The Charmers (7 page)

A glance at the bottles he was carrying when he returned settled her peculiar thoughts. Beaune. So that was how you said it.

“Shall we have some light?” said he.

“A little light on the subject,” said Christine, which was one of the things they had always said at home, and he laughed.

She did not know how few men there were in London, with James’s background, who would have. But when he switched on the lamp standing on the big table (it really was a Victorian one, Mrs. Traill had explained, with its brass bowl and glass shade repaired and polished and wired for electricity), she did think the brilliant light showed a face lacking certain qualities that she was accustomed to seeing in the faces of the middle-aged men who came into Lloyd and Farmer’s.

Mr. Richards’ face had not looked like those others, either. She was still seeking a name for what was in the two faces, when Diana came in.

“Oh, Miss Smith,” she began at once, huddling a stole about herself while her narrow turquoise eyes stared full at Christine. “Mrs. Traill tells me you’ve got a black to clean for us. How
could
you? They’re as unsatisfactory as they can be—childish and dishonest and uppity—if you’d lived in Africa …”

Christine was not taken aback by what sounded to her like nonsense; they hadn’t even seen the man yet.

“Suppose we see how he gets on,” she said equably. “I know some folks don’t like coloured people …”

“A good many folks,” Diana muttered.

“—But if he’s a good cleaner we shall be lucky; they’re very
difficult
to get, these days,” Christine went on, recalling various confidences from acquaintances, “and he can always keep out of your way. He’ll be coming evenings, anyway.”

“I did think I had seen the last of them in the house when we came Home. In Kenya you
had
to have them, of course, but I never got over feeling there was a nest of snakes in the kitchen.”

“Oh, come, sweetie,” said James.

“Is she carrying on about our Massa Johnson?” demanded Clive coming in. He was followed by Mrs. Traill, in a white sweater and more disgruntled jewellery, who said, “Oh, be your age, Diana. They’re wonderful people, full of colour and gaiety, and so
vital
.”

“You haven’t lived in Africa.”

“I shall soon feel I have, if I hear that again … I think Massa Johnson will be a nice addition to our establishment,” Mrs. Traill ended gaily.

“It’s ready,” Christine said, and added to soothe Mrs. Meredith as she put hot plates on the table, “perhaps he won’t turn up.”

Her own experience of cleaners was almost confined to this fact, which she had picked up from various customers in the shop: swore she’d be there by ten sharp, knew I was desperate, seemed to take to the place: never turned up.

“Oh I do hope he will—you must have someone,” Diana exclaimed, with one of her lightning changes of mood. “That would never do … I expect I’ll get used to him.” She smiled, the irritated expression fading.

“Beaune, sweetie,” said James, hovering with his bottle.

“Antonia telephoned,” announced Mrs. Traill, when all had been peacefully eating for some moments. “She’ll be here this evening. She’s got a cold.”

Christine was surprised at the effect of this announcement. James whistled and appeared perturbed, Diana groaned and muttered, “Of
course
,” and Clive Lennox said, “Poor angel.” Mrs. Traill herself looked solemn, as though proclaiming some crisis of the global type.

“What time is she coming?” asked Clive next. “I might run down and meet her.”

“Oh, rubbish, Peter’s there, isn’t he? Let him cope with her.”

“He said she got no sleep last night. They ran out of petrol.”

“They
what
?” Diana shrieked.

Mrs. Traill shrugged. “That’s what he said. I couldn’t hear properly, the line was bad.”

‘What I
cannot
stand about Antonia’s colds,” Diana said vigorously, “is her never getting them in the nose. Other people do, they drip and look red and sore, but not Antonia. She just
caws
at you attractively—like Tallulah used to. Remember Tallulah in ‘Scotch Mist’, Fabia?”

“Yes. But that—last night, I mean—wasn’t like …” Mrs. Traill’s sentence tailed off and she bit on a piece of toast, looking conscious. Diana just glanced at Christine.

“Where was he calling from,” asked Clive, after a small silence.

“Some place on Exmoor, I gathered.”

“
What
a fool the man is. Surely he knows by now she loathes the country,” said Diana.

“There is always hope—‘unfortunately’, as poor Wilde said.” Clive got up from the table. “I want a paper. Coming, James?”

“You may have to go down to the tube station, Mr. Meredith,” warned Christine, “the paper-shops both shut at half-past five.”

“Never mind, a walk will do our figures good, won’t it, James?” They went out together, saying they might find a chemist’s, and lay in a good stock of ‘the usual things’ for Antonia’s cold.

“She often gets them before a show,” Mrs. Traill said to Christine, when the ladies were alone and rather languidly beginning on fruit, cigarettes and coffee. (“What a trial they are, going off like that; I haven’t talked to Clive for ages) And on Monday it’s the Spring one.”

“A dress show?” asked Christine, interested.

“At Nigel Rooth’s, yes. Antonia usually works them out to the last tiny detail and then goes away for the week-end before the opening; Nigel R. nearly expired on the spot the first time she did it, but now he’s used to it. They both say it’s good for the staff, makes them responsible and so forth.”

“I shouldn’t feel safe, leaving it all to bits of girls,” Christine said.

“Oh, Nigel R. will be very much there, don’t you fret, and they aren’t all girls, some of them are quite elderly.”

“But if she gets this cold, worrying about it—” Christine knew about psychological ailments, thanks to many a tedious half-hour spent listening to her brother Garfield.

“Oh, she doesn’t get them over
that
.” Mrs. Traill’s tone had become meaningful and her expression what Christine called ‘
kind-of-churchy
’. “They’re an expression of subconscious resentment. She resents her job and wants to give it up and flop on some man.”

“Rubbish,” said Diana, beginning to peel a plum. “This time, whatever reason she gives for catching it, we all know what she’s worrying about.” She looked across at Fabia and nodded. “Ferenc Briggs. Nothing subconscious about him.”

Mrs. Traill sighed and looked distressed. “Poor sweetie, it is hard luck.”

“Not if you’re right, Fabia,” Diana said, and something in the gleam of her eye and the ring in her tone caused Christine, who was listening a little bemusedly, to let her eye wander to the fast-emptying second wine bottle. “If you’re right, she’ll be relieved when the break comes and Ferenc’s got her job. Then she can relax, and fall back into the arms of Peter—”

“He’d overbalance,” gurgled Mrs. Traill, refilling her glass and her friend’s.

“Well—Peter or someone. She’s always got a number of them floating around.”

“Clive,” droned Mrs. Traill, so quietly that Christine was not quite sure she had heard the name.

“Don’t tell me that’s starting up again!” Diana said sharply, widening the turquoises.

“Oh, I think so. Didn’t you notice various things this evening?”

“No, I did not. It’s all your artistic imagination—I hope to God not, anyway. Shall you ever forget the time we all had? I did think—you know—when I heard he was coming here—jolly good having old Clive around, but if she’s going to be here too—”

Mrs. Traill only nodded, and seemed suddenly to realise that Christine was looking from one lined, lively face to the other, as the talk went on, with the absorbed expression of a spectator at a tennis match.

“What a heavenly colour,” Mrs. Traill observed, just touching the largest of the bloomy plums in their plaited wicker basket. “True amber.”

“I’m glad you like them, I got them in the Village,” Christine said eagerly. “Two-and-three the pound. Expensive, I know, but the flavour’s good, isn’t it?”

“Delicious.” Diana gave a small yawn. “And so was the salad. Congratulations. Of course, you can’t go wrong if you pay enough for steak.”

Christine felt gratified. She dismissed the little dig by reminding herself of Mr. Lucas at Lloyd and Farmer’s, for whom nothing that had ever gone right had done so because of someone’s individual effort. Mrs. Meredith was going to be the one to complain, if anyone did.

Christine’s salad had been chosen from a booklet called
Twenty Salads That Are Different
, given away with a woman’s magazine she took in which encouraged its readers to make their cookery exciting, in face of a steely resistance from husbands who preferred it dull.

She had always enjoyed reading these recipes. At Mortimer Road, appetite had been governed by a mysterious quality called Fancy (dimly related, possibly, to what it was always telling people to do, though there was precious little Fancy flitting about those rooms) and sometimes you couldn’t Fancy an apparently tasty piece of haddock or came home
with
a huge sickly pastry because you just Fancied it. In general, food was pushed about on plates and a surprisingly large amount of it was wasted. Tea, of course, had a place of its own; should you suffer from any minor disablement that left you without a relish for tea, this was regarded seriously—“
Even tea
didn’t taste right.”

Diana refilled their glasses, passing over Christine’s at a murmur of “Oh—no more for me, thank you—I couldn’t.”

“That’s what comes of that kind of relationship, of course,” said Mrs. Traill, with her full glass held at her lips, looking pensively over the top. “Antonia and Nigel R., I mean. It’s all right for twenty years because their—their individual oddities happen to fit in, and then suddenly along comes someone like Ferenc and bowls Nigel over and Antonia’s had it, both as a woman
and
as a designer.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t care as a woman, Fabia. She’s very fond of Nigel R. but she isn’t blind to his what you call oddities; I’ve heard her laughing at them.”

“Perhaps not, but she jolly well cares as a designer. And it’s all the worse because she thinks Ferenc is a bad designer. Her pride’s hurt and she’s afraid of the future—she’s our age remember—and I’m sure she’s afraid for the House of Rooth, too. She thinks Ferenc’s going to ruin it.”

“He won’t necessarily. I like Antonia’s things, as you know, and I like Nigel’s whole style. He makes clothes for ladies. But we’re getting to be an extinct race.” Diana refilled their glasses, “and he’ll have to keep up with the times or go under. Ferenc will keep him ‘with it’. I don’t see why he should ‘ruin’ anything.”

“Perhaps she’d sooner it
was
ruined than take second place as a designer and see Nigel Rooth’s swamped by kooky clothes.”

“Then she’s very immature, isn’t she? But, of course we both know that about our Antonia. She’s very immature. I don’t agree with you about her longing to retire; I think she adores it and it’s her whole life—”

“And
I
think she won’t face the fact that she’s simply dying to settle down and have some man take care of her.”

The last words floated rather than sounded, on the warm, drowsing air of the old room. Christine felt a faint sensation, too far-off, too slight, to be named pain. Diana was leaning back, looking thoughtfully down into her glass.

“It’s just a question of finding the right man,” said Mrs. Traill, wagging her head. She turned her large, now gently-swimming eyes slowly on Christine. “We don’t want to make a mystery out of anything,” she went on. “Darling Antonia, Miss Marriott, doesn’t like being—er—married.” She giggled abruptly.

Mortimer Road was for the moment completely in charge of its child, and all that Christine could offer was a small nod while she tried to keep her mouth from falling open. You read about such things, of course. But she was Miss Marriott. Oh, perhaps that was only the name she used in business, like Miss Owen at Lloyd and Farmer’s who had really been Mrs. Jones? But how did they know she didn’t like it? This lot seemed to know everything about each other. And who, if she was married, was she married to? And where was he? Or, perhaps she’s divorced. That’s it, Christine thought.

Mrs. Traill was sipping from her refilled glass and going on with the head-wagging.

“It’s prevented her from being quite normal—”

“Everybody isn’t like you, darling,” Diana struck in, on a note of pure—could it be spite? Christine stared at her. “I still think a lot of it’s due to that ghastly mother of hers.”

“Oh now, Diana. I’ve always rather liked Mrs. Marriott.”

“She encourages people to be shallow and frivolous—”

“Hark who’s talking! Who won’t even
discuss
apartheid?”

“I won’t discuss it because there’s nothing to discuss. Unless you’ve actually
lived
in Africa …”