The Charmers

  When Clive came back from seeing her out of the house he found them still laughing; even Mrs. Marriott was smiling, though far from broadly, down into her brandy glass.

  “Isn’t it funny—” Antonia was saying, “you can tell she’s an actress? She hasn’t even started training—but you can tell. I’ll bet you,” turning to Clive, “that in five years her name’ll be up in those little bright lights.” She lifted her glass. “Congratulations, papa.”

  Christine, who was watching sympathetically, saw him give her a glance that was startling. Why, he loves her! she thought, at once looking away from the two; I can see it; he loves her.

  What an evening it was being !

  Clive began to laugh with them, looking round at their laughing faces.

  “What a child it is … but you can see, can’t you? She’s got it, hasn’t she? Hasn’t she got it?”

  Tenderly, warmly, they told him over and over again that she had.

  Glynis, charging across the square in the dim light, crashed into a young man who was coming to meet her, with enough force to have sent most young men off their feet. But this one was stocky and strong; he seized her, swung her up, and nuzzled her soft face with his bearded one, she returning the nuzzling with slightly less ardour. Oh, it was well that old Lady Clontarf could not see those boots waving slowly in the air.

  He set her down again, thrust a paperback into his pocket, shoved his arm through hers, and began to march her down the hill.

  “How was it? I thought you were stuck there for the night.”

  “It’s only eleven.” (She did not add I hope you haven’t been waiting long.) “Oh, it was all rather pathetic, really. None of them are real—except Daddy, of course. Fabia Traill said I wasn’t feminine.”

  “Ho! ho! that really is a good one!” he said.

  She glanced at him. “She meant I wasn’t fat.”

  “What on earth were you doing, all those hours?”

  “Oh, sitting around. Not what you and I would call talking, it was conversation, I suppose. Nigel Rooth is going to make me a dress.”

  “The homo designer? I say, is he having a change of heart or something?”

  “Tom,” said Glynis, after a pause while they walked down the hill in silence. “You say all the things everyone else does.”

  “Well, isn’t he a homo?”

  “I don’t know. I thought he was charming.”

  “They often are, we all know that. Anyway I hope we shan’t see you becoming sweet and suburban. I shan’t like it, even if I do say all the things everyone else does.”

  “I shall wear it to parties. I’m tired of being scruffy anyway, it’s a bore remembering to be. I’ve got to learn to wear clothes and make up my face, I may as well start now.”

  “They’ve been corrupting you! I can feel it.”

  “Oh don’t be so—so raw. The only person who did anything like get at me was old Mrs. Marriott, Antonia’s mother. She delivered a speech at me. No one would ask me anywhere if I talked about—you-know-what.”

  “Did you talk about it? Good on you, flea.” He pressed her arm against his side.

  “They seemed to want me to, so I did.”

  “I expect the subject has a morbid fascination for them. Most of them have no imagination and their minds are hopelessly set in the past. They think it would be like 1939.”

  “Don’t … it wasn’t too bad, really, only it all seemed so unreal and there was nothing to eat but horrible little biscuits tasting of pepper. Daddy did sing his song.”

  “Oh, God. ‘Lost Moo-o-nlight’,” he mimicked.

  “Belt up,” said Glynis distinctly, and dragged away her arm.

  “What’s up? What have I done now?”

  “They may be unreal, and smug, but I’ve known most of them all my life and—they aren’t so bad. They can’t help being old. And, anyway, Daddy’s going to be in the new Noël Coward.”

  “Good heavens—do you expect me to congratulate you? I should think you’d keep that piece of good news to yourself.”

  “It is good news. He likes it, anyway, it’s good news for him. You really have less imagination than anyone I ever met—talk about them having none.”

  “I have no imagination! I, who find it almost impossible to get through my life because I’ve got so much imagination! That—really—is—rich.”

  “I didn’t mean you haven’t any, flea. But you can’t get inside other people’s minds unless they’re a bit like yourself.”

  “Do you realise what you’ve just said? I’m going to write novels—you’ve practically told me that I’ve been born without the equipment to do it.”

  “Oh, don’t take it so seriously. All I meant was”—her voice began to quaver maddeningly—”you know how I get worked up about The Bomb and of course I don’t like that old woman saying no one’s ever going to ask me anywhere or like me—what about audiences, I was thinking all the time she was talking—what about audiences. And you know I love that song. Dearly,” she added more decidedly, the quaver having been mastered. “So will you kindly—not—say—that kind of thing.”

  Silence. “I’m sorry, flea,” he said at last. She put her arm through his again. “That’s all right, flea.”

  “Say it, flea. Say ‘I love you’. Please.”

  Glynis shook her head, looking straight down the hill to the lights glittering in the valley; she did not slide her large dark glance round on him, nor was there a trace of coquetry in the smile that curved her unpainted lips. Her steps rang as if in some triumphal march.

  “Now be quiet, flea. You know I never will say it, it’s too serious. Let’s go somewhere and eat. After those beastly peppery biscuits, I’m starving.”

  “All right, where would you like to go?” he asked eagerly. “I haven’t much on me …”

  Boots twinkling, voices now rising and falling amicably, they went on down the hill into London.

  Chapter 11

  “I EXPECT YOU’VE been wondering why Glynis is so utterly different from her father,” began Mrs. Traill, one morning some days after the party.

  “You’ll need that all dug over; it hasn’t been touched for years,” said Christine; she had heard what was said, but was more interested in the flower-bed in the garden at the back of the house which she and Mrs. Traill were inspecting.

  ‘You see he married somebody very tense, for his first wife, she was always making scenes (yes, it will need doing, won’t it; I wish we could get hold of a man) and Glynis is like her.”

  “That’s like Mr. Meredith, he always says ‘get a man, get a man.’ But they aren’t so easy to get, these days. I saw in the paper gardeners were getting a pound an hour, somewhere down Kensington way.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it; you would think the peace and primitive joy in handling growing things would make them more or less indifferent to money …” murmured Mrs. Traill, whose remarks made Christine understand why Diana could occasionally be overheard declaring, “Fabia is bonkers, and we have to face it.”

  “I suppose they have to live,” she said briskly. “There’s a lovely rose,” lifting the heavy crimson head to sniff it. “Considering nothing’s been done to the garden, it looks quite nice.”

  “Yes, but a bit desolate, don’t you think? … He could paint the shed for Diana, too.”

  “The shed for her pottery?”

  “Yes.” They both turned to look at the shed. “She won’t get a single pot made,” said Mrs. Traill. “She talks about it, but never a pot shall we see. She’s like that. What she truly likes is more and more hats. She’s got fifteen already … But if James likes to buy her a wheel, and pamper her, that’s his business … Do you think Mr. Johnson would dig the garden for us?”

  “I could ask him,” said Christine doubtfully, “But I hae ma doots … he’s been rather funny, lately.”

  “Oh, you don’t think someone’s got hold of him and made him politically conscious? That child-like, innocent-type is quite unfitted for politi
cal maturity.”

  “I shouldn’t think he’d understand if they had. No, it’s this other job he’s got, somewhere in Hampstead. He seems to be always over there, these days.”

  “I expect they pay him more. We could manage that, if he asks about it.”

  “I don’t think it’s the money, Mrs. Traill. He seems to like going there. When he comes on to us, afterwards, he’s full of giggles, and singing, and ever so cheerful. I think it’s more the job and the people, really.”

  “Oh well, we must hope for the best … look at that rose. How funny.”

  “What?” Christine stared through the clear summer air towards the bush, and was just in time to see the rose she had admired swaying as if in a stiff breeze. It came gently into position again, with languorously drooping head.

  “You do get the odd draught in this garden; I was noticing the other day,” she said.

  Mrs. Traill sauntered back to the house, her prevailing mood of dreaminess having apparently replaced the mood of energy which had caused her to suggest an inspection of the garden. She alternated thus; Christine had noticed it, and had some time ago decided that if she wanted anything accomplished with Mrs. Traill’s help, she would have to do it herself. She did not mind; she felt cheerful, and content, and had many small interesting plans of her own which were only occasionally dimly shadowed by thoughts of Mr. Richards and his threatened tea-drinking.

  She had already done one or two unadventurous jobs in the garden; planted some stock seedlings, and several times cut the grass, which grew fast in spite of the prevailing shade. But the narrow, green-lawned, quiet place—with its view of distant churches and the white blocks of new flats and that great American hotel and featureless grey vistas, all framed in the high brown brick walls of two neighbouring houses-seemed to be silently but actively resisting alteration. Seedlings might be put in, a shrub pruned here, the grass might be kept featly short—but the garden had looked like this for two hundred years, and it was not going to be changed. It was so quiet! The singing of birds echoed there. Christine drew one of the three or four sighs of pleasure she had breathed in her life as she stood looking at it.

  Later that afternoon, Diana Meredith and Mrs. Traill sat gossiping in the former’s flat. Christine Smith, surprisingly, was the subject of tongues usually busy with more colourful personalities.

  “I bet you—if I took her out into the garden this evening and showed her those lights, she’d simply say ‘very nice’, or something of that sort. I’m almost certain she’s all of a piece, right through,” Diana said.

  Mrs. Traill had taken refuge in waggings of her head and murmurings about never knowing ourselves or anyone else.

  “Bosh. I know James and he knows me … Well, will you have a little bet?”

  “No, Diana. I don’t think it would be kind … and there’s almost no one left in England, now, like Christine Smith—”

  “What nonsense—Oxford Street is full of her …”

  “… and if you scare her off or upset her we shall be sunk.”

  “We shall be sunk anyway if those swine get in in the autumn.” Diana said viciously, lighting her cigarette.

  “Well perhaps they won’t … How boring it all is. As if anything mattered but Art and Love!”

  Diana, leaning back in her chair, blew out smoke, shook her head, and surveyed her friend affectionately for some seconds in silence.

  “Well, are you on?” she asked at last. “I’m only going to show her the lights of London. Half-a-crown, then. Done?”

  “Oh, all right. But I do think it’s cruel and unfair … Do you still dislike her?”

  “Our Christine? Did I dislike her? Oh yes—I believe I did, just at first. I thought she was typical lower-middle class which is absolutely the type I loathe most, timid and narrow and inhibited, but now I’m not so sure … and she is efficient. It’s because I’m not so sure that I want to try this experiment with the lights. No, I don’t dislike her, now.”

  So, that evening after they had finished supper, Diana suggested that she and Christine should go out and look at the lights because it was a wonderful evening, so clear.

  Christine followed her, out into the chilly dusk. She was a little surprised by the invitation but was accustomed, by now, to Mrs. Meredith’s moods.

  “It’s too small, of course,” Diana said over her shoulder. Country gardens spoil you for town ones … There … just look at that.”

  A faint glow, neither green nor yellow, lingered in the garden, as if contained by the walls, and through it the flowers that were white or yellow still glimmered. At the end of the long dim lawn there was the low wall, and beyond it a mighty, sparkling, glittering, twinkling cloud, like the diamanté bosom of some colossal meretricious sorceress—orange, white-gold, silver, and a cold, decadent mauve; alluring, far off—quite, quite unreal. Oh, come on down, said the sorceress, do.

  “Very nice,” said Christine, after a pause, and Diana thought, what did I tell you? Half-a-crown, please.

  Chilled, and mildly irritated, she turned away from the astonishing spectacle.

  “Isn’t it strange, this light?” she said, feeling that it was only fair to Mrs. Traill give Christine another chance. “A friend of ours, Maurice Condron, said once that it was like the taste of lemons.”

  “Is that the one who wrote that song, who was … He passed over at Calais?”

  Diana had shuddered—perhaps at a memory, or at Christine’s phrase. “Yes. (Let’s go in, it’s getting cold.) He was the most wonderful person—nobody could make one laugh as Maurice could—except Dick Keiler, perhaps … but not like Maurice.”

  Christine heard her sigh.

  She had only asked the question about this Maurice, of whom she had already heard something from Glynis Lennox, and in whom she wasn’t much interested, from a sudden fierce instinct of self-defence.

  She had wanted to hide from Diana the quick, intense joy that had come upon her at the sight of the afterglow in the garden. Immediately recognized, transforming herself and everything she was conscious of, and welcomed with as near as Christine could aproach to rapture, it was the very emotion of That Day, belonging—but she did not know this—neither to heart nor to senses but to the spirit that had been starved into numbness for nearly half a century.

  It lasted for perhaps a few seconds—she did not know how long. Then it had gone, and she was following Mrs. Meredith back to the house and wondering aloud whether they should ask Mr. Johnson to dig the garden? She only hoped, Christine said sensibly, that he had not seen that piece in the papers about those gardeners in Kensington earning a pound an hour.

  Yes, it had gone again, just as it had gone when she had seen the snow-laden cedar tree in Hampstead. She turned to take a last look; the light lingered yet, the flowers glimmered through its aquamarine dusk, but where was the delight? She could only remember it; she could no longer feel it.

  But it did come, she thought, following the now silent and withdrawn Diana down the stone-paved passage. That’s the second time. It could come again. It’s always there, somewhere, waiting.

  Where?

  She put the thought from her mind and went back to the kitchen and began on the washing-up.

  There was really nothing to think over.

  It had come again, and that was a wonderful thing to have happened. She would have liked a walk by herself, over the Heath, just to think about it; but it would have been only daydreaming; there was nothing to do, or to decide; that was the delight, but also the strangeness, about this fleeting feeling; she could neither command it to come nor use it in any way when it did.

  But she would have liked her solitary walk, and what prevented her from having it was the fact that she was meeting Mr. Richards outside the bus-stop for Kenwood House at three. He had telephoned about nine on the previous evening and made the arrangement.

  Across the Square, in her summer coat, hatless, with a white cotton flower in her lapel, carrying her white bag and gloves, she we
nt. It was a fine day and the outing would ‘make a break’. But Mortimer Road was not completely easy in its mind about Mr. Richards. It sensed, from afar, Change, possibly Bother, looming up on some yet distant horizon.

  Mr. Richards was at the bus-stop, also hatless—which made him look younger—and wearing a nice grey suit. Christine was pleased to have such an escort; she liked a man to dress well. But she did just wonder what they would find to talk about.

  She need not have; Mr. Richards had already been to the house and secured a guide-book and as they walked on under the trees, he gave her an outline of its history. She listened, but with half her mind wondered what he did with himself all day, if he had time to wander round getting guide-books before meeting her at three? He must be still out of a job.

  The big, cool house was crowded with visitors, moving slowly past the smiling or pensive Gainsborough beauties and the gleaming furniture; the occasion was not quite so novel to Christine as it would have been six months ago, because she herself now lived in a house with gleaming furniture and beauties, but it was full of interest, and she was enjoying it.

  Mr. Richards was easy to get on with, mingling his attention to what there was to see with pleasant general remarks, and while she half-listened to him, she concentrated the other part of her mind on really studying what the girls in the paintings wore. Those corsets! And their shoes looked too tight. But lovely materials. She had always had a secret wish to wear a sash.

  “Tired?” asked Mr. Richards, as they paused before Lord Leighton’s ‘Orphans’, the little girl in the Kate Greenaway frock nursing an infant rabbit.

  “Poor little mite, she does look sad, what a pity he couldn’t have painted her smiling. Not a bit. But I could do with a cup of tea.”

  “If he had, there wouldn’t have been any point in the title … and how could he have got the rabbit to smile, anyway?” Mr. Richards was teasing her, and she smiled back at him. “How about going along, then? It’s early, but it won’t be so crowded.”