Last Guests of the Season (2 page)

But where Claire would linger for conversation, with Frances, or with whoever else happened to be around, Frances never lingered. She was slender and neat, with fair hair cut in a bob; she wore jeans and T-shirts from Biba in muted blues and greys, and she had, it seemed, no time for conversation, although she smiled politely. She made her coffee and toast and carried it away down the long corridor to her room, her gym shoes light on the new flooring, and shut her door. Claire gathered, through passing remarks from people in the same group as Frances, that she was clever, and had once given a paper on Metaphysical conceits which their tutor, whom everyone fancied, had praised effusively; afterwards, someone had heard her throwing up in the loo. Claire, whose own essays and seminar papers tended to be written at the last minute, wondered briefly at such intensity, and on the whole gave her barely a thought.

At the end of the first year they all moved out into flats or bedsits.

On a rainy Sunday morning in November, Claire walked along the road in Bishopston to get the paper, wearing her purple Laura Ashley cloak with the hood up, and bumped into Frances in the newsagents. She was wearing a black gaberdine mac, and carried a black umbrella. Walking back up the hill they discovered they were living quite close to each other, and on impulse Claire, whose flatmates were away for the weekend, invited Frances for coffee, wondering almost immediately if she would regret it.

Claire's flat was on the second floor of a double-fronted Victorian house with a neglected garden. The kitchen was at the back. Frances sat at the table by the window, resting her elbows on a green-checked cloth covered in toast crumbs, and while Claire made coffee looked out at the rain, falling on rooftops and gardens, drifting, in sudden gusts, away towards the hills. She did not chat, as Claire's flatmates did, but neither, after the first few minutes, did she seem her usual stiff and awkward self: away from the vastness of lecture hall or canteen, or the crowded little kitchen in their old place of residence, she visibly relaxed, until she seemed at ease, as if she'd been here before, turning away from the window and taking the mug she was given – which in her thin white hands looked, Claire realised, not completely clean – and asking Claire about her course, her background, her plans. Claire had made no plans, she was too busy enjoying herself, but she felt flattered to be asked. Indeed, she found she could not remember anyone for a long time who had taken such an interest in her. Not in quite this way, drawing her out, attentive.

‘You're a very good listener,' she said, getting up to answer the phone on the landing. ‘That'll be home, they always ring on Sundays.' She sat leaning up against the wall and let her mother, on the cheap rate from Derbyshire, describe a contented week of WI meetings, parish council disagreements and supper with friends. Her father, an auctioneer, had taken the dogs out and sent his love, her brother had gone to the pub. Claire could almost smell the lunch they were all about to have; she said goodbye with affection and returned to the kitchen feeling hungry. Frances was looking out of the window again.

‘Would you like to stay for lunch?' Claire asked.

Frances turned to look at her, and smiled. ‘Why not?' she said, as if she had known her for years. And over spaghetti with onions and tinned tomatoes, which was all there seemed to be, she described, in answer to Claire's polite return of questions, the house a few streets away where she had taken a room, and revealed something of her own background, eating little, while Claire had second helpings.

‘I am the only child of elderly parents,' she said. ‘They are dear, but it is a fate I should wish on no one. I grew up in a tidy little house in the suburbs of Middlesex, full of Dralon and air-freshener, and went to the local grammar school. I had a friend there called Rowan, who over the years prevented me from going crazy: she is now reading History at York, and I miss her. I find people a strain, in fact I am incapable of relating to more than one person at a time. I am still a virgin. Sometimes I feel my life is completely hopeless, but I am not without ambition and intend to let my work be my salvation.'

Claire laughed.

‘Don't laugh,' said Frances gravely. ‘I am clinging to the wreckage.'

The rain fell away; they had flapjacks and more coffee.

‘Let's go to a movie,' said Claire.

They walked through the damp Sunday streets to the Scala, which was showing
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.
A son lay dying; his father raised his hand and waved two fingers, almost imperceptibly, in farewell. Claire turned to look at Frances and saw tears in her eyes; by the end, they were both in tears, as the family of Jews was taken away, losing their garden for ever.

When they came out it was cold and almost dark, and beginning to drizzle. They put up their umbrellas and walked home in silence.

At Claire's house the second-floor windows were lit, the curtains undrawn. People had come home from the weekend, and she could see her friend Jo, ironing in the sitting-room, watching television.

‘Well,' she said to Frances, ‘that was great. D'you want to come up?'

Frances shook her head. ‘No thanks.'

‘We must do it again some time.'

‘Yes. That would be very nice.'

‘Your papers,' said Claire. ‘They're still in the kitchen – don't you want to come and get them?'

‘It's all right.' Frances looked suddenly as she usually looked, tense and shy, and Claire thought: she doesn't want to have to come up and be jolly. So she said, ‘No, that's silly, hang on, I'll run up and get them.'

When she came down again, Frances was standing by the gate where she had left her, but turned away, and beneath the black umbrella her face looked drawn.

Claire handed her the
Observer.
‘Well,' she said kindly, ‘see you soon.'

Frances tucked the paper under her arm. ‘Yes,' she said stiffly, ‘see you soon. Thanks for a lovely day.' In her gaberdine mac and good flat shoes she walked away down the wet street, and Claire, hearing the telephone, turned and ran up the path to the house.

In the weeks that followed she did not see much of Frances; indeed, for a time she seemed almost to have disappeared; other people pressed enjoyably upon Claire's days and she forgot all about her. But late one cloudy afternoon towards the end of term she came across her in the library. Frances wore a thick navy sweater and was wrapped in knitted scarves; bending over her books, she looked paler than usual, in a translucent, convalescent way. Claire touched her shoulder and she jumped. Claire smiled.

‘It's only me. Where've you been?'

‘I've had flu,' said Frances.

‘Oh, dear, I'm sorry. Who looked after you?'

‘Mr Beecham.' Frances put down her pen. ‘How are you?'

‘I'm fine, thanks. Do you want to come for tea in a bit?'

‘That would be nice.'

Over in the refectory, they sat opposite each other beside the Gothic windows. The place was half empty, afternoon lectures over, those coming in for the evening not yet arrived. Across in Park Row, lights flicked on in the pub; people were getting up and wandering over. Claire said: ‘Perhaps we should be going for a drink – you look as though you could do with a brandy or something.'

Frances shook her head. ‘I don't really drink much, thanks.'

‘That's a pity, I was going to ask you to our party. Last Saturday of term, if you can make it. Or would you find it unbearable?'

‘Probably,' said Frances, ‘but it's nice of you to ask me. What time?'

‘Oh, any time after nine,' said Claire, and was pleased and surprised when Frances did indeed appear, looking rather good. Claire was wearing a voluminous smock, dyed coffee-colour, with lacy straps and floating Indian scarves; it wasn't until years later that she realised how dreadful she and most of her friends must have looked at that time. Frances, even then, stood out, in a straight black dress and black tights, with little buttoned shoes from Anello & Davide. Claire went over and kissed her.

‘I didn't think you'd come.'

‘No,' said Frances, ‘neither did I.' She held out a bottle of wine and looked about her, at the filling room lit by candles in bottles, at the Indian bedspreads hung on the walls and the joss sticks on the mantelpiece, dropping threads of ash.

‘Food and drink in the kitchen.' Claire took the bottle. ‘Thanks for this – let me get you something.'

‘What kind of something?' asked Frances. ‘There is a smell not disguised by your strawberry incense.'

‘Yes,' said Claire. ‘I hope our landlady can't smell it, or she'll ring the police.' But she led her over to a little group sitting on floor cushions in a corner near the speakers, where Pink Floyd throbbed. ‘Do you know any of these people?'

‘By sight,' said Frances curtly.

‘This is Frances, everyone,' said Claire, sitting down beside them, pulling Frances down to join her. Heads were raised, there were slow smiles. Claire made introductions, had a couple of puffs and passed the joint to Frances, leaving her to it as more people came. Surely they hadn't asked so many.

During the course of the evening she noticed that Frances seemed to know what was good for her: from time to time she caught sight of her smiling dreamily down in her corner and by about midnight she was lying full-length upon the rug by the fireplace, wrapped round someone called David Blunden, with whom she eventually left, going down the steep stairs in her gaberdine mac very slowly, laughing.

‘Happy Christmas,' called Claire from the top, leaning up against the wall with her arms around someone she had long liked the look of. ‘See you next term.'

‘Indeed,' said Frances, and laughed again as David Blunden opened the front door, panelled with yellow and violet glass, and let in a gust of cold air. It closed behind them, and Claire turned back to her interesting companion.

Frances reappeared the next term in the refectory queue for lunch.

‘David?' asked Claire, after the pleasantries.

‘Nice,' said Frances. ‘Briefly fulfilled a need.'

‘Why only briefly?'

Frances shrugged, and took a bowl of minestrone from the counter. ‘Who can say? It doesn't matter anyway.' She put a roll on her plate and moved her tray along, blushing, Claire noticed. Ahead of them, steam rose diffusely and tin lids banged. ‘Are you free for supper one evening?'

‘Yes,' said Claire. ‘Let's make a date.'

On a bright cold January night Frances cooked lamb chops with rosemary and garlic on her Belling ring and served them to Claire with mushrooms, broccoli and sauté potatoes. They sat at a varnished table with barley-sugar legs that doubled as desk in Frances's high-ceilinged bedsit, and the gas fire popped beneath a mantelpiece which doubled as a bookshelf. Pinned to the wall above the books was a film poster: Bergmann's
Persona.
On the table a wine-bottle lamp shone on to the tight buds of early daffodils which Claire had brought.

‘This is delicious.' She picked up a forkful of mushrooms.

‘Thank you,' said Frances. ‘I enjoy cooking. Reading Elizabeth David has helped me to rise above Middlesex, where my mother makes food out of packets. How was your Christmas?'

‘It was lovely,' said Claire, who had taken Marcus, the man from the party, home to Derbyshire and walked with him across snowy fields, returning to a lit-up house and tea by the fire with her family, who had liked him. At night, when they were all asleep, he had come to her room and slipped into bed with her. The moon had shone through the curtains of her childhood, and she had felt wonderful. She still did.

Frances listened to an edited version of all this with apparent interest.

‘And your Christmas?' Claire asked.

‘Different. The turkey did not, of course, come out of a packet, but the gravy did and the turkey might as well have done. My parents and my Aunt Myra, who is there every Christmas, watched the Queen's speech and fell asleep. I read, and went for walks in streets which felt like an old people's home, and vowed I would never return.' She picked up Claire's empty plate. ‘I also took up smoking, I can't think why it's taken me so long. Do you mind if I smoke now?'

‘Of course not. Do you mean smoking or smoking?'

‘Not dope,' said Frances. ‘I can't afford it. That's just for special occasions.'

Claire watched her cross the room with the plates and disappear into the kitchenette outside. She was wearing the black tights and little buttoned shoes again, and a long grey sweater; her fair hair shone. When she came back, Claire said: ‘What about Rowan? Your friend.' Frances took a packet of cigarettes off one of the books on the mantelpiece; on the wall above her, Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson gazed across the room, pale and uncompromising. It all felt a very long way from Derbyshire.

Frances shook out her match and came over with an ashtray. ‘Rowan's Christmas was more like yours,' she said. ‘She has met someone nice at York and went home with him.'

‘Oh.' Claire watched her, smoking intently. She wanted to ask again why David Blunden had not similarly rescued Frances, but didn't like to.

‘I went up to see her at New Year,' Frances went on, ‘but it was only partly enjoyable. People change. Never mind. There is always work. Work, as I have told you, is my salvation.'

And after that evening she dropped from view again. Claire saw her from time to time but only at a distance: smiling thinly across the lecture hall and disappearing afterwards, coming out of the library with a pile of books, hurrying in a dark duffle-coat down the cold hill to the bus stop. Spring came, and by Easter Claire rarely gave her a thought; she spent most of her time with Marcus, and in the summer they went to Greece. There she discovered that you could have too much of a good thing: back in Bristol they drifted apart, and since no one came to take his place, Claire settled down at last to do some work.