“Of course I’ll be all right. I daren’t be ill with that little swine getting his foot in whenever there’s half an inch … Don’t be silly,’ with a crushing look at Peter.
He instantly said, well, he must be pushing, and she wailed, “Oh don’t get all hurt now, please. You must have some dinner.” She turned to Mrs. Traill. “He can have some tongue, can’t he?”
Peter, however, earnestly persisted in his intention of pushing, and was at length languidly waved off by Antonia and seen out by James. He retreated in a diminuendo of apologies, still explaining that it had all been his fault.
No one said anything when James reappeared, but Mrs. Traill drew the biscuits towards her and Clive leant over the table to cut himself a wedge of cheese.
“Antonia, darling, this is our Miss Smith—she’s going to look after us,” Diana said, in a moment, and Christine exchanged smiles with Miss Marriott. There was something likeable, something immediately winning, about her; Christine felt that she would not hurt a fly. She also felt that she was rather wet.
The party stayed long over the supper-table that first evening; at half-past ten, Christine stopped trying to tidy up and went off to bed, dismissed with absent, flashing smiles from her absorbedly gossiping employers.
Someone called Amanda was providing the laughter: she seemed to have had a stormy time of it following her second divorce and the attempts of her discarded first husband to get back jewellery that had belonged to his mother. In every country in Europe. And then, of course, there was Dick. Christine went out with her ears full of the gurgling, affectionately-malicious voices—Oh, you know Amanda, that’s typical Amanda—he couldn’t have, Fabia; you’re embroidering. Miss Marriott’s cold seemed to be better.
Slowly, as she climbed the long flights of stairs, she entered into a realm of silence and peace, while the laughter and voices from the kitchen grew fainter and fainter until she heard it no more.
Stars looked in at landing windows, lamplight shone through the branches of a flowering tree in the Square, making every blossom and leaf into some fantastic tropical butterfly. Distant traffic droned, paused, droned on again, as it climbed Highgate Hill. My flat, thought Christine, pausing to look out of her landing window over dark sleeping roofs and the rounded masses of sleeping trees, my home. Mine.
Cries about hot-water bottles, Vick, boiling baths, that wonderful stuff that man in Paris put Fabia on to, and a final landing colloquy between Fabia and James about the pathetic and extraordinary behaviour of that poor ass, Peter, floated up to her until past midnight, breaking in on a wakefulness due to the excitement that she had felt, and controlled, throughout the day. Into the small hours, it seemed to her between waking and sleeping, she heard the light gay murmur of their voices and, surely once there was singing, and a scatter of applause. They keep all hours, she thought drowsily, as she at last fell asleep.
Chapter 7
MISS MARRIOTT REMAINED invisible throughout the quiet Sunday that followed. But on Monday morning she appeared in the kitchen at nine o’clock, looking dewy, fresh and cold-less.
“Is there any coffee?” she asked, smiling a little at Christine.
“I have got it all ready to make. But I was just wondering who would be coming down … Mrs. Traill said would I give you all breakfast for the next few days, just while you’re settling in …”
“Divine,” Miss Marriott said lifelessly, sitting down at the table and beginning to fidget with the cups. ‘Oh, I think everybody’ll want coffee.”
Christine was about to measure the powder from a tin into the first cup when there came a low shriek and an arresting hand.
“Not that muck out of a tin! Haven’t we any real coffee?” Enormous sapphire eyes swept the kitchen distractedly, coming to rest on Christine’s face.
“There is half a pound. I did get some. Mrs. Traill said to get it but I thought it’ud save time.” Christine was slightly flustered and thinking that she had excuse to be.
“And don’t boil the milk. Scald it. It spoils the flavour to boil it. And sugar. Yes, sugar—two teaspoonfuls—for once.” Miss Marriott sighed and her voice died away.
Nervy, thought Christine, piecing together the fragments of gossip overheard, and shovelling coffee beans into the patent grinder fixed to the wall. Looks older by daylight, too. She concentrated on the grinding, resisting a temptation to count the strings of pink beads that filled the scooped-out neck of Miss Marriott’s black suit. Her eyelashes were black this morning, as well.
“Hullo, darling. Better?” Clive Lennox came in, smiling absently at Christine while bending over Miss Marriott. She opened her eyes long enough to rub her cheek against his, then shut them again, and Christine approached with a cup, saying, “Your coffee, Miss Marriott,” with an intonation unconsciously modelled on that of a butler she had seen in some film. Antonia groped for it, and drank.
“Oh …” she sighed, cradling improbably long fingers about the cup, “that’s good … that’s very good,” nodding at Christine. “Yes, I’m better … I hope I’ll be better still at five this evening, when that little bastard’s numbers are out of the way.”
“The first-night feeling. Don’t I know it,” Clive muttered.
“No. No, it isn’t like that now, Clive. It used to be, but at least then I did know I had a clear field; some numbers would just be more of a hit than others. But this time—that little so-and-so’s first show, and sharing it with him—it’s all so muddly. I do loathe him so, and his horrible little jackets all over pearly-king buttons.”
She waved away the bread which Christine was holding towards her and rested her head on her hand.
“Better eat something. Can’t face up to things on an empty stomach,” said James Meredith, who came in humming and was the first to give Christine what she called ‘a proper good-morning’.
“James, I couldn’t. I’m having milk and sugar in my coffee, that will have to do. You’re both being so sweet, but honestly this morning it will just have to do.”
James shook his head.
“Bacon and egg, Mr. Meredith?” Christine enquired, feeling sure of her ground this time, and having received a beam and a silent and definitely conspiratorial nod in answer, set to work.
“I’ll take some coffee to the girls to wake them up,” he said in a moment, and while Antonia slowly drank her coffee and was persuaded by Clive to try a piece of toast, Christine made two trays ready.
She hoped that there wouldn’t be this fuss every morning, meals on trays, and people sitting about half-crying. Still, she hadn’t got to take anything upstairs and yesterday no one had come down to breakfast at all.
James went out, having deftly put everything onto one tray.
“… and his frightful, frightful old mum,” Antonia was sighing, “all bursting out of black satin and her shoes three sizes too small and short sleeves. Her huge arms make me feel quite ill—and Nigel said she was ‘wonderful’. Wonderful! I used to think Nigel had taste.”
Clive confined himself to fondling her long limp hand.
“She keeps hinting that one of us might be trying to marry him. As if we would, or he could. I really don’t think she knows anything about … anything,” glancing sideways under the eyelashes towards Christine. “She was one of those Ivor-worshippers—well, we all know what a darling Ivor could be—I’m not blaming the boy for his name—but—”
She got up slowly, a long, black, immoderately-slender shape topped with loops of hair neither silver nor gold, pressing distraught hands against the barely visible, scrupulously creamed wrinkles on her forehead.
“I want to see him design a suit. That’s all I want,” she sighed. “One suit—the kind of thing you wear to go shopping in, and put something on it if you go on to lunch with people. Lunch!” The hands came down, dropping to her sides. “All he’s ever heard of is high tea—with chips.”
Clive sat looking up at her, with distress and one or two other feelings gliding cloudily over his face.
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br /> “Nigel says—and I know it’s true, in a way—his name and his mum and that waify look and his accent are just handed to us on a platter so far as publicity goes—but when did Nigel Rooth’s want that kind of publicity or need it? ‘Beautiful clothes for gentlewomen’. Yes, I know it sounds corny now. Twenty years ago it didn’t.”
She gave a last gusty sigh, then glanced at the clock and uttered one of her subdued shrieks.
“I’ll only take twenty minutes, the worst rush is over,” said Clive soothingly.
“You are sweet. They said they’d only keep mine a week, and it’s already ten days, blast them. Thank you, love,” as she slipped her arms into the coat he held out.
“’Couldn’t let you go off without a word,” croaked Mrs. Traill, hobbling in on a pair of sandals that looked vaguely Javanese and carrying an empty cup. “Best of luck, honey.”
“Oh, I shall need it—” she shook her head at them despairingly.
“Bear up,” said Diana, following, and also carrying one. “All the luck in the world, pet.”
They called it after her affectionately, heartily, as she went out supported by Clive; then they sat down and pushed the cups hopefully at Christine and began to nibble fruit and toast. Both wore exotic and becoming dressing-gowns.
“It would be this week of all weeks, her car being laid up,” Mrs. Meredith said. “It must be the last straw.”
“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.”