The Paying Guests

  He looked glumly at Lilian. ‘Oh, dear.’

  Frances looked at Lilian too. She had drawn down another cushion from the sofa and was hugging it to her bosom. She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Now, don’t be like that,’ he said reasonably. ‘You know the rules. I didn’t make them.’

  ‘Yes, you did!’

  ‘No, I didn’t! It was Mr… Kidd.’ He had picked up the lid of the box and was pretending to read the manufacturer’s instructions. ‘He was one of those dirty-minded Victorian so-and-sos, I expect. Yes, here it is, in black and white. “Whenever a player lands on a square marked with a heart, the lady in the room with the shadiest character must remove one of her garments.” Well, I mean to say,’ he appealed to his wife, ‘that can’t be Frances, can it?’

  Lilian had been smiling at last, but at his words her smile grew fixed, and now it wavered and broke and she turned her head from him. Undeterred, he pressed on. ‘“If said lady refuses to remove one garment, as a forfeit she must remove two! Bracelets not to be counted!”’ He punched the lid with his finger, holding it up as if to display it, then whisking it away. ‘Well, we’ll be kind and let the bracelet business pass. But really, Lil, rules is rules. Come along now, play the game. You’re showing yourself up. Good heavens, you’d think she’d never undressed in front of a gentleman before, wouldn’t you, Frances? You’d think —’

  ‘All right,’ said Lilian sharply. She got to her feet, dropping the cushion, but then for some reason stepping on to it, moving about to get her balance. The gin seemed to have caught up with her, all of it at once. She made a lurch to the side, her heel came down hard on the carpeted boards, and her barmaidy bosom gave a bounce.

  Frances thought again of her mother, trying to sleep in the room below. What time was it, anyhow? She had no idea. She looked for the clock and couldn’t find it.

  Leonard, naturally, was as serious as ever – saying to his wife, in a warning way, ‘Now, remember what I said. No hairs, or any tricks like that. No earrings. No —’

  ‘Oh, let me alone!’ she said. She stood frowning for a moment, then came to some decision and, turning, faced the chimney-breast, putting her back to him and to Frances. The back was squarest to him, however: Frances, watching from her place by the easy chair, suddenly unable to look away, saw her lift the hem of her skirt and grope beneath it for the top of her stocking; she saw the stocking grow opaque as it was eased down over her thigh, her knee, her calf and lifted foot. By the time it was free, Leonard was whistling like a workman on the street. Lilian turned back to him and dipped an ironic, inelegant curtsy. She screwed the stocking into a ball and made as if to throw it – her stance suggesting, as her hand came up, that she was wondering, just for a second, whether to throw it at him or at Frances. She chose her husband: she threw it hard, but it unrolled as it flew. He caught it and ran it across his moustache.

  ‘Now,’ he said as he did it, ‘a more scrupulous fellow than me might say that, since stockings come in pairs, they ought really to count as one garment… But, hell, I’ll be generous.’

  He put the stocking around his neck and began to fuss with it, trying to tie it into a bow above his ordinary collar. Lilian sat heavily back down on her cushion and tucked her skirt around her legs. But the skirt reached only to her ankles, leaving her feet illuminated baldly by the lamp; and somehow the sight of the two plump feet together like that, one of them stockinged, one of them bare, was more unsettling, more indefinably lewd, than if both had been naked. Frances kept drawing her gaze away from them, but the gaze kept creeping back. Purely to break the spell of the thing she lifted her glass, not wanting the gin at all, but recklessly drinking it down anyhow; beginning to feel a little sick as a result.

  Leonard had finished the bow at his throat. He looked like a comical cat on a picture postcard. Slapping his hands together he returned to the board. ‘Allons-y! Whose turn is it next? Well? Frances? Is it yours?’

  It was his wife’s turn, Frances knew. Probably he knew it himself. But Lilian kept to her cushion, saying nothing.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to put the game away now,’ Frances said.

  ‘Put it away?’ said Leonard. ‘You’re joking! Things are just warming up. Come on, whose turn is it? Is it yours?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted.

  ‘I thought as much. Let’s have you then, Lil! Don’t keep me and Frances waiting. I want my second stocking, don’t I?’

  His voice jarred on Frances now. He was like a boy with a whip, trying to keep up the boisterous motion of the game. But the game seemed to be turning against him. The whole evening was turning, breaking apart on sour currents in a way she didn’t quite understand.

  Lilian worked the spinner in silence. The number took her to a ladder; her counter went up it to an empty square. Then it was Frances’s turn, then Leonard’s, then Lilian’s again – the game running on without incident, though at every spin Leonard tensed, then gasped or groaned or clapped his hands to his head, like a Regency buck at the card-table watching his gold, his horse, his country estate, his entire fortune, melt away.

  Then Frances’s turn came round again, and, drunk as she was, she saw at once that the number she had spun carried her counter to a square with a heart drawn on it. She said quickly, ‘I muddled that one. I’m going to spin again.’

  Leonard, however, was quicker. ‘No second spins! That’s in the rules too.’ He picked up her man and moved it for her: ‘… three, four, five. Aha! Another heart! Perhaps I shall get my pair of stockings after all. What do you say, Frances?’

  Lilian had drawn up her knees, and had bowed her head to meet them. Her voice was muffled by the fabric of her skirt. ‘I don’t want to play any more. You’re ganging up on me! It’s not fair!’

  ‘Come on!’ he cried. ‘We’re waiting. You can’t welch on us now.’

  ‘I don’t want to play!’ She wailed it, and when she lifted her head her face was puffed and blurry, almost ugly. She spoke like a child. ‘I’m tired. I feel giddy. You’ve made me drink too much. You always do.’

  ‘I like that!’ he answered. ‘There’s you and Frances been putting it away like a right pair of sozzlers —’

  Oh, shut up! thought Frances. She felt really unwell suddenly. She had changed her pose, put a hand to the floor, and found that the floor wasn’t quite where it ought to have been. She said, ‘It’s late, isn’t it? What time is it?’

  ‘It’s time for Lilian to get cracking!’

  ‘I need my bed. I feel dreadful.’

  ‘You need a bit more gin, that’s all. Come on, Frances. I thought you were enjoying it. Don’t you want to see the show?’

  She gazed at him in muzzy disbelief. What on earth was she doing here? She knew that her room was close by, just on the other side of the wall, but she had a panicky feeling that she was far from home, among strangers. And was that a noise downstairs, a door opening and closing? She began to rise, saying, ‘Oh, God, I need to go to bed.’

  He put out his hand to her. ‘Don’t do that.’ He actually gripped her, hotly, on the ankle. ‘You’re spoiling the game!’

  The surprise of his touch sobered her slightly. She twisted her foot out of his grasp, then leaned unsteadily to the board. Taking hold of his wooden counter she slid it to the final square.

  ‘There. You’ve won. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  He looked sulky – or mock-sulky. She couldn’t tell now.

  ‘Well, it’s no fun like that.’

  ‘Hard luck. I’m tired. So’s Lilian.’

  ‘Oh, Lilian isn’t tired. It’s just a thing she likes to say.’ He added quietly, turning his head, ‘She’ll probably say it again later. She won’t mean it then, either.’

  There was a silence after his words. He looked at his wife and said, ‘What? Oh, Frances doesn’t mind.’ The sulkiness had disappeared. He leaned back on his elbows and grinned up at Frances, all his crowded teeth on display. ‘Frances is a woman of the world – aren’t you, F
rances?’

  She was trying to straighten her frock. She said, without smiling, ‘I might have been once.’

  He answered quickly, ‘Just the once? Still, once is all it takes – unfortunately. Ask Lil.’

  His tone was so unpleasant now that, gazing down at his face, Frances had the urge, shockingly powerful, to kick him in it. Instead she turned away and began to work her feet into her shoes. ‘Whoops!’ he said, when she swayed. But it was Lilian who rose to help her. She came across the rug, her own step far from steady, her face as pinkly mottled as a plate of ham, her skirt creased like a concertina above her mismatched feet and ankles. But she offered her hand for Frances to grip; and when she spoke, her voice was kind, tired, her own.

  ‘I’m sorry, Frances.’

  Frances saw the clock at last: it was a few minutes to midnight. Holding tight on to Lilian’s hand she was filled with a vision, a sad mirage, of the simple, pleasant few hours that the two of them, in a different world, a different life, might have spent together. Instead – what had they done? They had squandered those hours on Leonard. She hadn’t so much as gazed honestly into Lilian’s face until this moment. Instead she had cajoled and bullied her – had clapped and cheered while she took off her clothes! And she had done it, she realised now, out of some mean, malicious impulse – siding against her with her husband, in order to punish her for being his wife.

  She couldn’t communicate any of this to Lilian. Shaking her head she said simply, ‘I’m sorry, too.’ She regained her balance; and Lilian’s fingers slid out of hers.

  Leonard got to his feet to escort her across the room. ‘At least you haven’t got far to go,’ he said, palely humorous, as he opened the door for her. His manner had changed again. She went to step past him and he moved closer, approaching her with such intent that she thought for a moment that he might be about to kiss her. But what he did was to touch her arm, just above the elbow.

  ‘You’ve been a jolly sport, Frances. You won’t give any mind, will you, to me and my big mouth?’

  She found herself unable to reply. She shook her head and moved away.

  She looked so dreadful in her bedroom mirror, all her features blurred and coarse, that when she had taken off her frock she tried to drape it over the glass; almost at once, it slid to the floor. She needed the lavatory rather badly, so as soon as she had changed into her night-clothes she headed purposefully downstairs. The Barbers had not yet emerged from their sitting-room – she was glad about that. The hall light was still burning, but the edges of her mother’s door were dark – she was glad about that, too. In what seemed a jumble of motion she let herself into the yard, visited the WC, then returned to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. She wasn’t aware of drinking the water, or of putting down the glass, but the next moment she was empty-handed; the next moment again she was back on the stairs with the hall light extinguished; and then she was noisily closing her bedroom door and kicking off her slippers.

  She approached the bed with longing, but once she had climbed on to it and was lying flat on her back the mattress tilted like the deck of a ship; she had to push herself upright again. She sat with her head in her hands and groaned. God Almighty, what an evening! If only she had stayed at Mrs Playfair’s! She felt as though she’d been fed poison. The longer she sat there, the more unnaturally aware she became of various furious currents in her body: the slosh of liquids in her stomach, the pounding of blood through the channels of her ears. Braving the tilt of the bed, she carefully lowered herself back down. But there was no ease, no relief, to be found in any position; no possibility of escape from herself. When she closed her eyes she saw a sort of futurist nightmare, snakes and ladders in acid colours, inky hearts, Leonard’s grinning red face. Clearest of all, however, she saw Lilian, groping for the clasp of her suspender. She saw the silk stocking coming down, over and over again.

  6

  When she awoke the next morning, at just before six, the details of her evening with the Barbers seemed weirdly out of reach. On the other side of the window the sun was already blazing, but of the night that had passed she retained only a muddle of echoes and impressions, noise and laughter, a glass in her hand… Apart from that, she felt quite clear-headed; unnaturally well, in fact. She knew that she had drunk more than she ought to have, but she seemed for the moment so unaffected, so unharmed, that she began to grow slightly complacent. Weren’t there certain people, with particularly sturdy constitutions, who could stand large amounts of alcohol without ill effect? She must be one of those.

  But only a few minutes later, as the factory whistles went off, the lustre of her well-being was beginning to cloud. The light at the edge of the curtains was bothering her. She needed the lavatory again, she wanted another glass of water, she felt as hollow as though she hadn’t eaten anything in days. But when she attempted to sit upright her bed, like a beast, came back to life, and her insides gave such a sour plunge that she thought for a moment that she might be sick. She hastily lay flat again, rigid and swallowing, and though the worst of the feeling soon passed, she realised that making a trip downstairs was out of the question. Thank God for the chamber-pot! She managed to fish it from under the bed, to squat giddily over it, to scurry back between the sheets. Now her heart was thudding as if it would burst. She didn’t understand it. Could she have eaten something bad at Mrs Playfair’s? Queasily, she thought over the meal: the soup, the sole, the chicken, the pudding, the cheese, the crème de menthe —

  The memory of the glass of green liqueur made bile leap into her mouth. But what she tasted was gin and lemonade. Gin and lemonade; and black cigarettes.

  And gradually, then – gradually but relentlessly, like a series of bloated corpses surfacing in murky water – gradually the evening in the Barbers’ room came back to her. She remembered reclining in the easy chair with a glass in one hand and a fag in the other. She remembered pausing with her fingers over Mr Barber’s box of cigarettes, gazing girlishly up at him, practically fluttering her eyelashes: ‘I had the idea you didn’t approve of ladies smoking.’ She recalled singing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ at the top of her lungs. She recalled tittering, she recalled bellowing, she recalled —

  No, she wouldn’t admit the memory! No, no, no!

  But up it came, the most bloated corpse of all… She remembered leering like a drunken soldier while Lilian stood on a cushion to do a wobbly strip-tease.

  She hid her face under her blanket, fighting down waves of nausea and shame.

  At seven o’clock the Barbers’ alarm clock went, and she heard Mr Barber – Leonard, damn it, she had to call him now – she heard Leonard rise, go softly downstairs, then return and enter his kitchen. She listened in disbelief to the jaunty ordinariness of his movements as he washed, shaved, fried himself a solitary breakfast. He was even, at one point, humming through his teeth; she felt that he was quite capable of breaking into the chorus of ‘Everybody’s Doing It’. Once she had recalled the image of him with his thumbs hooked in his armpits it hopped about on the inside of her eyelids and made her feel queasier than ever. When she heard the splash and gurgle of tea being poured from the pot, followed by the rattle of china as he carried the cups to his bedroom, she longed so dismally for a cup of tea of her own that she nearly wept.

  There came a few calmer minutes after he had left the house, but presently she heard movement downstairs: her mother, heading for the kitchen. She thought of the stove to be seen to, the milk to be brought in, the breakfast to be made, all the chores of the day ahead of her. Could she do it? She had to try. Her stomach quivering, she rose, put on her slippers, tied on her dressing-gown. So far, so good. Then she went to the glass. Her eyes were red and swollen, but her face was powder white; even her lips were white. Her hair was sticking up as though she’d been electrocuted.

  She did the best she could to put herself tidy, then ventured out of the room. There was no sign of life on the landing save the smell of Leonard’s rashers.

  Down in
the kitchen she opened her mouth to wish her mother a casual good morning, and instead began to cough. The cough had the taste of those filthy cigarettes in it; it went on and on until it almost convulsed her.

  ‘I hope you aren’t starting a cold, Frances,’ her mother said at last. She was cutting herself a slice of bread.

  Frances wiped her mouth and streaming eyes, and spoke hoarsely. ‘I think you know very well that I’m not.’

  ‘You enjoyed yourself with Mr and Mrs Barber?’

  She nodded, swallowing something with the taste and texture of tar. ‘We didn’t disturb you too much, did we? We ended up playing a silly game of —’ She coughed again. ‘Snakes and Ladders. Things ran on later than we planned.’

  ‘Yes, I heard them doing that.’

  Now the bread was cut and on a plate. It couldn’t be toasted, with the stove unlighted. Her mother was bringing over the butter dish, fishing out a knife from the drawer. But, the weather being so warm, the butter was beginning to run: Frances caught the faintly rancid whiff of it as the lid of the dish came off, and had to turn sharply away. She must have grown even paler as she did it, because her mother, with a mixture of rebuke and concern, lowered the knife to say, ‘Really, Frances, you look dreadfully done-up! You must remember, you aren’t as young as Mr and Mrs Barber.’

  Frances kept her gaze from the liquefying butter. ‘Mr Barber is only a year younger than I am.’

  ‘Mr Barber is a man, with a man’s constitution.’

  ‘What a very Victorian thing to say.’

  ‘Yes, well, as I’ve often pointed out, the Victorians are much maligned. How old is Mrs Barber?’

  Frances hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Twenty-four or -five, I think.’