The Paying Guests(54)

She no longer felt sick; that was something. And the room was comfortingly warm and dim. She had opened the window wide but left the curtains almost closed, and now and then a breeze stirred them, making the column of light between them blur and sharpen, widen and thin. The scents were those of the garden: sweet lavender, sharp geranium. From the scullery of a house near by she could just hear the splash of water, from a kitchen the whistle of a kettle, hectically rising, rising, then falling weakly away. The sounds and the smells snagged and tussled, but struck a precarious kind of balance. She felt herself held in the balance along with them, an infinitely fragile and humble thing.

She closed her eyes. Perhaps she dozed. She was faintly aware, in time, of the opening of Lilian’s bedroom door, followed by slippered footsteps on the landing. But the steps slowed, hesitating, and something about the hesitation made her wake up properly; she could feel, as it were, the direction of it. Her stomach gave an unpleasant flutter. She was just pushing herself up into a sitting position when Lilian tapped at her door.

‘Are you there, Frances?’

She cleared her throat. ‘Yes. Yes, come in.’

The door opened and Lilian came gingerly into the twilit room. ‘You weren’t asleep?’

‘Not really.’

‘I wanted to see how you were.’

She stood with a hand on the doorknob, her other hand raised to her face, pushing in her cheek with her knuckles. She and Frances looked at each other, neither of them knowing what to say. Then Frances let her head fall back against the iron bed-head.

‘God, but I feel seedy!’

Lilian said, ‘Oh, so do I! I feel like nothing on earth! I don’t know what to do with myself. Can I – Can I sit with you for a bit?’

Frances’s stomach fluttered again, but she nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’

Lilian closed the door and moved towards the bedroom chair. But the chair was draped with clothes from the night before, all of them reeking of cigarette smoke, and Frances, seeing the uncertainty in her step, said, ‘I’ll have to tidy that later. I haven’t the strength for it now.’ She shuffled back against her pillows and drew in her legs. ‘Up here, instead? Is that all right for you?’

If Lilian hesitated, it was only for a moment. She climbed on to the bed, keeping right down at the foot of it, then sinking sideways against the wall, closing her eyes. Her eyelids were heavy, Frances saw now, and her hair had lost its dark shine. She was wearing a skirt the colour of an envelope, and her plain white blouse had just a bit of violet stitching on its cuffs and at its collar – as if that was all the dash she had been able to muster.

She opened her eyes, and met Frances’s gaze. ‘I’m so sorry about last night.’

Frances blinked, embarrassed. ‘So am I.’

‘I don’t know what was the matter with me. I didn’t do or say a natural thing all evening. Len was even worse. What must you think of us? He feels awful about it now.’

‘Does he?’

‘Oh, yes. Don’t you believe me?’

Frances didn’t know what to think. She recalled the sound of Leonard that morning, going springily about his kitchen. But, ‘It isn’t that,’ she said. ‘It’s just – Oh, Lilian, I can’t make your husband out. He isn’t to blame for last night. I made a fool of myself, I know that. But I can’t help feeling that he enjoyed watching me do it… And he wasn’t very pleasant to you. But then, I wasn’t very pleasant to you either.’

Lilian lowered her eyes. ‘It’s only what I deserved.’

‘What do you mean?’

But she shook her head and wouldn’t answer.

For a minute or two they sat sighing. Gradually Frances’s sighs became groans. She rubbed her face. ‘What a state to get ourselves into! I haven’t been as drunk as that in the whole of my life. My stomach feels like some poor creature that’s been beaten with a club. My eyes might as well have had gunpowder rubbed in them! Shall we have a smoke? Will that make us feel better, do you think, or worse?’

They didn’t know, but decided to find out. Frances got out papers, tobacco and a glass ashtray, and rolled two untidy cigarettes.

When she had taken her first puff she sank back on to her pillows. ‘Oh, it does help, doesn’t it?’

‘Does it?’ asked Lilian. ‘I’m not sure. It makes me feel racy.’

She meant it innocently, putting a hand to her galloping heart. But Frances, hearing the word, and seeing her hand at her bosom, had another flashing vision: the cushion on the floor and Lilian stepping tipsily about to get her balance; her heel coming down on the carpet, and the bounce of her breasts. The image brought a tangle of feelings with it: disbelief, embarrassment, and something else, a queasy remnant of the excitement of the night before.

Lilian was watching her face. ‘What are you thinking, Frances?’

‘Oh —’ She drew on the cigarette. ‘I’m thinking how frightful I was last night.’

‘You weren’t frightful. It was Len and me.’

‘I should never have come in in the first place. Had the two of you been quarrelling?’

‘No, we hadn’t been quarrelling.’

‘But all those awful things Leonard said to you. Is he often like that?’

‘He’d just had too much to drink. Anyhow, I say awful things to him.’