‘I don’t want you to bathe like that on your own. You might pass out. You might drown!’
‘There must be something I can do.’ She thought it over, then got to her feet. ‘I’m going to take more of the pills.’
‘No,’ said Frances, rising too. ‘I won’t let you. They’ve made you ill enough already.’
‘They’ve got to make me a lot iller than this.’
‘Please don’t. Lilian, please!’
But Lilian was already on her way to her bedroom, and by the time Frances had joined her she had retrieved the buff-coloured packet from a drawer and was tipping out its contents. Frances saw two or three or possibly even more of the filthy-looking pills go tumbling into her hand and get shovelled into her mouth. She saw Lilian screw up her face as the pills went down.
She looked pale again as she made her way to bed that night, and when Frances saw her on the Friday morning, just after Leonard had left for work, it was immediately obvious that something had changed. Her face now was the colour of dough, and her hair was sticking to her forehead; she came shuffling out of her bedroom like a weak old lady. She had been woken in the night, she said, by awful pains. She felt as though someone had given her a kick in the stomach. She’d been lying there for hours, not wanting to tell Len. But there was still no bleeding, and that was bothering her.
Frances didn’t care about the bleeding. She was too alarmed by the ghastliness of Lilian’s appearance. She hurried her back into the bedroom, lit a fire in the grate. She filled a kettle in the little kitchen, made tea and a hot water bottle.
‘I’ll go down in a moment,’ she whispered, as she handed the bottle over. Already there were sounds of movement downstairs. ‘But once I’ve seen to the stove I’ll come back. I’ll tell my mother that you’re ill, that you need someone to sit with you —’
But, ‘No,’ said Lilian, hugging the bottle to her belly. ‘No, you mustn’t do that. I don’t want your mother to think I’m ill. She might want to come and see me, and I’d be so guilty and ashamed. And she’d be bound to say something to Len.’
‘But I can’t leave you!’
‘Yes, you can. Just come up now and then.’
‘Well, drink your tea, at least. I’ll bring you a breakfast.’
She screwed up her face at the thought. ‘No, I don’t want any breakfast, I’ll be sick. I’ve had some aspirin, and that’ll help. Just let me be, Frances.’
‘I’ll come up as often as I can, then. But if you start to feel really bad —’
‘I won’t.’
‘But if you do, you’ll call me, won’t you? Never mind about my mother.’
Lilian nodded, her eyes closed. Frances kissed her, and, feeling the coolness of her cheek, she unhooked Leonard’s dressing-gown from the back of the door; she left her sitting on the side of the bed with the gown draped round her like a cloak. But even before she had reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard the creak of the ceiling. Lilian was up on her feet and walking about, going now from the door to the window, now from the window back to the door, like a prisoner in a cell, desperately pacing.
After that, the day seemed to stretch and grow endless, to become taut as a jangling nerve. Frances slipped upstairs as often as she dared, to find Lilian still white in the face, and still pacing. She wouldn’t stop moving, she said, until the bleeding had started; late in the morning she began shifting furniture about, picking up chairs, setting them down, lifting the treadle sewing-machine. The creaks and the bumps seemed to sound right through the house; at last even Frances’s mother commented on them. Frances, her heart fluttering, told her that Lilian was doing some out-of-season spring cleaning.
In the middle of the afternoon, however, all sounds of movement ceased. Apprehensively, Frances climbed the stairs, to find Lilian on the sitting-room sofa, lying propped against cushions with a blanket over her knees, and looking so like an ordinary invalid that the sight of her, just for a moment, was reassuring. Then she went closer, and saw her face. It was more doughy than ever – colourless, faintly swollen beneath a tight upper layer of skin, and with a sheen of unhealthy-looking moisture across it. She didn’t protest against Frances’s having come up to see her. Instead she put out her hand, saying, ‘Oh, Frances, it’s awful!’ She gripped Frances’s fingers and shut her eyes tight, evidently bracing herself against cramping pain.
Frances was horrified. ‘This can’t be right! I’ve got to get you a doctor.’
But at that, Lilian’s eyes flew open. ‘No, a doctor mustn’t see me! He’ll know what I’ve done! Just keep hold of my hand. Don’t let go. The bleeding’s started, that’s all. It’s bad, but – Oh!’ She grew rigid as the pain mounted, and held the stiffened pose for what seemed an impossibly long time; Frances saw tiny beads of sweat appear on her brow and top lip. When at last her limbs began to loosen, she sank back against the sofa cushions, wiping her face, and panting. ‘It’s all right. I’m all right.’
Frances had grown rigid, and then slack, along with her. ‘Surely it oughtn’t to be so bad? You look dreadful, Lilian.’
That made her weakly turn her face away. ‘Don’t look at me.’
‘I didn’t mean that. But you’re as pale as death.’
‘It’s worse some times than others. That was a bad one, that’s all.’ She stirred uncomfortably, raising one of her hips, sliding a hand beneath the seat of her skirt. ‘The blood keeps coming. I’m afraid of it getting on the couch. There’s nothing there, is there?’
Frances looked. ‘No, there’s nothing.’
‘I’ve got through three napkins already. I’ve been putting them on the fire. But it’s still only blood, not the proper thing. You can tell when that comes out. It’s hasn’t come yet. It’s no good till it does.’
Her voice had a new, fretful note to it, and her eyes seemed glazed. It crossed Frances’s mind that she might be feverish. She rested a hand on her damp forehead; but the forehead was chill, if anything. Was that a good sign, or a bad? She didn’t know. She didn’t know! Her own uselessness appalled her. How could she have allowed this to happen? What on earth had she been thinking? How could she possibly have let Lilian do this reckless, reckless thing —
Already Lilian was stiffening against another wave of pain, moving her feet beneath the blanket. ‘Oh, it’s starting again.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Just hold my hand.’
‘Isn’t there something I can get you, to help you bear it?’
But Lilian wasn’t listening. Her eyes were closed, her features contorted. ‘Oh, it’s worse than ever this time! Oh, Frances! Oh!’ She was doubled up with the pain, nearly twisting Frances’s fingers from their sockets.
Frances couldn’t bear to do nothing. She pulled herself free, ran to her bedroom, looked in her bedside cabinet for more aspirin. All she found was a bottle of kaolin and morphine: she held the brown bottle up to the light. There was a solid chalky block at the base of it, with an inch or two of fluid above; the fluid, she thought, was more or less pure morphine. It was better than nothing, surely? She hurried to the kitchen for a spoon, then ran back to the sitting-room. Lilian was still doubled up, and her cheeks were wet with tears. She didn’t ask what the medicine was. She took three spoonfuls, like an obedient child, then lay back against the cushions with tightly closed eyes.
And the morphine must have eased the pain a little, for after a few minutes her face grew less clenched. She parted her lips and let out her breath in a long, uneven sigh.
Frances thought of her mother, calmly writing letters downstairs. If she knew what was happening here, if she knew what Lilian had done —
Lilian was watching her. ‘This is too awful, Frances. You must go back down.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I want you to, though. And your mother will wonder where you are. She’ll want her tea.’
She was right, Frances realised. It was well after four. But the thought of having to go and set cups on saucers, arrange bread and bu
tter on a plate, was horrible – grotesque!
‘I can’t leave you,’ she said.
‘It isn’t so bad. Honestly. And soon – soon you’ll never have to leave me again. When we’re together, I mean. We can do as we like then, can’t we? But I don’t want your mother to know something’s wrong, and tell Len, and get him thinking. Please, Frances. It’s just a few more hours.’
Her voice had that fretful note to it again, but her gaze seemed clearer. In an agony of indecision, Frances kissed her, and left her, and returned downstairs. She made the tea, and sat in the drawing-room, managing to chat with her mother, about the weather, about the garden – about God only knew what. An instant after she’d made a comment she’d forgotten what it was.
At six she even started work on a pie for her own dinner. She could hear her mother getting ready to go out as she was doing it, and longed for her to move more quickly; she looked at the clock, and willed its hands forward. The sunless day had given way to a chill, moonless dusk, and her mother, she suspected, would be glad to be walked the short distance to Mrs Playfair’s house; she had grown a little nervous since the attack on Leonard. But Frances had escorted her to Mrs Playfair’s one evening last week, and had been drawn inside and kept talking for half an hour; she was afraid to leave Lilian alone so long. So when her mother appeared in the kitchen, she kept her hands in the mixing bowl.
Her mother hovered, watching her work. ‘You won’t change your mind about coming?’
Frances showed her floury fingers. ‘Well, I’ve started this now. And I’ll only upset the card tables if I turn up at the last minute.’
‘Oh – yes, I suppose so.’
She was plainly disappointed. But it couldn’t be helped. Not this once. Not tonight. She lingered for another minute, then buttoned her coat and said goodbye. There was the sound of her crossing the hall, followed by the thud of the closing front door.
And then it was weirdly like the early, urgent days of the affair. Frances shook the moment off along with the flour on her hands. She untied her apron, ran to the stairs, started up them – then jumped with fright. Lilian was at the top, leaning over the banisters, clutching at the rail.
‘Is that your mother just gone? I need the lavatory!’
Frances hurried towards her. ‘It’s cold out. Use the pot.’
But she came down. ‘I need it badly, Frances! I need it now!’
She moved with a combination of speed and caution that, at any other moment, might have been funny, the sort of agonised closed-kneed hobble with which a low comedian would signify a pressing case of the trots. To Frances the pose seemed horrifying: she took hold of her hand with shaking fingers, helped her negotiate the staircase, supported her as she made her way along the passage and through the kitchen. She paused to light a lantern, but Lilian wouldn’t wait for that: she went scuttling across the twilit yard and into the WC.
She left the door to swing open behind her, and by the time Frances had caught up with her she was sitting on the lavatory with her legs exposed, leaning forward as if convulsed, a blood-stained napkin in her hand. When she saw Frances, however, she made a weak shooing gesture, saying, ‘Oh, Frances, don’t come near me! I don’t want you to see! Put the lantern down and leave me! Oh! Oh, Christ!’ And though the curse was shocking, because Frances had never heard Lilian swear before, not once, it was also queerly reassuring, a burst of anger rather than despair, the final snapping of tolerance; the breaking-point of the day. She did as she was told, set down the light and stepped away. She heard the rustle of the Bromo, followed by the gushing of the cistern. A minute of silence, then more Bromo – endless amounts of Bromo, it seemed – then the gushing of the cistern again.
And then Lilian emerged. She had the lantern in her hand, and her face looked ghastly with the light striking it from underneath. There was blood in the lavatory, she said; she couldn’t get it to go away. But apart from that she was all right. It was finished, all over.
Her teeth were chattering, though. Frances got her into the house, made sure that she was capable of climbing the stairs. Then she returned to the WC and peered gingerly into the pan. The china rim was spotted with red, but the stuff at the bottom was dark as black treacle. She stirred the whole thing up with the lavatory brush, added paper, pulled the chain. And when she had done that two more times, the water settled clear.
Upstairs, Lilian was back on the sofa, shivering, her hair sticking to her cheeks: Frances couldn’t tell if that was with sweat, or simply from the dampness of the night. She tucked the blanket more tightly around her, drew the slippers from her feet, tried to warm her toes and fingers – they felt like stiff white roots. The hot water bottle was cooling. She went to the kitchen, filled the kettle for a fresh one. There was no food about anywhere – Lilian had had nothing all day – but she found a jar of beef essence, made a spoonful of it into a broth, and took it back to the sitting-room along with a slice of dry bread. Lilian grimaced and turned away at the sight of the little meal, but gave in to it at last; and after that her shivering subsided and a trace of colour began to appear in her cheeks. She looked, unmistakably, less burdened and fretful.
And soon she sighed and grew still. Frances put an arm around her; they leaned into each other, exhausted. The fire leapt and crackled in the grate, and the room became improbably cosy. The clock on the shelf showed twenty to eight. What a day it had been! Frances felt as wrung-out as a dish-swab. And yet, the fantastic thing was that it had worked out just as Lilian had promised, even down to the timing of it all. Her mother wouldn’t be back from Mrs Playfair’s until half-past ten or so. Leonard might well not return until after eleven. They had a good three hours now to collect themselves, to regain their calm.
She kissed the crown of Lilian’s head, and spoke softly. ‘How is it?’
Lilian felt for her hand, and answered on a sigh. ‘It’s not so bad. Just an ordinary pain now. Not like it was this afternoon.’
‘I was frightened to death when I saw you! I thought I would lose you.’
Lilian shifted back to look up at her. ‘Did you?’ She was almost smiling.
‘But I think it’s worse than you’re making out. I wish I could take the pain myself.’
‘I’d never let you do that.’
‘Half the pain, then. Half each.’
She shook her head. ‘No. It’s my pain, and I can bear it. It’s my old life coming out of me; my life with Len. That’s why it was bad. But it’s better now.’
They leaned into each other again and sat with closed eyes, hand in hand.
But she was still worried about her napkin, about blood getting on the sofa. Once or twice, as she had before, she ran her hand under her thighs to be sure that none was escaping; and presently she got to her feet. Turning away, touchingly prim, she drew up the hem of her skirt, and Frances heard her groan. The blood was slowing at last, she said, but it had made an awful mess of her legs, her stockings and slip. She ought to wash herself, and change the napkin, before she grew any sleepier.
So Frances hauled herself up and went back to the little kitchen for a bowl of water, soap and a towel. She returned to find Lilian with her legs bare, unfastening the soiled napkin from a narrow linen belt around her hips. ‘Oh, don’t look!’ she cried, as she’d been crying all day; but she moved so wearily, and fumbled the pins so badly, that Frances set down the bowl and stepped to assist her.
The napkin, heavy with blood, resembled a piece of raw meat. Frances did her best to fold it, and then, for want of anywhere else to put it, she placed it among the cinders on the hearthstone. Lilian lowered herself with a wobble over the bowl, and soaped and rinsed between her legs. The water grew pink, then distinctly crimson: her pose had brought on another gush. Frances, alarmed, could see it falling from her; it was like a glistening dark thread. She helped her to rise and dab at her thighs with the towel. They quickly put the new napkin in place and attached it to the belt. Lilian stepped back into her skirt, then sat heavily down again
, blowing out her breath with the effort of it all, letting herself sag sideways until her cheek met the arm of the sofa.
She watched from under heavy eyelids as Frances collected her cast-off clothes, the blood-smeared petticoat and stockings. And when Frances had lifted the bowl of grisly water and was carrying it across to the door, she said, ‘I’m so sorry, Frances. It’s all been so horrible, and you’ve been so good. I’d have died to have anybody but you see me like this.’
Frances answered after a hesitation. ‘You said you weren’t brave.’
Lilian looked back at her, not understanding.
‘You said you weren’t brave. Look how brave you’ve been today.’
Lilian’s eyes filled with tears. She shook her head and couldn’t answer. Her dark hair fell lankly. Her face was still doughy, and her lips were dry. But Frances, gazing across at her, felt that she had never in her life loved anyone so much, nor so purely.
She adjusted her grip on the bowl of water and got hold of the knob of the door. Hooking the door open with her foot, moving awkwardly around it, she stepped out to the landing.
There, at the turn of the stairs, just coming up them – just undoing the buttons of his overcoat – was Leonard.
She gave such a start at the sight of him that the bowl jumped in her hands and the water almost slopped. But after that she stood still, in a paralysis of confusion and fear. He came on towards her in an ordinary evening way, perhaps not quite thrilled to see her, but raising his hand in tired greeting. Then he began to take in the strangeness of her manner. Once he’d mounted the last of the steps and could see what she was holding – the blood-stained clothing, and the bowl, which there was absolutely no way of concealing – his gaze sharpened.
‘What’s going on?’
She answered absurdly, ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Is it Lily?’
He stuck his hat on the newel post and pushed past her into the sitting-room. ‘Lily?’ she heard him say. ‘What the hell’s the matter?’