The Paying Guests

  And the cigarette changed her, somehow. Some of her girlishness fell away. She sat back after the first puff, picking a strand of tobacco from her lip with a casual, practised gesture, and, ‘Len ought to see us now,’ she said. ‘He’s like your mother, Miss Wray, and doesn’t really want me smoking. But then, men never do want women to do the things they want to do themselves, have you noticed?’

  She had spoken conventionally. But Frances, looking for something that would serve as an ashtray, finally pulling across a saucer, said, ‘Things like voting, you mean? Standing for Parliament? No, I hadn’t noticed that at all. Let’s see, what else? Managing industries? Working whilst married? Suing for divorce? Stop me if I become boring.’

  Mrs Barber laughed. The laughter was mixed with the smoke from her cigarette: it seemed to come visibly out of her pursed, plump mouth, and was so warm, so real, so unlike her usual automatic tittering, that Frances felt an odd thrill of triumph at having called it into life.

  Once it had faded, however, they sat without speaking, in a silence broken only by soft kitchen noises, the tick of the clock, the stir of coals in the stove, the faintly musical drip of water in the scullery sink. They caught one another’s eye. Frances said, ‘I liked meeting your family today.’

  Mrs Barber regarded her warily. ‘It’s nice of you to say so.’

  ‘I’m not saying it to be nice. I don’t say things I don’t mean.’

  ‘I was worried about you meeting them. You, and your mother.’

  ‘You were? Why?’

  ‘Well… Len said you’d think them common.’

  Frances, remembering watching the visitors go from the drawing-room window, felt a smudge of guilt. She felt a smudge of something else, something darker, towards Mr Barber. Tapping ash into the saucer, she said firmly, ‘I’m very glad they came. I specially liked your mother. – Now, why do you look like that?’

  Mrs Barber had sagged slightly. ‘Only that, well, people do like her. And the fact is, she plays up to it. She must always be a character, my mother. Some of the things she said this afternoon! I don’t know what Mrs Wray must have thought. And then, she will go about in those cheap old things of hers, when she has plenty of money, now, to buy better.’ She tapped ash from her own cigarette, looking guilty. ‘I oughtn’t to be so unkind, ought I? She’s had such a bad time of it, one way and another. We were – We were terribly poor, you know, when I was young, after my father died and before my mother married Mr Viney. I’m ashamed to tell you how poor. My mother worked too hard. That’s why her back’s so bad. And you saw her legs?’

  Frances grimaced. ‘Can nothing be done?’

  ‘Oh, she won’t do what the doctor tells her. And then, Mr Viney will never let her rest. She must be up and down doing things for him every hour of the day and night. He looks at a woman sitting idle and sees a knife going to rust, I think.’ She turned her head. The clock was chiming. ‘Is that five, already? Len’ll be back any minute. He’s been over at his parents’. I ought to go and tidy up. His mother keeps their house like a pin.’

  She spoke with a slight yawn, however, and remained in her chair, plainly enjoying her cigarette, evidently glad to be talking so freely. She had quite let slip the air she’d sometimes had with Frances in the past, of being on her best behaviour. She put an elbow on the table and leaned with her chin on her hand, the flesh of her arm looking rounded, solid, smooth. There were no angles to her at all, thought Frances with envy. She was all warm colour and curve. How well she filled her own skin! She might have been poured generously into it, like treacle.

  Now she was smiling, savouring the silence. ‘Isn’t it lovely and quiet here? I never knew a house be so quiet; at least, I never knew a quiet like this one. It’s like velvet. When it was quiet at Cheveney Avenue – Len’s parents’ – it used to make me want to scream. They’re not at all alike, you see, his side and mine.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No! My sisters and I were all brought up Catholic like our father. Not that we ever go to mass any more or anything like that. But, well, that sort of thing sticks. Len’s parents think me a heathen. They’re chapel people. And his cousin was in the Black and Tans. – Len’s not like that,’ she added hurriedly, seeing Frances’s expression. ‘But his parents and his brothers – Oh, they’ve no sense of art, or life, or anything. If you so much as open a book in front of them you get called grand. Here, you can be calm, and the house seems to like it. And nobody needs to know what you’re doing! Not like the houses I grew up in. You knew it if the neighbours stirred their tea in some of those. Oh, we lived in some awful places, Miss Wray. We lived in a house that was haunted, once.’

  Frances supposed she was joking. ‘Haunted? By whom, or what?’

  ‘By an old, old man with a long white beard. He wasn’t misty like a ghost in a book; he was solid, like a real person. I saw him twice, coming down the stairs. Vera and I both saw him.’

  She wasn’t joking at all. Frances frowned. ‘Weren’t you frightened?’

  ‘Yes, but he never hurt anybody. We found out about him from the neighbours. He had lived in the house years before, and his wife had died, and he’d wasted away through missing her. They said he went up and down the stairs looking for her, night after night. Sometimes I wonder if he’s still there. It’s sad to think he might be, isn’t it, when all he wanted was to be with her.’

  Frances’s cigarette had gone out. She relit it and didn’t answer. She was marvelling at Mrs Barber’s candour, her simplicity, her lack of self-consciousness – whatever quality it was, anyhow, that allowed her to say such a thing aloud, with such obvious sincerity. She knew that she herself would find it as hard to confess to an almost-stranger that she had seen a ghost as to admit to believing in elves and fairies.

  Which was why, of course, she realised, she never would see a ghost.

  She felt slightly dashed, suddenly. The feeling took her by surprise. She fiddled with the box of matches, setting it on one end and then on another. And when she raised her eyes she found that Mrs Barber was watching her, her brows drawn together in an expression of concern.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve said something to upset you, Miss Wray.’

  Frances shook her head, smiled. ‘No.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have been talking about ghosts and unhappy things on a day like today.’

  ‘A day like today?’ said Frances. Then: ‘You mean, because of my father? Oh, no. No, you mustn’t think that. Think it about my brothers, if you like. I miss them every day of my life. But as for my father —’ She tossed the matches down. ‘My father, Mrs Barber, was a nuisance when he was alive, he made a nuisance of himself by dying, and he’s managed to go on being a nuisance ever since.’

  Mrs Barber said, ‘Oh. I – I’m sorry.’

  They were plunged back into silence. Frances thought of her reticent mother, just across the hall. But again the stillness was tempered by those gentle kitchen sounds, the tumble of coals, the scullery music. And Mrs Barber had spoken freely… She found she had an urge to meet the candour, repay it with something of her own. She took a long draw on her cigarette, and went on in a lower tone.

  ‘It’s simply that my father and I – we never got along. He had old-fashioned ideas about women, about daughters. I was a great trial to him, as perhaps you can imagine. We argued about everything, with my poor mother as referee. Most of all we argued about the War, which he saw as some sort of Great Adventure, while I – Oh, I loathed it, right from the start. My elder brother, John Arthur, the gentlest creature in the world, he more or less bullied into enlisting; I shall never forgive him for that. Noel, my other brother, went in practically as a schoolboy, and when he was killed my father’s response was to have a series of “heart attacks” – to take to an armchair, in other words, while my mother and I ran about after him like a pair of fools. He died a few months before the Armistice, not of a heart attack after all, but of an apoplexy, brought on by reading something he disagreed with in The
Times. After his death —’ Her tone became rueful. ‘Well, it must be obvious to you and your husband, Mrs Barber, that my mother and I aren’t as well off as we might be. It turned out that my father had been putting the family money into one bad speculation after another; he’d left a pile of debts behind him that we’re still paying off and – Oh.’ She stubbed out her cigarette, unable to be still. ‘Look, you mustn’t let me talk about him! It isn’t fair of me. He wasn’t a bad man. He was a blusterer and a coward; but we’re all cowardly sometimes. I’ve got into the habit of hating him, but it’s a horrible habit, I know. The truth is, the most hateful thing my father ever did to me was to die. I – I’d had plans, you see, while he was alive. I’d had terrific plans —’

  She paused, or faltered; then drew herself up. ‘Well, my father always did say that my plans would come to nothing. He’d certainly smile if he could see me now, still here, on Champion Hill. Like your ghost!’

  She smiled, herself. But Mrs Barber did not smile back. Her gaze was serious, dark, kind. ‘What sort of plans did you have, Miss Wray?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. To change the world! To put things right! To – I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘It was a different time, then. A serious time. A passionate time. But an innocent time, it seems to me now. One believed in… transformation. One looked ahead to the end of the War and felt that nothing could ever be the same. Nothing is the same, is it? But in such disappointing ways. And then, the fact is, I had had – There had been someone – a sort of proposal —’

  But now she caught sight of those rings on Mrs Barber’s finger: the wedding-band, the little diamonds. She said, ‘Forgive me, Mrs Barber. I don’t mean to be mysterious. I don’t mean to be maudlin, either. All I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that this life, the life I have now, it isn’t —’ It isn’t the life I was meant to have. It isn’t the life I want! ‘It isn’t the life I thought I would have,’ she finished.

  She seemed to herself to have been very nearly raving. She felt as exposed and as foolish as if she had inadvertently given a glimpse of her bare backside. But Mrs Barber nodded, then dropped her gaze in her delicate way – as if, impossibly, she understood it all. And when she spoke at last, what she said was, ‘It must be funny for you and your mother, having Len and me here.’

  ‘Oh, now,’ said Frances, ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘No, I know you didn’t. But it must be funny all the same. I like this house so much. I wanted to live in it the minute I saw it. But it must be awfully strange for you to see me and Len here; as if we’d gone helping ourselves to your clothes, and were wearing them all the wrong way.’

  She reached to the saucer as she spoke, tucking in her chin, self-conscious, the wooden beads of her necklace gently nudging at one another. Frances, watching the crown of her head, saw a fingertip-sized spot of scalp appear, lard-white against the glossy dark hairs that sprang from it.

  ‘What a thoroughly nice woman you are, Mrs Barber,’ she said.

  That made Mrs Barber look up with a smile of surprise. But she winced, too. ‘Oh, don’t say that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, because some day you’re sure to find out that it isn’t true, and then you’ll be disappointed in me.’

  Frances shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine it. But now I like you more than ever! Shall we be friends?’

  Mrs Barber laughed. ‘I hope so, yes.’

  And that was all it took. They smiled at each other across the table, and some sort of shift occurred between them. There was a quickening, a livening – Frances could think of nothing to compare it with save some culinary process. It was like the white of an egg growing pearly in hot water, a milk sauce thickening in the pan. It was as subtle yet as tangible as that. Did Mrs Barber feel it? She must have. Her smile grew fixed for a second, a touch of uncertainty entering her gaze. But the frown came, and was gone. She lowered her eyes, and laughed again.

  And as she did it there was a sound in the hall, the rattle of the front-door latch. Her husband was back from Peckham: the two of them realised it at the same time and their poses changed. Frances drew slightly back from the table. Mrs Barber put an arm across herself, making a prop with her wrist for the elbow of her other arm, and taking a puff of her cigarette. Frances saw her sisters in the gesture, and in the new tilt of her jaw. When she spoke, it was in a whisper; but her sisters were in the whisper, too.

  ‘Just listen to him creeping about!’ He was going softly across the hall. ‘He’s practically on tiptoe. He’s afraid my family are still here.’

  Frances answered in the same low tone. ‘Does he really dislike them?’

  ‘Oh, there’s no telling with him. No, he just pretends to, I think. It seems funnier to him that way.’

  They sat in silence in the shadowy room, oddly intimate for a moment as they listened to Mr Barber mount the stairs. Then, with a sigh, Mrs Barber began to get to her feet. ‘I’d better go up.’

  Frances watched her rise. ‘Had you?’

  ‘Thank you for my cigarette.’

  ‘You haven’t quite finished it.’

  ‘He’ll only come looking for me if I stay. He’ll make a joke of it, and it’s been so nice, and – No, I’d better go up.’

  Frances rose too. ‘Of course.’

  But she was sorry. She was thinking of the little alembic shift that had taken place a minute before. She was thinking of the honest way in which she had spoken – or, the almost-honest way – a way, anyhow, that was nearer honesty than any way she felt that she had spoken, to anyone, in years.

  She got as far as the kitchen door, her hand extended to draw it open; then she turned back.

  ‘Listen, Mrs Barber. Why don’t you and I do something together some time? Let’s – I don’t know – take a walk, or something. Just locally, I mean. One afternoon next week? Tuesday? – Wait, Tuesday won’t do. Wednesday, then? My mother’s abandoning me that day; I’ll be glad of the company. What do you say?’

  The idea had come from nowhere. Was it all right? she wondered at once. Could a woman like her ask a thing like that, of a woman like Mrs Barber? Did it make her sound odd, sound lonely, sound a bit of a leech?

  Mrs Barber looked slightly thrown. But it seemed she was flattered, that was all; Frances hadn’t thought of that. With a blush, she said, ‘That’s kind of you, Miss Wray. Yes, I’d like to. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Wednesday afternoon?’ She blinked, considering; then grew more decided, her chin rising, her blush fading. ‘Yes, I’d like to very much.’

  Again, they smiled at each other – though without the alchemy of before. Frances opened the door, and Mrs Barber nodded and was gone. There was the pat of her slippers in the hall and on the treads of the stairs, followed by the sound of her husband’s voice as they greeted each other up on the landing. Frances, standing in the open doorway, listened shamelessly this time; but there was nothing to hear but murmurs.

  4

  And what a funny thing it was to feel excited about, she thought later. She and Mrs Barber settled on their destination – Ruskin Park, just down the hill, the most ordinary, small, unthrilling, neat and tidy place, with flower-beds and tennis courts and a stand for the band on Sundays. But she was excited about it, she realised; and she had the feeling, as the days passed, that Mrs Barber was excited about it too. A picnic tea, they decided, would make the event jollier, so on the Wednesday morning they spent time in their separate kitchens, putting together a few bits of food. And when she was dressing to leave the house, Frances found herself taking trouble over her outfit, rejecting a dull skirt and blouse in favour of the smart grey linen tunic she generally saved for her trips into Town, then wasting minute after minute trying out different hat-pins – amber, garnet, turquoise, pearl – in an effort to liven up her old felt hat.

  Had Mrs Barber taken trouble? It was difficult to say, for she took pains over her outfit ever
y day of the week. Frances, joining her on the landing, found her in her usual combination of warm colours and comfortable lines, a violet frock, pink stockings, grey suede shoes, lace gloves, a hat of the snug modern variety that didn’t require a pin at all: she wore it pulled down nearly to her dark eyelashes. But around her wrist was the tasselled silk cord of something – Frances thought it a bag, until they moved down the stairs together; then she saw that it was a red paper parasol. And that made her think that Mrs Barber had taken trouble after all, for though the weather was sunny it wasn’t so sunny as all that; the parasol was simply a flourish, to lend a gaiety to the occasion. They might have been heading for the sea-front. Suddenly, she wished they were. Hastings, Brighton – why hadn’t she thought of it? She ought to have been more ambitious. Once they had left the house it took only a few minutes to reach the gates of the park. They might as well have stayed in the back garden! The sounds of trams and motor-cars barely faded once they were inside.

  Still, it was nice to be among the trees, on a path of hard earth, rather than on the dusty pavement. And a stretch of long grass had bluebells in it: Mrs Barber paused to look at them, stooping, taking off a glove, running a hand across the drowsy-looking stems.

  The bluebells led them to an odd sort of ruin: a pillared portico, standing alone, wound about with ivy. The park had been put together from the grounds of several large houses when Frances was a child, and she could remember very clearly the house at this end, sitting in a wilderness of bramble, grand and derelict as a mad old duchess. She had once, for a dare, led Noel into its garden, and had been punished for it later – spanked on the back of her legs with a slipper – when he had had nightmares. Now the house, like Noel himself, was gone; there were only a few stranded details to recall it and its neighbours; she thought it sad, sometimes. The park seemed self-conscious, pretending. On wintry days, in particular, the place could be depressing.