It often seemed queer to her, now, to think that her best friend was Mr. Richards’ sister.
Miss Marriott was the first to come home.
She arrived late one afternoon, squired by Peter-whose-other-name-Christine-had-never-heard, and Mr. Herz; they were all in Peter’s car.
“Oh, Miss Marriott, I do wish I’d known—I’d have had everything ready for you. Your flat is all dusted; I did it yesterday, but I’d have put some flowers …”
“Sweet of you, but it’s all right … we’re going out to dinner almost at once … Peter! That’s apricot liqueur in there … careful!”
They followed her up the steps, Mr. Herz plump and dark and elegant, Peter looking pink and foolish, as usual.
Miss Marriott actually looked plump, too. Why, she must have been a big girl before she started modelling, thought Christine, who knew that this was how Antonia had begun on her career. She could not help staring; she did not know that she was doing it.
“Yes, I know I’ve got enormous,” Antonia said good-naturedly, turning to smile, almost to laugh, at her, as they came into the hall. “I suppose I’ll have to start taking it off soon, but it is such bliss not having to worry about dieting on the top of everything else … how pretty everything looks … bliss to be back, really …”
She passed a hand over her hair, paled by the sun, looking less arranged than formerly. Her skin was delicately brown and her eyes glittered as if reflecting the summer seas she had been drowsing beside.
“You do look well, Miss Marriott!”
“Oh, I feel well … it’s wonderful. Just dump them there, darling … Christine will take them up, won’t you, Christine … Oh, very well …” as Peter, smiling at Christine, began to take the cases upstairs.
When he came down, they went out to his car and drove away. Christine stood at the door to watch them go; it was so nice to have one of them home again; She does seem better; perhaps she’ll marry someone now, Christine thought. I hope it’s Mr. Lennox.
There had been good news of Mr. Lennox; the show had been a success on Broadway. It was only booked for a six-week ran, however, because it was not possible to get a theatre for longer, and Christine supposed that then he too would soon be coming home. From her newspaper she gathered that he had had a personal success, as well; the local paper had a column about him, one week-end.
Miss Marriott did not go back to work immediately.
She seemed more relaxed, and spent most of the next few days at home; sleeping late, gossiping for half-hours at a time on the telephone, or wandering out to have things done to her nails and hair; in the evenings she usually sat in the Long Room laughing with Peter, or Mr. Herz, or both, and drinking something Peter had invented which he called “Antonia’s Special”.
If anything, she continued to put on weight. It was surprisingly becoming to her; Christine once heard Mr. Herz, who seemed to own one of those galleries where paintings are shown off, tell her that if she wasn’t careful she would look like a Ray-nwar (which was, Christine supposed, some kind of picture).
Miss Marriott ‘took up with’ Mr. Lennox’s daughter, bringing her back to lunch or supper and going on shopping expeditions with her to buy clothes. They seemed to get on very well together, and Christine thought that this meant Miss Marriott really was thinking of settling down with Glynis’s father. They laughed a good deal. She would hear the peals coming down from Antonia’s sitting-room: Laugh and grow fat, as they say, thought Christine.
Glynis no longer looked like one of those beatniks. She was working out a style of her own, thought Christine; rather—it was not easy to find a word for it, Christine, not having poetic in her vocabulary, had to fall back on individual, of which she was rather proud. There was a white tweed cloak, and a little embroidered cap like a fez. Yet it didn’t look like fancy-dress.
Miss Marriott took a great interest in all this.
She also lectured Glynis about the way she should dress when she was older; this conversation took place one evening while the three were at supper in the kitchen.
“Fabia’s the awful example,” Miss Marriott said. “She can’t or won’t see that you can get away with 1917-trenches colour and no cut until you’re forty-five or so, but after that you have to have so much personality that people simply don’t notice what you’re wearing—and she hasn’t got it. After fifty, you just look like one more peculiar arty female.”
“Oh I like Mrs. Traill’s style, Miss Marriott,” Christine said, pausing between table and stove with a summer pudding suspended. “I can see what you mean, in a way, but I do think Mrs. Traill always looks very nice.”
“God help us,” cried Miss Marriott, darting a sparkle at Glynis which Christine, turning away to get the cream, did not see. “All right, if you really want to see everybody of her age going around in sludge-coloured shopping bags …”
“I didn’t mean that, Miss Marriott.” Christine, smiling indulgently, began spooning out icy heaps of bread soaked in rich blackish-red juice, “I only meant I think it suits Mrs. Traill.”
Glynis sat in silence, smiling, while this went on. The long summer seemed to have brought her looks into bloom, as well as revivifying those of Antonia, and she glowed in a dress of white cotton, cut low to show her brown, now full, bosom; skirt and bodice covered in little sprigs of currants, the same dark red as the fruit in the summer pudding.
As she took her place between the two beauties, one in her first pride, the other enjoying a last return of her tide before it went out for ever, Christine experienced a selfless wish that all this beauty and gaiety might be enjoyed by what she thought of as sweethearts. It seemed such a waste.
Her regrets were ill-founded. The young girl came to Pemberton Hall between bouts of furious love-making: the elderly one, sailing on this return of the tide of youth, now had her hopes.
Chapter 23
ANOTHER WEEK, AND the rest of them were home again, and found Christine with a pleased welcome but also with a list of things that were Going, or had Gone, Wrong.
It struck her, as the only person in the group who had lived in the same house for more than half a century, that her employers must have been fortunate in where they had lived.
Slates working loose on roofs, outside lead pipes forced out of shape by the battering of garden brooms, electric wiring that had worn itself out over the years—they seemed to have so little experience of these daily misfortunes of the householder that they received her doleful report with incredulity and a little indignation.
There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that Pemberton Hall had in some way let them down.
“Why, it was only done up in April,” cried Mrs. Meredith, sunburnt and thinner than ever from sailing with friends on the Broads.
“Yes, but I didn’t trust that surveyor, I said at the time I thought he was deeply unsure of himself,” said Mrs. Traill.
“That wouldn’t stop him giving an honest report.”
“It might, Diana. Unsure people have a deep-seated wish to give pleasure.”
“So that’s why he didn’t tell us the whole place would need re-wiring and it would cost five hundred pounds,” said Diana. “It’s nice to know.”
Antonia gave one of her shrieks, but rather lazily.
Mrs. Meredith whistled dolefully and glanced out of the windows as if seeking inspiration from the Faces. They were growing ever more visible as the leaves drifted down from the trees, and everyone at Pemberton Hall had taken to complaining about the forthcoming General Election, which was felt to be creeping up on one, like that figure in the picture in the M. R. James ghost story.
“Yes,” said Diana, following his glance, “and that isn’t going to make it easier. I can’t think of a worse time to find spare cash for house repairs. If those brutes get in, shares will drop like lead.”
“Perhaps they won’t. The latest poll showed a slight tendency the other way.”
‘Oh, I know, but do you take much notice of these things?”
/> “I never take any notice of any of it,” said Mrs. Traill, who had returned from Montenegro with perhaps the one ugly tunic embroidered during the last five years by peasants in that interesting region, and was now wearing it over blue jeans. “Why do you have to? You can choose which age you like, and live in it. I saw that somewhere, the other day; some artist said it. Or was it in some novel?”
“Bravo, dear,” Diana said absently. “Any news from Clive, Antonia?”
“Not a sound,” Antonia said. She had coloured a little.
“Oh well, bless him anyway,” Diana leisurely surveyed her friend. “You do look well, you know,” she pronounced at last. “I haven’t seen you look so well for years. What have you been doing?”
Her mocking turquoise eye, fixed on Antonia’s face, stated unequivocally what she thought any other woman would have been doing.
“Oh, don’t be silly. I don’t know—the sun was so gorgeous and Bill and Freda were so sweet to me and it was so heavenly peaceful. I just lay about. I don’t know.”
“Anyone amusing staying there?”
“Just us, most of the time. I did do one or two designs and posted them off but I slacked disgracefully, really. That poor little boy seemed to have dropped behind, somehow. I didn’t worry about him and his sparkles.” But she sighed as she spoke. “I suppose I must call Nigel tonight. Then back to the grind. I’ll look in there tomorrow.”
“You haven’t got long,” said Mrs. Traill, “if the autumn show’s on the twenty-first. No,” more energetically, “you haven’t, Antonia, if today’s the sixth—what is it?”
“It might be the ninth. This morning, actually, it was the twelfth. Does it matter? Fabia, you really are too vague to live. I wonder you haven’t ‘dropped behind’ yourself somewhere, long ago,” said Diana.
Mrs. Traill laughed and put her arms behind her silvery head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s comfortable. You always did fuss.”
“Don’t stir her up—let her relax,” said James kindly, looking at Antonia. “It’s true I haven’t seen you looking like this for years, Antonia. Congratulations.”
“I expect your mother’s marriage is a weight off your mind, isn’t it? Hasn’t he got a house somewhere?—I mean, he doesn’t live in hotels, does he?”
“At Esher, yes. Not old, or unique or anything, but about fifteen bedrooms and a nice garden. Just what Mummy likes—you know she can’t bear old beautiful places—No,” as everyone laughed, “she truly can’t, they depress her. She says they’re always needing things doing to them, too.”
“She’s right there,” said James. He turned to Christine, “If you’ll let me have your little list, I’ll see about getting things moving.”
“Well, leave me enough cash for a winter coat,” said Diana. “And I want one of these leather hats like a space-woman’s.”
“Oh, God, Diana,” mildly said Mrs. Traill.
“I think I could wear one.” She looked at her delicate arrogant profile in the long looking-glass across the room. “No specs, yet, no double chin—yes, I’m certain I could.”
“I wouldn’t, Diana, really, you need to be nineteen to carry one off. Why not get a couple of scarves from the Rumanian shop? Wonderful designs, and so graceful—classic.”
“Scarves! You can look like a refugee or a student if you like; I prefer to look my age.”
“I don’t think she’d take any notice if he did. She’s got him rather under her thumb, you know; he relies on her.” This remark came from Antonia, who had been discussing her mother’s marriage with James. She now glanced at Christine.
“Ducky, could you see to some supper? I’m starving again.” Her new tone towards their housekeeper was very pretty; she had borrowed its easy endearments from Clive’s vocabulary.
Christine bustled off willingly, so pleased to have them all home again … Mr. Lennox would be back soon, too, and then there might be wedding bells.
There came a day some weeks later—it happened to be Tom Richards’s wedding-day, and Christine was at least trying to regret, for his sake, that it was pouring with rain—when she was standing on the kerb in the Village waiting for a chance to cross the road. The traffic! All you could say was that it didn’t, so far, turn on you and chase you down the quieter streets …
Under the umbrella she was struggling to hold up against the swooping wind her eye was caught by a placard outside one of the two Village newsagents.
HIGHGATE STAR WEDS IN U.S.
Christine experienced a kind of downward swoop in her stomach, accompanying an awful suspicion. It couldn’t be … it mustn’t … Turning again to face the boisterous wind, she hurried across to the shop. It was nonsense, of course, lots of stage and screen people lived in Highgate … but Oh, please, don’t let it be …
But it was.
Disregarding the people in the shop, she stood there holding the paper before her, staring at the paragraph while her umbrella lay dripping and unheeded on the floor. Her eyes swept down the column; Oh, perhaps … let there be … some mistake …
No mistake. Clive Lennox, star in the Noël Coward show now running successfully on Broadway, had married Zetta Dettinger, a dancer. Zetta had starred in musicals and on television in the States. Mr. Lennox lived at Pemberton Hall, in the Square.
Christine slowly folded the paper and stuffed it into her shopping-bag.
No one was looking at her. That was what the world was like: awful things happened, treacheries happened, people’s hearts got broken, and no one noticed. No one.
She felt a strong, painful impulse to tell someone, and had to walk out of the shop, carefully putting up her umbrella, so that she should not give way to it. She began to walk briskly homewards through the rain-swept roads, under the bare trees.
Men! Why need there be any?
All they ever seemed to do was to upset things, and women could get on all light without them; of course, you had to have them for other things, like looking at bodies when people were murdered, but if there weren’t any men probably no one would get murdered; women weren’t always murdering people …
Murder? What was she thinking of?
Her thoughts were running wild … She deliberately took a hold on herself; she must be ready to face Miss Marriott.
Thank goodness, she thought, she was out today, down at Nigel Rooth’s. No one was at home.
Oh this rain … ‘happy the bride that the sun shines on’ … poor, poor Miss Marriott … and Tom, too … Tom was getting married today … I’m getting married in the morning … a pair of them, and both at the church in time. Trust them.
Men.
Christine slammed the front door so forcibly that the noise seemed to shake the house.
Instantly, she was ashamed. Her gesture seemed silly, having nothing to do with the feeling inside the hall. She stood still for a moment, almost listening—and there was the ‘happy welcome’ as usual, gentle and wooing, laying its silent blessing on heart and spirit and assuring her that anger would pass, but comfort would remain. She went slowly up the stairs.
Chapter 24
SHE SAW NOTHING of her employers until the evening. She almost tip-toed about, dreading to be confronted by some distressed face, but the house remained quiet. Then, suddenly, about six o’clock, everyone seemed to come in flourishing newspapers and exclaiming.
“Christine! Have you seen this?” demanded Mrs. Meredith, coming into the kitchen and thrusting the Evening Standard at her, eyes sparkling joyfully with excitement and anticipation of more to come. “Isn’t it—”
“Yes, Mrs. Meredith. I saw it in the local paper, up in the Village,” Christine said, unable, for the life of her, to keep a repressive note out of her voice.
“Well? Isn’t it splendid news? She looks a poppet.” Mrs. Meredith absorbedly studied the bride, who thrust out her bosom as she stood, flourishing a large knife, beside an equally large cake and her new husband. Mr. Lennox looked much as usual. Christine had somehow expected him to look cowed and remorsef
ul; he ought to, goodness knew.
“She looks like a pretty little frog,” Mrs. Meredith pronounced.
“Oh, do you think she’s pretty, Mrs. Meredith?”
“By modern standards—very. A belle laide—bouncing with vitality and plenty of mouth. Here … want it?” She tossed the paper on to the table just as Mrs. Traill glided in.
It was plain to Christine, from the first sight of her, that Mrs. Traill was taking it differently. Even the usual walk had been modified and the paper she held out drooped limply, having got wet in the rain.
“I thought you … might … like … to see this, Christine. It might have come as … a bit of a shock. Knowing us all so well,” added Mrs. Traill confusedly, as Diana glanced at her in surprise.
“Thank you, Mrs. Traill. It’s very nice of you but I had seen it. This afternoon, up in the Village.”
“I give it eighteen months,” intoned Mrs. Traill, snatching up the other paper and fixing an indignant stare on the wedding group. A descending step on the stair now caused all three, off guard for a second, to exchange lightning glances; the excitement in it was unconscious, but avid as that once greeting the entrance of Christians into the Roman arena.
But it was James.
“Well, what do you think about this?” he demanded of Christine. There is no third evening paper in London now, so at least he could not offer her yet another photograph. “Surprised us all, hasn’t he? Last thing I ever thought … er … pretty little thing, though, don’t you think?” He took up Mrs. Traill’s paper and studied it.
“I don’t admire that style of looks, Mr. Meredith. Piggy little eyes and a huge mouth. I like something more … refined,” Christine said, rushing biscuits away into a tin.
“She does look very common,” Mrs. Meredith said judicially, “but that means nothing nowadays; in fact it’s fashionable. God help us all,” she added, but without emphasis.
“Sexy,” murmured James.
Again, footsteps were heard coming down the stairs, and this time it could only be one person. Her three old friends were temporarily overcome by feelings which, indulged in for thirty years, had become instinctive and quite uncontrollable: malicious interest, and what may be called gossipry, and real affectionate concern, and no one said anything. Christine continued to open packets of biscuits, delivered that afternoon by the grocer, and wedge them recklessly into their tins.