She smiled and nodded and turned away. Mr. Meredith smiled slightly more warmly, and did likewise.
Christine went down the steps and out past the daffodils, open now, and glowing in the sun. Not so nice as Mrs. Traill. A bit stand-offish. But a lady all right, which perhaps Mrs. Traill …?
A certain kind of easiness of manner was not, for Christine, associated with birth.
But these were regions of speculation unfamiliar to her, and she put them aside with the thought that she would not be seeing much of her employers anyway, and so long as they were pleasant to her and she satisfied them, what did anything else matter?
“I don’t like that woman,” said Diana Meredith, the instant Christine was gone.
“Oh come, darling.”
“I always know, James. I know people. It’s my thing. I’m a natural psychologist. Not a glimmer of imagination, I should think. She just doesn’t realise—or more likely won’t acknowledge—her enormous luck. Typical lower-middle class. It’s just like Fabia to land us with someone like that, she probably felt sorry for her.”
“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.
Chapter 4
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. C
hristine 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.
“Are you there?” said Christine.
“Yes, I am here, madame. I coloured man, you know,” said the voice with the faintest note of questioning.
“Oh. Yes, well,” Christine liked Mr. Johnson’s polite madame and what was the use of being, as her employers were, artistic, if you were not also broad-minded? “Of course that doesn’t matter at all if you do your work properly,” she went on firmly. “Now you just hold on, and I’ll run across the road; the house is right opposite where I’m ’phoning from, and I’ll ask …”
She hurried over, Mrs. Traill almost certainly wouldn’t mind, but Mrs. Meredith … Christine herself had never thought about coloured people, and there was no time to think about her views now.
By luck, Mrs. Traill was just coming down the steps, in Bedford-cord slacks and an enormous navy sweater, with her silver-gilt hair blowing about and a shopping-bag on her arm.
“Hullo,” she said, waving, as Christine hurried up.
“Good-afternoon, Mrs. Traill. I’ve got a cleaner holding the line in the box across the road. Would you mind a black? You see I thought they’re so strong; he can lift things and perhaps clean the windows. What do you think we ought to pay?”
“Oh heavens; I don’t mind. I love coloured people, they’re so vital. Oh … I don’t know … whatever he asks … Good for you—quick work.”
She smiled and drifted away, and Christine hurried back to the telephone.
“Yes, I still here,” said Mr. Johnson, but cheerfully now. “What money you be paying you think? I must have five shillings per hour. I engineering student. Electricity.”
A more experienced hirer of cleaners than Christine might have pointed out that the fact of his being a student of electrical engineering did not imply his being qualified, as a house-cleaner, to demand five shillings an hour, but she was too relieved at having apparently secured a cleaner—even a black one—at all that she did not meditate pointing out anything. She did dare to say, however—
“That seems rather expensive.”
“Oh, I must have five shillings per hour. Yes. I got responsibilities,” was the instant reply: Mr. Johnson appeared to have soared in a remarkably short time from a humble recognition of disadvantages connected with the hue of his skin to an enviable state of self-confidence.
Christine pondered this fact, as she hung up the receiver, having arranged that he should present himself at Pemberton Hall at six o’clock on the following Monday evening. His studies at a local Polytechnic prevented his coming during the day.
“I be there. I brought up in Christian household,” were Mr. Johnson’s parting words. This was more than Christine had been. If Forty-Five Mortimer Road had had a God, it was the sacred promise of coloured television in years to come.
As she walked up the steps of Pemberton Hall, Christine faced the fact that she had engaged a coloured man as a cleaner.
A black man. As a cleaner.
I must be going mental, she thought. But she also had a feeling that she was not so appalled as she should have been. He didn’t sound too bad, she reflected, and anyway it will make a change.
It was not clear what she meant by this last thought, and she forgot everything when once she had reached her own landing.
Her furniture stood, lean and elegant, against the duck-egg walls, and there, in a neat large parcel on the floor, were what must be her curtains. Someone had taken them in; kind. But these people, she was sure, were kind.
Mrs. Traill, arriving half-an-hour later with the frank admission that she had come up to have a peep, stopped at the living-room door and said “Oh.”
“Do … Don’t you like it???
? Christine gave a small, not quite confident laugh. She was standing on a chair putting up the curtains.
“I love your furniture. And I love the curtains, too. But not with that furniture. You should have something peasanty, with scarlet and black, on very coarse white stuff … it would look wonderful. Why not scrap these and shop around? I’ll help you.”
Christine’s reply was to smile brightly and not answer. It was the technique perfected by years of life with Mother and Father, who had always told you, when you had made up your mind to go to Ilfracombe, that you ought to go to the Isle of Wight; you would like it better at the Isle of Wight; Mrs. Smith had a cousin who always went to the Isle of Wight and she spoke very well of it.
“But of course you know what you like and you must have it!” suddenly cried Mrs. Traill, her lovely battered face alight with the kindest of smiles. “And that very dark green does look awfully good against the greeny blue … well, I must fly … I’m in the middle of an orchid … very difficult to draw.”
She tottered away on one of the pairs of curious Mexican or Japanese sandals which she affected, and Christine drew a stealthy breath of relief and looked affectionately at the ivy sprays.
Chapter 5
MRS. BENSON’S MANNER had become ever more condescending as the days drew on towards her lodger’s departure. Such time as she could spare from the pursuit of Bingo and harrying Mr. Benson (who harried back with all his might and main; no one need sigh for Mr. Benson) was given to the tolerant questioning of Christine; how had she got on today, there was always plenty to do, moving, wasn’t there? Those old places, they often had the dry rot, give her a Council house any day—and on the last evening, as Christine was letting herself into the house about nine o’clock, she said, laughing with her head on one side: “I’ll be paying you a visit one of these days, up in your little nest, you see.”