The Paying Guests(128)
12
She awoke to more darkness. The rain had stopped – that was something – but a mist hung just beyond the window, like a dirty veil on the world. The Sunday bells rang as usual, but her mother, who had slept badly, didn’t attempt to go to church, and since neither of them could face breakfast they simply sat at the kitchen table with a cooling pot of tea between them, too dazed for conversation, paralysed by the wrongness of things.
Presently they rose to go over to the drawing-room, and as they were crossing the hall Lilian came down to take a bath. She came a step at a time, leaning heavily on her sister’s arm.
Frances darted forward to help. Her mother, hanging back, said, ‘How are you feeling, Mrs Barber?’
She was still ghastly pale, though her gaze, to Frances’s relief, was clearer. ‘I feel so weak,’ she answered.
‘I’m sure you do. I’m glad you have someone here to look after you’ – with the ghost of a smile for Vera. ‘I meant to go to morning service. I should so like to have said a prayer for you there. But I couldn’t quite manage it today. I shall say my prayers for you here instead.’
Lilian dipped her head. ‘Thank you, Mrs Wray. I’m sorry everything’s been so – so awful.’
‘You mustn’t think that. You must keep up your strength. And if there’s anything at all that Frances or I can do to help you, you must tell us – will you?’
Lilian nodded, grateful, her eyes filming with tears.
But there was something, Frances thought, slightly strained about the encounter, an odd lack of warmth on her mother’s part, despite the kindness of her words. And when the two of them had gone through to the drawing-room, her mother sat down and said in an almost querulous way, ‘Mrs Barber looks dreadful! Surely it would make more sense for her to be with her family? Why on earth didn’t her mother take her home with her last night?’
‘She tried to take her,’ said Frances, as she laid kindling in the grate. ‘Lilian doesn’t want to go.’
‘Why not?’
‘She wants to stay here.’
‘But, why?’
She looked up. ‘Well, why do you think? It’s her home.’
Her mother didn’t answer that. She sat with her hands in her lap, her papery fingers fidgeting.
The morning wore on in its off-kilter way. Frances waited for another chance to see Lilian alone, and found none. Outside, the mist thickened until it might have been pressing at the house. Indoors, she seemed to feel the drawing-room steadily filling with her mother’s sighs. When, at around midday, she answered a knock at the front door and saw that Mrs Viney was back, with Netta, Min, baby Siddy and Vera’s little girl, Violet, she felt genuinely pleased to see them. Violet had her doll’s pram with her, and she helped her manoeuvre it into the hall.
But Mrs Viney came in puffing, her colour higher than ever. Had Miss Wray and her mother seen the News of the World? No? With a sort of grim pride she fished the paper out of a balding carpet bag on her arm, to show Frances a smudged half-column entitled MURDER AT CHAMPION HILL: CLERK’S MYSTERIOUS DEATH.
A frightful discovery was made early yesterday morning at Champion-hill, Camberwell. The body of Mr Leonard Barber, a resident of the good-class street, was found in a secluded spot where it had apparently been lying for many hours. Mr Barber, an insurance-clerk, had plainly received a most ghastly blow to the head. Policemen and a doctor were summoned at once, but life being found to be extinct the body was conveyed to the Camberwell mortuary. Mr Barber’s widow, on being informed of her husband’s death, is said to have plunged into a collapsed condition, with very pitiful results.
Frances felt sick. To see the case reported like that – unequivocally like that, as murder; to see the reference to Lilian; to see it all there, between another lurid headline, BOY’S ESCAPE, and cheap advertisements for winter woollies and a constipation cure —!
‘“Insurance-clerk”,’ she said. ‘How do they know so much already? And “pitiful results”! Where did they get that from?’
‘Well, not from anyone in our family,’ said Mrs Viney, ‘that’s for sure! There was a chap at the shop yesterday asking questions, my husband told me. He sent him off with a flea in his ear – and I shall do the same, if I see him! But word gets about, that’s the trouble. People will talk; well, it’s human nature. One thing I am pleased about: they mention the class of the street. As soon as I saw that I said to Min, “Well, thank heavens for that, if only for Miss Wray’s and her mother’s sake!” – didn’t I, Min? Still,’ she added, in a lower tone, ‘I shan’t show this to Lil. It wouldn’t do her no good, would it? Have you seen her this morning, Miss Wray? Is she any better in herself? It’s a terrible thing to lose your husband. I remember when her poor father died, I didn’t know whether I was on my heels or on my head. I ran out into the street in my petticoat; a man crying brooms had to dash water in my face!’
As she spoke, she tucked the newspaper back into her bag, and Frances saw, in the bag’s interior, open packets of black material, along with a jumble of black silk flowers, black threads, ribbons and dye. Yes, said Mrs Viney, noticing the direction of her gaze, they planned to make Lil some mourning costumes this afternoon. They’d gone right through her wardrobe yesterday and, would you believe it, with all those colours of hers she’d barely got a bit of black to her name.