Paying Guests (8 page)

THERE WAS AN embarrassed silence for a moment, because it was quite obvious to everyone that Duff was decidedly bosky, not to say positively inebriated. He stood at the door with one hand in his pocket, his eyes very bright and bulging a little in a flushed face. His hair was rumpled and there was an air of danger about him and Tilly felt her belly tighten with anxiety as she looked at him.

After a moment the chatter started again, but only for a short while. By the time Duff had come to sit beside his mother and her coffee tray, Silas Geddes was on his feet.

‘It is remarkably late, is it not?’ he said to Miss Sophia Fleetwood. ‘I had not noticed the clock move round so fast! I declare I am quite tired out.’

Miss Fleetwood, who had relaunched herself into an account of her trenchant views on Mr Darwin’s first and now notorious book,
The Origin of Species
, looked a little startled and then pulled at the fob watch on her considerable bosom and peered at it.

‘Oh,’ she said, looking up at Silas. ‘It is not so very –’ and then stopped. Quite how he had communicated with her Tilly was never to know, but that he had was undoubted. Miss Fleetwood glanced swiftly at Duff and then surged to her feet.

‘You are quite right, Mr Geddes,’ she said. ‘Come along, Priscilla. It is time we were up the wooden stairs to Bedfordshire. Tomorrow is to be a busy day, with the bishop coming to school, drat the man – oh, I mean every word of it, Mr Hunter! You should not look so shocked. And I dare say you have a busy day too? We must still bid
Mrs Quentin goodnight – and you too, dear Duff. So good to see you home again.’

It took a matter of moments. She went sailing out of the room carrying Miss Knapp and the two men in her wake, like the tide going out and cleaning the beach of its detritus. Silas Geddes lingered a moment more at the drawing-room door and said in a neutral voice, ‘I shall see you tomorrow, Mrs Quentin, I hope, so that we may continue our most interesting discussion. Good night to you,’ managing to make the banal words sound like a promise of concern for her well-being. She flashed a glance at him and nodded, and then sat there staring at the door after it had closed and left her cocooned with Duff in the warmth of the big drawing room.

‘’S funny,’ Duff said after a while. ‘Most people I know say that the rooms and houses they knew when they were children have shrunk when they go home for the hols, but not here. Here the rooms get bigger an’ bigger.’

‘It is because of the use of this house, Duff, as you know perfectly well,’ she said and passed him a cup of coffee, taking care not to fill the cup too full in case he spilled it. He smelled powerfully of brandy and cigars and she could have wept, remembering suddenly the round downy head that had used to tuck itself in under her chin after his childhood bath times, filling her nostrils with the scent of soap and tooth powder and the sweet essence that had been his own special smell. ‘It took a few years to have enough money to consider the conversion of the drawing rooms of the two houses and to make this big room as well as the two extra bedrooms.’

‘Oh, I know, I know.’ He laughed then, a high pitched sneering little giggle. ‘Haven’t I grown up in the trade, hearing of nothing but the costs of this and that, and how much money the guests bring in and –’ He caught his breath and then bent his head to his cup and drank thirstily.

She looked down on his rumpled crown and said sharply, ‘You do not need to speak as though it were so very boring, surely? I don’t recall you ever speaking so slightingly of my endeavours before!’

‘Didn’t know any better,’ he mumbled.

‘And what does that mean, precisely?’ She was sitting very straight now, and knew her voice sounded flinty. She was shaking inside; he had never spoken so to her, had never shown by any word or action that he was uninterested in the house and her work in it, and to hear the contempt she now heard in his voice was painful in a way that she could never have imagined.

‘It means that it’s a bit hard on a chap to have to see his mother taking in lodgers to live! Worse’n runnin’ a shop, almost. I mean to say –’ His voice was high and shrill and he stared at her petulantly.

She leaned forwards and took his cup and saucer from his hands and set them down on the tray with a little clatter. And then she took him by the shoulders and shook him. He seemed to make no resistance, letting his head roll from side to side as he stared up at her still with that sneering look in his face.

‘You are drunk, Duff, I am disgusted with you. You go out to dine and come back to me here in a state that is – that should fill you with shame as it does me. I will be charitable and put your comments down to the drink. But I tell you –’

‘Well, it’s true!’ He pulled away from her pettishly and then sat with his arms round his knees, staring at her over them with slightly swimming eyes. ‘It’s been damned hard for me there at school to hold my head up sometimes! The way they went on at me – well, I learned pretty fast, I can tell you, to say nothing about my home or about you for it wasn’t worth the ragging they gave me! Why else did you think I begged you never to visit me there? Thank God for Lord Patrick. Dear old man, best pal a fella ever had.’ And to her amazement tears rose into his eyes and remained trembling on his lower lashes.

‘But – but you never said! I thought you were – I thought you liked school and were happy there and only kept me away to protect yourself from pangs of homesickness! Why did you not say? You could have come home, no matter what anyone else said.’

‘Oh, pooh!’ He sniffed hard. ‘School’s all right. It’s home tha’s the trouble. Tol’ you. But I got Paton to make up for it all – good ol’ Paton.’ He sniffed again and this time the tears seemed to settle and he looked pugnacious rather than lugubrious.

‘But this is the first I have ever heard –’ She was wretched and knew that she too was barely controlling tears. ‘I would not have had you unhappy for the world. I sent you there because it seemed better for your future, to give you an education that would take you to university and perhaps –’

‘I’m going to no university,’ he said then. ‘That’s for swots.’

‘But,’ she shook her head, still bewildered, ‘to be so ashamed of your home and – and of me –’

It was more than she could bear and now tears did come, and she reached in her small reticule for a handkerchief and scrubbed at her wet cheeks in a fury of shame. Not to be able to control herself in front of Duff was dreadful.

He stared at her, and then it was as though the years had rolled backwards and left him the vulnerable eleven year old he had been when she had first sent him away to school, six long years ago. ‘Oh, Mamma!’ he wailed. ‘Please don’t cry, oh
please
don’t cry. I cannot bear it – I really cannot bear it! I am so sorry to have vexed you!’ and he hurled himself into her arms and clung to her, and she held on to him, feeling his tears on the hand he had grasped to hold to his cheek, aware that her own face was equally wet.

The tide receded at last until he was reduced to occasional gulps and sniffs, and after a few more moments she mopped her own face dry with some ferocity and then raised his head between both her hands and looked at him.

‘You silly boy,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Do, I beg you, blow your nose.’ And she smiled, unable not to, for his nose was running copiously and he looked piteously like his junior self.

He took the damp handkerchief, blew vigorously, mopped his face with his shirt cuffs and sat back.

‘I am sorry, Mamma. I could not help it. I am a little merry you know, though why they should call it merry when it makes one feel so wretched, I can’t imagine.’ His eyes threatened to fill up again but he controlled himself and managed to speak again. ‘I did not mean this to happen, truly I didn’t. But he makes me so – so, oh, Mamma, it is so hard!’

‘What is, my love?’ she said gently and then held her arms in the
air so that he could do as he had when he was small, and sit with his head on her lap. It had been a wordless invitation he had never been able to refuse and he did not refuse now.

He lay there for a while, his eyes fixed on the last tired flickering of the flames in the grate and sighed, a deep gusty and slightly tremulous sound, and carefully she began to stroke his hair. He’d always liked that.

‘I tell you what it is, Ma, I just don’t know what I feel and that is the truth of it,’ he said suddenly. ‘I used to laugh at the others, you know, when they did it, and when I was a sprig in the first form, why, we all used to think them quite absurd. Except those that liked it, don’t you know. There’re always a few of
them
.’ He wriggled his head in a sort of moue of distaste that sent the frills on her skirts dancing. ‘I believe there are always a few of the young ones who egg them on, but for my part, I thought it all a hum. But when it happens to you, you just –’ again he produced that big gusty sigh, ‘– you just don’t know what to do.’

‘I am, perhaps, being very stupid,’ she ventured. ‘But I am not sure I entirely understand what you’re saying. Would it be better to wait until the brandy you have clearly had is less –’

‘If I do, I won’t talk at all, I think,’ he said with a flash of commonsense and sat up. ‘It’s because I’ve had so much that I feel able – oh, Ma, have I been hateful to you?’

She thought for a moment about what form her response might take and then knew what it had to be.

‘Yes,’ she said simply.

‘Oh, Ma, I’m so sorry!’ And again he hurled himself at her, weeping, but this time she did not feel he needed to have a burst of it, and gently pushed him upright again and firmly set her handkerchief back in his hand.

‘Now, that is enough of that,’ she said. ‘Tell me what it is that is distressing you. I had no idea that you suffered at school because of my occupation. Is that the problem?’

‘It was the start of it,’ he said after a moment and discarded her handkerchief for his shirt sleeve again. ‘If they hadn’t been so hateful, some of ‘em, taunting me about being in trade and so forth,
I’d never have paid any attention to him, you see. But because some of them did, and it got worse – I was so afraid they’d torment you too if you came to school, which was when I begged you not to, for I could not have borne that – when Patrick came along and defended me, well it was natural, was it not, that I should come to – to – regard him so highly?’

He looked appealingly at her, begging her to say something that would make him feel better but her puzzlement deepened.

‘But my dear boy, of course if someone is kind to you and stands as your friend against those who are not kind – but who is this Patrick? I am very confused.’

‘Oh, I explain badly.’ He sniffed again and closed his eyes as though he were willing himself to lose the effects of the brandy, and indeed his speech was becoming clearer as the time passed. ‘He is Lord Patrick Paton. He is a little older than the rest of us, for he remained in the Fifth Form for two full years, you know, since he could never master his Latin and because his papa – he is the duke, do you see – insists he must go to his old college at Oxford, he made the school keep him until he could pass the exams. He’s been in the Sixth for two years as well so he is quite old – past twenty, don’t you know.’ He smiled then, a sudden glimmering grin of reminiscent pleasure. ‘And such fun! He cares nothing for the masters, you know, and what they say, and does such things! I know it is because his papa will always deal with the school, but it is still brave of him, for his pa has him beaten at home for every bad report he gets, and sometimes he says he is quite raw meat and fit only for the hounds to breakfast on. And he came to rescue me! He was still in the Fifth Form then, and I was but thirteen – and after that they left me alone, or at least when he was about. Anyway that was the start of it.’

He bent his head and looked at his hands, and she said, ‘Please, dear Duff, the start of what?’

‘I do love him, you know,’ he said suddenly. ‘I mean, it is not just that he is a lord and so rich and brave and, well, all those things. I just admire him so – it is so painful not knowing what to do.’

Tilly leaned back in her chair and tried to collect her thoughts,
which had begun to whirr about her head like demented bees. She was not a woman of the world in the sense that the term was generally used to denote those who were knowledgeable about such matters as other people’s lovers and the latest crim. con. cases and the doings of the high and mighty, which were such enthralling subjects of gossip for many of the ladies she knew in Knightsbridge, but for all that she was not totally innocent. She knew that men and women sometimes behaved in ways that were regarded as less than proper by people of pure mind and life, but it was not a matter to which she had ever given much thought. When her acquaintances on morning calls or at meetings or parties in the neighbourhood started talking about such things she tended to find a good reason to wander off, if, that was, she could not change the subject of the conversation. So, now she was at a disadvantage.

But not completely. She knew how some men were with boys and her heart contracted as she looked at her son, sitting there with his square face and troubled grey eyes and rumpled brown hair. Was he growing up to be such a one? Had his lack of a father to guide him and to emulate made him the sort of sissified young man her neighbours had been known to giggle and whisper about behind their fans?

‘You had better tell me all there is to tell me, dear Duff,’ she said carefully. ‘I cannot – I can’t help or advise you if I do not know all the situation.’

‘I love him,’ Duff said again, and now his mouth was set in a mulish line that was all too familiar to his mother. ‘I did not think at first I did, that it was just friendship, but I have learned to find him – well, if I do not see him I am wretched and when I do he can tease and torment me to his heart’s content and know I will do nothing to retaliate. And anyway he had been so good to me when I was a sprog! I used to be his fag, you know, doing all he demanded of me, with his boots and cleaning his study, and so forth, and I was so grateful to him for never seeming to care about my coming from trade. But now, when I have found how much I love him he is so – so capricious. He torments me more about you and this house – the way we live – than any of the others did. He
wanted to come here, you know, but I did not dare to let him and would not even tell him where we lived. I know he would say something cruel to you and you would be mortified, and I could not bear to think what you might say to him: So I meet him out and hope we can be comfortable together, but he torments me and – and tonight he said I must keep march with him while he drank, and I did and then when I said I felt sick and could drink no more he got horrid and went off with Garston and everyone knows what
he
is like. All I could do was come back here and – oh, Ma, what shall I do? I love him so, you see! It hurts so to see him with that creature Garston, for he peacocks about and mops and mows like some – it makes me puke and so I tell him! But he will do it – how could Patrick be so hateful to me?’