The Paying Guests(86)
And what, really, did she want? She wanted Lilian, obviously. Further than that, she had never allowed her thoughts to venture. But now the vision she had had – the room, the freedom, the dizzying leap – it was in her head, small, small as a mustard seed, but taking root. Was it possible? Could they do it? Could they make a future together? Could she walk away from her mother, from the Champion Hill life that she had built up so sedulously, one dusty bit of housework at a time? And could she seriously ask Lilian to give up a marriage?
No, of course she couldn’t. It was madness even to consider it. She had to remember what she’d told Christina: that the affair was glorious, a gift, to be enjoyed as long as it lasted. Surely it would run its course. Probably it was simply a thing of the summer, that she and Lilian would outgrow… But another week passed, and then another. The August days kept warm, but began to be noticeably shorter. And the affair did not cool, did not run its course. On the contrary, it became ever more tearing, ever more consuming, ever more frustrating. For there, like a brick wall in the way of it, like a briar hedge – there was Leonard. The two of them could kiss and make love as fiercely as they dared during the day, but at the end of it – at every end, of every day – Lilian would go into her bedroom with him, the door would close behind them, and – Frances still shrank from picturing what happened after that. She took comfort from the fact that the couple seemed to argue more regularly now; that they sometimes passed entire evenings in a dead or bristling silence. But what a way, she thought, to have to find one’s comfort! And in any case, the arguments were always made up. The silences would give way to yawns, to murmurs, to laughter. There were still trips to dancing-halls and public-houses. There was even to be a holiday: Lilian announced it miserably. At the beginning of September she and Leonard were going to Hastings for a week with Charlie and Betty. A whole week! How would they bear it?
Worse even than the thought of it, however, worse than the laughter and the dancing-halls, worse than anything, were the routine casual intimacies of married life: Leonard waiting for Lilian at the bottom of the stairs, calling, ‘Come on, woman!’; Lilian straightening the angle of his hat, doing up the buckle at the back of his waistcoat – little husband-and-wifely moments which Frances might glimpse or overhear as she made her way through the house, and which, if she came upon them unreadied, could strike at her like blows to the heart. At first she did her best to turn and walk away from them. Increasingly, as the month wore to a close, she found herself seized by a pointless impulse to interrupt them. She’d invent trivial domestic dramas, find any sort of excuse – reels of thread, needles, books, that must be urgently borrowed or returned – anything, anything at all to get hold of Lilian, get her by herself, away from Leonard, even for a minute.
‘What is it?’ Lilian would ask, following her into her bedroom.
‘I just wanted to see you, that’s all.’
‘Oh, Frances, you mustn’t.’
For now Leonard might come too, peering in from the landing – ‘What are you women whispering about? You’re forever whispering, you two. A man isn’t safe. What are you plotting?’ – making a joke of it, Frances thought; but peering all the same.
It became hard to keep from hating him. The idea of him bothering Lilian in bed, the thought of him clambering on top of her – She went out of her way to avoid him, and whenever the two of them did meet she was so cool and so unwelcoming that he would retreat, looking puzzled. He gave up stopping in the kitchen for an evening chat with her and instead mooched about the garden, pushing the mower, watering plants. But, of course, he’d always go back to Lilian at the end of it; and sometimes she would find herself creeping after him, imagining the two of them up there in that dangerous room. She’d stand at the bottom of the stairs – or on the first stair, or the second – her head cocked, listening.
Once her mother caught her at it. ‘What are you doing, Frances?’
She gave a start. ‘I thought I heard Lilian and Leonard calling to me, that’s all.’
Her mother looked troubled. ‘They’re in their sitting-room, aren’t they? Why should they want you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, don’t go bothering them. Mr Barber will be glad to go on holiday, I should think – glad to have some time alone with his wife.’
And yes, reflected Frances, he probably would. She thought of the days and days he’d have with Lilian, and the nights and nights… And suddenly she was an inch from going up there and throwing the whole thing in his face. You think she’s yours, she imagined herself saying. You haven’t a clue! She’s mine, you moron! For wouldn’t it solve everything, to do that? Or, if not solve it, then break it, change it —
Then she pictured the horror that she would see in Lilian’s expression; and did nothing.
And then it was September, and the holiday was upon them. Lilian spent the day before it packing a suitcase for the trip. Frances kept her company for a while, sitting on the edge of her bed, but the sight of the things being folded into the case’s striped interior – the bathing costumes, the towels for the beach, vests and underpants of Leonard’s – made her heart wither. When Lilian reached past her to the bedside table for a tub of studs and cufflinks, she got up.
‘I’m in the way, I fear.’