The Charmers (11 page)

Christine’s family had been quite content to let her settle into her new life without telephoning or visiting them. They had been mildly uneasy about her, what with her rushing off to live in that run-down place and then going to work for artists, but the news that she would have a flat set their minds at rest; it was her first home of her own, she would have more than enough to do, and could be left alone until some family occasion demanded her presence.

One now presented itself; the wedding of that Michael who was the son of Christine’s sister Mary; and Mary wrote to her sister, enclosing an invitation and asking at the end of her note how Christine was getting along?

Christine was too much her family’s product not to answer almost immediately, but she confined her reply to the casual question in a couple of lines, saying she was getting along all right: she wanted, very much, to avoid hinting at the new world that was opening before her.

She did not miss her family. She had always felt herself to be the odd-woman-out in the home circle, the one who was unlikely to marry, and could be relied upon to look after Mother and Father and keep them supplied with electric kettles and toasters until they subsided into their graves; and her new employers were the last kind of people to arouse family memories or domestic reveries. They none of them seemed to have any family, except Miss Marriott, whose mother, it appeared, wrote a gossip column in one of the high-class magazines.

“Awful snobbish nonsense, of course,” Mrs. Traill had observed to Christine, when this lady’s name had come up in conversation during one of the communal meals, and Christine had afterwards ventured some interested questions. “All about the Hon. This and Lady the Other and the Biggleton-Buswaites … She’s getting on now, of course, she’s like the
chicken
in that nigger-story of Clive’s—‘litle, but dam’ ole’ but she still gets around—Bermuda, Fez, everywhere. Like me. Diana can’t stand her, says she’s ruined Antonia’s life.”

This was purest Romance to Christine. Again and again, she marvelled at her luck in finding a home amongst such glamorous people.

She gathered from remarks dropped between the friends that Mrs. Traill had been too busy travelling all over the world, marrying her husbands and buying her Mexican sandals and Javanese pottery, even to pause and have a baby. Mr. Lennox did have this daughter, Glynis, who was only seventeen and had recently got herself accepted at some school for training actresses where it was very difficult to get in. But the Merediths, who were just the kind of people you might expect to have grown-up, even married, sons and daughters, apparently had none, and Miss Marriott—well, there were mysteries about her. Christine found this family-less state unusual, and far more interesting than the stifling family-atmosphere she had all her life been used to.

The wedding-day was bright and fair, and the ceremony was held—in a church, of course—at a suburb near Hendon.

Most of the large Smith family into which Christine had been born was there, and a number of their very old friends. The bride looked sweet and the bridegroom looked a fool, which is what Smiths expect and like at weddings.

Christine’s thoughts about Mortimer Road had become increasingly clear—and resentful—during her time at Pemberton Hall. Once or twice she found the words
wasted my life in that place
going through her head. But, although she compared her new employers with the Smiths gathered at the wedding, and even found the words
nicer
and
more kind of intelligent
to describe the former, and even though they seemed in some way closer to That Day than Smiths, she came away from the reception feeling cheerful, and fond of them all.

It was the cosy Smith atmosphere. Once your feet had been caught in it, perhaps you never quite got them free.

Having briskly declined the offer of a lift from some cousins, she set out on an enjoyable homeward journey by bus; through roads of newish houses where many trees, and small gardens filled with brilliant flowers surrounding tiny lawns, gave an agreeable, and quite false, rural impression. The warm wind blew in through the windows, the sky was all blue except for swathes of ravelled white cloud floating high, and on the horizon dark trees, gathered together by distance, might have been a real forest.

The bus stopped—at a Request, Christine noticed, because this was the kind of thing she did notice (she would have made a first-class witness)—and some people came up the stairs and one of them was Mr. Richards, from the office; from Lloyd and Farmer’s.

Christine was so surprised that she felt quite a shock. It was Mr. Richards, she never had an instant’s doubt. But he did look pale and tired. Perhaps he had been ill.

She was sitting in the back seat near the stairs, and when he half-turned to make certain of catching the conductor’s eye and hand him the fare—that was like him, he was always a one for quiet efficiency—he saw Christine.

He looked surprised, and he smiled and raised his hat (Mr. Richards had the habits of one over fifty years old) but he finished giving his fare, and getting his change, and counting it, and putting it away in a small purse, before he spoke to her.

“Miss Smith! What are you doing here? Do you live in this part of the world?”

“No, I’ve been to my nephew’s wedding. Do you live near here, Mr. Richards?”

“No, I’m staying with some relations … er …” At this moment the man sitting next to Christine got up and went down the stairs and Mr. Richards said masterfully, “I’ll come and sit next to you …” and moved adroitly into the place, adding with a laugh, “that is … if I may?”

Christine laughed too. But she thought that this had not
been
the way of Mr. Richards in the office. Kind he always had been, especially on that morning when he had had to break the news to her. But not one for jokes.

“And what are you doing?” he went on. “I don’t expect you had any difficulty about getting another job.”

This was part of the kindness, because he must have known, better than most, that women over fifty did not find it easy to get another job. But she could answer cheerfully, and did, explaining what she was doing and where, and adding that Pemberton Hall was a fine old place.

Then she said, after he had commented that it all sounded satisfactory and he was glad she was well placed … “And how is Lloyd and Farmer’s?”

She spoke with a playfulness which she would never have permitted herself in the office. But the day was so fine and she felt affectionate towards her family again after months of unacknowledged estrangement, and she was quite pleased to see Mr. Richards.

He said abruptly, “I’m not with them any more.”

“Oh, I am sorry,” said Christine. “They must miss you … it wouldn’t seem the same there without you.”

Mr. Richards smiled. It was not a real smile.

“I don’t think they miss
me
much,” he said. “There were big changes after you left, Miss Smith. Many changes. I’m not sorry to be out of it.” Then after a pause he added, looking out of the window, “You knew my wife died?”

“No. No, I didn’t know that. Oh. I am sorry … you have had some bad luck, haven’t you, Mr. Richards.”

They said no more for a little while. It did not occur to Christine that one does not refer to the death of a man’s wife as bad luck, because she was eager to show her sympathy, but afterwards she remembered office gossip about his not getting on with the dead one, and did wonder if it was all bad luck?

The small silence was broken by some remark from Mr. Richards, and after that they got on nicely until the bus was approaching a stop where he said that he must get off. Christine was preparing a remark about its having been nice to see him, when she saw him taking out a little notebook.

“Now if you will let me have your telephone number,” he said, “I should like to ring you up one day soon and see if you would be free one afternoon to come and have a cup of tea with me.”

“It’s Highgate 1111,” said Christine, very surprised. “Thanks, it’s very nice of you.”

She had accepted the invitation unhesitatingly. After he had gone down the steps at the next stop, she continued to look ahead, deliberately not glancing down to see if he were waving.

The bus moved on, and she experienced a slight sensation of relief. Out to tea with Mr. Richards. Well. Also Fancy.

CHRISTINE’S LIFE HAD
not been one in which the sentence
he had not telephoned
had played the part it does in the lives of most women. She had known one or two men for a couple of months and been out with them to a cinema or for a walk, and ‘nothing had come of it’.

Smiths expect something to come of it, and that something is what they call wedding bells.

None of these men had aroused any feelings in her, beyond a conviction that they were not the same to get along with, somehow, as women; and, when ten days passed and Mr. Richards had not telephoned, she only thought, ‘Oh well, I expect he will, some time’, and the matter began to drift out of her mind.

One evening while she was going out to the garden to water some zinnias which Mrs. Traill had bought “because those gorgeous colours remind me of Txlculpa,” Miss Marriot spoke to her.

“We want to have a party on Sunday evening, Christine, for Clive’s daughter—you know she’s just got into this school. Can you arrange it? Glasses, and a few bits to eat, and so forth. It won’t be many—just us, and Glynis, and my mother, and one or two people Clive knows and Mr. Rooth. James will see to the drinks. And, of course, you’ll come, won’t you?”

Looking like an angel burdened with some troubling secret, she stood at the foot of the stairs in her dark suit, the jewel on her lapel flashing in the dusk, and smiled—absently, as usual. She always seemed, Christine thought, to be thinking about something else when she spoke to you.

“Oh, thank you, Miss Marriott, I’d love to come. Er—those little biscuits, shall I get? And put cheese on them and those
olives
? Things like that? I would offer to make you a cake—but I’m still only learning, really—”

“Oh, God, no. Not
cake
. Ask Fabia, she’ll know. That’s lovely, then.” She nodded and drifted away.

This was exciting news. Christine was to meet a gossip-writer and a dress-designer, and no doubt the ladies would be wearing lovely clothes. She would have liked to see them all eating a cake baked and iced by herself, but it wasn’t wanted, and anyway she could not have made one yet.

Mrs. Traill was helpful. She took over the catering, saying that she had to go into Soho anyway on the Saturday and would buy some snazzy biscuits. And Nigel Rooth adored caviare, they must have some caviare.

“They won’t want much. It’s at half-past eight—most people will have had dinner. It’s just an excuse for us all to get together, really, and I think Clive has some sort of a dim feeling it might do that little Glynis good to see a bit of formal entertaining—he’s given her some money to have the kind of party she’ll really enjoy with all her weirdy beardy friends. Of course she won’t
enjoy
coming to us. But we really couldn’t face having all the noise and the mess here. She’ll just have to put up with nothing but conversation, for once.”

Even Christine could feel that this was hardly the spirit in which you gave a party for someone, and experienced a little sympathy for this Glynis.

“Is she pretty, Mrs. Traill?” she asked.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say pretty. Mostly mouth and eyes, like they all manage to be, nowadays. She’s very
unfeminine
. Too thin, and her hair always needs brushing. And you simply cannot get anywhere with her. I think it’s one’s
duty
to know the young, and realise what goes on in their heads and usually I’m pretty good with them but honestly she won’t let you in an inch. I expect it will be a flop. I can’t bear conventional parties; when we lived in Esthonia we always had them on the shore. Baked our own fish. Caught it, and then baked it on stones. Delicious. But Diana and Antonia are both
deadly
conventional about entertaining.”