The Charmers (4 page)

“Oh, I don’t know, darling.”

“She really is an ass— I wish we’d let Amanda and Dick have it.”

She turned moodily away and stared up at the chaste curve of the staircase, down which floated some masochistic transistor-plaint.

The calmness with which James Meredith heard these ominous remarks implied that he had been married to them for some time, and perhaps married as well to something love-able in the speaker. He gave her a pat on the behind, and she wheeled round with a lightning change to gaiety and they went upstairs as entwined as if they were eighteen—which, except for living in a body that had been here for some fifty years, Diana was.

CHRISTINE SPENT MORE
money than she was pleased to, during the next few days, sitting in the shops, sitting in the cinema, sitting over her lunch. Her lodgings were not a place in which anyone could sit.

Why had she gone to live there at all?

On an afternoon in January, more than a year ago now, she had happened to be on some errand which had taken her to Hampstead Village.

It had been the usual kind of Smith errand; one of the electric deities installed in the temple consecrated to their worship had turned capricious (as they all frequently did) and the shop from which this particular one had been bought was not local; Mrs Smith’s infrequent excursions from beneath her own roof were usually made in search of new shops displaying gadgets, and she had found this one in Hampstead and ordered whatever-it-was to be sent home to Mortimer Road, and then, after ten days, it had Gone Wrong, and would Christine go over to Hampstead, they were sure to be open though it was a Saturday, and just ask them to pop across to Crouch End and put it right; Mrs. Smith combined an impatient belief in the power of shop-people to ‘put things right’ with an immediate acceptance of the fact that they usually couldn’t, and would have to send the gadget back to its makers.

So Christine had uncomplainingly gone, putting aside the small tasks of interest to herself that she was leaving at home, and had enjoyed, in a mild way, the journey in a bouncing bus across the Hampstead ridge and the snowy Heath.

The shop was not easily found; it was new, and bright in a cheap way, and braving things out in a tiny back lane. The
young
man inside it seemed at once gay and without hope—the familiar contemporary attitude—and Christine had left whatever-it-was with him and come outside again and walked off.

And then she had mislaid, rather than lost, her way for perhaps five or seven minutes, and during that time she had come upon a church, an old church, shadowed by the sweeping branches of a cedar burdened in dazzling snow. The sight of it, and the long curve of a snow-covered wall bordering the graveyard in which it stood, filled her with an unfamiliar, exquisite emotion.

Perhaps it is impossible for people who have often experienced this feeling to conceive the effect it had upon a mind stunned and dimmed for more than half a century by ugly sounds and commonplace sights, and it is true that Christine’s visitor had to find its way through a thickish barrier. But it did find its way, and afterwards, for more than a year now, she had thought of the moment as ‘That Day’, and had wanted to have the feeling again.

Occasionally it reappeared as a kind of ghost of its self, lacking its first force, and when she had once encountered this memory-feeling in Iver Street, while taking a short cut to a bus-stop, she had associated it with the ruined grace of the old houses there and decided, in an odd, confused way that was most unlike her usual habit of mind, to look for a room there when she left Mary’s, where she had gone for a few weeks after her parents’ death, and go to live in one of those houses; just for a time, just until she had decided what to do about her future.

She had to admit, on reflection, that it had been a crazy thing to do.

Hadn’t every action of the Smiths, ever since she could remember, been taken with the object of leaving Mrs. Benson as far behind as possible? Hadn’t they scrambled up and away from her as fast and as far as they could scram, taking her position down there for granted, never mentioning her but with contempt and hatred and fear?

The Kitchen-Sink School of Drama got no support from the Smiths.

Christine’s action had caused incredulity and sombre head-shakings among her family.

Willy had said that he hoped Chris was not going all funny-peculiar now that she was at a loose end, and had even considered suggesting that she should be told to go and see one of these trick-cyclists, only of course … anything mental … you never knew where you might end up … But Garfield, who was a bit highbrow, and interested in psychology, but nevertheless retained some Smith common-sense, said that she must naturally be psychologically disturbed by Mother and Father dying in the same week like that and losing her job and the home breaking up. So Christine had been spared the fashionable prescription for bewilderment and grief.

Mary had confined herself to marvelling at old Chris going to live in a slum, and allowing her thoughts to play not uninterestingly around the subject of her sister’s age.

All were thankful that she had not suggested coming to live with any of them, for all three led lives crammed to bursting with the usual ingredients of family life, and Christine had only her share of the money from the sale of the house to live on, and was decidedly old to set about looking for a new job. There was satisfaction and relief among the Smiths when she announced that she had found employment, and they were now leaving her to get on with it. She always had.

And Christine, never having had much to tell her brothers and sister, now began to keep her affairs even more to herself.

She did not even hint to them at her early disillusionment with life in Iver Street, where she found that it was one thing to be reminded of That Day and its revelation by the exterior of the house, and another to live in one of its dark, narrow, stuffy, clean-smelling rooms, and not a word did she breathe about having given her share of the furniture to Mrs. Benson, knowing how the news of this reckless and extraordinary bestowal would be received.

She was sitting in a coffee-bar in Hampstead while thus musing over the past months. April sunlight poured through its wide windows on to the foreign cakes and the dirty English hair and beards. The place was warm and, under the serious babbling of young voices, it was quiet, and Christine was enjoying being there; the sensation of leisure was still pleasant and unfamiliar to her after some months of idleness, and even the aftertaste of a smallish gill of coffee, weak and expensive, which was a sort of
döppelganger
of the real thing, was agreeable.

But she could afford one-and-sixpence now, without a thought, because she was going to have a flat and six guineas a week.

Why guineas? She would have been surprised to hear that this was Antonia Marriott’s idea, “because it sounded prettier.” Indeed and indeed, Garfield would have found food for his psychological interpretations of human behaviour in Pemberton Hall.

Six guineas a week and that flat. Christine suddenly inwardly glowed. It was wonderful, quite wonderful, that she had really got it—especially when she remembered Mrs. Meredith’s remark about those friends of hers being after it.

For the first time since the day of her engagement, she wondered why they—Mrs. Traill—had chosen
her
. Thirty-five years in one job had never exposed her to the chances and humiliations of looking for a new one, and, from her sheltered retreat with Messrs. Lloyd and Farmer, she had actually assumed that what was wanted was a mere capacity for hard work, and honesty (taken for granted), and experience. Only now, when she had taken in her leisure to listening to people talking at café tables and in buses, did she realise that hard work and honesty and experience were never mentioned. Age was.

Shall I go over there now? thought Christine. Straightaway, and see if my things have come? She (‘She’ was Mrs. Traill) is sure to have the door open.

This habit had struck Christine on her visits to the Hall because of its striking difference to that prevailing in Mortimer
Road
, where you exclaimed at a knock, advanced reluctantly and suspiciously upon the front-door, and opened it four inches while putting part of your nose round it and demanding, “Yes, what is it?”

Yes, she would go. And—the disagreeable thought invaded her mind at the sight of a background figure doing something to the floor with a mop—there was the question of getting a cleaner.

The idea was so disturbing that she sat down again and resumed her thoughts.

She was completely unaccustomed to dealing with or managing them.

The late Mrs. Smith ‘never would have’ a cleaner, the distance which she had scrambled up from Mrs. Benson not being great enough to permit of her coping with the latter when subordinate, and, while she had the strength to flap a duster, she would do everything herself.

So Christine, unfamiliar with the notion of a Mrs. Benson in the house, quailed at the thought of employing her, and was only slightly reassured when she recalled the procession of juniors she had effortlessly controlled throughout five-and-thirty years at Lloyd and Farmer’s.

Though it had to be faced that during the past five years the procession had become so outrageous in its dress (trousers to business, if you please, and the cold weather no more than an excuse—but that Mr. Richards would not have) and so intimidatingly casual and assured in it manner that ‘effortlessly’ had gradually ceased to be the word. Nevertheless, there remained the habit of mild authority, and of course the people in the house would back her up; that Mrs. Meredith wouldn’t stand for any cheek or slackness, Christine was certain.

Reassured, she proceeded to the Village, and spent a few minutes there studying a board displayed in a shop. She then went into a telephone-box and dialled the number she had memorised. From where she stood, she could see Pemberton Hall, already assuming a half-inhabited air because of Mrs. Traill’s curtains and the fact that the front lawn had been mown, though whether the inhabitants were coming or going
it
would have been difficult to decide … a man might be very useful …

“Yes?” demanded an irritable male voice.

I expect Mr. Johnson’s an old-age pensioner, thought Christine, and demanded to speak to him.

“Oh yes, let ’em all come,” cried the voice, derisive and affronted, and Christine hoped that Mr. Johnson was not being beseiged by prospective employers; it would make him above himself. She heard the telephone being bumped about and background noises suggesting impatient customers and temporarily postponed activities with Easter cards and cigarettes, which suggested that Mr. Johnson lived over a small newsagent-tobacconist’s and at last, after a long pause, a man’s voice, young and soft with a sing-song in it, said politely: “Here is Mister Johnson.”

“I’ve seen your advert’ in Ellis’s, the grocers,” said Christine, realising instantly from his voice that Mr. Johnson was coloured and going steadily on because for the moment she really did not know what else to do. “And I want a cleaner. For a large house in Highgate Village. To sweep the stairs down and that kind of thing—it’s rather rough work.” (He was a man, and young, and, of course, strong. They always were. He could just get on with it. Only what would they all say? A black about the place. At the thought of what they would all have all said at Mortimer Road, she really did falter in spirit. But she did not ring off.)

The pause lengthened.