CHAPTER 2

       Arrival in London

      I

      Now that the last trunk was closed and had been dragged away by an impatient steward, the cabin seemed to have lost all its character. Surveying it by lamplight, for it was still long before dawn, Roberta felt that she had relinquished her ownership and was only there on sufferance. Odd scraps of paper lay about the floor, the wardrobe door stood open, across the dressing-table lay a trail of spilt powder. The unfamiliar black dress and overcoat in which she would go ashore hung on the peg inside the door and seemed to move stealthily, and of their own accord, from side to side. The ship still creaked with that pleasing air of absorption in its own progress. Outside in the dark the lonely sea still foamed past the porthole, and footsteps still thudded on the deck above Roberta’s head. But all these dear and familiar sounds only added to her feeling of desolation. The voyage was over. Already the ship was astir with agitated passengers. Slowly the blackness outside turned to grey. For the last time she watched the solemn procession of the horizon, and the dawn-light on cold ruffles of foam.

      She put on the black dress and, for the hundredth time, wondered if it was the right sort of garment in which to land. It had a white collar and there was a white cockade in her hat so perhaps she would not look too obviously in mourning.

      ‘I’ve come thirteen thousand miles,’ thought Roberta. ‘Half-way round the world. Now I’m near the top of the world. These are northern seas and those fading stars are the stars of northern skies.’

      She leant out of the porthole and the sound of the sea surged up into her ears. A cold dawn-wind blew her hair back. She looked forward and saw a string of pale lights strung like a necklace across a wan greyness. Her heart thumped violently, for this was her first sight of England. For a long time she leant out of the porthole. Gulls now swooped and mewed round the ship. Afar off she heard the hollow sound of a siren. Filled with the strange inertia that is sometimes born of excitement Roberta could not make up her mind to go up on deck. At last a bugle sounded for the preposterously early breakfast. Roberta opened her bulging handbag, and with a good deal of difficulty extracted the two New Zealand pound notes she meant to give her stewardess. It seemed a large tip but it would represent only thirty English shillings. The stewardess was waiting in the corridor. The steward was there too and the bath steward. Roberta was obliged to return to her cabin and grope again in her bag.

      Breakfast was a strange hurried affair with everybody wearing unfamiliar clothes and exchanging addresses. Roberta felt there was no sense of conviction in the plans the passengers made to sustain the friendships they had formed, but she too gave addresses to one or two people and wrote theirs on the back of a menu card. She then joined in the passport queue and in her excitement kept taking her landing papers out of her bag and putting them back again. Through the portholes she saw funnels, sides of tall ships, and finally buildings that seemed quite close to hand. She had her passport stamped and went up to B. deck where the familiar notices looked blankly at her. Already the hatches were opened and the winches uncovered. She stood apart from the other passengers and like them gazed forward. The shore was now quite close and there were many other ships near at hand. Stewards, pallid in their undervests, leant out of portholes to stare at the big liner. Roberta heard a passenger say, ‘Good old Thames.’ She heard names that were strange yet familiar: Gravesend, Tilbury, Greenhithe.

      ‘Nearly over, now, Miss Grey,’ said a voice at her elbow. An elderly man with whom she had been vaguely friendly leant on the rail beside her.

      ‘Yes,’ said Roberta. ‘Almost over.’

      ‘This is your first sight of London?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘That must be a strange sensation. I can’t imagine it. I’m a cockney, you see.’ He turned and looked down at her. Perhaps he thought she looked rather small and young for he said:

      ‘Someone coming to meet you?’

      ‘At the station, not at the boat. An aunt. I’ve never met her.’

      ‘I hope she’s a nice aunt.’

      ‘I do too. She’s my father’s sister.’

      ‘You’ll be able to break the ice by telling her that you recognized her at once from her likeness to your father –’ He broke off abruptly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve said something that’s … I’m sorry.’

      ‘It’s all right,’ said Roberta, and because he looked so genuinely sorry she added: ‘I haven’t got quite used to talking ordinarily about them yet. My father and mother, I mean. I’ve got to get used to it, of course.’

      ‘Both?’ said her companion compassionately.

      ‘Yes. In a motor accident. I’m going to live with this aunt.’

      ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can only repeat that I do hope she’s a nice aunt.’

      Roberta smiled at him and wished, though he was kind, that he would go away. A steward came along the deck carrying letters.

      ‘Here’s the mail from the pilot boat,’ said her companion.

      Roberta didn’t know whether to expect a letter or not. The steward gave her two and a wireless message. She opened the wireless first and in another second her companion heard her give a little cry. He looked up from his own letter. Roberta’s dark eyes shone and her whole face seemed to have come brilliantly to life.

      ‘Good news?’

      ‘Oh yes! Yes. It’s from my greatest friends. I’m to stay with them first. They’re coming to the ship. My aunt’s ill or something and I’m to go to them.’

      ‘That’s good news?’

      ‘It’s splendid news. I knew them in New Zealand, you see, but I haven’t seen them for years.’

      Roberta no longer wished that he would go away. She was so excited that she felt she must speak of her good fortune.

      ‘I wrote and told them I was coming but the letter went by air-mail on the day I sailed.’ She looked at her letters. ‘This one’s from Charlot.’

      She opened it with shaking fingers. Lady Charles’s writing was like herself, at once, thin, elegant and generous.

      ‘Darling Robin,’ Roberta read, ‘we are all so excited. As soon as your letter came I rang up your Kentish aunt and asked if we might have you first. She says we may for one night only which is measly but you must come back soon. She sounds quite nice. Henry and Frid will meet you at the wharf. We are so glad, darling. There’s only a box for you to sleep in but you won’t mind that. Best love from us all. Charlot.’

      The wireless said: ‘Aunt ill so we are allowed to keep you for a month. Hurrah darling so glad aunt not seriously ill so everything splendid love Charlot.’

      The second was from Roberta’s aunt.

      ‘My dearest Roberta,’ it said, ‘I am so grieved and vexed that I am unable to welcome you to Dear Old England but alas, my dear, I am prostrated with such dreadful sciatica that my doctor insists on a visit to a very special nursing home!! So expensive and worrying for poor me and I would at whatever cost to myself, have defied him if it had not been for your friend Lady Charles Lamprey, who rang me up from London which was quite an excitement in my hum-drum