The Paying Guests (16 page)

‘I suppose it’s a pretty girl that does it, is it?’ Lilian asked him.

‘Well, you suppose wrong, don’t you? It’s a pretty fellow, as it happens. Chap with a wave in his hair, and a lisp.’ He gave Frances a wink. ‘Likes holding my hand just a bit too much for my liking, if you get my drift, Miss Wray?’

Frances, growing hot, reached for her drink again – and saw Lilian, at the same moment, reaching for hers.
I’ll stay for ten minutes
, she thought.
I’ll stay for less than that
–
for five
.
He’ll make a fuss about me leaving, but that doesn’t matter
…

Already, however, after just three mouthfuls, she could feel the gin inside her, quick and warm, like a friendly flame; the friendliest thing, it seemed to her, that she had encountered in ages. And by the time she had taken a fourth sip Mr Barber had begun to seem a shade less annoying. He told her a couple of office anecdotes, but soon reverted to his theme of the night – his cool two-twenty and what he planned to do with it. There were certain bonds and investments that he had in his sights, he said. There were chaps – connections of his, stockbrokers and bankers – all poised to put first-rate deals his way.

‘Of course,’ he went on, with a swerve of tactic, ‘it doesn’t help a working fellow if he’s got a certain type of wife. I mean the sort of wife’ – his tone became pointed – ‘who likes spending her husband’s money, but who doesn’t understand that, in order for a chap to earn the money in the first place, he has to be made a bit of a fuss of. The sort of wife who sits at home all day in her nightie, reading books about society girls getting ravished by desert princes.’

Lilian made a face at him. ‘You ought to go back to your parents’, then. There aren’t any books there.’

He looked at Frances and gave a shrug. ‘See what I have to put up with? You know, I’m thinking of writing a book of my own one day. All about the ordinary chap and the things he’s had to contend with since the War.
That
’ll be worth reading! You can have the first copy if you like.’

Frances sipped again. ‘Thanks. I’ll make a space on the shelf. Somewhere between Austen and Dostoevsky all right?’

‘Yes, I’ll sign it “To Frances, with —”’ He caught himself up. ‘Whoops! Miss Wray, I suppose I should say. But that sounds so awfully old-fashioned. You don’t mind me calling you Frances, do you? Now that we’re all getting along so well?’

His tone was so affable that it would have been impossible to protest or demur, but Frances felt taken by surprise – almost tripped up. She had no interest in calling him Leonard, she wouldn’t have dreamt of calling him Len, and she had the sneaking suspicion that his slip of the tongue was less accidental than he was pretending. Worst of all, the moment somehow undid some of the specialness of her friendship with Lilian. Was this, she thought, what happened when one made friends with a married woman? One automatically got the husband too? – like a crochet pattern, coming free with a magazine?

But then, of course, the specialness of her friendship with Lilian had already melted away. Looking at her across the hearth-rug, she wasn’t sure that she even liked her very much. Her figure seemed bosomy as a barmaid’s tonight. She was wearing brass bangles on one of her wrists, and they kept clattering up and down her arm with a cheap sort of ring. How conventional she was, really, for all her arty pretensions! Just now, for example, she had drawn up her legs and was shifting around on the sofa. Mr Barber – Leonard, Frances supposed she had to call him – Leonard had begun to complain that he was being kicked; that made her kick out at him in earnest, and he caught hold of her feet. They started to tussle, laughing and snorting, her skirt rising, exposing her knees. For more than a minute they kept it up, appealing to Frances for help or for judgement: ‘Tell him to stop it, Frances!’ ‘It’s her, Frances, not me!’

Even with the gin inside her this began to be tiresome. Frances had the sense that their antics were a weird kind of show, done for her but not flattering to her. She suspected that if she were to leave the room their hilarity would instantly die; that they would sit there, side by side, in silence.

Perhaps they suspected the same thing, because when she made a move to rise they grew calmer, as if really wanting her to stay. She drank more of her gin, still thinking to hurry it down; but then she was amazed, on lifting the tumbler, to find it three-quarters empty. The moment the last quarter was gone Leonard was up on his feet, whisking the glass away to be refilled along with Lilian’s and his own. She protested as he took it; she protested when he brought it back. He told her it was mostly lemonade – she knew that was untrue as soon as she tried it. But the knowledge was curiously without force. And when, with a smudge of discomfort, she thought of her mother in the room below, the thought had another feeling mixed up with it, something dark and unkind.
Mother
, she told herself, sipping again,
can like it or lump it
.

What was Leonard doing now? He seemed unable to sit still. He had gone to a drawer to dig something out of it – a fancy box, with a hinged lid. He brought the box to Frances and displayed it like a waiter.

‘What do you think?’ The box held cigarettes, fat, black, foreign-looking. ‘The real thing, these are. Given to me by a grateful client. He has them shipped in from the East. Can’t you smell the Orient in them?’ He waved them about under her nose.

She wasn’t sure whether he was offering them or simply showing them off. She gave a nod. ‘Very nice.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, what?’

‘Are you up to them?’

‘Oh, but I had the idea that you didn’t approve of ladies smoking.’

He looked shocked. ‘What, me? Who told you that? I’m all for ladies’ rights, I am. I’m a proper Mrs Pankhurst.’

‘Really.’

‘Oh, yes.’

She hesitated – then heard a sound in the room below and, with another surge of dark bravado, dipped in her hand and drew out the fattest cigarette of all. Leonard gave a honk of laugher – ‘Oh, Frances! I always knew there was more to you than met the eye!’ – and produced a book of matches from his pocket, with which he struck her a flame. There was a silver saucer near by, with one or two butts already in it, but he wouldn’t let her use that. Instead he brought over the stand-ashtray, the horrid bronze-effect thing, setting it down with a flourish beside her chair.

Lilian watched all this from the sofa as if not quite liking what she saw. When Leonard returned to her side with the cigarettes, she reached for them and said, ‘Well, if Frances is having one I’m going to have one too.’

At once he drew the box away from her. ‘Oh, don’t
you
have one.’

‘Why not?’

‘They’re too good for you, these are. Besides’ – he stroked his moustache – ‘I might want to kiss you later. It’ll be like kissing a man.’

‘Then you’ll know what I have to put up with!’

They tussled over the box, but Lilian got hold of a cigarette at last and, grumblingly, he lit it for her. For a minute the three of them sat in silence, slightly stunned by the strength of the tobacco. The smoke unfolded from their mouths and nostrils, tangible as muslin, bluish-grey where it hung in the shadows, green where it crossed the amber lamplight.

The room quickly began to resemble Frances’s notion of an opium den. Lilian and Leonard were sitting so loosely on the sofa that they were practically lolling, Lilian with her knees drawn up, Leonard low, his legs out in front of him, his feet on the red leather pouffe. Frances had been keeping near the front of the easy chair all this time, but the sight of the two of them lounging like that made the pose feel unnatural. She leaned back, giving herself over to the plush. Leonard drew her attention to a lever fitted at the side of the chair. Slightly wary, she pulled it – and with a grinding, collapsing motion the chair transformed itself into a recliner. Her head went back, her feet came up, and she felt the gin in a rush as she tilted. She might have been a hollow vessel with the liquor inside her, its surface spreading as she approached the horizontal. She said to herself, in astonishment, ‘I’m a little drunk! Christ, how squalid!’ Again, though, the knowledge had no bite. It seemed hardly to concern her. And the Barbers, of course, were drunker, had been at it longer than she had. She still had that advantage over them, that crucial touch of superiority. As for the chair – it was a revelation! A masterpiece of engineering! Well, that was the clerk class for you. They might be completely without culture, but they certainly knew how to make themselves comfortable…

In what appeared to be no time at all she lifted her glass and was once again surprised to find it empty; and once again Leonard noticed, rose, rounded up the empty tumblers and took them off to be refilled. But when he had returned and handed out the glasses he stood and gazed around the room, drawing in his lower lip, making a clicking, calculating sound against it with his mobile little tongue.

Lilian was watching him over the rim of her tumbler. ‘What are you looking for?’

He spoke to Frances instead. ‘How about a game of something, Frances?’

‘A game?’ She thought he must mean, perhaps, Charades, at which she was hopeless, painfully bad. ‘Oh, no. I must get to bed. It must be late, mustn’t it?’

No one answered her. Lilian was still watching Leonard. He had gone across the room again; now, from the lowest shelf of a bookcase, he pulled a battered card box. As he brought it back into the lamplight Frances caught sight of its colourful lid.

‘Snakes and Ladders!’

He grinned. ‘You like this game?’ The grin grew sly. ‘So does Lily. Don’t you, Lil?’

In reply, Lilian leaned and tried to snatch the box from his hands. He held it out of her reach, however, and, once he had kicked aside the pouffe, he unfolded the board and set it down in the middle of the floor, then picked out three wooden counters – yellow for Frances, blue for Lilian, red for himself – assertively thumbing them on to the carpet like a gambler setting down coins. Frances leaned closer, for a better look. Then, since it seemed like a lark, she clambered out of the chair, kicked off her shoes, and joined him on the floor – doing it all rather unsteadily, but taking her glass of gin with her. The counters were chipped, rubbed pale at the edges. The board was furred and loose in its folds. The game looked about thirty years old, but the illustrations were still acidly colourful, and where a number was faded it had been inked back into its square. Some of the inky numerals were extravagant; they grew limbs, became flowers, hearts, musical notes. And several of the snakes had been given top hats, or spectacles and whiskers.

Lilian was still sitting on the sofa. Frances said, ‘Won’t you join us?’

She shook her head, her expression veiled. ‘I don’t want to play.’

‘I’d have thought you’d like all these colours.’

Lilian looked at her, looked away. Leonard sniggered. ‘She doesn’t like losing.’

She frowned at him. ‘That’s not true!’

‘She’s a bad sport.’

‘Is she?’ asked Frances.

‘No, I’m not.’

‘She cheats like anything.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘No, I don’t!
He’s
the cheater!’

‘Prove it, then.’

‘Yes, come on!’ said her husband, reaching for her and pulling her down to the floor.

She came with a bump, spilling some of her drink on the way, and when she tried to return to the sofa he reached and pulled her back again. So she gave in – still refusing to smile, though; pulling a cushion from the sofa and shifting herself on to it, tucking her skirt around her legs, but doing it with cross, clumsy movements, then sitting with her glass raised, hiding her mouth.

Frances ran fingers across the board, tracing the curves of one of the snakes.

‘What a nice old game this is.’

Leonard was straightening the spinner, a creased card hexagon on a wooden spike. He said, ‘It was Dougie’s, when we were boys. Don’t go sucking on your yellow counter, will you? I think it might have arsenic in it.’

She heard herself titter. ‘Was it your brother who added the hearts and the whiskers?’

He twirled the spinner against his palm. ‘Ah. No, that was Lily and me.’

There was something behind his words. Raising her eyes, she saw him smirking. Before she knew what she was doing she had leaned and poked his knee. ‘What? What is it?’

He looked at Lilian, and opened his mouth to answer. But Lilian spoke more quickly.

‘It’s just a thing to make the game more silly. It’s just something Len and I sometimes do. If you land on a square with musical notes drawn on it, you have to sing something – a song, I mean. If you land on a flower, you have to – well, you have to pretend to be a flower, and the other person has to say what flower you are. I told you it was silly!’

Frances had tittered again. But there was more, she could see. She pointed to a square with a heart drawn on it.

‘And what happens if you land on this?’

‘Nothing. – Don’t, Len!’

He protested. ‘Frances wants to know! It’s only fair to tell her the rules. It’s like this, Frances. When Lily lands on a heart, she —’

Lilian put down her glass and reached across the board to hit him. She swung her hand hard, but he caught her wrist and they struggled. It wasn’t quite like their tussles from before, which had been manufactured as if for Frances’s benefit. They fought seriously this time, reddening with the effort of it; for several seconds they were almost still, in a sort of perfect tension, braced against each other but attempting to pull apart, like a couple of repelling magnets.

Then Lilian let out her breath in a burst of nervous laughter and Leonard, making the most of her moment of weakness, got hold of her other hand and pinned her wrists together.

‘When Lily lands on that,’ he told Frances, strained and breathless and beginning to laugh himself, ‘she has to take off one of her things!’

Frances had been expecting something of the sort. All the same, the words came as a shock, and her first, flustered thought was: Can Mother hear? But the room, with its shut door and its cone of lamplight, had begun to feel not so much confining as insulated, snug. Lilian was rubbing at her wrists where her husband had gripped them, looking flushed from the struggle, looking vexed, embarrassed, excited – Frances wasn’t sure which. Leonard’s smirk had broadened.