The Paying Guests (9 page)

‘
Is
the father a businessman?’

‘The father’s dead. Mrs Viney is a widow and has remarried. To a shopkeeper, whom all the girls despise. He must run that drapers by the fried fish shop.’ And then, when her mother looked blankly at her: ‘Can you think of another on the Walworth Road?’

Her mother took in what she was saying. ‘The Walworth Road? Not really, Frances?’

‘Weren’t you paying attention?’

‘Well, it was hard to keep one’s eye from wandering. Mrs Barber’s decorations – I hadn’t an idea! It looks like the house of Ali Baba! Or the Moulin Rouge! Or the Taj Mahal! If only she would decide on a country and have done with it. Is that what passes for modern décor? If your dear father – You noticed his chair, I suppose?’

‘Mrs Barber explained about that just now. She was most apologetic. Her mother has a “back”, apparently.’

‘Well, I’m amazed that’s all she has! What Amazons those girls are. And Mrs Viney herself hardly more than four feet high!’

‘Still,’ said Frances, smiling, ‘I liked her. Didn’t you? A kind woman, I think.’

‘I think so too,’ her mother admitted. ‘But the sort of kindness of which – let’s be truthful, Frances – a little goes a long way. And why must people of that class always reveal so much of themselves? A few minutes more and she would have shown us her varicose veins.’ She peered anxiously down the room towards the window overlooking the street. ‘I wonder if the Dawsons saw her come. Oh, I know it’s unchristian of me, but I do hope she doesn’t think of visiting too often.’

‘Well, I hope she does,’ said Frances. ‘She’s perked me up no end. She’s as good as a trip to a gin-palace.’

Her mother smiled, wanly – then flinched and looked anxious at another roar of mirth from the floor above. ‘Oh, but I
do
hope they won’t visit too often. I never heard such gales of laughter! And some of it in very questionable taste. No wonder Mr Barber is keeping away, poor man. Oh, they’re not at all what I expected from Mrs Barber, Frances. If we had known – Oh, dear. I can’t help but feel that she – well —’

‘What?’ asked Frances, smiling, heading for the kitchen. ‘That she’s sold us a pup? I think it makes her more interesting. How hard she must have worked for those green stockings!’

The children continued to charge about for another half-hour, and laughter still gusted out of the sitting-room; but then there came a spell of footsteps and creaking so intense it could mean only that the sisters were up and on the move, shifting chairs, tidying and gathering. As Frances and her mother had their tea, gas pulsed through the meter and china was rattled in the sink. There was the inevitable clip of heels on the stairs as, one after another, the women came down to visit the WC, bringing the protesting children with them. Finally there was the slow descent of Mrs Viney, and prolonged, hilarious farewells in the hall. The little girl discovered the dinner-gong, and struck it, and was smacked.

Frances’s mother had taken up her work-box and sat sewing through the hubbub as if determined not to wince. Frances herself had an open book in her lap, but, distracted, kept going over and over the same two pages. As soon as the front door was closed and Mrs Barber was on her way back upstairs she put the book aside and, unable to resist, she tiptoed across to the window and watched the visitors as they headed off in the direction of Camberwell. There they went, in their gaudy coats, their complicated hats, Netta leading the way with her baby at her shoulder, looking like the Triumph of Twentieth-Century Motherhood, while Mrs Viney, arm in arm with Vera and Min, a sham-leather bag clutched to her bosom, made her slow, good-humoured, late-Victorian progress behind. The children were twirling stems of lavender, plucked from pots in the front garden. More stems lay broken in the garden itself.

‘Paul Pry,’ said Frances’s mother, from the rear of the long room.

Frances answered without turning. ‘I don’t care. I want to be certain that no one’s been left behind. One, two, three, four, five, six – seven, if you include the baby. Can that be right? I’m sure there weren’t so many an hour ago.’

‘Perhaps they’ve bred another in the meantime.’

‘Poor Mrs Viney. Her ankles! They look like the kind one keeps umbrellas in.’

‘Perhaps one of us ought to go out to the kitchen and count the spoons.’

‘Mother! As if they’d be interested in our old spoons. They’re more likely to have left us a couple of shillings on the hall table. Just quietly, you know, so as not to embarrass us —’

She turned away from the glass as another thump came from the floor above.

Her mother was wincing at last. ‘Oh, this really is too bad. What on earth is Mrs Barber doing now?’

The sound came again, from the landing this time, and soon the staircase began to creak, there was a bumping of wood against the banisters…

Frances started forward. ‘She’s bringing down the chair. She’ll have the paper off the walls! – Everything all right, Mrs Barber?’ she called, going out into the hall and closing the drawing-room door behind her.

‘Yes, quite all right!’ came the breathless reply. But Frances went up and found her struggling. The chair was heavy, and its legs were caught: between them they freed it, manoeuvred it around the bend of the staircase, then carried it safely down to the hall.

Frances fitted it precisely back into its spot and gave it a pat. ‘There, you charlatan. A little adventure for you. I don’t believe anyone’s ever actually sat on it before, you know.’

Mrs Barber, still embarrassed, said, ‘I really oughtn’t to have taken it. My sisters talked me into it. They boss me; they always have. I’m afraid it’s awfully old, too.’

‘Well, my father certainly thought so. No, your sisters were quite right. I’m glad you found a use for it.’

‘Well, you’ve been kind about it. Thank you.’

She was moving back towards the stairs already. How different she was from her husband! He would have lingered, got in the way. Frances, if anything, was sorry to see her go. She remembered how curiously appealing she had looked as she’d squatted at her nephew’s side, with her green-stockinged heels rising out of her embroidered slippers. She had shaken the crumbs from her gown at last, but the curls of her hair were still disordered, and again Frances had the housewifely impulse to pat her back into shape.

Instead she said, ‘You look weary, Mrs Barber.’

Mrs Barber’s hand went to her cheek. ‘Do I?’

‘Why not sit down with me for a moment? Not on this monster, I mean, but’ – she gestured over her shoulder – ‘out in the kitchen? Just for a minute?’

Mrs Barber looked uncertain. ‘Well, I don’t want to keep you.’

‘You won’t be keeping me from anything except perhaps thinking about my next chore. And I can do that any old time… Do say yes. I’ve meant to ask you before. Here we are, sharing a house, and we’ve barely spoken. It seems a pity, don’t you think?’

Her tone was a sincere one, and Mrs Barber’s expression changed. She said, with a smile, ‘It does rather, doesn’t it? Yes, all right.’

They went the short distance into the kitchen. Frances offered a chair.

‘May I make you some tea?’ she asked, as Mrs Barber sat.

‘Oh, no. I’ve been drinking tea all afternoon.’

‘A slice of cake, then?’

‘I’ve been eating cake, too! You have something, though, will you?’

Frances was thinking it over. She said, ‘To tell the truth, what I really want right now —’ Going across to the open doorway, she put her head out into the passage, listening for sounds of activity in the drawing-room. Hearing none, she moved back, noiselessly closed the door, and reached into the pocket of the apron that was hanging on the back of it. ‘My mother,’ she murmured, bringing out tobacco, papers and matches, ‘doesn’t approve of me smoking. Watching your sisters all at it earlier I thought I’d just about burst. Now, if I’m caught, I’ll blame this on you. I’m a good liar, so be prepared.’ She joined Mrs Barber at the table, and offered the packet of papers. ‘Want one?’

Mrs Barber gave a quick, tight shake of her head. ‘I’ve never got the knack of rolling them.’

‘Well, I could roll one for you, if you like?’

At that, she hesitated, biting her full lower lip. Then, ‘Oh, why not?’ she said, with an air of naughtiness. ‘Yes, go on.’

The whole business seemed to amuse her. She watched in a fascinated way as Frances set out the papers and teased the tobacco from the tin, leaning in for a closer look as the first of the cigarettes took shape, resting her bare lower arms on the table. She had a bangle around one of her wrists, a red wooden thing that matched her necklace; but she wore no rings, Frances noticed, except for a slender wedding-band, with beside it, also slender, a half-hoop of tiny engagement diamonds. ‘How quick you are,’ she said, impressed, when Frances had raised the cigarette to her mouth to run the tip of her tongue along the line of gum. And then, when both cigarettes were finished: ‘They’re so neat, it seems a pity to smoke them.’ But she leaned into the flame that Frances offered – placing a hand on Frances’s, just for a moment, to steady herself, so that Frances had a brief but vivid sense of the warmth and the life in her fingers and palm.

And the cigarette changed her, somehow. Some of her girlishness fell away. She sat back after the first puff, picking a strand of tobacco from her lip with a casual, practised gesture, and, ‘Len ought to see us now,’ she said. ‘He’s like your mother, Miss Wray, and doesn’t really want me smoking. But then, men never
do
want women to do the things they want to do themselves, have you noticed?’

She had spoken conventionally. But Frances, looking for something that would serve as an ashtray, finally pulling across a saucer, said, ‘Things like voting, you mean? Standing for Parliament? No, I hadn’t noticed that at all. Let’s see, what else? Managing industries? Working whilst married? Suing for divorce? Stop me if I become boring.’

Mrs Barber laughed. The laughter was mixed with the smoke from her cigarette: it seemed to come visibly out of her pursed, plump mouth, and was so warm, so real, so unlike her usual automatic tittering, that Frances felt an odd thrill of triumph at having called it into life.

Once it had faded, however, they sat without speaking, in a silence broken only by soft kitchen noises, the tick of the clock, the stir of coals in the stove, the faintly musical drip of water in the scullery sink. They caught one another’s eye. Frances said, ‘I liked meeting your family today.’

Mrs Barber regarded her warily. ‘It’s nice of you to say so.’

‘I’m not saying it to be nice. I don’t say things I don’t mean.’

‘I was worried about you meeting them. You, and your mother.’

‘You were? Why?’

‘Well… Len said you’d think them common.’

Frances, remembering watching the visitors go from the drawing-room window, felt a smudge of guilt. She felt a smudge of something else, something darker, towards Mr Barber. Tapping ash into the saucer, she said firmly, ‘I’m very glad they came. I specially liked your mother. – Now, why do you look like that?’

Mrs Barber had sagged slightly. ‘Only that, well, people
do
like her. And the fact is, she plays up to it. She must always be a character, my mother. Some of the things she said this afternoon! I don’t know what Mrs Wray must have thought. And then, she
will
go about in those cheap old things of hers, when she has plenty of money, now, to buy better.’ She tapped ash from her own cigarette, looking guilty. ‘I oughtn’t to be so unkind, ought I? She’s had such a bad time of it, one way and another. We were – We were terribly poor, you know, when I was young, after my father died and before my mother married Mr Viney. I’m ashamed to tell you how poor. My mother worked too hard. That’s why her back’s so bad. And you saw her legs?’

Frances grimaced. ‘Can nothing be done?’

‘Oh, she won’t do what the doctor tells her. And then, Mr Viney will never let her rest. She must be up and down doing things for him every hour of the day and night. He looks at a woman sitting idle and sees a knife going to rust, I think.’ She turned her head. The clock was chiming. ‘Is that five, already? Len’ll be back any minute. He’s been over at his parents’. I ought to go and tidy up. His mother keeps their house like a pin.’

She spoke with a slight yawn, however, and remained in her chair, plainly enjoying her cigarette, evidently glad to be talking so freely. She had quite let slip the air she’d sometimes had with Frances in the past, of being on her best behaviour. She put an elbow on the table and leaned with her chin on her hand, the flesh of her arm looking rounded, solid, smooth. There were no angles to her at all, thought Frances with envy. She was all warm colour and curve. How well she filled her own skin! She might have been poured generously into it, like treacle.

Now she was smiling, savouring the silence. ‘Isn’t it lovely and quiet here? I never knew a house be so quiet; at least, I never knew a quiet like this one. It’s like velvet. When it was quiet at Cheveney Avenue – Len’s parents’ – it used to make me want to scream. They’re not at all alike, you see, his side and mine.’

‘No?’

‘No! My sisters and I were all brought up Catholic like our father. Not that we ever go to mass any more or anything like that. But, well, that sort of thing sticks. Len’s parents think me a heathen. They’re chapel people. And his cousin was in the Black and Tans. – Len’s not like that,’ she added hurriedly, seeing Frances’s expression. ‘But his parents and his brothers – Oh, they’ve no sense of art, or life, or anything. If you so much as open a book in front of them you get called grand. Here, you can be calm, and the house seems to like it. And nobody needs to know what you’re doing! Not like the houses I grew up in. You knew it if the neighbours stirred their tea in some of those. Oh, we lived in some awful places, Miss Wray. We lived in a house that was haunted, once.’

Frances supposed she was joking. ‘Haunted? By whom, or what?’

‘By an old, old man with a long white beard. He wasn’t misty like a ghost in a book; he was solid, like a real person. I saw him twice, coming down the stairs. Vera and I both saw him.’