The Paying Guests(90)
She started to work her way through them early the following morning, tackling the landing first, dusting and sweeping, beating the rugs. She ended up with a cloudy panful of fluff and tangled hairs: dark hairs from Lilian’s head, reddish ones from Leonard’s, brown from her own; the sight of them all muddled up like that made her feel queasy. She didn’t want them in the house, she decided, not even burning in the stove; instead she carried them all the way down the garden to the ash-heap. The ten o’clock post arrived while she was doing it: she returned to the hall to find two or three letters on the mat. And her heart did just flutter slightly as she stooped to pick them up – for mightn’t one of them be from Lilian? Wouldn’t she send at least a note to say that she had arrived safely?
The letters, however, were all from tradesmen. She tucked them away in her book of accounts.
There was no post at all the next day, nor the day after that. Thursday simply brought more bills… But it was humiliating to watch and wait for the postman. She went into Town, and called on Christina. And when Christina asked archly, ‘So? How’s Love, upper case?’ she blew a raspberry at her.
‘Love’s packed its upper case and gone to Hastings with its husband. Love’s eating ices on the front, having a donkey-ride – I don’t know. I don’t care.’
Christina didn’t ask for any of the details. She made tea, produced cigarettes, then rooted about for something to eat; she turned up a bag of monkey-nuts, and the two of them sat breaking open the shells. But when the last of the nuts was finished she moved forward in her chair and said, ‘Here’s an idea. How long do you have? Let’s go to the music hall! We can make the second half of the matinée at the Holborn if we leg it. My treat. What do you say?’
It was the sort of thing they might have done together years before. Frances brushed the crumbs from her lap; they left the tea-table just as it was, and, still buttoning their jackets, hurried down the stone staircase to the street. They picked up a bus at once, and were at the Holborn Empire five minutes later; five minutes later again they were sitting in the hot bright darkness of the balcony, watching a couple of comedians pedalling around the stage on a tandem. The elderly, peppermint-sucking audience made Frances remember how young she was. Gazing sideways at Chrissy, catching her eye and smiling, seeing her face and fair hair lighted up by the glow of the stage, she felt a swell of affection for her – something stronger than affection, perhaps; a shiver of the heart, as if the ghost of their lost passion were gliding through it.
But later, when she got home, she looked again for a letter from Lilian, and, as before, found nothing; and it suddenly dawned on her that Lilian’s silence must be a message of its own. She thought back to how they had parted, with none of their difficulties resolved. She remembered their conversation in the park, the weariness on Lilian’s face. I couldn’t. I never could. Don’t keep asking me, Frances.
And she had to push down a sudden wave of fear, like fighting off nausea.
The next day, she and her mother had a visitor. She heard the knock at the front door, and something about the rather tentative nature of the sound made her think that the caller might be Margaret Lamb, from down the hill. On pulling the door open, however, she saw, not Margaret’s rather dumpy figure, but a good-looking, well-dressed woman holding a bouquet of bronze chrysanthemums. She blinked – then recognised Edith, John Arthur’s fiancée.
‘Edith! How lovely to see you! And what glorious flowers! Not for us? Oh, you shouldn’t have. I shudder to think what they must have cost you.’
‘I’m not disturbing you?’
‘Not in the least. You’re just in time for tea. Mother will be delighted. – Mother, look who’s here! Come in, come in. We didn’t look for you for another month.’
Edith generally called in October, for the anniversary of John Arthur’s death, so this visit was out of season. As she stepped into the hall, Frances’s mother emerged from the drawing-room and came to greet her, beaming.
‘Well, what a treat. And such handsome flowers! But you didn’t travel all the way from Wimbledon on our account, Edith?’
Edith coloured slightly. ‘I ought to have given you warning, I know.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘But I had a day to myself, and thought how I should like to see you.’
‘Well, I call it very kind that you did. I shall get out the albums. And how well you’re looking. You’re looking wonderfully well!’
Edith was looking well. Her auburn hair was shining. She was wearing a cream-coloured frock and coat, and pale suede shoes; her gloves were spotless, as if fresh from the box; her hat had an exotic Bond Street feather in it, the sort of feather that Frances, in her youth, had signed letters of petition against. Had Edith always been so fashionable, so glossy? Surely not. Her background was unremarkable; her father was a banker, in a modest sort of way. But perhaps, Frances thought, her family had simply kept to its level, while she and her mother had started slipping down the scale. The idea was disconcerting. She felt ashamed of her tired indoor clothes, of her mother’s drab old frock. And she was embarrassed by the house, unchanged since Edith’s last visit and all the visits before that, except that it was all slightly shabbier, every surface a little more dull. As the three of them entered the drawing-room she saw Edith looking from one thing to another with a touch of wonder, and, ‘Yes, everything’s just exactly the same, you see!’ she found herself saying, with a laugh.