Charity Child

by Sara Seale

  Charity did not go with them. She had, so far, scarcely had two words with Marc alone, and it would appear that he seemed as anxious to avoid her company as she his. It was, therefore, a complete surprise when on Sunday morning, as she was about to start out for a walk on the downs, he announced his intention of coming with her.

  “Oh!” she said blankly. She did not want his company in the secret, solitary places she had found for herself, neither could she imagine what they would find to talk about.

  “Do you object?” he enquired with raised eyebrows.

  “No, of course not,” she replied a little awkwardly, and they set out together down the short drive and out on to the chalk track which wound to the first breast of downland.

  They did not talk very much, for the way to Cleat Beacon was steep, and although Marc appeared unaffected by the effort of climbing, Charity still felt the effects of sedentary city life and arrived at the top breathless.

  “You seem out of training,” he observed as they paused on the crest of the Beacon and she laughingly begged for a rest.

  “Until I came here I had little chance for exercise,” she said, and lifted her face to the sky, sniffing the strong air. “Up here there’s always a wind. I love it.”

  He watched her thoughtfully, observing the unwonted color in her cheeks and the rather endearing disorder of her short dark hair. She wore a plain rough fisherman’s jersey under a faded leather jerkin, and the black, tapered slacks made her legs look incredibly long. She seemed very young and very naive as she stood there with her face lifted to the wind, and he frowned. He was unused to dealing with twenty-year-olds except in the criminal courts, and this girl vaguely troubled him.

  “I’ve got my breath now,” she said, and they began to walk along the broad ridge of the Beacon. “How do you manage to keep fit, Mr. Gentle, living in London?”

  “I play squash whenever I get the time,” he answered absently. “What other jobs have you had?”

  “Not many. Before I worked for the music publishers I had a job as typist in a firm of solicitors, but I got the sack.”

  “Oh, what for?” he asked, and she thought there was a ring of satisfaction in his voice.

  “My speed wasn’t good enough,” she answered meekly, and was aware of the quick glance he gave her. “Well, before that I went out charring.”

  “Charring?”

  “Yes, it’s quite respectable, and you get very good pay by the hour. I don’t mind housework.”

  “But surely there must have been more suitable ways of earning a living?”

  “Not if you’re untrained for anything. You see, it was the only way I could earn enough money to go to a commercial school in the evenings and learn to be a typist. And before I went out charring I was still at school—so you see—”

  “I see.”

  She was either very ingenuous or she was speaking the plain truth. The reason for her dismissal could, of course, be checked with the firm of solicitors, but the likelihood of a young girl in her teens, who was clearly gently bred, going out charring rather stuck in his throat. He glanced at her striding out resolutely beside him. The hair blew back from her face like a dark pennant and her ears were pink from the sting of the wind.

  “I understand my aunt has suggested changing her will in your favor,” he said conversationally. “Did you know she had made an appointment to see her lawyers next week?”

  She looked up at him with evident surprise.

  “No, I didn’t,” she said. “Your aunt mentioned something the other day, but I didn’t take her seriously.”

  “No? Or the idea, of adopting you?”

  She looked even more surprised.

  “She never said anything about that. Can one adopt grown-up people?”

  “In the eyes of the law you are a minor until you are twenty-one.”

  “Oh. But I shouldn’t think—I mean it doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”

  “You’re very ingenuous, Charity Child,” he said, and it was plain from his tone how he intended her to take his interpretation of her name.

  She stopped abruptly and turned to face him.

  “Are you suggesting that I—I’ve been getting at your aunt?” she asked, and the inconsequent gaiety had gone from her voice.

  “Yes, I think perhaps I am. I’ve watched you playing up to her so innocently, feeding her vanity, falling in with this ridiculous spiritual daughter business. I think you’re more dangerous than the other little gold-diggers from whose clutches I had to extricate her, so I’m warning you now.”

  “Warning me?” She sounded bewildered, and the hurt look of disbelief in her eyes made him speak harshly.

  “Yes, warning you, my dear little girl. My aunt has had these quixotic notions before. She’s easily won by flattery, as I’ve no doubt you’ve discovered for yourself, and a clever little nobody with an eye to the main chance could doubtless make a fairly easy killing, but I’ll be watching you, Charity. Don’t think for one moment you’ll pull the wool over my eyes, for you won’t get away with it.”

  She hugged the leather jacket close to her body as if she felt suddenly cold.

  “Do you want me to go?” she asked bleakly, and he raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh, no, that would make a martyr of you. You can stay as long as you behave yourself, for my aunt plainly doesn’t share my doubts, but remember I’ll be watching, and at the first sign of—shall we say undue influence—I’ll have you out of Cleat in twenty-four hours. Now, do you understand?”

  She had gone so white that he began to feel uneasy, and he was conscious that he had chosen his moment badly. Up here on the Beacon, with the wind blowing coldly, the scudding clouds and the loneliness, she could elude him. She no longer seemed the sort of person he accused her of being.

  “I understand very well,” she said. “I understand that you’ve resented and disliked me from the first.”

  “Not disliked you. You have a way with you, Charity Child, I’ll give you that.”

  “I have no way with me —I’ve never learnt,” she retorted coldly, then suddenly stamped her foot at him.

  “You needn’t be tolerant, Mr. Gentle,” she cried. “I’ve disliked you every bit as much! I may be a nobody, as you suggest, but I’m not used to suspicion—no, not even from the people I used to char for who might have been watching to see I didn’t pinch the spoons! You must, I think, have had a very unfortunate experience of life.”

  He knew a quite irrational impulse to take her in his arms and either shake her or kiss her. She had, for all her youth and inexperience, a trick of getting under his skin. She was plain and immature, he thought angrily, suddenly remembering Roma, then as she continued to stand before him with the wind whipping the thin slacks against her long, slender legs, he reluctantly amended his opinion. She would never be entirely plain, he thought with those great, fringed eyes and plaintive brows.

  “Bravo!” he said, meeting her defiance with cynical appreciation. “Well, now we’ve both had our little say, shall we go back?”

  “You can go back at your own pace —I’ve had enough,” she said and, turning, began to run from him along the ridge of the Beacon. The wind was behind her and she was soon a diminishing figure in the distance as he stood and watched her. He paused to light a cigarette, then leisurely followed in her wake.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT was difficult, Charity found, after he had gone back to London, to resume the old relationship with Astrea. She felt as awkward as a schoolgirl when her employer showered her with extravagant praise, but when she withdrew into herself, it was only to be met with reproach.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Astrea complained with brimming eyes. “We have been so close, dear child. What has made you stiff and unnatural—all that delightful spontaneity gone?”

  Charity felt her own eyelids sting. She had grown very fond of Astrea in the short time she had been at Cleat, and it was hard to resist the first affection that had come her way sin
ce her father died.

  “If you hadn’t suggested changing your will—” she blurted out, and Astrea’s eyes gleamed with sudden interest.

  “Marc has been talking to you,” she cried triumphantly. “You should pay no attention, child—my affairs have nothing whatever to do with him. I have changed my will before now, and will doubtless do it again.”

  “Yes, of course,” Charity said, with a lifting heart

  This nonsense about the will and adoption was only one of the many foibles with which Astrea amused herself. Her nephew should have known that. But she went to London to consult her solicitors, for all that, taking Charity with her, and, when the interview was over, seemed in high spirits and took Charity shopping, spending money on her with reckless abandon, only saving on their lunch which they surprisingly had at an A.B.C. She did not tell the girl of the outcome of her visit to the lawyers, and Charity could not ask. This orgy of spending was, she suspected, embarked upon chiefly to annoy her nephew, for Astrea bade her wear her new clothes the following weekend, and when she did so a little reluctantly, repeatedly drew Marc’s attention to every garment with an embarrassing exposition of how much each one had cost.

  Once or twice Charity thought his eyes rested on her with a certain sympathy, but that weekend she seldom found herself alone with him, and the weekend after he remained in London.

  Snow fell towards the end of February and lasted well into March. Charity delighted in the unbroken beauty of the white-clad downs and the wind that stung her face, but Astrea developed a bronchial cough and moped in her room with a blazing fire and all the windows shut.

  “Such a country, such a climate!” She grumbled. “Here we are well into March, with Easter only three weeks off, and look at the weather! I never could stand the cold, it’s always affected my voice.”

  “Why don’t you spend your winters abroad?” asked Charity, thinking that with so much money at her disposal, Astrea made little use of the many opportunities that wealth must offer.

  “No, no, I’m getting an old woman,” she said fretfully. “When you are into the sixties, dear child, you cease wanting to roam.”

  “Seventy, if you’re a day!” murmured Minnie, who was brushing her hair.

  “Nonsense!” Astrea said sharply. “I’m sixty-seven, to be exact.”

  “That you’re not!” Minnie retorted. “I’m sixty-nine meself, and you were always five years older; if not six.”

  “Go away, you’re pulling my hair, you silly old woman!” Astrea said crossly. “And leave my heart medicine where I can reach it, this time.”

  “Heart medicine?” echoed Charity, startled, and Minnie gave one of her surprising Cockney winks.

  “That’s what she likes to call it,” she sniffed. “Nothing but ipecacuanha, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “You know very well—” began Astrea, enraged, but the old dresser affected another wink, this time in her mistress’s direction, and stumped out of the room.

  When Marc came down at the end of the week, his aunt was still in bed and he glanced a little sharply at Charity’s peaked face. She looked thinner, he thought, and that ridiculous resemblance to Pierrot was more marked.

  “Haven’t you been getting out?” he asked, and when she explained that she had been thoughtless in neglecting Astrea when the snow first came and was now making amends, he exclaimed: “Rubbish! Tomorrow we’ll go for a long walk and pelt each other with snowballs.” She looked surprised, then dubious. She had no wish to repeat her only experience of walking with him, neither could she imagine the fastidious Marc Gentle throwing snowballs.

  “You don’t care for the notion?” he asked, looking amused.

  “Not particularly.”

  “H’m ...” he said, non-committally, but it would, she realized, be difficult to avoid his company this weekend. Apart from the fact that his mood seemed to have changed, they would, if Astrea remained in her room, be forced to eat solitary meals together, an intimacy Charity viewed with dismay. He would, she felt sure, return to the attack, and although of late Astrea had not mentioned the subject of her will, there had been letters and telephone calls from the solicitors, as much, Charity had thought, to relieve the boredom of a sick-room as anything else.

  However, when they sat down alone to dinner, he indulged in the polite small talk he would have exerted on a strange and rather shy guest, surprising Charity with an easy charm she had not thought he possessed, and succeeding at last in loosening her own unwilling tongue.

  “That’s better!” he said when she laughed spontaneously at some mild quip. “I’ve seldom had to work so hard to put a girl at her ease.”

  She lowered her lashes and looked down at her plate.

  “You can scarcely have expected me to feel at my ease with you, Mr. Gentle,” she replied. Astrea had long ago insisted that her nephew should be addressed by his Christian name, but Charity had found it a difficult habit to acquire.

  He grinned a little wryly.

  “Perhaps not,” he said. “Perhaps I was altogether too hasty in my original judgment.”

  She looked enquiringly across at him m the candlelight. The expression on his dark face was quizzical and even conciliatory.

  “Is that meant for a—an apology?” she asked, stammering slightly.

  “If you like. I don’t withdraw everything, mind you, but you are not, I’ve discovered, the sort of young person I took you to be.”

  “You’ve been making enquiries, perhaps?”

  “Naturally. Your firm of solicitors gave you a good character, so did the commercial school. They had, they said, never before had so young a pupil who had gone out charring.”

  “Well, really!” Charity exclaimed, not sure whether to be relieved or outraged that he had seen fit to investigate her statements.

  His eyes surprisingly twinkled.

  “You’ve no great liking for me, have you, Charity?” he said.

  “You’ve hardly set out to inspire that,” she retorted.

  He observed her thoughtfully, annoyed that he should care one way or the other whether she liked him or not.

  “You must blame it on my court-room manner,” he said lightly. “Well, shall we call a truce?”

  “Legal questions are one of the worries of Aquarians,” she told him sedately, and he gave a sharp exclamation of impatience.

  “For heaven’s sake! You’re not becoming infected with my aunt’s obsession with the stars, are you?” he said.

  “The books she has lent me are very interesting,” she replied demurely.

  “I don’t doubt it. And what are the other worries of Aquarians?”

  “Situations of mental strain, lack of appreciation of efforts—among others.”

  “I see.”

  Was she getting at him, he wondered, giving her a searching glance. She had side-stepped neatly, he noticed, his offer of a truce, and her cool indifference began to irritate him.

  “Well, my dear,” he observed with deliberate indifference, “it makes no odds if you choose to bear malice. I only thought it might prove easier if we met on a civilized basis, since we will see a good deal of one another.”

  She sat considering this, fiddling with the cutlery beside her plate. He was not to know, she supposed, how harsh he could sound, or how easily he could charm, if he chose.

  “I don’t think I ever bear malice,” she said. “If I have been rude to you, Mr. Gentle, it was only you who drove me to it. You’re not, after all, my employer.”

  “Very true,” he replied crisply. “But you’d better acquire the habit of my Christian name or you’ll annoy my aunt.”

  “I’m sorry. I find it difficult to think of you as Marc.”

  “Because you don’t like me? Really, Charity Child, you’re a most irritatingly self-possessed young woman!”

  Charity was relieved that Minnie chose that moment to bring in the next course. She did not feel self-possessed at all; indeed, this change of front in him was as alarming as his early suspi
cions. He could make her feel gauche and tongue-tied more easily in his present mood than when he was accusing her of unspeakable things. He was, she thought, a very uncomfortable person to live with, whatever his intention.

  The silence grew when Minnie had left the room. Charity could think of nothing to say, and Marc, it seemed, had no inclination to return to his earlier role of attentive host. They ate in silence at Astrea’s well-appointed table, and outside the wind began to rise. It had almost reached gale force by the time they returned to the music-room, and Marc drew back the curtains to reveal the snow driven with blinding fury against the window.

  “It looks as if we’re in for the blizzard they’ve been having in the north,” he observed.

  “Will we be snowbound?” Charity asked watching, with awe, a sight she had never before beheld.

  “It has happened up here on the downs,” he answered. “Were you fearing you might have to put up with my company for longer than a weekend?”

  “No,” she said. “I was thinking of the lambs.”