Paying Guests (5 page)

‘A newspaper,’ he said at once, accepting her control of their conversation without demur. ‘I am the last to take any luncheon so I must eat alone. I thought I would read over Eliza – Mrs Horace’s – excellent plate of cheese pastries.’

‘Oh,’ she said and laughed. ‘You may call her Eliza! Everyone does. I believe she prefers it. A newspaper, you say? There is one
here.’ She darted across to the hall stand and reached into the space on one side just beneath the table section. There are always newspapers here for any of our guest’s who require them. Should you wish for your own use every day, then we will gladly –’

‘Not at all.’ He lifted both hands in protest. ‘I am happy indeed to share. Thank you so much.’

He returned to the staircase, with the newspaper tucked neatly under his arm and then turned back and looked down at her a little tentatively. ‘Er, I suspect, you know, that you have not taken luncheon yet either.’

She was a little surprised. ‘Oh! Why should you – well, you are quite right. I haven’t.’ She laughed. ‘I had quite forgotten.’

‘That is not good for you: he said. ‘When a lady works as hard as you do, she needs her sustenance if she is to retain her health.’

She felt her face go a little pink. ‘Oh, come, I don’t work that hard.’

‘Oh, yes you do. I’ve watched you ever since I arrived. I know I’ve only been here a few days, but I have noticed: He nodded with an air of sagacity. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve noticed.’

‘Well, I am well enough, I do assure you: she said briskly, shy now that he was looking at her so directly with those oddly sharp eyes. She wanted to look away, but felt it would be impolite. ‘There is no need to concern yourself.’

‘Well, all the same, I am concerned: he said and then, suddenly, held out one hand towards her. ‘Perhaps you would do me the honour of joining me in my light luncheon? I shall not eat too much, because I know that the good Eliza will have prepared some special dish for me tonight. I do appreciate her concern for my welfare, although I suspect that if she understood why I need her special efforts she might be less sympathetic. She thinks I eat so for my health, you know.’

‘Oh!’ She was surprised again. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Oh, not at all!’ He laughed and it was a pleasant sound, low and rumbling and it made his eyes vanish into slits of pleasure that made her smile too, for the look it gave him was so droll and merry. ‘But I need time to explain it properly. So, perhaps you will take
luncheon while I do? Please do: He still looked merry, if less comical and she looked back at him, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Then, as a little gurgle of sound came from her middle to remind her just how long it had been since breakfast, she made her decision.

‘Why not?’ she said. ‘We shall ring for some fresh coffee, for I am sure the pot will be quite cold by now, since it is close on two o’clock, and you shall explain to me why it is Eliza has to make you special food.’

‘And you shall explain other matters to me: he said and crooked his arm so that she could tuck her hand into his elbow. ‘If you will.’ And he led the way to the dining room.

HE WAS SUCH very agreeable company that she found herself talking more easily and freely than she had for many years (if indeed she ever had, as she was to tell herself later). He sat on the other side of the dining-room table, watching her as she ate and refilling her coffee cup from time to time, and by dint of asking sympathetic and quite inoffensive questions, persuaded her to tell him all about herself.

That she was a widow, and indeed had been widowed twice before the age of twenty-five. That she had just the one, much-loved son, Duff, whose name was really Francis, for he had been named after his dead father, Francis Xavier Quentin, but had been given his nickname because he looked so like a sweet round pudding as an infant. That after her father’s death, which led to a complete loss of income for her (but she did not tell him of the machinations of one Mrs Leander, which had led to that loss), she had been driven to earn her own and her child’s subsistence by means of turning her home into a respectable lodging house for paying guests, which had been enlarged by the legacy of her second husband, Frederick Pomfret Compton, who had owned the house next door. She almost told him of her ambitions to extend even further by taking a third house, the one next door in the row, but bit her tongue in time. It was none of anyone else’s concern, least of all this strange young man’s.

It was at this point that she realized she had been doing all the talking and made a strong effort to change the direction of the
conversation. She found aid in the fact that he ate so heartily of Eliza’s cheese pastry but refused Lucy’s offer of a slice of Charlie Harrod’s black-skinned Bradenham ham.

‘I had understood that you did not eat meat on doctor’s orders,’ she said as Lucy removed herself back to the kitchen, together with the remains of the mushroom soup with which they had commenced their luncheon. ‘But you said before –’ She stopped invitingly.

He smiled. ‘I often find it simpler to let people make that assumption.’ He was very relaxed and comfortable, seeming not at all put out by what must have seemed an implied criticism of his veracity. ‘The truth of the matter is that I have made a definite choice to abjure the eating of dead animals.’

She stared at him. ‘What a very unpleasant way to describe the eating of meat!’

‘But isn’t it true?’ He seemed all gentle sweet reason. ‘Is not that there –’ and he indicated the ham, resplendent on its silver dish, its thick skin glistening with the black treacle and spices that had been used in its dressing, and the meat succulent and pink. ‘– is that not the hind quarter of a pig that not so very long ago was snuffling happily for acorns in some wood, or trotting along beside its mate in search of its cosy sty? Just as the collops of lamb which appeared at table last night, dressed with mint and green peas and new potatoes – which vegetables, by the by, I ate with great enjoyment – just as those collops, as I say, were this very spring gambolling in the fields and bleating for their mothers.’

‘Oh, really, Mr Geddes!’ Tilly protested. ‘You can’t speak so! It is true undoubtedly that the food we eat was once live animal or bird or fish, but that is the nature of the world. One creature feeds upon another. And anyway, these animals we breed for the table are not thinking creatures, are they? And wasn’t mankind given dominion over the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens and so forth, so that we might eat? I learned that in my infancy.’

‘Ah!’ he said gently. ‘If the things they taught us in our infancy about God and the Creation and so forth were strictly true, then of course it would be a different matter.’

‘True?’ she stared even harder, amazed and rather excited. She
had never heard anyone speak so. ‘But how can it be otherwise – oh –’ and stopped.

He looked at her closely and then laughed. ‘So! You too have had your doubts, I see!’

‘Doubts? I cannot say –’ She floundered and then bit her lip. ‘I have to say I have doubted the true goodness of some people who profess to be religious, but show themselves to be less than compassionate.’

‘Oh?’ he said. Again she found herself telling him more than she had intended.

‘It was – after Francis died. Before Duff was born. I was very anxious about – my father had died, you see, and I had no money that I knew of. I feared I might even lose the roof over my head, and with the baby coming, I – well, I went to our curate at the church where I had always attended and had been married and he –’ Her face hardened. ‘He had no help for me. None at all. I have not been to that church since, but chose another to take Duff to, and to attend. When I am able, that is –’

‘When you feel embarrassed at how long it is since you showed yourself there,’ he said softly. ‘Am I right? Not because you feel any loss of virtue, or any draw from the Divinity. Simply because it is a social affair, because successful people must display themselves at church if they are not to lose the respect – and the pecuniary benefit that accompanies that respect – of their neighbours.’

‘Really, Mr Geddes!’ She got to her feet, more ruffled than she would have expected. ‘You go too far!’

‘I apologize,’ he said at once and also stood up. ‘I meant no impertinence. But you were asking me about my reasons for not eating meat and suggested I was flying in the face of Divine Law in behaving so. And I needed to explain to you that it is possible to live a good and thoughtful life without being unduly concerned with – um – the opinion of the Deity.’ He looked at her silently for several seconds and then went on, ‘I did not think I had misread you. In watching and listening to you in the few days since I joined this household I had judged you a thoughtful person who would be interested in the new ideas that are now abroad.’

‘New ideas?’ She knew she should have gone by now, that this conversation was becoming amazingly intimate on so short an acquaintance, but she was curious and, she had to admit, a little excited. No one had ever spoken to her as seriously as this man was speaking to her; most men with whom she had dealings assumed her to be like all other women and interested only in the fripperies of daily life, clothes and children, servants and suchlike, and even though she had for this past many years been earning her own and her son’s living – a rare enough occupation for women of her class – they continued to treat her so. Yet this man had no qualms about implying that he lacked religious belief and even suggesting she might share his views!

‘What sort of new ideas?’ she went on cautiously. ‘I have little time, I am afraid, to read the latest books or sit and discuss weighty affairs.’

‘They are not so very new, after all. Thomas Paine expressed some of them before the start of this century – the rights of the individual, you know, and especially those of women.’

‘But he supported revolution!’ Tilly said. ‘I am not as educated as I would wish to be, but I do know that. Did he not support the French Revolution and all its blood
and
the American one? I can recall my father speaking very slightingly of the ideas of Paine.’

‘Oh, many people believed that he was only about revolution without understanding why he felt so. But many of the new ideas of today are more scientific in nature. Mr Huxley says –’ He stopped, and laughed a little awkwardly. ‘Mrs Quentin, I must beg you to stop me if I seem to become so enthusiastic in my manner that I grow tiresome.’

She shook her head. ‘You are not tiresome, Mr Geddes. Surprising, perhaps, but not tiresome. Do explain.’

‘Well, there is a scientist for whom I have a great admiration – Dr Thomas Huxley. Perhaps you have heard of him? He created a considerable stir a few years ago when he and Bishop Wilberforce defended Darwin in an Oxford debate. Anyway, he is, I am proud to say, a friend, and I have learned from him that it is impossible to have true knowledge without science. The ideas of religion and
some philosophers cannot be tested rigorously by the scientific method, so must be regarded as – well, it is better to be silent than to speak of what you cannot truly know.’

‘Ah!’ she said, enlightened. ‘I understand now!
You
are a scientist, Mr Geddes!’

He looked a little uncomfortable. ‘I am interested in the subject,’ he said, ‘but I am not an active – an – I do not work in a laboratory, you understand, I am just interested.’

‘Oh?’ She felt on surer ground now. ‘Then do tell me, Mr Geddes, how you do occupy your time. What is your career?’

‘I have to confess that I am little more than a dilettante, Mrs Quentin, most interested in science and the new thinking that is so exciting at present. I edit a small and rather select magazine –’ He flashed a sudden smile. ‘That means we have only a few readers and organize meetings and discussions from time to time.’

‘It cannot be –’ She paused, seeking to be delicate. ‘It is not a lucrative occupation.’

‘I am fortunate in not needing to worry about that,’ he said and looked down at his hands. ‘I have a private income.’

‘Ah!’ She said no more but, puzzled, looked more closely at him from beneath lowered lashes. Generally her paying guests were drawn from the middling levels of society, people who needed to earn their own livings and who sought a place to live that was comfortable and respectable without bringing down on them the high costs of running their own homes. Schoolteachers like the Misses Knapp and Fleetwood and their special friend, Miss Cynthia Barnetsen; Mr Oswald Gee who was an articled clerk to a lawyer in Kensington; and retired couples like Mr and Mrs Grayling who had sold their grocer’s shop and therefore their home over it, and now planned to live frugally with Tilly to ensure their savings lasted their lifetimes. To have a man with a private income and a tolerably large one at that, going by the costly appearance of his clothes, was surprising.

He seemed to understand her surprise and smiled disarmingly. ‘I dislike the loneliness of life in a house of my own or in bachelor chambers,’ he said. ‘I have long been seeking the sort of accommodation
where I might be comfortable and well cared for and yet have the pleasure of agreeable company when I require it. I think my search is now over.’