‘Oh, dear!’
‘Dear, dear!’
‘Never mind!’
‘Here he is!’
Vera had put her hands into the basket and lifted out a kicking baby in a knitted yellow suit. This was Siddy, then: she handed him across the hearth-rug to Netta, who set him on her lap with his limbs still thrashing, his big puce-coloured head rolling about on a stem-like neck.
‘Won’t you smile for the ladies?’ she asked him. ‘No? Not after Mrs Wray, and Miss Wray, have come all the way up to see you? Oh, what a face!’
‘P’raps he’s hungry,’ suggested Mrs Viney, as the child continued to howl.
‘He’s always hungry, this one. He’s like his dad in that department.’
‘How’s his napkin?’
Netta patted his bottom. ‘His napkin’s all right. He just wants to join in. Don’t you? Hey?’
She bounced the baby on her knee, and his head rolled more wildly, though his cries began to subside.
Frances’s mother, who liked babies, leaned forward for a better view. ‘Quite the little emperor, isn’t he?’ she said, with a smile.
‘He’s that, all right,’ said Mrs Viney, showing the gaps in her teeth. ‘He can scream like a lord, anyhow. Oh, just look at him! Like a great big turnip, isn’t he? We’re hoping he’ll grow into his head. And his big brother there was just the opposite. Do you remember, Netta? Oh, his head was that small, you could have darned your stocking on it!’ She had to wipe away tears of laughter. ‘Have you any other children, Mrs Wray? You won’t mind my asking, I’m sure.’
‘I don’t mind at all,’ answered Frances’s mother, drawing her gaze from the wobbling infant in Netta’s lap. ‘I had three children altogether. My sons both gave their lives in the War.’
Mrs Viney’s face became stripped of its mirth. She said, ‘Oh, now ain’t that a shame. Oh, I am sorry for you. My brother lost two of his boys the same way – and had another sent home with his eyes shrivelled right up in his head. Vera’s husband, Arthur, we lost too. Didn’t we, Ver? I used to pine after boys, you know, Mrs Wray, when I was a young married woman. I could never hang on to boy babies, I don’t know why. I had two misses and a still, and they were all boys, the midwife told me; the last one such a dear little mite, too.’
‘What’s a still?’ asked the girl.
The women ignored her. Min said, ‘I remember that. I remember Daddy crying over it and telling me he had pepper in his eyes.’
‘He was a dear man, your father,’ said Mrs Viney, smiling. ‘An Irishman, Mrs Wray. Sentimental, as they all are. Yes, we were both of us very cut up to lose that last one. But, now, do you know, I’m not sure I should have liked that little boy to have grown up, if he was only to have been killed like his cousins.’
She sighed and shook her head, and again her face lost its jollity, and her high colour was revealed for what it really was, a spider’s web of broken veins in yellow, deflated cheeks. Her button eyes looked suddenly naked – as if life had used her so hard, thought Frances, it had had the very lashes off her.
The girl repeated, ‘What’s a still?’
Vera answered her at last. ‘Something I wish you’d been.’
Frances’s mother looked startled. Mrs Barber dipped her head as if mortified. But the visitors rocked with heartless laughter, Mrs Viney fishing a hanky from her sleeve in order to mop her freshly running eyes. The baby watched the merriment with a solemn expression – then gave a sudden chortle, as if just getting the joke. That made everyone laugh again. Netta squeezed and jiggled him to make him chortle harder. His head rolled, his mouth and chin grew wet, and he kicked her in the stomach in his excitement.
And with that, the mood of the gathering made a slight but definite shift. Vera groped about in her handbag and offered cigarettes. Frances’s mother, looking startled again, shook her head; Frances reluctantly shook hers. But the younger women struck matches, reached for the stand-ashtray, and began to reclaim the conversation. There began to be mentions, Frances noticed, of ‘his nibs’, ‘his lordship’ – ‘Well, you can guess what he said!’, ‘I didn’t pay any mind to him!’ – at which Mrs Viney made occasional, ineffectual protests: ‘Oh, now don’t be nasty! Your poor step-dad don’t mean no harm!’ The family, like a clockwork engine, had made its way over the minor obstacle of the Wrays’ entrance and was returning to what were evidently very comfortable lines. Frances, looking from sister to sister, saw clearly the role that had been won by each – or, more likely, had been foisted on them by the demands of the machine – tart Vera, capable Netta, simple-minded, sandy-faced Min.
And then, of course, there was Mrs Barber: Lilian, Lily, Lil. She had been keeping to the edge of the group all this time, leaning sometimes against the mantelpiece, sometimes against the arm of the sofa; looking, every few minutes, in a worried sort of way, at Frances and her mother. She was wearing a plum-coloured frock of soft material, with panels of crochet at its bosom and on the cuffs of its short sleeves; she had teamed it with olive-green stockings and her Turkish slippers, and around her neck was a string of red wooden beads, clicking together like an abacus with every slight movement. ‘The artistic one in the family,’ her mother had called her, Frances remembered, and it was certainly true that, dress-wise, she had little in common with her sisters, who were all decked out like chorus girls in faux-silk frocks, open-work stockings, high-heeled shoes, wristlets and anklets; nor did her careful accent much resemble theirs. She was moving away from the circle of chairs now. The little boy, her nephew, had approached her with some whispered request; she caught hold of his hand to lead him across the littered carpet, and began gathering titbits for him from the remains of a tea of buns and biscuits that lay scattered on the table on the other side of the room. The boy took the plate she offered and carefully held it to his chest; when its contents began to slip she tucked her skirt behind her thighs and lowered herself at his side to steady it. She did it in one smooth, supple motion, her heels rising out of her slippers, her calves showing, pale and rounded, through the sheen of her stockings. The little boy bit into a biscuit, scattering crumbs into the crochet at her bosom.
She didn’t notice the crumbs. She made her plump lips plumper, to plant an idle sort of kiss on the child’s fair head. Just as the kiss was finished she looked up, saw Frances watching, and dropped her gaze, self-conscious. But when Frances, smiling, continued to watch, she raised her eyes again and smiled uncertainly back.
But now the boy’s cousin, the little girl, had realised that there were treats to be had. She picked her way over and asked for a biscuit of her own. That made Mrs Viney wonder if there mightn’t be biscuits enough for everybody… Frances looked at her mother, and her mother gave the slightest of nods: they rose and began to say their farewells. Detaching themselves from the fibres of Mrs Viney’s goodwill took several more minutes, but finally they made it out to the landing.
Mrs Barber made a point of going with them. And when Frances’s mother had started on her way downstairs, she beckoned Frances back and spoke quietly.
‘I’m so sorry about the chair, Miss Wray. I know you noticed it. Please tell your mother how sorry I am. I’d hate you to think we’d gone helping ourselves to your things. Only, my mother needs a hard armchair, because her back and her legs are bad, and Len and I haven’t got one.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Frances.
‘It isn’t, but you’re kind to say so. It was nice of you to come in. My family’s such a noisy one. They won’t stay much longer. They only came for an hour, but then it started raining. And I think —’ She nodded to Frances’s sober costume. ‘I’m afraid you must have been somewhere solemn today, you and your mother?’
Frances explained about the visit to her father’s grave.
Mrs Barber looked appalled. ‘Oh, and for you to have come home and found all these people here!’
She put a hand to her head, disarranging the curls of her hair. She still had crumbs in the panel of her gown: Franc
es felt a housewifely urge – a housespinsterly urge, she supposed it ought to be called, in her case – to brush them free. Instead, she moved towards the stairs.
‘Your family must stay as long as they like, Mrs Barber. They shan’t disturb us. Truly.’
Downstairs, however, it was possible to hear quite clearly the women’s laughter, the drum of the children’s feet. As Frances closed the drawing-room door the joists above it creaked, then creaked again – even the walls seemed to creak – as if a giant had the house in his hands and was squeezing and jiggling it just as Netta had squeezed and jiggled her chortling child.
Her mother had planted herself in her chair by the French windows with an air of exhaustion.
‘Well!’ she said. ‘What a very surprising family for Mrs Barber to have produced! Or what a surprising family to have produced Mrs Barber, is what I suppose I mean. I was under the impression that her father managed a business of some kind. Didn’t she tell us that? And that she had a brother in the Navy?’
Frances leaned on the back of the sofa. ‘A brother in the —? Oh, Mother, don’t be so elderly. That was all my fancy, don’t you remember?’
‘Is the father a businessman?’
‘The father’s dead. Mrs Viney is a widow and has remarried. To a shopkeeper, whom all the girls despise. He must run that drapers by the fried fish shop.’ And then, when her mother looked blankly at her: ‘Can you think of another on the Walworth Road?’
Her mother took in what she was saying. ‘The Walworth Road? Not really, Frances?’
‘Weren’t you paying attention?’
‘Well, it was hard to keep one’s eye from wandering. Mrs Barber’s decorations – I hadn’t an idea! It looks like the house of Ali Baba! Or the Moulin Rouge! Or the Taj Mahal! If only she would decide on a country and have done with it. Is that what passes for modern décor? If your dear father – You noticed his chair, I suppose?’
‘Mrs Barber explained about that just now. She was most apologetic. Her mother has a “back”, apparently.’
‘Well, I’m amazed that’s all she has! What Amazons those girls are. And Mrs Viney herself hardly more than four feet high!’
‘Still,’ said Frances, smiling, ‘I liked her. Didn’t you? A kind woman, I think.’
‘I think so too,’ her mother admitted. ‘But the sort of kindness of which – let’s be truthful, Frances – a little goes a long way. And why must people of that class always reveal so much of themselves? A few minutes more and she would have shown us her varicose veins.’ She peered anxiously down the room towards the window overlooking the street. ‘I wonder if the Dawsons saw her come. Oh, I know it’s unchristian of me, but I do hope she doesn’t think of visiting too often.’
‘Well, I hope she does,’ said Frances. ‘She’s perked me up no end. She’s as good as a trip to a gin-palace.’
Her mother smiled, wanly – then flinched and looked anxious at another roar of mirth from the floor above. ‘Oh, but I do hope they won’t visit too often. I never heard such gales of laughter! And some of it in very questionable taste. No wonder Mr Barber is keeping away, poor man. Oh, they’re not at all what I expected from Mrs Barber, Frances. If we had known – Oh, dear. I can’t help but feel that she – well —’
‘What?’ asked Frances, smiling, heading for the kitchen. ‘That she’s sold us a pup? I think it makes her more interesting. How hard she must have worked for those green stockings!’
The children continued to charge about for another half-hour, and laughter still gusted out of the sitting-room; but then there came a spell of footsteps and creaking so intense it could mean only that the sisters were up and on the move, shifting chairs, tidying and gathering. As Frances and her mother had their tea, gas pulsed through the meter and china was rattled in the sink. There was the inevitable clip of heels on the stairs as, one after another, the women came down to visit the WC, bringing the protesting children with them. Finally there was the slow descent of Mrs Viney, and prolonged, hilarious farewells in the hall. The little girl discovered the dinner-gong, and struck it, and was smacked.
Frances’s mother had taken up her work-box and sat sewing through the hubbub as if determined not to wince. Frances herself had an open book in her lap, but, distracted, kept going over and over the same two pages. As soon as the front door was closed and Mrs Barber was on her way back upstairs she put the book aside and, unable to resist, she tiptoed across to the window and watched the visitors as they headed off in the direction of Camberwell. There they went, in their gaudy coats, their complicated hats, Netta leading the way with her baby at her shoulder, looking like the Triumph of Twentieth-Century Motherhood, while Mrs Viney, arm in arm with Vera and Min, a sham-leather bag clutched to her bosom, made her slow, good-humoured, late-Victorian progress behind. The children were twirling stems of lavender, plucked from pots in the front garden. More stems lay broken in the garden itself.
‘Paul Pry,’ said Frances’s mother, from the rear of the long room.
Frances answered without turning. ‘I don’t care. I want to be certain that no one’s been left behind. One, two, three, four, five, six – seven, if you include the baby. Can that be right? I’m sure there weren’t so many an hour ago.’
‘Perhaps they’ve bred another in the meantime.’
‘Poor Mrs Viney. Her ankles! They look like the kind one keeps umbrellas in.’
‘Perhaps one of us ought to go out to the kitchen and count the spoons.’
‘Mother! As if they’d be interested in our old spoons. They’re more likely to have left us a couple of shillings on the hall table. Just quietly, you know, so as not to embarrass us —’
She turned away from the glass as another thump came from the floor above.
Her mother was wincing at last. ‘Oh, this really is too bad. What on earth is Mrs Barber doing now?’
The sound came again, from the landing this time, and soon the staircase began to creak, there was a bumping of wood against the banisters…
Frances started forward. ‘She’s bringing down the chair. She’ll have the paper off the walls! – Everything all right, Mrs Barber?’ she called, going out into the hall and closing the drawing-room door behind her.
‘Yes, quite all right!’ came the breathless reply. But Frances went up and found her struggling. The chair was heavy, and its legs were caught: between them they freed it, manoeuvred it around the bend of the staircase, then carried it safely down to the hall.
Frances fitted it precisely back into its spot and gave it a pat. ‘There, you charlatan. A little adventure for you. I don’t believe anyone’s ever actually sat on it before, you know.’
Mrs Barber, still embarrassed, said, ‘I really oughtn’t to have taken it. My sisters talked me into it. They boss me; they always have. I’m afraid it’s awfully old, too.’
‘Well, my father certainly thought so. No, your sisters were quite right. I’m glad you found a use for it.’
‘Well, you’ve been kind about it. Thank you.’
She was moving back towards the stairs already. How different she was from her husband! He would have lingered, got in the way. Frances, if anything, was sorry to see her go. She remembered how curiously appealing she had looked as she’d squatted at her nephew’s side, with her green-stockinged heels rising out of her embroidered slippers. She had shaken the crumbs from her gown at last, but the curls of her hair were still disordered, and again Frances had the housewifely impulse to pat her back into shape.
Instead she said, ‘You look weary, Mrs Barber.’
Mrs Barber’s hand went to her cheek. ‘Do I?’
‘Why not sit down with me for a moment? Not on this monster, I mean, but’ – she gestured over her shoulder – ‘out in the kitchen? Just for a minute?’
Mrs Barber looked uncertain. ‘Well, I don’t want to keep you.’
‘You won’t be keeping me from anything except perhaps thinking about my next chore. And I can do that any old time… Do say yes. I’ve
meant to ask you before. Here we are, sharing a house, and we’ve barely spoken. It seems a pity, don’t you think?’
Her tone was a sincere one, and Mrs Barber’s expression changed. She said, with a smile, ‘It does rather, doesn’t it? Yes, all right.’
They went the short distance into the kitchen. Frances offered a chair.
‘May I make you some tea?’ she asked, as Mrs Barber sat.
‘Oh, no. I’ve been drinking tea all afternoon.’
‘A slice of cake, then?’
‘I’ve been eating cake, too! You have something, though, will you?’
Frances was thinking it over. She said, ‘To tell the truth, what I really want right now —’ Going across to the open doorway, she put her head out into the passage, listening for sounds of activity in the drawing-room. Hearing none, she moved back, noiselessly closed the door, and reached into the pocket of the apron that was hanging on the back of it. ‘My mother,’ she murmured, bringing out tobacco, papers and matches, ‘doesn’t approve of me smoking. Watching your sisters all at it earlier I thought I’d just about burst. Now, if I’m caught, I’ll blame this on you. I’m a good liar, so be prepared.’ She joined Mrs Barber at the table, and offered the packet of papers. ‘Want one?’
Mrs Barber gave a quick, tight shake of her head. ‘I’ve never got the knack of rolling them.’
‘Well, I could roll one for you, if you like?’
At that, she hesitated, biting her full lower lip. Then, ‘Oh, why not?’ she said, with an air of naughtiness. ‘Yes, go on.’
The whole business seemed to amuse her. She watched in a fascinated way as Frances set out the papers and teased the tobacco from the tin, leaning in for a closer look as the first of the cigarettes took shape, resting her bare lower arms on the table. She had a bangle around one of her wrists, a red wooden thing that matched her necklace; but she wore no rings, Frances noticed, except for a slender wedding-band, with beside it, also slender, a half-hoop of tiny engagement diamonds. ‘How quick you are,’ she said, impressed, when Frances had raised the cigarette to her mouth to run the tip of her tongue along the line of gum. And then, when both cigarettes were finished: ‘They’re so neat, it seems a pity to smoke them.’ But she leaned into the flame that Frances offered – placing a hand on Frances’s, just for a moment, to steady herself, so that Frances had a brief but vivid sense of the warmth and the life in her fingers and palm.