The Paying Guests(97)

‘Yes. It isn’t so bad, Frances. When it’s only just started there are pills you can take to put yourself right —’

‘Oh, Lilian, no. You can’t be serious. It’s too squalid.’

‘I don’t care, so long as they work.’

‘I can’t believe they ever do. And God knows what goes into them.’

‘They do work, if you get the right ones, and you take them at just the right time.’ Her tone was certain, knowing. She coloured. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It’s only what lots of women do.’

Frances was staring at her. ‘You’ve taken them before?’

‘Only once. Frances, I had to. It was the year after we got married, a few months after I’d lost my baby. I – I couldn’t face it. It felt all wrong. I got it into my head, you see, that it would happen again. Vera has a friend who’s a nurse, and she got the pills for me. They made me feel dreadful. I thought I was dying! I tried to do it on my own, but in the end I had to tell Len. He nearly had a fit. He thought his parents would find out. We had to do it all in secret, all in their tiny little house. But it won’t be so bad if I do it again, because this time I’ll know what to expect. I just can’t do it alone, that’s all. I thought of doing it and not telling you, but – It’s just too hard, when you’re on your own. I can get the pills. I can go to a shop —’

‘A shop? What shop? What shop are you talking about?’

‘There’s a place in Town, on the Edgware Road. Vera’s friend told me about it. I can get them. I know what to ask for. But I’ll need you to help me when the worst bit happens.’

She had clearly thought it all through. Frances was struggling to keep up with her. To be casually discussing this, there in her bedroom, on Champion Hill, on a rainy Monday morning —

‘Surely there’s another way?’

‘There isn’t, Frances.’

‘You might make yourself ill!’

‘I don’t care about that.’

‘Well, I do. One hears such stories. It isn’t safe.’

‘No, no, it only isn’t safe when it’s become a real baby, when you leave it too long and have to put something in there to get the baby out. But that’s different. That’s unnatural. That’s a sin, and against the law. I’d never do that.’

‘But what you’re talking about is just the same.’

‘No, Frances. It isn’t.’

She spoke with certainty again – with impatience, even. Frances couldn’t tell if she had genuinely misunderstood the process, or had simply decided on a convenient course of belief and was sticking to it. Either way – God, how monstrous it was! How different from the pure, true thing she’d had in mind!

She felt exposed, suddenly. She felt cold and under-dressed. She rose and crossed the room to her armchair, sat at the front of it, her limbs drawn in.

Lilian watched her. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘I’m trying to realise it,’ she said. ‘I feel… caught out. Tripped up. I’m sorry.’

‘You mustn’t feel that. It’s isn’t so bad. It’s —’

‘When did it happen, exactly?’

The abruptness of the question made Lilian blink. ‘What? I’ve told you.’

‘Yes, but which night? That’s what I mean. Which particular night?’

‘Oh, what does it matter? It’s happened, that’s all.’

‘Was it that night when you were ironing? The night I came into the kitchen?’

‘The kitchen?’ Lilian frowned. ‘No. No, it must have been after that. I don’t know when it was, Frances.’

Just some ordinary night, then. Just one of those nights when Frances had lain there listening for the sound of the door…

Lilian was still watching her. ‘Don’t you want us to be together? You did, a minute ago. You said you would help me to be brave.’

‘I didn’t know this would be a part of it.’

‘You said you’d give things up for me. Why won’t you let me give this up, for you?’

And at that, Frances felt a touch of horror. Was this, after all, what she had persuaded Lilian into? She rubbed her bare shoulders, a shiver pimpling her skin. She knew that she ought to go back to the bed, take Lilian in her arms. But she couldn’t do it; she felt paralysed. She kept thinking of herself lying here, while just across the landing —

Didn’t they say that a woman had to enjoy it, in order for a pregnancy to take?

She shook the idea off. Lilian was about to become hers. That was the point to remember. That was the destination of it all. It had happened, it was dreadful, but they couldn’t be kept apart, could they, by such a little, little thing?

She rose, returned to the bed, and they held each other tightly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lilian said again. ‘I’m so sorry. Don’t hate me, Frances. I love you so much. But it isn’t as bad as you think. It’s just a nuisance. It’s just… nothing. It’s like a bad tooth that has to come out. Once I’ve done it, we can forget it. We can be together, just like you said.’



When Frances’s mother returned to the house at lunch-time, fresh from her morning with the vicar, Frances could hardly bring herself to meet her gaze. She could hardly meet Leonard’s gaze, either, when he came home from work. Her excitement about the future that she and Lilian were planning – it was lost, overwhelmed, a single pale thread in a dark, dark tangle. Lying in bed that night, she tried to pull the thing apart. Suppose the baby were to be born. Could the two of them manage? It would be hard, but not impossible, not impossible at all. Other women managed it, with less money than they would have. There were thousands of fatherless families, since the War… But in her heart, she didn’t want it. Apart from anything else, it would be a permanent link with Leonard, even assuming that he would let them keep the child. It might draw Lilian back to him. It might somehow repair their marriage. And what would Frances do then? Would she return to her old life, her loveless, Lilianless life, like a snake having to fit itself back into a desiccated skin?