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.
While we stood in the drive waiting for Aunt Deb to come out of the house, Kate explained that Uncle George never went to church.
'He spends most of his time in his study. That's the little room next to the breakfast room,' she said. 'He talks to all his friends on the telephone for hours, and he's writing a treatise or a monograph or something about Red Indians, I think, and he only comes out for meals and things like that.'
'Rather dull for your aunt,' I said, admiring the way the March sunlight lay along the perfect line of her jaw and lit red glints in her dark eyelashes.
'Oh, he takes her up to Town once a week. She has her hair done, and he looks things up in the library of the British Museum. Then they have a jolly lunch at the Ritz or somewhere stuffy like that, and go to a matinee or an exhibition in the afternoon. A thoroughly debauched programme,' said Kate, with a dazzling smile.
After lunch, Uncle George invited me into his study to see what he called his'trophies'. These were a collection of objects belonging to various primitive or barbaric peoples, and, as far as I could judge, would have done credit to any small museum.
Ranks of weapons, together with some jewellery, pots, and ritual objects were labelled and mounted on shelves inside glass cases which lined three walls of the room. Among others, there were pieces from Central Africa and the Polynesian Islands, from the Viking age of Norway, and from the Maoris of New Zealand. Uncle George's interest covered the globe.
'I study one people at a time,' he explained. 'It gives me something to do since I retired, and I find it enthralling. Did you know that in the Fiji Islands the men used to fatten women like cattle and eat them.'
His eyes gleamed, and I had a suspicion that part of the pleasure he derived from primitive peoples lay in contemplation of their primitive violences. Perhaps he needed a mental antidote to those lunches at the Ritz, and the matinees.
I said, 'Which people are you studying now? Kate said something about Red Indians-?'
He seemed pleased that I was taking an interest in his hobby.
'Yes. I am doing a survey of all the ancient peoples of the Americas, and the North American Indians were my last subject. Their case is over here.'
He showed me over to one corner. The collection of feathers, beads, knives, and arrows looked almost ridiculously like those in Western films, but I had no doubt that these were genuine. And in the centre hung a hank of black hair with a withered lump of matter dangling from it, and underneath was gummed the laconic lable, 'Scalp'.
I turned round, and surprised Uncle George watching me with a look of secret enjoyment. He let his gaze slide past me to the case.
'Oh, yes,' he said. 'The scalp's a real one. It's only about a hundred years old.'
'Interesting,' I said non-committally.
'I spent a year on the North American Indians because there are so many different tribes,' he went on. 'But I've moved on to Central America now. Next I'll do the South Americans, the Incas and the Fuegians and so on. I'm not a scholar, of course, and I don't do any field work, but I do write articles sometimes for various publications. At the moment I am engaged on a series about Indians for the Boys' Stupendous Weekly.' His fat cheeks shook as he laughed silently at what appeared to be an immense private joke. Then he straightened his lips and the pink folds of flesh grew still, and he began to drift back towards the door.
I followed him, and paused by his big, carved, black oak desk which stood squarely in front of the window. On it, besides two telephones and a silver pen tray, lay several cardboard folders with pale blue stick-on labels marked Arapaho, Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo, and Mohawk.
Separated from these was another folder marked Mayas, and I idly stretched out my hand to open it, because I had never heard of such a tribe. Uncle George's plump fingers came down firmly on the folder, holding it shut.
'I have only just started on this nation,' he said apologetically. 'And there's nothing worth looking at yet.'
'I've never heard of that tribe,' I said.
'They were Central American Indians, not North,' he said pleasantly. 'They were astronomers and mathematicians, you know. Very civilized. I am finding them fascinating. They discovered that rubber bounced, and they made balls of it long before it was known in Europe. At the moment I am looking into their wars. I am trying to find out what they did with their prisoners of war. Several of their frescos show prisoners begging for mercy.' He paused, his eyes fixed on me, assessing me. 'Would you like to help me correlate the references I have so far collected?' he said.
'Well- er- er-' I began.
Uncle George's jowls shook again. 'I didn't suppose you would,' he said. 'You'd rather take Kate for a drive, no doubt.'
