The Paying Guests(88)
And in amongst them all glided Frances and Lilian, getting the hang of it, picking up speed. Now and then men looked at Lilian, because men always did look at her, but no one troubled them except to smile at them, or to make way for them, politely. What a genius Lilian was! Nowhere else in the world, thought Frances, could they have been together so publicly, holding on to each other like this. It wasn’t at all like making love. It was a lark, pure, childish. And yet it was like making love: the thrill and intimacy of it, the never letting go of each other, the clutching of fingers and the bumping of thighs, the racing and matching of heartbeats and breaths. After they’d been at it for half an hour the signal was given for the skaters to change direction; in the hilarity that ensued they made their clumsy way off the rink and, still in their skates, sat at one of the tables on the other side of the barrier, drinking tea and eating ginger nuts and watching the crowd. When they returned to the rink after that they were more confident; they put their arms around each other’s waists, or held each other as if for a country dance, Lilian with her right hand raised and Frances holding it from behind, their other hands joined tight down at Frances’s hip. Frances felt graceful and easy now; she wanted to stay on the rink for ever. She looked at the best of the skaters and thought, Lilian and I could do that! They could buy skates of their own, come to the rink every day. They could practise and practise…
She detached herself from Lilian’s waist and held her hands instead, going ahead of her, skating backward, daring. They laughed into each other’s faces.
‘You’ll go over!’
‘No. Never.’
She did not fall, and neither did Lilian. They pushed on with the crowd for another twenty minutes or so. They narrowly avoided a collison with one of the sporting old ladies. But then they began to be tired; their leg muscles were aching. It was hard work, after all. Hand in hand, they made a final, regretful circuit of the rink; and then, like birds leaving a pond, they were back on the ordinary floor, waddling and ungainly. Removing the skates was, briefly, blissful. But it was sad, Frances thought, to return them to the counter, sad to exchange motion, speed, glamour for safety and unstrained arches.
And it was something worse than sad to push back out through the doors and find themselves in Brixton again, to rejoin the commonplace, unwheeled afternoon and head home to Champion Hill. They weren’t so aware of it at first. They had the glow of the rink about them. Lilian put up her parasol and they walked with joined arms, humming the harmless tunes they had skated to – still feeling as though, with a push of the foot, they could launch themselves forward into effortless arabesques. But the climb up through Herne Hill pulled at their aching muscles, and the road seemed longer and dustier than it had before. And then, all at once, they were close to home. It was almost five; Leonard would be back in an hour and a half… Frances’s steps began to lag as though she were heading for the gallows. They drew level with one of the entrances to the park, and – ‘I can’t go back just yet,’ she said, coming to a halt. ‘I can’t.’
Lilian said nothing. Without a word they went in through the gate.
They finished up at the band-stand. The small, railed space recalled the rink, and for a minute again they were lively: Lilian glided across to the balustrade, then stood smiling as Frances joined her, the tassel of the parasol raised to her mouth. She had waltzed like that, and stood like that, Frances recalled, the very first time that they had come here. How impossibly far off that day seemed! How long ago was it? A little over three months. If she put her mind to it she could just summon up the particular quality of being here with Lilian then, the two of them still more or less strangers, Mrs Barber, Miss Wray, but their intimacy, surely, already taking root, already growing, somewhere deep, deep below the skin of their friendship… The feeling receded and was gone. She could only see Lilian as she was now, her smile fading as they faced each other and her gaze, as it sometimes did, becoming so level, so stripped, so grave and ungirlish, that Frances felt an answering pressure around her heart, something dark and almost frightening, like the intimation of agony.
She looked away. An elderly man was passing by on one of the paths – a Mr Hawtrey, one of the residents at the local hotel. He raised his cane and called a pleasantry when he recognised Frances, and she answered with a laugh: ‘Yes, we do rather, don’t we? No, we’ve left our trombones at home today…’
He moved on, and her laughter died. She watched him go, then dropped her gaze and ran her fingers over the scored green paint of the balustrade rail. Bill goes with Alice. Albert & May.
She said, ‘It’s real, isn’t it?’
Lilian answered after a pause, with a bowed head, in a murmur. ‘Yes, it’s real. It’s the only real thing.’
‘Then, what are we to do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What we talked about, living together —’
Lilian turned away from her. ‘Don’t, Frances.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why. It’s too much. You don’t mean it, not really. It’s just a dream.’
‘I think I do mean it.’
‘I couldn’t. I never could.’
‘You’d rather stay in an empty marriage? For the rest of your life?’
‘It isn’t just that. Don’t ask me. If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask. We’ll just make ourselves unhappy if we keep thinking about it.’