The Paying Guests

  Lilian came next morning, however, the moment Leonard had left for work: they had ten minutes together in Frances’s bed, before Frances heard her mother moving about and felt they had to separate. But they were able to kiss later, when her mother took letters to the post; they kissed again the next day; and on the Friday afternoon, while her mother was visiting a neighbour, they lay in a patch of sunlight on Lilian’s sitting-room floor, their mouths together, their skirts pushed up… Saturday was harder. Sunday was harder still. Worst of all was the evening early in the second week when Lilian and Leonard went out to a dancing-hall with Mr Wismuth and his fiancée, Betty. Frances sat at home, watching the fading of the light, feeling herself seem to fade with it.

  But later, as she lay in bed, there was the rattle of the front door, and while Leonard was out in the yard Lilian came slipping in to see her, bringing a haze of troubling scents into the darkness: cigarettes, lipstick, stout, sweet liquor.

  She put her arms around Frances, tight. ‘I thought of you all evening long!’

  ‘Oh, I thought of you too!’

  ‘I looked at all those people and not one of them was you, it was awful! I hated them! Everybody paid me compliments. They all said how well I was looking. I didn’t care, I only wanted you!’

  They kissed, until the back door banged. And then, ‘I love you!’ she whispered, squeezing Frances’s hand as she pulled away. She hadn’t said it before. ‘I love you!’ Their fingers tore, and she was gone.

  Frances lay with the back of her hand over her eyes, wondering how on earth it had all happened. How had things changed so utterly, so rapidly? She felt as alive as a piece of radium. She felt a sort of exaltation. ‘I want you with every single part of me,’ she told Lilian, the next time they met. ‘My fingernails want you under them. The hairs on the back of my neck rise up whenever you go by. The stoppings in my teeth want you!’ They kissed, and kissed again. There was no self-consciousness between them, no sort of shame or embarrassment: they had passed through all that, she thought, their eyes glowing with triumph and wonder, as easily as runners breasting the ribbon at the end of a track. Whenever they could, they lay together naked. The summer days were heavy and hot, the air like tepid water. Lilian tucked her hair behind her ear and placed her cheek to Frances’s bosom to listen to her heart. She put her mouth to Frances’s breasts, her fingers between Frances’s legs. ‘You feel like velvet, Frances,’ she whispered, the first time she did it. ‘You feel like wine. My hand feels drunk.’

  And meanwhile, amazingly, the routines of the house went on. There were all the usual chores, as well as new ones because of the heat. If milk was to be kept from souring it had to be scalded as soon as it arrived. Jam turned sugary in the jar. Ants invaded the larder. Frances’s clothes clung to her as she worked, the dust rising from her brooms and fastening itself to her perspiring arms and face. But she did it all without fuss; she seemed to have the strength of a battalion of servants. She went to the pictures with her mother on Wednesday afternoons. There were the games of backgammon after dinner, the watery cocoa at quarter to ten… It was simply that there was now this other thing too, this thing like a bright, bright flame at the centre of her days, making the cloudy lantern-glass of her life blaze with colour. Could no one see the change in her? Sometimes she would look across at her mother as they sat together in silence, remember some kiss or caress, and marvel to think that it had left no mark on her. To her the caress was still with her; it felt as livid as a branding on the cheek. And what about Leonard? Did he have no idea? It seemed incredible. But then, since his promotion he had been busier at the Pearl, working slightly longer hours, coming home tired and complaining – but coming also with a touch of smugness, clearly rather liking the figure he cut as the weary breadwinner; his flag rising again as his bruises faded.

  ‘He doesn’t care about me,’ said Lilian moodily. ‘He cares more about his mates at the office. He gets his fingernails polished for them. What does he ever do for me? He’s been my husband for three years, and he doesn’t notice anything about me. You care more about me than he does, Frances. You care more about me than anybody. Even my family – they love me, but they laugh at me, too. They always have. You’ve never laughed at me. You never would, would you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’re like Anna and Vronsky, aren’t we? No, that’s too sad. We’re like gipsies! Like the gipsy king and queen. Oh, don’t you wish we were? We could go miles and miles from Camberwell, and live in a caravan in a wood, and pick berries, and catch rabbits, and kiss, and kiss… Shall we do it?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘When shall we go?’

  ‘Tomorrow. I’ll pack a spotted handkerchief. I’ll tie it to the end of a stick.’

  ‘I’ll bring my tambourine, and a scarf for my head. We won’t need anything else, not shoes or stockings or money, or anything.’

  And in the days that followed they spent an absurd amount of time debating the route they would take, and the colours of the caravan they’d have, the style of the curtains that Lilian would sew for it; even the name of the pony that would pull it.

  Then, all at once, July was nearly over, and they had been lovers for almost a month. Frances had barely left Camberwell in all that time. She’d let slip the trips into Town, she had neglected Christina; she’d sent her a picture postcard, that was all – a boring view of Champion Hill, cows grazing in a meadow – to say that she was busy and would visit soon. But she hadn’t visited. She was nervous about it, she realised. She felt a sort of squeamishness about revealing the affair.

  But she longed to talk about it. The longing mounted, day by day. And who was there to tell, save Chrissy? She had to do it, or burst. One night there was rain, and the following morning was cooler. It seemed a sort of sign. She saw to her chores, had lunch with her mother, then took a bus to Oxford Circus.

  A moment after she had made the turn on to Clipstone Street she caught sight of Christina herself, a hundred yards ahead of her, just emerging from her building and setting off in the direction of the Tottenham Court Road. She was hatless, and dressed in one of her creased paisley frocks, with a short green velvet jacket over the top; under her arm she had what looked like a brown-paper parcel. She hadn’t spotted Frances, and her pace was brisk. Frances hurried after her, but the distance between them narrowed only gradually; it wasn’t until Christina paused at a crossing on the Tottenham Court Road itself that she was able to tap her on the shoulder.

  ‘You’re Christina Lucas,’ she said breathlessly, ‘and I claim my ten shillings!’

  Christina turned, startled, blinking. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? I’d begun to think you must be dead. Where on earth have you been?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Chrissy. The month has run clean away from me.’

  ‘Well, I can’t give you tea, or anything like that. I’ve this package to deliver.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been trailing after you for the past ten minutes. What a pace you set! Where are you headed?’

  ‘To Clerkenwell.’

  ‘To your newspaper people? Well, I’ll go along with you. May I? Look, here’s our chance.’

  A policeman had put up his white-gloved hand. Frances offered her elbow, and Christina caught hold of it; they crossed the road and went on, arm in arm, with matching strides. The day had the odd glamour that a grey day can have in the middle of a heat-wave. The smells were tart London ones: petrol, soot, manure, asphalt. There were still pools of rainwater in the dips of the pavement, and once or twice Christina steadied herself against Frances’s arm in order to hop across them. Aside from that, her grip was light. She seemed slim, almost bird-like, in comparison with Lilian. ‘How little you are,’ Frances said once. ‘There’s nothing to you, I’d forgotten. Let me carry that parcel for you.’

  ‘Carry my parcel? Don’t be absurd.’

  They zig-zagged their way through the Bloomsbury streets, crossing the garden at Russell Square, losing themselves for a while in a maze of warehouses east o
f the Gray’s Inn Road; then Christina found a landmark and regained her sense of direction, and fifteen minutes later they made a turn into a dilapidated Georgian square. At the bottom of a set of area steps a door was propped open; the dim old kitchen beyond had been turned into an untidy office, while in the scullery to which it led a man in his shirt-sleeves could just be glimpsed, feeding paper in and out of a noisy treadle printing-press. Another man came to greet Christina and receive her package; Frances hung back, watching, while its contents were discussed. The man was youngish, with an Oxford voice, and had the haunted sort of looks that, if she hadn’t known better, she would have guessed he had got in the trenches. But he had been an objector, she remembered Chrissy having told her – one of the first, when it was hardest – and his health had been broken, not in France, but in an English prison.

  The small errand was soon concluded. She and Christina climbed the steps, and, ‘Where shall we make for next?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t you have to hurry home?’

  ‘Not really. Let’s wander further. I – well, I’d like the chance to talk.’

  So they set off again, heading south by the sun, but taking turns more or less at random. The route grew steadily more shabby, but became fascinating too, a mixture of little businesses – leather works, sanitary works, glass merchants, rag-and-bone men – and street after street of elderly houses, some that had once been grand and were now let as sad-looking rooms, others that had never been grand in the first place and were all but derelict. They paused at a patch of waste ground, possibly the result of a Zeppelin raid: it gave a view of a sprawling, weather-boarded building with a jutting upper storey that must have been there, they decided, for three hundred years, since before the Great Fire.

  By the time they had hurried through the stink of Smithfield Market, crossed Newgate Street, and were peering up at the gold figure on the dome of the Old Bailey, Christina had begun to limp. She had the remains of a corn, she said, that was giving her trouble. The limp grew worse around the start of Fleet Street, so they turned into an alley, and in the shadow of some meeting-house or chapel they found a small railed yard with three or four ancient tombs in it; they sat down to rest among the blurry inscriptions. The traffic sounds were muted here. On the other side of the railings men went by: clerks, errand-boys, even a couple of barristers in wigs and gowns. But the yard was a gloomy one, and, seeing that the men paid no attention to Christina and her, Frances got out her tobacco and papers and discreetly rolled a couple of cigarettes.

  Christina yawned as the match was struck. She took a single puff, then let herself droop sideways, resting her head on Frances’s shoulder.

  ‘What tired old ladies we’ve become! And to think how far you used to make me walk. What a tyrant you were. Do you remember you wanted us to walk down every street in London? I still have the little atlas we kept, full of our serious notes. We didn’t get very far, did we? Shall we start it again?’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  ‘An hour or two, one afternoon a week. We’d cover the city by about – oh, 1955.’

  The words dissolved: she was yawning again. Frances spoke to the top of her head. ‘Dear me, how elderly you sound.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Christina, patting her mouth. ‘I’m a tired old lady.’ She added, in a different tone, almost a sly one: ‘What with turning five-and-twenty, and all…’

  She twisted as she spoke, to look up into Frances’s face. Frances closed her eyes. ‘Oh, Chrissy. It’s the end of July. I forgot your birthday.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Which day was it?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘Tuesday. So it was. I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me?’

  Christina settled her head more comfortably. ‘I suppose I must. I had a nice day, anyhow. I went to Kew Gardens with another friend. I have heaps of other friends, you know.’

  ‘I should have liked to send a greeting.’

  ‘Yes, I did rather expect one.’

  ‘I’ve been… busy.’

  ‘So you said, on your charming postcard.’

  ‘Something’s happened, you see, at home. I —’

  But Christina wasn’t really listening. Her cigarette had gone out, and she plucked Frances’s from her fingers in order to re-light it. ‘Something’s happened?’ she said as she did it. ‘On Champion Hill? What, have you found some terrific new brand of floor polish?’

  ‘Not floor polish —’

  ‘Moth balls?’

  ‘— Love.’

  They had both spoken at once, so it took Christina a fraction of a second to absorb the word. When she did, she straightened up, and answered, in a not-quite-natural way, ‘Love! Good gracious! But, who with?’ Handing back the cigarette she added, as a joke, ‘Not Lil, the lodger?’

  Frances watched another clerkish man appear beyond the railings. ‘Yes, in fact,’ she said quietly, when he had gone by.

  Christina’s smile faded. ‘You don’t mean it, Frances.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘But – wait a bit. Wait a bit. I had no idea you so much as admired her.’

  ‘Neither had I, until about six weeks ago. Or, maybe I had. I don’t know. It’s all been such a whirlwind.’

  ‘But – oh, Frances, you haven’t declared yourself? I’d advise against it, really I would.’

  ‘Declared myself?’ said Frances. ‘Oh, but we’re miles past that.’

  ‘You don’t mean the two of you have embarked on some sort of… intrigue?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With her husband in the house? Does he know?’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t.’

  ‘How long has the thing been going on?’

  ‘Not quite a month. That sounds no time at all, I know. But it feels longer than that. Every day we slip a bit further into it. And we were in it already, I think. Even Lilian was. We were in it up to our knees, before we’d even – Well. Now it’s up to our necks.’

  ‘But how do you contrive it? When do you see each other?’

  ‘Whenever we can. We don’t take risks. We’re not stupid. But in some ways, nothing’s changed. We’d somehow got into the habit of spending time together almost in secret. It’s what we do with the time that’s changed.’

  She had been speaking slightly sheepishly up until now. But the suggestion of a smirk must have crept into her features, because Christina, tutting, said, ‘Yes, well, I don’t want the details, thanks. Honestly, I don’t know what to say. I’d always supposed this Mrs Barber a perfect man’s woman.’

  ‘So had I. So had she.’

  ‘And so, I presume, had her husband. And your mother hasn’t tumbled to it? You think you can keep it from her, in that house?’

  ‘But you forget,’ said Frances, ‘what an old hand I am at keeping things from my mother. I don’t mean just about – about you and me. I mean things like – oh, stuffing kippers into my handbag, so as to keep up the idea that I don’t carry my own parcels. I mean going about with holes in my petticoats so that hers might be less ragged. You think I’m out to punish her, don’t you, by making a martyr of myself? You don’t know the countless little lies I tell for keeping the worst of our situation from her. But when I’m with Lilian I feel honest. I feel like a knot that’s been unpicked. Or as if all my angles have been rubbed smooth.’

  Christina was gazing at her now with a look of perplexity. ‘And it’s really Love? Upper case?’

  ‘Oh, Chrissy, I don’t know what else to call it.’

  ‘But what can happen? Where can it lead? Do you expect her to abandon her husband for you?’

  ‘I don’t expect anything. Neither of us does. We aren’t looking ahead. The present’s too thrilling.’

  That made Christina’s expression harden. ‘You aren’t looking ahead. You’re like everyone else just now, then.’

  ‘Oh, well, and what if I am?’ said Frances. ‘I’m keeping step with the world for a change. Will it kill me? And there’s so much antagonism eve
rywhere, so much stress and chafe. Lilian and I – we can’t let this bit of love go by. We just can’t.’

  Her voice had thickened with an emotion that surprised even herself, and in the pause that followed she guessed that she had been too frank, or over-sentimental. But Christina turned away from her to take a final puff on her cigarette, and then to grind the cigarette out on one of the smooth old stones beneath their feet. And what she said, as she did it, was, ‘Well, lucky Mrs Barber.’

  It was plain what she meant, though they hadn’t discussed it in years. Frances was silent for a moment, then spoke in a murmur.

  ‘I let you down, Chrissy.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve waited all this time to hear you admit it.’

  ‘But I lost more than you did.’

  ‘You did? How’s that?’

  ‘Well, how do you think? You got our life, but with Stevie in it.’

  Christina flicked a speck of ash from her sleeve. ‘Yes, well,’ she said grudgingly, ‘I’d prefer to have had it with you.’

  The admission astonished Frances. She said, ‘You don’t mean that? I’d supposed you were happy with Stevie.’

  Christina made a face. ‘I am. You needn’t grow conceited. I wouldn’t swap her for you now. And, really, Frances, you’re such a queer combination of things – so conservative one minute, so reckless the next – it would have driven me to tears to live with you. I think I should have finished by wanting to throttle you! It’s simply that – well, I’d like to have had the chance to find out. And most of all,’ she added, ‘I’d have liked it if, when faced with a choice between me and a life of buns and parish bazaars and games of two-handed patience with your mother, you had chosen me. But you didn’t, so there’s an end of it.’