The Paying Guests(38)
She lowered the gown, embarrassed. ‘Perhaps the puddle-coloured one instead.’
‘There must be something else.’
‘Truly, there isn’t. See for yourself.’
Side by side, they gazed into the wardrobe’s bleak, plundered interior. All that hung from the rail now were things from Frances’s schooldays. Serge frocks, long skirts, stiff collars, neck-ties: it was astonishing to think that only a decade ago she had been going about in cumbersome clothes like this. The very memory of the endless layers of flannel underwear made her droop.
But something had caught Lilian’s eye. She put in her hand, and pulled. ‘What’s this?’
‘Oh,’ said Frances, as the garment emerged, ‘I only ever had that as a fancy. Someone talked me into buying it. No, that won’t do at all.’
The gown was a sage-green thing with a wide collar and a tiered skirt, laced at the bosom and cuffs with slim leather thongs. It was Christina who had persuaded her to buy it, back in that other life of theirs. It had cost three guineas – three guineas! The figure seemed astronomical now – and she had worn it only once, to a Red Cross ball. Christina’s father had got hold of the tickets, and in their earnest, pacifist way she and Chrissy had debated the ethics of attending. But they had got swept up by the fun of it in the end; she remembered that ball, now, as a bright spot among shadows. Seeing the gown dangling from Lilian’s fingers brought it all back: the electric intensity of the evening, the rides in the taxi through the blacked-out streets with Christina’s dim Aunt Polly as chaperone, Christina herself, the sweet scent of her hair, the feel of her hands in tight kid gloves…
Lilian was watching her face. ‘This is what you ought to wear, Frances.’
‘This? Oh, no.’
‘Yes. All the other things have made you frown. But this – You see? You’re smiling. Put it on.’
‘No, no. I’d feel a fool. And look at the state of it! It reeks of must.’
‘That doesn’t matter. It wants a wash and a press, that’s all. Put it on and let me see. Just to please me. Will you? I’ll look away until you’re ready.’
She shoved the gown into Frances’s hands, then turned her back to her and stood waiting. Frances, seeing no way out of it, began to undress. She did it slowly at first. But the petticoat that she was wearing was literally coming apart at the seams, and, realising that, growing afraid that Lilian would turn too soon, she worked more quickly – kicking off her slippers, wriggling free of her skirt and blouse, then shaking open the musty frock and pulling it over her head. It seemed immediately to tie itself into a knot, and she wrestled with it for several seconds, trying to work her arms along its narrow sleeves. Looking into the mirror at last she saw herself red-faced, with untidy hair, her collarbones plainly visible beneath the clinging creased material, and the dress itself, with its lacings, like something from Sherwood Forest, as if she ought be sitting in one of her father’s chairs, playing a lute.
But when Lilian turned, and saw her, her expression softened.
‘Oh, Frances, you look lovely. Oh, the colour suits you. You’re lucky. If I wear green near my face it makes me look like a corpse. But, yes, it just suits you. All it needs is a bit of work.’ Coming close, she began to tug the frock into shape with brisk, professional fingers. ‘The waist wants lowering, for a start. It’ll be quite a different gown then. It’ll show how lovely and slim you are – oh, I’d give anything to be slender like you! – but the line will be softer. You see what I mean? You ought to wear looser stays, you know. They only need to be stiff or elastic when you’ve a bust like mine. And you must wear silk stockings, Frances, not these terrible cotton ones. Don’t you want to make the most of your nice ankles?’
She spoke without a blush, quite unselfconscious, as if it were perfectly natural that she should have been studying and forming opinions on Frances’s ankles, Frances’s hips, the style of Frances’s underwear. But then, of course, women like Lilian studied other women all the time. They noticed, they judged, they admired and damned, they coveted bosoms, complexions, mouths… She was drawing up the hem now. ‘This ought to be raised. See how it’s better?’
‘But I don’t want it raised.’
‘Just an inch or two, for the party? I should have thought you’d like ladies to have shorter skirts. You don’t want us to go about hobbled?’
‘But —’
‘Stay just like this, while I fetch my pins!’
There was no resisting her. She ran for her work-basket and returned to measure and mark, moving Frances’s limbs about as if they were those of an artist’s dummy. She loaded the frock with so many pins that when it was time for Frances to remove it she had to inch herself out, afraid for her skin.
And even then she hadn’t finished. Once Frances was back in her harmless, laundered-to-death old blouse and skirt, she stood looking her over with a calculating expression, tapping her fingers at her plump mouth, and – ‘What shall we do about your hair?’ she said.
Frances was aghast. ‘My hair? My hair’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘But you always wear it up. Wouldn’t you like a new style, to match the frock? I could cut it for you. I could wave it! We could surprise your mother. Oh, Frances, what do you say?’