The Paying Guests(45)

‘I wish we’d known you’d be back so early. We would have asked you and your mother to join us for a drink. We’re celebrating tonight.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Yes, I don’t like to boast, but – well, a little promotion at work, for yours truly.’

He touched his moustache as he spoke, in a mock-modest gesture. She saw then, through the gloom, that the tumblers he was carrying had a lacework of froth inside them and puddles of beer at the bottom, and that his colour was rather high. Still smiling, she began to edge past him. ‘Congratulations. Good for you.’

He put out a hand. ‘Well, look here, why not join us now? It isn’t so late. Just a night-cap? One for the road? Lily would like it – wouldn’t you, Lil?’ He had moved back into the sitting-room – done it nimbly, on his shoeless feet – and now he spoke to the part of the room that was hidden from Frances by the open door. ‘Miss Wray’s out here, back early from her dinner. I’ve told her she must come in and join us.’

There was no audible answer, but Frances, hearing the creak of the sofa, simply saw no way out of it. Mr Barber beckoned to her, and she followed him into the room.

Lilian was sitting in the amber-coloured light of a single lamp, looking uncertain about whether or not to get to her feet. She was slipperless like her husband, her colour was high like his, and the cushions all around her were squashed and disarranged. Sprawled on one of them was the doll that Frances had seen the couple playing with that other time. She got a proper view of it now: a loosely-jointed thing with padded limbs and a leering expression, dressed in navy blue corduroy and a white sailor’s cap.

She felt another gust of loneliness. When Lilian rose and said, in a self-conscious way, ‘Hello, Frances. Isn’t it nice about Len’s promotion?’ she found herself answering, falsely hearty, like another person altogether, ‘Isn’t it, though! I’ll bet you’re bucked.’

Mr Barber puffed out his chest, pretending smugness now. ‘Yes, when the chief called me into his room this morning I thought he was going to let loose a rocket! Instead he sat me down and gave me a cigar and said, “Now, listen here, Barber. A talented fellow like you —”’

‘Oh, he didn’t say that,’ said Lilian.

‘Those were his exact words! “Now, look here, Barber m’boy. A bright spark like you oughtn’t to be stuck in the sort of post that’s never going to bring him in more than two-oh-five a year. Old Errington’s leaving us soon. What d’you say to taking over his desk? There’s a clear ten pounds extra in it for you. And just to show you how much we think of you, say we add on another fiver, make it a round two-twenty!”’

Frances’s smile felt painful now. Two hundred and twenty pounds! She had just that morning received a dividend statement – one of the doomed investments put in place by her father – for forty-five. Last year the statement had been for sixty.

‘Good for you!’ she said again. ‘No wonder you’re celebrating. But, look, I mustn’t intrude —’

‘Oh, don’t say that.’ He seemed really sorry. ‘We’re all friends, aren’t we?’

‘Of course, but —’

‘And it’s still broad daylight outside! It isn’t even ten o’clock! I know the clock on the shelf says a quarter past, but that clock’s like Lily – rather fast.’ With a snigger, he dodged away from his wife’s hand: she had leaned to take a swipe at him.

Frances had to move out of his path. The movement took her further into the room. She tried again. ‘Please don’t trouble.’

But she felt worn down. The strength had been squeezed out of her by the tangles of her own peculiar mood. Mr Barber, in a way that would brook no further protest, said, ‘Now, what do you fancy? Stout? Sherry? A gin and lemonade?’ And after a moment’s struggle she answered, defeated, ‘A gin and lemonade, then. Just a small one, Mr Barber.’

He made for the door. ‘And how about Lily? Still stout, is she?’

Another swipe, another dodge, and Lilian’s colour rose higher. ‘I’ll have the same as Frances,’ she called after him, as he went off to the kitchen.

He took the life of the room with him. In his absence, she and Frances stood like strangers. After a moment, they sat, Lilian returning to her place on the dishevelled sofa, Frances taking the easy chair, perching at the front of it, not easy at all. From out in the kitchen there came the sound of a stopper being drawn from a bottle, followed by the chink of glasses.

‘It seems ages since I’ve seen you,’ said Lilian at last.

‘You see me every day,’ said Frances.

‘You know what I mean. How are you?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m tip-top. And you? What have you been up to? Did you ever finish Anna Karenina?’

But at that, Lilian lowered her gaze. ‘I wish now that I’d never read it. It made me too sad.’

She pulled the doll on to her knee and began picking at its corduroy trousers. Frances’s eye was caught by something on the mantelpiece: the Turkish delight box, tucked between the Spanish fan and the Buddha.

There was no time to comment on it. Mr Barber was back, three tumblers in his hands, one of them dark with beer, the others so full of gin and lemonade that the mixture was slopping over his fingers. He closed the door behind him with his foot, and brought the glasses across the room. Frances took hers gingerly because of the drips. He handed the other to Lilian, then stood with his hand at his mouth, sucking the spilled drink from his knuckles.