The Paying Guests(62)
Lilian stopped, and looked curiously at her. ‘What’s the matter? You’re not nervous?’
‘I am, a bit.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just, we’ve gone to so much trouble, come all this way. But now that we’re actually here…’
Lilian glanced ahead at the house, biting her lip. ‘I feel that too, a bit. Aren’t we silly?’
‘Are we?’
‘Well, we can’t not go in. The party’s why we’ve come, after all.’
Was it, though? All at once Frances wondered what would happen if she were to catch hold of Lilian’s hand and pull her in the opposite direction. Let’s go, she wanted to say, right there on the Clapham street. Let’s go! Now! Quickly! Just you and me!
But she didn’t do it, she didn’t say it; and in any case, it was too late. Someone had seen them from the window. The Nottingham lace was raised. Netta’s door opened and Vera’s little girl emerged, bumping a creaking doll’s pram over the step. ‘Auntie Lily! Come and see!’
After the houses of Champion Hill this one seemed built to a miniature scale, the narrow hall widening only slightly at the foot of the stairs, so that when Netta appeared, bringing with her her husband, Lloyd, they all had to reach around each other in order to embrace or shake hands.
‘Many happy returns,’ Frances remembered to say. She had brought along a gift, a jar of bath-crystals. Lilian’s gift was scent. There was a minute or two of unwrapping, unstoppering and sniffing, children coming to sniff too, the boys making faces, rushing away with their noses pinched. There seemed to be children everywhere. A small back room was like a school playground. Ahead was a tiny kitchen, and a few men stood drinking at the garden door, but most of the grown-ups were gathered in the front room, the room that Frances had glimpsed from the street. Seen here, from the hall, it looked even more alarming. There might have been two dozen people in there, sitting on every sort of chair, the younger ones sharing places or cross-legged on the floor. It was bright, hot, crowded, yet intimate and challenging too; the open patch of carpet in the middle recalled a space for fighting cocks. When Lilian led her in at last, she spoke only to say ‘Good evening’ and ‘How do you do?’, but she could at once sense the impact of her accent. People sat straighter in their seats. She felt herself looked over in an interested way. ‘That’s the lady that keeps the house that Lil and Len have,’ she heard someone murmur, as if they knew all about her and had been curious to meet her. The horrible idea came into her head that perhaps the only reason Lilian had brought her here – had dressed and curled her – was to show her off.
It was a relief to recognise Vera and Min. And to spot Mrs Viney, lavishly hung about with jet, her dress rising very nearly to her knees, her swollen ankles on full display, was like seeing a dear old friend.
‘Oh, Miss Wray, don’t you look handsome! And ain’t your hair done lovely! I bet it was Lil done that, wasn’t it?’
She put out her hand as she spoke. Frances moved forward to take it, and was drawn down and given a smacking kiss on the cheek.
Places were rearranged, cushions moved, chairs passed. Frances and Lilian squeezed themselves in next to two elderly women. They proved to be Lilian’s Irish aunties, a Mrs Daley and a Mrs Lynch. Other aunties sat near by, Mrs Someone, Miss Someone Else: Frances forgot the names at once, but was glad to tuck herself in amongst them, grateful to be less on show. She was complimented on her frock. She was given a drink, a glass of claret-cup with chunks of tinned fruit bobbing about in it. The aunties offered her a piece of birthday cake, a glossy sausage roll. And how did she like Clapham? It wasn’t quite what she was used to!
‘And has Lenny not come, then?’
She explained about his supper.
‘Oh, what a pity! He’s a real comedian, that Lenny. Keeps you in stitches, that one.’
‘Yes, doesn’t he?’
She didn’t really want the claret-cup; it brought back memories of Snakes and Ladders. But she sipped it, smiling, self-conscious, gazing about. The room was blandly showy: Toby jugs on a high shelf, tankards and salvers in factory brass. The furniture seemed all brand-new, the varnish on the side-board was gleaming. But, of course, furniture, she remembered having been told once, was Lloyd’s ‘line’. He managed a warehouse, somewhere in Battersea. The man over there, as round as a turnip, she guessed to be Mrs Viney’s brother. The younger man beside him, scarred and sightless, was clearly the son who had been blinded in the War. The boys in the corner must be Lilian’s famous hot-eyed Irish cousins. Two of them had ordinary brown good looks; the third was handsome as a film star. The girls were like Vera, sharp-faced, but with thin unlipsticked mouths. They were calling to Lilian now: they wanted to see her Theda Bara bangle. She eased it free and passed it over, and one after another they tried it on.
It was disconcerting, Frances found, to see Lilian so at home among so many strangers, to think of her as having this world, this life, quite separate from her daily life in the house on Champion Hill. She thought, These people all have their claim on her. What’s mine, exactly?
But as she began to feel almost glum about it, Lilian turned to her to ask in a murmur, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
‘It isn’t too much, all these people?’