The Paying Guests(6)
There was no one save Mr Barber, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his jacket off, his cuffs rolled back; he was fiddling with a nasty thing he had evidently just hung on the landing wall, a combination barometer-and-clothes-brush set with a lurid orangey varnish. But lurid touches were everywhere, she saw with dismay. It was as if a giant mouth had sucked a bag of boiled sweets and then given the house a lick. The faded carpet in her mother’s old bedroom was lost beneath pseudo-Persian rugs. The lovely pier-glass had been draped slant-wise with a fringed Indian shawl. A print on one of the walls appeared to be a Classical nude in the Lord Leighton manner. The wicker birdcage twirled slowly on a ribbon from a hook that had been screwed into the ceiling; inside it was a silk-and-feather parrot on a papier-maché perch.
The landing light was turned up high, hissing away as if furious. Frances wondered if the couple had remembered that she and her mother were paying for that. Catching Mr Barber’s eye, she said, in a voice to match the dreadful brightness all around them, ‘Got everything straight, have you?’
He took the cigarette out of his mouth, stifling a yawn. ‘Oh, I’ve had enough of it for one day, Miss Wray. I did my bit, bringing up those blessed boxes. I leave the titivating to Lilian. She loves all that sort of thing. She can titivate for England, she can.’
Frances hadn’t really looked at him properly before. She’d absorbed his manner, his ‘theme’ – that facetious grumbling – rather than anything more tangible, more physical. Now, in the flat landing light, she took in the clerkly neatness of him. Without his shoes he was only an inch or two taller than she. ‘Puny,’ his wife had called him; but there was too much life in him for that. His face was textured with gingery stubble and with little pimple scars, his jaw was narrow, his teeth slightly crowded, his eyes had sandy, near-invisible lashes. But the eyes themselves were very blue, and they somehow made him handsome, or almost-handsome – more handsome, anyhow, than she had realised so far.
She looked away from him. ‘Well, I’m off to bed.’
He fought down another yawn. ‘Lucky you! I think Lily’s still decorating ours.’
‘I’ve put out the lights downstairs. The mantle in the hall has a bit of a trick to it, so I thought I’d better do it. I ought to have shown you, I suppose.’
He said helpfully, ‘Show me now, if you like.’
‘Well, my mother’s trying to sleep. Her room, you know, is just at the bottom of the stairs —’
‘Ah. Show me tomorrow, then.’
‘I will. I’m afraid it’ll be dark, though, if you or Mrs Barber need to go down again tonight.’
‘Oh, we’ll find our way.’
‘Take a lamp, perhaps.’
‘That’s an idea, isn’t it? Or, I tell you what.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll send Lil down first, on a rope. Any trouble and she can… give me a tug.’
He kept his gaze on hers as he spoke, in a playful sort of way. But there was something to his manner, something vaguely unsettling. She hesitated about replying and he raised his cigarette, turning his head to take a puff of it, twisting his mouth out of its smile to direct away the smoke; but still holding her gaze with those lively blue eyes of his.
Then, with a blink, his manner changed. The door to his bedroom was drawn open and his wife appeared. She had a picture in her hands – another Lord Leighton nude, Frances feared it was – and the sight of it brought on one of his mock-complaints.
‘Are you still at it, woman? Blimey O’Reilly!’
She gave Frances a smile. ‘I’m only making things look nice.’
‘Well, poor Miss Wray wants to go to bed. She’s come to complain about the noise.’
Her face fell. ‘Oh, Miss Wray, I’m so sorry!’
Frances said quickly, ‘You haven’t been noisy at all. Mr Barber is teasing.’
‘I meant to save it all for tomorrow. But now I’ve started, I can’t stop.’
The landing felt impossibly crowded to Frances with them all standing there like that. Would the three of them have to meet, exchange pleasantries, every night? ‘You must take as long as you need,’ she said in her false, bright way. ‘At least —’ She’d begun to move towards her door, but paused. ‘You will remember, won’t you, about my mother, in the room downstairs?’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Mrs Barber. And, ‘Of course we will,’ echoed her husband, in apparent earnestness.
Frances wished she’d said nothing. With an awkward ‘Well, good night,’ she let herself into her room. She left the door ajar for a moment while she lit her bedroom candle, and as she closed it she saw Mr Barber, puffing on his cigarette, looking across the landing at her; he smiled and moved away.
Once the door was shut and the key turned softly in the lock, she began to feel better. She kicked off her slippers, took off her blouse, her skirt, her underthings and stockings… and at last, like a portly matron letting out the laces of her stays, she was herself again. Raising her arms in a stretch, she looked around the shadowy room. How beautifully calm and uncluttered it was! The mantelpiece had two silver candlesticks on it and nothing else. The bookcase was packed but tidy, the floor dark with a single rug; the walls were pale – she’d removed the paper and used a white distemper instead. Even the framed prints were unbusy: a Japanese interior, a Friedrich landscape, the latter just visible in the candle-light, a series of snowy peaks dissolving into a violet horizon.