The Charmers (9 page)

“Now, Diana! You
know
she welcomes
any
chance to flop on to Clive.”

Mrs. Meredith shrugged and did not answer, but James shook his head as he sat behind
The Times
.

“This psychological approach … now I should have said his driving her down was just a convenient arrangement with an old friend.”

“
No
, James. It goes deeper, and you have to look for the
hidden motive
,” Mrs. Traill said severely.

“Well, I’m going upstairs to look at my
Times
,” and with a cheerful laugh he went out.

Christine was sorry. She had already responded to the un-Mortimer-like atmosphere of Pemberton Hall sufficiently to admit to herself that she preferred the company of its gentlemen to that of its ladies; they were less critical, she felt, more ready to be pleased with what she did. At Mortimer Road you always expressed thankfulness when no men were about, and must tell yourself you meant it.

“Antonia always has been crazy about clothes.” Mrs. Meredith said musingly, “Remembering her drawing ‘fashion ladies’ when she was seven, Fabia, and designing frocks with longish skirts well before anyone would look at them, in the
late
’twenties? You know,” with a vivid transformation of tone and expression, “I’d give my ears for her job, Ferenc or no Ferenc, but all she does is grizzle.”

“P’raps she doesn’t like going out to work any more?” put in Christine, rinsing cups; continually, during the past three days, she had thought of all those years at Lloyd and Farmer’s and wondered how she had endured them. The relaxed atmosphere in the room invited her to join in the conversation.

Diana just glanced at her.

“Oh bosh, she adores it. That’s why there’s all this fuss about Ferenc. She’s terrified she’ll have to resign, just to save her face, if he gets made top designer, or whatever Nigel calls it. I think it would be more dignified if she retired now, before she has to. She can afford it—she must have thousands put away, she’s been earning a great deal of money for over fifteen years.”

“It’s not that simple,” said Mrs. Traill.

“It never is, bless your neurotic old heart … Well, this won’t do, I must go out and buy a hat,” and Diana sauntered off.

Mrs. Traill shook her silvery fleece. “Diana and her hats—so
ageing
,” she said, following her friend out of the kitchen.

Christine began to make her plans for the evening. Her employers could look after themselves; they would understand that she must be on hand, with a new cleaner arriving and black at that; and she herself would eat something later, when Mr. Johnson’s capacities had been proved and her mind was at rest—or not, perhaps.

It would be better, she decided, to have them all downstairs at supper when he arrived and not wandering around the house, for Mrs. Meredith had made it plain that she would hate the sight of him, and Mrs. Traill—well, she might get too friendly with him: for I’m sure, thought Christine, that she likes men, black or white.

She saw none of them all that day, and greatly enjoyed pottering about her flat and cautiously cooking her lunch. By six, when Mr. Johnson was expected, she had assembled an attractive-looking cold meal in the kitchen.

Six o’clock struck.

She drew herself up, and prepared to meet her ebony Mrs. Benson.

Punctually at a quarter to seven, there was a by-no-means hesitant knock, followed by a peal on the bell.

“You’re three-quarters of an hour late,” accused Christine, jerking the door open with no wavering hand.

Mr. Johnson, who looked about nineteen and was having trouble with a voluminous scarf and the evening breeze, gave a loud cheerful laugh.

“Oh, yes. I know I late. I couldn’t help. I got responsibilities. You got a very big house. This all your house?” He followed her into the hall, looking around with smiling curiosity.

“No, it isn’t. I’m the housekeeper. It belongs to some ladies and gentlemen who’ve bought it. Come this way.”

She led him down the stairs. Instinct told her to talk to him as if he were a child, and a child who must be kept in order.
Begin
, decided Christine, as you
mean
to go on; I can see he’s the kind who’ll be sitting about drinking coffee and asking questions all the evening if he gets half a chance.

“Long way down,” observed Mr. Johnson. Christine did not answer. A slight initial liking for Mr. Johnson’s young face, and his smiles, she ignored.

Outside the kitchen door she had arranged some cleaning materials.

“That a broom,” said Mr. Johnson, pointing with an air of pleased recognition, “and that a brush. What that red thing?”

“That’s a dust-pan.”

“Dust-pan. Pan. What you use it for?”

“What—good gracious, haven’t you ever seen a dust-pan before? That’s to put the dirt in, when you sweep down the stairs.”

“I live in dirty house, now,” said Mr. Johnson, smiling more brightly. “Dirty peoples. I brought up in Christian household; we have broom, and dust. Maybe we have dust-pan. Long time ago, I forget.”

“Yes, well, you’ll soon learn,” Christine said firmly. “Now, I’ll take you up to the top of the house.”

She led him all the way up the stairs again, up and up, to the landing below her own. (Up there, she was
not
having him).

“Now,” she said, as they paused, Mr. Johnson standing on the stair below her laden with brush and duster and pan and smiling hopefully, “I want you to sweep the stair-carpet and rub the paint at the sides with the duster, and dust between the banisters. I’ll show you, and then you can get on by yourself.”

She showed him. He did not receive instruction as she would have wished, continually interrupting with impatience—“Yes, I understand. That easy. I know now.”—and gazing around him while she was demonstrating. But she was not going to waste his time—at five shillings an hour, indeed, and hurried through her task.

“I never done cleaning work before,” he remarked, as she was going downstairs again, “except maybe when I a little kid in Christian household. But I soon learn. I intelligent.”

She went down, accompanied by the not-reassuring sound of a brush banging smartly against fresh paint.

She arranged things a little more to her satisfaction in the kitchen and presently the household began to drift in: first James Meredith, who almost at once went out to get the appropriate wine from his cellar, having first asked her what they were going to eat; and then Mrs. Traill, smilingly confessing that she had talked to Mr. Johnson on the stairs and he seemed an utter lamb, and then Diana, poising her new hat on one finger.

“Thought I’d like your verdict on it,” she said.

Mrs. Traill said that she disliked hats and never wore them; they put years on to your age; they kept the sun from your hair—

“I don’t want the sun on my hair.”

—They were always such conventional shapes; she used to make her own at one time; pick up a Mexican or Chinese straw, the peasants had wonderful ones—

“I dare say. I got this at Harrods. Like it?”

The two of them looked at half a yard of violet net and six or seven little violet velvet bows in silence.

“Very smart,” James said at last, in a tone suggesting to Christine that he had said the same thing many times before; but at that moment in swept Antonia, preceded by a faint disturbance that was not exactly a rustle, and a waft of Amour-Amour, and followed by Clive Lennox.

“Angel of a hat. Exactly right for you. Lots of them about, of course, but what does that matter if it’s Good Fashion,” she said, falling into a chair. She was white with tiredness, and Clive at once set about getting her a drink. James indicated the wine; Clive shook his head and mouthed
Whisky
and went off, followed by James, to the cellar.

“Well, how did it go?” asked Diana, turning a jug upside down on the dresser and setting the hat on it.

“Oh, my things did very well, better than I expected. I knew I’d got one or two good numbers but I’ve been so fussed about that little tick I didn’t realise
how
good, and one in particular,
Fall Folly
, stopped the show. That’s being photographed for
Harpers
. They do keep some sense of proportion and occasionally show their readers clothes that haven’t gone mad … and my others did well, too.”

“Of course you must still have a lot of fans from just after the war. I know they’re getting old,” Diana said, “but—”

“Meaning that it was applause from old-hat people for old-hat numbers? Thank you.”

“Don’t be so touchy, darling. I was going on to say that I expect they’ve trained their daughters to like your kind of clothes; you’ll have a new generation growing up, all adoring you.”

Antonia shut her eyes. “Nigel’s pleased,” she said, “and that’s something, nowadays.”

Christine listened with divided attention to all this because she was expecting any moment to hear the banging of Mr. Johnson’s brush as he came down the kitchen stairs. But she could not hear it, even in the distance, and presently she slipped out of the room.

All was quiet as she hastened up to the hall, her mind full of forebodings not unconnected with the colour of Mr. Johnson’s skin which her common-sense instantly checked. And sure enough he was not sacrificing a white cockerel in the Merediths’ bathroom or sticking pins into an image of herself.

But she did find him sitting on the top step of the kitchen flight, silent, seeming suddenly older, all his smiles gone and his hands drooping dejectedly between his knees in some way that brought out in them a simian look.

“Hullo—what’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?” Christine demanded briskly.

He slowly moved his eyes until he was looking at her, without lifting his head, and shook it.

“Can’t you get on?”

Mr. Johnson slowly waved his hand over the dust-pan, the brush, and the duster and broom, all of which, she saw, had accompanied him as he made his way down the stairs.

“This,” he said, in an immensely deep and sad voice, “woman’s work.”

“Well, you should have though of that before, shouldn’t you?” said Christine, marshalling the considerable, though largely unconscious, forces of Mortimer Road. “I think it all works out nicely. I want a bit of help, you need the money, what does it matter if it is woman’s work, as you call it?”

“I a man,” he said sorrowfully.

“Well, it’s too late to do anything about that now,” Christine retorted briskly. “I wouldn’t think about whose work it is. You just get on with it. When you get to the bottom there’ll be a nice cup of tea. That’ll cheer you up.”

Mr. Johnson looked more cheerful immediately, and even laid a languid hand on the brush.

“Is true, about what you say. Is just work, for money. I got responsibilities. I like two cups tea, with plenty sugar. Also sandwich.”

“There won’t be sandwich.” She was annoyed to find his way of talking infectious. “Sandwiches, I mean, but I daresay I could find you a biscuit—”

“Slice of cake,” said Mr. Johnson eagerly.

Christine laughed. Really, he was just a great child.

“Perhaps. Now you get on with your job.”

She left him, and in a moment heard the brush banging against the banisters again, and also a deep buzzing noise, not musical by any standards of her own, but pleasant to hear. Mr. Johnson was humming “There is a green hill far away,” and even Christine Smith knew that tune.

“Is that our Massa Johnson? How’s he shaping?” asked Clive, as the banging and buzzing became faintly audible in the kitchen.

“I don’t know yet. He’s got a lot to learn—”

“I hope,’ interrupted Mrs. Traill, “I
do
hope you won’t
spoil
him, Christine—”

“How do you mean?—spoil him, Mrs. Traill? I certainly shan’t let him take any liberties.”

“I didn’t mean that kind of thing. We’ve got to treat him like a
friend
, and not ruin all that grand
warmth
and
vitality and joy of life
.”

“So long as he does his work properly and isn’t nearly an hour late every time, like he was this evening, I shan’t take over-much notice of him. He seems nothing but a great child, anyway,” Christine said.