‘Steak,’ said Huia, musically.
‘Is it cooked?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. I shall have ham.’
‘What the devil are you driving at, James?’ asked Colonel Claire, irritably. ‘You talk in riddles. What do you want?’
‘I want grilled steak. If it is already cooked it will not be grilled steak. It will be boot leather. You can’t get a bit of grilled steak in the length and breadth of this country.’
Huia looked politely and inquiringly at Barbara.
‘Grill Dr Ackrington a fresh piece of steak, please, Huia.’
Dr Ackrington shook his finger at Huia. ‘Five minutes,’ he shouted. ‘Five minutes! A second longer and it’s uneatable. Mind that!’ Huia smiled. ‘And while she’s cooking it I have a letter to read to you,’ he added importantly.
Mrs Claire came in. She looked as if she had just returned from a round of charitable visits in an English village. The Claires ordered their lunches and Dr Ackrington took out the letter from Dr Forster.
‘This concerns all of you,’ he announced.
‘Where’s Smith?’ demanded Colonel Claire suddenly, opening his eyes very wide. His wife and children looked vaguely round the room. ‘Did anyone call him?’ asked Mrs Claire.
‘Don’t mind Smith, now,’ said Dr Ackrington. ‘He’s not here and he won’t be here. I passed him in Harpoon. He was turning in at a pub and by the look of him it was not the first by two or three. Don’t mind him. He’s better away.’
‘He got a cheque from home yesterday,’ said Simon, in his strong New Zealand dialect. ‘Boy, oh boy!’
‘Don’t speak like that, dear,’ said his mother. ‘Poor Mr Smith, it’s such a shame. He’s a dear fellow at bottom.’
‘Will you allow me to read this letter, or will you not?’
‘Do read it, dear. Is it from home?’
Dr Ackrington struck the table angrily with the flat of his hand. His sister leant back in her chair, Colonel Claire stared out through the windows, and Simon and Barbara, after the first two sentences, listened eagerly. When he had finished the letter, which he read in a rapid uninflected patter, Dr Ackrington dropped it on the table and looked about him with an air of complacency.
Barbara whistled. ‘I say,’ she said – ‘Geoffrey Gaunt! I say.’
‘And a servant. And a secretary. I don’t quite know what to say, James,’ Mrs Claire murmured. ‘I’m quite bewildered. I really don’t think …’
‘We can’t take on a chap like that,’ said Simon loudly.
‘And why not, pray?’ his uncle demanded.
‘He’ll be no good to us and we’d be no good to him. He’ll be used to posh hotels and slinging his weight about with a lot of English servants. What’d we do with a secretary and a manservant? What’s he do with them anyway?’ Simon went on with an extraordinary air of hostility. ‘Is he feeble-minded or what?’
‘Feeble-minded!’ cried Barbara. ‘He’s probably the greatest living actor.’
‘Well, he can have it for mine,’ said Simon.
‘For the love of heaven, Agnes, can’t you teach your son an intelligent form of speech?’
‘If the way I talk isn’t good enough for you, Uncle James …’
‘For pity’s sake let’s stick to the point,’ Barbara cried. ‘I’m for having Mr Gaunt and his staff, Sim’s against it, Mother’s hovering. You’re for it, Uncle, I suppose.’
‘I fondly imagined that three resident patients might be of some assistance to the exchequer. What does your father say?’ He turned to Colonel Claire. ‘What do you say, Edward?’
‘Eh?’ Colonel Claire opened his eyes and mouth and raised his eyebrows in a startled manner. ‘Is it about that paper you’ve got in your hand? I wasn’t listening. Read it again.’
‘Great God Almighty!’
‘Your steak,’ said Huia, and placed before Dr Ackrington a strip of ghastly pale and bloated meat from which blood coursed freely over the plate.
During the lively scene which followed, Barbara hooted with frightened laughter, Mrs Claire murmured conciliatory phrases, Simon shuffled his feet, and Huia in turn shook her head angrily, giggled, and uttered soft apologies. Finally she burst into tears and ran back with the steak to the kitchen, where a crash of breaking crockery suggested that she had hurled the dish to the floor. Colonel Claire, after staring in surprise at his brother-in-law for a few seconds, quietly took up Dr Forster’s letter and began to read it. This he continued to do until Dr Ackrington had been mollified with a helping of cold meat.
‘Who is this Geoffrey Gaunt?’ asked Colonel Claire after a long silence.
‘Daddy! You must know. You saw him in Jane Eyre last time we went to the pictures in Harpoon. He’s wildly famous.’ Barbara paused with her left cheek bulging. ‘He was exactly my idea of Mr Rochester,’ she said ardently.
‘Theatrical!’ said her father distastefully. ‘We don’t want that sort.’
‘Just what I say,’ Simon agreed.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Claire, ‘that Mr Gaunt would find us very humdrum sort of folk. Don’t you think we’d better just keep to our own quiet ways, dear?’
‘Mummy, you are …’ Barbara began. Her uncle, speaking with a calm that was really terrifying, interrupted her.
‘I haven’t the smallest doubt, my dear Agnes,’ he said, ‘that Gaunt, who is possibly a man of some enterprise and intelligence, would find your quiet ways more than humdrum, as you complacently choose to describe them. I ventured to suggest in my reply to Forster that Gaunt would find few of the amenities and a good deal of comparative discomfort at Wai-ata-tapu. I added something to the effect that I hoped lack of luxury would be compensated for by kindness and by consideration for a man who is unwell. Apparently, I was mistaken. I also fancied that, having gone to considerable expense in building a Spa, your object was to acquire a clientele. Again, I was mistaken. You prefer to rest on your laurels with an alcoholic who doesn’t pay his way, and a bounder whom I, for one, regard as a person better suited to confinement in an internment camp.’
Colonel Claire said: ‘Are you talking about Questing, James?’
‘I am.’
‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t.’
‘May I ask why?’
Colonel Claire laid his knife and fork together, turned scarlet in the face and looked fixedly at the opposite wall.
‘Because,’ he said, ‘I am under an obligation to him.’
There was a long silence.
‘I see,’ said Dr Ackrington at last.
‘I haven’t said anything about it to Agnes and the children. I suppose I’m old-fashioned. In my view a man doesn’t speak of such matters to his family. But you, James, and you two children have shown so pointedly your dislike of Mr Questing that I’m forced to tell you that I – I cannot afford – I must ask you for my sake to show him more consideration.’
‘You can’t afford …?’ Dr Ackrington repeated. ‘Good God, my dear fellow, what have you been up to?’
‘Please, James, I hope I need say no more.’
With an air of martyrdom Colonel Claire rose and