The Paying Guests (8 page)

Come here to Nanny
…
While she fussed with the boy, the younger women looking on, Frances began to catch the resemblances between them all. Mrs Rawlins – Netta, the others called her – was, she realised, simply a more matronly Min. Vera had Mrs Viney’s button eyes, though with a drier expression in them. Even the boy and girl, she saw now, had the family look, the girl solid on sturdy legs, the boy fair but with the sort of fairness that would quickly darken, and each of them with a pink, full, elastic, unchildlike mouth – Mrs Barber’s mouth, in fact. She had just, with relief and surprise, worked the mystery out, when Mrs Barber herself came breathlessly into the room.

She caught Frances’s eye first. ‘Miss Wray, I’m so sorry! Mrs Wray, how are you?’ Her smile pulled tight, and her tone wavered. ‘You’ve met my mother and my sisters, then?’

‘Oh, we’re great pals already,’ said Mrs Viney comfortably. ‘And there you were, Lil, saying as how the ladies would be out all day!’

‘She was hoping you wouldn’t meet us,’ Vera told Frances. ‘She’s ashamed of us.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mrs Barber, blushing.

But, ‘Yes, that’s the truth of it!’ their mother cried gaily, her old-fashioned stays giving off a volley of pops and creaks. ‘Still, we make up in cheerfulness, Mrs Wray, what we lack in nice manners. And, oh, I do think this house delightful, really I do.’

Frances’s mother, flushing, blinking, rapidly adjusting to the situation, said, ‘Thank you. Yes, it’s been a happy family home in its day. A little large, that’s all, for my daughter and me to manage now.’

‘Oh, no, you don’t want all that trouble. No, there’s nothing like a big house for trouble. There’s nothing brings your spirits down, I always think, like an empty room. You shall enjoy having company here now, I expect. And don’t you keep the back garden lovely!’

‘Oh, you’ve seen the garden, then?’

‘Yes, Lil took us over it.’

‘Just quickly,’ said Mrs Barber.

‘You might be right in the country here. Why, you’d never know you had a neighbour! Gives you quite a bank holiday mood. You could bring in trippers and do them teas. Now, a pokey old place like ours – we live behind my husband’s shop, on the Walworth Road, Vera, Min and me – well, that’s just old-fashioned. But a charming place like this…’

She gazed appreciatively around the room – which seemed to have acquired even more flourishes since Frances had glimpsed it last, the hob grate with a bunch of paper poppies standing in it, the sofa covered in what looked like a chenille table-cloth, complete with bobbles on its hem, and the mantelpiece crowded now with postcards and ornaments: ebony elephants, brass monkeys, a china Buddha, a Spanish fan; the tambourine was there too, its ribbons trailing. ‘I was saying to the girls before you come up,’ Mrs Viney went on warmly, ‘isn’t it wonderful to think of all the ladies that must have lived here in days gone by, in their bonnets and fine frocks? Such skirts those frocks had, didn’t they! Yards of material in them! Makes you wonder how they got on, with all the muck on the streets back then. Makes you wonder how they got up the stairs, even. As for visiting certain other little places —’

‘Mum!’ cried her daughters. Mrs Barber cried it loudest of all.

Mrs Viney opened wide her button eyes. ‘What? Oh, Mrs Wray knows it’s only my fun. So does Miss Wray, I’m sure. Besides, we’re all ladies here.’

At that the little girl began to protest that they were
not
all ladies; that there were boys there too. Mrs Viney, still comfortable, said, ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

But, no, the little girl
didn’t
know what she meant, because
Maurice
wasn’t a lady, and
Siddy
wasn’t a lady. Siddy wasn’t even a
boy
yet, he was too little —

‘That’s enough from you, madam,’ said Vera sharply, while Frances, puzzled, thought,
Siddy?
The girl pushed out her grown-up mouth, but fell silent. Mrs Viney was saying again, Yes, she did think the house a fine one. ‘Such a bit of luck for Lil and Len. And hasn’t Lil done the rooms up nice! She always was the artistic one in the family. – No, Lil, you was!’ She gave Frances a wink. ‘I’m making her blush, look.’

‘It’s her artist’s temperament,’ said Vera, in her dry way.

‘Well, I don’t know which side she gets it from. Not from mine, that’s for sure! And as for her dear father, God rest him, why, he couldn’t hang a picture straight on a nail, let alone paint one —’

Her words were broken into by an extraordinary noise, a snuffling, gurgling, animal sound, that made Frances and her mother give starts of alarm. The sisters, by contrast, grew hushed. Vera peered over the arm of the sofa into a large straw bag that was sitting beside it – a bag which Frances, all this time, had taken for a simple hold-all, but which she now realised was a carrying basket for an infant. There was a moment of suspense. The women spoke in whispers. Was he going off? Was he off? Had he gone? But then the snuffling started up again, and almost instantly exploded into a howl.

‘Oh, dear!’

‘Dear, dear!’

‘Never mind!’

‘
Here
he is!’

Vera had put her hands into the basket and lifted out a kicking baby in a knitted yellow suit. This was Siddy, then: she handed him across the hearth-rug to Netta, who set him on her lap with his limbs still thrashing, his big puce-coloured head rolling about on a stem-like neck.

‘Won’t you smile for the ladies?’ she asked him. ‘No? Not after Mrs Wray, and Miss Wray, have come all the way up to see you? Oh, what a face!’

‘P’raps he’s hungry,’ suggested Mrs Viney, as the child continued to howl.

‘He’s always hungry, this one. He’s like his dad in that department.’

‘How’s his napkin?’

Netta patted his bottom. ‘His napkin’s all right. He just wants to join in. Don’t you? Hey?’

She bounced the baby on her knee, and his head rolled more wildly, though his cries began to subside.

Frances’s mother, who liked babies, leaned forward for a better view. ‘Quite the little emperor, isn’t he?’ she said, with a smile.

‘He’s that, all right,’ said Mrs Viney, showing the gaps in her teeth. ‘He can scream like a lord, anyhow. Oh, just look at him! Like a great big turnip, isn’t he? We’re hoping he’ll grow into his head. And his big brother there was just the opposite. Do you remember, Netta? Oh, his head was that small, you could have darned your stocking on it!’ She had to wipe away tears of laughter. ‘Have you any other children, Mrs Wray? You won’t mind my asking, I’m sure.’

‘I don’t mind at all,’ answered Frances’s mother, drawing her gaze from the wobbling infant in Netta’s lap. ‘I had three children altogether. My sons both gave their lives in the War.’

Mrs Viney’s face became stripped of its mirth. She said, ‘Oh, now ain’t that a shame. Oh, I
am
sorry for you. My brother lost two of his boys the same way – and had another sent home with his eyes shrivelled right up in his head. Vera’s husband, Arthur, we lost too. Didn’t we, Ver? I used to pine after boys, you know, Mrs Wray, when I was a young married woman. I could never hang on to boy babies, I don’t know why. I had two misses and a still, and they were all boys, the midwife told me; the last one such a dear little mite, too.’

‘What’s a still?’ asked the girl.

The women ignored her. Min said, ‘I remember that. I remember Daddy crying over it and telling me he had pepper in his eyes.’

‘He was a dear man, your father,’ said Mrs Viney, smiling. ‘An Irishman, Mrs Wray. Sentimental, as they all are. Yes, we were both of us very cut up to lose that last one. But, now, do you know, I’m not sure I should have liked that little boy to have grown up, if he was only to have been killed like his cousins.’

She sighed and shook her head, and again her face lost its jollity, and her high colour was revealed for what it really was, a spider’s web of broken veins in yellow, deflated cheeks. Her button eyes looked suddenly naked – as if life had used her so hard, thought Frances, it had had the very lashes off her.

The girl repeated, ‘What’s a still?’

Vera answered her at last. ‘Something I wish you’d been.’

Frances’s mother looked startled. Mrs Barber dipped her head as if mortified. But the visitors rocked with heartless laughter, Mrs Viney fishing a hanky from her sleeve in order to mop her freshly running eyes. The baby watched the merriment with a solemn expression – then gave a sudden chortle, as if just getting the joke. That made everyone laugh again. Netta squeezed and jiggled him to make him chortle harder. His head rolled, his mouth and chin grew wet, and he kicked her in the stomach in his excitement.

And with that, the mood of the gathering made a slight but definite shift. Vera groped about in her handbag and offered cigarettes. Frances’s mother, looking startled again, shook her head; Frances reluctantly shook hers. But the younger women struck matches, reached for the stand-ashtray, and began to reclaim the conversation. There began to be mentions, Frances noticed, of ‘his nibs’, ‘his lordship’ – ‘Well, you can guess what
he
said!’, ‘I didn’t pay any mind to
him
!’ – at which Mrs Viney made occasional, ineffectual protests: ‘Oh, now don’t be nasty! Your poor step-dad don’t mean no harm!’ The family, like a clockwork engine, had made its way over the minor obstacle of the Wrays’ entrance and was returning to what were evidently very comfortable lines. Frances, looking from sister to sister, saw clearly the role that had been won by each – or, more likely, had been foisted on them by the demands of the machine – tart Vera, capable Netta, simple-minded, sandy-faced Min.

And then, of course, there was Mrs Barber: Lilian, Lily, Lil. She had been keeping to the edge of the group all this time, leaning sometimes against the mantelpiece, sometimes against the arm of the sofa; looking, every few minutes, in a worried sort of way, at Frances and her mother. She was wearing a plum-coloured frock of soft material, with panels of crochet at its bosom and on the cuffs of its short sleeves; she had teamed it with olive-green stockings and her Turkish slippers, and around her neck was a string of red wooden beads, clicking together like an abacus with every slight movement. ‘The artistic one in the family,’ her mother had called her, Frances remembered, and it was certainly true that, dress-wise, she had little in common with her sisters, who were all decked out like chorus girls in faux-silk frocks, open-work stockings, high-heeled shoes, wristlets and anklets; nor did her careful accent much resemble theirs. She was moving away from the circle of chairs now. The little boy, her nephew, had approached her with some whispered request; she caught hold of his hand to lead him across the littered carpet, and began gathering titbits for him from the remains of a tea of buns and biscuits that lay scattered on the table on the other side of the room. The boy took the plate she offered and carefully held it to his chest; when its contents began to slip she tucked her skirt behind her thighs and lowered herself at his side to steady it. She did it in one smooth, supple motion, her heels rising out of her slippers, her calves showing, pale and rounded, through the sheen of her stockings. The little boy bit into a biscuit, scattering crumbs into the crochet at her bosom.

She didn’t notice the crumbs. She made her plump lips plumper, to plant an idle sort of kiss on the child’s fair head. Just as the kiss was finished she looked up, saw Frances watching, and dropped her gaze, self-conscious. But when Frances, smiling, continued to watch, she raised her eyes again and smiled uncertainly back.

But now the boy’s cousin, the little girl, had realised that there were treats to be had. She picked her way over and asked for a biscuit of her own. That made Mrs Viney wonder if there mightn’t be biscuits enough for everybody… Frances looked at her mother, and her mother gave the slightest of nods: they rose and began to say their farewells. Detaching themselves from the fibres of Mrs Viney’s goodwill took several more minutes, but finally they made it out to the landing.

Mrs Barber made a point of going with them. And when Frances’s mother had started on her way downstairs, she beckoned Frances back and spoke quietly.

‘I’m so sorry about the chair, Miss Wray. I know you noticed it. Please tell your mother how sorry I am. I’d hate you to think we’d gone helping ourselves to your things. Only, my mother needs a hard armchair, because her back and her legs are bad, and Len and I haven’t got one.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Frances.

‘It isn’t, but you’re kind to say so. It was nice of you to come in. My family’s such a noisy one. They won’t stay much longer. They only came for an hour, but then it started raining. And I think —’ She nodded to Frances’s sober costume. ‘I’m afraid you must have been somewhere solemn today, you and your mother?’

Frances explained about the visit to her father’s grave.

Mrs Barber looked appalled. ‘Oh, and for you to have come home and found all these people here!’

She put a hand to her head, disarranging the curls of her hair. She still had crumbs in the panel of her gown: Frances felt a housewifely urge – a housespinsterly urge, she supposed it ought to be called, in her case – to brush them free. Instead, she moved towards the stairs.

‘Your family must stay as long as they like, Mrs Barber. They shan’t disturb us. Truly.’

Downstairs, however, it was possible to hear quite clearly the women’s laughter, the drum of the children’s feet. As Frances closed the drawing-room door the joists above it creaked, then creaked again – even the walls seemed to creak – as if a giant had the house in his hands and was squeezing and jiggling it just as Netta had squeezed and jiggled her chortling child.

Her mother had planted herself in her chair by the French windows with an air of exhaustion.

‘Well!’ she said. ‘What a very surprising family for Mrs Barber to have produced! Or what a surprising family to have produced Mrs Barber, is what I suppose I mean. I was under the impression that her father managed a business of some kind. Didn’t she tell us that? And that she had a brother in the Navy?’

Frances leaned on the back of the sofa. ‘A brother in the —? Oh, Mother, don’t be so elderly. That was all my fancy, don’t you remember?’