The Paying Guests(81)
Oh, what the hell, she thought. One wasn’t in love every day! She went inside and bought the thing, carried it home, took it up to her room, spent ages wrapping it in a bit of coloured paper and a ribbon.
She gave it to Lilian the next morning, while her mother was in the garden. And though she laughed as she handed it over, and though Lilian laughed too once she had unwrapped it, somehow when the cheap little ornament was resting between them in her upturned palms their laughter died and they grew almost grave.
‘I shall look at this when we’re apart,’ Lilian said, ‘and it won’t matter who I’m with, whether it’s Len or anyone. He’ll think I’m here, but I won’t be here. I’ll be with you, Frances.’
She raised the caravan to her mouth, closed her eyes as if wishing, and kissed it. And then she set it on the mantelpiece in place of Sailor Sam – put it right there, in Leonard’s own sitting-room, where his gaze, Frances thought, would pass unwittingly over it perhaps a hundred times a day. The idea set off a mixture of feelings inside her: she didn’t know which of them was uppermost, excitement or disquiet.
8
And perhaps the conversation with Christina broke some sort of spell; for, almost immediately, things began to change. At breakfast a few days later, Frances’s mother received a note inviting her over to Braemar for an hour or two, so that she and Mrs Playfair might discuss some new charity venture. And though Frances had planned to devote the morning to housework, and would ordinarily have used her mother’s absence to throw herself into some especially grubby chore, once her mother was safely out of the way the knowledge that Lilian was upstairs, alone, unguarded, began to mount in her like a dreadful itch. At last she gave in and went up, tapped at the sitting-room door. Lilian pulled across the curtains, and the room became the dim, warm, insulated place that it had been on the night of Snakes and Ladders. They lay kissing on the sofa for a while, then moved to the floor, gently undoing each other’s clothes as they went.
But when Frances made to draw up Lilian’s skirt, Lilian stopped her. ‘No.’
‘No?’
‘Not yet. Lie back first, and let me love you.’
So Frances did as she was told, lay flat, closed her eyes, let her skirt be raised, let her legs be eased apart. She felt Lilian’s hand, and then her mouth, warm and mobile, on her stockinged thigh; she felt the mouth grow wet and velvety where it met the flesh above the silk. Then her underclothes were thumbed aside and the mouth was between her legs, tight against her, hot, quite still – unbearably still, so that she started to stir against it – then becoming movement, becoming lips, tongue, breath, pressure, insistence —
Then, with painful abruptness, the mouth was withdrawn. She lifted her head. ‘What —?’
‘Sh!’ said Lilian. She was looking over at the door, a finger raised to her wet lips. And then Frances heard it too: a creak, a footstep, leaving the stairs. Before she could react, there came a voice: ‘Frances? Are you up here?’
It was her mother, out on the landing, just on the other side of the not-quite-shut sitting-room door.
They leapt to their feet as if shot through with electricity. Lilian was madly wiping her mouth and chin. Frances’s skirt was up around her hips, one of her stockings come free of its suspender: she groped for the catch, got it fastened, straightened seams, smoothed her hair. Where were her slippers? She spotted the heel of one: it had got kicked under the sofa. She tried to hook it out with her toe, tilting sideways as she did it… Now her mother was calling again. ‘Frances?’ She gave up on the slippers, looked once at Lilian, and, her heart hammering, went to the door.
Her mother was just turning away as if to head downstairs again. Hearing Frances, she turned back. ‘Oh, you are here. Good.’
‘Yes,’ said Frances. ‘Yes, I’m here.’ She moved forward, pulling the door to behind her. ‘What is it? Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. But it’s Patty, over at Mrs Playfair’s. An upset stomach. Nothing to trouble a doctor with, but she has set her mind on arrowroot as the cure; and Mrs Playfair’s kitchen is out of it. Don’t we have some? I was sure we would. I’ve promised to take it straight back to them. But I’ve looked right through the larder and can’t see any.’
She was still in her hat and her coat. The front door hadn’t sounded; she must have come by the lane and the garden, for quickness. Stammering slightly over the words, Frances said, ‘How long have you been here?’
‘Just a few minutes. I did wonder where you were. I saw that you weren’t in the drawing-room.’
‘No. No, I’ve been up here, with Lilian.’
Her mother was paying more attention to her now. ‘Yes? What have you been doing? You look as though you’d run a race!’
‘Do I?’ Frances laughed. ‘Oh, Lilian’s been teaching me a dance step.’
It was the first thing that sprang to mind. But she’d had to say something to account for her manner and appearance. She was acutely conscious of her uncombed hair, the colour in her cheeks, her creased clothes and shoeless feet – and also of the fading slippery commotion between her thighs. Thinking to use a small lie to deflect attention from a larger one – because that was a strategy that had sometimes worked for her in the past – she added, in a coming-clean sort of way, ‘We’ve been smoking, too. I didn’t want you to be bothered by the smell of it.’