told Mama, “I’ve spoken to Sam and he’ll see me tomorrow. And Louise said, could you and Anna come as well.”
“Are you ill, Papa?” asked Anna.
Professor Sam Rosenberg was a doctor and though hiswife Louise had been at school in Germany with Mama, and Anna could not remember a time when they had not known them, they did not usually see them without some reason.
“No, I’m not ill,” said Papa. “It’s just something I want to talk to him about.”
The Rosenbergs lived in a vast flat in Harley Street with a porter and a lift and a brass plate on the door. When Anna rang the bell a maid let them in, deposited Papa in the waiting room and led Anna and Mama along a passage filled with packing cases to Aunt Louise’s boudoir.
This too was in a state of upheaval. There were dust covers over some of the pretty velvet chairs, an open packing case stood in a corner and a gilt mirror had been taken down and was leaning against the wall, half-smothered in wadding. In the midst of it all Aunt Louise was sitting in her silk dress and pearls and with her hair beautifully curled, looking distraught.
“My dear, it’s all so awful!’ she cried in German as soon as they came in. “We have to pack up everything – Sam has taken a house in the country, he says it will be safer there.”
“Where in the country?” asked Mama, embracing her.
“Buckinghamshire, I think – or perhaps it’s Berkshire – anyway, it’s miles from anywhere, and he’s going to close up this flat completely except for the consulting room and drive up to see his most important patients only.” She drew a deep breath, looked at Anna and said, “How are you?”
“All right, thank you,” said Anna indistinctly.
Aunt Louise with her delicate features and beautiful clothes always made her feel uncomfortable. Also it was Aunt Louise who, admittedly with the best intentions in the world, had persuaded Miss Metcalfe to take Anna into her school.
Aunt Louise smiled. “Still at the awkward age,” she cried gaily to Mama. “Never mind, they all grow out of it. And how are those charming American friends of yours?”
Mama explained that the Bartholomews had gone back to America and that Anna was now living at the Hotel Continental.
“Oh dear, how difficult for you!” cried Aunt Louise, but it was not clear whether she meant the financial aspect or simply the fact that Mama had someone in the awkward age living with her.
“It’s all such a rush,” she wailed. “Sam says we’ve got to be out of London in two days, or he won’t be responsible, with the French collapsing the way they have. And you can’t get anyone to move the furniture – so many people have had the same idea. Do you know, I rang up eleven different firms before I found one which could do it?”
Mama made a sympathetic noise in her throat.
“And I’m sure they’re going to break all the china, they’re such galumphing great louts,” said Aunt Louise. Then, quite unexpectedly, she flung her arms round Mama’s shoulders to cry disarmingly, “And I know it’s dreadful of me to fuss about it when people like you are staying behindin London and God only knows what’s to happen to us all – but you know, my dear, that I was always a fool, ever since you were at the top of the class in Berlin and I at the bottom!”
“Nonsense,” said Mama. “You were never a fool, and even at school you were always the prettiest, most elegant …”
“Oh yes I am,” said Aunt Louise. “Sam has told me so many a time and he knows.”
As though settling the matter once and for all, she rang a bell by her side and the maid appeared almost at once with a silver tea-pot on a tray and little sandwiches and cakes. Aunt Louise poured out delicately. “I looked out a few things for you while I was packing,” she said. “I thought they might be useful.” Then she cried, “Oh, she’s forgotten the lemon again, I can’t bear tea without lemon, she knows that