The wedding-day was bright and fair, and the ceremony was held—in a church, of course—at a suburb near Hendon.
Most of the large Smith family into which Christine had been born was there, and a number of their very old friends. The bride looked sweet and the bridegroom looked a fool, which is what Smiths expect and like at weddings.
Christine’s thoughts about Mortimer Road had become increasingly clear—and resentful—during her time at Pemberton Hall. Once or twice she found the words wasted my life in that place going through her head. But, although she compared her new employers with the Smiths gathered at the wedding, and even found the words nicer and more kind of intelligent to describe the former, and even though they seemed in some way closer to That Day than Smiths, she came away from the reception feeling cheerful, and fond of them all.
It was the cosy Smith atmosphere. Once your feet had been caught in it, perhaps you never quite got them free.
Having briskly declined the offer of a lift from some cousins, she set out on an enjoyable homeward journey by bus; through roads of newish houses where many trees, and small gardens filled with brilliant flowers surrounding tiny lawns, gave an agreeable, and quite false, rural impression. The warm wind blew in through the windows, the sky was all blue except for swathes of ravelled white cloud floating high, and on the horizon dark trees, gathered together by distance, might have been a real forest.
The bus stopped—at a Request, Christine noticed, because this was the kind of thing she did notice (she would have made a first-class witness)—and some people came up the stairs and one of them was Mr. Richards, from the office; from Lloyd and Farmer’s.
Christine was so surprised that she felt quite a shock. It was Mr. Richards, she never had an instant’s doubt. But he did look pale and tired. Perhaps he had been ill.
She was sitting in the back seat near the stairs, and when he half-turned to make certain of catching the conductor’s eye and hand him the fare—that was like him, he was always a one for quiet efficiency—he saw Christine.
He looked surprised, and he smiled and raised his hat (Mr. Richards had the habits of one over fifty years old) but he finished giving his fare, and getting his change, and counting it, and putting it away in a small purse, before he spoke to her.
“Miss Smith! What are you doing here? Do you live in this part of the world?”
“No, I’ve been to my nephew’s wedding. Do you live near here, Mr. Richards?”
“No, I’m staying with some relations … er …” At this moment the man sitting next to Christine got up and went down the stairs and Mr. Richards said masterfully, “I’ll come and sit next to you …” and moved adroitly into the place, adding with a laugh, “that is … if I may?”
Christine laughed too. But she thought that this had not been the way of Mr. Richards in the office. Kind he always had been, especially on that morning when he had had to break the news to her. But not one for jokes.
“And what are you doing?” he went on. “I don’t expect you had any difficulty about getting another job.”
This was part of the kindness, because he must have known, better than most, that women over fifty did not find it easy to get another job. But she could answer cheerfully, and did, explaining what she was doing and where, and adding that Pemberton Hall was a fine old place.
Then she said, after he had commented that it all sounded satisfactory and he was glad she was well placed … “And how is Lloyd and Farmer’s?”
She spoke with a playfulness which she would never have permitted herself in the office. But the day was so fine and she felt affectionate towards her family again after months of unacknowledged estrangement, and she was quite pleased to see Mr. Richards.
He said abruptly, “I’m not with them any more.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” said Christine. “They must miss you … it wouldn’t seem the same there without you.”
Mr. Richards smiled. It was not a real smile.
“I don’t think they miss me much,” he said. “There were big changes after you left, Miss Smith. Many changes. I’m not sorry to be out of it.” Then after a pause he added, looking out of the window, “You knew my wife died?”
“No. No, I didn’t know that. Oh. I am sorry … you have had some bad luck, haven’t you, Mr. Richards.”
They said no more for a little while. It did not occur to Christine that one does not refer to the death of a man’s wife as bad luck, because she was eager to show her sympathy, but afterwards she remembered office gossip about his not getting on with the dead one, and did wonder if it was all bad luck?
The small silence was broken by some remark from Mr. Richards, and after that they got on nicely until the bus was approaching a stop where he said that he must get off. Christine was preparing a remark about its having been nice to see him, when she saw him taking out a little notebook.
“Now if you will let me have your telephone number,” he said, “I should like to ring you up one day soon and see if you would be free one afternoon to come and have a cup of tea with me.”
“It’s Highgate 1111,” said Christine, very surprised. “Thanks, it’s very nice of you.”
She had accepted the invitation unhesitatingly. After he had gone down the steps at the next stop, she continued to look ahead, deliberately not glancing down to see if he were waving.
The bus moved on, and she experienced a slight sensation of relief. Out to tea with Mr. Richards. Well. Also Fancy.
Chapter 9
CHRISTINE’S LIFE HAD not been one in which the sentence he had not telephoned had played the part it does in the lives of most women. She had known one or two men for a couple of months and been out with them to a cinema or for a walk, and ‘nothing had come of it’.
Smiths expect something to come of it, and that something is what they call wedding bells.
None of these men had aroused any feelings in her, beyond a conviction that they were not the same to get along with, somehow, as women; and, when ten days passed and Mr. Richards had not telephoned, she only thought, ‘Oh well, I expect he will, some time’, and the matter began to drift out of her mind.
One evening while she was going out to the garden to water some zinnias which Mrs. Traill had bought “because those gorgeous colours remind me of Txlculpa,” Miss Marriot spoke to her.
“We want to have a party on Sunday evening, Christine, for Clive’s daughter—you know she’s just got into this school. Can you arrange it? Glasses, and a few bits to eat, and so forth. It won’t be many—just us, and Glynis, and my mother, and one or two people Clive knows and Mr. Rooth. James will see to the drinks. And, of course, you’ll come, won’t you?”
Looking like an angel burdened with some troubling secret, she stood at the foot of the stairs in her dark suit, the jewel on her lapel flashing in the dusk, and smiled—absently, as usual. She always seemed, Christine thought, to be thinking about something else when she spoke to you.
“Oh, thank you, Miss Marriott, I’d love to come. Er—those little biscuits, shall I get? And put cheese on them and those olives? Things like that? I would offer to make you a cake—but I’m still only learning, really—”
“Oh, God, no. Not cake. Ask Fabia, she’ll know. That’s lovely, then.” She nodded and drifted away.
This was exciting news. Christine was to meet a gossip-writer and a dress-designer, and no doubt the ladies would be wearing lovely clothes. She would have liked to see them all eating a cake baked and iced by herself, but it wasn’t wanted, and anyway she could not have made one yet.
Mrs. Traill was helpful. She took over the catering, saying that she had to go into Soho anyway on the Saturday and would buy some snazzy biscuits. And Nigel Rooth adored caviare, they must have some caviare.
“They won’t want much. It’s at half-past eight—most people will have had dinner. It’s just an excuse for us all to get together, really, and I think Clive has some sort of a dim feeling it might do that little Glynis good to see a bit
of formal entertaining—he’s given her some money to have the kind of party she’ll really enjoy with all her weirdy beardy friends. Of course she won’t enjoy coming to us. But we really couldn’t face having all the noise and the mess here. She’ll just have to put up with nothing but conversation, for once.”
Even Christine could feel that this was hardly the spirit in which you gave a party for someone, and experienced a little sympathy for this Glynis.
“Is she pretty, Mrs. Traill?” she asked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say pretty. Mostly mouth and eyes, like they all manage to be, nowadays. She’s very unfeminine. Too thin, and her hair always needs brushing. And you simply cannot get anywhere with her. I think it’s one’s duty to know the young, and realise what goes on in their heads and usually I’m pretty good with them but honestly she won’t let you in an inch. I expect it will be a flop. I can’t bear conventional parties; when we lived in Esthonia we always had them on the shore. Baked our own fish. Caught it, and then baked it on stones. Delicious. But Diana and Antonia are both deadly conventional about entertaining.”
It had struck Christine before now that so far as Mrs. Traill was concerned there was only one way of living, and looking, and thinking, and that was Mrs. Traill’s.
She condemned in others what she approved in herself; rebuking the yet-unseen Glynis for thinness, for example, while keeping the severest watch on her own exiguous waist and hips, and wagging her head dolorously if, at the end of each week’s ritual weighing, she had put on an ounce. And what could be less feminine than her trousers, and her sombrely-hued old men’s shirts, and her jerkins embroidered by peasants in whom the traditional merriment had died some collective death?
Yet she had had four husbands. There must be something that attracted them, thought Christine, who described as not exactly pretty Mrs. Traill’s face, with its brown bulging brow, and heavy-lidded grey eyes and mouth shaped like a bow, unpainted and serene, all framed in the fleece of wanton silver hair.
When Christine came into the Long Room about nine o’clock on Sunday evening, her first thought was one of self-congratulation.
Under protest, she had spent the larger part of the day polishing, and dusting, and arranging the claw-legged table with its load of bottles and what to her seemed a thin display of tiny biscuits and scraps of strongly-flavoured foods. But there were flowers and flowers. She had spent three hours, picking and arranging them; and gleams from burnished silver here and there, and a warm apricot light from many little lamps lying along the walls. The long curtains at the windows were not drawn.
She had remained upstairs, changing her dress, while the company arrived. There were only five of them, beside her employers, and everybody was sitting in an informal circle before the fireplace hidden in lilac and young fern; there was a scent from the lilac, and the light rise and fall of voices, and laughter.
Christine sidled in, so far as a large person could sidle, and, excited and full of pleasant anticipation, took a chair next to a wall slightly outside the circle. A large dark man in evening-dress with a red carnation in his buttonhole at once turned his head to stare at her, with a look of open interest.
“Ah …” said Clive Lennox, in a tone that welcomed her pleasantly, and turning from where he stood pouring out something beside the table to smile at her, “here’s Christine … she’s kind enough to look after us all.”
“Keeps us in order, don’t you, Christine.”
“Won’t stand any nonsense,” said Diana Meredith, winking.
“It’s utter bliss, we never have to think about a thing,” muttered Antonia mechanically; she was almost lying on the sofa beside the dark man who had stared at Christine, with his fingers just touching her wrist.
“Now, dear, what will you drink?’ asked Clive.
Christine said in her usual clear voice that she would like a gin and orange, please, and Clive poured it out and handed it to one of the guests, a man whom Christine thought looked like an actor, to pass to her.
She did not, now, feel as confident as she had sounded, for the friendly murmurs that had followed her general introduction had been pierced on their conclusion by one sharp little voice. It suggested the yap of a Pekinese, and what it had said was: “How do you do, Miss Smith.” It came from a small shape in a light dress who sat on the other side of Antonia.
Near the fireplace, on a tuffet, sat another shape, consisting chiefly of long, long dark boots and long, long dark hair. The boots were drawn up almost to its chin. The eyes were cast down. The hands were clasped between the knees and the whole pose suggested suffering mutely borne.
Christine sat sipping her gin and orange, which Clive had made enjoyably strong, and found to her satisfaction that she could stare as much as she liked, because no one now was looking at her or taking any notice of her.
They were talking about Noël Coward.
“Surely by now he doesn’t care what the critics say? People will go to see him anyway; our generation because we adore him and he talks our language and the young ones—those of them who care about the theatre—because he’s becoming a classic,” said Diana.
“No one likes bad notices,” said another man who also diffused an atmosphere of the stage; that is to say, he was livelier and better-groomed and handled his voice in a way that was different from most people’s. “When you’re in something by Noël, it’s those catty remarks sending up the book.”
“Have you much to do in it, darling? I’ve been in such a rush, I’ve never taken it all in,” sighed Antonia, turning to Clive.
“Only second-lead, dear,” he said mildly. But Christine noticed that his eyes wandered always back to her; away to his daughter, then moving from one guest to another to make sure everyone’s glass was full, but always back to Antonia, in her black chiffon sheath that broke into a mermaid’s tail of frills just below her knees.
“I did tell you,” he murmured, and she turned to him with a remorseful smile.
“Always so good, isn’t he, to people who’ve been in his shows before,” said Diana.
“Well, thank you, love, I was hoping I’d got the job on my merits—poor things, but mine own,” Clive said.
“Don’t be so touchy, darling!” suddenly cried Antonia ringingly. “Peter, get me a drink, I’m as dry as bones.”
Yes. Peter was there, pink in white tie and tails, sitting rather out of the circle, just as Christine was, and doing more listening and looking than talking. They hadn’t even troubled to let her know that he was coming, and they were always making fun of him, he was one of their perpetual jokes, like Amanda and her mother-in-law. But Christine, without any reason, liked him.
He now got up and went across to the table and competently prepared the drink which Antonia instructed him about in the same carrying, impatient voice.
“Well mixed, brother,” said James.
“Ha, that’s experience,” said Peter, carrying the full glass deftly across the room. “I usually end up doing this at parties. Often thought if that lot gets in and taxes us out of existence in the autumn, I’ll get a job as a barman.”
“Think they will?”
“Get in? Haven’t a clue. Hope to God not, anyway.” He sat down in his corner and began again to look at Antonia.
She, sipping at her glass, had turned away from the party and was listening to the little woman next to her, who, Christine supposed, must be the famous Mrs. Marriott, the gossip-writer.
She not only sounded like a Pekinese but looked rather like one, with her short, round-eyed, snub-nosed face, if a Pekinese can be imagined wearing a shift-dress of oatmeal-tinted brocade and a gauze scarf. Her hair was dressed in frizzy blue curls and there were six rows of pearls clasped tightly about her neck. That’s to hide it, thought Christine, she must be getting on. But she’s ever so smart.
The conversation was absorbingly interesting to her.
“… the Braithewaites, and Colonel Lester (their girl’s just off to the Sorbonne). Then on Wednesday I
flew up to Gail-glass for young Hugh’s twenty-first, fireworks and a barbecue with a whole sheep and Games the next day. And we danced till four, then back here for Lady Muir’s dance for Katherine, and Susan Gillespie …”
It sounded an unbelievable kind of life, flying off to parties in grand houses and writing about them afterwards.
The two actors and Clive were talking in a group by themselves—animatedly and with frequent bursts of laughter, and Mrs. Traill, who this evening wore a drab hessian shift with buttons like pebbles and more pebbles in her ears, after listening smilingly to their talk for a little while, joined them, and the laughter became more frequent; Christine remembered Clive saying that Mrs. Traill had been on tour with him “between the wars”; the group would have something in common.
Diana and James had drawn Peter from his corner and were talking with him about cars; only she, and Glynis, and the big dark man next to Antonia, were out of it for a brief moment; silent, not laughing.
“The flowers are simply delicious,” he suddenly called across to her. “Who arranged them? You?”
Christine smiled and nodded.
“At least …” he edged a little nearer to her, lessening the distance, “they aren’t arranged at all; they’re divinely natural. Of course, you’ve never been to one of those awful places where they teach you to bunch up chicken-wire and ‘balance values’, have you?”