Free King and Joker by Peter Dickinson Page B

her to her feet and then, as if greeting her after a long separation, kissed her warmly on both cheeks. The three of them moved off together. Mother in the middle with her arms round the waists on either side of her. Behind them Nonny’s pad lay where she had dropped it with its upper sheets gesturing feebly in the light breeze.
    â€œThey’re putting on a show for us,” said Louise.
    â€œYes. But it’s a show of something real. I don’t think they laid it on, Lulu. It happened.”
    â€œI don’t understand it, really.”
    â€œNor do I, but it’s a functioning system. If you muck around with it it’ll break down.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œDon’t ask too many questions.”
    â€œI wasn’t going to. I’m not like that. It’s just … Anyway that’s interesting about Sir Sam’s trousers. I’m having tea with Durdy tomorrow. It’ll make her laugh.”
    Durdy did laugh. Anything that discomforted Sir Sam was balm to her heart, provided it didn’t in any way upset the members of the Family. Louise fetched the crumpets out of the corner cupboard (Kinunu put a fresh packet there every day, whether or not the old one had been eaten; the O and M men would soon stop that if they found out) and was sitting on the brown rug by the gas fire toasting one on the old telescopic brass toasting-fork whose prongs were the horns and tail of a grinning devil and whose handle had once been a pudgy angel but was now worn with use into an abstract blob.
    â€œMother was telling me about some horrible German cousins,” she said. “They smelt of sheep and aniseed and kept picking her up and kissing her. Did you ever meet them, Durdy?”
    â€œYes, darling. They came to your grandfather’s funeral.”
    â€œKissing and crying?”
    â€œI soon put a stop to the kissing.”
    â€œHow on earth? They sound like a real kissing mafia.”
    â€œI borrowed Lady Elizabeth Motion’s little girl who was just coming out with, the measles.”
    â€œBut didn’t that mean that Father and the Aunts got measles too?”
    â€œThey’d had it, darling. I always saw that my children got the infectious diseases as soon as they were old enough. If I heard of a suitable child with mumps I’d borrow him at once. Why, I even borrowed one of the Ribbentrop boys to give your Aunt Anne the chicken-pox. But their German Highnesses weren’t to know my little ways, were they? And your grandmother was always too far up in the clouds to remember who’d had what.”
    â€œDurdy, you’re marvellous. I wish Mother had had you to protect her from the kissing mafia.”
    â€œNanny Cramp was an excellent Nanny, darling. She did the best she could in very trying circumstances.”
    At the first faint whiff of burning Louise withdrew the fork until its prongs were stopped by the criss-cross mesh of the fireguard. Reaching over the brass rail at the top she reversed the crumpet and thrust it back to within half an inch of the red-gold elements.
    â€œNorth Sea Gas isn’t really so bad for this,” she said. “I think Father just made a fuss because it was different. I suppose when you’ve been toasting crumpets the same way for forty years … what trying circumstances, Durdy?”
    â€œOh, it was enough to try the patience of a saint, Nanny Cramp said. Everything so formal all the time! When Queen Ena went bathing there’d be these two great big soldiers in their best uniforms with their, guns, and they’d march into the sea beside her until it was deep enough for her to swim in. Nanny Cramp once saw them standing there, staring out to sea, with only their heads sticking out of the waves. Ridiculous! And if you were a Royal, everywhere you went in the Palace there’d be footmen all along the corridors to shout ahead that you were coming. Just fancy! The notions it might give a