The Paying Guests(31)
Mrs Barber said, ‘I know. I sometimes went there with my sisters.’
‘You did? I used to go with my brothers – until my father decided it was vulgar, and put a stop to it. We might have been there at the same time.’
‘Isn’t that a funny thought?’
The idea of it seemed to impress them both. They moved on at a livelier pace – making now for the band-stand, a quaint octagonal pavilion with a red tiled roof. They crossed the gravel, climbed the steps, and the wooden floor must have made Mrs Barber think of dancing: she went across it in the slow twirls of a graceful, unpartnered waltz.
She came to a stop at the balustrade, and stood looking down at the rail. Frances, joining her there, was dismayed to discover that the glossy green paint, which had looked neat from a distance, was in fact scored with naughty drawings – a bare-breasted woman, a cat’s behind – and carved with names: Bill goes with Alice, Albert & May, Olive loves Cecil – though the Cecil had been scratched through, perhaps with a hat-pin, and Jim carved instead.
She ran her fingers over the scorings. ‘Fickle Olive,’ she said.
Mrs Barber smiled, but made no reply. She seemed to have grown slightly wistful since her solitary waltz. For a minute she and Frances gazed out across the park, at the rather uninspiring view – the red-brick buildings of the local hospital. Then she turned and leaned back against the rail, catching hold of the cord of the parasol, absently running the red tassel back and forth over her lips. And since she seemed content to sit there, Frances turned and leaned beside her. It was a curious place to rest, rather a showy spot to sit in; but the parasol, raised behind them, gave an illusion of privacy.
Of course, the mood of the park would be different later, once dusk had begun to fall. Lovers would come here, clerks and shop-girls: Bill and Alice, Olive and Jim. Mrs Barber might return with her husband. Would she, though? It didn’t seem very likely to Frances. She recalled the dead little conversation she had overheard the week before; she remembered the encounter in the starlit garden that had preceded it. Looking sideways at Mrs Barber, watching her stroke the tassel in that idle way over her rounded chin and mouth, she said, ‘May I ask you something, Mrs Barber?’
Mrs Barber turned, intrigued. ‘Yes?’
‘How did you and your husband meet?’
Frances saw her expression fix slightly. ‘Me and Len? We met in the War, in my step-father’s shop. I used to work in there in those days – my sisters and I, we all did. Len was going by, on one of his leaves. He looked in, and saw me through the window.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Oh, well, then he came inside, making out that there was something he wanted to buy. We started talking, and – I didn’t think him specially handsome. He’s rather a weed really, isn’t he? But he had nice blue eyes. And he was fun. He made me laugh.’
She smiled as she spoke, but her gaze had turned inward, and the smile was a strange one, fond but faintly scornful. Aware of Frances waiting for more, she lifted a shoulder in a shrug. ‘There isn’t anything to tell about it, really. He took me to tea. We went dancing. He’s a good dancer when he wants to be. And then, when he went back to France, we began to write to each other. Other boys had taken me out, but Len – I don’t know. The War didn’t seem to touch him in the way it touched everybody else. He never got injured – only scratches. He told me he had a charmed life, that there was something uncanny about it, that fate had picked us out for each other, and —’ She let the tassel drop. ‘I was awfully young. It’s like you said the other day: the War made things seem more serious than they were. I don’t suppose he really meant to marry me. I don’t suppose I really meant to marry him.’
‘And yet, you did marry each other.’
She put out a foot, began to nudge at a knot in the wooden floor. ‘Yes.’
‘But why, if neither of you meant to?’
‘It was just one of those things, that’s all.’
‘One of those things?’ said Frances. ‘What a funny way to put it. You can’t marry someone by accident, surely?’
At that, Mrs Barber looked at her with a curious expression, a mixture of embarrassment and something else, something that might almost have been pity. But, ‘No, of course you can’t,’ she said, in an ordinary tone. She drew in her foot. ‘I’m just fooling. Poor Len! His ears must be on fire, mustn’t they? You oughtn’t to listen to me today. He and I – we had words last night.’
‘Oh,’ said Frances. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We’re always having words about something. I thought we wouldn’t, once we’d left Peckham. But it turns out we do.’
Frances found the simplicity of this statement, combined with the matter-of-fact tone in which Mrs Barber made it, rather terrible. For a few seconds she struggled to find an adequate reply. At last, in an effort to lighten the moment, she said, with a smile and an air of conclusion, ‘Well, my Yorkshire grandmother used to say that marriages are like pianos: they go in and out of tune. Perhaps yours and Mr Barber’s is like that.’
Mrs Barber smiled back at her; but the smile quickly faded. She lowered her gaze, and her eye was caught by something on the stretch of balustrade on which they were perched. She put her hand to it and, ‘This is marriage, Miss Wray,’ she murmured. ‘This is marriage, exactly.’