The Charmers (12 page)

It had struck Christine before now that so far as Mrs. Traill
was
concerned there was only one way of living, and looking, and thinking, and that was Mrs. Traill’s.

She condemned in others what she approved in herself; rebuking the yet-unseen Glynis for thinness, for example, while keeping the severest watch on her own exiguous waist and hips, and wagging her head dolorously if, at the end of each week’s ritual weighing, she had put on an ounce. And what could be less feminine than her trousers, and her sombrely-hued old men’s shirts, and her jerkins embroidered by peasants in whom the traditional merriment had died some collective death?

Yet she had had four husbands. There must be
something
that attracted them, thought Christine, who described as
not exactly pretty
Mrs. Traill’s face, with its brown bulging brow, and heavy-lidded grey eyes and mouth shaped like a bow, unpainted and serene, all framed in the fleece of wanton silver hair.

When Christine came into the Long Room about nine o’clock on Sunday evening, her first thought was one of self-congratulation.

Under protest, she had spent the larger part of the day polishing, and dusting, and arranging the claw-legged table with its load of bottles and what to her seemed a thin display of tiny biscuits and scraps of strongly-flavoured foods. But there were flowers and flowers. She had spent three hours, picking and arranging them; and gleams from burnished silver here and there, and a warm apricot light from many little lamps lying along the walls. The long curtains at the windows were not drawn.

She had remained upstairs, changing her dress, while the company arrived. There were only five of them, beside her employers, and everybody was sitting in an informal circle before the fireplace hidden in lilac and young fern; there was a scent from the lilac, and the light rise and fall of voices, and laughter.

Christine sidled in, so far as a large person could sidle, and,
excited
and full of pleasant anticipation, took a chair next to a wall slightly outside the circle. A large dark man in evening-dress with a red carnation in his buttonhole at once turned his head to stare at her, with a look of open interest.

“Ah …” said Clive Lennox, in a tone that welcomed her pleasantly, and turning from where he stood pouring out something beside the table to smile at her, “here’s Christine … she’s kind enough to look after us all.”

“Keeps us in order, don’t you, Christine.”

“Won’t stand any nonsense,” said Diana Meredith, winking.

“It’s utter bliss, we never have to think about a thing,” muttered Antonia mechanically; she was almost lying on the sofa beside the dark man who had stared at Christine, with his fingers just touching her wrist.

“Now, dear, what will you drink?’ asked Clive.

Christine said in her usual clear voice that she would like a gin and orange, please, and Clive poured it out and handed it to one of the guests, a man whom Christine thought looked like an actor, to pass to her.

She did not, now, feel as confident as she had sounded, for the friendly murmurs that had followed her general introduction had been pierced on their conclusion by one sharp little voice. It suggested the yap of a Pekinese, and what it had said was: “How do you do, Miss Smith.” It came from a small shape in a light dress who sat on the other side of Antonia.

Near the fireplace, on a tuffet, sat another shape, consisting chiefly of long, long dark boots and long, long dark hair. The boots were drawn up almost to its chin. The eyes were cast down. The hands were clasped between the knees and the whole pose suggested suffering mutely borne.

Christine sat sipping her gin and orange, which Clive had made enjoyably strong, and found to her satisfaction that she could stare as much as she liked, because no one now was looking at her or taking any notice of her.

They were talking about Noël Coward.

“Surely by now he doesn’t care what the critics say? People will go to see him anyway; our generation because we adore
him
and he talks our language and the young ones—those of them who care about the theatre—because he’s becoming a classic,” said Diana.

“No one likes bad notices,” said another man who also diffused an atmosphere of the stage; that is to say, he was livelier and better-groomed and handled his voice in a way that was different from most people’s. “When you’re in something by Noël, it’s those catty remarks sending up the book.”

“
Have
you much to do in it, darling? I’ve been in such a rush, I’ve never taken it all in,” sighed Antonia, turning to Clive.

“Only second-lead, dear,” he said mildly. But Christine noticed that his eyes wandered always back to her; away to his daughter, then moving from one guest to another to make sure everyone’s glass was full, but always back to Antonia, in her black chiffon sheath that broke into a mermaid’s tail of frills just below her knees.

“I did tell you,” he murmured, and she turned to him with a remorseful smile.

“Always so good, isn’t he, to people who’ve been in his shows before,” said Diana.

“Well, thank you, love, I was hoping I’d got the job on my merits—poor things, but mine own,” Clive said.

“Don’t be so touchy, darling!” suddenly cried Antonia ringingly. “Peter, get me a drink, I’m as dry as bones.”

Yes. Peter was there, pink in white tie and tails, sitting rather out of the circle, just as Christine was, and doing more listening and looking than talking. They hadn’t even troubled to let her know that he was coming, and they were always making fun of him, he was one of their perpetual jokes, like Amanda and her mother-in-law. But Christine, without any reason, liked him.

He now got up and went across to the table and competently prepared the drink which Antonia instructed him about in the same carrying, impatient voice.

“Well mixed, brother,” said James.

“Ha, that’s experience,” said Peter, carrying the full glass deftly across the room. “I usually end up doing this at parties.
Often
thought if that lot gets in and taxes us out of existence in the autumn, I’ll get a job as a barman.”

“Think they will?”

“Get in? Haven’t a clue. Hope to God not, anyway.” He sat down in his corner and began again to look at Antonia.

She, sipping at her glass, had turned away from the party and was listening to the little woman next to her, who, Christine supposed, must be the famous Mrs. Marriott, the gossip-writer.

She not only sounded like a Pekinese but looked rather like one, with her short, round-eyed, snub-nosed face, if a Pekinese can be imagined wearing a shift-dress of oatmeal-tinted brocade and a gauze scarf. Her hair was dressed in frizzy blue curls and there were six rows of pearls clasped tightly about her neck. That’s to hide it, thought Christine, she must be getting on. But she’s ever so smart.

The conversation was absorbingly interesting to her.

“… the Braithewaites, and Colonel Lester (their girl’s just off to the Sorbonne). Then on Wednesday I flew up to Gail-glass for young Hugh’s twenty-first, fireworks and a barbecue with a whole sheep and Games the next day. And we danced till four, then back here for Lady Muir’s dance for Katherine, and Susan Gillespie …”

It sounded an unbelievable kind of life, flying off to parties in grand houses and writing about them afterwards.

The two actors and Clive were talking in a group by themselves—animatedly and with frequent bursts of laughter, and Mrs. Traill, who this evening wore a drab hessian shift with buttons like pebbles and more pebbles in her ears, after listening smilingly to their talk for a little while, joined them, and the laughter became more frequent; Christine remembered Clive saying that Mrs. Traill had been on tour with him “between the wars”; the group would have something in common.

Diana and James had drawn Peter from his corner and were talking with him about cars; only she, and Glynis, and the big dark man next to Antonia, were out of it for a brief moment; silent, not laughing.

“The flowers are simply delicious,” he suddenly called across to her. “Who arranged them? You?”

Christine smiled and nodded.

“At least …” he edged a little nearer to her, lessening the distance, “they aren’t arranged at all; they’re divinely natural. Of course, you’ve never been to one of those awful places where they teach you to bunch up chicken-wire and ‘balance values’, have you?”

“Oh no. I just—but I’ve always thought it would be nice to understand how to arrange them properly,” said Christine, glowing under the interest in the heavy dark face and the kindness in the pouched, bloodshot eyes. He threw up his hands.

“
Oh
, my God. Now promise me you’ll never have any lessons. If you knew how refreshing those great country bunches are—and the grass, the grass was an inspiration, I wish you could come down to my showrooms and arrange the flowers for me, the people who do it never seem to get them quite right … promise me you won’t waste your money on lessons,” he implored, leaning towards her. She almost felt the faint heat from his thick body, coming at her across the gap that separated them, and was a little embarrassed by his intense manner.

“All right,” she said, laughing, “I won’t.”

“Darling …” said Antonia, turning her head, “what are you going on at Christine about … the flowers? Aren’t they lovely, she’s our clever girl, aren’t you?” smiling at Christine. He had taken out a flat gold watch and was looking at it. “And you can put that away, Nigel. It isn’t ten yet.”

“I know, darling, I’m desolate at having to, but honestly I must. You know what he’s like if one’s late. So touchy. I sometimes feel if I have to take one more scene I shall quietly
die
.”

This conversation went on in a rapid undertone, while the two pairs of eyes, the large sapphire ones and those small and richly grey as water-rinsed pebbles stared into each other and painfully smiled.

“Why take them at all?”

“Now, darling … How many more times have we got to have this one out?”

“Well at least say something to the child. It’s supposed to be her party.”

He glanced across the room to where Glynis Lennox, roused from apparent dozing by the conversation between Mrs. Traill and the three actors, was now sitting upright on her tuffet and listening with a solemn expression.

“Why in God’s name does she dress like that? It’s an outrage. She’s exactly like that early photograph of Mrs. Pat that used to be in my mother’s sitting-room. She could look wonderful.”

“Go and tell her so. Clive adores her but I can’t get near her; those clothes put me off so.”

“All right. But then I really must run.”

He got up heavily—Christine’s first thought about him had been that here was a man giving much time and planning to not looking elderly—and went across the room to Glynis and squatted in front of her. Her enormous dark eyes flew round and fitted themselves, startled, on his face.

“Have you ever heard of an actress called Mrs. Pat Campbell?” he demanded.

“Of course. Paula Tanqueray.” Glynis retorted, so clearly that most people stopped talking and turned towards them.

“You’re exactly like her. But exactly. My mother had a big photograph of her in her sitting-room and I used to worship it when I was six … Now if I make you a red dress, very dark red, and give it you for a present, will you burn those truly terrible boots and wear it?”

“Yes, I will. And thank you very much,” she said, keeping her eyes on his face. Her tone was rather cold.

“I should like to make it à
la princesse
. But if I did I suppose you wouldn’t have the guts to wear it. Or would you?”

“Yes, I would,” she said.

“Without knowing what à
la princesse
means?” beginning to smile.

For the first time, Glynis’s composure wavered slightly. “I—
isn
’t it fitting to the body, without a join at the waist?” she asked, also beginning to smile.

“That’s right, put briefly.” He struggled up; the squatting position had been trying. “It’s a romantic fashion; and you’ll look as if you were in fancy dress. But you’ll also look like Mrs. Pat come to life again … I’ll put ruching at the neck, a low neck, and elbow sleeves, very puffed … and you’ll wear it? Promise?”

She nodded, laughing. Everybody had crowded round them, and someone started to clap. Rooth bowed ironically. “Thank you, thank you one and all, ladies and gentlemen, and goodnight. Sweet Antonia, sweet Fabia, sweet Diana, thank you for a lovely party. Good-night, young Stella,” to Glynis.