The Charmers (6 page)

“Someone’s come, oh good. I’ll fly up and see who it is. You make the tea,” and Mrs. Traill tottered away.

Christine went back to the kitchen and made tea in an old pot of dented Victorian plate which she took from the enormous dresser. The cups and plates displayed there must belong to Mrs Traill, as the first tenant to establish herself; there-were Spanish lustre saucers, grey and blue dishes from Brittany, a sea-blue jug from Bruges, some Japanese cups of eggshell fragility.

Christine turned each one upside down, curiously examining the marks on their behinds. Mrs. Traill must have Travelled. Then she set them all out on the table; people would be arriving all day, and arrivals always wanted and expected tea.

She was experiencing a faint excitement. The fear and suspicion of unknown people endemic to her home had never infected her, for she had left the nest each morning for thirty-five years to go to a job where she dealt with strangers all day. You got used to meeting people, in business.

But these people were different.

Eighteen, she had been, that first morning at Lloyd and Farmer’s: with her hair—nice hair it was, she had always had a good head of hair—in a shingle, as they called it, and a hat, and gloves, and those pinky silk stockings. 1924. Seemed like another world. But she didn’t feel all that different.

Voices and footsteps coming down the passage. The kitchen door opened, and Christine looked up.

“Ah—tea!” exclaimed James Meredith, “and Miss Smith—how nice to see you both.” He laughed, and his wife, who, Christine saw at once, had been upset by something, gave him a resigned look. “These will come in handy, I hope.”

He put a large carton, crammed with cream buns, on the table, and Diana Meredith sank into a chair, muttering to no one in particular, “Oh good heavens.”

Christine now saw that someone had followed the Merediths down the passage and was standing in the doorway, surveying the room. Mrs. Traill, who was pouring tea, followed the direction of her glance.

“Clive! Darling!” she cried. “Come and have some tea … Miss Smith, this is Clive Lennox …”

“You may have heard of him,” chorused Diana and James, as the actor came forward.

“Yes, she might just have as a schoolgirl,” he said, taking Christine’s hand and gently pressing it while he gazed into her face. “How sweet of you to come and look after us.”

“Of course, I have!” Christine said eagerly. “On T.V. …”

“Oh he doesn’t count that,” cried Diana. “He doesn’t count anything really since Mr.
Melody
, do you, darling?”

“Well hardly that, dear. It would mean I hadn’t worked for fifteen years … Where’s Antonia? Not here yet?” He sat down, and took a cup of tea.

“She’s coming tomorrow evening. She’s in the country for a few days. With … for a day or two.” Mrs. Traill fixed an intent gaze on the cream buns.

“I shall just gulp this and get upstairs. They’ll be putting the heavy stuff in the wrong places. James, I don’t know who you think wants to eat those things at half-past eleven in the morning.”

Diana drained her cup and turned to Christine. “You can give us lunch today, can’t you? We shall be up to our eyes.”

“Yes. I’d thought of that. I’ll go out and shop. Would one o’clock be all right?” asked Christine.

“Perfect.” Diana nodded, adding as if making a concession. “It’s only for today. I expect Fab—Mrs. Traill has told you how we want—how things are to be run, hasn’t she?”

“Very sketchily. But she understands. We’ll work it out as we go.” Mrs. Traill smiled absently towards Christine. “None of us are fussy about food, really. I mean, we shan’t expect marvellous menus, on the occasions when you are kind enough to do us a meal. But—” she glanced round at the company—“and this goes for all of us—we’d sooner have good bread and cheese and coffee, or wine, than hot snacks or endless tea. Or puddings.”

“Here!” James Meredith looked up across his cream buns, “Hands off puddings. I like ’em.”

“We’ll have puddings sometimes,” Christine promised him.

James bowed, smiling, and Clive Lennox said :

“Now, James. Don’t you have any of that, Miss Smith—he’s only making up to you to get all the gravy. I like puddings too. I know you girls—if you’re left to yourselves you’ll live on wet lettuce.”

“Antonia may. I like my food,” said Mrs. Traill.

“Antonia has to think about her figure,” said Diana.

“Oh, what nonsense, Diana. She’s been 34–26–34 since she was seventeen,” Mrs. Traill protested, “though personally I like something up above. It’s more
feminine
,” and James and Clive unsmilingly nodded.

“Work—work,” exclaimed Diana, getting up. “Fabia, has Miss Smith any cash?”

“Oh—no—of course. You’d better all give her something now. We’ll work out details tomorrow.”

In a few moments Christine was in possession of five pounds—“one for Antonia”—and alone in the kitchen with Clive Lennox, who was unhurriedly finishing the cream buns. Mr. Meredith could be heard humming contentedly while he took a refreshing glance over his wine-cellar.

Christine, trying not to show that she was doing so, studied Mr. Lennox. It was her first opportunity to look at the celebrity in the flesh.

And after all he was only an elderly man in a shabby silver-grey suit, with a long actor’s face and dark hair flecked with silver above his big, comic ears. Nothing thrilling about him.

Christine would have found it difficult to say, had she been asked, what she did find thrilling. The beautiful, debauched word meant, to her, things which she found ‘farfetched’ and ‘silly’; those contemptuous Smith expressions applied to suspense plays on television, and other contemporary devices for providing excitement. The thought now slipped through her mind that she had been more thrilled by That Day than by anything else in her life, and she scolded herself. What a thing to be ‘thrilled’ by. She must be going mental.

But the instant this comment from her past made itself heard, she fiercely repudiated it. Nothing—
nothing
was going to spoil the memory of That Day.

SHE GLANCED UP
, and found Mr. Lennox looking at her.

“All a bit strange? You’ll get used to us,” he said, gaily, but gently too.

“I was in business,” was all Christine could say.

“You’ve never done this kind of thing?” The cloud-shadow swiftness of the actor’s responses can be disconcerting: he looked dismayed, but Christine’s own responses were not cloud-like, and she did not notice.

“I helped my mother. I shall get on all right, I’m sure.”

“Of course you will.” Her firm manner and rosy, solid looks reassured him. He held out a cigarette-case which, Christine noticed, bore the sprawled engraved signature
Always—Tasha
, and she took one. He leant gracefully across the table and lit it for her.

“Aren’t you going to sit down?”

“I’ll just wash these up.” She began to collect the cups. “I’m not used to sitting down; in business I was usually on my feet.”

She began swiftly on the work. Mr. Lennox would not want to hear what went on at Lloyd and Farmer’s. (The rarity of this decision, the difference it would make to social life if we all decided that no one wanted to hear about what went on at Lloyd and Farmer’s, quite passed Christine by.)

Clive Lennox, who could not help caressing women with voice and manner, began to chat to her. It was an agreeable sound; his voice rose, fell, hesitated, pounced on a word, rippled. It was like listening to Semprini Serenade on the wireless, thought Christine, with an unaccustomed flight of fancy.

“I expect Fabia told you we’ve all known each other since the Flood? James and I were at school together, and Fabia was on tour with me between the wars—she’s done a bit of
everything
—through her I got to know Antonia Marriott. I’d always kept up with James, he knew a couple of Fabia’s husbands, too … But neither of ’em wanted to come here, thank God,” ended Mr. Lennox with fervour.

A couple …? Christine turned from the dresser to look at him.

“She’s had four. But I’m gossiping. I won’t say ‘forget it all’ because you must have a clue to us … Oh, you’ve finished! And I was so busy cackling I never offered to help you.”

“That’s all right,” Christine said with her cheerful smile. “Talking of helping, I’ve got us a cleaner.”

“Splendid. I’m afraid none of us is very deft with the duster.”

“Er—he’s black. His name’s Mr. Johnson. He’s coming on Monday evening.”

Clive went off into a delighted peal of laughter.

“It can’t be! Massa Johnson! How absolutely perfect.”

“Don’t you mind, then?”

“Of course not. I love nigs; my old father was so fond of nigger stories. So long as he doesn’t strain the coffee through my socks … but I don’t expect you know any of those stories, do you? Before your time. Ah, well. To work, to work.”

He made an airy gesture and stolled out, leaving Christine to bustle calmly around, thinking that Mr. Lennox was nice.

They always say stage people are temperamental, she mused. But he isn’t. Fancy them all being such friends …

Four husbands. None of these people seemed to be what you might call ordinarily married, except the Merediths, and it was plain to see, thought Christine, who wore the trousers
there
.

Who wore the trousers, and to what extent, had been a subject of perennial interest in Mortimer Road. Racialism might burgeon like some monstrous toadstool, earthquakes might shatter cities, newer and more appalling bombs might threaten the globe—the Smiths were more interested—and perhaps on second thoughts are they to be blamed?—in who wore the trousers.

Lunch was eaten hastily and in relays by the party, as no one
could
leave their tasks to spend long over it, and Christine passed the rest of the day in finishing the arranging of her own flat and in shopping for the week-end.

She tramped busily about her three rooms—Christine had not a light step—aware of distant hangings and bumpings all over the house.

Furniture was gradually filling up its rooms; furniture heavy with associations and memories settling down on the uneven old floors and against the walls, curtains draping the long windows with the little panes that window-cleaners call ‘postage-stamps’; an endless roll of drugget, the colour of biscuits, unrolling from Christine’s landing right down the stairs to the hall, with what seems hours of hammering.

There’s a deal of white paint for Mr. Johnson to keep clean, thought Christine, coming down about six o’clock to begin preparing supper.

It’ll show every mark and so will the carpet, but then she thought recklessly that it all looked so nice, a bit of dirt-showing would not matter. The bareness of the walls, and the light colouring everywhere, light yet sober, was most unlike what she had all her life regarded as ‘looking nice’. Yet she liked it; she liked it all, very much.

On the landing that had been allotted to Mrs. Traill, a small table, with a miniature brass fence around its top, stood outside her door, and on it was a large blue-and-white Chinese vase filled with white irises, and as she passed it, two things happened to Christine. She thought that the flowers looked as if they were going to fly away any minute, and she began to tread more lightly.

She did not know that she was doing it. It was an instinct, and she followed it so as not to disturb the quiet. For all the bumpings and hangings had ceased, and the great house was brimming with light and silence.

“Well,” Christine muttered, reaching the hall, “supper.”

While she was busy with her preparations, Mr. Meredith came in and began to chat, in the pauses of strolling in and out of his wine-cellar (Christine could already see that he loved that old wine-cellar).

“It’s such a comfort, having enough room to keep my wine in,” he confided, while she peeled potatoes. “I was brought up in the country in a draughty great place with lots of room for everything, and I’ve never got used to these modern hamster-hutches. My people had to go to Africa when I was about seven, and they handed me over to an old uncle with an even draughtier and larger one,” laughing cheerfully, “What are you giving us? Steak? Oh splendid. We’ll have a Beaune …” and off he went to his cellar, leaving Christine with curious thoughts about dogs.