Dancing the Charleston Read online

  Barbara found me a lifebelt ring to wear about my waist. ‘Bruno doesn’t need it any more. It will help you enormously, Mona. And see here – you kick your legs like this and move your arms at the same time. Keep your chin up! That’s the spirit,’ she said encouragingly.

  The pool was so shockingly cold that for a few minutes I could barely think, let alone listen to instructions, but I found if I jumped up and down I stopped shivering quite so violently. I tried a few strokes as Barbara suggested.

  I hoped I would pick it up straight away and swim up and down the pool as easily as the others, but I kept getting mouthfuls of water and I panicked whenever I took my feet off the bottom. Marcella bobbed along, trying to show me, while Bruno dived in, doing his best to put me off.

  ‘I’ll teach you, Mona,’ said Roland. ‘I’ll tow you around. I won’t let you go under, I promise. Trust me.’

  I did trust him, so I let him put his hand under my chin while he gently tugged me away from the side of the pool. I kicked my legs a little, and waved my arms around too. I’m not sure I was actually swimming, but it felt as if I was.

  Stanley was thrashing up and down, making great waves, and Ambrose swam lazily but stylishly for several lengths. Mr Benjamin looked stylish in his black-and-white-striped costume, but his breaststroke was timid and he held his head well out of the water at all times. His black curls stayed bone-dry. When we got out of the pool, he was the only one who didn’t look like an otter.

  Ella brought a huge pile of fluffy towels so we could dry ourselves. ‘Quite one of the family now, aren’t you, Mona?’ she murmured to me.

  ‘Do feel free to use the pool yourself, Ella,’ said Mr Benjamin, dabbing himself dry. ‘I know young Harold dives in at every opportunity.’

  ‘I’ve got better things to do with my time than fling myself into cold water, sir,’ she said crisply.

  She went to help catch Bruno, who was running away from his mother.

  ‘Come back, you silly boy – you can’t stay soaking wet,’ she called.

  ‘I don’t want to get dry. I want to go in the pool again. And again. And again. I have to have lots of swims before we go home. I don’t want to go home!’ Bruno wailed as Ella caught him and bundled him under her arm to give him back to his mother.

  ‘When are you going home?’ I asked Marcella.

  ‘Stanley says we have to go on Saturday as he wants to get back to his studio. We can’t see why he doesn’t go back by himself and let us stay till the end of the summer. Or stay for ever. We love it here,’ she said, shivering.

  ‘I love having you here, chickie,’ said Mr Benjamin, wrapping himself in a white towelling robe. ‘Can’t they stay, Barbara?’

  She sighed and shook her head. ‘Poor Stanley needs to get back. He says he can’t paint here. It’s the wrong atmosphere. And we mustn’t split up the family.’

  ‘Uncle Benjamin is proper family,’ said Roland, towelling his wild hair. ‘Not that oaf over there,’ he muttered, nodding at Stanley, who was performing callisthenics by the pool.

  ‘Roland, stop this, please,’ said Barbara, looking wretched.

  ‘If you really do have to go on Saturday, then we must make the most of the time we have left. Swimming. Picnics. Outings. Yes, when Esmeralda’s back we’ll have a grand outing. How about Friday? Mona will be with us anyway while her aunt is in London,’ said Mr Benjamin.

  ‘Where will we go?’ Bruno asked eagerly, allowing himself to be caught and dried. ‘What’s the furthest place we can go, so it will take up the most time? How about Timbuktu?’

  ‘Excellent idea, Bruno. I’m sure we can go there, and perhaps we’ll stop by Egypt on the way and see the pyramids … And I’ve heard the Taj Mahal is a sight worth seeing, so we’ll put that on our itinerary too. And I’ve always had a yearning to cross the Rocky Mountains. We’re going to have the most exciting trip in the world,’ said Mr Benjamin.

  ‘Don’t, Benjamin, he believes every word you say,’ Barbara remonstrated.

  ‘I shall keep my word, I swear it,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘I know where we’re going!’ said Roland. ‘We’re going to the big Empire Exhibition at Wembley!’

  ‘We are indeed,’ said Mr Benjamin.

  ‘Well, count me out,’ said Stanley rudely. ‘I’m not going anywhere near all those gawping crowds.’

  ‘No one’s asking you to, old chap,’ said Mr Benjamin. ‘Why don’t you and Barbara have a day to yourselves. Lie by the pool and relax. I’ll take the children.’

  ‘That would be heaven,’ said Barbara, ‘but you can’t possibly cope with five children, especially when one of them is Bruno.’

  ‘I won’t be by myself. Ambrose will be coming too,’ said Mr Benjamin.

  ‘Oh no I’m not,’ said Ambrose, appalled. ‘I’m not looking after a parcel of brats. Besides, I went to the exhibition last year. I’ve seen it all.’

  ‘It’s even bigger and better this year, and there’s a new section on interior design, dear chap – right up your street,’ said Mr Benjamin.

  Ambrose didn’t look convinced, but when I went running up to the manor early on Friday morning, he was standing beside the motorcar, yawning and stretching, wearing a green shirt, mustard-yellow jacket and blue trousers. Mr Benjamin was resplendent in an embroidered Indian tunic. Roland wore a blue shirt and grey trousers, with Mr Benjamin’s cream jumper knotted casually around his shoulders. Marcella wore her shimmery green dress, while Bruno was in a striped Breton top, and shorts that showed the scabs on his knees. Then I saw a strange young woman in a very short dress and buttoned satin shoes with spindly heels. She had a brutally bobbed haircut.

  ‘Hurry up, you’re late. We’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.

  It was Esmeralda! She looked so different without her wonderful long fair hair. Her face seemed too big without it – much longer, with too much nose and chin, though her eyes were still blue and beautiful. They were glaring at me now.

  ‘Don’t just stand there gawping,’ she snapped.

  ‘You didn’t recognize Esmeralda at first, did you, Mona?’ said Marcella, jumping up and down. ‘Doesn’t she look grown up? I want a bob too, but Barbara says over her dead body. She practically exploded when she saw Es, and then she rang up Desiree and was so angry.’

  ‘No wonder. Her hair looks awful!’ said Bruno.

  ‘As if I care what you think, scruffy infant,’ said Esmeralda.

  ‘But it does. Don’t you think it looks awful, Mona?’ he asked.

  I swallowed. ‘No, I think it looks very … avant garde.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mr Benjamin. ‘I can’t believe I have such a grown-up niece. I feel I should curtsy to you now, Esmeralda, and call you Madam.’

  ‘Men don’t curtsy, Uncle Benjamin!’ Bruno squealed.

  ‘Let’s all get in the blasted car,’ Ambrose said curtly, clearly fed up with children already.

  It was a struggle fitting us all in. Bruno begged to travel in the luggage rack but was forced into the back with the rest of us. Nigel had been left with Harold, so Bruno insisted that he was now Nigel, and he scrabbled and barked and lay down on top of our feet.

  ‘Get off!’ Esmeralda cried, kicking at him with her pointy shoes.

  ‘Come and sit on my lap, little doggie Bruno, and I’ll feed you a chocolate titbit,’ said Mr Benjamin.

  It was still a squash. Marcella chattered on about Esmeralda’s adventures in London with Desiree, and how some young man at a party had thought her at least eighteen.

  ‘Don’t you think I’ll look older if I get my hair bobbed?’ she said.

  ‘I dare say you’ll look at least fifty, and very beautiful into the bargain, Marcella darling, but do you think you could stay looking like a little girl for a few years?’ said Mr Benjamin. ‘And don’t you go getting any fancy ideas either, Mona.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ said Roland.

  ‘It wouldn’t suit her,’ said Esmeralda.

  ‘It doesn’t suit you eithe