The Paying Guests(171)
And then she picked up her coat. Watching her slide an arm into its sleeve, Frances said, ‘You’re going right now then, are you?’ She loathed the sound of her own voice. ‘We haven’t even talked about the case.’
Lilian let the coat fall slightly. ‘There’s nothing to say, is there? We’re just going to wait, we said. You haven’t changed your mind?’
‘No, I haven’t changed my mind.’
‘You wouldn’t change it and not tell me?’
‘Well, of course I wouldn’t.’
‘Well, don’t say it like that! I don’t know what’s in your head any more. You feel so far away from me.’
‘All the way between here and Walworth.’
‘Oh, now you’re not being fair! You know why it is I’m staying there. It makes the other things easier. We’ve still got men from the newspapers coming. Some of them wait outside, with cameras. We’ve still got policemen coming, too. You wouldn’t rather they all came here?’
Frances was silent for a moment. Then, ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘No, I wouldn’t rather that.’
Lilian’s tone softened. ‘Being apart for a while – it’s just something we have to bear. It’s hard, now. Everything’s hard. But it’ll seem small afterwards. Won’t it? If everything comes right?’
Frances was silent again, but nodded. In a deliberate sort of way, Lilian put down the coat and came to her, and they embraced.
But there was no match between them, Frances thought. There was no fit, no comfort. She stood rigid, hating it, then began to move out of Lilian’s arms.
But, as she edged away, Lilian caught hold of her. ‘Frances —’ Her heart had quickened its pace: Frances could feel the thud of it. She bowed her head to Frances’s shoulder, and when she spoke, the race of her heart was in her voice. ‘Frances, tell me it’ll be all right between us when all this is finished. Tell me it’ll be how it used to be. I know you hate me for what I did, and I know you think I’m weak. I’m trying hard not to be weak any more. But let me be weak for just one minute, now. Tell me nothing will have changed, that I haven’t ruined it. I get so frightened. I don’t mean just about the boy. That’s bad enough. But I think I could bear it better if I knew, if I thought – It was all so clear, everything we planned to do. It was all so wonderful. Now it’s like there’s a curtain across it. I don’t know what’s going to be there when the curtain’s pulled back. I don’t know what you’re thinking.’
She drew back her head on the last words, and looked into Frances’s eyes. Their faces were inches apart; Frances caught the scent of her lipstick and powder, felt the heat and stir of her lips. It was as impossible not to kiss her as not to blink, not to breathe. But when their mouths came together they did so drily and uneasily, like the meeting mouths of strangers, so that it seemed to Frances for a moment that the kiss would be worse than no kiss at all – would be like an unkiss, an undoing.
But then she felt the shy, tentative pressure of Lilian’s tongue against hers: just the tip of a tongue, warm and familiar against hers. She met it with a pressure of her own, put up a hand to Lilian’s face; and all at once the kiss had changed, was wet, open, intimate. The sudden flooding relief of it made them both grow weak. They broke the kiss to clutch at each other, to pull each other closer. ‘Oh, I love you! I love you!’ said Lilian, her words coming in a hot rush against Frances’s ear, on the breath that was being squeezed out of her.
They kissed again, more hectically than before. Where their breasts and hips met it was like the pushing of something through skin, a bursting back into life, almost painful. But there were too many bulky layers of fabric between them. Still kissing, they began to fret and tug at each other’s clothing. Frances worked her hands under Lilian’s blouse, got hold of the waistband of her skirt. She fumbled for a moment with hooks and a button, then gave up and reached lower, catching at the skirt itself, hauling it high, handful by handful, plucking at it and bunching it, until her fingers met the silk beneath, then found the flesh beneath that.
They were still on their feet, swaying and ungainly. She put out a foot to kick closed the door and they almost stumbled. Lilian’s arms were around her, her hands chill on a strip of bare skin; only when she had brought her own hand around Lilian’s thigh and her fingers were slipping and rubbing between Lilian’s legs did Lilian pull away from her slightly, to catch her breath, to dip her head, and to reach, blindly, behind her – wanting the wall or the bedstead, something to get hold of to give her balance. Finding nothing, she gradually surrendered herself to the instability of the pose, letting her arms fall, letting Frances brace and support her. She lifted her head, that was all; as Frances’s hand moved faster, as the muscles of her face began to tense, she lifted her head and held Frances’s gaze – as if wanting Frances to see, as if determined for her to see, that there was nothing in the way of the two of them, nothing between them but skin.
But then – what happened? Something happened, something like the change that had come before; but a wrong thing, this time, a dimming, a draining away. Lilian closed her eyes after all. She held her breath, the lines of her face pulled tighter, the colour mounted in her cheeks; but the tension led nowhere, and with the loss of urgency their pose began to feel awkward, odd. Frances’s arms and legs were aching now, the strain building like a burn in her muscles. She altered her stance, shifted her weight, trying to keep up the rhythm of her hand. Now Lilian’s face was clenched. Dismayed, Frances could see that she was having to will the thing to its crisis. Her own fingers felt blind, suddenly. She quickened the slide of them and, ‘What shall I do?’ she asked. ‘Lilian? How shall I do it?’ But the question, the admission, only made her more self-conscious. The ease and familiarity were gone. She became aware that she was chafing at cooling, sticky, unenchanted flesh; abashed, she let her hand slow.