The Paying Guests

  She took her time over it, doing all she could to press her mood into some more manageable shape. She supposed that Lilian would go on upstairs without her. But when she returned to the hall Lilian was still standing there, gazing upward but hesitating about starting the climb. ‘I just need to get my courage up,’ she said. ‘I’ve been dreading coming back. Will you – Will you go up ahead of me?’

  Again Frances said nothing, but climbed the stairs at an ordinary pace, then stood in silence on the landing while Lilian cautiously followed.

  They went into the sitting-room first. Lilian set down the case but made no move to take off her hat and coat. Instead she stood looking around like a wondering stranger.

  ‘It feels so long since I was here. It’s only a month. But everything seems different. Everything looks wrong. All these things. So many things… And everything with dust on it already.’ She had gone to the cold fireplace and was gazing at the clutter on the mantelpiece, the elephants, the tambourine, the caravan, all of it dulled, the bright surfaces clouded as if by gusts of sour breath.

  Then she noticed the substantial pile of letters that had accumulated in her absence. She picked them up, and Frances said awkwardly, ‘I didn’t know what to do with them, whether to take them to you at your mother’s, or – I didn’t know when you’d be coming back.’

  Lilian was going through the bundle with a look of dismay. ‘Most of them are for Len.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I never thought of ordinary things like post still coming for him. But these others – I’ve had letters like these at Walworth. They’re from people who’ve read about me in the papers; they say all sorts of things. Unkind things, sometimes. I don’t open them any more.’

  ‘Leave them, then,’ said Frances. ‘I’ll burn them.’

  She had been speaking flatly all this time, but Lilian didn’t appear to notice. She put the letters down, then stood like a stranger again. She seemed not to know what to do with herself. Frances offered to make her tea, but, no, she didn’t want that… Finally she closed her eyes tight and gave a shake of her head. ‘Oh, I knew if I came back I’d start to feel like this! While I’m at my mother’s it doesn’t seem real. About Len, I mean. But here, I’m still wondering where he is.’ She looked at Frances. ‘Aren’t you? I’m still expecting him to walk through the door. Then I have to remember that even if he did come – well, he’d have come from her, wouldn’t he? He’d been with her that night, the night it all happened. And, do you remember? When he thought I was seeing another man, he – he laughed. Just for a second, before he got angry. As if it was funny. I couldn’t think why he laughed like that. I know now. I —’

  ‘Are you here,’ said Frances, ‘simply to grouse about your husband? What with one thing and another, I’m not sure I’m quite in the mood for it today.’

  She didn’t know where the comment had come from. It seemed to have said itself. She couldn’t remember ever before having used the word grouse like that; it was much more the sort of thing that Leonard would have said. Startled, she and Lilian looked at each other; but the moment for apology came, then went. Lilian put down her head, stepped past Frances for her suitcase, and carried it out of the sitting-room and into the room next door.

  It was the first time that they had been properly alone together, and they were wasting it, Frances thought in despair; it was all grating, discordant. She followed Lilian as far as the landing, looked in at her through the bedroom doorway. She had put the suitcase on the bed and removed her hat and coat at last, but removed them only so that she could go more freely to the wardrobe and the chest of drawers and pull out the things she needed.

  Frances thought back to that day in the summer when she had watched her packing this same suitcase for her trip to Hastings. They had gone rinking that day. Rinking! It seemed too quaint and wholesome to be true. She remembered the speed, the laughter, the holding of hands. Afterwards, they had gone to the park. It’s the only real thing, Lilian had said.

  She was working quickly now, seeming to be taking clothes at random, and the small case was already almost full. Frances watched her fit in another nightdress, another pair of shoes. ‘You surely don’t mean to carry all that to Walworth?’ she said, as Lilian drew over the case’s lid and tried to press it shut.

  Lilian answered tightly, without looking up. ‘I’ll take a tram. I’m all right, now. I’m not ill like I was before.’

  ‘And you really have to take quite so much?’

  ‘It’s easier to just take everything. We don’t know what’s going to happen, do we? I don’t know what I’ll need.’

  Frances didn’t answer that. But after another moment of watching the struggle with the suitcase she moved forward to help, leaning her weight on the springy lid so that the latches could be clicked home. Lilian drew the case from the bed and, caught out by the weight of it, set it down with a thump. But, ‘I can manage,’ she insisted, still without meeting Frances’s eye, as Frances automatically reached to take it. ‘I told you, I’m all right now.’ She added, after a second, in a different, more hesitant tone, ‘I’ve something for you, though.’

  She picked up her handbag and drew out an envelope. She put it into Frances’s hand, and Frances heard the chink of coins. ‘What’s this?’

  She answered self-consciously. ‘It’s my rent. Did you think I had forgotten? There’s nearly twelve pounds there, enough for two months. Is that all right?’

  And once again the moment had another moment inside it: that time, back in April, when they were still strangers to each other and Lilian had shyly held out her first paper packet of rent. It was as though their life, thought Frances, were being mercilessly spooled back on to a reel; or as if, one by one, the stitches that had fastened them together were being unpicked.

  The thought upset her. She tried to give the envelope back. ‘I can’t take this, Lilian. You can’t pay rent for rooms you aren’t living in.’

  ‘Please take it. It’s yours. Yours and your mother’s.’

  ‘I’d far rather you kept it.’

  ‘Don’t you need the money?’

  ‘Well, yes. But so do you, don’t you?’

  Lilian looked more self-conscious than ever. She said, ‘I saw a solicitor yesterday. He wrote to me about Len’s money. The money from his insurance, I mean. He gave me a cheque. – Oh, please don’t do that.’ Frances had gone close to her, to stuff the envelope back into her bag. She got it out again and attempted to return it to Frances’s hand.

  Frances made fists, lifted her arms. ‘I don’t want it.’ They dodged and scuffled, absurdly.

  ‘Just take it, Frances.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘No! I hate that money!’

  ‘Well, I hate it too!’ said Lilian. She had flung the envelope on to the bed; her face was patched with colour. ‘How do you think it makes me feel? Have you thought about that? You know when Len took the policy out. It was right after that night in July, that night when the boy hit him. He must have thought it all through. He must have thought that the boy really meant it – that he might go after him again. He must have really thought he might die! But even then, even thinking that – well, that didn’t keep him from seeing her, did it? He thought enough of me to get me that five hundred pounds. But he thought more of her.’

  ‘God!’ said Frances, unable to bear it. ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘I don’t know! But I do. I do.’

  ‘You used to say that you didn’t even love him. You were planning to leave him, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but —’

  ‘Weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes! Don’t bully me, Frances. You always bully me. I can’t explain it. I hate him for wanting her. I know he was only doing with her what I was doing with you, but I hate him for it. And I hate her, too. I never wanted his money. You say you don’t want it either, but —’ With a bruised, stubborn expression she retrieved the envelope and set it on the che
st of drawers. ‘I’ll leave it here, and you can take it or forget about it as you like.’

  And then she picked up her coat. Watching her slide an arm into its sleeve, Frances said, ‘You’re going right now then, are you?’ She loathed the sound of her own voice. ‘We haven’t even talked about the case.’

  Lilian let the coat fall slightly. ‘There’s nothing to say, is there? We’re just going to wait, we said. You haven’t changed your mind?’

  ‘No, I haven’t changed my mind.’

  ‘You wouldn’t change it and not tell me?’

  ‘Well, of course I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, don’t say it like that! I don’t know what’s in your head any more. You feel so far away from me.’

  ‘All the way between here and Walworth.’

  ‘Oh, now you’re not being fair! You know why it is I’m staying there. It makes the other things easier. We’ve still got men from the newspapers coming. Some of them wait outside, with cameras. We’ve still got policemen coming, too. You wouldn’t rather they all came here?’

  Frances was silent for a moment. Then, ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘No, I wouldn’t rather that.’

  Lilian’s tone softened. ‘Being apart for a while – it’s just something we have to bear. It’s hard, now. Everything’s hard. But it’ll seem small afterwards. Won’t it? If everything comes right?’

  Frances was silent again, but nodded. In a deliberate sort of way, Lilian put down the coat and came to her, and they embraced.

  But there was no match between them, Frances thought. There was no fit, no comfort. She stood rigid, hating it, then began to move out of Lilian’s arms.

  But, as she edged away, Lilian caught hold of her. ‘Frances —’ Her heart had quickened its pace: Frances could feel the thud of it. She bowed her head to Frances’s shoulder, and when she spoke, the race of her heart was in her voice. ‘Frances, tell me it’ll be all right between us when all this is finished. Tell me it’ll be how it used to be. I know you hate me for what I did, and I know you think I’m weak. I’m trying hard not to be weak any more. But let me be weak for just one minute, now. Tell me nothing will have changed, that I haven’t ruined it. I get so frightened. I don’t mean just about the boy. That’s bad enough. But I think I could bear it better if I knew, if I thought – It was all so clear, everything we planned to do. It was all so wonderful. Now it’s like there’s a curtain across it. I don’t know what’s going to be there when the curtain’s pulled back. I don’t know what you’re thinking.’

  She drew back her head on the last words, and looked into Frances’s eyes. Their faces were inches apart; Frances caught the scent of her lipstick and powder, felt the heat and stir of her lips. It was as impossible not to kiss her as not to blink, not to breathe. But when their mouths came together they did so drily and uneasily, like the meeting mouths of strangers, so that it seemed to Frances for a moment that the kiss would be worse than no kiss at all – would be like an unkiss, an undoing.

  But then she felt the shy, tentative pressure of Lilian’s tongue against hers: just the tip of a tongue, warm and familiar against hers. She met it with a pressure of her own, put up a hand to Lilian’s face; and all at once the kiss had changed, was wet, open, intimate. The sudden flooding relief of it made them both grow weak. They broke the kiss to clutch at each other, to pull each other closer. ‘Oh, I love you! I love you!’ said Lilian, her words coming in a hot rush against Frances’s ear, on the breath that was being squeezed out of her.

  They kissed again, more hectically than before. Where their breasts and hips met it was like the pushing of something through skin, a bursting back into life, almost painful. But there were too many bulky layers of fabric between them. Still kissing, they began to fret and tug at each other’s clothing. Frances worked her hands under Lilian’s blouse, got hold of the waistband of her skirt. She fumbled for a moment with hooks and a button, then gave up and reached lower, catching at the skirt itself, hauling it high, handful by handful, plucking at it and bunching it, until her fingers met the silk beneath, then found the flesh beneath that.

  They were still on their feet, swaying and ungainly. She put out a foot to kick closed the door and they almost stumbled. Lilian’s arms were around her, her hands chill on a strip of bare skin; only when she had brought her own hand around Lilian’s thigh and her fingers were slipping and rubbing between Lilian’s legs did Lilian pull away from her slightly, to catch her breath, to dip her head, and to reach, blindly, behind her – wanting the wall or the bedstead, something to get hold of to give her balance. Finding nothing, she gradually surrendered herself to the instability of the pose, letting her arms fall, letting Frances brace and support her. She lifted her head, that was all; as Frances’s hand moved faster, as the muscles of her face began to tense, she lifted her head and held Frances’s gaze – as if wanting Frances to see, as if determined for her to see, that there was nothing in the way of the two of them, nothing between them but skin.

  But then – what happened? Something happened, something like the change that had come before; but a wrong thing, this time, a dimming, a draining away. Lilian closed her eyes after all. She held her breath, the lines of her face pulled tighter, the colour mounted in her cheeks; but the tension led nowhere, and with the loss of urgency their pose began to feel awkward, odd. Frances’s arms and legs were aching now, the strain building like a burn in her muscles. She altered her stance, shifted her weight, trying to keep up the rhythm of her hand. Now Lilian’s face was clenched. Dismayed, Frances could see that she was having to will the thing to its crisis. Her own fingers felt blind, suddenly. She quickened the slide of them and, ‘What shall I do?’ she asked. ‘Lilian? How shall I do it?’ But the question, the admission, only made her more self-conscious. The ease and familiarity were gone. She became aware that she was chafing at cooling, sticky, unenchanted flesh; abashed, she let her hand slow.

  And after another few seconds of it, Lilian reached to still her fingers. They stood like that, with bowed heads, drooping shoulders, while their breathing steadied and the race of their hearts subsided.

  Even then it might have been all right. ‘Come and lie down with me,’ Lilian said softly. She led Frances to the bed; they lay with their heads on a single pillow, drew the counterpane over each other so that they shouldn’t get cold, just as they’d done when they were lovers. The pillow smelled faintly of Leonard’s hair-oil. On the dusty bedside cabinet were his box of links and studs, his handkerchief, his public-library thriller racking up a fine; on the back of the bedroom door his dressing-gown still clung to Lilian’s kimono. But if one closed one’s eyes, thought Frances. If one forgot the fumble and failure of a few minutes before. If one forgot the blood, the electric panic, the police, the newspapers. If one made one’s mind a blank. Then couldn’t it be how it used to be, the two of them together, warm and true? It’s the only real thing. Couldn’t they let it be real again? Just for a moment?

  But, then, that boy, trapped in the machine… Already, her mind was lurching back into horrible life. She turned her head. She opened her eyes. And what she saw, over on the chest of drawers, was the envelope with twelve pounds in it.

  Don’t look at it, she told herself. Don’t think it. Say nothing. For God’s sake! But she couldn’t help it. The madness was rising in her again. She let out a horrid little sneering laugh, and in a voice that didn’t even sound like her own, she said, ‘I’m afraid you didn’t quite get your money’s worth today.’

  Lilian lifted her head from the pillow, her face creasing into a frown. ‘Money’s worth?’

  ‘Or have I misunderstood? Is the payment for something else entirely? Don’t worry, I won’t go to the police, if that’s what’s troubling you. The boy will stay nicely tucked up at Brixton.’

  Lilian held herself quite still for a moment. Then she jerked away, threw off the counterpane, got down from the bed. She turned her back to Frances as she straightened her skirt and blouse. Her hair was untidy, but she didn
’t pause to comb it; in a series of rigid, furious movements she found her hat, stepped into her shoes, pulled on her coat, stuffed her gloves into her handbag. Only when the strap of the bag was looped over her arm and she had leaned to pick up the suitcase did she turn back to Frances, who, all this time, had been watching from the bed.

  And what she said, coldly and levelly, was: ‘I’m sorry you aren’t as brave as you thought you were, Frances.’

  Frances stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘But don’t punish me because of it, and make out you’re doing it because of that boy. If I want punishing I’ll go to Inspector Kemp and get it for something I deserve.’

  She covered her eyes, and spoke less steadily. ‘Now you’ve made me be sharp with you, when all I came for, all I came for was —’ She dropped her hand. ‘I gave things up for you, Frances. I gave my baby up for you. I never asked for what we had. If I’d asked for something like that, don’t you think I’d have asked for it to be easier? Instead – No, get off me. Get away from me.’ Frances had jumped down from the bed and was reaching for her. She pushed her back. ‘Let me alone.’

  But Frances was panicking now. The madness had vanished, as completely as if pricked by a pin and exploded. ‘Lily, forgive me. Please. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I —’

  ‘Get off!’

  ‘I think – I think I’m losing my mind. The other night, I – Please, Lily.’ Lilian was at the door, had got it open. ‘Don’t go. Don’t leave me again. I don’t know why I said what I did. I didn’t mean it. I —’

  ‘Let me alone!’

  She had struck out properly this time. The blow caught Frances on the bone of the cheek and made her start back. She put a hand to the sting of it, and for a second the two of them faced each other, horrified at what they were doing, horrified at what the moment recalled; but part of their horror, Frances knew, was at their own helplessness, their own inability to do anything to the tangle they were in but make it pull tighter. ‘Don’t go,’ she said again. But it was too late. It was all too late. Lilian had already turned, was fleeing. In the silent house, her heels were noisy as gunshots as she went down.