The Paying Guests(146)
Mr Viney’s shop was a few hundred yards along it: a modest Victorian front still with its mirrored ’seventies lettering, one half of its display given over to collars, to masculine vests and pants, the other festooned with stockings and elastic corsets. The blind on the door was down and there was no sign of life behind it, but to the left of the window was another door, an ordinary street-door, painted in matching chocolate gloss: this led, Frances supposed, to the rooms above. She put her finger to the bell-push, and waited. When nothing happened she pressed again.
The door was yanked open at last by a stout, freckled girl of about fifteen. Was she one of Lilian’s cousins? She coolly looked Frances up and down. ‘Yes, what is it?’
Frances explained why she had come – that she hoped to speak to Mrs Barber. But at that the girl’s manner cooled even further.
‘She’s not seeing nobody from the papers.’
‘No, I’m not from the papers. I’m Miss Wray, her friend, from Champion Hill.’
‘Well, I don’t know nothing about that.’
‘I’m sure Mrs Barber will be glad to see me.’
‘Well —’
‘It’s rather urgent.’
The girl spoke grudgingly. ‘Well, all right. But if you ain’t who you say you are, mind, there’ll be trouble!’ Still hostile, she moved back, opening the door fully, doing her best to flatten her bulky figure against the wall.
Stepping forward, Frances found herself in a long brown passage leading to a set of narrow stairs. Somewhere up above a small dog was madly barking, and there seemed nowhere to go save closer to the sound. Once the door was closed, however, the passage was dark, lighted only by a dusty transom. She paused, and the girl pushed past her, to go ahead of her up the staircase. As they reached the minuscule half-landing an inner door was opened and a Jack Russell came scrabbling out. It was followed by a pink-faced Mrs Viney, peering button-eyed into the gloom. When she recognised Frances her eyes grew even rounder.
‘Oh, Miss Wray, is it you? What must you think of us, keeping you out on the street like that! Here, Monty! Oh, isn’t he a villain!’ The dog was jumping up and barking. ‘Catch hold of him, Lydia, before he knocks poor Miss Wray down the stairs! – This is Lydia, Miss Wray, who lives next door to us, and who’s been helping us out while Lil’s been here. We’ve had that many callers, you see, we are sick to death of them, but Lydia – well, she don’t take no nonsense from no one! But, oh, to think of it’s being you! And me in my pinny! Come in off them draughty old stairs. – Monty! Be quiet, do!’
Frances moved forward as best she could around the demented dog, and, following Mrs Viney, emerged in a stuffy kitchen. She took in the immense black range in the chimney-breast, the laundry dangling from the rack above it, the coconut mat on the floor, the dresser shelves crammed with blue china – all of it meaner and more old-fashioned than she had been expecting, so that for a moment, disconcerted, she bent to the leaping dog, trying to pat and calm it; it kept twisting its jaws to her hands.
When she straightened up, Lilian was there, just coming in through a second doorway. She was dressed in what must have been some outfit of Vera’s, an artificial silk frock in a muted floral pattern, with her hair pulled up in a pair of combs; she looked even less like herself than she had at the inquest. Her face had lost its horrible doughiness, however, and had more colour to it – though when she met Frances’s gaze some of the colour drained away. She must have seen in her expression that something had happened.
She came forward to catch hold of the dog, lifting it up and sitting it in her arms. Drawing her chin away from its muzzle, she said, ‘Is everything all right?’
No, answered Frances, with her eyes, her breath, her skin. ‘Yes,’ she said aloud. ‘I happened to be passing, and – well, I thought I’d call in. You wouldn’t rather be left alone?’
Lilian looked around, troubled. ‘No, I – No, it’s nice to see you. But there isn’t anywhere to take you. Vera and Violet are upstairs. Violet’s off school, she’s been sick all morning —’
And, ‘No,’ cried her mother, ‘you don’t want to take Miss Wray up there! She’s come all this way; she wants a proper chair to sit in. Take her through to the parlour. Your step-dad won’t mind. He’ll be glad to meet her, he’s heard that much about her. You take her through – go on – and me and Lydia’ll make some tea.’
There was clearly nothing else for it. Gazing at Frances in a sort of forlorn frustration, Lilian led her out of the kitchen into a dingy little parlour, over-furnished and over-hot, where they found a lean, balding figure with a toothbrush moustache – Mr Viney. He had heard them coming and was already up on his feet. He greeted Frances with the flustered, faintly resentful air of a man who’d hastily pulled on his jacket or shoved in his teeth.
‘You’re here about this business of Lilian’s, I suppose?’ he asked sourly. ‘Have the newspapers been pestering you? They’ve been plaguing the life out of us. Parasites, I call ’em! Suck your blood, the whole lot of ’em!’
He grumbled on in a practised way until Mrs Viney and Lydia brought in the tea; he had his in a special cup, slightly larger than the others. There was a bit of fussing with the dog, who was made to ‘shake hands’ before being allowed a biscuit. Mrs Viney asked after Frances’s mother; they discussed the preparations for the funeral, the inspector’s recent visit, the fact that no more progress seemed to have been made with the case… The talk went on and on, Frances sitting tensely the whole time, gazing across the room at Lilian, seeing the tension in her pose, too. It wasn’t until Vera had appeared, shuffling down from some upstairs room to say that Violet had left off being sick and was asking for a bit of bread and butter, but wanted her nan to take it up – it wasn’t until then, in the upheaval that followed, with the dog barking again, wriggling away like a greased pig every time someone tried to catch hold of it, that she and Lilian could snatch a few minutes together, alone. ‘I just need to talk to Frances for a bit about some things at the house,’ Lilian told her mother, once Frances had risen and said her goodbyes; and before Mrs Viney could throw in some kind word to prevent it they had headed down the narrow stairs to the badly lighted passage. Behind them, the dog was still yapping its head off. On the other side of the street-door the whole of the Walworth Road seemed to be thundering by. Frances thought of all they had to say – all they had to discuss and to plan, with only ever hurried, harried moments like this in which to do it – and felt a touch of despair.