The Paying Guests(82)

Did that help, or make things worse? Her mother’s mouth straightened, conventionally. But then she seemed to hesitate, her gaze sliding past Frances to settle with a touch of wariness on the pulled-to door.

There was nothing to do now, however, but brazen it out. Frances moved forward. Poor Patty. Yes, there was certainly arrowroot. She had used it only last week, for the shape at Sunday’s lunch. If her mother would just come back to the larder… They went down the stairs and into the kitchen in silence. The larder door was open, the box right at the front of the shelf – right there, where anyone but her mother would have spotted it. It was rather a full box. Patty, surely, wouldn’t need so much as that? She fussed for a minute, tipping the powder into a bit of brown paper, making a neat packet of it with two rubber bands.

Her heart was racing the whole time, though her voice, she thought, was steady. But her mother’s manner remained stilted, and her goodbye, when it came, was rather a muted one. She headed off down the garden in a rigid way, as if she knew full well that Frances was at the window watching her go.

Once she had disappeared through the door to the lane, Frances went weakly back upstairs. The sitting-room curtains were open now. Lilian was standing on the hearth rug, her clothes made neat, her hands at her face, covering her nose and mouth. She looked at Frances over her fingertips, and for a moment it seemed possible that, appalled, relieved, the two of them might burst into nervous laughter.

But somehow the moment passed. Frances sank on to the sofa. ‘God!’ She gazed down at her crumpled skirt. ‘I look untidy as hell, don’t I? And my face is blazing. Did you hear me out there? I told her we’d been dancing. That you’d been teaching me a step. Oh, it’s all too music-hall for words!’

Lilian lowered her hands. ‘But your mother wouldn’t guess, would she?’

‘I don’t know. She guesses more than you’d imagine. Then again, she’s good at not seeing the things that don’t suit her… Oh, bloody Mrs Playfair! It’s exactly like her to send my mother home for half an old box of arrowroot, when she might easily have sent one of her army of maids to buy a new one. It’s exactly like my mother, too, to come!’

‘But she won’t think of it,’ insisted Lilian. ‘Nobody would. They’d think of anything but that.’

Frances answered unwillingly. ‘She might, though. Because of Christina and me.’

Lilian stared at her, then abruptly turned away. She sat down on the easy chair, biting at her thumb-nail. Frances looked from her to the patch of carpet where they had lain to make love. The room felt airless to her now. At least her mother hadn’t come the street way and seen the pulled-across curtains. The curtains were silk summer things of Lilian’s, put up just recently. They matched some of the cushions on the sofa. There were silk flowers in the hob-grate, too; the birdcage was twirling slowly on its ribbon; and there on the mantelpiece, of course, were those toys and trinkets, the china caravan amongst them… Frances suddenly saw the room with her mother’s eyes, and it looked like something from a Piccadilly back street.

She gazed across at Lilian and, in a deflated sort of way, her shoulders sinking, she said, ‘What are we doing, Lilian?’

Lilian looked back at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. It’s half-past ten in the morning. It’s no surprise my mother nearly caught us. The wonder is she never has before.’

‘But didn’t you want it?’

‘Of course I wanted it.’

‘It was you that came up to me.’

‘Yes, because if I hadn’t come then, when would I have been able to see you? Maybe for five minutes, later, while Leonard was down in the lav?’

‘But what else can we do?’ Lilian asked. And then, when Frances didn’t answer: ‘You don’t want us to stop?’ She came across to the sofa, sat, took hold of Frances’s hands. ‘You couldn’t stop, could you? Oh, Frances, say you couldn’t. I think I’d die! I love you so much.’

‘And I love you. But we say it, and what does it mean?’

‘You know what it means. You know. Why do you even have to ask me?’

‘Sometimes I think we’ve a sort of delirium.’

‘It’s the rest of the world that has that. We’ll just have to be more careful. It doesn’t matter what time of the day we see each other, does it? What does the time matter? It doesn’t matter that it’s in secret; that just makes it more special, more ours.’

‘Do you suppose my mother would think it special? Do you imagine Leonard would?’

‘Oh,’ Lilian answered automatically, ‘I don’t care what he thinks. And it isn’t as though I’m going with a man, is it?’

Frances’s heart dropped. ‘Isn’t it?’

At once, Lilian grew flustered. ‘I mean, that’s how he would see it.’

‘How, precisely?’ asked Frances. ‘As a small thing, you mean. Why not tell him all about it, then, if it’s as small as all that?’

Lilian sat with her gaze lowered, and spoke quietly. ‘It isn’t a small thing. You know it isn’t.’

Frances did know it. Or, she was almost sure she did. But she felt a perverse temptation to kick out, start a fight… The impulse subsided. She lifted Lilian’s hand to her mouth, and sighed against her fingers. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t let’s quarrel.’