Tonight, of course, the room was not quite dark: light was leaking in from the landing, a thin bright pool of it beneath her door. What were they doing out there now? She could hear the murmur of their voices. They were debating where to hang the wretched picture – were they? If they started banging in a nail she would have to go and say something. If they left the landing light burning so furiously she’d have to say something, too. She began trying out phrases in her head.
I’m sorry to have to raise this matter —
Do you remember we discussed —?
Perhaps we might —
It might be best if —
I’m afraid I made a mistake.
No, she wouldn’t think that! It was too late for that. It was – oh, years and years too late for that.
She slept well, in the end. She awoke at six the next morning, when the first distant factory whistle went off. She dozed for an hour, and was finally jolted out of a complicated dream by a hectic drill-like noise she couldn’t at first identify; it was the ring, she realised blearily, of the Barbers’ alarm clock. It seemed no time at all since she had lain there listening to the couple make their murmuring way to bed. Now she got the reverse of it, as they emerged to mutter and yawn, to creep downstairs and out to the yard, to clatter about in their kitchen, brewing tea, frying a breakfast. She made herself pay attention to it all, every hiss and splutter of the bacon, every tap of the razor against the sink. She had to accommodate it, fit herself around it: the new start to her day.
She’d remembered the fifty-eight shillings. While Mr Barber was gathering his outdoor things she rose and quietly dressed. He left the house at just before eight, by which time his wife had returned to their bedroom; Frances gave it a couple of minutes, so as not to be too obvious about it, then unlocked her door and went downstairs. She raked out the ashes of the stove and got a new fire going. She crossed the yard, returned to the house to greet her mother, make tea, boil eggs. But all the time she worked, her mind was busy with calculations. Once she and her mother had had their breakfast and the dining-table had been cleared she settled herself down with her book of accounts and ran through the bundle of bills that, over the last half-year, had been steadily accumulating at the back of it.
The butcher and the fishmonger, she thought, ought to be given large sums at once. The laundryman, the baker and the coal-merchants could be kept at bay with smaller amounts. The house-rates would be due in a few weeks’ time, along with the quarterly gas bill; the bill would be higher than usual, because it would contain the charge for the cooker and the meter and the pipes and connections that had been installed upstairs. There was still money to be paid, too, for some of the other preparations that had had to be made for the Barbers – for things like varnish and distemper. It would be three or four months – August or September at the earliest, she reckoned – before their rent would show itself in the family bank account as clear profit.
Still, August or September was a great deal better than never, and she put her account book away with her spirits lifting. The baker’s man came, shortly followed by the butcher’s boy: for once she was able to take the bread and the meat as if really entitled to them and not somehow involved in the shady reception of stolen goods. The meat was neck of lamb; that could go into a hot-pot later. She had no real interest in food, neither in preparing nor in eating it, but she had developed a grudging aptitude for cookery during the War; she enjoyed, anyhow, the practical challenge of making one cheap cut of meat do for several different dishes. She felt similarly about housework, liking best those rather out-of-the-way tasks – stripping the stove, cleaning stair-rods – that needed planning, strategy, chemicals, special tools.
Most of her chores, inevitably, were more mundane. The house was full of inconveniences, bristling with picture rails and plasterwork and elaborate skirting-boards that had to be dusted more or less daily. The furniture was all of dark woods that had to be dusted regularly, too. Her father had had a passion for ‘Olde England’, not at all in keeping with the Regency whimsies of the villa itself, and there was a Jacobean chair or chest in every odd corner. ‘Father’s collection’, the pieces had been known as, while her father was alive; a year after his death Frances had had them valued and had discovered them all to be Victorian fakes. The dealer who’d bought the long-case clock had offered her three pounds for the lot. She would have been glad to pocket the money and have the damn things carted away, but her mother had grown upset at the prospect. ‘Whether they’re genuine or not,’ she’d said, ‘they have your father’s heart in them.’ ‘They have his stupidity, more like,’ Frances had answered, though not aloud. So the furniture remained, which meant that several times a week she had to go scuttling around like a crab, rubbing her duster over the barleytwist curves of wonky table legs and the scrolls and lozenges of rough-hewn chairs.
The very heaviest of the housework she saved for those mornings and afternoons when she could rely on her mother being safely out of the way. Since today was a Monday, she had ambitious plans. Her mother spent Monday mornings seeing to bits of parish business with the local vicar, and Frances could ‘do’ the entire ground floor in her absence.
She began the moment the front door closed, rolling up her sleeves, tying on an apron, covering her hair. She saw to her mother’s bedroom first, then moved to the drawing-room for sweeping, dusting – endless dusting, it felt like. Where on earth did the dust come from? It seemed to her that the house must produce it, as flesh oozes sweat. She could beat and beat a rug or a cushion, and still it would come. The drawing-room had a china cabinet in it, with glass doors, tightly closed, but even the things inside grew dusty and had to be wiped. Just occasionally she longed to take each fiddly porcelain cup and saucer and break it in two. Once, in sheer frustration, she had snapped off the head of one of the apple-cheeked Staffordshire figures: it still sat a little crookedly, from where she had hurriedly glued it back on.
She didn’t feel like that today. She worked briskly and efficiently, taking her brush and pan from the drawing-room to the top of the stairs and making her way back down, a step at a time; after that she filled a bucket with water, fetched her kneeling-mat, and began to wash the hall floor. Vinegar was all she used. Soap left streaks on the black tiles. The first, wet rub was important for loosening the dirt, but it was the second bit that really counted, passing the wrung cloth over the floor in one supple, unbroken movement… There! How pleasing each glossy tile was. The gloss would fade in about five minutes as the surface dried; but everything faded. The vital thing was to make the most of the moments of brightness. There was no point dwelling on the scuffs. She was young, fit, healthy. She had – what did she have? Little pleasures like this. Little successes in the kitchen. The cigarette at the end of the day. Cinema with her mother on a Wednesday. Regular trips into Town. There were spells of restlessness now and again; but any life had those. There were longings, there were desires… But they were physical matters mostly, and she had no last-century inhibitions about dealing with that sort of thing. It was amazing, in fact, she reflected, as she repositioned her mat and bucket and started on a new stretch of tile, it was astonishing how satisfactorily the business could be taken care of, even in the middle of the day, even with her mother in the house, simply by slipping up to her bedroom for an odd few minutes, perhaps as a break between peeling parsnips or while waiting for dough to rise —
A movement at the turn of the staircase made her start. She had forgotten all about her lodgers. Now she looked up through the banisters to see Mrs Barber just coming uncertainly down.
She felt herself blush, as if caught out. But Mrs Barber was also blushing. Though it was well after ten, she was dressed in her nightgown still; she had some sort of satiny Japanese wrapper on top – a kimono, Frances supposed the thing was called – and her feet were bare inside Turkish slippers. She was carrying a towel and a sponge-bag. As she greeted Frances she tucked back a sleep-flattened curl of hair and said shyly, ‘I wondered
if I might have a bath.’
‘Oh,’ said Frances. ‘Yes.’
‘But not if it’s a trouble. I fell back asleep after Len went to work, and —’
Frances began to get to her feet. ‘It’s no trouble. I shall have to light the geyser for you, that’s all. My mother and I don’t usually light it during the day. I should have said last night. Can you come across? You’ll have to hop.’ She moved her bucket. ‘Here’s a dry bit, look.’
Mrs Barber, however, had come further down the stairs, and her colour was deepening: she was gazing in a mortified way at the duster on Frances’s head, at her rolled-up sleeves and flaming hands, at the housemaid’s mat at her feet, still with the dents of her knees in it. Frances knew the look very well – she was bored to death with it, in fact – because she had seen it many times before: on the faces of neighbours, of tradesmen, and of her mother’s friends, all of whom had got themselves through the worst war in human history yet seemed unable for some reason to cope with the sight of a well-bred woman doing the work of a char. She said breezily, ‘You remember my saying about us not having help? I really meant it, you see. The only thing I draw the line at is laundry; most of that still gets sent out. But everything else, I take care of. The “brights”, the “roughs” – yes, I’ve all the lingo!’
Mrs Barber had begun to smile at last. But as she looked at the stretch of floor that was still to be washed, she grew embarrassed in a different sort of way.
‘I’m afraid Len and I must have made an awful mess yesterday. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Oh,’ said Frances, ‘these tiles get dirty all by themselves. Everything in this house does.’
‘Once I’ve dressed, I’ll finish it for you.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ve your own rooms to care for. If you can manage without a maid, why shouldn’t I? Besides, you’d be amazed what a whiz I can be with a mop. – Here, let me help.’
Mrs Barber was on the bottom stair now and clearly doubtful about where to step to. After the slightest of hesitations, she took the hand that Frances offered, braced herself against her grip, then made the small spring forward to the unwashed side of the floor. Her kimono parted as she landed, exposing more of her nightdress, and giving an alarming suggestion of the rounded, mobile, unsupported flesh inside.
They went together through the kitchen and into the scullery. The bath was in there, beside the sink. It had a bleached wooden cover, used by Frances as a draining-board; with a practised movement she lifted this free and set it against the wall. The tub was an ancient one that had been several times re-enamelled, most recently by Frances herself, who was not quite sure of the result; the iron struck her, today especially, as having a faintly leprous appearance. The Vulcan geyser was also rather frightful, a greenish riveted cylinder on three bowed legs. It must have been the top of its manufacturer’s range in about 1870, but now looked like the sort of vessel in which someone in a Jules Verne novel might make a trip to the moon.
‘It has a bit of a temperament, I’m afraid,’ she told Mrs Barber as she explained the mechanism. ‘You have to turn this tap, but not this one; you might blow us sky-high if you do. The flame goes here.’ She struck a match. ‘Best to look the other way at this point. My father lost both his eyebrows doing this once. – There.’
The flame, with a whoosh, had found the gas. The cylinder began to tick and rattle. She frowned at it, her hands at her hips. ‘What a beast it is. I am sorry, Mrs Barber.’ She gazed right round the room, at the stone sink, the copper in the corner, the mortuary tiles on the wall. ‘I do wish this house was more up-to-date for you.’
But Mrs Barber shook her head. ‘Oh, please don’t wish that.’ She tucked back another curl of hair; Frances noticed the piercing for her earring, a little dimple in the lobe. ‘I like the house just as it is. It’s a house with a history, isn’t it? Things – well, they oughtn’t always to be modern. There’d be no character if they were.’
And there it was again, thought Frances: that niceness, that kindness, that touch of delicacy. She answered with a laugh. ‘Well, as far as character goes, I fear this house might be rather too much of a good thing. But —’ She spoke less flippantly. ‘I’m glad you like it. I’m very glad. I like it too, though I’m apt to forget that. – Now, we oughtn’t to let this geyser get hot without running some water, or there’ll be no house left to like, and no us to do the liking! Do you think you can manage? If the flame goes out – it sometimes does, I’m sorry to say – give me a call.’
Mrs Barber smiled, showing neat white teeth. ‘I will. Thank you, Miss Wray.’
Frances left her to it and returned to her wet floor. The scullery door was closed behind her, and quietly bolted.
But the door between the kitchen and the passage was propped open, and as Frances retrieved her cloth she could hear, very clearly, Mrs Barber’s preparations for her bath, the rattle of the chain against the tub, followed by the splutter and gush of the water. The gushing, it seemed to her, went on for a long time. She had told a fib about her and her mother’s use of the geyser: it was too expensive to light often; they drew their hot water from the boiler in the old-fashioned stove. They bathed, at most, once a week, frequently taking turns with the same bathwater. If Mrs Barber were to want baths like this on a daily basis, their gas bill might double.
But at last the flow was cut off. There came the splash of water and the rub of heels as Mrs Barber stepped into the tub, followed by a more substantial liquid thwack as she lowered herself down. After that there was a silence, broken only by the occasional echoey plink of drips from the tap.
Like the parted kimono, the sounds were unsettling; the silence was most unsettling of all. Sitting at her bureau a short time before, Frances had been picturing her lodgers in purely mercenary terms – as something like two great waddling shillings. But this, she thought, shuffling backward over the tiles, this was what it really meant to have lodgers: this odd, unintimate proximity, this rather peeled-back moment, where the only thing between herself and a naked Mrs Barber was a few feet of kitchen and a thin scullery door. An image sprang into her head: that round flesh, crimsoning in the heat.
She adjusted her pose on the mat, took hold of her cloth, and rubbed hard at the floor.
The steam was still beading the scullery walls when her mother returned at lunch-time. Frances told her about Mrs Barber’s bath, and she looked startled.
‘At ten o’clock? In her dressing-gown? You’re sure?’
‘Quite sure. A satin one, too. What a good job, wasn’t it, that you were visiting the vicar, and not the other way round?’
Her mother paled, but didn’t answer.
They ate their lunch – a cauliflower cheese – then settled down together in the drawing-room. Mrs Wray made notes for a parish newsletter. Frances worked her way through a basket of mending with The Times on the arm of her chair. What was the latest? Awkwardly, she turned the inky pages. But it was the usual dismal stuff. Horatio Bottomley was off to the Old Bailey for swindling the public out of a quarter of a million. An MP was asking that cocaine traffickers be flogged. The French were shooting Syrians, the Chinese were shooting each other, a peace conference in Dublin had come to nothing, there’d been new murders in Belfast… But the Prince of Wales looked jolly on a fishing trip in Japan, and the Marchioness of Carisbrooke was about to host a ball ‘in aid of the Friends of the Poor’. – So that was all right, then, thought Frances. She disliked The Times. But there wasn’t the money for a second, less conservative paper. And, in any case, reading the news these days depressed her. In the quaintness of her wartime youth it would have fired her into activity: writing letters, attending meetings. Now the world seemed to her to have become so complex that its problems defied solution. There was only a chaos of conflicts of interest; the whole thing filled her with a sense of futility. She put the paper aside. She would tear it up tomorrow, for scraps and kindling.
At least the house was silent; very nearly its old
self. There had been bumps and creaks earlier, as Mrs Barber had shifted more furniture about, but now she must be in her sitting-room – doing what? Was she still in her kimono? Somehow, Frances hoped she was.
Whatever she was doing, her silence lasted right through tea-time. She didn’t come to life again until just before six, when she went charging around as if in a burst of desperate tidying, then began clattering pans and dishes in her little kitchen. Half an hour later, preparing dinner in her own kitchen, Frances was startled to hear the rattle of the front-door latch as someone let themself into the house. It was Mr Barber, of course, coming home from work. This time he sounded like her father, scuffing his feet across the mat.
He went tiredly up the stairs and gave a yodelling yawn at the top, but five minutes later, as she was gathering potato peelings from the counter, she heard him come back down. There was the squeak of his slippers in the passage and then, ‘Knock, knock, Miss Wray!’ His face appeared around the door. ‘Mind if I pass through?’
He looked older than he had the day before, with his hair greased flat for the office. A crimson stripe across his forehead must have been the mark of his bowler hat. Once he had visited the WC he lingered for a moment in the yard: she could see him through the kitchen window, wondering whether or not to go and speak to her mother, who was further down the garden, cutting asparagus. He decided against it and returned to the house, pausing to peer up at the brickwork or the window-frames as he came, and then to examine some crack or chip in the door-step.
‘Well, and how are you, Miss Wray?’ he asked, when he was back in the kitchen. She saw that there was no way out of a chat. But perhaps she ought to get to know him.
‘I’m very well, Mr Barber. And you? How was your day?’
He pulled at his stiff City collar. ‘Oh, the usual fun and games.’
‘Difficult, you mean?’
‘Well, every day’s difficult with a chief like mine. I’m sure you know the type: the sort of fellow who gives you a column of numbers to add and, when they don’t come out the way that suits him, blames you!’ He raised his chin to scratch at his throat, keeping his eyes on hers. ‘A public-school chap he’s meant to be, too. I thought those fellows knew better, didn’t you?’