“You look tired, darling,” said her mother. “Perhaps you’d like a glass of milk.”
Christine was in the bathtub when the phone rang. She was not prone to fantasy but when she was in the bathtub she often pretended she was a dolphin, a game left over from one of the girls who used to bathe her when she was small. Her mother was being bell-voiced and gracious in the hall; then there was a tap at the door.
“It’s that nice young French student, Christine,” her mother said.
“Tell him I’m in the bathtub,” Christine said, louder than necessary. “He isn’t French.”
She could hear her mother frowning. “That wouldn’t be very polite, Christine. I don’t think he’d understand.”
“Oh, all right,” Christine said. She heaved herself out of the bathtub, swathed her pink bulk in a towel and splattered to the phone.
“Hello,” she said gruffly. At a distance he was not pathetic, he was a nuisance. She could not imagine how he had tracked her down: most likely he went through the phone book, calling all the numbers with her last name until he hit on the right one.
“It is your friend.”
“I know,” she said. “How are you?”
“I am very fine.” There was a long pause, during which Christine had a vicious urge to say, “Well, goodbye then,” and hang up; but she was aware of her mother poised figurinelike in her bedroom doorway. Then he said, “I hope you also are very fine.”
“Yes,” said Christine. She wasn’t going to participate.
“I come to tea,” he said.
This took Christine by surprise. “You do?”
“Your pleasant mother ask me. I come Thursday, four o’clock.”
“Oh,” Christine said, ungraciously.
“See you then,” he said, with the conscious pride of one who has mastered a difficult idiom.
Christine set down the phone and went along the hall. Her mother was in her study, sitting innocently at her writing desk.
“Did you ask him to tea on Thursday?”
“Not exactly, dear,” her mother said. “I did mention he might come round to tea sometime, though.”
“Well, he’s coming Thursday. Four o’clock.”
“What’s wrong with that?” her mother said serenely. “I think it’s a very nice gesture for us to make. I do think you might try to be a little more co-operative.” She was pleased with herself.
“Since you invited him,” said Christine, “you can bloody well stick around and help me entertain him. I don’t want to be left making nice gestures all by myself.”
“Christine, dear,” her mother said, above being shocked. “You ought to put on your dressing gown, you’ll catch a chill.”
After sulking for an hour Christine tried to think of the tea as a cross between an examination and an executive meeting: not enjoyable, certainly, but to be got through as tactfully as possible. And it was a nice gesture. When the cakes her mother had ordered arrived from The Patisserie on Thursday morning she began to feel slightly festive; she even resolved to put on a dress, a good one, instead of a skirt and blouse. After all, she had nothing against him, except the memory of the way he had grabbed her tennis racquet and then her arm. She suppressed a quick impossible vision of herself pursued around the livingroom, fending him off with thrown sofa cushions and vases of gladioli; nevertheless she told the girl they would have tea in the garden. It would be a treat for him, and there was more space outdoors.
She had suspected her mother would dodge the tea, would contrive to be going out just as he was arriving: that way she could size him up and then leave them alone together. She had done things like that to Christine before; the excuse this time was the Symphony Committee. Sure enough, her mother carefully mislaid her gloves and located them with a faked murmur of joy when the doorbell rang.
Christine relished for weeks afterwards the image of her mother’s dropped jaw and flawless recovery when he was introduced: he wasn’t quite the foreign potentate her optimistic, veil-fragile mind had concocted.
He was prepared for celebration. He had slicked on so much hair cream that his head seemed to be covered with a tight black patent-leather cap, and he had cut the threads off his jacket sleeves. His orange tie was overpoweringly splendid. Christine noticed, however, as he shook her mother’s suddenly-braced white glove that the ballpoint ink on his fingers was indelible. His face had broken out, possibly in anticipation of the delights in store for him; he had a tiny camera slung over his shoulder and was smoking an exotic-smelling cigarette.
Christine led him through the cool flowery softly-padded livingroom and out by the French doors into the garden. “You sit here,” she said. “I will have the girl bring tea.”
This girl was from the West Indies. Christine’s parents had been enraptured with her when they were down at Christmas and had brought her back with them. Since that time she had become pregnant, but Christine’s mother had not dismissed her. She said she was slightly disappointed but what could you expect, and she didn’t see any real difference between a girl who was pregnant before you hired her and one who got that way afterwards. She prided herself on her tolerance; also there was a scarcity of girls. Strangely enough, the girl became progressively less easy to get along with. Either she did not share Christine’s mother’s view of her own generosity, or she felt she had gotten away with something and was therefore free to indulge in contempt. At first Christine had tried to treat her as an equal. “Don’t call me ‘Miss Christine,’ “ she had said with an imitation of light, comradely laughter. “What you want me to call you then?” the girl had said, scowling. They had begun to have brief, surly arguments in the kitchen, which Christine decided were like the arguments between one servant and another. Her mother’s attitude towards each of them was similar; they were not altogether satisfactory but they would have to do.
The cakes, glossy with icing, were set out on a plate and the teapot was standing ready; on the counter the electric kettle boiled. Christine headed for it, but the girl, till then sitting with her elbows on the kitchen table and watching her expressionlessly, made a dash and intercepted her. Christine waited until she had poured the water into the pot. Then, “I’ll carry it out, Elvira,” she said. She had just decided she didn’t want the girl to see her visitor’s orange tie; already, she knew, her position in the girl’s eyes had suffered because no one had yet attempted to get her pregnant.
“What you think they pay me for, Miss Christine?” the girl said insolently. She swung towards the garden with the tray; Christine trailed her, feeling lumpish and awkward. The girl was at least as big as she was but in a different way.
“Thank you, Elvira,” Christine said when the tray was in place. The girl departed without a word, casting a disdainful backwards glance at the frayed jacket sleeves, the stained fingers. Christine was now determined to be especially kind to him.
“You are very rich,” he said.
“No,” Christine protested, shaking her head, “we’re not.” She had never thought of her family as rich; it was one of her father’s sayings that nobody made any money with the Government.
“Yes,” he repeated, “you are very rich.” He sat back in his lawn chair, gazing about him as though dazed.
Christine set his cup of tea in front of him. She wasn’t in the habit of paying much attention to the house or the garden; they were nothing special, far from being the largest on the street; other people took care of them. But now she looked where he was looking, seeing it all as though from a different height: the long expanses, the border flowers blazing in the early-summer sunlight, the flagged patio and walks, the high walls and the silence.