The Paying Guests(19)

‘A grand night for star-gazing tonight, Miss Wray! I used to know all about the stars when I was a boy; it was a regular hobby of mine. I used to sneak out my bedroom window after the family were asleep and sit for hours on the scullery roof, with a library book and a bicycle lamp – matching the sky, you know, with the pictures. My brother Dougie caught me at it once, and locked the window on me, so that I had to stay out all night in the rain. He was always pulling stunts like that, my brother. But it was worth it. I had all the names: Arcturus, Regulus, Vega, Capella…’

He was murmuring now, and the words had a charm, spoken softly in the darkness. It was odd to be standing there with him, in her night-clothes, in that lonely spot – but then, she thought, it’s only the garden. Looking back at the house she saw the lights: the kitchen door standing open, the window with its blind half lowered, the window above it, at the turn of the stairs, with the old Morris curtains not quite meeting in the middle.

And he had been right about the night. The moon was slim, the merest paring; against the deep blue-black of the sky the stars stood out, precise, electric. So she put back her head, and, ‘Which one is Capella?’ she asked, after a pause. She had been attracted by the name.

He gestured with the hand that held the cigarette. ‘The bright little chap above your neighbour’s chimney. That’s Vega, over there. And up there —’ He shifted about, and she turned to follow the glow of the cigarette. ‘That’s Polaris, the North Star.’

She nodded. ‘I know the North Star.’

‘You do?’

‘I know the Plough, and Orion.’

‘You’re as good as a Girl Guide. How about Cassiopeia?’

‘The ones shaped like an M? Yes, I know them.’

‘They’re a W tonight. You see them? That’s Perseus beside them.’

‘No, I don’t see that.’

‘It’s a matter of joining the dots. You have to use your imagination. The fellows who did the naming – well, they were short on entertainments back then. How about Gemini, the twins?’ He moved closer, and sketched an outline. ‘You see the two of them? Holding hands? And just across from them there’s the Lion… To the right of him there’s the Crab. And there’s the Whiting.’

She peered. ‘The Whiting?’

‘Just over there, beside the Whelk.’

She realised two things at the same moment: one, of course, that he was teasing her; the other that, in order to steer her gaze, he had moved very close to her and raised his free hand to the small of her back. The unexpectedness of the contact gave her a jolt: it made her start away from him, her shoulder clipping his as she did so, her galoshes noisy on the path. He seemed to step back too, to put up his hands in an exaggerated way, like a man caught out at something, playfully pretending innocence.

Or perhaps he really was innocent. She was suddenly uncertain. It was too dark to make out his expression; she could see only faint gleams of starlight at his eyes, his teeth. Was he smiling? Was he laughing at her? She had the tricked, trapped feeling she’d sometimes had with men in the past, the sense that, through no act of her own, she had become a figure of fun, and that whatever she did or said now would only make her more of one.

And she felt the loneliness of the spot again, the moist and crafty garden. It seemed to be on Mr Barber’s side, in a way it hadn’t been before. She tightened the belt of her dressing-gown, straightened her back, and spoke coldly.

‘You oughtn’t to linger out here, Mr Barber. Your wife must be wondering where you are.’

As she expected, he laughed, though with a sort of wryness that she didn’t understand.

‘Oh, I dare say Lily can live without me for another minute or two. I’ll just have my smoke out, Miss Wray, and then I’ll wend my way to bed.’

She left him without a farewell, stumping back to the house, feeling just as much of a fool as she’d known she would. Once she had kicked off the galoshes she saw to the stove and the breakfast things at top speed, not wanting to have to encounter him for a third time that night. But in any case, he didn’t appear. She was up in her room, groping for the pins in her hair, before she heard the back door closed and bolted.

She listened to his step on the stairs with a lingering crossness – but found herself curious, too, as to how he would greet his wife. She thought of Christina asking her if she had put a tumbler to the wall. But it wasn’t eavesdropping, was it, if one simply stole closer to the door and tilted one’s head?

She heard Mrs Barber’s voice first. ‘There you are! I thought you’d got lost. What have you been doing?’

He answered with a yawn. ‘Nothing.’

‘You must have been doing something.’

‘Having a smoke, out the back. Looking at the stars.’

‘The stars? Did you see your future in them?’

‘Oh, I know that already, don’t I?’

That was all they said. But the way in which they said it – the absolute deadness of their tones, the absence of anything like affection – took Frances aback. It had never occurred to her that their marriage might be anything other than happy. Now, astonished, she thought, Why, they might almost hate each other!

Well, their feelings were their own affair, she supposed. So long as they paid their rent… But that was thinking like a landlady; that was a horrible way to think. She didn’t want them to be miserable. But she felt unnerved, too. She was reminded of how little she knew them. And here they were, at the heart of her house! Her mind ran back, unwillingly, to Stevie’s warning about the ‘clerk class’.