The Paying Guests(25)

Frances explained about the visit to her father’s grave.

Mrs Barber looked appalled. ‘Oh, and for you to have come home and found all these people here!’

She put a hand to her head, disarranging the curls of her hair. She still had crumbs in the panel of her gown: Frances felt a housewifely urge – a housespinsterly urge, she supposed it ought to be called, in her case – to brush them free. Instead, she moved towards the stairs.

‘Your family must stay as long as they like, Mrs Barber. They shan’t disturb us. Truly.’

Downstairs, however, it was possible to hear quite clearly the women’s laughter, the drum of the children’s feet. As Frances closed the drawing-room door the joists above it creaked, then creaked again – even the walls seemed to creak – as if a giant had the house in his hands and was squeezing and jiggling it just as Netta had squeezed and jiggled her chortling child.

Her mother had planted herself in her chair by the French windows with an air of exhaustion.

‘Well!’ she said. ‘What a very surprising family for Mrs Barber to have produced! Or what a surprising family to have produced Mrs Barber, is what I suppose I mean. I was under the impression that her father managed a business of some kind. Didn’t she tell us that? And that she had a brother in the Navy?’

Frances leaned on the back of the sofa. ‘A brother in the —? Oh, Mother, don’t be so elderly. That was all my fancy, don’t you remember?’

‘Is the father a businessman?’

‘The father’s dead. Mrs Viney is a widow and has remarried. To a shopkeeper, whom all the girls despise. He must run that drapers by the fried fish shop.’ And then, when her mother looked blankly at her: ‘Can you think of another on the Walworth Road?’

Her mother took in what she was saying. ‘The Walworth Road? Not really, Frances?’

‘Weren’t you paying attention?’

‘Well, it was hard to keep one’s eye from wandering. Mrs Barber’s decorations – I hadn’t an idea! It looks like the house of Ali Baba! Or the Moulin Rouge! Or the Taj Mahal! If only she would decide on a country and have done with it. Is that what passes for modern décor? If your dear father – You noticed his chair, I suppose?’

‘Mrs Barber explained about that just now. She was most apologetic. Her mother has a “back”, apparently.’

‘Well, I’m amazed that’s all she has! What Amazons those girls are. And Mrs Viney herself hardly more than four feet high!’

‘Still,’ said Frances, smiling, ‘I liked her. Didn’t you? A kind woman, I think.’

‘I think so too,’ her mother admitted. ‘But the sort of kindness of which – let’s be truthful, Frances – a little goes a long way. And why must people of that class always reveal so much of themselves? A few minutes more and she would have shown us her varicose veins.’ She peered anxiously down the room towards the window overlooking the street. ‘I wonder if the Dawsons saw her come. Oh, I know it’s unchristian of me, but I do hope she doesn’t think of visiting too often.’

‘Well, I hope she does,’ said Frances. ‘She’s perked me up no end. She’s as good as a trip to a gin-palace.’

Her mother smiled, wanly – then flinched and looked anxious at another roar of mirth from the floor above. ‘Oh, but I do hope they won’t visit too often. I never heard such gales of laughter! And some of it in very questionable taste. No wonder Mr Barber is keeping away, poor man. Oh, they’re not at all what I expected from Mrs Barber, Frances. If we had known – Oh, dear. I can’t help but feel that she – well —’

‘What?’ asked Frances, smiling, heading for the kitchen. ‘That she’s sold us a pup? I think it makes her more interesting. How hard she must have worked for those green stockings!’



The children continued to charge about for another half-hour, and laughter still gusted out of the sitting-room; but then there came a spell of footsteps and creaking so intense it could mean only that the sisters were up and on the move, shifting chairs, tidying and gathering. As Frances and her mother had their tea, gas pulsed through the meter and china was rattled in the sink. There was the inevitable clip of heels on the stairs as, one after another, the women came down to visit the WC, bringing the protesting children with them. Finally there was the slow descent of Mrs Viney, and prolonged, hilarious farewells in the hall. The little girl discovered the dinner-gong, and struck it, and was smacked.

Frances’s mother had taken up her work-box and sat sewing through the hubbub as if determined not to wince. Frances herself had an open book in her lap, but, distracted, kept going over and over the same two pages. As soon as the front door was closed and Mrs Barber was on her way back upstairs she put the book aside and, unable to resist, she tiptoed across to the window and watched the visitors as they headed off in the direction of Camberwell. There they went, in their gaudy coats, their complicated hats, Netta leading the way with her baby at her shoulder, looking like the Triumph of Twentieth-Century Motherhood, while Mrs Viney, arm in arm with Vera and Min, a sham-leather bag clutched to her bosom, made her slow, good-humoured, late-Victorian progress behind. The children were twirling stems of lavender, plucked from pots in the front garden. More stems lay broken in the garden itself.