The Paying Guests(114)

Please, Frances. Please, Frances. Frances had heard those words all evening. But the tears were running from Lilian’s eyes now; she was trembling again; and it was impossible to do anything but go over to her and embrace her.

And in clutching at each other, they both grew a little calmer.

‘All right,’ murmured Frances, as she helped her to her feet. ‘All right. Put on your night-clothes. Can you do that? Don’t get cold.’

While Lilian went weakly off to undress, she herself remained in the sitting-room, looking again at the stains on the carpet, and searching for anything she might have missed before, any evidence of Leonard’s having been there… She found only more pearl-headed pins.

Out on the landing they called good night to each other, and Lilian closed her bedroom door. That was for Frances’s mother’s benefit; a minute later she came creeping across the landing and Frances hurried her into bed. They left a candle burning. Her face was grey in the light of it. She lay under the blankets with chattering teeth, her arms and legs twitching with cold, her hands at her still-aching belly. Frances spread herself against her, pulling her close, trying to warm her.

Once her shivering had begun to subside they talked for a while, in strained whispers, about what might happen in the days to come. They settled on the stories they would tell, as to how they had spent their evening. But Lilian by now was exhausted, and began to frighten herself by growing muddled; so Frances kissed her, and let her be, and soon she lay still and heavy in the bed, marble-cold, like a toppled statue. She stirred only twice more before sinking completely into sleep. The first time was to squeeze Frances’s hand, to look into her eyes and murmur, ‘We used to want to do this, didn’t we?’ She might have been mournfully recalling the habits of a long-ago love affair. But the second time was to raise her head with a start, and peer over at the curtained window.

‘What was that?’

‘There’s nothing,’ said Frances.

‘Are you sure? I thought I heard —’ She met Frances’s gaze. ‘Suppose we made a mistake? Suppose he wakes up? Suppose —?’

‘He won’t wake up,’ said Frances. ‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s too late. Don’t think about him.’

But she was thinking about him herself. She was recalling the weight of his body in her arms, the bulk of his padded head against her shoulder. She kept remembering the moment in the sitting-room when she had had that vision of the two dark paths. What had made her choose one over the other? She could recall the urgency of her feelings, but the feelings themselves eluded her. The only urgency she felt now was the urgency of fear. She was afraid of what she had done, and of what she might have neglected to do. Those twists and tugs in Leonard’s clothing, for example: she ought to have taken more care over putting them right. And then, the position of his limbs. She hadn’t thought of that at all, but surely there was a way that a man fell, when he’d slipped or stumbled, and a way that he didn’t fall…?

Most of all, however, she thought of his wound, that had had the cushion pressed against it. She couldn’t believe that the yellow fabric hadn’t left threads and tufts behind. Could she go back? For a moment she considered it. She actually began to ease herself out of Lilian’s statue-like grip, thinking that she could steal downstairs and out across the garden with a lantern in her hand.

But then she heard a noise, a rustling or creaking on the other side of the window; after a few suffocating heartbeats she realised that the noise was the patter of rain. It came gently at first, then fell more persistently, until she could picture it making its blameless, cleansing assault on Leonard’s clothes, Leonard’s body, his smashed head, his soft, soft mouth. She lay there listening to the drum of it, sick to her bones with relief and shame.





Part Three





11





The rain fell steadily all night long. The candle died, the fire burned lower in the grate; the room grew dark, then less dark, and still the tumble of water went on, until Frances began to think that she had heard every separate drop of it. She didn’t sleep. She barely closed her eyes. Somewhere around six she managed to prise herself from Lilian’s grip, to slide from the bed, creep to the window and part the curtains. She could just make out a line of roofs and chimneys through the downpour, but of the far garden wall she could see nothing: only a black mass of shadow.

She was aching in every limb, and the room seemed piercingly cold. She struck a match, tiptoed to the hearth, did her best to light a new fire in the ashes of the old. Once the flames had begun to crackle, she heard a murmur: ‘Frances.’ Lilian was awake, looking at her. She went back to the bed and they held each other tightly. ‘I thought it was a dream,’ Lilian whispered. ‘I thought it was a dream; and then I remembered.’ A shudder ran right through her, just like the shudder that came with love.

But she didn’t cry. The tears seemed all wrung out of her. A change had come over them both: they were calm, perhaps dazed. Frances looked at the clock. ‘You ought to go back to your own room. Now that it’s light, someone will find him; a workman, or someone. Someone might come to the house.’

Lilian rose without complaint, only wincing a little with pain. She was still bleeding into the napkin, though not so heavily as before. She fitted her arms into her dressing-gown with her shoulders drooping. She and Frances stood together in a last, wordless embrace. Then Frances eased open the door and she stole across the landing, pale and silent as a ghost.