The Paying Guests(24)
‘What’s a still?’ asked the girl.
The women ignored her. Min said, ‘I remember that. I remember Daddy crying over it and telling me he had pepper in his eyes.’
‘He was a dear man, your father,’ said Mrs Viney, smiling. ‘An Irishman, Mrs Wray. Sentimental, as they all are. Yes, we were both of us very cut up to lose that last one. But, now, do you know, I’m not sure I should have liked that little boy to have grown up, if he was only to have been killed like his cousins.’
She sighed and shook her head, and again her face lost its jollity, and her high colour was revealed for what it really was, a spider’s web of broken veins in yellow, deflated cheeks. Her button eyes looked suddenly naked – as if life had used her so hard, thought Frances, it had had the very lashes off her.
The girl repeated, ‘What’s a still?’
Vera answered her at last. ‘Something I wish you’d been.’
Frances’s mother looked startled. Mrs Barber dipped her head as if mortified. But the visitors rocked with heartless laughter, Mrs Viney fishing a hanky from her sleeve in order to mop her freshly running eyes. The baby watched the merriment with a solemn expression – then gave a sudden chortle, as if just getting the joke. That made everyone laugh again. Netta squeezed and jiggled him to make him chortle harder. His head rolled, his mouth and chin grew wet, and he kicked her in the stomach in his excitement.
And with that, the mood of the gathering made a slight but definite shift. Vera groped about in her handbag and offered cigarettes. Frances’s mother, looking startled again, shook her head; Frances reluctantly shook hers. But the younger women struck matches, reached for the stand-ashtray, and began to reclaim the conversation. There began to be mentions, Frances noticed, of ‘his nibs’, ‘his lordship’ – ‘Well, you can guess what he said!’, ‘I didn’t pay any mind to him!’ – at which Mrs Viney made occasional, ineffectual protests: ‘Oh, now don’t be nasty! Your poor step-dad don’t mean no harm!’ The family, like a clockwork engine, had made its way over the minor obstacle of the Wrays’ entrance and was returning to what were evidently very comfortable lines. Frances, looking from sister to sister, saw clearly the role that had been won by each – or, more likely, had been foisted on them by the demands of the machine – tart Vera, capable Netta, simple-minded, sandy-faced Min.
And then, of course, there was Mrs Barber: Lilian, Lily, Lil. She had been keeping to the edge of the group all this time, leaning sometimes against the mantelpiece, sometimes against the arm of the sofa; looking, every few minutes, in a worried sort of way, at Frances and her mother. She was wearing a plum-coloured frock of soft material, with panels of crochet at its bosom and on the cuffs of its short sleeves; she had teamed it with olive-green stockings and her Turkish slippers, and around her neck was a string of red wooden beads, clicking together like an abacus with every slight movement. ‘The artistic one in the family,’ her mother had called her, Frances remembered, and it was certainly true that, dress-wise, she had little in common with her sisters, who were all decked out like chorus girls in faux-silk frocks, open-work stockings, high-heeled shoes, wristlets and anklets; nor did her careful accent much resemble theirs. She was moving away from the circle of chairs now. The little boy, her nephew, had approached her with some whispered request; she caught hold of his hand to lead him across the littered carpet, and began gathering titbits for him from the remains of a tea of buns and biscuits that lay scattered on the table on the other side of the room. The boy took the plate she offered and carefully held it to his chest; when its contents began to slip she tucked her skirt behind her thighs and lowered herself at his side to steady it. She did it in one smooth, supple motion, her heels rising out of her slippers, her calves showing, pale and rounded, through the sheen of her stockings. The little boy bit into a biscuit, scattering crumbs into the crochet at her bosom.
She didn’t notice the crumbs. She made her plump lips plumper, to plant an idle sort of kiss on the child’s fair head. Just as the kiss was finished she looked up, saw Frances watching, and dropped her gaze, self-conscious. But when Frances, smiling, continued to watch, she raised her eyes again and smiled uncertainly back.
But now the boy’s cousin, the little girl, had realised that there were treats to be had. She picked her way over and asked for a biscuit of her own. That made Mrs Viney wonder if there mightn’t be biscuits enough for everybody… Frances looked at her mother, and her mother gave the slightest of nods: they rose and began to say their farewells. Detaching themselves from the fibres of Mrs Viney’s goodwill took several more minutes, but finally they made it out to the landing.
Mrs Barber made a point of going with them. And when Frances’s mother had started on her way downstairs, she beckoned Frances back and spoke quietly.
‘I’m so sorry about the chair, Miss Wray. I know you noticed it. Please tell your mother how sorry I am. I’d hate you to think we’d gone helping ourselves to your things. Only, my mother needs a hard armchair, because her back and her legs are bad, and Len and I haven’t got one.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Frances.
‘It isn’t, but you’re kind to say so. It was nice of you to come in. My family’s such a noisy one. They won’t stay much longer. They only came for an hour, but then it started raining. And I think —’ She nodded to Frances’s sober costume. ‘I’m afraid you must have been somewhere solemn today, you and your mother?’