The Charmers

  Christine lingered, staring, but all she could find to say was: “What an effective garden. Quite original …”

  “Ah, I thought you’d like that; that’s old Frank’s fine Italian hand. He’s a great gardener. You must tell him you approve, it’ll quite win his heart.”

  I don’t want to win it, thought Christine, determined not to be sucked back into the strong Mortimer Road atmosphere; and, a figure at that moment opening the front-door who must be Moira, it was instantly eclipsed by a large clean boy in a large clean shirt, who darrted out in front of it shouting, “Hullo, Uncle Tom, hullo Chris, I can’t stop, I’m sorry,” and, precipitating himself upon a moped leaning against the hedge, shot away.

  Tom was still muttering, “Noisy young beggar,” as Moira came towards them, smiling and saying, “Hullo, Chris, You don’t mind me calling you, Chris, do you—I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Moira was not like what Christine had expected.

  The bustle and high colour and loud managing voice which she associated with a three-day cake-baker were notably absent; Moira was small, with an ordinary figure and wearing the usual flowered summer dress; she had a round, reddish, unlined face surrounded by coarse, drooping grey curls, and her eyes looked large and light behind thick lenses. Christine was again slightly thrown off her guard. She shook hands and said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” and smiled, but felt that her armour for getting through the afternoon must be redoubled; she followed Moira and Tom into a room at the back of the house overlooking the garden in some confusion.

  The room was another surprise. Its shady length ended in French windows curtained in a soothing rose-coloured and grey chintz, and there were many flowers: it was an unexpected kind of room to find in such a Mortimer Road kind of house, and it increased her bewilderment. But—

  “What a pretty room,” she said at once, looking admiringly around.

  “Ah, that’s Moira.” Tom glanced at his sister. “She took a course in Home Decoration last year, one of those Evening School affairs.”

  “But you’d better tell Chris that I walked out after the third lesson. It was all too cut-and-dried for me; I like to choose things that I like. But I did pick up a few hints. And the teacher was very nice.”

  She laughed; a longer and a lighter laugh than Christine was accustomed to hear at Pemberton Hall, where people tended either to be lengthily convulsed over some communal private joke or not to laugh at all. Moira was one of those people who often laugh, as Christine found out during her visit: she laughed again when, excusing herself to go and get the tea because Christine, she knew, must be ready for a cup after that long journey, she indicated a distant figure at work in the garden.

  “That’s Frank,” she said. “My husband. You’ll have to excuse him, Chris. He never comes in to Sunday tea; he likes to be in the garden all day Sunday. I even take his lunch out to him. Now you make yourself at home, I shan’t be a tick.”

  Christine sat rather far forward on her chair, trying to imagine what would have happened had anyone at Mortimer Road suggested Father’s having Sunday lunch in the garden—but the newly-developing faculty failed her and she turned to wondering if certain undecided gestures being made by the form in the greenhouse were intended for gestures of greeting to herself? Presently, doubt was set at rest.

  “Old Frank’s waving to you,” said Tom, who had collapsed on to a sofa, and looked, in this setting, decidedly scruffy.

  “Oh,” Christine firmly returned the wave, in a hand holding a white glove; she had just been slipping them into her bag, and, instantly, all signs of communication from the other figure ceased.

  “He must be quite a character,” she ventured at last, “having Sunday lunch in the garden.”

  “No,” said Tom, after a pause, “no, I wouldn’t say a character. He likes his own way, though.”

  Christine allowed her eyes to dwell pensively upon Tom. It seemed ages since he had been Mr. Richards and those shoes were past a joke, and he, too, she suspected, liked his own way. She preferred him as he had seemed to her in the old days. That, she was quite certain about.

  “Tom,” called Moira’s voice, “open the door, please.” But even as Tom began to rise reluctantly, the door was opened and round it came Moira carrying the teapot and a rangy brown girl of about fourteen, with lank hair confined by a white bandeau, and a white tennis-frock short and pretty as a ballerina’s, pushing a laden trolley.

  “It’s all right—Anne to the rescue. Chris, meet Anne—our other teenager. That was Michael, who went out just now. He thinks of nothing but that moped of his. It took him eighteen months to save up for it, even third-hand from a friend. Dad and I helped a bit, of course. He’s only just got it—”

  “He did say ‘good-afternoon’,” Christine interrupted the purling chatter.

  “I’m sure I’m glad to hear it—”

  “He said ‘Hullo’,” put in Tom, who was now helping his niece hand round plates and put them on various little tables.

  Christine had never had tea, until she left home, except at a large table, ready, at some unannounced moment, to blossom with knives, forks, and cold ham. Yet this was definitely a Mortimer Road house; it reminded her, in some ways, of home.

  “Mum’s famous cake. It’s turned out all right, hasn’t it, Mum?” muttered Anne, who after a shy smile at Christine had retreated as far as possible behind her hair.

  Moira took a bite, tasted, paused critically.

  “Not one of your successes,” pronounced Tom.

  “No, I can do better. But it’ll pass. Life’s too short for cake-fussing … Do you like cooking, Chris?”

  Christine explained about her cooking, and they had some pleasant talk about cookery.

  But she was thinking while she chatted, of Moira’s remark about life being too short for cake-fussing, it had been just to her taste … yes! cake-fussing, electric-iron-fussing, electric-blanket-fussing, while somewhere miles away the sea thundered softly and the woods waved in spring and you never thought about them, much less saw them, and the years glided on.

  He eye was caught by a large hole in Tom’s sock … Of course, that would be another thing, sock darning.

  Second cups of tea—third, in Tom’s case—had been reached when a kind of impression of movement, too subdued to be called agitation, began to emanate from the corner where Anne had poked herself, and presently murmurs—“Yes, I will. Yes. Yes, Mum … can I go, now, then?” and then a kind of inclusive smile, with chin-well-ducked into her chest, and a sidling exit.

  “First date,” said Moira, when the door had been shut for a full minute, “a nice boy. Local. They’re going to play tennis.” Her voice sounded soft and proud.

  “You don’t want her getting married too young, Moira,” Tom said, in such a tone as to draw a look from Christine.

  “Married! He’s sixteen-and-a-half,” said Moira, rippling off into a laugh with a sidelong glance, like a freshet from the mainstream, at the guest.

  “I know all about that, but they start young nowadays—seventeen, eighteen. I ought to know about young marriages, if anyone does.” There was a pause. “I think I’ll go and take a look at old Frank,” said Tom, and got up and went out into the garden.

  Both women were conscious that old Frank would not want to be looked at, and they smiled at one another.

  “Poor Tom,” said Moira. “He was twenty when he married Dorothy—that was my sister-in-law. She wasn’t at all a nice woman, I’m afraid. Discontented, and always on at him to make more money. It sounds a dreadful thing to say but I was quite relieved when she died, and he wasn’t all that heartbroken, either … funny, isn’t it? If Frank died, I would want to die too.”

  “If I’d ever got married,” Christine said, colouring, and after another pause, “that’s how I’d like to feel—how I’d like to have felt, I mean.”

  “Yes …” Moira’s eyes turned to her face and lingered with a thoughtful look. “That’s how it is, for some people.
I should have thought you’d be like that—our kind has to be careful.”

  Neither said any more. But, as she finished her cup of tea, Christine was wondering what Moira had meant, by telling her about Tom’s first marriage? Was she letting her know that there were no happy memories she need feel jealous of? Or was she what Christine thought of as ‘hinting’, telling her that she was not likely to be happy with him in that special way, that way which would make you want to die, too, if the other person died? Our kind has to be careful—yes, careful not to marry anyone but the right person.

  She suddenly wished that it might have been an ordinary visit, without this business about Tom. It had not spoiled the afternoon, which was being more enjoyable than she had expected, but she was conscious of it all the time; all Moira’s remarks, interesting and even helpful as they were, had reminded her that a proposal was hanging over her, with its attendant discomforts and embarrassments.

  She glanced out of the window

  “I do admire your garden. I never saw so many flowers. Do you do it all yourselves?”

  “I don’t do it at all; it’s Frank’s baby. Come out and look at it. I know it seems rude, him not coming in to tea,” as she led the way through the French windows, “but he works so hard at the office all the week and I do like him to have his garden on Sundays. Come on—he loves showing it to friends.”

  She has a nice way of putting things, Christine thought.

  They stepped out into the plot, which was given depth and length because the opposing garden was separated from it by a golden privet hedge and a screen of young beeches.

  Christine was now reflecting that her impression of Moira being inquisitive about Pemberton Hall and its inmates must have been wrong. She had shown not a trace of it during the afternoon, and perhaps—Christine did just wonder—if Tom himself was inquisitive about them, and if he had been—I am afraid the words noseying about occurred to her—in order to gratify his own curiosity, not his sister’s? Pretending Moira wanted to know, Moira asked this and that—I’m sure she never did, Christine decided indignantly.

  Reflections about one more nail in someone’s coffin, however, were now dispelled.

  The miniature beauty of the garden waylaid her; it was impossible to think about anything disagreeable in the midst of these crimson bells, these lilac clusters, these white and brown butterflies drowsing on long purple blooms, all bathed in the low light of the evening sun. Rounded cushions of blossom flowed on to the bricks of the tiny paths that had been painstakingly set by an amateur hand, looking as if they were sculptured from some marvellous soft blue stone.

  “It’s a picture, a perfect picture,” Christine said again and again, while Frank, a tall thin man with a face that at first sight suggested the word glum, assured her, over every clump, that she ought to have seen it last year.

  He also pressed on her a sizeable packet of foxglove seeds which he took from a kind of seed-library in the greenhouse, trying to make her promise to scatter them over Hampstead Heath.

  “Now, Frank, Chris won’t want to be bothered doing that,” said Moira, laughing long, then, turning to Christine with a change of expression, “or—I don’t know—perhaps you might. It’s a pretty idea, isn’t it? Foxgloves. ‘Folk’s gloves’, it means, really, you know. ‘The folk’ was the old name for fairies.”

  “Well, I’m sure you can easily imagine fairies in Mr. Rusting’s garden,” blurted Christine, anxious to say the prettiest thing she could, and was rewarded by a kind look from Moira and not the faintest sign of acknowledgement from Frank, beyond the dismaying one of his beginning to look for another packet of foxglove seeds which he found, and silently presented to her.

  “At the bottom of the garden—eh, Chris?” exploded Tom, seizing her unresponsive arm with a laugh.

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant it was pretty,” Christine said firmly, and Frank said that it would be better next year or he would know the reason why. After another slow stroll, back to the greenhouse this time, and a leisurely inspection of its beauties, murmurs began to come from Christine about making a move.

  Frank found a rather small specimen of a pink rose hiding itself away in the only corner of the garden that could by any effort of imagination be called shady or remote and, having explained that this particular bush had been “checked in its first season,” he presented the lone bloom to Christine. Moira caught her eye and winked.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a good big bunch, I’d have loved to,” she whispered as they parted at the gate. “Frank’s really shocking about that. He never will let me give a thing to anyone, so you’ll just have to forgive him. And come in whenever you feel like it—I’m nearly always here—never mind that old journey!”

  She suddenly gave Christine’s cheek a warm, gentle kiss.

  “There,” she said. “Lovely to have seen you at last. Bye-bye.”

  “Well, what did you think of them?” began Tom at once, when they were walking down the road.

  “Very nice,” said Christine.

  “No—but really?” He had taken her arm, and now he pressed it and peered into her face.

  “They’re nice people, very nice people, of course I liked them, anybody would,” Christine said, a little crossly; in another, and a less-controlled woman it might have been a little wildly.

  “Well, don’t take it like that … I only wanted to know.” He pressed her arm again. “You know why, don’t you, Chris?”

  “Why what?” Christine fumbled in her opened bag for a handkerchief, for she felt disagreeably and unbecomingly hot.

  “Why I want to know if you like them.”

  “Good gracious, Tom, I don’t know—don’t keep on so about it, I’ve said I like them. I do like them, very much. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I can see you aren’t feeling up to the mark, dear. I expect it’s the heat, so I won’t say any more,” said Tom, keeping firm hold of her arm. “Feel like doing a film this evening?”

  “Oh, good heavens, no!” exclaimed Christine quite loudly and before she could prevent herself. “I’ve got all that mending to do and—and I think Mrs. Traill did say something about—about clearing up the garden.”

  Her voice became calmer as she enlarged upon this subject, and Tom took his cue from her and did not return, even circuitously, to the subject whose approach she was beginning to dread. He read her a lecture, all the way to the bus-stop, on the necessity of not letting herself be exploited by those people.

  He was kind, he was nice, and Moira was unexpectedly nice, and the kids were nice, Frank was a bit of a bore but nice too and the garden was ever so pretty, but it was with Oh! such a great, shaking sigh of relief that Christine at last sank on to the hard seat on top of the bus and was borne away from all the Richards—so she collectively thought of them—through the impersonal sunny breezes of the evening.

  And, thinking of Tom’s kindness, and his attempt to understand how she felt, and his avoidance of any return to that subject which plainly caused her distress, surprising tears suddenly rushed up into her eyes and she thought, it’s all too late. Too late, that’s what it is. I’ve spent the best years of my life on them, and I’ve got nothing to show for it, and oh, if this had only come when I was twenty-five!

  But they had not been the best years of her life.

  Chapter 18

  THE WHEEL HAD arrived. It was carried into Mrs. Meredith’s shed one morning by three men, and they set it up. Permission had been obtained from the necessary official body, electricity had been installed there by a cable running through the wall of the house and along the wall behind the shed, and Mrs. Meredith had brought in three rolls of ready ‘pugged’ clay and had arranged them, wrapped in damp cloths, in a box specially made to retain moisture.

  “Don’t you have to bake it?” asked Christine, who could not resist looking into the shed from time to time.

  “Of course. A place down in London will do that for me; would be more fun to have my own kiln but that?
??s looking some way ahead. I shall, one of these days.”

  “And will the pots be those lovely colours, like those dinner services, I mean?”

  “Oh, mercy, give me a chance, I shall start on ordinary pots and vases with a brown glaze or some ordinary colour, it’ll take me some time to get my hand in again.” She turned down a switch, and a low dreamy humming crept out on the air.

  “Well, I won’t intrude, Mrs. Meredith,” and Christine went on her way. Diana did not look up; she was standing with bent head, listening, a quiet expression on her usually alert face.

  In the evening they all strolled down to have a look. Mrs. Traill shook her head when she heard that Diana hoped to have some pots to show to the guests at the party in a fortnight’s time.

  “I really wouldn’t try, Diana—”

  “I daresay you wouldn’t. I’m a quick worker. I shall soon get my hand in.” With square-nailed brown fingers she lightly touched the rough surface of the wheel. “No one will expect miracles. But I must have something to show.”

  “Can you make me some bulb-bowls?” Miss Marriott asked, pausing on her way out to dinner with some man. “I really adore Chinese bowls, but they cost the earth and you have to hunt for them; there are only those plastic things in most of the shops. Could you make me six? Have you got an order-book?”

  This was evidently a prearranged question, for she produced from behind her nylon-draped back a ledger bound in crimson and gold. “There. It’s got your name on. Look.”

  “You are a duck, Antonia. No one but you would have thought of that; thank you lots,” said Diana, examining it. And then Mrs. Traill fished behind a convenient bush and brought up a beautifully-lettered gilt sign on a square board.

  PEMBERTON POTTERIES

  D. Meredith. Prop.

  In one corner was painted a tiny classic pot, in Diana’s favourite shade of purple.