The Charmers Read Online Free PDF

disturbing that she sat down again and resumed her thoughts.
    She was completely unaccustomed to dealing with or managing them.
    The late Mrs. Smith ‘never would have’ a cleaner, the distance which she had scrambled up from Mrs. Benson not being great enough to permit of her coping with the latter when subordinate, and, while she had the strength to flap a duster, she would do everything herself.
    So Christine, unfamiliar with the notion of a Mrs. Benson in the house, quailed at the thought of employing her, and was only slightly reassured when she recalled the procession of juniors she had effortlessly controlled throughout five-and-thirty years at Lloyd and Farmer’s.
    Though it had to be faced that during the past five years the procession had become so outrageous in its dress (trousers to business, if you please, and the cold weather no more than an excuse—but that Mr. Richards would not have) and so intimidatingly casual and assured in it manner that ‘effortlessly’ had gradually ceased to be the word. Nevertheless, there remained the habit of mild authority, and of course the people in the house would back her up; that Mrs. Meredith wouldn’t stand for any cheek or slackness, Christine was certain.
    Reassured, she proceeded to the Village, and spent a few minutes there studying a board displayed in a shop. She then went into a telephone-box and dialled the number she had memorised. From where she stood, she could see Pemberton Hall, already assuming a half-inhabited air because of Mrs. Traill’s curtains and the fact that the front lawn had been mown, though whether the inhabitants were coming or going it would have been difficult to decide … a man might be very useful …
    “Yes?” demanded an irritable male voice.
    I expect Mr. Johnson’s an old-age pensioner, thought Christine, and demanded to speak to him.
    “Oh yes, let ’em all come,” cried the voice, derisive and affronted, and Christine hoped that Mr. Johnson was not being beseiged by prospective employers; it would make him above himself. She heard the telephone being bumped about and background noises suggesting impatient customers and temporarily postponed activities with Easter cards and cigarettes, which suggested that Mr. Johnson lived over a small newsagent-tobacconist’s and at last, after a long pause, a man’s voice, young and soft with a sing-song in it, said politely: “Here is Mister Johnson.”
    “I’ve seen your advert’ in Ellis’s, the grocers,” said Christine, realising instantly from his voice that Mr. Johnson was coloured and going steadily on because for the moment she really did not know what else to do. “And I want a cleaner. For a large house in Highgate Village. To sweep the stairs down and that kind of thing—it’s rather rough work.” (He was a man, and young, and, of course, strong. They always were. He could just get on with it. Only what would they all say? A black about the place. At the thought of what they would all have all said at Mortimer Road, she really did falter in spirit. But she did not ring off.)
    The pause lengthened.
    “Are you there?” said Christine.
    “Yes, I am here, madame. I coloured man, you know,” said the voice with the faintest note of questioning.
    “Oh. Yes, well,” Christine liked Mr. Johnson’s polite madame and what was the use of being, as her employers were, artistic, if you were not also broad-minded? “Of course that doesn’t matter at all if you do your work properly,” she went on firmly. “Now you just hold on, and I’ll run across the road; the house is right opposite where I’m ’phoning from, and I’ll ask …”
    She hurried over, Mrs. Traill almost certainly wouldn’t mind , but Mrs. Meredith … Christine herself had never thought about coloured people, and there was no time to think about her views now.
    By luck, Mrs. Traill was just coming down the steps, in Bedford-cord slacks and an enormous navy sweater, with her silver-gilt hair