The Charmers (22 page)

“Someone did give me a bottle of some stuff for Christmas, and I’m always meaning to use it and I do forget,” said Glynis, laughing.

“There you are, you see.” Antonia was laughing too. “But it isn’t too late for
you
to reform … Now will you be all right with this?” Christine imagined her holding up the box.

“Will it be all right with me, you mean? Oh, yes, someone’s driving me down; I shan’t leave it on a bus.”

Christine was now so absorbed in what was going on that she did not hesitate to look out of her window for a glimpse of ‘someone’, and in a few minutes saw Glynis, re-armoured in jeans and funereal leather, run across the square to a disreputable, rakishly-glamorous vintage car, sitting high on its big wheels, and already looking as if one could say that it ‘belongs to the ages’. A beard was in the driver’s seat, and started into life at sight of Glynis, and Christine lingered to see the box, severely plain but wearing Rooth’s famous summer-sky blue, bestowed in the back seat. And let’s hope oil doesn’t get on to it, for that thing looks as if it would fall to pieces for two pins, she thought, moving away from the window.

Conversation, loud and careless, was still coming up from the flat below, and this time Christine Smith did hesitate about continuing to listen. The presence of youth, and the cheerful, almost public manner of the fitting, had seemed to justify her former eavesdropping by some unstated theory that could not be applied to talk going on between two friends thinking themselves unheard.

Nevertheless, after a moment’s hesitation, she did not shut her door and pick up her magazine. The fact was that her months at Pemberton Hall had given her a deep curiosity, not by any means pure, in the lives and situations of her employers. It was not pure because it was warmed by affection and the
protective
instinct, and the strong wish felt by old-fashioned televiewers and readers and cinema-goers for a ‘happy ending’.

She did very much want to see Miss Marriott safely out of the muddle at Nigel Rooth’s; she earnestly hoped Mrs. Meredith’s pottery would be bought for many ‘pennies’; she wanted Mrs. Traill’s drawings to sell to discerning editors and Mr. Lennox’s show to be a ‘smash hit’.

There were also interesting side developments …

“Oh, she means to have him,” Miss Marriott was saying. “You see, that would mean she needn’t worry about me so much.”

“Does she worry about you?” Mrs. Traill’s tone was sceptical.

“Of course she does. It’s never been fair on her, poor Mummy. First Daddy leaving us so poor—you know how she had to scrape to send me to Claregates—and I loathed it anyway—and then my breaking off
three
engagements and then, when she isn’t even middle-aged any more, all this business starts at Nigel’s, and she has to wonder what’ll happen to me in my old age.”

“What good does she think marrying that old man will do? He must be eighty,” Mrs. Traill said—severely, this time.

“He’s over eighty. But he has got some money, and if she were Lady Belsize she could help me from time to time if I needed it. And her mind would be at rest.”

Christine was trying to imagine Mrs. Traill’s face. She felt sure that it expressed disbelief in Mrs Marriott’s having the kind of mind that needed to be, or could be, at rest.

“It would be fun for her, too,” her daughter went on. “She would love it. And he does need a wife; he’s so old, and he will drag round London to everything that’s on, until he’s utterly worn out and has a stroke. Then he gets better and starts all over again. Mummy wouldn’t let him.”

“But if he
likes
doing it, Antonia …”

“But he doesn’t. When he has a stroke, he’s always saying how nice it is to be in bed and read James Bond … but people will ask him to things and he can’t say ‘no’. And Mummy could give up her work, then. I think it’s a good idea.”

“And you could marry Clive,” Mrs. Traill said. She must have been waiting to get that in.

Silence: dead silence, with a quality in it that was different from the former laughing pauses. Then Miss Marriott said—

“I don’t want to talk about it, Fabia.”

“That’s just your trouble and always has been, not talking about things. You can’t or won’t see that your mind needs the relief of talking. Sometimes I’ve thought of recommending a good analyst—”

“Thank you. I’m not going dotty.”

“Oh, don’t be childish. No one’s talking about going dotty, if you could only face up to that business in Italy, drag it out, and look at it—”

“I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about it.” Christine heard repeated nervous clickings of Miss Marriott’s
luxe
little gold lighter.

“I’m telling you for your own good …”

“Oh, please don’t, please shut up. I do try to think about it sometimes, but I still feel so awful about it. I always loathed the idea of being married. I’m a freak or something. Do you think I don’t know I’m a freak, a kind of joke? That’s why I try not to think about it.” Her voice had grown shriller as the sentences went on, and Christine, listening with slightly open mouth, shook her head.
Least said, soonest mended
.

“But it’s natural, Antonia …” Mrs. Traill began kindly.

“I know it’s natural. I’m not twelve years old, Fabia. I hate it,”—and then, as if suddenly recalling the theory that the best method of defence is attack—“That button! Really, you are quite extraordinary. I simply do not know where you get your things. I believe you get someone to
mould
them for you in some cellar somewhere.”

“It’s a set. I designed them and Kupetsky carved them for me. It’s Japanese cedar. I brought a lump back with me, I adore that smooth grain and the honey colour.”

“It’s—it’s distorted-looking.”

“I meant them to have a Japanese feeling.”

“Well, it certainly has something … I wouldn’t care to say
what
… For God’s sake shall we go to a cinema? You’ve made me feel awful.”

The murmurs that followed were presumably concerned, accompanied as they were by rustlings of a newspaper, with making arrangements for the excursion, and in a moment Christine heard the pair going downstairs—looking, she thought inevitably, like the Long and Short of It. As they passed out of earshot, she heard Miss Marriott say, in a pensive and confidential tone, “You know, it’s funny, but I can talk to Clive. About
anything
else, I mean.” To which Mrs. Traill replied oracularly, “There you are, you see,” before they shut the front door on themselves.

Christine returned to her agreeable pottering about. Though her imagination made no attempt to carry her beyond the flat statement of detestation made by Miss Marriott, she vaguely linked it with her own picture of marriage as being a bother and a nuisance, and she sympathized. People, thought Christine, were always on at you about something. Why couldn’t they leave each other alone?

The enormous question faltered, and died out on the quiet air of her room.

IT HAD BEEN
arranged that Christine should meet Tom at the end of Avalon Road, and, precisely at four o’clock, she was crossing the road leading down into it by the pillar-box, as he had recommended, when she saw him strolling towards her.

He was hatless, as usual, and wearing a more domestic air than commonly because of an old green tweed jacket with bits of leather on its elbows. And his trousers seriously needed pressing and his hair was standing on end, and it could not be called a good beginning to the festivities that Christine’s immediate thought was that he looked a regular sight.

The relaxed mood of Sunday afternoon had not been permitted to touch herself; a polished cotton two-piece
had
been pressed, and a coffee stain almost successfully removed with a patent fluid, and the second pair of white gloves was on duty.

“Hul-lo!” exclaimed Tom, smiling so kindly and with such pleasure at the sight of her that she felt a little ashamed. “Why, Chris, you do look smart. I like all those strong clear colours. You make me think of a Gauguin.”

Christine smiled, pleased, as they walked on together; she had an idea that a Gauguin was some kind of foreign bird, but the open admiration was welcome. No, she was not nervous, she knew that she looked her best, and if old Moira didn’t like her, she could do the other thing. They talked animatedly, as they approached the gate of Number Twenty-Four.

This was the old part of the widening, ever-developing suburb; three or four streets of two-storey smallish houses built in a dark brown brick, with white quoins and gables shaded by sycamores, and separated from one another by enough space to give just a little of the dignity of privacy. It was all very Smith; these houses were like smaller versions of Number Forty-Five, and, almost against her will, Christine began to
feel
on her guard. She deliberately began to think about the space and airy silence and beauty of Pemberton Hall.

But when Tom stopped at the shabby green gate, being guarded—and Pemberton Hall—slipped completely from her mind. For here, in a plot of ground some eighteen feet by fifteen, were two solid sheets of cream snapdragons and an old, gnarled, knotted jasmine wrapping and shading the walls of the house with its lacy foliage and white stars. There was no grass plot, no other colours.

Christine lingered, staring, but all she could find to say was: “What an effective garden. Quite original …”

“Ah, I thought you’d like that; that’s old Frank’s fine Italian hand. He’s a great gardener. You must tell him you approve, it’ll quite win his heart.”

I don’t want to win it, thought Christine, determined not to be sucked back into the strong Mortimer Road atmosphere; and, a figure at that moment opening the front-door who must be Moira, it was instantly eclipsed by a large clean boy in a large clean shirt, who darrted out in front of it shouting, “Hullo, Uncle Tom, hullo Chris, I can’t stop, I’m sorry,” and, precipitating himself upon a moped leaning against the hedge, shot away.

Tom was still muttering, “Noisy young beggar,” as Moira came towards them, smiling and saying, “Hullo, Chris, You don’t mind me calling you, Chris, do you—I’ve heard so much about you.”

Moira was not like what Christine had expected.

The bustle and high colour and loud managing voice which she associated with a three-day cake-baker were notably absent; Moira was small, with an ordinary figure and wearing the usual flowered summer dress; she had a round, reddish, unlined face surrounded by coarse, drooping grey curls, and her eyes looked large and light behind thick lenses. Christine was again slightly thrown off her guard. She shook hands and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” and smiled, but felt that her armour for getting through the afternoon must be redoubled; she followed Moira and Tom into a room at the back of the house overlooking the garden in some confusion.

The room was another surprise. Its shady length ended in French windows curtained in a soothing rose-coloured and grey chintz, and there were many flowers: it was an unexpected kind of room to find in such a Mortimer Road kind of house, and it increased her bewilderment. But—

“What a pretty room,” she said at once, looking admiringly around.

“Ah, that’s Moira.” Tom glanced at his sister. “She took a course in Home Decoration last year, one of those Evening School affairs.”

“But you’d better tell Chris that I walked out after the third lesson. It was all too cut-and-dried for me; I like to choose things that
I
like. But I did pick up a few hints. And the teacher was very nice.”

She laughed; a longer and a lighter laugh than Christine was accustomed to hear at Pemberton Hall, where people tended either to be lengthily convulsed over some communal private joke or not to laugh at all. Moira was one of those people who often laugh, as Christine found out during her visit: she laughed again when, excusing herself to go and get the tea because Christine, she knew, must be ready for a cup after that long journey, she indicated a distant figure at work in the garden.

“That’s Frank,” she said. “My husband. You’ll have to excuse him, Chris. He never comes in to Sunday tea; he likes to be in the garden all day Sunday. I even take his lunch out to him. Now you make yourself at home, I shan’t be a tick.”

Christine sat rather far forward on her chair, trying to imagine what would have happened had anyone at Mortimer Road suggested Father’s having Sunday lunch in the garden—but the newly-developing faculty failed her and she turned to wondering if certain undecided gestures being made by the form in the greenhouse were intended for gestures of greeting to herself? Presently, doubt was set at rest.

“Old Frank’s waving to you,” said Tom, who had collapsed on to a sofa, and looked, in this setting, decidedly scruffy.

“Oh,” Christine firmly returned the wave, in a hand holding a white glove; she had just been slipping them into her bag,
and
, instantly, all signs of communication from the other figure ceased.

“He must be quite a character,” she ventured at last, “having Sunday lunch in the garden.”

“No,” said Tom, after a pause, “no, I wouldn’t say a character. He likes his own way, though.”

Christine allowed her eyes to dwell pensively upon Tom. It seemed ages since he had been Mr. Richards and those shoes were past a joke, and he, too, she suspected, liked his own way. She preferred him as he had seemed to her in the old days. That, she was quite certain about.