This is the first time that I am aware of my family and I am now convinced that we are true aristocrats, blue blood of the first water.
Aubrey has children, a boy of twelve, whom I have never met before. A fine boy. I suggest educating him. We talk of it at length and with stress. "Let's keep up family tradition. He may be a member of Parliament or perhaps President. He's a bright boy."
We dig up all the family and discuss them. The uncles in Spain. Why, we Chaplins have populated the earth.
When I came I told Aubrey that I could stay only two hours, but it is 4 a.m. and we are still talking. As we leave Aubrey walks with me toward the Ritz.
We hail a Ford truck on the way and a rather dandified young Johnny, a former officer, gives us a lift.
"Right you are. Jump on."
A new element, these dandies driving trucks, some of them graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, of good families, most of them, impecunious aristocrats. Perhaps it is the best thing that could happen to such families.
This chap is very quiet and gentle. He talks mostly of his truck and his marketing, which he thinks is quite a game. He has been in the grocery business since the war and has never made so much money. We get a good bit of his story as we jolt along in the truck.
He is providing vegetables and fruit for all his friends in Bayswater, and every morning at four o'clock he is on his way to the market. He loves the truck. It is so simple to drive.
"Half a mo." He stops talking and pulls up for petrol at a pretty little white-tiled petrol station. The station is all lit up, though it is but 5 a.m.