“Laying aside the years I was in the Army,” he amended.
“You’re ex-Service, then?” said Christine.
“I suppose you may say so,” said Banks, not encouragingly.
He then seemed to unbend a little, and slapped the left leg that moved with a slight dragging motion when he walked. “Somme, I got that. 1916.” He rolled up his sleeve and indicated a rather horrifying, though small, blue-ridged pit in his forearm. “Warden. 1940. Shrapnel, that was.”
Christine found nothing to say. But she liked Banks, with his Tunes of Glory marching faintly in his background, and saw to it that he did not leave Pemberton Hall without being at least offered the cup of tea which he never seemed to want or to appreciate when he had it.
“If you’re making,” he would say. Once he added, “I’m not one for drowning meself in slops.”
The only thing she did not like about him were his ironical glances. She would pass him in the hall or working on the stairs—and he did not bang the brush against the banisters—and his eye, bloodshot, small and grey, would be moving around, taking in the space and the comfort and the beauty of it all.
“Plenty of room round ’ere,” he once observed, looking at her over his cup while drinking one of the slops at the kitchen table, and it was surprising what volumes—she did not care to think what of—he could convey in five words.
But he had not said it again, and she was well satisfied with him at the end of the week.
It was pleasant to be able to forget the stairs and banisters and the kitchen floor and the outside work until the next Monday or Friday came round. Banks did his work thoroughly and tacitly, rolled and smoked a cigarette, and left dead on the minute. The dreaded spirit of Mrs. Benson retreated from Pemberton Hall as though she had never threatened it.
Suddenly, the background pother about Chinese lanterns died away.
One afternoon Mrs. Traill returned by taxi from one of her grim excursions into London with fifteen of them; large and small, bulbous, instantaneously festive, in softest shades of orange and pink, fascinatingly pleated, and adorned with cherry blossom, and little temples, and almond-faced ladies in trailing robes, and storks and cranes and tiny crookback bridges.
She was calmly triumphant.
“Oh, I knew they were there all right,” she said as if someone had been devoting the last week to hiding the lanterns in some peculiarly inaccessible place. “It was just a question of sticking to the search and ferreting them out. Aren’t they angels?” holding up the smallest, which had a design of monkeys at play in a fir-tree. “I can’t wait to see them alight.”
Chapter 16
“CAN YOU BE in this evening? That child is coming up to fetch her dress. I brought it home this afternoon and I’d like your verdict,” said Antonia abruptly.
“I can. I was going to the Music Club. But they’ve replaced those enchanting early water-colours of Hampstead by contemporary stuff and it looks so wildly wrong in the house where they have the concerts that I really can’t face it.”
“Oh … Well, can you be in?” Mrs. Traill nodded.
Christine overheard these remarks as the two ladies were going upstairs after the evening meal. The Merediths were out to dinner, and Clive Lennox at rehearsal; the rehearsals had increased in frequency and fierceness as the first night drew near and Clive was looking tired; no wonder, and him no chicken, nice though he is, thought Christine. But there—better to wear out than rust out.
This was an adage sometimes quoted at Mortimer Road, small though the likelihood of any inhabitant there wearing themselves out might be. Buried deeper than Ariel’s corals, dodged around with a skill greater than that of the most spectacular of centre-forwards, swathed in layers of protective cosiness beside which the mufflings of atomic reactors would seem mere drifts of down, were all the feelings that might lead any Mortimer Roadite to wear him or herself out.
Christine hoped that she might be asked to give her ‘verdict’ on Glynis Lennox’s dress. But she was not; and never even saw it; though fortunately the ladies kept the door of Antonia’s living-room open and Christine, calmly propping that of her own ajar, could hear most of what was being said, and imagine what was being done, while she sat by the window with her magazine.
She did see ‘that child’ arrive, bounding lithely up the stairs in stained jeans and the leather jacket with her mane flying. But it had been brushed; well-brushed. Christine, peeping over the banisters, could tell that it had.
“Hullo, hullo, come on in,” she heard Miss Marriott call, with youthful energy and brightness. “Well, now, here it is.” Pause, while the dress was evidently being held out for inspection. “Like it?”
Christine, lingering on the landing, almost pressed her hands together in the fervency of her hope that Glynis would.
“Beautiful colour,” said Glynis at last, coolly. “It looks a bit queer, a funny shape or something.…”
“That’s because it fits, sweetie. Your eye is used to clothes in chunks and blocks. Those seams make it fit.”
“I rather … like that ruffle. Ruffles are being worn, aren’t they? One of the girls I share with is clothes-mad. She spends all her money on them and starves. I couldn’t do that. She bought a dress with a ruffle the other day.”
“This isn’t just a ruffle. Look—it goes down at the back and you can wear it like a boa.”
“A what?”
“A boa. They were called feather-boas—I suppose because it’s like a boa-constrictor.’
“What is, or was, a boa? I mean, what was it that was constricted originally?” put in Mrs. Traill earnestly; Christine imagined her as sprawling on Antonia’s sofa, “By the constrictor, I mean?”
“Oh, God,” Miss Marriott exploded, “will no one ever give their full attention to clothes? Put it on, Glynis—how extra-ordinary you are, Fabia—a Nigel Rooth model, and you go on like Webster’s Dic … You’re the original … bore … Here, let me help …”
Another pause. Christine had given up her pretence with chair and magazine by the window. She imagined Glynis wriggling into the dress, guided by the expert hands of Antonia. The pause lengthened.
“There.” She heard the excitement and triumph in Antonia’s voice; she must have led Glynis up to the long mirror. The pause lengthened.
“I look absolutely different,” Glynis pronounced at last. “I … I say, I do look different, don’t I? I didn’t think I could look so different, I haven’t worn costume yet.”
“You look absolutely fab,” said Antonia shrilly. “Doesn’t she look fab, Fabia?”
“Yes, she does. She really does. I wish Clive could see her—he’d be proud of his beautiful daughter,” said Mrs. Traill; in the straightforward, kind way she sometimes had.
“Now pull the boa round your shoulders, that’s right, now up round your neck—delicious! Doesn’t it make you feel good, Glynis?” Antonia persisted, like an adult coaxing a child to express its pleasure in a present and thus increase the pleasure of the giver.
“I don’t feel like me,” said Glynis, and laughed suddenly.
“Well, you’ll have to get used to that, won’t you, if you’re going to act?” observed Mrs. Traill. “She’ll need shoes, Antonia.”
“Yes … white satin … medium heel … you’re tall enough …
I’ll give you a bit of the stuff and you can take it along to a shop where they’ll dye it to match; and be sure they do, Glynis. If they don’t, you must take it back and have it done again more than once if necessary, until it’s right.”
“Oh, all right—but what a fuss … and I’m having a work-crisis; I’m a slow study, worse luck; I have to study parts longer than most people … Won’t all this take ages?”
“Think of it as a stage costume that’s got to be just right,” Mrs. Traill said soothingly. “Here, let me help.”
Swish, swish, a gentle, careful sound, as Miss Marriott folded away the dress into its box. She evidently thought this was the occasion for a small lec
ture, for Christine heard her begin—
“These details are very important, you know. Some writer—I think it was Nancy Mitford, my memory is getting simply awful—said that the entire standard of the luxe trades in Paris was kept up by a group of old women who will not accept anything but the best from the Houses they deal with … I wish to heaven we had something like that over here, but all that Englishwomen seem to care about is their dogs and their blasted gardens. Their flowers are divine, but their clothes simply make you want to die on the spot and, as for hair or scent, they never think about it. One duchess who comes to us told Nigel she ‘always forgot’ to use scent. What can you do with such women? You make up your little mind not to be like that, Glynis.”
“Someone did give me a bottle of some stuff for Christmas, and I’m always meaning to use it and I do forget,” said Glynis, laughing.
“There you are, you see.” Antonia was laughing too. “But it isn’t too late for you to reform … Now will you be all right with this?” Christine imagined her holding up the box.
“Will it be all right with me, you mean? Oh, yes, someone’s driving me down; I shan’t leave it on a bus.”
Christine was now so absorbed in what was going on that she did not hesitate to look out of her window for a glimpse of ‘someone’, and in a few minutes saw Glynis, re-armoured in jeans and funereal leather, run across the square to a disreputable, rakishly-glamorous vintage car, sitting high on its big wheels, and already looking as if one could say that it ‘belongs to the ages’. A beard was in the driver’s seat, and started into life at sight of Glynis, and Christine lingered to see the box, severely plain but wearing Rooth’s famous summer-sky blue, bestowed in the back seat. And let’s hope oil doesn’t get on to it, for that thing looks as if it would fall to pieces for two pins, she thought, moving away from the window.
Conversation, loud and careless, was still coming up from the flat below, and this time Christine Smith did hesitate about continuing to listen. The presence of youth, and the cheerful, almost public manner of the fitting, had seemed to justify her former eavesdropping by some unstated theory that could not be applied to talk going on between two friends thinking themselves unheard.
Nevertheless, after a moment’s hesitation, she did not shut her door and pick up her magazine. The fact was that her months at Pemberton Hall had given her a deep curiosity, not by any means pure, in the lives and situations of her employers. It was not pure because it was warmed by affection and the protective instinct, and the strong wish felt by old-fashioned televiewers and readers and cinema-goers for a ‘happy ending’.
She did very much want to see Miss Marriott safely out of the muddle at Nigel Rooth’s; she earnestly hoped Mrs. Meredith’s pottery would be bought for many ‘pennies’; she wanted Mrs. Traill’s drawings to sell to discerning editors and Mr. Lennox’s show to be a ‘smash hit’.
There were also interesting side developments …
“Oh, she means to have him,” Miss Marriott was saying. “You see, that would mean she needn’t worry about me so much.”
“Does she worry about you?” Mrs. Traill’s tone was sceptical.
“Of course she does. It’s never been fair on her, poor Mummy. First Daddy leaving us so poor—you know how she had to scrape to send me to Claregates—and I loathed it anyway—and then my breaking off three engagements and then, when she isn’t even middle-aged any more, all this business starts at Nigel’s, and she has to wonder what’ll happen to me in my old age.”
“What good does she think marrying that old man will do? He must be eighty,” Mrs. Traill said—severely, this time.
“He’s over eighty. But he has got some money, and if she were Lady Belsize she could help me from time to time if I needed it. And her mind would be at rest.”
Christine was trying to imagine Mrs. Traill’s face. She felt sure that it expressed disbelief in Mrs Marriott’s having the kind of mind that needed to be, or could be, at rest.
“It would be fun for her, too,” her daughter went on. “She would love it. And he does need a wife; he’s so old, and he will drag round London to everything that’s on, until he’s utterly worn out and has a stroke. Then he gets better and starts all over again. Mummy wouldn’t let him.”
“But if he likes doing it, Antonia …”
“But he doesn’t. When he has a stroke, he’s always saying how nice it is to be in bed and read James Bond … but people will ask him to things and he can’t say ‘no’. And Mummy could give up her work, then. I think it’s a good idea.”
“And you could marry Clive,” Mrs. Traill said. She must have been waiting to get that in.
Silence: dead silence, with a quality in it that was different from the former laughing pauses. Then Miss Marriott said—
“I don’t want to talk about it, Fabia.”
“That’s just your trouble and always has been, not talking about things. You can’t or won’t see that your mind needs the relief of talking. Sometimes I’ve thought of recommending a good analyst—”
“Thank you. I’m not going dotty.”
“Oh, don’t be childish. No one’s talking about going dotty, if you could only face up to that business in Italy, drag it out, and look at it—”
“I’ve told you, I don’t want to talk about it.” Christine heard repeated nervous clickings of Miss Marriott’s luxe little gold lighter.
“I’m telling you for your own good …”
“Oh, please don’t, please shut up. I do try to think about it sometimes, but I still feel so awful about it. I always loathed the idea of being married. I’m a freak or something. Do you think I don’t know I’m a freak, a kind of joke? That’s why I try not to think about it.” Her voice had grown shriller as the sentences went on, and Christine, listening with slightly open mouth, shook her head. Least said, soonest mended.
“But it’s natural, Antonia …” Mrs. Traill began kindly.
“I know it’s natural. I’m not twelve years old, Fabia. I hate it,”—and then, as if suddenly recalling the theory that the best method of defence is attack—“That button! Really, you are quite extraordinary. I simply do not know where you get your things. I believe you get someone to mould them for you in some cellar somewhere.”
“It’s a set. I designed them and Kupetsky carved them for me. It’s Japanese cedar. I brought a lump back with me, I adore that smooth grain and the honey colour.”
“It’s—it’s distorted-looking.”
“I meant them to have a Japanese feeling.”
“Well, it certainly has something … I wouldn’t care to say what … For God’s sake shall we go to a cinema? You’ve made me feel awful.”
The murmurs that followed were presumably concerned, accompanied as they were by rustlings of a newspaper, with making arrangements for the excursion, and in a moment Christine heard the pair going downstairs—looking, she thought inevitably, like the Long and Short of It. As they passed out of earshot, she heard Miss Marriott say, in a pensive and confidential tone, “You know, it’s funny, but I can talk to Clive. About anything else, I mean.” To which Mrs. Traill replied oracularly, “There you are, you see,” before they shut the front door on themselves.
Christine returned to her agreeable pottering about. Though her imagination made no attempt to carry her beyond the flat statement of detestation made by Miss Marriott, she vaguely linked it with her own picture of marriage as being a bother and a nuisance, and she sympathized. People, thought Christine, were always on at you about something. Why couldn’t they leave each other alone?
The enormous question faltered, and died out on the quiet air of her room.
Chapter 17
IT HAD BEEN arranged that Christine should meet Tom at the end of Avalon Road, and, precisely at four o’clock, she was crossing the road leading down into it by the pillar-box, as he had recommended, when she saw him strolling towards her.
He was hatless, as usual, and wearing a more domestic air than commonly because
of an old green tweed jacket with bits of leather on its elbows. And his trousers seriously needed pressing and his hair was standing on end, and it could not be called a good beginning to the festivities that Christine’s immediate thought was that he looked a regular sight.
The relaxed mood of Sunday afternoon had not been permitted to touch herself; a polished cotton two-piece had been pressed, and a coffee stain almost successfully removed with a patent fluid, and the second pair of white gloves was on duty.
“Hul-lo!” exclaimed Tom, smiling so kindly and with such pleasure at the sight of her that she felt a little ashamed. “Why, Chris, you do look smart. I like all those strong clear colours. You make me think of a Gauguin.”
Christine smiled, pleased, as they walked on together; she had an idea that a Gauguin was some kind of foreign bird, but the open admiration was welcome. No, she was not nervous, she knew that she looked her best, and if old Moira didn’t like her, she could do the other thing. They talked animatedly, as they approached the gate of Number Twenty-Four.
This was the old part of the widening, ever-developing suburb; three or four streets of two-storey smallish houses built in a dark brown brick, with white quoins and gables shaded by sycamores, and separated from one another by enough space to give just a little of the dignity of privacy. It was all very Smith; these houses were like smaller versions of Number Forty-Five, and, almost against her will, Christine began to feel on her guard. She deliberately began to think about the space and airy silence and beauty of Pemberton Hall.
But when Tom stopped at the shabby green gate, being guarded—and Pemberton Hall—slipped completely from her mind. For here, in a plot of ground some eighteen feet by fifteen, were two solid sheets of cream snapdragons and an old, gnarled, knotted jasmine wrapping and shading the walls of the house with its lacy foliage and white stars. There was no grass plot, no other colours.