The Paying Guests (24 page)

‘Oh, Lenny,’ said Lilian.

He hastily replaced the towel and tilted back his head. ‘Well, don’t say it like that! It hurts like hell.’

‘Look at all this blood.’

‘It isn’t my fault. I can’t make it stop.’

‘It’s got all over you. It’s everywhere!’ She was gazing at the floor. There was a trail of grisly splashes stretching right across the kitchen.

Frances picked her way around the splashes in her suede shoes, to stand with her back to one of the counters. The room felt horribly crowded and wrong to her: too small for all the alarm and confusion. She was still wearing her hat; she still had her evening bag dangling from her wrist. Putting them both on the counter, she said, ‘But I don’t understand. Who was the man, and why did he do this?’

Leonard was dabbing at his nostrils, squinting at his fingertips in distaste. ‘I’ve told you, haven’t I? I don’t know who he was.’

‘Well, what kind of man was he?’

‘I hardly saw him! He was one of these wasters you see hanging about, I suppose. Wanting money, and all that.’

‘An ex-service man?’

‘I don’t know. Yes.’

‘Did he want
your
money?’

‘I don’t know! He didn’t give me a chance to find out – just came at me, then flew off again. He must have lost his nerve, or seen somebody coming. Not that anyone
did
come. I had to get myself home on my own. I thought he’d broken my nose! Perhaps he has. It damn well feels like it.’

Frances’s mother drew out a chair with a scrape of its legs. ‘Isn’t it frightful, Frances? I wanted to send for a policeman. I thought of running across to Mr Dawson —’

‘No, I don’t want a policeman,’ Leonard said, as she sat. He sounded moody again. ‘What’s the point?’

‘But say he attacks someone else, Mr Barber? And it might be a lady next time. Or an elderly person. Frances, an ex-service man accosted you. Do you remember, a few weeks ago? He spoke most uncivilly to you. Do you think it could be the same man?’

But, ‘No, no,’ said Leonard irritably, before Frances could respond. ‘It could have been one of ten thousand. London’s full of them. I knew blokes like them in the army. They can’t stand to think that someone else is doing all right for himself. He saw me in my smart clothes and thought he’d have some fun with me, that’s all. A nice bit of sport on a Saturday night! Kicking fellows into the gutter on Champion Hill.’ He touched the bridge of his nose. ‘God, this hurts.’ He looked up at his wife. ‘Do you think it’s supposed to hurt this much? It feels like there’s a red-hot poker shoved up it.’

Lilian went gingerly across to him and he raised the tea-towel again. But when the sight of the blood made her draw back, he gave a tut of impatience and appealed, instead, to Frances.

‘Have a look at it for me, will you? Tell me what you think?’

So Frances approached him and made him tilt his head to the light. His nose was still bleeding pretty freely. Could it be broken? She had no idea. She had been to a few Home Nursing classes at the start of the War, but she’d forgotten most of that now. The pupils of his eyes seemed their ordinary sizes… She supposed they ought to go for the doctor. When she suggested it, however, he was as perversely reluctant to bring in a medical man as he was to involve the police. ‘No, I don’t need someone poking me about and then sending me a bill for it afterwards. I went through worse than this in France, for God’s sake. Just stop the damn thing up, can’t you? Jam something into it?’

And what choice did she have? What else could she do? Drawing the silvery ribbons from the cuffs of her gown was like a final undoing of the promise of the night; but she folded back her sleeves, tied on an apron, fetched dressings from the medicine cabinet, and did her best to staunch the bleeding. He leapt like a hare when the first bit of gauze went in, clutching at the edge of the kitchen table. But after that he sat grimly, with folded arms, clearly resenting his own helplessness. When Lilian leaned to pick grit from his collar, he said, ‘Are you all there? Doing that, in a white frock, with all this blood?’

Frances had never seen him so ill at ease, so out of temper with the world and himself. By the time both nostrils had been packed he looked like a schoolboy smarting at having been beaten in a fight. He felt at the bridge of his nose again, then gazed down at his spoiled clothes. Twitching the flap of his jacket pocket, looking at the dirt beneath his fingernails, surveying the wreck of his evening, he said nasally, ‘God, what a night!’

And, yes, thought Frances, as she washed her hands and began to set the kitchen straight, what a night. Or, rather, what an ending to it. Her mother was white in the face. Her own heart was still fluttering. She felt faintly queasy from the sight of the blood. And Lilian – Lilian, whose hand she had held, who had stood beside her in Netta’s back room, saying,
Take me home
– Lilian was lost to her, Lilian was gone, sucked back into her marriage.

For while Frances had been working at Leonard’s nose, Lilian had been standing by dumbly, looking sick, looking worried. Had her mind returned to that moment in Netta’s room, too? Did it seem inexplicable to her, now? Was she seeing her husband’s wounds as some sort of sign, some sort of reminder? He rose from the chair, swaying, and she quickly moved forward to catch hold of his elbow. She made sure he was steady on his feet before picking up his hat and gathering her own things. She didn’t look at Frances once. Frances asked, ‘Will you be all right?’ and it was Leonard who answered, in his bunged-up voice.

‘Yes, I’ll be all right. I’ll take some aspirin or something, try to sleep the worst of it off. I expect I’ll feel charming in the morning! But, thank you, Frances.’ He sounded simply weary now. ‘Thank you, Mrs Wray. I’m afraid I gave you an awful fright. You’ve got my hat, have you, Lily? That’s ruined too, I suppose. Hell!’

He peered resentfully at the damage, then tilted up his chin, felt for his wife’s hand and let her guide him from the room. She looked back at the Wrays as she went, to add her thanks to his. But her gaze when it met Frances’s was as blank as marble.

‘Poor Mr Barber!’ said Frances’s mother, as their steps on the staircase faded. ‘Can you believe it? Oh, the sight of his face at the door! I thought my heart would fail me. I do wish he had let us send for the doctor.’

Frances was clearing the kitchen table. She picked up the blood-stained tea-towel, stood uncertainly with it for a moment, then poked it into the embers in the stove.

‘I suppose he’s embarrassed,’ she said.

‘Embarrassed?’

‘At being – I don’t know – bested by a stranger on the street. Men have odd ideas about that sort of thing, don’t they?’

‘He certainly wasn’t at all himself. But what a thing for him to go through!’

‘Well, I dare say he’ll get over it. It might have been worse, after all. If the man had had some sort of weapon —’

‘Oh, don’t!’

‘Say, a knife —’

‘Don’t, Frances! Oh, it’s too horrible. Is it the War that’s done this? Made brutes of our young men? I don’t understand it.’

‘Well, try not to think about it. Mr Barber will have two nasty black eyes tomorrow, but apart from that he’ll be all right. And by Monday he’ll be boasting. You wait and see.’

Perhaps it was the shock of it all, but she couldn’t seem to summon up any real upset on Leonard’s behalf. She felt vaguely impatient even with her mother. It was well past midnight now, but there was no possibility of either of them going to bed yet. The house had the dazed wide-awakeness she remembered from the after-hours of other emergencies: her father’s apoplexy, Zeppelin raids. And a part of her was still with Lilian. She could hear her in the kitchen upstairs, running water. There was the clang of a bowl or a bucket being set on the floor, that must have been the sound of her putting Leonard’s clothes to soak.

The stove had just enough heat left in it to warm two cups of cocoa. Frances added generous sloshes of brandy; they drank it in her mother’s bedroom. And gradually, finally, the night lost some of its spin.

As she was settling back against her pillows her mother even thought to say, ‘I haven’t asked after your evening, Frances. Did you enjoy yourselves, you and Mrs Barber?’

‘Oh,’ said Frances. ‘Yes, it was jolly.’

‘I expect you were much admired. But what a business for you to come home to! And if you’d been half an hour earlier, while that man was on the street – It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

No, it didn’t bear thinking about. And yet, when Frances did think about it, she found herself oddly unable to believe in the danger. She pictured the shadowy street, with herself and Lilian on it. She let her mind run further backward, to the train, the walk through Clapham.
It’s your shine, Lilian
.

The moment seemed lost, the merest glimmer of a slender lure on a cast-out line that could never be reeled in.

Out in the kitchen the light was still blazing. She stood in it with staring eyes. The clock showed ten to one, but the thought of going upstairs, alone, to lie sleepless in her hot room – No, she couldn’t face it. She washed the cups from which she and her mother had drunk their cocoa. She washed the enamel pan in which she had heated the milk. Then she looked at the floor, with those grisly splashes on it; and she thought that she might just as well wash that. She took off her shoes and stockings, and fetched a bucket.

The blood, which was dark on the flagstones, regained its colour as she scrubbed at it. By the time she had finished the water was tinted like rose-hip tea. She carried it out to the yard and tipped it down the drain – standing awkwardly, pouring low, so as not to splash her skirt. Overhead, the sky had the same deep, inky look as before.

She returned to the kitchen; and found Lilian there.

She was standing just inside the doorway that led to the passage. Her hair was forward across her smudged, dark eyes. She was dressed in her nightgown and wrapper, and, like Frances’s, her feet were bare.

She watched Frances set down the bucket and said, in a murmur, ‘You’re here, then.’

‘Yes,’ said Frances.

‘I didn’t hear you come upstairs, and thought you must be with your mother.’

‘I knew I wouldn’t sleep if I went up.’

‘I don’t think I shall sleep either.’

‘How’s Leonard?’

She raised a hand to her mouth, to pull at her lip. ‘He’s all right. He’s got into bed. His nose has stopped bleeding now that he’s lying down.’

‘It’s awful, what happened to him. I’m sorry.’

She didn’t answer that. She simply stood, gazing at Frances across the width of the too-bright room, still pulling at her lip in that distracted way. What did she want? Frances couldn’t tell. She wasn’t sure that she cared any more. There had been too much dancing back and forth. The night had been over-stretched: it had lost its tension. She went into the scullery to wash her hands, and when she returned to the kitchen, and saw that Lilian was moving away, she was almost relieved.

Then she realised that Lilian was not moving away; she was simply looking out into the passage to be sure that no one else was near. Now, in fact, she was turning back, she was drawing a breath, she was stepping forward – pushing off from the doorpost as if gently but bravely launching herself into a stretch of chill water.

And with no more effort than that, no more fuss, no more surprise, she came across the room to Frances and touched her lips to hers.

The kiss was perfectly lifeless, for a second or two. It was cool and dry and chaste, the sort of kiss one might give to a child – so that the thought flashed across Frances’s mind that perhaps, after everything, this was all that Lilian wanted, perhaps even all that she herself wanted; that they could separate, and nothing really would have changed. But they did not separate. They held the kiss, chaste as it was, until, by their very holding of it, it became unchaste; and in another moment again, still kissing, they had moved into an embrace, fitted themselves tightly together. With only the nightdress and wrapper on her Lilian might almost have been naked, and the push and press of her breasts and hips, combined with the yield and wetness of her mouth, gave the embrace a sway, a persuasion… It was like nothing Frances had ever known. She seemed to have lost a layer of skin, to be kissing not simply with her lips but with her nerves, her muscles, her blood. It was nearly too much. They pulled apart, breathing hard, their hearts thumping. Lilian looked anxiously over her own shoulder and spoke in a whisper.

‘We mustn’t, Frances!’

Frances caught hold of her. ‘Don’t you want to?’

‘Somebody might come, or —’

‘You don’t think Leonard would come, do you?’

‘I don’t think he will. But, your mother —’

‘I don’t think she would. And we’ll hear, if she does. Let me kiss you again.’

‘Wait. I don’t – It isn’t – It’s making me giddy.’

‘Please.’

‘But if Len, or your mother —’

‘Come outside, then. Out to the garden!’

She almost smiled. ‘What? You’re mad!’

‘Come somewhere,’ said Frances. ‘Look, in here.’ She had hold of Lilian’s hand, had begun to draw her into the scullery. ‘No one will find us. I’ll lock the door.’

Lilian tugged against her. She said again, ‘You’re mad!’

‘I can’t let you go.’ It was like being parched, and touching water; like being famished, and holding food. ‘Please. Please. Just a little while longer. Just to kiss. I promise.’

And after another moment of uncertainty, Lilian let herself be drawn. They went silently over the threshold on their bare feet. Frances quietly closed the door, eased across the squeaky bolt.

The scullery was dark as blindness after the gaslit kitchen, and the darkness was abashing; Frances hadn’t expected that. She felt suddenly apprehensive. Lilian was right. Her mother might come. Leonard was upstairs with a bleeding nose! What on earth were they doing? How would they ever, if challenged, explain away the shot bolt?

But already the darkness was lessening. Lilian was beside her, a shimmer, a blur. She put out her hands, and they found her face, they found her lips: they were smooth, cool, wet. She kissed them again, even as she touched them, kissing around and across her own fingers. She drew her hands, damply, to Lilian’s throat, to the silky skin at the opening of her nightgown.