Color Scheme

“Lunch, Father,” screamed Barbara u

“Are you there, Mummy?” asked Barbara.

“Come in, my dear.”

She walked round the screen and found her mother at her feet, submerged up to the shoulders in bright blue steaming water that quite hid her plump body. Over her fuzz of hair Mrs. Claire wore a rubber bag with a frilled edge and she had spectacles on her nose. With her right hand she held above the water a shilling edition of Cranford.

“So charming,” she said. “They are all such dears. I never tire of them.”

“Lunch is nearly in.”

“I must pop out. The Elf is really wonderful, Ba. My tiresome arm is quite cleared up.”

“I’m so glad, Mummy,” said Barbara in a loud voice. “I want to ask you something.”

“What is it?” said Mrs. Claire, turning a page with her thumb.

“Do you like Mr. Questing?”

Mrs. Claire looked up over the top of her book. Barbara was standing at a curious angle, balanced on her right leg. Her left foot was hooked round her right ankle.

“Dear,” said Mrs. Claire, “don’t stand like that. It pushes all the wrong things out and tucks the right ones in.”

“But do you?” Barbara persisted, changing her posture with a jerk.

“Well, he’s not out of the top drawer of course, poor thing.”

“I don’t mind about that. And anyway what is the top drawer? It’s a maddening sort of way to classify people. Such cheek! I’m sorry, Mummy, I didn’t mean to be rude. But honestly, for us to talk about class!” Barbara gave a loud hoot of laughter. “Look at us!” she said.

Mrs. Claire edged modestly towards the side of the pool and thrust her book at her daughter. Stronger waves of sulphurous smells rose from the disturbed waters. A cascade of drops fell from the elderly rounded arm.

“Take Cranford,” she said. Barbara took it. Mrs. Claire pulled her rubber bag a little closer about her ears. “My dear,” she said, pitching her voice on a note that she usually reserved for death, “aren’t you mixing up money and breeding? It doesn’t matter what one does surely…” She paused. “There is an i

“Can one? Look at Simon.”

“Dear old Simon,” said her mother reproachfully.

“Yes, I know. I’m very fond of him. I couldn’t have a kinder brother, but there isn’t much i

“It’s only that awful accent. If we could have afforded…”

“There you are, you see,” cried Barbara, and she went on in a great hurry, shooting out her words as if she fired them from a gun that was too big for her. “Class consciousness is all my eye. Fundamentally it’s based on money.”

On the verandah the bell was rung again with some abandon.

“I must pop out,” said Mrs. Claire. “That’s Huia ringing.”

“It’s not because he talks a different language or any of those things,” said Barbara hurriedly, “that I don’t like Mr. Questing. I don’t like him. And I don’t like the way he behaves with Huia. Or,” she added under her breath, “with me.”

“I expect,” said Mrs. Claire, “that’s only because he used to be a commercial traveller. It’s just his way.”

“Mummy, why do you find excuses for him? Why does Daddy, who would ordinarily loathe Mr. Questing, put up with him? He even laughs at his awful jokes. It isn’t because we want his board money. Look how Daddy and Uncle James practically froze out those rich Americans who were very nice, I thought.” Barbara drove her long fingers through her mouse-coloured hair, and avoiding her mother’s gaze stared at the top of Rangi’s Peak. “You’d think Mr. Questing had a sort of hold on us,” she said, and then burst into one of her fits of nervous laughter.

“Barbie darling,” said her mother, on a note that contrived to suggest the menace of some frightful indelicacy, “I think we won’t talk about it any more.”

“Uncle James hates him, anyway.”

“Barbara!”

“Lunch, Agnes,” said a quiet voice on the other side of the fence. “You’re late again.”

“Coming, dear. Please go on ahead with Daddy, Barbara,” said Mrs. Claire.

Dr. Ackrington bucketed his car down the drive and pulled up at the verandah with a savage jolt just as Barbara reached it. She waited for him and took his arm.

“Stop it,” he said. “You’ll give me hell if you hurry me.” But when she made to draw away he held her arm in a wiry grasp.

“Is the leg bad, Uncle James?”

“It’s always bad. Steady now.”

“Did you have your morning soak in the Porridge Pot?”

“I did not. And do you know why? That damned poisonous little bounder was wallowing in it.”

“Mr. Questing?”

“He never washes,” Dr. Ackrington shouted. “I’ll swear he never washes. Why the devil you can’t insist on people taking the shower before they use the pools is a mystery. He soaks his sweat off in my mud.”

“Are you sure…?”

“Certain. Certain. Certain. I’ve watched him. He never goes near the shower. How in the name of common decency your parents can stomach him…”

“That’s just what I’ve been asking Mummy.”

Dr. Ackrington halted and stared at his niece. An observer might have been struck by their resemblance to each other. Barbara was much more like her uncle than her mother, yet while he, in a red-headed edgy sort of way, was remarkably handsome, she contrived to present as good a profile without its accompaniment of distinction. Nobody noticed Barbara’s physical assets; her defects were inescapable. Her hair, her clothes, her incoherent gestures, her strangely untutored ma

“Oh,” said Dr. Ackrington at last. “And what did your mother say?”

Barbara pulled a clown’s grimace. “She reproved me,” she said in a sepulchral serio-comedy voice.

“Well, don’t make faces at me,” snapped her uncle.

A window in the Claires’ wing was thrown open, and between the curtains there appeared a vague pink face garnished with a faded moustache, and topped by a thatch of white hair.

“Hullo, James,” said the face crossly. “Lunch. What’s your mother doing, Ba? Where’s Simon?”

“She’s coming, Daddy. We’re all coming. Simon!” screamed Barbara.

Mrs. Claire, enveloped in a dark red fla

“Aren’t we going to have any lunch?” Colonel Claire asked bitterly.

“Of course we are,” said Barbara. “Why don’t you begin, Daddy, if you’re in such a hurry? Come on, Uncle James.”

As they went indoors, a young man came round the house and slouched in behind them. He was tall, big-boned, and sandy-haired, with a jutting under lip.

“Hullo, Sim,” said Barbara. “Lunch.”

“Righto.”

“How’s the Morse code this morning?”

“Going good,” said Simon.

Dr. Ackrington instantly turned on him. “Is there any creditable reason why you should not say ‘going well’?” he demanded.

“Huh!” said Simon.

He trailed behind them into the dining-room and they took their places at a long table where Colonel Claire was already seated.

“We won’t wait for your mother,” said Colonel Claire, folding his hands over his abdomen. “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Huia!”

Huia came in wearing cap, crackling apron, and stiff curls. She looked like a Polynesian goddess who had assumed, on a whim, some barbaric disguise.

“Would you like cold ham, cold mutton, or grilled steak?” she asked, and her voice was as cool and deep as her native forests. As an afterthought she handed Barbara a menu.