The Paying Guests(63)
‘No, it isn’t too much.’
And, with that, it wasn’t. They smiled at each other, and the blushes and the jitters of the past few days fell away. Instead, a knowledge seemed to leap between them, to leap all the more thrillingly for doing it there in that hot, bright, overcrowded room. And, of course, that’s why they had come. Frances realised it all at once. They could never have looked at each other so nakedly in the dangerous privacy of Champion Hill. But here, among so many people… They turned from one another’s eyes, but the knowledge remained. They were sitting tight together, more or less sharing a chair, Lilian so close that Frances could catch the separate scents of her, the scents of her powder, her lipstick, her hair. She called something to one of her cousins. She leaned to move an auntie’s glass, and then to straighten the beads of her mother’s necklace. Frances took all this in, even while angled away from her, gazing at her – how, exactly? Perhaps with the pores of my skin, she thought.
More guests arrived. There was a commotion in the hall: a barking dog, a crying baby. The dog came into the room with the newcomers, rushing about with a dripping tongue. The baby was handed from lap to lap, a scrap of a thing in a frilled frock, bawling its head off. The aunties rearranged themselves, and the chair to Frances’s left became free. It was taken by a pleasant-looking man of about her own age, who introduced himself as Ewart and shook her hand with hot rough fingers. Was he one of the cousins? No! He didn’t know the family well. He worked as a driver for Lloyd. He’d come to the party on his own. Seeing that Frances’s and Lilian’s glasses were empty, he took them away and refilled them. It was to Frances that he spoke, however, when he had returned.
‘How do you like this weather, then?’ He was wiping his neck with his handkerchief.
‘Not quite so good for a party, is it?’
‘Not so good in the city, full stop. I want to get out of it, I do.’ He tucked the handkerchief away. ‘I have it in mind to take a run down to Hampton Court one of these Sundays.’
He seemed self-conscious about the word run. Frances said, as she lifted her glass, ‘You’ve a motor-car, then?’
‘Near enough. I’ve a pal with one, and he lets me take it out when I fancy. I put him in the way of some work one time, you see, so he owes me the favour. Yes, I’m thinking of Hampton Court. Perhaps take a little row-boat on the Thames.’
‘Or, why not Henley?’ she suggested, struck with the image of the little row-boat; imagining herself and Lilian in it.
‘Henley,’ he said, rubbing his pleasant-looking chin. ‘Now, I hadn’t thought of Henley.’
‘Or Windsor, of course.’
‘No, Henley’s the place. You could make a day of it at Henley. A stroll by the river, a bit of fun on the water.’
‘Feed the ducks.’
‘Feed the ducks. And finish up with a nice tea.’
They exchanged a smile. His eyes were the blue of Cornish china, his fairish hair sat close to his scalp in tight little lamb-like curls. He was the type of man who, twenty or even ten years before, would never have dreamed of sitting down and chatting so freely with a woman of Frances’s class. Now he took a gulp of his beer, neatly wiped his mouth, and felt in his jacket pocket. ‘Like a cigarette?’
The chat about Henley had perked him up. He left off huffing against the heat and told her all about a Saturday-to-Monday he had recently spent down in Brighton. He’d gone there with a pal – not the pal with the motor-car, another pal entirely. They’d had an evening on the pier, at a Wild West show. The stunts those fellows could pull with a lasso and a tomahawk had to be seen to be believed…
Frances listened with half an ear, nodding, smiling; still conscious of Lilian; feeling the evening ticking forward, second by second, beat by beat.
By half-past nine the sky outside was beginning to darken, and the lace at the window acquired a yellow electric sheen. Some of the children had come to their parents and started to pull at their hands: they wanted to go home, they were tired, it wasn’t fair, they wanted to go. One little boy climbed on to his mother’s lap and tried to press her lips shut: ‘Stop talking!’ Mildly, she pushed his hands away and went on chatting with her neighbour. But by ten, people were rising and gathering their things. A group was heading back to Walworth, taking the kids and the aunties home. Mrs Viney was going with them, if she could ever get out of her chair. It took all four of her daughters to raise her to her feet, the rest of the room calling encouragement, the boys making the popping noises of a cork coming out of a bottle.
When she was up and wiping her eyes at the hilarity of it all, Lilian spoke quietly to Frances.
‘I’ll just see Mum and Vera off at the gate. And then we needn’t stay much longer. Just a little while?’
‘Yes, if you’d like to.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, of course.’
She put a hand on Frances’s shoulder, smiling down into her face, her lipstick blurred by the kisses she’d given to aunties, nephews, nieces. When she moved away she went slowly, her hand remaining in contact with Frances until the very last moment, and Frances felt drawn by her fingers, pulled along in the wake of her touch.
Once she had left it, the room became very ordinary. Ewart was still at Frances’s side. He was describing the runs he’d made in his van, to Maidstone, to Guildford; he’d been as far as Gloucester and back in a single day. When he paused to light another cigarette, she got to her feet.