The Paying Guests

  They were in full view of the terrace, but just far enough away from it so that they could talk without being overheard. Frances, watching Mr Crowther work his fingers over the cat’s ecstatic face, said, ‘I’m afraid you’ve had rather to sing for your supper tonight, Mr Crowther. Not just with the wireless, I mean. It can’t be much fun.’

  He answered without lifting his gaze. ‘Oh, I’m not complaining. Generally when ladies learn that one was anywhere out east of Suez they rather lose interest. They want the romance of the trenches and all that.’

  ‘You don’t mind going over it?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. It was every kind of hell, at the time. It was real, stinking hell. But the queer thing is, I sometimes find myself missing those days. There were things to do, you see, and one did them. That counts for a lot, I’ve discovered. Back here, now it’s all over – well, there isn’t a great deal for one. Lots of one’s friends dead, and so on. And there are no paid posts for men like me. I ran into my second lieutenant the other day. He’s shining shoes at Victoria Station! Other fellows I know are drifting about, getting into this, getting into that. None of us has any sticking power. I feel half in a daze, myself. Ceylon, South Africa – I’ll never get there. Or, if I do, I’ll wear my days away just as I wear them away here. I envy the ordinary working man, to be honest with you. He hasn’t a job, either – but at least he has Bolshevism.’

  He continued to fuss with the cat as he spoke, and Frances was struck by the absolute lack of rancour in his manner; by the absence of any sort of passion in him. She said quietly, after a pause, ‘I miss the War too. You’ve no idea, Mr Crowther, what it costs me to admit that. But we can’t succumb to the feeling, can we? We’ll fade away like ghosts if we do. We have to change our expectations. The big things don’t count any more. I mean the capital-letter notions that got so many of our generation killed. But that makes the small things count more than ever, doesn’t it?’

  ‘The small things?’ He smiled. ‘Like this little beast, you mean?’

  ‘I mean ordinary things, to be done well. Bits of ground to till and care for. Houses to sweep.’

  ‘Houses to sweep,’ he repeated, still with that smile on his face, and she couldn’t tell from his tone whether he liked the idea or was making fun of it. She didn’t know, after all, whether she liked the idea herself or suddenly thought it a nonsense. The sight of him petting the cat like that had begun to get on her nerves. There seemed no life in him at all save in the tips of his restless fingers. She suspected that he had come to Mrs Playfair’s tonight for the same reason she had – simply as a way of killing an evening, striking another one off the calendar. Perhaps the prospect of a free dinner had appealed to him, too.

  The thought dismayed her. She turned away from him. And, in doing so, she saw that, over on the terrace, Mrs Playfair and her mother were watching her. Or, rather, they were watching her and Mr Crowther, in a sly but interested way, as if there were something significant about the fact that they were sitting quietly together in the dusky garden; as if to gauge how the two of them were ‘doing’.

  The predictability of it made her more dismayed than ever. She let out her breath in a puff of impatience; he heard, raised his eyes, then glanced across at the terrace himself.

  ‘Ah, yes. I think I was meant to sing for my supper in more ways than one this evening. I can only wish, Miss Wray, that I wasn’t such a poor sort of song-bird for you.’

  ‘Not in the least,’ she said tightly. ‘You mustn’t think that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t care to play along? We could take a turn around the garden, or —’

  ‘No, I’d rather not.’

  He looked into her face, his smile fading at last. ‘I’m afraid you’re upset.’

  ‘Not upset. – Oh, I can’t explain.’

  He waited, in a kind enough sort of way; but he didn’t wait very long. He went back to fussing with the cat, and they sat in silence for another few minutes, until the creature, suddenly bored, sprang from his knee like a pale monkey and went chasing after a moth.

  Frances rose. ‘Shall we join the ladies?’

  Once the four of them had moved indoors she sat saying little, doing her best to return smiles; but it was no good. Her resolutions were peeling from her like bark from a tree. She could feel herself advancing steadily but helplessly into a state of dejection – as steadily and helplessly as if she were being screwed into it. Patty brought a tray of liqueurs. A game of auction bridge was proposed. ‘Emily, you’ll be my partner,’ Mrs Playfair told Frances’s mother, in her high-handed way. ‘We can pit our wits against these youngsters.’

  But, ‘I’m afraid I shan’t be up to playing,’ said Frances. ‘I’ve something of a headache. I expect it was the sun, at dinner.’

  ‘Oh, what a pity!’

  The older women were disappointed. One could hardly, after all, play auction bridge with three. So instead the gramophone was opened, and a couple of old-fashioned waltzes were aired. They discussed the day’s news: loans to Germany, society divorces… But with Frances’s rather chilling presence in it the little party quickly began to falter. In the end they were all grateful to Yum-Yum, who returned noisily to Mr Crowther’s knee to butt her head against his fingers, and who at least gave them something to look at.

  At twenty to ten Patty was asked to bring the hats. Mr Crowther, obliging to the last, escorted Frances and her mother the short distance to their garden gate.

  The two of them went into the house in silence, to find the hall unlighted and everything looking, as it often did after a visit to Mrs Playfair’s, rather dim and small and crowded. The stairs, thought Frances in despair, might never have been polished, the floor never cleaned, though she had been down on her knees that morning, going over the skirting boards with Vim.

  She took off her hat, then stood on her tiptoes to put a match to the gas.

  Her mother was lingering. ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘It isn’t too bad.’

  ‘Will you have an aspirin?’

  ‘No. I’ll go straight to bed, I think.’

  ‘Oh, will you? Then it’s hardly worth your doing the light.’

  ‘The Barbers will want it, later. I suppose they’re out again.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I suppose so… And you’re really going up right now? Won’t you sit with me a minute? You could tell me what you and Mr Crowther were chatting about.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell, Mother.’

  ‘You seemed so deep in conversation. There must be something.’

  ‘Nothing, I assure you!’

  Her mother tutted. ‘Well, you certainly seem in a very odd temper tonight. I can’t think why.’

  Frances put away the box of matches. ‘Can’t you?’

  They looked at each other across the tiles, the only sound between them the slow pant of the gas. Then her mother’s expression closed.

  ‘Well, I shall let you get to your bed. I hope your head is better by the morning.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Frances, turning away. And by the time she had seen to the stove and taken out the milk-can her mother was in her room with the door shut.

  She started up the staircase, hating the sight of it. She drew together the curtains at the turn and wanted to rip them from their rings. She really did have a headache now – or, anyhow, could feel it gathering, tightening, mounting from the muscles at the top of her spine.

  Then she climbed the last few stairs, and saw a light in the Barbers’ sitting-room, heard the thump of feet on the boards – and realised with an extra plunge of dismay that the couple were at home after all. Her step slowed, then speeded up. But she was not quite quick enough. Mr Barber emerged on to the shadowy landing at the very moment she did.

  He was slipperless and jacketless, dressed in one of his soft-collared shirts, and had two empty tumblers in his hands. ‘Miss Wray! We had the notion you’d be out until late. Everything all right?’

  Could he have overheard her exchange w
ith her mother? She didn’t want him to suppose that she was going to bed in a huff. So she forced a smile. ‘Yes, quite all right. We’ve been for dinner at a neighbour’s.’

  ‘I wish we’d known you’d be back so early. We would have asked you and your mother to join us for a drink. We’re celebrating tonight.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes, I don’t like to boast, but – well, a little promotion at work, for yours truly.’

  He touched his moustache as he spoke, in a mock-modest gesture. She saw then, through the gloom, that the tumblers he was carrying had a lacework of froth inside them and puddles of beer at the bottom, and that his colour was rather high. Still smiling, she began to edge past him. ‘Congratulations. Good for you.’

  He put out a hand. ‘Well, look here, why not join us now? It isn’t so late. Just a night-cap? One for the road? Lily would like it – wouldn’t you, Lil?’ He had moved back into the sitting-room – done it nimbly, on his shoeless feet – and now he spoke to the part of the room that was hidden from Frances by the open door. ‘Miss Wray’s out here, back early from her dinner. I’ve told her she must come in and join us.’

  There was no audible answer, but Frances, hearing the creak of the sofa, simply saw no way out of it. Mr Barber beckoned to her, and she followed him into the room.

  Lilian was sitting in the amber-coloured light of a single lamp, looking uncertain about whether or not to get to her feet. She was slipperless like her husband, her colour was high like his, and the cushions all around her were squashed and disarranged. Sprawled on one of them was the doll that Frances had seen the couple playing with that other time. She got a proper view of it now: a loosely-jointed thing with padded limbs and a leering expression, dressed in navy blue corduroy and a white sailor’s cap.

  She felt another gust of loneliness. When Lilian rose and said, in a self-conscious way, ‘Hello, Frances. Isn’t it nice about Len’s promotion?’ she found herself answering, falsely hearty, like another person altogether, ‘Isn’t it, though! I’ll bet you’re bucked.’

  Mr Barber puffed out his chest, pretending smugness now. ‘Yes, when the chief called me into his room this morning I thought he was going to let loose a rocket! Instead he sat me down and gave me a cigar and said, “Now, listen here, Barber. A talented fellow like you —”’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t say that,’ said Lilian.

  ‘Those were his exact words! “Now, look here, Barber m’boy. A bright spark like you oughtn’t to be stuck in the sort of post that’s never going to bring him in more than two-oh-five a year. Old Errington’s leaving us soon. What d’you say to taking over his desk? There’s a clear ten pounds extra in it for you. And just to show you how much we think of you, say we add on another fiver, make it a round two-twenty!”’

  Frances’s smile felt painful now. Two hundred and twenty pounds! She had just that morning received a dividend statement – one of the doomed investments put in place by her father – for forty-five. Last year the statement had been for sixty.

  ‘Good for you!’ she said again. ‘No wonder you’re celebrating. But, look, I mustn’t intrude —’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that.’ He seemed really sorry. ‘We’re all friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘Of course, but —’

  ‘And it’s still broad daylight outside! It isn’t even ten o’clock! I know the clock on the shelf says a quarter past, but that clock’s like Lily – rather fast.’ With a snigger, he dodged away from his wife’s hand: she had leaned to take a swipe at him.

  Frances had to move out of his path. The movement took her further into the room. She tried again. ‘Please don’t trouble.’

  But she felt worn down. The strength had been squeezed out of her by the tangles of her own peculiar mood. Mr Barber, in a way that would brook no further protest, said, ‘Now, what do you fancy? Stout? Sherry? A gin and lemonade?’ And after a moment’s struggle she answered, defeated, ‘A gin and lemonade, then. Just a small one, Mr Barber.’

  He made for the door. ‘And how about Lily? Still stout, is she?’

  Another swipe, another dodge, and Lilian’s colour rose higher. ‘I’ll have the same as Frances,’ she called after him, as he went off to the kitchen.

  He took the life of the room with him. In his absence, she and Frances stood like strangers. After a moment, they sat, Lilian returning to her place on the dishevelled sofa, Frances taking the easy chair, perching at the front of it, not easy at all. From out in the kitchen there came the sound of a stopper being drawn from a bottle, followed by the chink of glasses.

  ‘It seems ages since I’ve seen you,’ said Lilian at last.

  ‘You see me every day,’ said Frances.

  ‘You know what I mean. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m tip-top. And you? What have you been up to? Did you ever finish Anna Karenina?’

  But at that, Lilian lowered her gaze. ‘I wish now that I’d never read it. It made me too sad.’

  She pulled the doll on to her knee and began picking at its corduroy trousers. Frances’s eye was caught by something on the mantelpiece: the Turkish delight box, tucked between the Spanish fan and the Buddha.

  There was no time to comment on it. Mr Barber was back, three tumblers in his hands, one of them dark with beer, the others so full of gin and lemonade that the mixture was slopping over his fingers. He closed the door behind him with his foot, and brought the glasses across the room. Frances took hers gingerly because of the drips. He handed the other to Lilian, then stood with his hand at his mouth, sucking the spilled drink from his knuckles.

  Then, ‘Oh, I see what you’re up to,’ he said, in a tone of reproach.

  Frances, just for a second, thought that he was addressing her. But he was talking to the doll.

  ‘Sailor Sam down here,’ he explained, ‘has got his eye on Lil. Every time I turn my back, he manages to find his way on to her lap.’ He set his glass on the floor and took hold of the doll instead. ‘Up you come, my lad! You’ve had your fun for the evening. You can sit up here on the mantelpiece and keep your wandering hands to yourself… That’s assuming I can find a spot for you amongst all these blessed gewgaws.’ He moved aside the Buddha, the rattling tambourine. ‘Did you ever see such a lot of rubbish in your life, Miss Wray? You know you should never sit too still, don’t you, when Lily’s around? Just in case she pins a bow on you. Not that you wouldn’t look nice with a bow, I’m sure. Sailor Sam thinks so, don’t you, Sailor Sam? But, what’s that?’ He lifted the doll’s leering face to his ear. ‘You aren’t so sure about Lily? You think Lily looks like a – Oh, Sailor Sam, that’s not a very nice word!’

  Lilian put out a foot to give him a kick – a proper kick, this time – and he dodged away from it with another snigger. He fitted the doll on to the mantelpiece, making a fuss about crossing its legs, then retrieved his drink and sat down at his wife’s side.

  Frances, tired, uncomfortable, unenchanted by Sailor Sam, wondered if she had made a mistake. The glass was sticky in her hand. She had had sherry, wine and a crème de menthe at Mrs Playfair’s, and didn’t at all want another drink. Now that the door was shut, and with the pool of light from the lamp so narrow, the room seemed small and close and she was, she realised, trapped in it. She was trapped in it with Lilian, at whom she couldn’t look without a gulp of dismay. She was trapped with Mr Barber, whom she did not quite trust. And, worst of all, she was trapped with their marriage, their mystifying union, which had evidently passed out of whatever affectionate phase it had recently enjoyed and was already mired in some new quarrel… She didn’t care about the details. Lifting her glass to her lips she thought: I shan’t stay longer than fifteen minutes. She took a sip – a large sip, to hurry the drink down – and instantly began to cough. The mixture had caught in her throat. It seemed all gin.

  ‘Don’t say it’s too stiff for you, Miss Wray?’ said Mr Barber, his blue eyes wide.

  And now the innuendoes were back! Still coughing, she couldn’t answer. S
he took a second sip to calm the first, then pointedly set the glass aside.

  Almost immediately, however, he raised his own glass for a toast, and she was obliged to drink again.

  ‘Well, here’s to my two-twenty!’ His narrow throat jumped as he swallowed. Wiping the froth from his moustache he said, ‘I tell you what, Miss Wray. I wish my brother Dougie were here. He’s been with his firm for thirteen years, and he’s on less than I’ll be getting. – Not that I mean to stick at two-twenty, mind,’ he added, perhaps feeling that he had given too much away. ‘But now, you see, I shall be right behind another fellow; and his is the job I want. Still, I shan’t be doing too badly. A desk to myself, a telephone, a secretary —’

  ‘He’s even had his nails done, Frances,’ Lilian broke in. ‘He went for a manicure on his way home from work. Aren’t they fine?’

  At that, his expression changed. With a frown at his fingernails he said slowly, ‘I dunno. You women are allowed to spend hours beautifying yourselves, but if a chap tries to smarten himself up he gets chipped about it! I’ve my position to consider now. I’ve an example to set to the juniors.’

  ‘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.