The Paying Guests (20 page)

Only when the little charade was nearly complete did Frances understand what it was all about. The spot at which Lilian had been grasping lay just above her heart. She had been drawing an imaginary stake from it.

She did it without once meeting Frances’s gaze; but she did it smoothly, deliberately – even casting the stake aside afterwards with a graceful unclosing of her hand. But then she stood as if startled by the implications of what she had done. Her own heart was thudding: Frances could see it, a drum-skin quiver at the base of her throat. They looked at each other in silence, and the moment seemed to swell, to be suspended, like a drop of water, like a tear… Then the curtains billowed and rattled, and that made her start back into life. She put down her head and stepped away, left the room and closed the door behind her.

Why had she done it? What had she meant? Frances sank against her pillows, listening in wonder to the fading of her footsteps. Placing a hand on her bosom, she found that the spot through which the imaginary stake had passed was slightly tender. She pulled down the collar of her blouse, moved aside the limp camisole beneath it; she even got up and crossed the room, to look at her breast in the glass. There was nothing to see, the flesh was unbroken, unmarked. It was impossible, after all… But she returned to the bed, lay with her fingers over her heart, convinced that she could feel a stir of heat, a glow of blood – something, anyhow, that had been brought to the surface by Lilian’s hand.

When Leonard returned from work that evening he came almost immediately downstairs again, putting his head around the kitchen door and gazing in with a guilty expression. His brow was marked, as usual, by the line of his bowler hat, but his face was pale, the whites of his eyes looking dingy as a result, and the ends of his moustache were drooping.

Could Frances spare him a minute?

She nodded, and he edged into the room, keeping one hand behind his back, awkwardly.

‘I’ve come to beg your pardon,’ he said, ‘for my behaviour last night. I had a bit too much to drink and I let myself get carried away. I said lots of things I shouldn’t have. It was unforgivable of me. But I hope – well, I hope you’ll take these, and say no hard feelings?’

There was a dullish rattle as he brought round his arm. He had chocolates for her, the box done up with a pink satin ribbon, the lid with a picture of a ballerina on it.

She looked at it in acute embarrassment. ‘You didn’t have to buy me sweets, Leonard.’

‘Well, I wanted to get you something, and the garden’s full of flowers, so I knew roses were no good. And I bet you don’t treat yourself to chocolates very often, do you?’

‘It isn’t me you ought to be apologising to, in any case. It’s Lilian.’

To her surprise, he coloured slightly. ‘I know.’

‘You said some very unkind things to her.’

‘I know, I know. But I didn’t mean a word of it; Lily knows that. I’ve already told her how sorry I am. I’ll find a way to make it up to her… I wish you’d take these chocolates, Frances. I’ve always thought of you and me as being good pals, and I’d hate that to change. You can give them to your mother if you don’t want them yourself. I expect we annoyed her too, didn’t we?’

She wiped her hands on her apron and took the box at last, doing her best to find an expression that would meet the demands of the moment, trying to admire the fancy wrapper, retain a bit of dignity – and all the time, of course, remembering that other charged moment of a few hours before, his wife’s hand an inch from her bosom, easing out that imaginary stake.

He looked relieved. ‘Thank you. It means a lot to me that you’re prepared to do that. I hope you don’t think too badly of me. We – well, we had fun last night, didn’t we, before I forgot my manners?’

His moustache twitched as he spoke, and at the sight of his pink, wet mouth she again felt a ripple of the dark excitement of the night before – like finding the last slosh of gin in a near-empty bottle. That was one current too many, however. Yes, she admitted, they had had fun; but she spoke primly, turning away, putting the chocolates down unopened, and returning to the task he had interrupted – slicing shallots. For a minute or two he lingered, perhaps hoping for more from her. When nothing came he sloped off through the open back door.

He remained in the yard after he’d visited the WC. Glancing out, she saw him with his hands in his trouser pockets, scuffing his feet across cracks in the flagstones. When she looked again a minute later he had wandered on to the lawn: she watched him light himself a cigarette, throw the spent match into the bushes, begin to amble between the flower-beds, occasionally leaning to dead-head a rose. He kept his back to her as he did it; she stood still with the knife in her hand, and what she noticed most of all was the narrowness of his hips and shoulders: he seemed suddenly a lonely and vulnerable figure, drifting about like that. She thought of Lilian’s lost baby; it was his lost baby, too. She recalled the hectic way in which he had whipped on the Snakes and Ladders, as if wanting something from the game, from his wife, from Frances, from the night, determined to goad and goad it until it coughed up or broke.

He’s as unhappy as any of us
, she realised.

Or, was he? His cigarette finished, he returned to the house, and what had clicked into place about him for her clicked out again. He looked livelier than before; his moustache had lost its droop. He’d spotted a lawn-mower, he said, tucked away at the end of the garden. The mechanism was all seized up, but he thought he might be able to get it going. He’d take a look at it later, if Frances and her mother didn’t mind.

Frances said he could help himself. He went upstairs for his dinner, and when he reappeared, at just before eight, his jacket was off, his collar and tie were removed, and his sleeves were rolled nearly to his armpits.

But this time Lilian was with him: she sat on the bench beneath the linden tree, watching him spread out a square of oilskin and begin to take the mower apart. When his hands became too greasy for him to light a cigarette, she got the packet out of his pocket and lit one for him. Frances saw it all from the drawing-room window while her mother picked chocolates from the ballerina box.

‘Won’t you have one at all, Frances? After Mr Barber went to so much trouble? I feel quite a glutton, eating all by myself!’

But, no, she wouldn’t eat a chocolate. She couldn’t relax into her mending, either. She was too conscious of Lilian, there at the end of the garden, in her white blouse with the touches of violet at the collar and the cuffs.

But – could she be imagining it? She had the sense that Lilian was conscious of her. She didn’t once look back at the house. She watched as Leonard worked the spanners, nodding in an encouraging way at the bits of machinery he displayed to her, the cogs and the blades and the God knew what. But even as she nodded, even as she murmured, even as she lit that cigarette and leaned to fit it between his lips, a part of her, like a long, long shadow running counter to the sun, was leaning to Frances; Frances was sure of it.

They saw very little of each other over the week-end, and when they met on the Monday they made no mention of the confidences they had exchanged in Frances’s bedroom, nor of the electric but ambiguous way in which they had parted. They spoke of nothing much at all – of domestic matters, laundry bills. But for the rest of that day the rumble of the treadle sewing-machine could be heard across the house; and the following morning, while Frances was stripping the sheets from her bed, Lilian appeared at her door.

‘I have your frock for you, Frances,’ she said shyly.

‘My frock?’

‘For Saturday night. For Netta’s party. Had you forgotten?’

Frances hadn’t forgotten. But the trying-on of the dress, the hair-cutting – that all seemed to belong to a distant, less complicated time. She left the bed and moved to the doorway as Lilian held the frock up on its hanger; then she gaped in amazement. The gown was transformed. Lilian had made it fashionably loose and low-waisted. She had washed it and pressed it and removed all trace of must. But she’d also replaced the frock’s worn leather lacings with silvery velvet ribbons, and she had faced the collar and the lowest tier of the skirt with a satiny fabric to match.

Frances lifted one of its cuffs. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘Do you mean it?’

‘I hate to think how long it must have taken you.’

‘It didn’t take any time at all. And I found a bag that goes with it – here.’ It was an evening bag, grey plush. ‘And this hat, too. What do you think?’ The hat was pink with a wide brim. ‘The crown’s quite soft, so it won’t spoil your hair. I thought I could wave you again – shall I?’

Frances turned the hat in her hands, then stood at the glass to try it. The colour suited her; the style was flattering. When she lifted it off it left a trace of Lilian’s scent behind. Carefully setting it down on her chest of drawers, she said, ‘I thought you must have changed your mind about the party. You haven’t mentioned it in so long, and I’ve rather had the idea – Are you sure you’d still like me to come?’

‘Don’t you want to come?’

‘Yes, I’d like to. But how about Leonard? Won’t he mind your going with me instead of with him?’

Lilian coloured, but tilted up her chin. ‘Why should he mind? He’s got his assurance thing to think about. And he’ll be glad to escape my family. It’ll only be family – you know that, don’t you? And Netta’s house – it isn’t very grand. Perhaps you’ll hate it.’

‘I won’t hate it.’

‘I won’t a bit blame you if you do.’

‘I’m sure I won’t hate it, Lilian,’ said Frances.
I won’t hate it
, she meant,
if I’m with you.
A couple of weeks before, she might have said the words aloud. A couple of weeks before, Lilian might have dipped her head and absorbed them as another piece of funny chivalry. She couldn’t have said them now, not for fifty pounds; not for five hundred.

But perhaps Lilian heard them anyhow. Her bravado seemed to fail her. She hooked the frock on its hanger to the back of the door, and after a brief, uneasy silence she returned to her own room.

The uneasiness continued as the week wore on. With the tugging of that stake from Frances’s heart some sort of potential had been released, some physical charge made possible. Catching one another’s eye through an open doorway could set them both blushing. If they had to pass on the stairs they seemed to be twice their natural size, all hands and hips and bosoms. When they stopped to chat they were as awkward with each other as if they both had a touch of the jitters. No sooner had they parted, however, than they seemed to meet again. It was as if a thread were fixed between them, continually drawing them back together.

And there was another sort of thread, tugging them towards that party. The event had acquired an unlikely promise, an improbable allure. Frances could not stop thinking about it; and yet, when she spoke about it to others, she became like a hopeless liar, delivering an untruth with a yawn. To Christina, for example, she made a great joke of it. Fun and games with Lil’s relations! Would there be Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Blind Man’s Buff? With her mother she was casual. Well, it wasn’t far to go. It had been kind of Lilian to ask her; she couldn’t very well have said no. And with Leonard —

But Leonard beat her to it. He looked at her in disbelief. ‘Have you any idea what you’ve let yourself in for? It’ll be all tinkers and Sinn Féiners, you know. The O’Flanagans, the O’Hooligans… But I’m glad you’re going, to be honest. You can keep an eye on Lily for me. Some of those hot-eyed Irish cousins of hers – I wouldn’t trust them further than I could throw them!’

He was half serious, Frances realised. Mumbling a reply, she turned away before he could spot how ghastly her smile was.

That was on the Thursday evening. The Friday dawned very fair. And the Saturday, the day of the party, was warm even at five in the morning: she awoke with the light, and stole downstairs, and drank her tea in the garden. She spent the morning doing housework – doing it extra carefully, aware of a powerful temptation not to do it at all. She cooked an elaborate lunch, with a fruit tart for dessert, and made a point of being nice to her mother, attentive and chatty, prolonging the meal.

But when the clearing-away was done she went upstairs, to sit again in the little kitchen while Lilian trimmed and waved her hair: the procedure was as excruciating as it had been the first time, but in a completely different way. Lilian was clumsy with the iron; one of the waves would not sit right. She had to wet it and re-do it, her face inches from Frances’s. They both seemed to be holding their breath. Frances kept her gaze fixed on a spot on the wall, a sliver of bare paper that had got missed by the varnish.

Once the hair was finished, she couldn’t relax. She spent time assembling her outfit, hunting down some good silk stockings, steaming the nap back into a pair of suede shoes. She scrubbed her hands with lemon juice, she cut and polished her fingernails, she fitted a new blade into her safety-razor and carefully shaved her legs. That all took until tea-time; after that she sat in the drawing-room with an open book in her lap, too restless to read properly; too conscious of Lilian overhead, at the wardrobe, opening drawers. Half-past four… Quarter to five… The minutes dragged by – until she heard the clang of the gate and hollow-sounding footsteps in the front garden. Leonard was home. He let himself into the house, and with his arrival the pace of the day was suddenly accelerated: the afternoon seemed to catch its breath, to rise on to its toes and spring forward. He had his own evening to prepare for, of course, his dinner, his club-night – whatever it was. Soon Frances could hear him on the landing, calling to Lilian about shaving-soap and sock-suspenders. As she was out in the kitchen making an early Saturday supper, the gramophone blared into life, and she felt a thrill of absolute excitement. For once, the dance-tunes seemed to beckon to her rather than repel her.

The music was still playing when she went up. It buzzed in the boards at her feet while she stripped and washed. On went clean underwear. Up came the stockings, gliding with supernatural smoothness over her newly shaven legs. The frock took a bit of fiddling with. It was disconcertingly loose at the bust, alarmingly short at the hem – Lilian had raised it after all – and, gazing at her reflection, at the Burne-Jones lacing, Frances thought again of Sherwood Forest, of lutes and pageants. And did her hair look all right above the satiny collar? Her neck seemed as long as a sea-serpent’s. Pointing her jaw this way and that she was reminded of those stretched wax mannequin heads and shoulders she had now and then seen on display in hairdressers’ windows.