The Charmers (15 page)

“We shall be sunk anyway if those swine get in in the autumn.” Diana said viciously, lighting her cigarette.

“Well perhaps they won’t … How boring it all is. As if anything mattered but Art and Love!”

Diana, leaning back in her chair, blew out smoke, shook her head, and surveyed her friend affectionately for some seconds in silence.

“Well, are you on?” she asked at last. “I’m only going to show her the lights of London. Half-a-crown, then. Done?”

“Oh, all right. But I do think it’s cruel and unfair … Do you still dislike her?”

“Our Christine? Did I dislike her? Oh yes—I believe I did, just at first. I thought she was typical lower-middle class which is absolutely the type I loathe most, timid and narrow and inhibited, but now I’m not so sure … and she is efficient. It’s because I’m not so sure that I want to try this experiment with the lights. No, I don’t dislike her, now.”

So, that evening after they had finished supper, Diana suggested that she and Christine should go out and look at the lights because it was a wonderful evening, so clear.

Christine followed her, out into the chilly dusk. She was a little surprised by the invitation but was accustomed, by now, to Mrs. Meredith’s moods.

“It’s too small, of course,” Diana said over her shoulder. Country gardens spoil you for town ones … There … just look at that.”

A faint glow, neither green nor yellow, lingered in the garden, as if contained by the walls, and through it the flowers that were white or yellow still glimmered. At the end of the long dim lawn there was the low wall, and beyond it a mighty, sparkling, glittering, twinkling cloud, like the diamanté bosom of some colossal meretricious sorceress—orange, white-gold, silver, and a cold, decadent mauve; alluring, far off—quite, quite unreal. Oh, come on down, said the sorceress, do.

“Very nice,” said Christine, after a pause, and Diana thought,
what did I tell you? Half-a-crown, please
.

Chilled, and mildly irritated, she turned away from the astonishing spectacle.

“Isn’t it strange, this light?” she said, feeling that it was only fair to Mrs. Traill give Christine another chance. “A friend of ours, Maurice Condron, said once that it was like the taste of lemons.”

“Is that the one who wrote that song, who was … He passed over at Calais?”

Diana had shuddered—perhaps at a memory, or at Christine’s phrase. “Yes. (Let’s go in, it’s getting cold.) He was the most wonderful person—nobody could make one laugh as
Maurice
could—except Dick Keiler, perhaps … but not like Maurice.”

Christine heard her sigh.

She had only asked the question about this Maurice, of whom she had already heard something from Glynis Lennox, and in whom she wasn’t much interested, from a sudden fierce instinct of self-defence.

She had wanted to hide from Diana the quick, intense joy that had come upon her at the sight of the afterglow in the garden. Immediately recognized, transforming herself and everything she was conscious of, and welcomed with as near as Christine could aproach to rapture, it was the very emotion of That Day, belonging—but she did not know this—neither to heart nor to senses but to the spirit that had been starved into numbness for nearly half a century.

It lasted for perhaps a few seconds—she did not know how long. Then it had gone, and she was following Mrs. Meredith back to the house and wondering aloud whether they should ask Mr. Johnson to dig the garden? She only hoped, Christine said sensibly, that he had not seen that piece in the papers about those gardeners in Kensington earning a pound an hour.

Yes, it had gone again, just as it had gone when she had seen the snow-laden cedar tree in Hampstead. She turned to take a last look; the light lingered yet, the flowers glimmered through its aquamarine dusk, but where was the delight? She could only remember it; she could no longer feel it.

But it did come, she thought, following the now silent and withdrawn Diana down the stone-paved passage. That’s the second time. It could come again. It’s always there, somewhere, waiting.

Where?

She put the thought from her mind and went back to the kitchen and began on the washing-up.

There was really nothing to think over.

It had come again, and that was a wonderful thing to have happened. She would have liked a walk by herself, over the
Heath
, just to think about it; but it would have been only daydreaming; there was nothing to do, or to decide; that was the delight, but also the strangeness, about this fleeting feeling; she could neither command it to come nor use it in any way when it did.

But she would have liked her solitary walk, and what prevented her from having it was the fact that she was meeting Mr. Richards outside the bus-stop for Kenwood House at three. He had telephoned about nine on the previous evening and made the arrangement.

Across the Square, in her summer coat, hatless, with a white cotton flower in her lapel, carrying her white bag and gloves, she went. It was a fine day and the outing would ‘make a break’. But Mortimer Road was not completely easy in its mind about Mr. Richards. It sensed, from afar, Change, possibly Bother, looming up on some yet distant horizon.

Mr. Richards was at the bus-stop, also hatless—which made him look younger—and wearing a nice grey suit. Christine was pleased to have such an escort; she liked a man to dress well. But she did just wonder what they would find to talk about.

She need not have; Mr. Richards had already been to the house and secured a guide-book and as they walked on under the trees, he gave her an outline of its history. She listened, but with half her mind wondered what he did with himself all day, if he had time to wander round getting guide-books before meeting her at three? He must be still out of a job.

The big, cool house was crowded with visitors, moving slowly past the smiling or pensive Gainsborough beauties and the gleaming furniture; the occasion was not quite so novel to Christine as it would have been six months ago, because she herself now lived in a house with gleaming furniture and beauties, but it was full of interest, and she was enjoying it.

Mr. Richards was easy to get on with, mingling his attention to what there was to see with pleasant general remarks, and while she half-listened to him, she concentrated the other part of her mind on really studying what the girls in the paintings wore. Those corsets! And their shoes looked too tight. But
lovely
materials. She had always had a secret wish to wear a sash.

“Tired?” asked Mr. Richards, as they paused before Lord Leighton’s ‘Orphans’, the little girl in the Kate Greenaway frock nursing an infant rabbit.

“Poor little mite, she does look sad, what a pity he couldn’t have painted her smiling. Not a bit. But I could do with a cup of tea.”

“If he had, there wouldn’t have been any point in the title … and how could he have got the rabbit to smile, anyway?” Mr. Richards was teasing her, and she smiled back at him. “How about going along, then? It’s early, but it won’t be so crowded.”

He gently steered her by her elbow, which she found slightly irritating.

“Now you wait here, Christine, and I’ll go and forage.”

He arranged her at a table, and hastened away. She sat there, staring down at her gloves. ‘Christine’. Fancy … and this was only the first time they had been out. H’m …

The table was one of those set around a small walled garden at the side of the house’s stables. Here a number of people were already drinking tea and eating sausage rolls and fruit salad and watching other people doing the same—with every excuse, for this little garden is a favourite resort of the lively German-Jewish families that live in West Hampstead and Golders Green, and every table had its private operetta.

She took away her fascinated stare from a wonderfully wrinkled face, topped with marigold curls, which was changing its expression every three seconds, and saw Mr. Richards coming across the grass with a laden tray.

“You’re going to call me Tom, aren’t you?” he said, smiling and setting it down. “I’ve already taken the bull by the horns and called you ‘Christine’. Now—will you do the honours, please?”

She had a confused feeling of relief that he had not said
will you be mother
… It would have been … Here, what
is
all this? It’s only because I’m not used to going about with a
man
, she told herself sensibly, and smiled at Mr. Richards—Tom, then—across the teacups.

“I hope you like buns, Christine, buns and butter? Most of the cakes looked rather richer than I thought you would care for. But buns haven’t changed much these forty years. No, they haven’t been able to do much to buns. I’m very partial to a bun and butter.”

So was Christine, and so much better for you than those sickly cakes. Good, hot, strong tea. And then cigarettes.

She listened while he talked.

She had a feeling, as his talk went on, that he was not used to being listened to, because every now and then he stopped, and looked—sort of defiantly—at her. But she did not interrupt, or even comment, but sat opposite to him looking into his eyes with her own cheerful brown ones, and saying nothing.

What came up from Mr. Richards’—Tom’s—talk was a feeling of disapproval—rather bitter, really—about what they had been doing these last years to everything except buns; and a dislike of change, especially change in business methods; and a strong pull backwards towards the world before the war, when times were much harder of course—but money was worth more, and things were more, well, solid.

He had a lot to say about social conditions, then and now, and Christine’s thoughts began to wander, and she had to concentrate so as not to miss any remarks that might reveal what he himself was doing nowadays? (As if anyone cared about the coal-miners in 1937.)

He paused, and drank some tea.

“I was wondering—have you retired completely, then?” asked Christine.

Curiosity impelled her, and the dead hand of Mortimer Road was growing less strong every day.

Mortimer Road would have thought twice about asking that question. It would have been dying to
know
, oh, yes, and why shouldn’t it know, it would have demanded? But it would have felt that such a question, from an unmarried ‘girl’ to a
widower
, might warn him that she was trying to
find out how the land lay
, and so forth.

But Christine thought that he seemed pleased at her taking an interest.

“No, Christine. I’m working four days a week at a business supplies firm at Bow, supervising, and doing some accounting work. It’s quite interesting … The journey across London is terrible, of course, that’s the chief disadvantage—public transport nowadays …”

He was off again. They had done things to public transport.

He grumbles, Mr. Richards—Tom—does, was Christine’s discovery of the afternoon. But she let him go on, feeling that he needed to; also, she was sorry for him. Sorry for Mr. Richards. I never thought I should be that, thought Christine. It just shows.

After what seemed a long time, he calmed down, spoke more quietly, and seemed in better spirits. Got it off his chest, thought Christine—let’s hope. For she quite expected that he was going to ask her out again, and she did not want ‘all this’ every time she sacrificed an afternoon in her dear flat to spend it with him.

“Well! I must have been boring you. It’s too bad—you’ll have to forgive me,” he said, smiling at her. “The fact is I’ve had rather a packet in the last eight months—resigning from the firm, and then my wife … I think everything’s rather got on top of me.”

“I don’t mind. A bit of a grumble does us all good now and then. I know I often have one.”

“I don’t believe you do, Christine. I believe you’re one of the rare ones who are always on top of things. But it doesn’t make you unsympathetic. You’re a good listener.”

Christine glanced across at the nearest German-Jewish face which was being thrust into that of a neighbour at the same table with every appearance of a lifelong hatred about to explode in violence, then down at her gloves.

“I’m naturally strong, I expect. Mother always said I had a very good constitution.” (Yes, and had not Mother also said
you must be imagining it
, if one complained of anything wrong
anywhere
? Luckily, one had never had anything seriously wrong anywhere, and perhaps Mother’s attitude was better than pampering. Perhaps.)