The Charmers Read Online Free Page A

her own personality.
    “Oh, yes. Splendid,” he exclaimed. “My name’s Meredith. Very glad to … just having a look round. Awful mess, isn’t it. But Mr. Ryan here tells me we really shall be straight by the twenty-first.”
    Mr. Ryan said nothing but looked sardonic.
    “I was taking some measurements,” said Christine. “In my flat.”
    Before Mr. Meredith could say more, a tallish slender woman, also wearing rather sporting clothes, came out of one of the adjoining rooms and paused, looking quickly at Christine. She was noticeably thin, and had been noticeably pretty.
    “Ah, Diana—this is Miss Smith, darling, she’s going to be our housekeeper. My wife, Miss Smith—Mrs. Meredith.”
    “We’re so thankful to have got you,” said Mrs. Meredith. “You mustn’t be put off by the mess. It’s all going to be cleared up by the end of the week. Isn’t it, Mr. Ryan?”
    Mr. Ryan, who was comely and carried no transistor set, began a rigmarole in an unintelligible Irish accent which gradually, for lack of hearers who could understand what he was saying, died away. He walked off, looking sarcastically at a slide-rule.
    “Isn’t your flat charming?” Mrs. Meredith went on, in a tone firm as Christine’s own, “I’m sure you’ll love it … so
lucky
, with accommodation in London what it is …
I
think its the nicest in the house. Two old friends of ours are mad about it—they’re dying to have it.”
    “It is very nice,” Christine said, inwardly alarmed at this news.
    “When I saw that north light, in the sitting-room, I nearly decided to have it for myself—for my wheel, you know. I’m a potter.”
    “Oh, do you do those hand-made jugs and vases? There were some lovely ones in a shop at Lulworth, where I went on holiday last year. All black and brown, with white sort-of whirls,” said Christine.
    “Yes. Oh, I shall be at work again, as soon as we’re settled in. Well, we mustn’t keep you. We shall be seeing each other again , I expect, running in and out, before we all move in. My husband and I are staying in the village.”
    She smiled and nodded and turned away. Mr. Meredith smiled slightly more warmly, and did likewise.
    Christine went down the steps and out past the daffodils, open now, and glowing in the sun. Not so nice as Mrs. Traill. A bit stand-offish. But a lady all right, which perhaps Mrs. Traill …?
    A certain kind of easiness of manner was not, for Christine, associated with birth.
    But these were regions of speculation unfamiliar to her, and she put them aside with the thought that she would not be seeing much of her employers anyway, and so long as they were pleasant to her and she satisfied them, what did anything else matter?
    “I don’t like that woman,” said Diana Meredith, the instant Christine was gone.
    “Oh come, darling.”
    “I always know, James. I know
people
. It’s my thing. I’m a natural psychologist. Not a glimmer of imagination, I should think. She just doesn’t realise—or more likely won’t acknowledge—her enormous luck. Typical lower-middle class. It’s just like Fabia to land us with someone like that, she probably felt sorry for her.”
    “Oh, I don’t know, darling.”
    “She really is an ass— I wish we’d let Amanda and Dick have it.”
    She turned moodily away and stared up at the chaste curve of the staircase, down which floated some masochistic transistor-plaint.
    The calmness with which James Meredith heard these ominous remarks implied that he had been married to them for some time, and perhaps married as well to something love-able in the speaker. He gave her a pat on the behind, and she wheeled round with a lightning change to gaiety and they went upstairs as entwined as if they were eighteen—which, except for living in a body that had been here for some fifty years, Diana was.

Chapter 4
     
    CHRISTINE SPENT MORE money than she was pleased to, during the next few days, sitting in the shops, sitting in the cinema, sitting