The Paying Guests(37)

Then she grew still, and raised her head, and looked at Frances through the bit of swing-glass left unobscured by the stockings. ‘Why don’t you come to Netta’s with me, Frances?’

Frances was taken aback. ‘To the party?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘I haven’t been invited.’

‘Netta said I could bring who I liked. And my family would be pleased to see you. They’re always asking after you. Oh, do say yes!’ She had turned, was growing excited. ‘It’ll only be little – at Netta’s house in Clapham. But it’ll be fun. We’ll have fun.’

‘Well —’ Frances was thinking it over. Would it be fun, with the Walworth sisters? ‘I don’t know. When is it, exactly?’

‘The first of July. A Saturday night.’

‘I’ve nothing to wear.’

‘You must have something.’

‘Nothing that wouldn’t shame you.’

‘I don’t believe you. Let me take a look. Come and show me, right now!’

But, ‘Oh, no,’ said Frances. Her mind had gone flashing through her wardrobe. ‘Half of my things are falling apart. I’d be ashamed for you to see them.’

‘How can you say such a thing?’

‘You’d laugh at them.’

‘Oh, Frances, come on. You threw your shoes at a policeman, once.’

‘Not a policeman. An MP.’

‘You threw your shoes at an MP. You can bear to show me the inside of your wardrobe, can’t you?’

She came across the room as she spoke, her hand extended, and when Frances still hesitated she reached and caught hold of her wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong: Frances tugged against it for a moment, but then, protesting, complaining, she allowed herself to be drawn from the room and led around the stairwell. They went into her bedroom laughing, and had to stand, pink-faced, to let the laughter subside.

Once Lilian had recovered, she began to look around. She had never been right inside the room before: Frances saw her gazing in a polite but noticing way at the few little things on display, the candlesticks on the mantelpiece, the Friedrich landscape on the wall…

‘This is a nice room, Frances,’ she said, with a smile. ‘It suits you. It isn’t full of rubbish, like mine. And are those your brothers?’ She had spotted the two framed photographs on the chest of drawers. ‘May I see? You don’t mind?’ She picked them up, and her smile grew sad. ‘How good-looking they were. You’re awfully like them.’

Frances stood at her shoulder to look at the pictures with her, the studio shot of Noel as a handsome schoolboy, the family snap of John Arthur in the back garden, larking about, tilting his hat to the camera. He was years younger there than she was now, though she still thought of him as her elder. And how quaint he looked in his waistcoat, with the old-fashioned watch-chain across it. She had never noticed before.

All at once, she had had enough of her brothers for the day. And she could see Lilian’s eyes beginning to wander again, to wander almost furtively this time, as if she were thinking that there might be another young man in a photograph somewhere, perhaps over there, on the bedside cabinet…?

‘Look here, this party.’ Frances crossed to the wardrobe. ‘You really meant it, about going through my clothes?’

Lilian returned the pictures to their places. ‘Yes!’

‘Well —’ The wardrobe door creaked open like the door to a cemetery vault. ‘Don’t say I haven’t warned you.’

After a moment of looking over the drooping garments on their wire shoulders she began to unhook them and pull them out. She started with her house blouses and skirts, then moved on to the things she kept for best: the grey tunic, a fawn jacket, a navy frock that she was fond of, another frock, never quite so successful, in tea-coloured silk. Lilian received each item and carefully examined it, polite and tactful for a while, finding details to praise and admire. As she warmed to the task, however, her tone grew more critical. Yes, this one was handsome enough, but it was the colour of a puddle. This skirt ought to be shortened; no one wore them so long any more. As for this – it might have belonged to Queen Victoria! What had Frances been thinking?

She piled the garments on the bed. ‘Have you never wanted nice things?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Frances. ‘When I was young.’

‘You always talk as though you’re ninety.’

‘I lost heart for it all. And then, there hasn’t been the money. You ought to see my underclothes. They make this lot look Parisian. Some of them are held together with pins.’

‘Well, what might you wear to Netta’s?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. You’ve sprung it on me, rather.’ She pulled a gown free from the heap on the bed. ‘This, I suppose.’

It was a black moire frock, a thing she’d been wearing to suppers and parties for the last six or seven years. She shook it out, and turned it to the light of the window so that she and Lilian could look it over. But it was worse than she’d remembered. The bodice was beaded, but beads had been lost, leaving threads behind them like coarse black hairs. In one of the sleeves a line of stitches was visible where she had mended a rip. Worst of all, the armpits were pale: she had coloured them in with ink in the past, but the ink had faded, was streaked and blueish…