The Paying Guests(167)
‘He would have intended his blow to be fatal?’
‘He must have expected that result.’
Frances couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The thing had taken on a life of its own. The surgeon, the lawyers, the police – they were all working backwards from their own idea of what had happened to Leonard and tailoring everything else to fit. There was no logic to it. Why couldn’t anyone else see? If she and Lilian were to stand up now and say what had really happened, the trial would fall to bits. If they could only bring themselves to do it! Wouldn’t it be easier than sitting here, listening to the facts being mangled? If they could only tell the truth, calmly – if they could just lead Inspector Kemp back to Champion Hill; if they just could show him the ashtray – he might be brought to believe, now, that it was all an accident. The surgeon had as good as said so, hadn’t he?
But even as she raised her hands to the back of the pew in front of her, all the power in her muscles seemed to begin to drain away. She had to lean forward for a moment, close her eyes, fight off her own fear… And in that moment the trial moved on, and she did nothing. Mr Strickland requested more time in which to pursue his client’s defence. With every respect to Mr Palmer, he wished to consult another surgeon. He hoped that the medical evidence might be put at his disposal.
The magistrate ordered that the hearing be adjourned. Spencer Ward was to be returned to Brixton for another seven days.
And that was how it went on – exactly like that, not just for one week but for two, with, incredibly, no advance, no resolution; with Frances every time preparing herself for the worst, then receiving that sickening reprieve; with the boy being dispatched back to prison – until she began to feel as though they’d all slipped into some nightmarish other life, some hell or purgatory from which they would never get free.
The complications of it all were beyond unpicking. Leonard’s father, for example: he seemed to be ageing before her eyes. Could she and Lilian really allow him to sit through another hearing, keep seeing that cosh displayed, imagine his son being pursued and beaten and left to die in a lane? Spencer’s mother was the same: she looked more faded by the week. But then, Frances’s own mother was looking older, too. What would a confession do to her? What would she think of the fact that Frances and Lilian had waited so long to make it? They ought to have spoken out at once; Frances saw that now. It was the two dark paths all over again and, just like last time, she had chosen the wrong one. It was too late to turn back. September gave way to October; the fourth hearing came and went. Already the boy had been in prison nearly a month. It was terrible, it was horrible. But at what precise moment should she and Lilian present themselves to the police? At what point did his safety start to outweigh theirs? While there was still a chance that the case would come to nothing, they had to keep on with it – didn’t they?
Yes, said Lilian, they had to keep on with it.
‘But suppose it goes to the Old Bailey?’ said Frances. ‘He’ll be on trial for his life, then. His life.’
Lilian paled. ‘But you said it wouldn’t.’
‘I thought it wouldn’t. Now – I don’t know.’
‘You were sure it wouldn’t. You said —’
‘Well, how could I possibly have been sure? It was you that wanted to wait!’
They’d begun to go on like this when they met – arguing in whispers, in the Vineys’ parlour, or Vera’s bedroom, or down in the badly lighted passage behind the Walworth Road door. Or else they sat in a dead silence, struggling and failing to break it. Their plans for the future, the art classes, the bread and scrape: where had it gone? Frances thought of that room they’d used to dream about. She’d seen herself closing the door of it, turning a key against the world. They were in a room now, certainly: the room of their poisonous secret. It might be a prison cell already! Sometimes she raged. Sometimes she could have wept. Sometimes they clung together before they parted, and it was almost all right. But, ‘Do you love me?’ Lilian asked once, with a note of yearning in her voice, and the question was as jarring as if it had been asked by Vera or Min. Frances drew her close and kissed her; but she did it mainly to hide her own face.
She went home that day so dejected, she wondered if their passion had ever been real. The house when she went into it clamoured drably for her attention. Rent-days had come and gone; she and her mother were slipping back towards debt. She made herself go into Lilian’s sitting-room. The stains on the carpet seemed vivid again. But the stains didn’t matter now, of course, she had to remind herself. Even the ashtray didn’t matter. Her eyes went instead to the birdcage, the tambourine. She could see nothing but a lot of old junk. The china caravan was still on the mantelpiece: she picked it up and was amazed by how light it was. Turning it over she saw that it was hollow, with a hole in the bottom; somehow she hadn’t realised that. She held it in her hand, and remembered Lilian dipping her mouth to it, and, for a second, desire stirred in her, like a flame brought to life by a breath on a cinder. Then she thought of Leonard in his coffin, Spencer in his prison cell, and felt a rush of shame and embarrassment so acute she was almost sick.
That night she dreamt she was pushing Leonard’s body through crowded streets in a thing like Violet’s doll’s pram, with only a little doll’s blanket to cover it. She kept pulling the blanket over his head, only to put his sprawled legs on display; kept twitching the blanket down again, exposing his bloated purplish face. She awoke in a sweat in the dark early morning, but what remained with her was not the horror of Leonard’s body in the pram so much as the loneliness of the dream – for she had been utterly on her own in it, the burden of the crime entirely hers. Where was Lilian? Lilian had left her! She felt like a child, abandoned. She had given her heart to Lilian and Lilian had given her nothing in return save half-truths, evasions, prevarications, lies.