At three that morning I am playing Donegal Poker. I go to bed at six with Donegal Poker insomnia. It is true I have won, but all I have won is my own cheque back from Harry. The next day I have to see accountants, managers, lawyers – it is very difficult for me. But Harry is not difficult. He is happy. He is writing a poem. We mustn’t disturb him, Moira says.”
“Poetry is a wonderful occupation,” Moira said angrily.
“The next afternoon, at five, he goes – with another cheque, because the banks are closed again. At eleven he is back, with friends he wants to hear our Hi-Fi. Take the Hi-Fi, Harry, I say. Take it and go.”
“The next morning I find him telephoning dealers, asking what they will give for a second-hand Hi-Fi. Now I want to get angry. Moira stops me. He’s a poet she says.”
“He is a poet,” Moira said softly. Hester looked at her with the astonished glance of a woman acknowledging an enemy. A flash of contempt for Moira’s forty years crossed her face like a beam of light.
“He is a poet in words. That is now of no importance. I am a poet of money. Words! We have too many words. Word poets talk all the time of love and death. People fall in love and they die, and no amount of poetic advice has ever helped them to do either of those things more successfully. They are interested in love for a few years, and later they are afraid of death. But they are always interested in money. Everyone, everywhere is interested in money all the time. There’s never been an age when people agreed so heartily to be interested all at once in the same thing. They’re crazy about money, even if it’s only to buy a bar of chocolate or a diamond necklace. This is how I am a poet in money. I’m not tied down to pearls and cigars. I have imagination and daring. I’m not frightened by six figures. I make beautiful combinations with banks and factories. I have just been buying more cinemas,” he added reflectively.
“A poor poem, at the moment,” Moira commented.
“I was telling you about Harry,” Joe said in a sombre voice. “In the end I say we are going to the country for a week. We lock up the London flat, I tell him. I am sorry, I say, but this time it’s goodbye. And what happens? He comes with us to the country here. I spend the first night in the quiet of this village playing Donegal Poker. I am lucky he doesn’t stay in London, break into the flat, steal my wife’s jewellery.”
“Which is in the bank,” Moira said, yawning.
“Because he is a bad man. I warn you, Hester, he is bad. He’s the kind of man who would pawn his grandmother’s crutches to buy a drink for a friend.”
“Thank you for the tea,” Hester said in a furious voice.
“You’re angry?” Moira enquired curiously. “Has Joe said something to offend you? Don’t take him seriously.”
“I don’t think it’s right to say these things about Harry,” Hester said. “You shouldn’t say them, Uncle Joe. It’s not true. Whatever Harry is, he’s honest. You just don’t understand him.”
“Have some more tea,” Moira suggested.
“I don’t understand him!” Joe repeated in amazement.
“No you don’t. He’s not one of the people who’s interested in money. He stands for something much finer than money. He doesn’t know about money, and because he doesn’t worship it as you do you think he’s no good. I agree with him. I despise money.”
“But so do I,” Joe said. “My dear child, I couldn’t agree with you more. So there’s no argument. I won’t quarrel with you. You know, Hester, I’m not even rich. I owe much, Inland Revenue is after me, and I leave the rest to Harry.”