The Charmers (31 page)

Men! Why need there be any?

All they ever seemed to do was to upset things, and women could
get on all light without them;
of course, you had to have them for other things, like looking at bodies when people were murdered, but if there weren’t any men probably no one would get murdered; women weren’t always murdering people …

Murder? What was she thinking of?

Her thoughts were running wild … She deliberately took a hold on herself; she must be ready to face Miss Marriott.

Thank goodness, she thought, she was out today, down at Nigel Rooth’s. No one was at home.

Oh this rain … ‘happy the bride that the sun shines on’ … poor, poor Miss Marriott … and Tom, too … Tom was getting married today …
I’m getting married in the morning
… a pair of them, and both at the church in time. Trust them.

Men
.

Christine slammed the front door so forcibly that the noise seemed to shake the house.

Instantly, she was ashamed. Her gesture seemed silly, having nothing to do with the feeling inside the hall. She stood still for a moment, almost listening—and there was the ‘happy welcome’ as usual, gentle and wooing, laying its silent blessing on heart and spirit and assuring her that anger would pass, but comfort would remain. She went slowly up the stairs.

SHE SAW NOTHING
of her employers until the evening. She almost tip-toed about, dreading to be confronted by some distressed face, but the house remained quiet. Then, suddenly, about six o’clock, everyone seemed to come in flourishing newspapers and exclaiming.

“Christine! Have you seen this?” demanded Mrs. Meredith, coming into the kitchen and thrusting the
Evening Standard
at her, eyes sparkling joyfully with excitement and anticipation of more to come. “Isn’t it—”

“Yes, Mrs. Meredith. I saw it in the local paper, up in the Village,” Christine said, unable, for the life of her, to keep a repressive note out of her voice.

“Well? Isn’t it splendid news? She looks a poppet.” Mrs. Meredith absorbedly studied the bride, who thrust out her bosom as she stood, flourishing a large knife, beside an equally large cake and her new husband. Mr. Lennox looked much as usual. Christine had somehow expected him to look cowed and remorseful; he ought to, goodness knew.

“She looks like a pretty little frog,” Mrs. Meredith pronounced.

“Oh, do you think she’s pretty, Mrs. Meredith?”

“By modern standards—very. A
belle laide
—bouncing with vitality and plenty of mouth. Here … want it?” She tossed the paper on to the table just as Mrs. Traill glided in.

It was plain to Christine, from the first sight of her, that Mrs. Traill was taking it differently. Even the usual walk had been modified and the paper she held out drooped limply, having got wet in the rain.

“I thought you … might … like … to see this, Christine. It might have come as … a bit of a shock. Knowing us all
so
well,” added Mrs. Traill confusedly, as Diana glanced at her in surprise.

“Thank you, Mrs. Traill. It’s very nice of you but I had seen it. This afternoon, up in the Village.”

“I give it eighteen months,” intoned Mrs. Traill, snatching up the other paper and fixing an indignant stare on the wedding group. A descending step on the stair now caused all three, off guard for a second, to exchange lightning glances; the excitement in it was unconscious, but avid as that once greeting the entrance of Christians into the Roman arena.

But it was James.

“Well, what do you think about this?” he demanded of Christine. There is no third evening paper in London now, so at least he could not offer her yet another photograph. “Surprised us all, hasn’t he? Last thing I ever thought … er … pretty little thing, though, don’t you think?” He took up Mrs. Traill’s paper and studied it.

“I don’t admire that style of looks, Mr. Meredith. Piggy little eyes and a huge mouth. I like something more … refined,” Christine said, rushing biscuits away into a tin.

“She does look very common,” Mrs. Meredith said judicially, “but that means nothing nowadays; in fact it’s fashionable. God help us all,” she added, but without emphasis.

“Sexy,” murmured James.

Again, footsteps were heard coming down the stairs, and this time it could only be one person. Her three old friends were temporarily overcome by feelings which, indulged in for thirty years, had become instinctive and quite uncontrollable: malicious interest, and what may be called
gossipry
, and real affectionate concern, and no one said anything. Christine continued to open packets of biscuits, delivered that afternoon by the grocer, and wedge them recklessly into their tins.

But there was more than one person coming down, and the door opened on Miss Marriott accompanied by the un-surnamed Peter and Mr. Herz. She looked—when Christine dared to glance sideways—radiantly cheerful, and was not yet inside the room before she was carolling—“Well! What
news
! Our Clivey!” and everybody began babbling at once. James went off to get some drink.

It was all very well for them to make a mock of Peter, but he remembered to pour a glass for Christine and offer it to her so that she could drink to Mr. Lennox’s health and happiness. Christine, however, did not join in the chorus of voices saying “Clive!” She took a good sip, feeling she owed it to herself, but in her silence she was drinking a toast to Miss Marriott.

This is how a girl ought to behave when she’s been let down, thought Christine. She’s behaving like I did when Moira told me about Tom. Of course I took it quieter, I’m not the exciteable type … and I expect her feelings are hurt, and mine weren’t. Poor Miss Marriott—and looking so pretty this evening, really lovely, not like that little frog-face …
she
looks like a—well, I know I shouldn’t use the word, but she does, really—a tart.

I wouldn’t have thought it of Mr. Lennox.

Everyone present ‘expected her feelings are hurt’, except Peter, who for many years had been mulishly telling himself and all their friends that there was nothing in that old affair between Toni and Clive Lennox (he never suspected that his persistence in calling her ‘Toni’, in spite of her protests, made it even more impossible for her to think of him as a husband), and who was now congratulating himself, as well as Clive. He, Peter, had been right. The older flame had married a sexy little Yank, and was out of the running. The outsider was drawing ahead. Herzy was nowhere; she’d only known him a year.

But Antonia had said to Mr. Herz: “Benny, I know you’ll help me. I do mind. Not lots—my heart isn’t broken—but I do mind a bit. And I’m just going to be as madly gay as I can. Everybody’ll know I mind, but at least I won’t show it. The hell with the lot of them. I adore them but sometimes I wish they weren’t all so frantically interested in us all. You’ll stand by, won’t you, darling?”

Mr. Herz, that clever man, had smiled a little, so that creases came in his soft full dark face, and said, “I will, darling.”

It had sounded … comforting. Warm, and not too easy. She had glanced at him in a little pleased surprise.

But it did hurt, and she did mind, and she tried not to think about that time they had seen the sun come up over London, and not to think about the pressure of Clive’s arm round her shoulders—and, oh!—like a sudden stab from a needle—Italy!
Italy
—when they had both been young!

“Clive!”

She was drinking a great deal of champagne and if tears ran down into it—no, not really, they ran into a hastily-applied handkerchief—well, these were her very old friends, and they would know that a few tears were natural.

In the circumstances.

The next piece of news was that Mr. Lennox, although the show had closed down in America, was not coming back to Pemberton Hall; he and his bride would live and work in the States.

Christine could understand that he might feel ashamed of himself, and also feel that his little frog-face would not fit in well with his old friends. Still, it was sad news.

Mrs. Traill kept up a steady jeremiad against the Lennox-Dettinger marriage, repeating every time the subject came up that she gave it eighteen months. Everyone said, “Oh come, Fabia,” or “Don’t be so dreary, darling”—nevertheless, none of them seemed to feel that
such a dreadful thing
, as Christine thought of it, was out of the question.

Glynnis Lennox came sometimes to see Miss Marriott. She had become ever so grown-up, Christine thought; you would take her for twenty-five rather than not yet eighteen, and she might be overheard speaking of her new stepmother as Zetta; what else could you expect, with the girl only a year or so older?

It all seemed
uncomfortable
to Christine: Mortimer Road had its disadvantages and she was thankful to be out of it, but at least, in
these
matters, you knew where you were in it.

Descending the stairs one day, her eye was caught at once
by
what looked like a scatter of waste-paper in the hall. She exclaimed in annoyance; surely Mr. Banks hadn’t been so careless as to drop a waste-paper basket (it was one of his afternoons for cleaning, she could hear the Hoover going in the Long Room.) Or was it letters?

It was neither; it was no less than twelve postcards, six with one Face on them and six with Another; smaller, local deities as compared with the vast celestial ones that had beamed down over the Square in the late summer.

Elections were like that, Christine thought; they began by reminding you that there was such a thing as politics, with Faces you occasionally saw in the papers, and then they crept up on you, with these other Faces you’d never heard of, much less seen.

But right in your own home—it was too much of a good thing. She slowly stooped and began to gather up the stuff.

“Is that more of their nonsense?” Mrs. Traill asked cheerfully, coming into the hall. “I’m going down—I’ll take it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Traill. Who they think’s got the time to read through all that, I don’t know—as if everybody hadn’t something better to do.”

“I couldn’t agree more … Oh, by the way, Christine …” she hesitated, then went on, “We’re expecting a ’phone call any time, from a Mr. Keiler, an old friend of ours. Would you keep your ears specially open, the next day or so? I’ve got to be out quite a bit.”

“I always do, Mrs. Traill. But I’ll do it specially for the next day or two.”

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Traill wandered away, a slight shade of—compunction, was it?—on her sensitive face. It’s a damned shame, she was thinking, it’s like laying a mine under a nice baby.

Still, they are two of our oldest friends.

The inhabitants of Pemberton Hall sat up determinedly to listen to the results of the General Election, that is, they sat up until about two in the morning, with drinks and sandwiches,
and
grilled kippers and coffee in the Long Room at midnight, but as it became plain that their Party was not going to be returned, they gradually lost interest.

James did point out that if the Party they all dreaded did get in, the size of its majority would strongly influence its policy. But this was too technical for the women, who, groaning in chorus, said that if they were in, they were in, and what did their majority matter? The words “the bit between their teeth” were used more than once by the three pretty, elderly creatures crouched yawning beside the log-fire.