The Paying Guests(185)

‘No. Don’t you see? If you try, if you touch me, you’ll only remind me, you’ll make it worse… Oh, why can’t it all be over with! We know what the jury’s going to say. I wish they’d just say it about me. Say it here and now, today! They could give me the rope and I’d do it myself.’

‘It won’t come to that. There’s still a chance.’

She drooped, exhausted. ‘Oh, Frances, you know there isn’t. You know it, deep down. All this time we’ve been pretending. We’ve been pretending from the start. The start of everything, I mean.’

‘The start of everything,’ repeated Frances. Then, ‘I never pretended for a moment, Lilian,’ she said simply, ‘when I was with you. It was everyone else I pretended with. – No, don’t answer, listen to me, because there isn’t any time any more, and I want to tell you, I have to tell you – Nothing’s changed, in how I feel about you. I went mad for a while, that’s all. I let what happened – I let it spoil things. It’s broken my heart that I did that. I burned your letter. You remember? The most wonderful letter anyone ever wrote me, and I burned it. I burned it! I did it to save my own skin. I barely knew I had a skin until I met you. Tell me you believe it. This is a place for truth, isn’t it? We’ve heard nothing in it but lies, but tell me, please tell me, that you know I love you, that you know it’s true.’

Breathless, she came to a halt. They faced each other in a silence broken by the trickle of a faulty cistern, by the flutter of pigeons in the light-well. The room smelt of bleach and of sour wet mops. But Lilian looked back at her with eyes grown silvery with tears, and for a moment the room, the trial, Leonard, the summer, their whole affair – it was as if none of it had yet happened. As if their love were all to be done again, but done properly, done honestly. As if they were back in Frances’s bedroom the day after Snakes and Ladders, that imaginary stake just drawn from her heart.

But across the moment there came, from out in the hall, the clanging of a bell, followed almost instantly by footsteps in the passage; and at that, Lilian’s gaze slid fearfully past Frances to the door. Frances turned to see the shadow of a figure against its ground-glass panel. It was one of the Old Bailey officials, come to tap, and to call discreetly. Was Mrs Barber inside? Did she wish to hear the verdict? Word had just come that the jury were on their way back to the court.

They faced each other again. Lilian had wiped her tears away. Frances could barely get the words out.

‘Here it is, then.’

And now, after the torpor of the wait, there was suddenly a horrible speed to it all – or, not a speed exactly, not a haste, but a remorseless forward movement, like the drop of a china cup towards a stone floor. With a shaking hand, Lilian lowered her veil. They returned to the hall and found it deserted. They had to hurry into the courtroom like tardy theatre-goers, had to push their way to their places – for the room was crowded to bursting-point now. Men must have come from other courts – come, as it were, for the finale – clerks and officials, reporters, policemen: they were standing against the walls, had fitted themselves into every corner. Up in the gallery, people were squashed together and seemed still to be piling in. She and Lilian sat – then almost at once had to stand again, as the door beside the dais was opened to admit the judge.

And as he came forward into the sudden electric hush, Frances saw that he had something in his hand – not the absurd little posy this time, but a dreadful limp black thing – a thing, she thought with a burst of horror, that oughtn’t to be allowed to exist – it was the cap that he would place over his wig if he had to pass sentence. He carried it without a qualm. He moved in an ordinary way, took his seat at an ordinary pace; unflustered, too, were the robed and gold-chained men who came with him, whose identity and function she had never been able to fathom. Then the jury filed in, still avoiding the boy’s eye – he had been kept on his feet in the dock, was passing his cuff across his sweating top lip. Frances watched them settle themselves. She watched the chief clerk approach them. This couldn’t be the moment, could it? It was all too smooth and unconsidered. A life was at stake. It couldn’t be now. It was all too quick!

But the foreman was making himself known, was rising – it was not the shopkeeper after all, but a slim, colourless man to whom she had paid no attention. She felt a movement against her wrist, and looked down to see Lilian’s hand feeling for hers. She caught hold of it; their fingers met, and slid into a clasp. There was a moment of dreadful suspense while some last detail was taken care of. Then:

‘Members of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?’

The colourless man nodded, and answered in a colourless voice. ‘We have.’

‘Do you find the prisoner, William Spencer Ward, guilty or not guilty of the murder of Leonard Arthur Barber?’

‘We find him not guilty.’

Christ! Had Frances cried out? She might as well have. Other people had cried out too, in disbelief and excitement, though somewhere in the gallery a strange, lone cheer had gone up, to be almost instantly stifled. Lilian was leaning forward, her face hidden, her shoulders heaving; she had burst into tears. Douglas was up on his feet. The boy in the dock was looking about as if uncertain of what he’d heard. Reporters were rushing from the room and a voice was calling for order.

Not guilty! What was happening now? Frances couldn’t take it in. The judge spoke; she didn’t hear him. He must have been discharging the prisoner, for the next time she looked at Spencer all she saw was his dipped, youthful head disappearing down the stairs in the dock. Not guilty! It couldn’t be real! That blade was back in her heart. Lilian was still crying. The jurymen had been dismissed and now the judge was leaving the chamber; the courtroom was coming apart at the seams, everyone moving from their places, chairs scraping, a hubbub of voices. She rose, and felt herself sway. Lilian got to her feet beside her; she had put back her veil, was wiping her face. Ought they to go? Ought they to stay? They had no plan, suddenly. The Barber men were elbowing their way down into the well of the court. She and Lilian stumbled after them, but the whole thing was like a dream, it seemed to rush at her and then to break into fragments, Spencer’s mother and uncle being hustled from the room, Billie smiling, revealing dimples, as she spoke with a reporter, the barristers shaking hands with each other like clubmen after a wager, the solicitor coming to apologise, misinterpreting Lilian’s tears: ‘A bad conclusion, Mrs Barber. These slips do happen, I’m afraid.’ Inspector Kemp and Sergeant Heath had faces lumpy with disgust. ‘Oh, he was our lad all right,’ the inspector was telling Leonard’s father. ‘We lost him to the squeamishness of the jury. But we’ll get him for something else before too long, don’t you worry.’ And there was Douglas, darting about – Douglas seeming to be everywhere at once – grabbing at people, calling in Leonard’s voice, with Leonard’s furious face and wet, red lips: ‘This is a joke! How is this justice? What the hell were the jury thinking? This won’t stop here! Bring those men back! I want the judge!’