The Charmers by Gibbons Stella

Author:Gibbons, Stella [Gibbons, Stella]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781448103430
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2011-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

THERE WERE BOTHER and change, perhaps, but they were a long way off on the horizon, and perhaps would not come any nearer. The roses came out, and Christine bought a second pair of white gloves.

June was marked by great activity on the part of Mrs. Meredith.

Having wearied of her daily visit to London because everything was so changed and the traffic was appalling and the petrol fumes sickened her and the streets were crammed with foreigners, she took to staying at home. Almost at once she was making plans for transforming the garden shed into her workshop.

“It’s nothing but a pipe-dream,” Mrs. Traill confided to Christine. “She used to make pots when we were all young, before, she went off to Africa with James, and Maurice encouraged her, and told her she had talent, as he told poor Dick he could write.

(He encouraged me, too, but I really do have it). And now she thinks she’d like to take it up again and make a few what she calls ‘pennies’. As if anyone would want to buy the kind of thing she’ll make! She’s got quite a good bit of money of her own and James has a good pension; they don’t need ‘pennies’! It’s all an excruciating bore, and we shall never hear the end of it.”

The first sign that Diana’s plans were beginning to take shape was her appearance in a series of becoming overalls, in lilac or blue or pink, and made of the newest materials that almost take care of themselves, so washable and dryable and uncreasable and generally biddable are they. Very elegant she looked in these loose, flower-hued garments, with her dark hair newly and expertly cut so as to bring out its streaks of silver, and what Christine thought of as ‘a kind of French fringe’.

“Real artists don’t get themselves up in special clothes,” Mrs. Traill said scornfully, one afternoon when Diana had gone humming down the garden to inspect the proposed workshop, wearing one of these creations. “They’re much too busy thinking about their work. You don’t see me,” she enlarged, “buying clothes to draw in.”

“Well, no, Mrs. Traill, but I would say you have your own definite style.”

“One works it out over the years,” murmured Mrs. Traill, pleased, “but with me it’s been more or less unconscious. I’ve never been a clothes-horse, and I could never stick those ’lons and ’lenes she’s so sold on, I must have natural materials. It’s nothing but subconscious laziness, you know, really, liking all these materials that practically wash and dry themselves. That khaki shift of mine takes three days to dry properly.”

Christine was tactfully silent. The gloomy garment in question seemed to her much less desirable than Diana’s airy new acquisitions; she had been quite depressed by it, hanging on the line for the three days, dripping, and slowly swinging its mud-coloured scanty folds in the breeze.

“There is no substitute for wool! as the adverts, say,” she contributed at last, with a little laugh.

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