The Paying Guests(69)

And what choice did she have? What else could she do? Drawing the silvery ribbons from the cuffs of her gown was like a final undoing of the promise of the night; but she folded back her sleeves, tied on an apron, fetched dressings from the medicine cabinet, and did her best to staunch the bleeding. He leapt like a hare when the first bit of gauze went in, clutching at the edge of the kitchen table. But after that he sat grimly, with folded arms, clearly resenting his own helplessness. When Lilian leaned to pick grit from his collar, he said, ‘Are you all there? Doing that, in a white frock, with all this blood?’

Frances had never seen him so ill at ease, so out of temper with the world and himself. By the time both nostrils had been packed he looked like a schoolboy smarting at having been beaten in a fight. He felt at the bridge of his nose again, then gazed down at his spoiled clothes. Twitching the flap of his jacket pocket, looking at the dirt beneath his fingernails, surveying the wreck of his evening, he said nasally, ‘God, what a night!’

And, yes, thought Frances, as she washed her hands and began to set the kitchen straight, what a night. Or, rather, what an ending to it. Her mother was white in the face. Her own heart was still fluttering. She felt faintly queasy from the sight of the blood. And Lilian – Lilian, whose hand she had held, who had stood beside her in Netta’s back room, saying, Take me home – Lilian was lost to her, Lilian was gone, sucked back into her marriage.

For while Frances had been working at Leonard’s nose, Lilian had been standing by dumbly, looking sick, looking worried. Had her mind returned to that moment in Netta’s room, too? Did it seem inexplicable to her, now? Was she seeing her husband’s wounds as some sort of sign, some sort of reminder? He rose from the chair, swaying, and she quickly moved forward to catch hold of his elbow. She made sure he was steady on his feet before picking up his hat and gathering her own things. She didn’t look at Frances once. Frances asked, ‘Will you be all right?’ and it was Leonard who answered, in his bunged-up voice.

‘Yes, I’ll be all right. I’ll take some aspirin or something, try to sleep the worst of it off. I expect I’ll feel charming in the morning! But, thank you, Frances.’ He sounded simply weary now. ‘Thank you, Mrs Wray. I’m afraid I gave you an awful fright. You’ve got my hat, have you, Lily? That’s ruined too, I suppose. Hell!’

He peered resentfully at the damage, then tilted up his chin, felt for his wife’s hand and let her guide him from the room. She looked back at the Wrays as she went, to add her thanks to his. But her gaze when it met Frances’s was as blank as marble.

‘Poor Mr Barber!’ said Frances’s mother, as their steps on the staircase faded. ‘Can you believe it? Oh, the sight of his face at the door! I thought my heart would fail me. I do wish he had let us send for the doctor.’

Frances was clearing the kitchen table. She picked up the blood-stained tea-towel, stood uncertainly with it for a moment, then poked it into the embers in the stove.

‘I suppose he’s embarrassed,’ she said.

‘Embarrassed?’

‘At being – I don’t know – bested by a stranger on the street. Men have odd ideas about that sort of thing, don’t they?’

‘He certainly wasn’t at all himself. But what a thing for him to go through!’

‘Well, I dare say he’ll get over it. It might have been worse, after all. If the man had had some sort of weapon —’

‘Oh, don’t!’

‘Say, a knife —’

‘Don’t, Frances! Oh, it’s too horrible. Is it the War that’s done this? Made brutes of our young men? I don’t understand it.’

‘Well, try not to think about it. Mr Barber will have two nasty black eyes tomorrow, but apart from that he’ll be all right. And by Monday he’ll be boasting. You wait and see.’

Perhaps it was the shock of it all, but she couldn’t seem to summon up any real upset on Leonard’s behalf. She felt vaguely impatient even with her mother. It was well past midnight now, but there was no possibility of either of them going to bed yet. The house had the dazed wide-awakeness she remembered from the after-hours of other emergencies: her father’s apoplexy, Zeppelin raids. And a part of her was still with Lilian. She could hear her in the kitchen upstairs, running water. There was the clang of a bowl or a bucket being set on the floor, that must have been the sound of her putting Leonard’s clothes to soak.

The stove had just enough heat left in it to warm two cups of cocoa. Frances added generous sloshes of brandy; they drank it in her mother’s bedroom. And gradually, finally, the night lost some of its spin.

As she was settling back against her pillows her mother even thought to say, ‘I haven’t asked after your evening, Frances. Did you enjoy yourselves, you and Mrs Barber?’

‘Oh,’ said Frances. ‘Yes, it was jolly.’

‘I expect you were much admired. But what a business for you to come home to! And if you’d been half an hour earlier, while that man was on the street – It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

No, it didn’t bear thinking about. And yet, when Frances did think about it, she found herself oddly unable to believe in the danger. She pictured the shadowy street, with herself and Lilian on it. She let her mind run further backward, to the train, the walk through Clapham. It’s your shine, Lilian.