The Paying Guests(111)

Lilian put out her hands to her the moment she stepped down from the lawn. Leonard lay slumped where they had left him, looking more than ever like some sort of horrible dummy. Frances braced herself to catch hold of him.

‘Are you ready?’ she whispered. ‘And remember what I said, about not letting go. We must keep to the path, too. The grass is wet. We don’t want to leave footprints on it. Now, quickly, but quietly. Fifty steps, that’s all. Fifty steps, and then it’s finished.’

With a tearing of muscles she heaved Leonard up, fought for and found a better grip on him, and then, feeling Lilian raise his ankles, she stepped backward and they were off. The soles of their shoes seemed loud on the path, and their breaths instantly grew laboured and noisy, but they went more swiftly than Frances had hoped for – impelled in part by the weight of their burden, but more by the prick of their own fear. Only once did Lilian seem to be about to lose her hold: Frances felt the tug and jolt of her groping hands, heard the sobbing catch of her breath. But her pace didn’t fail, even then; they forced themselves onward, and were soon at the far garden wall. Here they had to set Leonard down again. Frances stood listening at the door to the lane. When she was sure that all beyond was still, she carefully lifted the bar of its latch and, inch by inch, she drew the door open. The darkness that met her was so complete, her gaze seemed to slide about on its surface. The temptation rose in her, shamefully strong, simply to bundle Leonard into it, to close the door on him, to run away. But they mustn’t do that! There was still so much to do, still so much care to be taken.

She waited, listening again, then groped her way back to Lilian, and they took up Leonard’s body for the final time. She had hoped to carry him far along the lane, but their strength gave out almost at once: he slid from their fingers as if weary of the journey himself, and she knew that they simply had to let him lie where he had fallen. In the absolute darkness he had become invisible. She squatted beside him and went over him with her hands, straightening his coat, neatening his trouser-cuffs – thinking of how his clothing must have got tugged and twisted on its passage through the house. If only she could see what she was doing! If only she had light, and time! But she’d already lost track of how long they had spent on him, and now, alarmed by sounds from a street near by, the creaking open of a car door, the starting of an engine, she gave up on his clothes and felt her way to his head. She carefully unwound the scarf; that came easily enough. But the cushion was more resistant: it had stuck to his scalp and had to be coaxed free. God knew what sort of a mess that was making of the wound. God knew what the cushion might have left behind it in the way of threads or dye. She ought to have thought of that. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

It was too late now. Quickly, she groped across the surface of the lane, and in a patch of grass and bramble she found a stone with a smooth, round edge – an edge, as near as she could judge it, resembling the base of the stand-ashtray. She went back to Leonard, lifted his head and put the stone underneath it. At once, the head and the stone wobbled. As a deception it felt hopeless, clownish. But it was the best that she could contrive. And after that there was nothing to do but leave him.

But, now that the moment had come, she was unable to tear herself away. It seemed such a terrible thing, to leave him, with his broken head and only a stone for a pillow. To leave him there, in the choking darkness! It seemed worse than killing him. She put out her hands, and they met his face. She passed her fingertips over his stubbly cheek, his chin, his mouth. Beneath the bristles of his moustache his lips were soft as a woman’s.

The touch of a hand on her arm made her cry out: it was Lilian, reaching for her. They clung together for a second, then hurried back to the doorway in the wall, going through it with a stumble, clipping each other in their haste. Frances closed and latched the door, and they started down the garden; only when they were halfway along it did she remember the wretched bowler hat, still sitting sweatily on her head. Leaving Lilian to hobble to the house with the scarf and the cushion, she returned to the lane and got the door open again.

But here, at the last, her courage failed her. She couldn’t bring herself to grope her way through the darkness to Leonard’s body. Instead she tore the hat from her head and simply flung it into the void. An instant later she caught the thud of it, striking the surface of the cinder lane and bouncing jauntily away.



Back indoors, a frantic series of tasks awaited her. She saw to the first of them at once, scrubbing the blood and the dirt from her hands at the scullery sink, then wetting a cloth and going hastily over the floor of the kitchen and the hall, mopping up the trail of mud and blades of grass that Lilian’s shoes had left behind them, and wiping away the marks of Leonard’s dragging heels.

Lilian herself was up in her sitting-room, collapsed on the sofa. She raised her head when she saw Frances and said weakly, ‘I started to tidy, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry —’

‘It’s all right.’ Frances covered her over with the blanket. ‘It’s all right. I can do it.’

The room was just as they had left it, with its grisly chaotic floor. She stood and looked at it all, and for a moment her thoughts faltered. What ought she to do next? Her mind was a terrifying blank. Then her brain lurched back into life. She must get rid of anything with blood on it, of course. Thank God for the fire, still blazing in the grate! She added another shovelful of coal, then ran to her bedroom for the bowl containing Lilian’s cast-off clothing and went about flinging things into it, the cushion and the scarf, but also the balls of wool and the paper patterns that had lain on the floor around Leonard’s head. The patterns had caught the worst of it. Only a scattering of coin-sized spots of crimson seemed to have got on to the carpet itself.