The Paying Guests

  Ewart took the hat off, but did not move. Frances held out her hand to him, saying, ‘I do hope we’ll meet again.’

  He looked sulky now, as if she had played him a dirty trick. Perhaps she had. But she couldn’t be sorry. She couldn’t be guilty. She couldn’t, couldn’t! The door was open, and she and Lilian were inching towards it. More smiles, more handshakes, more apologies… And then they were free, going out of the house like swimmers. Or so, anyhow, it seemed to Frances, for directly the door was closed again and the clamour of the party was behind them she lifted her arms, put back her head, feeling unmoored, suspended, lapped about by the liquid blue night.

  Lilian watched her for a moment with an unreadable expression. She moved to the gate, released it, and the two of them went through. Without a word, and with unlinked arms, they started along the pavement. But at every step, Frances’s sense of expectation mounted. When she felt the slowing of Lilian’s pace her heart gave a lurch. She said to herself, Here it comes! Here it is! She slowed her own pace, and turned, almost put up her arms again, to meet it.

  Then she realised that Lilian had slowed simply to catch at her shawl, which was slipping from her wrist; in another second she’d moved on again, at the same pace as before. Frances faltered, then caught up with her. Still neither of them spoke. And soon the silence between them had lasted too long. She felt unable to break it. It had become something like the awkwardness with which they had danced together, something tangible and jangling.

  And after all, she thought, as they headed towards the High Street, what could happen, here? There had been no declaration – only a glance, a pressing of fingers. If they were a man and a girl, it would be different. There would be less confusion and blur. She would seize Lilian’s hand and Lilian would know what it meant. She herself would know what it meant! Lilian would or would not allow herself to be led to a patch of shadow; she might or might not put up her mouth for a kiss. But they were not a man and a girl, they were two women, with clipping heels, and one of them was in a white dress which the moon set glowing like a beacon.

  And all too soon they were on the High Street, still busy and full of life. They were in the bright, unintimate station. They were up on the crowded platform. Their train steamed in, and Frances looked in vain for an empty compartment. They got swept on board by a gang of people who had run for the train from down on the street and were full of the excitement of having caught it. They rolled in their seats, groaning and laughing. They had never moved so fast in their lives! The women had sprinted like champions! Oh, but they were paying for it now. They clambered about as the engine started, exchanging places. ‘Move over!’ ‘Budge up!’

  Frances hated every single one of them. If she could, she would have unlatched the door and kicked them on to the track. Instead she sat smiling in a rigid way, uncomplaining when they trod on her toes. Lilian, squashed beside her, smiling too, didn’t catch her eye once.

  At least the journey was a short one. The people called bright farewells when the two of them left the train. The engine was noisy as it puffed away, shoes were loud on the station steps, motor-cars were idling up at the entrance to the station; the final tram of the evening rattled hellishly by just as Frances and Lilian started up the hill for home. But after that, for minutes at a time, there was no sound at all save the peck of their heels on the pavement. They went in and out of lamplight, their shadows fluid under their feet. Lilian was walking as if to meet an appointment, as if fearing she might be late. Only once the house came into view did her step begin to slow. At the garden gate, Frances saw her looking at the upstairs windows, the curtains of which stood open, the rooms behind them clearly dark.

  ‘Len’s not home yet, then,’ she murmured.

  They looked at each other, saying nothing; and that knowledge was back. They went on tiptoe across the front garden, and by the time they were standing in the porch Frances’s heart was thumping so badly she could feel it in every part of her body; she feared it would somehow announce their presence, give them both away. She got out her key, and groped for the lock. Lilian was beside her, her arm brushing hers. Again she had the helpless, electric sense that the space between them was alive and wanted to ease itself closed.

  And then, inexplicably, the key sprang away from her hand. It took her a second to realise that the door had simply been pulled open from the other side. Wincing away from the sudden flood of weak light, she found herself face to face with her mother. She was in her dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, and her hair was drooping from its pins. Seeing Frances and Lilian in the porch, she clutched at the door in relief.

  ‘Oh, Frances, thank goodness you’re home! Mrs Barber, thank heavens!’

  Frances’s heart, that had been pounding so madly in one direction, seemed to shudder to a standstill and then begin pounding in another. She said, ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Now, don’t be alarmed.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s Mr Barber —’

  ‘Len?’ said Lilian. She had shrunk back from the opening door, but now came forward. ‘Where is he? What’s wrong?’

  ‘He’s out in the kitchen, a little hurt. There’s been a – a sort of accident.’

  They found him sitting at the table in the brightly lit room, his head tilted back, a bunched tea-towel clamped to his nose. His face was streaked with blood and with dirt, there was blood and dirt on his shirt-front, his tie; a pocket on his jacket had been ripped half off, and his oiled hair had gravel in it.

  When he saw Lilian in the doorway he gazed across the tea-towel at her with a mixture of sheepishness and fuming resentment. ‘I thought you’d never be home!’ He closed his eyes, as if in pain. ‘Don’t have hysterics. I’m OK.’

  She and Frances moved forward. ‘What on earth’s happened to you?’

  His eyes opened. ‘What’s happened to me? Some bloke’s had a go at me, that’s what! Some swine’s come at me and knocked me down!’

  ‘Knocked you down? What do you mean? At your dinner?’

  ‘No, of course not at the dinner! Just here, just down the hill. Someone came at me on the street.’

  ‘Just a few hundred yards away!’ said Frances’s mother. She had followed them into the kitchen.

  Frances looked from her white, shocked face back to Leonard’s bloody one. She couldn’t take it in. She’d barely given him a thought all evening. A minute before, she and his wife had been together in the darkness, the space between them drawing itself shut. Now —

  ‘But who was it?’ she said. ‘Who hit you?’

  He scowled at her. ‘I wish I knew. He came out of nowhere. I didn’t even have a chance to put up my fists.’

  ‘But when did you leave your supper? I thought —’

  ‘What’s the supper got to do with it? The supper —’ He lowered his gaze. ‘Oh, the supper was a wash-out. A load of snobs. Charlie and I were out of there by half-past ten. I very nearly went on to Netta’s. I wish I had, now!’

  Frances stared at him, still unnerved, still trying to make sense of it all. Just where, she asked, had the assault taken place? Not right outside? He scowled again. No, further down the hill. Near the park? Yes, near the park. He’d only just got off his tram, he said. He had been walking along, minding his own business, when he’d heard running footsteps behind him: he had turned, and in the moment of turning he had caught a blow to the face that had sent him flying. Perhaps he’d passed out for a second or two, he wasn’t quite sure. But when he’d clambered to his feet his attacker was nowhere in sight. Dazed and bleeding, he’d got himself up the rest of the hill to the house – frightening the life out of Frances’s mother, of course, who was just on her way to bed. She’d brought him out to the kitchen, given him brandy, tried to clean his wounds. His hands had grazes on them, but they were all right. The worst thing was his nose, which wouldn’t stop bleeding.

  He risked lifting the tea-towel. The nose, and the moustache beneath it, were gummy with
drying blood. Even as Frances and Lilian watched, fresh blood appeared at one of his nostrils, expanded into a bubble, and popped.

  ‘Oh, Lenny,’ said Lilian.

  He hastily replaced the towel and tilted back his head. ‘Well, don’t say it like that! It hurts like hell.’

  ‘Look at all this blood.’

  ‘It isn’t my fault. I can’t make it stop.’

  ‘It’s got all over you. It’s everywhere!’ She was gazing at the floor. There was a trail of grisly splashes stretching right across the kitchen.

  Frances picked her way around the splashes in her suede shoes, to stand with her back to one of the counters. The room felt horribly crowded and wrong to her: too small for all the alarm and confusion. She was still wearing her hat; she still had her evening bag dangling from her wrist. Putting them both on the counter, she said, ‘But I don’t understand. Who was the man, and why did he do this?’

  Leonard was dabbing at his nostrils, squinting at his fingertips in distaste. ‘I’ve told you, haven’t I? I don’t know who he was.’

  ‘Well, what kind of man was he?’

  ‘I hardly saw him! He was one of these wasters you see hanging about, I suppose. Wanting money, and all that.’

  ‘An ex-service man?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yes.’

  ‘Did he want your money?’

  ‘I don’t know! He didn’t give me a chance to find out – just came at me, then flew off again. He must have lost his nerve, or seen somebody coming. Not that anyone did come. I had to get myself home on my own. I thought he’d broken my nose! Perhaps he has. It damn well feels like it.’

  Frances’s mother drew out a chair with a scrape of its legs. ‘Isn’t it frightful, Frances? I wanted to send for a policeman. I thought of running across to Mr Dawson —’

  ‘No, I don’t want a policeman,’ Leonard said, as she sat. He sounded moody again. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘But say he attacks someone else, Mr Barber? And it might be a lady next time. Or an elderly person. Frances, an ex-service man accosted you. Do you remember, a few weeks ago? He spoke most uncivilly to you. Do you think it could be the same man?’

  But, ‘No, no,’ said Leonard irritably, before Frances could respond. ‘It could have been one of ten thousand. London’s full of them. I knew blokes like them in the army. They can’t stand to think that someone else is doing all right for himself. He saw me in my smart clothes and thought he’d have some fun with me, that’s all. A nice bit of sport on a Saturday night! Kicking fellows into the gutter on Champion Hill.’ He touched the bridge of his nose. ‘God, this hurts.’ He looked up at his wife. ‘Do you think it’s supposed to hurt this much? It feels like there’s a red-hot poker shoved up it.’

  Lilian went gingerly across to him and he raised the tea-towel again. But when the sight of the blood made her draw back, he gave a tut of impatience and appealed, instead, to Frances.

  ‘Have a look at it for me, will you? Tell me what you think?’

  So Frances approached him and made him tilt his head to the light. His nose was still bleeding pretty freely. Could it be broken? She had no idea. She had been to a few Home Nursing classes at the start of the War, but she’d forgotten most of that now. The pupils of his eyes seemed their ordinary sizes… She supposed they ought to go for the doctor. When she suggested it, however, he was as perversely reluctant to bring in a medical man as he was to involve the police. ‘No, I don’t need someone poking me about and then sending me a bill for it afterwards. I went through worse than this in France, for God’s sake. Just stop the damn thing up, can’t you? Jam something into it?’

  And what choice did she have? What else could she do? Drawing the silvery ribbons from the cuffs of her gown was like a final undoing of the promise of the night; but she folded back her sleeves, tied on an apron, fetched dressings from the medicine cabinet, and did her best to staunch the bleeding. He leapt like a hare when the first bit of gauze went in, clutching at the edge of the kitchen table. But after that he sat grimly, with folded arms, clearly resenting his own helplessness. When Lilian leaned to pick grit from his collar, he said, ‘Are you all there? Doing that, in a white frock, with all this blood?’

  Frances had never seen him so ill at ease, so out of temper with the world and himself. By the time both nostrils had been packed he looked like a schoolboy smarting at having been beaten in a fight. He felt at the bridge of his nose again, then gazed down at his spoiled clothes. Twitching the flap of his jacket pocket, looking at the dirt beneath his fingernails, surveying the wreck of his evening, he said nasally, ‘God, what a night!’

  And, yes, thought Frances, as she washed her hands and began to set the kitchen straight, what a night. Or, rather, what an ending to it. Her mother was white in the face. Her own heart was still fluttering. She felt faintly queasy from the sight of the blood. And Lilian – Lilian, whose hand she had held, who had stood beside her in Netta’s back room, saying, Take me home – Lilian was lost to her, Lilian was gone, sucked back into her marriage.

  For while Frances had been working at Leonard’s nose, Lilian had been standing by dumbly, looking sick, looking worried. Had her mind returned to that moment in Netta’s room, too? Did it seem inexplicable to her, now? Was she seeing her husband’s wounds as some sort of sign, some sort of reminder? He rose from the chair, swaying, and she quickly moved forward to catch hold of his elbow. She made sure he was steady on his feet before picking up his hat and gathering her own things. She didn’t look at Frances once. Frances asked, ‘Will you be all right?’ and it was Leonard who answered, in his bunged-up voice.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be all right. I’ll take some aspirin or something, try to sleep the worst of it off. I expect I’ll feel charming in the morning! But, thank you, Frances.’ He sounded simply weary now. ‘Thank you, Mrs Wray. I’m afraid I gave you an awful fright. You’ve got my hat, have you, Lily? That’s ruined too, I suppose. Hell!’

  He peered resentfully at the damage, then tilted up his chin, felt for his wife’s hand and let her guide him from the room. She looked back at the Wrays as she went, to add her thanks to his. But her gaze when it met Frances’s was as blank as marble.

  ‘Poor Mr Barber!’ said Frances’s mother, as their steps on the staircase faded. ‘Can you believe it? Oh, the sight of his face at the door! I thought my heart would fail me. I do wish he had let us send for the doctor.’

  Frances was clearing the kitchen table. She picked up the blood-stained tea-towel, stood uncertainly with it for a moment, then poked it into the embers in the stove.

  ‘I suppose he’s embarrassed,’ she said.

  ‘Embarrassed?’

  ‘At being – I don’t know – bested by a stranger on the street. Men have odd ideas about that sort of thing, don’t they?’

  ‘He certainly wasn’t at all himself. But what a thing for him to go through!’

  ‘Well, I dare say he’ll get over it. It might have been worse, after all. If the man had had some sort of weapon —’

  ‘Oh, don’t!’

  ‘Say, a knife —’

  ‘Don’t, Frances! Oh, it’s too horrible. Is it the War that’s done this? Made brutes of our young men? I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Well, try not to think about it. Mr Barber will have two nasty black eyes tomorrow, but apart from that he’ll be all right. And by Monday he’ll be boasting. You wait and see.’

  Perhaps it was the shock of it all, but she couldn’t seem to summon up any real upset on Leonard’s behalf. She felt vaguely impatient even with her mother. It was well past midnight now, but there was no possibility of either of them going to bed yet. The house had the dazed wide-awakeness she remembered from the after-hours of other emergencies: her father’s apoplexy, Zeppelin raids. And a part of her was still with Lilian. She could hear her in the kitchen upstairs, running water. There was the clang of a bowl or a bucket being set on the floor, that must have been the sound of her putting Leonard’s clothes to soak.


  The stove had just enough heat left in it to warm two cups of cocoa. Frances added generous sloshes of brandy; they drank it in her mother’s bedroom. And gradually, finally, the night lost some of its spin.

  As she was settling back against her pillows her mother even thought to say, ‘I haven’t asked after your evening, Frances. Did you enjoy yourselves, you and Mrs Barber?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Frances. ‘Yes, it was jolly.’

  ‘I expect you were much admired. But what a business for you to come home to! And if you’d been half an hour earlier, while that man was on the street – It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  No, it didn’t bear thinking about. And yet, when Frances did think about it, she found herself oddly unable to believe in the danger. She pictured the shadowy street, with herself and Lilian on it. She let her mind run further backward, to the train, the walk through Clapham. It’s your shine, Lilian.

  The moment seemed lost, the merest glimmer of a slender lure on a cast-out line that could never be reeled in.

  Out in the kitchen the light was still blazing. She stood in it with staring eyes. The clock showed ten to one, but the thought of going upstairs, alone, to lie sleepless in her hot room – No, she couldn’t face it. She washed the cups from which she and her mother had drunk their cocoa. She washed the enamel pan in which she had heated the milk. Then she looked at the floor, with those grisly splashes on it; and she thought that she might just as well wash that. She took off her shoes and stockings, and fetched a bucket.

  The blood, which was dark on the flagstones, regained its colour as she scrubbed at it. By the time she had finished the water was tinted like rose-hip tea. She carried it out to the yard and tipped it down the drain – standing awkwardly, pouring low, so as not to splash her skirt. Overhead, the sky had the same deep, inky look as before.

  She returned to the kitchen; and found Lilian there.

  She was standing just inside the doorway that led to the passage. Her hair was forward across her smudged, dark eyes. She was dressed in her nightgown and wrapper, and, like Frances’s, her feet were bare.