And when that had been told in a simplified version, “Mummy, should I be your little boy, if you’d married someone else?”
Since there seemed some doubt, Peter made haste to assure her, “Dearest, I’m so, so glad.”
In the dancing flames and shadows, Kay would be undressed and popped into the tin-bath while Peter helped. Then, all warm and snuggly, she would be carried to her mother’s bed. In a short time Peter would follow and fall asleep with his arms about her.
Toward midnight he would rouse; the gas was lit and someone was rustling. Looking down the bed, he would see his mother with her gold hair loose about her shoulders. “Hush,” she would whisper, placing her finger against her mouth. So he would lie still, watching her shadow on the walls and ceiling. Again the room was in darkness; his face was hidden in her breast as she clasped him to her. He was thinking how lucky it was that his father had found her.
In the morning Kay would wake them, climbing across their legs or losing herself beneath the bed-clothes. Just to be different from all other mornings, they would have their breakfast before they dressed. What an adventure they made of it and what good times they had!
In after years, looking back, Peter realized what children he had had for parents; they seemed anything but children then. His father was not too old to be a lion on hands and knees beneath the table, trying to catch him as he ran round. At last his mother would cry out, “Billy, dearest, do stop it. You’ll get the boy excited.”
And then there were those empty rooms at the top of the house to be furnished. Peter’s father led him all over London, visiting beery old women and dingy old men, whose shops to the unpracticed eye were stocked with rubbish. Oak paneling, bronzes, French clocks, canvases dim with dirt, were discovered and carried home in triumph. For the canvases frames had to be hunted out; the pursuit was endless. These treasures were driven home in cabs, taking up so much room that Peter had to make himself smaller. Nan would fly to the door as the wheels halted on the Terrace.
“Peter, why did you let him? Oh, Billy, how extravagant!”
“But, my dear, it’s an investment. I paid next to nothing and wouldn’t sell it for a thousand pounds.”
“Couldn’t,” she corrected; but, as was proved later, she was wrong in that.