The Paying Guests(52)
‘You’ve been a jolly sport, Frances. You won’t give any mind, will you, to me and my big mouth?’
She found herself unable to reply. She shook her head and moved away.
She looked so dreadful in her bedroom mirror, all her features blurred and coarse, that when she had taken off her frock she tried to drape it over the glass; almost at once, it slid to the floor. She needed the lavatory rather badly, so as soon as she had changed into her night-clothes she headed purposefully downstairs. The Barbers had not yet emerged from their sitting-room – she was glad about that. The hall light was still burning, but the edges of her mother’s door were dark – she was glad about that, too. In what seemed a jumble of motion she let herself into the yard, visited the WC, then returned to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. She wasn’t aware of drinking the water, or of putting down the glass, but the next moment she was empty-handed; the next moment again she was back on the stairs with the hall light extinguished; and then she was noisily closing her bedroom door and kicking off her slippers.
She approached the bed with longing, but once she had climbed on to it and was lying flat on her back the mattress tilted like the deck of a ship; she had to push herself upright again. She sat with her head in her hands and groaned. God Almighty, what an evening! If only she had stayed at Mrs Playfair’s! She felt as though she’d been fed poison. The longer she sat there, the more unnaturally aware she became of various furious currents in her body: the slosh of liquids in her stomach, the pounding of blood through the channels of her ears. Braving the tilt of the bed, she carefully lowered herself back down. But there was no ease, no relief, to be found in any position; no possibility of escape from herself. When she closed her eyes she saw a sort of futurist nightmare, snakes and ladders in acid colours, inky hearts, Leonard’s grinning red face. Clearest of all, however, she saw Lilian, groping for the clasp of her suspender. She saw the silk stocking coming down, over and over again.
6
When she awoke the next morning, at just before six, the details of her evening with the Barbers seemed weirdly out of reach. On the other side of the window the sun was already blazing, but of the night that had passed she retained only a muddle of echoes and impressions, noise and laughter, a glass in her hand… Apart from that, she felt quite clear-headed; unnaturally well, in fact. She knew that she had drunk more than she ought to have, but she seemed for the moment so unaffected, so unharmed, that she began to grow slightly complacent. Weren’t there certain people, with particularly sturdy constitutions, who could stand large amounts of alcohol without ill effect? She must be one of those.
But only a few minutes later, as the factory whistles went off, the lustre of her well-being was beginning to cloud. The light at the edge of the curtains was bothering her. She needed the lavatory again, she wanted another glass of water, she felt as hollow as though she hadn’t eaten anything in days. But when she attempted to sit upright her bed, like a beast, came back to life, and her insides gave such a sour plunge that she thought for a moment that she might be sick. She hastily lay flat again, rigid and swallowing, and though the worst of the feeling soon passed, she realised that making a trip downstairs was out of the question. Thank God for the chamber-pot! She managed to fish it from under the bed, to squat giddily over it, to scurry back between the sheets. Now her heart was thudding as if it would burst. She didn’t understand it. Could she have eaten something bad at Mrs Playfair’s? Queasily, she thought over the meal: the soup, the sole, the chicken, the pudding, the cheese, the crème de menthe —
The memory of the glass of green liqueur made bile leap into her mouth. But what she tasted was gin and lemonade. Gin and lemonade; and black cigarettes.
And gradually, then – gradually but relentlessly, like a series of bloated corpses surfacing in murky water – gradually the evening in the Barbers’ room came back to her. She remembered reclining in the easy chair with a glass in one hand and a fag in the other. She remembered pausing with her fingers over Mr Barber’s box of cigarettes, gazing girlishly up at him, practically fluttering her eyelashes: ‘I had the idea you didn’t approve of ladies smoking.’ She recalled singing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ at the top of her lungs. She recalled tittering, she recalled bellowing, she recalled —
No, she wouldn’t admit the memory! No, no, no!
But up it came, the most bloated corpse of all… She remembered leering like a drunken soldier while Lilian stood on a cushion to do a wobbly strip-tease.
She hid her face under her blanket, fighting down waves of nausea and shame.
At seven o’clock the Barbers’ alarm clock went, and she heard Mr Barber – Leonard, damn it, she had to call him now – she heard Leonard rise, go softly downstairs, then return and enter his kitchen. She listened in disbelief to the jaunty ordinariness of his movements as he washed, shaved, fried himself a solitary breakfast. He was even, at one point, humming through his teeth; she felt that he was quite capable of breaking into the chorus of ‘Everybody’s Doing It’. Once she had recalled the image of him with his thumbs hooked in his armpits it hopped about on the inside of her eyelids and made her feel queasier than ever. When she heard the splash and gurgle of tea being poured from the pot, followed by the rattle of china as he carried the cups to his bedroom, she longed so dismally for a cup of tea of her own that she nearly wept.