The Paying Guests(80)

Her voice had thickened with an emotion that surprised even herself, and in the pause that followed she guessed that she had been too frank, or over-sentimental. But Christina turned away from her to take a final puff on her cigarette, and then to grind the cigarette out on one of the smooth old stones beneath their feet. And what she said, as she did it, was, ‘Well, lucky Mrs Barber.’

It was plain what she meant, though they hadn’t discussed it in years. Frances was silent for a moment, then spoke in a murmur.

‘I let you down, Chrissy.’

‘Yes. I’ve waited all this time to hear you admit it.’

‘But I lost more than you did.’

‘You did? How’s that?’

‘Well, how do you think? You got our life, but with Stevie in it.’

Christina flicked a speck of ash from her sleeve. ‘Yes, well,’ she said grudgingly, ‘I’d prefer to have had it with you.’

The admission astonished Frances. She said, ‘You don’t mean that? I’d supposed you were happy with Stevie.’

Christina made a face. ‘I am. You needn’t grow conceited. I wouldn’t swap her for you now. And, really, Frances, you’re such a queer combination of things – so conservative one minute, so reckless the next – it would have driven me to tears to live with you. I think I should have finished by wanting to throttle you! It’s simply that – well, I’d like to have had the chance to find out. And most of all,’ she added, ‘I’d have liked it if, when faced with a choice between me and a life of buns and parish bazaars and games of two-handed patience with your mother, you had chosen me. But you didn’t, so there’s an end of it.’

She had lowered her head. Her hands were restless in her lap, the fingers with shadows of ink at the tips, the nails nibbled at the edges. And by some association of memories too convoluted to untangle, the sight of her hands fidgeting like that brought something into Frances’s mind: a moment from the very beginning of it all, opening a book in a public meeting, finding the slip of paper inside. You chump. Don’t you know by now what a horrible huge lot I like you?

And perhaps Christina was remembering something similar. Mixed in with the muted traffic sounds of Fleet Street there suddenly rose a bit of music: some event was being advertised from the back of a motor-van. The strains of it blared, then faded, and as they died altogether she said, with a sigh, ‘No one’s grinding out “our” song today, then.’ She got to her feet, straightening her skirt. ‘I ought to be getting along. Shall we go?’

So they left the yard and rejoined Fleet Street, their pace wearier than before. Once they had entered the Strand, Frances said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll turn at the bridge. How’s your corn?’

‘No, I don’t mind. The corn’s all right.’

‘And you’ve forgiven me?’

‘Forgiven you?’

‘Yes, for – Oh, wait here a sec, will you?’

There was always a flower-seller on the pavement at St Clement Dane’s, an elderly, tobacco-coloured woman who, as a girl, she’d once told Frances, had sold carnations to Charles Dickens. Frances dodged across the busy road to her now and bought a bunch of white lilac. She carried it back through the hooting traffic, and Christina looked sour.

‘For Mrs Barber, I suppose.’

But Frances held it out. ‘For you. For your birthday. I’m sorry I forgot.’

Christina coloured. She took the flowers and raised them to her nose. ‘Well, thank you. I’m glad to have seen you. Don’t let it go another month.’

‘I won’t. And Chrissy, what I’ve told you – You won’t go talking all about it? Not even to Stevie? Lilian has a morbid fear of it getting back to her sisters.’

‘Well, I don’t blame her! Do you?’

‘Oh, how maddening you are. I thought you’d think it all terribly progressive and Gordon Square.’

‘But Mrs Barber isn’t Bloomsbury.’

‘I do wish you’d call her Lilian. Is there one rule for Bloomsbury, then, and another for the suburbs?’

‘What if her husband discovers it? What will happen then?’

‘I don’t know. We haven’t thought that far. I told you, that’s the joy of it.’

Christina’s gaze flicked to the passers-by. She lowered her voice. ‘Well, just be careful. A married woman, Frances! Properly married, not just like Stevie and me. It can’t end well, can it?’

But the end, Frances wanted to say, was impossible to imagine. It was like the idea that one would grow old, when one was thrumming with youth; like the knowledge that one would die, when one felt full to one’s fingertips with life.

Instead she nodded, and kissed Christina’s cheek, and promised: ‘I’ll be careful.’ And then they parted, Christina limping off in the direction of Covent Garden, Frances heading south across the bridge – pausing for a minute in the middle, to look at the toffee-coloured river below.

And on the other side, she paused again. A display in a fancy-goods shop had caught her eye. The display was of cheap china ornaments: windmills, cottages, Scottie dogs. Nestled in amongst them was a caravan and pony, a gaudy, gimcrack thing, meant for children or doting old ladies; but it made her think of that fantasy of Lilian’s, about the gipsy king and queen. The price was a shilling and sixpence. It would be money thrown away. And she had already bought that lilac…