The Paying Guests(87)
‘Don’t go,’ said Lilian, catching hold of her.
‘You’ll do better without me, I think.’
‘No, wait. Please, Frances. We’ll be apart all next week, and —’ She stood with a hand at her eyes for a moment, looking suddenly shockingly weary, all her features dulled and sinking; then she seemed to shake the tiredness away. With a smile, she tossed the tub of rattling links into the half-filled suitcase. ‘I can finish the packing later. Len can help me, for once. I don’t want to be indoors any more. Come out with me, will you?’
Frances was thrown by the change in her. ‘Out with you? What do you mean?’
‘There’s somewhere I want to take you. As a treat. To make things up to you. To make up for – for everything. For going on this stupid holiday. For being married. For being a nuisance and making you love me! I don’t know. You always say you’re sick of stopping indoors with the curtains closed, don’t you? Come out with me, then.’
‘But where to?’
‘I shan’t tell you. It would spoil the surprise! Don’t you like surprises?’
No, Frances didn’t like surprises. She hated the thought of people plotting and planning on her behalf. She loathed the burden of being delighted once the surprise was disclosed. So, almost reluctantly, she got herself ready, and when, twenty minutes later, she and Lilian left the house, she immediately began to attempt to guess where they were heading. Lilian had brought no bag with her save a small velvet handbag, so she couldn’t be intending a picnic; and though they approached the park they soon veered away from it, taking the long road south-west towards Herne Hill. Perhaps they were going to Herne Hill station for an outing by train. Yes, it must be that, she decided. A ramble in the country, followed by tea at a café or an inn. She thought of where they could comfortably get to in two or three hours. Somewhere in Kent, obviously. Well, that was all right. She’d enjoy a trip into Kent. She began to put a good mood in place, to fit it together, determinedly.
But they reached the turning for the station and went marching past it. Lilian had her parasol over her shoulder, and twirled it as they walked, looking mischievous, excited; looking rather like a cat. They were heading for Brixton now. The road was rather noisy. ‘It isn’t much further,’ she said, in her enigmatic way; and Frances couldn’t imagine what, on this dusty suburban street, could possibly merit all this mystery, all this fuss. She could only suppose, with a sinking heart, that their destination would prove to be something whimsical, a gipsy fortune-teller in a room above a shop, a romantic-looking tree around which she’d be invited to tie a ribbon…
They made a turn, and, ‘You mustn’t look, for this last bit,’ Lilian said. ‘Keep your eyes on the ground, and I’ll lead you.’
Feeling foolish, but saying nothing, Frances went on with her gaze lowered, letting herself be steered around lamp-posts and over kerbs. They went through a break in the traffic across a busy road; and then they came to a halt.
‘May I look now?’
‘Yes,’ said Lilian. Then, quickly: ‘No.’ Her confidence was failing. ‘Perhaps you won’t like it after all.’
Frances was afraid to raise her eyes. She waited another moment, as a bus went noisily by; then lifted her head.
She found herself at the colourful entrance to the Brixton Roller Skating Rink.
She looked at Lilian. ‘You’ve brought me rinking.’
Lilian was anxiously watching her face. ‘You said you used to like it. Do you remember? The first time we went to the park?’
Frances nodded. ‘Yes, I remember.’
‘May I take you in?’
‘Yes.’
It was like being plucked from one life and hurled bang into another. They could already, as they approached the doors, hear the muddle of sounds from within. They entered the building and were met by music, by laughter, and by the low rumbling note of wheels on the rink. They saw the crowd making its circuit, its unnatural stiff-legged glide, and by the time they had queued for their tickets, then queued again for their skates, Frances was desperate to join in. The toes of her shoes went snugly into the little metal brackets; the worn leather straps pulled tight across her ankles. Straightening up, she felt ten feet tall but horribly ungainly: she’d forgotten the wild insecurity of it. She pushed forward, grabbing at nothing. ‘This is mad! It’s terrifying!’
Lilian rose, then shrieked and caught hold of her. Laughing, they clattered their way across the floor to the break in the barrier.
And then they were on the rink itself, on the treacherous chalked surface. Lilian pulled at her arm: ‘Slow down!’ She was clinging to the rail.
‘Let go of it,’ urged Frances.
‘I daren’t! I’ll fall!’
‘You won’t fall. Or if you do, then we’ll both go down together. Come on.’
She took hold of Lilian’s hand and drew her away from the barrier. Lilian shrieked again, but let herself be led; they found a place in the flow of skaters.
The building was huge, modern, charmless, like a giant church hall. The bunting that hung from the rafters was in faded Armistice colours, and the songs were mild old things from thirty or forty years before, ‘Funiculì Funiculà’ and ‘The Merry Widow Waltz’. The crowd was thinner than the crowds that Frances could recall from her rinking youth; it might have been made up solely of people who hadn’t yet twigged that thrills, these days, were to be had elsewhere – in jazz clubs, say, or cocaine houses. But the off-season air lent a camaraderie to the proceedings, and there were quite enough skaters to bump into or tumble over. It was still the school holidays, and children were darting like minnows, but there were courting couples too, and girls in pairs and groups, even the occasional game old lady. Boys raced and swooped in an inner circuit of their own, and in the rink’s underpopulated middle a few grave youngsters showed off their talents. Every so often someone flailed like a windmill and went down, to cheers and hoots and sympathetic laughter; they’d pick themselves up, sheepish, hitting the chalk from their knees and behinds. A man on the staff was going about to see that nobody got hurt, and to blow a whistle if ever the boys became too rowdy.