The Paying Guests (13 page)

She piled the garments on the bed. ‘Have you never wanted nice things?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Frances. ‘When I was young.’

‘You always talk as though you’re ninety.’

‘I lost heart for it all. And then, there hasn’t been the money. You ought to see my underclothes. They make this lot look Parisian. Some of them are held together with pins.’

‘Well, what might you wear to Netta’s?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. You’ve sprung it on me, rather.’ She pulled a gown free from the heap on the bed. ‘This, I suppose.’

It was a black moire frock, a thing she’d been wearing to suppers and parties for the last six or seven years. She shook it out, and turned it to the light of the window so that she and Lilian could look it over. But it was worse than she’d remembered. The bodice was beaded, but beads had been lost, leaving threads behind them like coarse black hairs. In one of the sleeves a line of stitches was visible where she had mended a rip. Worst of all, the armpits were pale: she had coloured them in with ink in the past, but the ink had faded, was streaked and blueish…

She lowered the gown, embarrassed. ‘Perhaps the puddle-coloured one instead.’

‘There must be something else.’

‘Truly, there isn’t. See for yourself.’

Side by side, they gazed into the wardrobe’s bleak, plundered interior. All that hung from the rail now were things from Frances’s schooldays. Serge frocks, long skirts, stiff collars, neck-ties: it was astonishing to think that only a decade ago she had been going about in cumbersome clothes like this. The very memory of the endless layers of flannel underwear made her droop.

But something had caught Lilian’s eye. She put in her hand, and pulled. ‘What’s this?’

‘Oh,’ said Frances, as the garment emerged, ‘I only ever had that as a fancy. Someone talked me into buying it. No, that won’t do at all.’

The gown was a sage-green thing with a wide collar and a tiered skirt, laced at the bosom and cuffs with slim leather thongs. It was Christina who had persuaded her to buy it, back in that other life of theirs. It had cost three guineas – three guineas! The figure seemed astronomical now – and she had worn it only once, to a Red Cross ball. Christina’s father had got hold of the tickets, and in their earnest, pacifist way she and Chrissy had debated the ethics of attending. But they had got swept up by the fun of it in the end; she remembered that ball, now, as a bright spot among shadows. Seeing the gown dangling from Lilian’s fingers brought it all back: the electric intensity of the evening, the rides in the taxi through the blacked-out streets with Christina’s dim Aunt Polly as chaperone, Christina herself, the sweet scent of her hair, the feel of her hands in tight kid gloves…

Lilian was watching her face. ‘This is what you ought to wear, Frances.’

‘This? Oh, no.’

‘Yes. All the other things have made you frown. But this – You see? You’re smiling. Put it on.’

‘No, no. I’d feel a fool. And look at the state of it! It reeks of must.’

‘That doesn’t matter. It wants a wash and a press, that’s all. Put it on and let me see. Just to please me. Will you? I’ll look away until you’re ready.’

She shoved the gown into Frances’s hands, then turned her back to her and stood waiting. Frances, seeing no way out of it, began to undress. She did it slowly at first. But the petticoat that she was wearing was literally coming apart at the seams, and, realising that, growing afraid that Lilian would turn too soon, she worked more quickly – kicking off her slippers, wriggling free of her skirt and blouse, then shaking open the musty frock and pulling it over her head. It seemed immediately to tie itself into a knot, and she wrestled with it for several seconds, trying to work her arms along its narrow sleeves. Looking into the mirror at last she saw herself red-faced, with untidy hair, her collarbones plainly visible beneath the clinging creased material, and the dress itself, with its lacings, like something from Sherwood Forest, as if she ought be sitting in one of her father’s chairs, playing a lute.

But when Lilian turned, and saw her, her expression softened.

‘Oh, Frances, you look lovely. Oh, the colour suits you. You’re lucky. If I wear green near my face it makes me look like a corpse. But, yes, it just suits you. All it needs is a bit of work.’ Coming close, she began to tug the frock into shape with brisk, professional fingers. ‘The waist wants lowering, for a start. It’ll be quite a different gown then. It’ll show how lovely and slim you are – oh, I’d give anything to be slender like you! – but the line will be softer. You see what I mean? You ought to wear looser stays, you know. They only need to be stiff or elastic when you’ve a bust like mine. And you must wear silk stockings, Frances, not these terrible cotton ones. Don’t you want to make the most of your nice ankles?’

She spoke without a blush, quite unselfconscious, as if it were perfectly natural that she should have been studying and forming opinions on Frances’s ankles, Frances’s hips, the style of Frances’s underwear. But then, of course, women like Lilian studied other women all the time. They noticed, they judged, they admired and damned, they coveted bosoms, complexions, mouths… She was drawing up the hem now. ‘This ought to be raised. See how it’s better?’

‘But I don’t want it raised.’

‘Just an inch or two, for the party? I should have thought you’d like ladies to have shorter skirts. You don’t want us to go about hobbled?’

‘But —’

‘Stay just like this, while I fetch my pins!’

There was no resisting her. She ran for her work-basket and returned to measure and mark, moving Frances’s limbs about as if they were those of an artist’s dummy. She loaded the frock with so many pins that when it was time for Frances to remove it she had to inch herself out, afraid for her skin.

And even then she hadn’t finished. Once Frances was back in her harmless, laundered-to-death old blouse and skirt, she stood looking her over with a calculating expression, tapping her fingers at her plump mouth, and – ‘What shall we do about your hair?’ she said.

Frances was aghast. ‘My hair? My hair’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘But you always wear it up. Wouldn’t you like a new style, to match the frock? I could cut it for you. I could wave it! We could surprise your mother. Oh, Frances, what do you say?’

Frances didn’t want a cut or a wave. She was happy with her brown, uncurly, middle-length hair, which could be trimmed when necessary at the scullery sink; which could be cheaply washed and dressed. As for surprising her mother – she knew exactly what sort of surprise that would turn out to be.

But Lilian’s excitement was exciting her now. There was something seductive about the idea of putting herself into Lilian’s hands, something seductive about the very passivity of the poses she had to adopt in order to do it: the bowed head, the lifted arms. She thought suddenly, I’m like one of those men one hears whispers about, who bend themselves over the knees of women in shady rooms off Piccadilly and ask to be thrashed.

But that thought was exciting, too. With only the feeblest bleat of a protest she let herself be led back out to the landing. She peered down the staircase as they passed it, thinking of her mother, dozing in the drawing-room in that unprotected way; but she didn’t slow her step. And, as before, Lilian kept hold of her so that she shouldn’t escape, hanging on to her cuff while awkwardly shaking out a newspaper, spreading sheets of it on the floor, lifting across a chair from beside the table. Once Frances was seated she even leaned over her with her hands on her shoulders, lightly but firmly pinning her in place.

‘Now,’ she said, in a warning way, ‘I have to gather my things. Don’t you run away from me, Frances! I am putting you on your honour.’

She left the room for two minutes and came back with a towel and combs, and swinging a leather vanity case, something like an effete doctor’s bag. She closed the door with an air of conspiracy. The towel went over Frances’s shoulders and was tucked into her collar. The case was set aside for now; she planned to wash the hair first. She wanted to do it all properly, and she meant to start with an egg shampoo. Oh, she knew Frances was going to say that! No, it wasn’t a waste of an egg. Or, if it was, then that was the point: it was a bit of pampering. Was Frances a nun?

She spoke playfully still, but also with determination, fetching an egg from a basket and carefully breaking it, tilting the halves of the shell above a saucer to separate the yolk from the white, then tipping the yolk into a cup and whisking it with vinegar. When she saw Frances begin to pull the pins from her hair she stopped her. Did ladies at the beauty parlour unpin their own hair? Of course they didn’t. She stood behind the chair and drew the pins out herself, feeling for them with her fingertips and gently working them free. As the locks grew slack, then slid and tumbled, Frances’s head seemed to expand, like a bud becoming a flower.

The putting on of the egg broke the spell. The sticky wet weight of it made her shiver. And then she was led to the sink and had to hang over the lip of it while Lilian filled jug after jug with water and doused her like a prison matron; she went stumbling back to the chair, her eyes stinging and her ears blocked, to have her head tugged in every direction as the tangles were combed out. There was a brief, blissful pause while the vanity case was unlatched; then she heard the unmistakable rasp and snap of a pair of scissors being opened and closed. And suddenly she was struck by the reality of what was about to happen. She turned, to see Lilian poised with the scissors in her hand, looking as though she, too, were rather daunted. The newspaper crackled under their feet. Again Frances thought of her mother, slack-mouthed and snoring. She thought of the unswept porch. How exactly had she got to this dangerous moment?

Lilian laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘You aren’t losing your nerve?’

She hesitated. ‘Just a bit.’

‘Think about that MP.’

‘I’m sorry I ever told you about that wretched MP.’

‘Think about that man in the park that time, how brave you were in seeing him off.’

‘That wasn’t bravery. It was —’ Frances turned back to face the wall. ‘I don’t know what that was. I haven’t done a real brave thing in years.’

Lilian’s hand was still on her shoulder. ‘I think you’re brave, Frances.’

‘Well, you hardly know me.’

‘You do just what you want to do, and don’t mind what other people make of it. I wish I was like that. And then —’ Her voice dipped slightly. ‘I think it’s brave of you to be so cheerful when you’ve had – well, so many losses.’

She might have had in mind any of a number of losses: Frances’s father, Frances’s brothers, the vanished family fortune. But somehow it was clear that the loss she was really referring to was that of Frances’s phantom fiancé.

After all the talk of bravery, the moment made Frances feel like a fraud. She didn’t answer, she didn’t turn. Lilian gave her shoulder a gentle, tactful pat, then drew her hand away.

And a moment after that, Frances felt the cold touch of the scissors, startlingly high up the nape of her neck; the blades closed with a scythe-like sound, and something slithered to the floor. She twisted, peered, and her heart missed a beat. There was a lock of dark hair on the newspaper, about half a yard long. Lilian took hold of her head and straightened it. ‘You’re not to look,’ she said firmly. The cold-metal touch came again. Another snip, another slither… Well, it was too late now. The hair could hardly be re-attached. She stared at the varnished wallpaper while the scissors continued their chill, ravenous journey around her neck.

And perhaps the steady snipping away of her hair had something to do with it. Perhaps she was still slightly hysterical from being led across the landing. But that comment of Lilian’s was on her mind. Wasn’t this the moment to speak – right now, while there was no possibility of meeting Lilian’s eye? Her stomach began to flutter. She waited until another lock of hair had gone slithering to the floor. Then, with a suddenly dry mouth, she said quietly, ‘Listen, Lilian. I think I might have given you the idea that I was once engaged to be married. That I once had some sort of an affair. With a man, I mean.’ She hesitated, then plunged on. ‘The truth is I did have a kind of love affair a few years ago. But it was – it was with a girl.’

She felt Lilian’s uncertainty in the slowing of her hands. She thought Frances might be teasing. With a touch of laughter, she answered, ‘A girl?’

‘Another woman,’ said Frances, flatly. ‘I’d like to be able to say it was terribly pure and innocent, and all that. It – well, it wasn’t.’ There was a silence. ‘You know what I mean?’

Lilian still said nothing; but she withdrew her hands. Frances gave it another few seconds, then turned to look at her. She was standing with the scissors at her side, and her colour was rising, rising even as Frances watched, spreading upward in a single tide of colour from the triangle of flesh that showed at her open-necked blouse, over her throat, her cheek, her forehead. She met Frances’s gaze, then looked away.

‘I – I didn’t know,’ she said.

‘No. Well, how could you?’

‘I’d supposed there was a man.’

‘Yes, that was my fault. I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to have misled you. But this sort of thing – one can’t just drop it into conversation. I don’t feel in the least ashamed about it. My friend and I, we were awfully in love. – But don’t let’s talk about it any more.’ Lilian’s colour had deepened at the word
love
. Frances turned back to the wall. ‘I’m sorry I mentioned it. Don’t give it another thought. It was a long time ago, and it was – it was nothing, really.’

It was not nothing. It was the crisis of her life. But she felt sick now with the knowledge that she had blundered, said too much. What on earth had she been thinking? She had let herself be seduced by the warmth and the ease of her friendship with Lilian, forgetting how unlikely their friendship actually was. Lilian was married, after all. Christ! Would she tell her husband? Tell her sisters? Tell her chatterbox mother?

Feeling sicker than ever, she risked another look over her shoulder. She saw Lilian wiping at the blades of the scissors, so patently struggling to digest what she had just learned that the information was almost visible, like a sharp crust going down.