‘Damned fool,’ said Uncle Matthew. He asked him his name and what time he started his day. The name was Payne and he was on the streets at about half-past eight. Uncle Matthew told him that, in future, he was to put his flag down when he left his garage and drive straight to The Mews.
‘I like to get to Victoria Street every morning in time for the Stores to open so that would suit us both.’ The Stores (Army and Navy) had ever been a magnet to my uncle; Aunt Sadie used to say she wished she could have a penny for each pound he had spent there. He knew most of the employees by name and used to take his constitutional in the magic precincts, ending up with a view from the bridge, whence he would note the direction of the wind. No sky was visible from The Mews.
Presently Payne and my uncle came to a very suitable arrangement. Payne would drop him at the Stores, return to The Mews and put in a couple of hours doing housework there. He would then go back for Uncle Matthew and drive him either to his club or home, in which case he would fetch him some hot luncheon from the Rest and Culture Hall, where according to my uncle, the cabbies do themselves exceedingly well. (I often feel pleased to remember this when waiting in a bitter wind for one of them to finish his nuts and wine.) For the rest of the day Payne was allowed to ply his trade on condition that between every fare he should ring up The Mews to see if anything were wanted. Uncle Matthew paid him, then and there, whatever was on the clock and a tip. He said this saved accounts and made everything easier. The system worked like a charm. Uncle Matthew was the envy of his peers, few of whom were so well looked after as he.
As I was walking along Kensington Gore a cab drew up beside me, Payne at the wheel. Taking no notice of his fare, who looked surprised and not delighted, he leant over to me and said, confidentially, ‘His Lordship’s out. If you’re going to The Mews now I’d best give you the key. I’m to pick him up at St George’s Hospital after taking this gentleman to Paddington.’ The fare now pulled down the window and said furiously, ‘Look here, driver, I’ve got a train to catch, you know.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Payne. He handed me the key and drove away.
By the time I arrived it was raining hard and I was glad not to be obliged to sit on the dustbin. Although we were already in July the day was turning chilly; Uncle Matthew had a little fire in his sitting-room. I went up to it, rubbing my hands. The room was small, dark and ugly, the old business room at Alconleigh in miniature. It had the same smell of wood fire and Virginia cigarettes and was filled, as the business room had always been, with hideous gadgets, most of which my uncle had invented himself years ago and which, it was supposed of each in turn, would make him rich beyond belief. There were the Alconsegar Ash Tray, the Alconstoke Fire Lighters, the Alconclef Record Rack and the Home Beautifier, a fly trap made of fretwork in the form of a Swiss chalet. They vividly evoked my childhood and the long evenings at Alconleigh with Uncle Matthew playing his favourite records. I thought with a sigh what an easy time parents and guardians had had in those days – no Teddy boys, no Beards, no Chelsea set, no heiresses, or at least not such wildly public ones; good little children we seem to have been, in retrospect.
Tea was already laid out, silver hot-dishes containing scones and girdle cakes and a pot of Tiptree jam. You could count on a good tea, at The Mews. I looked round for something to read, picked up the Daily Post and fell upon Amyas Mockbar’s Paris Page. Provincials like myself are kept in touch with fashionable and intellectual Europe in its last stronghold of civilized leisure by this Mr Mockbar who, four times a week, recounts the inside story of Parisian lives, loves and scandals. It makes perfect reading for the housewife, who is able to enjoy the chronicle without having to rub shoulders with the human horrors depicted therein; she lays down the paper more contented than ever with her lot. Today, however, the page was rather dull, consisting of speculations on the appointment of a new English Ambassador to Paris. Sir Louis Leone, it seemed, was due to retire after a mission of unusual length. Mockbar had always presented him as a diplomatic disaster, too brilliant, too social and much too pro-French. His beautiful wife was supposed to have made too many friends in Paris; reading between the lines, one gathered that Mockbar had not been among them. Now that the Leones were leaving, however, he was seized with an inexplicable tenderness for them. Perhaps he was saving his ammunition for the new Sir Somebody whom he confidently tipped as Sir Louis’s successor.
I heard the taxi crawling into The Mews. It stopped, the door slammed, the meter rang, my uncle rattled some half-crowns out of his pocket, Payne thanked him and drove off. I went to meet Uncle Matthew as he came slowly up the stairs.
‘How are you, my dear child?’
It was comfortable to be my dear child again; I was so accustomed to seeing myself as a mother – poor, neglected mother today, left to have her luncheon all alone. I looked at myself in a glass while Uncle Matthew went to the little kitchen to put on a kettle, saying ‘Payne got everything ready, there’s only the tea to make.’ No doubt there was something in my appearance which made ‘my dear child’ not too ridiculous, even at the age of forty-five. I
