The Paying Guests(11)
2
There was more jaunty whistling, in the days that followed. There were more yodelling yawns at the top of the stairs. There were sneezes, too – those loud masculine sneezes, like shouts into the hand, that Frances could remember from the days of her brothers; sneezes that for some reason never came singly, but arrived as a volley and led inevitably to a last-trump blowing of the nose. Then there was the lavatory seat forever left in the upright position; there were the vivid yellow splashes and kinked wet gingerish hairs that appeared on the rim of the pan itself. Finally, on the dot of half-past ten each night, there was the clatter of a spoon in a glass as Mr Barber mixed himself an indigestion powder, followed a few seconds later by the little report of his belch.
None of it was so very irksome. It was certainly not a lot to put up with for the sake of twenty-nine shillings a week. Frances supposed that she would grow used to it, that the Barbers would grow used to her, that the house would settle down into grooves and routines, that they’d all start rubbing along together – as Mr Barber himself, she reflected, might say. She found it hard to imagine herself ever rubbing along with him, it was true, and she had several despondent moments, lying in bed with her cigarette, wondering again what she had done, what she had let the house in for; trying to remember why she had ever thought that the arrangement would work.
Still, at least Mrs Barber was easy to have about the place. That mid-morning bath, it seemed, had been a freak. She kept herself very much to herself as time went on, doing more of that ‘titivating’ her husband had pretended to grumble about, adding lengths of beading and swaths of macramé and lace to picture-rails and mantelpieces, arranging ostrich feathers in jars: Frances caught glimpses of it all as she went back and forth to her own room. Once, crossing the landing, she heard a sound like jingling bells, and glanced in through the open doorway of the couple’s sitting-room to see Mrs Barber with a tambourine in her hand. The tambourine had trailing ribbons and a gipsy look about it. Gipsyish, too, was Mrs Barber’s costume, the fringed skirt, the Turkish slippers; her hair was done up in a red silk scarf. Frances paused, not wanting to disturb her – then called lightly into the room.
‘Are you about to dance the tarantella, Mrs Barber?’
Mrs Barber came to the doorway, smiling. ‘I’m still deciding what goes where.’
Frances nodded to the tambourine. ‘May I see it?’ And then, when the thing was in her hand, ‘It’s pretty.’
Mrs Barber wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s only from a junk shop. It’s really Italian, though.’
‘You have exotic tastes, I think.’
‘Len says I’m like a savage. That I ought to live in the jungle. I just like things that have come from other places.’
And after all, thought Frances, what was wrong with that? She gave the tambourine a shake, tapped her fingers across its drum-skin. She might have lingered and said more; the moment, somehow, seemed to invite it. But it was Wednesday afternoon, and she and her mother were off to the cinema. With a touch of reluctance, she handed the tambourine back. ‘I hope you find the right spot for it.’
When, a little later, she and her mother left the house, she said, ‘I suppose we might have asked Mrs Barber to come along with us today.’
Her mother looked doubtful. ‘Mrs Barber? To the picture-house?’
‘You’d rather we didn’t?’
‘Well, perhaps once we know her better. But mightn’t it become awkward? Shouldn’t we have to ask her every time?’
Frances thought about it. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
In any case, the programme that week was disappointing. The first few films were all right, but the drama was a dud, an American thriller with a plot full of holes. She and her mother slipped away before the final act, hoping not to draw the notice of the small orchestra – Mrs Wray saying, as she often did, what a pity it was that the pictures nowadays had so much unpleasantness in them.
They met a neighbour, Mrs Hillyard, in the foyer. She was leaving early too, but from the dearer seats upstairs. They walked back up the road together, and, ‘How are your paying guests?’ she asked. She was too polite to call them lodgers. ‘Are they settling in? I see the husband in the mornings on his way to the City. He seems a very well-turned-out chap. I must say I rather envy you, having a young man in the house again. And you’ll enjoy having some young people about to argue with, Frances, I expect?’
Frances smiled. ‘Oh, my arguing days are all behind me.’
‘Of course they are. Your mother’s grateful for your company, I’m sure.’
That night there was skirt of beef for dinner: Frances worked up a sweat beating it tender with a rolling-pin. The next day, with an hour to herself, she cleared soot from the kitchen flue. The muck got under her fingernails and into the creases of her palms, and had to be scrubbed off with lemon juice and salt.
The day after that, feeling rather as though she’d earned a Friday treat, she left her mother a cold lunch and bread already buttered for tea, and went into Town.
She liked to go in when she could, sometimes as a shopping expedition, sometimes to call on a friend. Depending on the weather, she had various ways of making the journey; the days had kept fine since the Barbers’ arrival so she was able, this time, to make the best of it on foot. She caught a bus as far as Vauxhall, and from there she crossed the river and wandered north, taking any street that caught her eye.