The Paying Guests(109)

Lilian was wringing her fingers. ‘Well, say he’d never come home at all? Couldn’t we take him, lay him down somewhere?’

‘Take him out to the street? With people going by? How could we do that?’

‘But he didn’t come the street way. He came the garden way. Couldn’t we carry him out to the garden?’

‘You aren’t serious?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, I am. I’m just so afraid! If we could only get him outside. They’d have to say it was an accident then, even if they weren’t sure. Couldn’t we take him right out of the garden? Right out to the back lane? Someone will find him. It won’t be like hiding him. It won’t be like that. Please, Frances. Please.’

Christ, what a nightmare it was! What a worse-than-nightmare! Frances tugged her fingers free and put her hands to her face. What she could see were two paths, both of them dark, both of them terrible. To start down one of the paths she would have to run for the doctor, right now. He would look at Leonard’s body with its broken head, and then he would look at Lilian – Lilian like this, helpless and ill. There would be questions, tears, lies. Her mother would come home to a house in turmoil, to a policeman at the door —

It was the thought of that, bizarrely, rather than anything to do with Lilian, that made her begin to waver towards the other path. She gazed down at Leonard’s body. She went over to peer at that sickening wound. Could it be passed off as an accident? If they were to lie him in a certain way, place something beneath his head? Could they do it? Could they?

She said slowly, ‘We’d both have to carry him. I’d never manage it alone. You’d have to help me. Oh, this is madness! Even supposing – You haven’t the strength.’

Lilian was wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘I can do it.’

‘You’re too ill! God, I don’t know. I can’t think straight! And time’s going by.’ The minute hand had snuck forward again.

‘Can’t we just try?’ pleaded Lilian.

Frances looked at her. ‘Do you really mean it?’

But Lilian was already scrambling to her feet. ‘What will we need? Our shoes? What else? Tell me, Frances!’

Frances didn’t know what to do. She put her ear to Leonard’s chest again, just in case, by some miracle, there was some sign, some beat or flutter that had escaped her before… There was nothing. Even the heat seemed to be leaving him now. And his face, with its lustreless slits of eyes and pink, protruding tongue, looked more inhuman than ever.

She tried to think it all through. ‘We’ll have to keep the cushion against him. We’ll get blood everywhere, otherwise. We’ll have to bind it. Will that work? Oh, Christ, I don’t know! What can we use? One of his scarves? And I’ll need something to cover my clothes, an apron, or a towel, or —’

Her hands at her belly, Lilian darted away.

She seemed to return almost instantly, with her arms full of things. She dropped them on the floor at Frances’s feet: a gingham apron from the kitchen, a blue knitted scarf from the rack, a pair of dark shoes of her own, another pair, of Frances’s, that she had got from Frances’s bedroom. Frances stared at the tangle of it all in disbelief. Lilian picked up the apron and held it out to her.

‘Please, Frances. Let’s just try.’

So, with a feeling of unreality, Frances tied the apron on, rolled back her sleeves, stepped into the shoes; then, shuddering, she squatted and took hold of Leonard’s head. It lolled in her hands, as heavy and uncontrolled as a cabbage in a string bag, and as she tilted it to fasten the cushion in place, the water that she had poured into his mouth came spilling out.

At the same time, once his face was obscured by the scarf it was harder to believe that he was really dead. She got herself behind his shoulders and tried to ease him up from the floor, nervously certain that he was about to wriggle about, protest. But as soon as she’d worked her hands under his armpits and had heaved him a little way towards the door, she had to let him drop: he was as unwieldy as a sodden roll of carpet. She thought, That’s it. We can’t do it. The words came with a gush of relief. Then she saw the fright and the helplessness on Lilian’s greenish face… She gripped again, and this time, by getting her arms hooked further under his, so that his padded head rested bulkily against her chin and shoulder, she was able to lift him and begin to drag. When his feet pulled at the carpet Lilian caught hold of his ankles. They slipped from her fingers after two steps, and she caught instead at his trouser-cuffs.

By the time they had staggered the few yards out to the landing and across to the top of the stairs, Frances was exhausted. And Leonard’s coat was dragging; she set him down and did up its buttons. Then her eye was caught by something dark on the newel post. His hat! They’d forgotten all about it! God, what else might they have forgotten? She reached across and picked it up: his City bowler, stained on the inside, sour and fragrant from the rub of his hair. But how could they carry it, as well as carrying him? The only way was to wear it herself. She began to raise the hat to her head, then looked at Lilian, and couldn’t do it. She couldn’t! It was all too much. It was madness!

But they had moved Leonard this far. And it must be almost quarter to ten by now. If they moved him back, and unbound him, and she ran for the doctor, how would they explain the delay? How would they explain the fact that they had moved him at all? They should never have begun. They had made a mistake! Let’s just try, Lilian had said. But this wasn’t a thing, Frances realised now, that could be tried and then un-started. The panic rose in her again, that black, electric fear… And suddenly the only possible way to beat the fear off was to keep going. She put the hat on her head, and, gesturing for Lilian to be silent, she leaned over the banister, listening. Suppose her mother had come home, unnoticed, some time in the past half-hour? And mightn’t neighbours or passers-by have heard the sounds of argument? But the windows were closed, and the street, so far as she could judge it, was still. She could hear nothing but the pulse of the gaslight, the tick of clocks.