The Paying Guests(60)
Once the hair was finished, she couldn’t relax. She spent time assembling her outfit, hunting down some good silk stockings, steaming the nap back into a pair of suede shoes. She scrubbed her hands with lemon juice, she cut and polished her fingernails, she fitted a new blade into her safety-razor and carefully shaved her legs. That all took until tea-time; after that she sat in the drawing-room with an open book in her lap, too restless to read properly; too conscious of Lilian overhead, at the wardrobe, opening drawers. Half-past four… Quarter to five… The minutes dragged by – until she heard the clang of the gate and hollow-sounding footsteps in the front garden. Leonard was home. He let himself into the house, and with his arrival the pace of the day was suddenly accelerated: the afternoon seemed to catch its breath, to rise on to its toes and spring forward. He had his own evening to prepare for, of course, his dinner, his club-night – whatever it was. Soon Frances could hear him on the landing, calling to Lilian about shaving-soap and sock-suspenders. As she was out in the kitchen making an early Saturday supper, the gramophone blared into life, and she felt a thrill of absolute excitement. For once, the dance-tunes seemed to beckon to her rather than repel her.
The music was still playing when she went up. It buzzed in the boards at her feet while she stripped and washed. On went clean underwear. Up came the stockings, gliding with supernatural smoothness over her newly shaven legs. The frock took a bit of fiddling with. It was disconcertingly loose at the bust, alarmingly short at the hem – Lilian had raised it after all – and, gazing at her reflection, at the Burne-Jones lacing, Frances thought again of Sherwood Forest, of lutes and pageants. And did her hair look all right above the satiny collar? Her neck seemed as long as a sea-serpent’s. Pointing her jaw this way and that she was reminded of those stretched wax mannequin heads and shoulders she had now and then seen on display in hairdressers’ windows.
The gramophone record ended as she was dabbing her nose with a leaf of papier poudré. In the abruptly unnerving silence she fitted on her borrowed hat, and cautiously crossed the landing.
She found Lilian’s bedroom door ajar, and could just glimpse Lilian beyond it: she was at the mirror, dressed in a frock that Frances had never seen before, the frock that she must have made for the party, a striking thing of white silk with a gauzy overskirt, and with slender shoulder straps that left her arms and upper back bare. She was pushing a gold snake bangle over her wrist when she caught sight of Frances; she paused with it part-way up her arm as their gazes met through the glass. But at once she looked away, lowering her kohl-darkened eyelids, sliding the bangle higher. And what she said was, ‘Here’s Frances. Doesn’t she look nice?’
Leonard was in there with her; Frances hadn’t realised that. But now, with the creak of a floorboard, his gingery head appeared around the door.
He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. The admiration, Frances thought, was part pretend, part genuine. ‘Well, Clapham won’t know what’s hit it tonight! You look like the lady in the tower, in the poem – what’s her name?’ He came out on to the landing; he wanted the clothes brush, for his jacket. ‘You’re in the right colour for Lily’s family, anyhow. They like anything that reminds them of the auld Emerald Oisle!’
She watched him tidying his shoulders. She had never seen him looking so dapper. He had taken as many pains over his outfit as she had over hers. His hair was severely oiled and parted; the creases in his trousers were sharp as blades. He was wearing a regimental tie, had some sort of crested ring on the smallest finger of his left hand, and his fingernails were gleaming: he’d been to see ‘Thidney, my manicuritht’, he told her, with a chorus-girl flop to his wrist.
But his manner had a hint of restraint to it. He had been cautious with her since the night of Snakes and Ladders. She said, ‘You’re looking forward to your evening?’ and he nodded: ‘Oh, yes.’
‘What is it, exactly? A supper?’
‘Yep. A slap-up one, by all accounts. Then we head off to a private room, and it’s there that the real business happens. Or so I’m told.’
‘Rolling up your trouser legs, learning the handshake – something like that, is it?’
He was straightening his cuffs now, and smiled at his sleeve. ‘No! Just a few chaps together, all in the same line of work. “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” You know the sort of thing, Frances.’
‘Not really, no.’
He didn’t answer that. His gaze had slid over her shoulder. Lilian had come to the bedroom doorway, one of her snug cloche hats on her head, a silk shawl over her arm; he looked her up and down as if taking her in for the first time. And when he spoke again, it was with an air of grievance. ‘I dunno. It doesn’t seem right to me, a fellow going one way on a Saturday night and his wife going another. I must want my head read, letting you loose among those cousins of yours!’
Lilian began to step past him. ‘You should have thought of that before you agreed to go to your stupid supper.’
‘Stupid supper? I like that! Don’t you want your man to get on? You’re quick enough to spend his money. – Just a sec.’ He reached for her wrist. ‘What time will you be home?’
She pulled against him. ‘I don’t know. Earlier than you, most probably.’
‘Well, mind you behave yourself. And don’t I get a farewell kiss?’