The Paying Guests(16)

‘Oh, I’m happy with the gaspers.’

‘You are?’

Christina said, in her Bloomsbury voice, ‘Let her be a martyr, Stevie. She likes it.’

They parted without a farewell kiss. Down in the lobby, Frances caught sight of the porter’s clock and saw with dismay that it was well past five. She had stayed longer than she’d meant to. She would have enjoyed the walk back to Vauxhall, or at least to Westminster, but there was dinner to be started at home. Rather regretting, now, having given that sixpence to the organ-grinder, and feeling guilty about her cosy-corner lunch, she decided to save a penny by taking a tram instead of a bus. She walked to Holborn for the tram she needed, had to wait an age before it came; then was rattled queasily across the river into the low, close streets of the south.

Almost the moment she left the tram she was approached by another ex-soldier, this one more ragged than the last. He limped along beside her, holding out a canvas bag, telling her the details of his military record: he’d served with the Worcesters in France and Palestine, been wounded in this and that campaign… When she shook her head at him he stopped, let her go on a couple of paces, and then called hoarsely after her:

‘I hope you’re never broke!’

She turned around, embarrassed, and tried to speak lightly. ‘What makes you think I’m not broke already?’

He looked disgusted, raising his hand and then bringing it down, turning away. ‘You’ve done all right, you bloody women,’ she heard him say.

She had seen the same opinion, scarcely less bald, in the daily papers. But she arrived home more disgruntled than ever. She found her mother in the kitchen and told her all about it.

Her mother said, ‘Poor fellow. He oughtn’t to have spoken so roughly to you; that was certainly wrong. But one does have sympathy for all these fighting men whose jobs have been lost.’

‘I have sympathy for them, too!’ cried Frances. ‘I was against their going to war in the first place! But to blame women – it’s absurd. What have we gained, aside from a vote that half of us can’t even use?’

Her mother looked patient. She had heard all this before. ‘Well, no one is hurt. No one is injured.’ She was watching Frances unpack her shopping. ‘I don’t suppose you found a match for my sewing silks?’

‘Yes, I did. Here they are.’

Her mother took the reels and held them to the light. ‘Oh, clever girl, these are – Oh, but you didn’t buy Sylko?’

‘These are just as good, Mother.’

‘I do find Sylko the best.’

‘Well, unfortunately it’s also the most expensive.’

‘But, surely, now that Mr and Mrs Barber have come —’

‘We still need to be careful,’ said Frances. ‘We still need to be very careful.’ She checked that the door was closed; they had already lowered their voices. ‘Don’t you remember, when I showed you the accounts?’

‘Yes, but, well, it did cross my mind – I did just wonder, Frances, whether we mightn’t be able to afford a servant again.’

‘A servant?’ Frances couldn’t keep the impatience out of her tone. ‘Well, yes, we might. But you know how much a decent cook-general costs nowadays. It would be half the Barbers’ rent gone, just like that. And meanwhile our boots are falling in pieces, we dread ever having to send for the doctor, our winter coats look like things from the Dark Ages. And then, another stranger in the house, someone to have to get to know —’

‘Yes, all right,’ said her mother, hastily. ‘I dare say you know best.’

‘When I can take care of things perfectly well —’

‘Yes, yes, Frances. I do see how impossible it is. Truly I do. Don’t let’s talk about it any more. Tell me about your day in Town. You made sure to have luncheon, I hope?’

Frances, with an effort, made herself sound less shrewish. ‘Yes, I did. At a café.’

‘And after that? Where did you go? How did you spend your afternoon?’

‘Oh —’ Turning away, she answered at random. ‘I walked about a bit, that’s all. I finished up at the British Museum. I had my tea there.’

‘The British Museum? I haven’t been there in years. What did you look at?’

‘Oh, the usual galleries. Marbles, mummies, that sort of thing. – Look, how hungry are you?’ She had opened the meat-safe door. ‘We’ve skirt, again. I might run it through the mincer.’ I shall enjoy doing that, she thought.



She did not enjoy it as much as she had hoped to. The beef was poor and kept clogging. She’d meant the meal to be an easy one, but, perhaps because she was discontented, the food seemed to turn against her, the potatoes boiling dry in their pan, the gravy refusing to thicken. Her mother, as sometimes happened, disappeared at the critical moment: she still liked to change her gown and re-pin her hair for dinner, and she tended to misjudge the minutes as she was doing it. By the time she had re-emerged, the food was cooling in its dishes. Frances almost ran with the plates to the drawing-room table. Another delay, then, while her mother said Grace…

She swallowed the food without enjoying it. They discussed the various appointments of the days ahead. Tomorrow they were off to the cemetery: it was her father’s birthday; they were taking flowers to his grave. On Monday they must remember to change their library books. On Wednesday —