The Paying Guests (31 page)

‘Please don’t.’

‘I can’t be without you.’

That sag came back into Lilian’s face. ‘Don’t, Frances! I love you so badly. But we’re different. You know we are. You don’t care what people think of you. It’s one of the things that made me love you, a thing I liked about you from the beginning, right from the moment I saw you cleaning the floor with that stupid duster on your head. But I’m not like that. I’m not like you. I’d have to give everything up. I shan’t ever love another girl, but you – you’d grow tired of me. I’ve expected you to grow tired of me every day since Netta’s party.’

‘But I haven’t. I couldn’t.’

‘You will, though. You might. Len’s tired of me, but that doesn’t matter. That’s just what happens between husbands and wives. But if you were to tire of me, and leave me, after I’d left him – what would I do?’

Frances shook her head. ‘How could I ever leave you, Lilian?’

Lilian looked back at her, unhappily. ‘But you left your other friend.’

The words caught Frances off guard, and she found herself unable to answer.

They stood in silence for a minute. Frances stared at the park without seeing it. ‘Can’t we just,’ said Lilian at last, ‘go on the way we’ve been doing? Something might change, or —’

‘What will change, if we don’t change it ourselves?’

‘I – I don’t know.’

‘And meanwhile, what? I must keep sharing you with Leonard?’

‘It isn’t like that.’

‘It feels like that. It feels worse than that! He doesn’t even know he’s sharing you.’

‘But it means nothing, my being with him. That’s the stupidest thing. He might as well be dead. Sometimes I wish he was. I know it’s an awful thing to say, but sometimes I wish some nice fat bus would just run him over. I wish – Oh, it isn’t fair! If we could only close our eyes, and open them and have everything be different!’

She did close her eyes as she spoke, as if she were wishing. But just what, wondered Frances, was she wishing for? She had lost sight of where the heart of the difficulty lay. Was it in the fact that they were both women? Or that Lilian was married? The two things seemed hopelessly entangled. She could get one of them smooth in her mind, but the other remained twisted. That came free and the first was in knots again. There had to be something, she thought – a word, a phrase, a key to it all – but she couldn’t find it, she couldn’t see it.

And before they could speak again there were sounds of giggling on the other side of the band-stand: two small boys were down on the gravel, peering in. They must have sensed the sad intensity of Frances and Lilian’s conversation, or perhaps seen something in their poses, for, ‘Spoony!’ one of them called. They raced off, screaming with laughter.

The word made Lilian jump. She pushed away from the rail. ‘God! Let’s go down, can we? The whole world can see us up here.’

‘No one’s looking. They were only schoolboys.’

‘I don’t like it. Let’s just go down.’

So they went back down the steps and picked their way along one of the paths. Nothing had changed, Frances thought. Nothing had been resolved or decided. She wanted to say again: What are we to do? But how many times could she keep asking it? Even to her own ears, the words were beginning to sound like a whine. So she said nothing. They moved on, with unlinked arms. There was nowhere to go save back to the house.

And there was no opportunity, after that, to be alone together. Leonard came home early for once, and seemed to spend the evening on the landing: every time Frances ventured upstairs she came face to face with him, fiddling about with his tennis racket, dabbing blanco on his shoes. She saw Lilian only in glimpses, over his shoulder. They didn’t kiss, they didn’t embrace; next morning they didn’t even say a proper goodbye. Mr Wismuth and Betty arrived at the same time as the butcher’s boy, and by the time Frances had taken the meat and sorted out some quibble with the order, Lilian and Leonard’s bags and cases, and then Lilian and Leonard themselves, had been squeezed into Charlie’s narrow motor-car and driven away.

And in some ways – oh, it was a relief to be rid of them. The whole furtive business of being with Lilian, of finding and securing and making the most of scraps of time with her – those juicy but elusive morsels of time, that had to be eased like winkles out of their shells, then gobbled down with an eye on the door, an ear to the stair, never comfortably savoured – it had all, Frances realised, been crushing the life out of her. She spent the two or three hours of that Saturday morning going between the kitchen and the drawing-room in a sort of trance. After lunch she lay on the sofa with the paper, shut her eyes against the latest bit of bad news, and actually slept.

She was still yawning at bedtime. With no closing door to listen for she passed an unfidgety night, and the next day, the Sunday, while her mother was at church, she ran herself a bath, then wandered about the house barefoot, smoking a cigarette. She was ashamed, as she did it, to discover how badly she had let things slip: all she could see were grubby corners, dusty plasterwork, finger-marks, smears. She fetched a pencil and a piece of paper and drew up a list of tasks.

She started to work her way through them early the following morning, tackling the landing first, dusting and sweeping, beating the rugs. She ended up with a cloudy panful of fluff and tangled hairs: dark hairs from Lilian’s head, reddish ones from Leonard’s, brown from her own; the sight of them all muddled up like that made her feel queasy. She didn’t want them in the house, she decided, not even burning in the stove; instead she carried them all the way down the garden to the ash-heap. The ten o’clock post arrived while she was doing it: she returned to the hall to find two or three letters on the mat. And her heart did just flutter slightly as she stooped to pick them up – for mightn’t one of them be from Lilian? Wouldn’t she send at least a note to say that she had arrived safely?

The letters, however, were all from tradesmen. She tucked them away in her book of accounts.

There was no post at all the next day, nor the day after that. Thursday simply brought more bills… But it was humiliating to watch and wait for the postman. She went into Town, and called on Christina. And when Christina asked archly, ‘So? How’s Love, upper case?’ she blew a raspberry at her.

‘Love’s packed its upper case and gone to Hastings with its husband. Love’s eating ices on the front, having a donkey-ride – I don’t know. I don’t care.’

Christina didn’t ask for any of the details. She made tea, produced cigarettes, then rooted about for something to eat; she turned up a bag of monkey-nuts, and the two of them sat breaking open the shells. But when the last of the nuts was finished she moved forward in her chair and said, ‘Here’s an idea. How long do you have? Let’s go to the music hall! We can make the second half of the matinée at the Holborn if we leg it. My treat. What do you say?’

It was the sort of thing they might have done together years before. Frances brushed the crumbs from her lap; they left the tea-table just as it was, and, still buttoning their jackets, hurried down the stone staircase to the street. They picked up a bus at once, and were at the Holborn Empire five minutes later; five minutes later again they were sitting in the hot bright darkness of the balcony, watching a couple of comedians pedalling around the stage on a tandem. The elderly, peppermint-sucking audience made Frances remember how young she was. Gazing sideways at Chrissy, catching her eye and smiling, seeing her face and fair hair lighted up by the glow of the stage, she felt a swell of affection for her – something stronger than affection, perhaps; a shiver of the heart, as if the ghost of their lost passion were gliding through it.

But later, when she got home, she looked again for a letter from Lilian, and, as before, found nothing; and it suddenly dawned on her that Lilian’s silence must be a message of its own. She thought back to how they had parted, with none of their difficulties resolved. She remembered their conversation in the park, the weariness on Lilian’s face.
I couldn’t. I never could. Don’t keep asking me, Frances.

And she had to push down a sudden wave of fear, like fighting off nausea.

The next day, she and her mother had a visitor. She heard the knock at the front door, and something about the rather tentative nature of the sound made her think that the caller might be Margaret Lamb, from down the hill. On pulling the door open, however, she saw, not Margaret’s rather dumpy figure, but a good-looking, well-dressed woman holding a bouquet of bronze chrysanthemums. She blinked – then recognised Edith, John Arthur’s fiancée.

‘Edith! How lovely to see you! And what glorious flowers! Not for us? Oh, you shouldn’t have. I shudder to think what they must have cost you.’

‘I’m not disturbing you?’

‘Not in the least. You’re just in time for tea. Mother will be delighted. – Mother, look who’s here! Come in, come in. We didn’t look for you for another month.’

Edith generally called in October, for the anniversary of John Arthur’s death, so this visit was out of season. As she stepped into the hall, Frances’s mother emerged from the drawing-room and came to greet her, beaming.

‘Well, what a treat. And such handsome flowers! But you didn’t travel all the way from Wimbledon on our account, Edith?’

Edith coloured slightly. ‘I ought to have given you warning, I know.’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘But I had a day to myself, and thought how I should like to see you.’

‘Well, I call it very kind that you did. I shall get out the albums. And how well you’re looking. You’re looking wonderfully well!’

Edith
was
looking well. Her auburn hair was shining. She was wearing a cream-coloured frock and coat, and pale suede shoes; her gloves were spotless, as if fresh from the box; her hat had an exotic Bond Street feather in it, the sort of feather that Frances, in her youth, had signed letters of petition against. Had Edith always been so fashionable, so glossy? Surely not. Her background was unremarkable; her father was a banker, in a modest sort of way. But perhaps, Frances thought, her family had simply kept to its level, while she and her mother had started slipping down the scale. The idea was disconcerting. She felt ashamed of her tired indoor clothes, of her mother’s drab old frock. And she was embarrassed by the house, unchanged since Edith’s last visit and all the visits before that, except that it was all slightly shabbier, every surface a little more dull. As the three of them entered the drawing-room she saw Edith looking from one thing to another with a touch of wonder, and, ‘Yes, everything’s just exactly the same, you see!’ she found herself saying, with a laugh.

At once, she wished she’d said nothing, or had kept the wryness out of her tone, because Edith blushed again, as if caught out.

Perhaps it made a bad start to the visit. She took the chrysanthemums to the scullery and put them into a vase, and when she carried them back to the drawing-room along with the tea-tray she found her mother settled in an armchair but Edith sitting at the front of the sofa, chatting brightly enough, but still wearing her gloves and her feathered hat. She kept the hat and the gloves on while Frances poured the tea. She shared her pieces of news, showed a photograph of her sister’s children; she took her cup, and a plate with a slice of sticky cake on it; and still, bafflingly, she sat there in her outdoor things. Finally Frances said, ‘Don’t you mean to stay long, Edith? Aren’t you hot, in all that get-up? You mustn’t stand on ceremony here.’

Edith looked less comfortable than ever. ‘Yes, I am a little warm.’ She rose, to unpin the hat at the mantel-glass and to tidy her hair, then returned to the sofa and drew off her gloves. Frances noticed nothing. But almost at once her mother said, ‘Edith,’ in a new sort of way.

Edith’s hands moved oddly, and she dipped her head. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, we must congratulate you.’

‘Thank you.’

Then Frances saw, and understood. In all these years since John Arthur’s death Edith had continued to wear her engagement ring, not on the ring finger of her left hand but on the corresponding finger of her right. Now, on the ‘real’ finger, another ring had appeared, a sizeable diamond in a square claw setting, rather putting John Arthur’s filigree band to shame. Frances looked from the wink of the diamond to Edith’s face and said, surprised and pleased, ‘You’re to be married.’

Edith nodded. ‘At the end of the month. And then a honeymoon. Six weeks. America!’

‘But, how marvellous for you. I’m so glad. And such a handsome ring! Look, Mother. Isn’t it terrific?’

‘Yes, I see it.’

‘Will you tell us about him, Edith?’

This, of course, was why she had come. Her colour now was the flush of relief. She said, ‘His name is Mr Pacey. He owns a business. Glassware – jars and bottles. Not very exciting! But he has built the business up over many years and made a great success of it. He’s rather older than I am. His first wife died, just a year ago. He has children, three boys and a girl, quite grown up already.’

‘So you shall be a mother right away.’

‘Yes.’ She put her hand to her heart. ‘That part makes me nervous, I must admit. But the children are very kind. The youngest boy is at school still. The girl, Cora, is nineteen. I hope to do my best by them. It isn’t at all what I expected. Two months ago I had no more idea of marrying than of flying to the moon! I met him only then, you see. Can you imagine?’

Frances answered with real feeling. ‘You’ll make him happy, Edith, I know it.’

‘I do hope so.’

‘Of course you will. Won’t she, Mother?’

‘Yes, indeed. And the children too! What an adventure. Your mother’s pleased, Edith, I dare say. How she’ll miss you though.’

‘Yes, it’s a great change for Mother. She means to write to you about it. I wanted to speak to you myself, before she did.’

‘I’m glad that you did. Thank you.’

‘Mother was so fond of Jack.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Jack’ was what Edith had always called John Arthur. The name had never sounded right to Frances; it was such a roguish sort of name, and John Arthur hadn’t been at all roguish, and neither was Edith herself. Had there been other marriage proposals, in the years since his death? If there had, Frances and her mother had not got wind of them. They had grown used to thinking of Edith as John Arthur’s widow; and Frances knew that widowhood meant something to the women of her mother’s generation that it did not mean to women now. ‘I’m delighted for you, Edith,’ she heard her mother say, but she could see, from the subtle working of her face, that she was not, at heart, delighted – or rather, that her delight was choked about by too many other feelings, too many griefs and disappointments on her own and John Arthur’s behalf. She asked to hear more about Mr Pacey, and Edith, still blushing, told them about his factory, his motor-cars, the suppers and tennis-parties he liked to host, his large house, with the garage attached, on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. He sounded as unlike mild John Arthur as it was possible to imagine. He seemed almost, Frances thought, to sit in the room along with them, overbearing, slightly bored, now and then checking his watch. She saw her mother’s smile become increasingly artificial, heard her responses to Edith’s remarks grow briefer and more forced. From the cupboard at her side she had brought the family photograph albums, along with the muddy pencilled letters that John Arthur had sent from the Front: it was their habit to go through them, on Edith’s visits. Edith noticed them now, and remembered; they rearranged the chairs so as to be closer to each other. But the turning of the pages and the reading aloud of the letters felt dry, this time – like picking through dead leaves. And once the final letter had been returned to its envelope their voices died away, and they sat in a painful silence.

Frances suggested that they look at the garden. They went out and on to the lawn, made a tour of the asters and the dahlias, and that perked the party up a little. Edith described the grounds of Mr Pacey’s house, the Italianate terrace, the ponds, the fountain. The Wrays, she said, must be sure to visit her in her new home, and they promised that they would, adding that she must bring her husband to meet them, here at Champion Hill; perhaps the daughter too. She nodded at that, but her smile was rather fixed, and Frances guessed that neither visit would ever come off. It had been one thing for Edith to call as John Arthur’s fiancée; it would be quite another for her to arrive as the wife of Mr Pacey. And within a few months, of course – probably before she returned from her honeymoon – she would in all likelihood be expecting a child of her own.

Out in the hall, before she left, Frances saw her looking around in the same noticing way as before. This time the wistfulness in her expression was plain: she was gazing from thing to thing as if to imprint it on her memory. The thought made Frances feel sorry. It seemed to her that, all these years, she had been short-changing Edith slightly. On impulse, she said, ‘You’re going down to the station, I suppose? Let me walk with you.’

‘Oh, Frances, you needn’t.’

But, ‘Yes, do walk Edith to the station,’ said Frances’s mother; and from the manner in which she said it Frances guessed that she would be grateful for some time to herself. So she ran upstairs to change her shoes and to pull on a hat, and she and Edith started down the hill together.

As they passed the gate to the Lambs’, Edith smiled in a troubled way. ‘I remember making this walk with Jack,’ she said, ‘so many times. It doesn’t seem six years, does it, Frances? But then in other ways – I don’t know. They’ve been long years, too. It’s always funny to see these houses, all so unchanged. You’re still friends with the Playfairs, I hope?’

‘Yes, we see Mrs Playfair often. Mr Playfair died, of course. The year before last.’

‘Of course he did. How stupid of me! You told me, and I’d forgotten. A kind man.’

‘Yes, we all liked Mr Playfair.’

‘And how’s your friend? I’ve never asked you.’

‘My friend?’

‘You remember? Carrie, was it?’

Frances, surprised, said, ‘Chrissy, you mean?’