Free The Charmers by Stella Gibbons Page A

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
.