The Paying Guests (62 page)

‘No, there was no mistake. His mother has nothing but a scrap of lace up; you can see clean through it when the lamps are lit. He was lying there giving out the orders to her as he usually does. She was fetching him cups of tea and the like all evening long. And when she took herself off to bed at a quarter to eleven he was still there; and he called her out of her bed a half-hour later to fetch him a glass of water. I heard his voice, that time, clear across the courtyard.’

Now the blade seemed to be pushing its way right into Frances’s heart. There were more murmurs, from the benches in front of her and from the spectators overhead. She couldn’t tell, however, if the murmurs were sceptical or impressed. She looked at Mr Ives, at the boy in the dock, at the jury, at the judge. The latter was sitting forward making notes, his face impassive.

As before, Mr Tresillian paused to let the disturbance subside – and also, she thought, to choose his next words carefully. When he addressed the man again, his tone had grown delicate.

‘I am going to put a question to you now,’ he said, ‘because I know that if I do not, my learned friend Mr Ives will, quite correctly, put it to you himself. That boy over there has been in prison for many weeks. I imagine you read the newspapers. I imagine you talk to your neighbours. I imagine there have been police about, asking questions, all over your building. You must have known the bearing your evidence would have on this case. Why did you delay so long in volunteering it?’

And, for the first time, the man looked uncomfortable. A touch of shiftiness entered his gaze. ‘Yes, I knew all about it,’ he said. ‘I was in two minds about going to the police, for reasons of my own.’

‘And those reasons were? Remember now, it is Mr Ward who is on trial here, not you. Remember, too, will you, that he is on trial for his life.’

The man changed his pose, moved his weight from one foot to another; and answered grudgingly at last. ‘I was in fear for my position. My employers had supposed me in Leeds on the night of the fifteenth. It wasn’t in my interest to enlighten them.’

‘You had misrepresented your movements to them?’

‘I had claimed expenses that weren’t due me… It sounds shabby to admit it, here.’

‘It does sound shabby,’ said Mr Tresillian. ‘But, then, there can’t be a man in this room – saving, of course, his lordship on the bench – who hasn’t given way to a shabby impulse at one time or another. When was it that you approached the police with your statement?’

‘Last week, when I heard how black things had got for the boy. I’d had a month of looking out my window, seeing his poor mother – I couldn’t live with myself.’

‘And the police, I imagine, spoke with your employers?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘With what result?’

‘I was given my marching orders.’

‘Your position lost, your good name tarnished. Just what you had anticipated, in fact. And yet, you still felt it your duty to come forward?’

The man looked sour again. ‘I did. I don’t like the boy. No one in our building does. I can’t speak for anything else he might have done or not done. He might want hanging ten times over for all I know about it. But as far as the murder of this Mr Barber goes, he doesn’t want hanging for that, for he was at home with his mother all that evening long, and nothing could make me tell you he wasn’t, though I should be hanged for it my —’

Myself
, Frances knew he was going to finish. But from the corner of her eye she had seen Douglas rise and lean forward, and now he shouted at the man in a fury: ‘Liar!’

There were exclamations, protests. His father and uncle attempted to restrain him; he shook off their hands and shouted again, more hoarsely. ‘Liar!’ He spoke to the jury: ‘He’s been put up to this! He’s been paid to do it! Can’t you see?’

The judge called sternly for him to be silent. Faces peered over the balcony, a woolly scarf dangled. Spencer looked on open-mouthed, showing all his dreadful teeth. A policeman came across the well of the court, and at his approach Douglas gave a snort of disgust but grew calmer and, with a flick of the tails of his overcoat, sat back down. And by the time the room had settled, Frances understood that the force of the man’s evidence had been dispelled. Mr Ives rose to cross-examine him, and he grew truculent again, and looked seedy and dishonest; his little moment of nobility, she realised, had come and gone. But they had to believe him, didn’t they? He had been brave. He had been brave where she and Lilian had been cowards. They had to believe him! She gazed from face to face, desperate to see some change in people’s expressions. But the faces remained closed to her. The mechanism of the trial had stuttered and jammed for a moment, but was already running smooth again.

She couldn’t listen to the final few witnesses. When it was time to leave the court, she found that she was trembling. Lilian’s face was whiter than ever. The mix of feelings was too much, the slim new chance almost unwelcome; it had been easier to remain in despair. They got down to the street and hailed a taxi, but she didn’t want to be still, not even for the brief ride to Walworth. She didn’t want to have to speak, in case all that came out of her were tears. She saw Lilian into the cab, then shook her head and drew back. She closed the door, and if Lilian called to her to wait, the words were lost. She began to walk. The rain had turned to a fine drizzle, and the pavements were slimy. Her boots began to let in the filthy water at once. But as she made the long journey home to Champion Hill she felt what she had tried and failed to feel the day before: she looked at the city and was sick with love for it, sick with yearning to remain a part of it, to remain alive and young and unconfined and bursting with sensation. Her tired muscles began to ache, but even the ache was dear to her, even the blisters on her heels. She’d be a thing of aches and blisters for the rest of her days, she thought; she’d ask for nothing, trouble no one; if only they’d let her keep her freedom, if only they’d let her keep her life.

By the time she arrived at the house the fizz of her feelings had begun to subside. Her mother exclaimed at the sight of her, hurried her out of her wet things. She warmed herself at the kitchen stove, washed the dirt from her feet, stuffed newspaper into her boots, put her coat and hat to dry. But when she went up to her bedroom, the spell of the walk was still on her. She lit a lamp, drew on clean clothes, then stood and gazed around the neat, plain room with passionate eyes. Who would love these things when she was gone? What would they mean to anyone else? The candlesticks, the photographs of her brothers, the prints on the wall, the books —

Her eye was caught by
Anna Karenina
. She drew it free, and opened it up at the page at which she’d left a marker: the scene at the Moscow station, Anna stepping down from the train.

She took the lamp, and crossed the landing, and went into the sitting-room.

She thought she had gone in there looking for Lilian. But this time the things she noticed all belonged to Leonard, his leather writing-case on the shelf, the battered box of Snakes and Ladders, his tennis racket, still in its frame, ready for the next tournament. Had they been real, those matches of his? Or had he spent the days with Billie? Had he loved her, as she’d loved Lilian?

Gipsy caravans. Adam and Eve.

Oh, Leonard, she thought, what a mess we made of things! She remembered the intent and frightening way in which he had grabbed her, that night. She remembered the look of betrayal and rage that had come into his face. But he couldn’t have foreseen all this; he couldn’t have wanted any of this… If only she could talk to him! It seemed absurd, all at once, that she couldn’t. She had carted his body down the stairs, she had seen him laid out on a mortuary slab, she had watched his coffin being lowered into the ground; but somehow she hadn’t until this moment absorbed the simple, staggering fact that he had once been here and now was gone. His whistling, his boasting, his yodelling yawns, his innuendoes: it was all of it gone. Where on earth was he? She moved forward, lifting the lamp, almost as if she were searching for him and the light would reveal him. But even the stains of his blood were invisible, in the gloom. He might have been spirited away by a wizard: it was as confounding and as pointless as that.

She heard a creaking on the landing, and turned to find that her mother had come up the stairs. She was peering cautiously in from the open doorway.

‘Is everything all right, Frances? I wondered what you were doing.’

She answered, after a hesitation, ‘I was thinking of Leonard.’

Her mother must have heard the catch of emotion in her voice. She came forward into the room. ‘I think of him too. I think of him often. It wasn’t kind, it wasn’t right, the way he behaved to Mrs Barber; but one can’t help but miss him. I still have nightmares when I picture him lying alone out there, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Frances, truthfully.

‘And all his things, still here…’ She sighed, and tutted. ‘Dear, dear.’ The words and the gesture were mild, but had an infinite weight of grief behind them. ‘What an unlucky house this has been for men, hasn’t it? Or unlucky for women, I suppose I ought to say. I know your brothers are at peace now.’

Frances said, ‘Do you really know it?’

‘I haven’t a single doubt about it. Them, and your dear father. And Mr Barber, too – though it’s hard to imagine him at rest, he was so lively. There are his tennis shoes, look, with the heels trodden down. I remember after your father died finding his pipe with tobacco in it – fresh tobacco, waiting for the match. It was almost more distressing than seeing him in his coffin. Mrs Barber will find it hard, when she comes to take her things. Has she spoken to you about that? She’ll be able to think more clearly, of course, once this dreadful trial is behind her. But has she given you any sense of her plans? She’ll remain at her mother’s, I suppose.’

‘I – I’m not sure. Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Well, be certain to tell her to take just as long as she needs. And then, once she has gone —’ She paused. ‘Well, we must do it all over again, must we? Find new people for these rooms?’

The thought was terrible. But Frances nodded. ‘What else can we do, if we mean to stay? But, then, the house – I don’t know. So many things are going wrong.’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought I could hold it all together, but —’

‘Well, don’t think about it now. We’ll sort it out, between us. It’s only a lot of bricks and mortar. Its heart stopped, Frances, years ago… You look tired again. This frightful business at the court! I wish you’d keep away from it. You really think it will end tomorrow?’

Frances lowered her gaze. ‘Yes, tomorrow will end it.’

‘Though not, I suppose, for that boy and his family. What a nightmare we’ve all been caught in! If you had told me, in the summer – No, I should never have believed you. Oh, won’t it be a weight off our minds when it’s all over and done with!’

She turned away as she spoke, rubbing her arms against the chill. Frances noticed the stoop of her shoulders, the elderly way she reached for the doorpost as she headed out to the landing.

She felt her mouth grow dry. ‘Mother —’

Her mother turned back to her, her dark brows lifted. ‘Yes?’

‘If anything were ever to happen to me —’

‘Happen to you? What do you mean? Oh, we’ve let ourselves grow morbid! Come back down out of the gloom.’

‘No, wait. If something were to happen – I know I haven’t always been kind to you. I know I wasn’t kind to Father. I’ve always tried to do what I thought to be right. But sometimes —’

Her mother’s joined hands made their papery sound. ‘You mustn’t grow upset, Frances. Remember what Dr Lawrence said.’

‘It’s just – You wouldn’t ever despise me, would you, Mother?’

‘Despise you! Good gracious! Why would I ever do that?’

‘Sometimes things become a muddle. They become such a muddle, Mother, that they turn into a sort of quicksand. You take a step, and can’t get free, and —’

She couldn’t continue. Her mother waited, looking troubled – but looking weary, too. Finally she sighed. ‘What a fight you’ve always made of everything, Frances. And all I ever wanted for you were such ordinary things: a husband, a home, a family of your own. Such ordinary, ordinary things. You mustn’t worry about the house. The house has become too great a burden. It isn’t a house for guests, after all. Mrs Barber came here as an unhappy woman, and I’m afraid she took advantage of your – your kindness. But, despise you! I could never despise you, any more than I could despise my own hand. Now, come down with me, will you? Back to the warm.’

Frances hesitated, still struggling – though she didn’t know now if she was struggling to speak or to stay silent. But at last she nodded, and moved forward, and followed her mother from the room. She wanted to be comforted, that was all. She wanted it so much. It didn’t matter, she told herself, as they started down the stairs, it didn’t really matter that the two of them had been talking about different things.

And once the final day had arrived, and she and Lilian were back in their taxi, back at the Old Bailey, back on their bench, she found it hard to remember that they had ever had a life beyond the courtroom. It seemed an absolute eternity since, three mornings before, she had crossed the floor, alone and uncertain; an eternity since she had looked at the clerks and the barristers and seen only a flock of jackdaws. She knew them now as individuals, almost as friends: the man who breathed with a whistle, the one who liked to crack his knuckles, the one who sucked white peppermints, that sometimes appeared, startlingly, from between his thin, dry lips. The court was much fuller than it had been at the start. The trial had gathered spectators as the days had passed, and witnesses had stayed or returned, to be fitted in as best they could – so that, if she peered past the heads and shoulders in front of her, she could see Spencer’s mother and uncle elbow to elbow with the police surgeon, while Inspector Kemp and Sergeant Heath sat squashed beside Leonard’s boss from the Pearl. How extraordinary it was to realise that all this fuss had been set in motion by that little collision in her mother’s old bedroom on Champion Hill. How astonishing that all these people had been hoicked together in this bright place because of that single intimate encounter between Lilian, Leonard and her.