The Paying Guests(182)
She heard a creaking on the landing, and turned to find that her mother had come up the stairs. She was peering cautiously in from the open doorway.
‘Is everything all right, Frances? I wondered what you were doing.’
She answered, after a hesitation, ‘I was thinking of Leonard.’
Her mother must have heard the catch of emotion in her voice. She came forward into the room. ‘I think of him too. I think of him often. It wasn’t kind, it wasn’t right, the way he behaved to Mrs Barber; but one can’t help but miss him. I still have nightmares when I picture him lying alone out there, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Frances, truthfully.
‘And all his things, still here…’ She sighed, and tutted. ‘Dear, dear.’ The words and the gesture were mild, but had an infinite weight of grief behind them. ‘What an unlucky house this has been for men, hasn’t it? Or unlucky for women, I suppose I ought to say. I know your brothers are at peace now.’
Frances said, ‘Do you really know it?’
‘I haven’t a single doubt about it. Them, and your dear father. And Mr Barber, too – though it’s hard to imagine him at rest, he was so lively. There are his tennis shoes, look, with the heels trodden down. I remember after your father died finding his pipe with tobacco in it – fresh tobacco, waiting for the match. It was almost more distressing than seeing him in his coffin. Mrs Barber will find it hard, when she comes to take her things. Has she spoken to you about that? She’ll be able to think more clearly, of course, once this dreadful trial is behind her. But has she given you any sense of her plans? She’ll remain at her mother’s, I suppose.’
‘I – I’m not sure. Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Well, be certain to tell her to take just as long as she needs. And then, once she has gone —’ She paused. ‘Well, we must do it all over again, must we? Find new people for these rooms?’
The thought was terrible. But Frances nodded. ‘What else can we do, if we mean to stay? But, then, the house – I don’t know. So many things are going wrong.’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought I could hold it all together, but —’
‘Well, don’t think about it now. We’ll sort it out, between us. It’s only a lot of bricks and mortar. Its heart stopped, Frances, years ago… You look tired again. This frightful business at the court! I wish you’d keep away from it. You really think it will end tomorrow?’
Frances lowered her gaze. ‘Yes, tomorrow will end it.’
‘Though not, I suppose, for that boy and his family. What a nightmare we’ve all been caught in! If you had told me, in the summer – No, I should never have believed you. Oh, won’t it be a weight off our minds when it’s all over and done with!’
She turned away as she spoke, rubbing her arms against the chill. Frances noticed the stoop of her shoulders, the elderly way she reached for the doorpost as she headed out to the landing.
She felt her mouth grow dry. ‘Mother —’
Her mother turned back to her, her dark brows lifted. ‘Yes?’
‘If anything were ever to happen to me —’
‘Happen to you? What do you mean? Oh, we’ve let ourselves grow morbid! Come back down out of the gloom.’
‘No, wait. If something were to happen – I know I haven’t always been kind to you. I know I wasn’t kind to Father. I’ve always tried to do what I thought to be right. But sometimes —’
Her mother’s joined hands made their papery sound. ‘You mustn’t grow upset, Frances. Remember what Dr Lawrence said.’
‘It’s just – You wouldn’t ever despise me, would you, Mother?’
‘Despise you! Good gracious! Why would I ever do that?’
‘Sometimes things become a muddle. They become such a muddle, Mother, that they turn into a sort of quicksand. You take a step, and can’t get free, and —’
She couldn’t continue. Her mother waited, looking troubled – but looking weary, too. Finally she sighed. ‘What a fight you’ve always made of everything, Frances. And all I ever wanted for you were such ordinary things: a husband, a home, a family of your own. Such ordinary, ordinary things. You mustn’t worry about the house. The house has become too great a burden. It isn’t a house for guests, after all. Mrs Barber came here as an unhappy woman, and I’m afraid she took advantage of your – your kindness. But, despise you! I could never despise you, any more than I could despise my own hand. Now, come down with me, will you? Back to the warm.’
Frances hesitated, still struggling – though she didn’t know now if she was struggling to speak or to stay silent. But at last she nodded, and moved forward, and followed her mother from the room. She wanted to be comforted, that was all. She wanted it so much. It didn’t matter, she told herself, as they started down the stairs, it didn’t really matter that the two of them had been talking about different things.
And once the final day had arrived, and she and Lilian were back in their taxi, back at the Old Bailey, back on their bench, she found it hard to remember that they had ever had a life beyond the courtroom. It seemed an absolute eternity since, three mornings before, she had crossed the floor, alone and uncertain; an eternity since she had looked at the clerks and the barristers and seen only a flock of jackdaws. She knew them now as individuals, almost as friends: the man who breathed with a whistle, the one who liked to crack his knuckles, the one who sucked white peppermints, that sometimes appeared, startlingly, from between his thin, dry lips. The court was much fuller than it had been at the start. The trial had gathered spectators as the days had passed, and witnesses had stayed or returned, to be fitted in as best they could – so that, if she peered past the heads and shoulders in front of her, she could see Spencer’s mother and uncle elbow to elbow with the police surgeon, while Inspector Kemp and Sergeant Heath sat squashed beside Leonard’s boss from the Pearl. How extraordinary it was to realise that all this fuss had been set in motion by that little collision in her mother’s old bedroom on Champion Hill. How astonishing that all these people had been hoicked together in this bright place because of that single intimate encounter between Lilian, Leonard and her.