Just at that moment Jack, in his shirt-sleeves and liberally besmeared with oil, came in to breakfast. He was a man of medium height with a mop of curly dark hair, prominent bright blue eyes, and a nose any Roman emperor would have been glad to possess. It was a nose that really was a nose; a nose to be reckoned with; a nose of size and substance, one that would have warmed the cockles of Cyrano de Bergerac’s heart, a nose that heralded the cold weather, the opening of the pubs, mirth, or any other important event, with a flamboyant colour change that a chameleon would have envied. It was a nose to be arrogant with, or to shelter behind in moments of stress. It was a nose which could be proud or comic, according to the mood; a nose that once seen was never forgotten, like the beak of a duck-billed platypus.
“Ah!” said Jack, and his nose quivered and took on a rubicund sheen. “Do I smell kippers?”
“There, in the kitchen, keeping warm,” said Mother.
“Where have you been?” asked Margo, unnecessarily, since Jack’s oil-covered condition stated clearly where he had been.
“Cleaning Esmerelda’s engine,” replied Jack, equally unnecessarily.
He went out into the kitchen and returned with two kippers lying on a plate. He sat down, and started to dissect them.
“I don’t know what you find to do with that car,” said Margo. “You’re always taking it to pieces.”
“I knew a man once who had a wonderful way with kippers,” remarked Jack to me, oblivious of my sister’s complaints. “He’d sort of turn them on their backs and somehow get all the bones out in one go. Very clever. They all came out, just like that. Like harp strings, you know . . . I still can’t quite see how he did it.”
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Margo.
“What’s wrong with what?” countered her husband vaguely, staring at his kippers as if he could hypnotize the bones out of them.
“The Rolls,” said Margo.
“Esmerelda?” asked Jack in alarm. “What’s wrong with her?”
“That’s what I’m asking you,” said Margo. “You really are the most irritating man.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” replied Jack. “Beautiful piece of work.”
“It would be, if we went out in her occasionally,” pointed out Margo, sarcastically. “She’s not very beautiful sitting in the garage with all her innards out.”
“You can’t say innards out,” Jack objected. “Innards are in, they can’t be out.”
“Oh, you do infuriate me!” said Margo.
“Now, now, dear,” said Mother. “If Jack says there’s nothing wrong with the car, then everything’s all right.”
“All right for what?” asked Jack, mystified.
“We were thinking of taking Larry out for a picnic when he comes,” Mother explained, “and we thought it would be nice to do it in the Rolls.”
Jack thought about this, munching on his kippers.
“That’s a good idea,” he said at last, to our surprise. “I’ve just tuned the engine. It’ll do her good to have a run. Where were you thinking of going?”
“Lulworth,” said Mother. “It’s very pretty, the Purbecks.”
“There’s some good hills there, too,” said Jack with enthusiasm. “That’ll tell me if her clutch is slipping.”
Fortified with the knowledge that the Rolls would be intact for the picnic, Mother threw herself with enthusiasm into the task of preparing for it. As usual, the quantity of food she prepared for the day would have been sufficient to victual Napoleon’s army during its retreat from Moscow . There were curry-puffs and Cornish pasties, raised ham pies and a large game pie, three roast chickens, two large loaves of home-made bread, a treacle tart, brandy snaps and some meringues; to say nothing of three kinds of home-made chutney and jams, as well as biscuits, a fruit cake, and a sponge. When this was all assembled on the kitchen table, she called us in to have a look.
“Do you think there’ll be enough?” she asked, worriedly.
“I thought we were only going to Lulworth for the afternoon?” said Leslie. “I didn’t realize we were emigrating.”
“Mother, it’s far too much,” exclaimed Margo. “We’ll never eat it all.”
“Nonsense! Why, in Corfu I used to take twice as much,” said Mother.
“But in Corfu we used to have twelve or fourteen people,” Leslie pointed out. There’s only six of us, you know.”
“It looks like a two years’ supply of food for a Red Cross shipment to a famine area,” said Jack.
“It’s not all that much,” said Mother, defensively. “You know how Larry likes his food, and we’ll be eating by the sea, and the sea air always gives one an appetite.”
“Well, I hope Esmerelda’s boot will hold it all,” commented Jack.
The next afternoon, Mother insisted, in spite of our protests, that we all dress up in our finery to go down to the station to meet Larry. Owing to the inordinately long time Margo took to find the right shade of lipstick, Mothers plans were thwarted, for, just as we were about to enter the Rolls, a taxi drew up. Inside was Larry, having caught an earlier train. He lowered the window of the cab and glared at us.
“Larry, dear!” cried Mother. “What a lovely surprise!”
Larry made his first verbal communication to his family in ten years.
“Have any of you got colds?” he rasped, irritably. “If so, I’ll go to an hotel.”
“Colds?” said Mother. “No, dear. Why?”
“Well, everyone else in this God-forsaken island has one,” said Larry, as he climbed out of the cab. “I’ve spent a week in London running for my life from a barrage of cold germs. Everyone sneezing and snuffling like a brood of catarrhal bulldogs. You should have heard them on the train — hawking and spitting and coughing like some bloody travelling TB sanitarium. I spent the journey locked up in the lavatory, holding my nose and squirting a nasal spray through the keyhole. How you survive this pestilential island, defeats me. I swear to you that there were so many people with colds in London, it was worse than the Great Plague.”
He paid off the taxi, and walked into the house ahead of us, carrying his suitcase. He was wearing a deer-stalker hat in a dog-tooth tweed, and a suit in a singularly unattractive tartan, the ground colour of which was dog-sick green with a dull red stripe over it. He looked like a diminutive and portly Sherlock Holmes.
“Mercifully, we are cold-free,” said Mother, following him into the house. “It’s this lovely fine weather we’ve been having. Would you like some tea, dear?”
“I’d rather have a large whisky and soda,” said Larry, taking a half empty bottle out of the capacious pocket of his coat. “It’s better for colds.”