London Lodgings

by Claire Rayner

  He did not return that night, nor on any of the following nights. At first all she felt was relief. Her father was not there, and that could be nothing but good. She spent her time seeing to the house, continuing with Eliza’s cookery education – and, of course, her own – as they pored over the sizeable collection of magazines Eliza had now amassed, and generally feeling stronger and better with each day that passed. Her father, she assured herself, would get over his sulk and come home from his club eventually, and she would deal with him. For the present the peace and quiet and the sheer joy of having the house free of Mrs Leander was enough for her.

  But after five days she became uneasy. The weather had remained hot and heavy and there were occasional thunderstorms. She tried to convince herself that that was what made her feel so restless and anxious.

  She stood at the drawing-room window staring out at Brompton Grove, watching the horses plodding by with sweaty flanks and drooping heads as they pulled their heavy loads of carriages and laden carts, and the languorous way passers-by moved along the pavements, stirring up little spurts of dust with each step, and felt again the queasiness she had thought no longer bothered her, now that she was into the fifth month of her pregnancy.

  She set her hand to her round belly and caught her breath as she felt a sudden odd sensation. She knew little about the processes of pregnancy, for she had no mother to talk to of what was happening to her, nor friends with whom to discuss it, but Eliza knew, and had regaled her with much information. It was Eliza who had patted her hand reassuringly and told her that she was ‘quickening’ when, a few weeks ago, she had felt as though she had swallowed a butterfly which was leaping around within her, deep in her belly. Now there was a definite little kick and her heart almost rose into her mouth at the excitement of it; and then sank as she thought: poor baby. Poor fatherless baby.

  And what of your grandfather? she thought then. Do you not even have him to care for you? And that notion was so strange she felt more uneasy than ever. He who was always so noisy and frightening and difficult, was she missing him? She had to admit she was. She was alone, without a husband and, she reminded herself with another lift of fear, precious little money. In spite of her careful shopping and most abstemious housekeeping she had barely seven shillings in her reticule. It would pay for food for the next week for Eliza and herself, but what would happen after that?

  ‘Come home, Papa,’ she whispered into the failing evening light. ‘That woman is not worth abandoning all for, surely?’ And on impulse she seized the black silk shawl that she had left lying on the sofa and went downstairs.

  ‘Eliza.’ She put her head around the kitchen door to see Eliza sitting in her rocking chair by the hearth, the brindled cat on her lap and her head down over one of her magazines. ‘I am going to visit next door. Don’t worry about me, and of course don’t lock the house until I return. I doubt I shall be long.’

  She had not seen Freddy since the day Mrs Leander had left. He had called in one afternoon while she was resting but had forbidden Eliza to disturb her – not that she would have done so willingly anyway – and Tilly had thought he might come the next day and had remained in the drawing-room all afternoon, waiting. But he had not, so she would have to go to him with her worries now. Not that she wished to burden him, but who else did she have to talk to? He had proved a good friend so far – or, at least, she thought he had.

  The street smelled of dust and horses and, faintly, of dying roses, for the gardens behind the houses here had many rose bushes, drooping in the still air, and she stopped for a moment to take a deep breath. The outside air made a change after the stuffiness of the house and she looked up at the sky, which was a deep opalescent blue shading to a rich pink where the sun touched the western horizon, and let the moment wash over her. There will never be a time like this again, she thought, this moment when there is just me and my baby and this perfect sky. Live this moment, know it in all its specialness; if only it could be like this for always and always.

  Along the road wheels rattled and harnesses jingled and she came to herself with a little start as a horse pulling a cab came alongside her and then stopped at the house which she was going to visit. The animal stamped and steamed as the cabby shouted at it, and the door of the cab opened and Freddy stepped down.

  He paid the driver and turned to go up his front steps but stopped as he caught sight of her. He had been wearing his usual expression, but now his face broke into its familiar transforming smile.

  ‘Tilly! How agreeable to see you! Are you taking a constitutional?’

  ‘Ah – no, not precisely,’ she said and pulled her shawl away from her shoulders, suddenly feeling rather warm. ‘I was in fact coming to see you.’

  He lifted his brows. ‘A little late for a morning call!’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. If it isn’t convenient, I shall –’

  ‘Oh, pooh! Of course you must visit. Come in now, do! I am sure Alice will be delighted to see you.’

  ‘Alice is home again? I had thought she was still away since she had not been to visit me.’

  ‘Oh?’ He had stopped on the step, his key in his hand, and looked down at her in some surprise. ‘I would have expected – oh, well. Perhaps she has been busy getting the house put to rights now the workmen are gone. It has no doubt kept her fully occupied.’

  He reached towards the keyhole but before he could insert his key, the door opened and the forbidding housemaid stood in the entrance.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Sir,’ she said heavily.

  ‘Of course it is! Who else should it be, Mary?’ Freddy stood back to allow Tilly to enter before him. ‘I have fetched a guest as well. Where is Mrs Compton?’

  ‘Madam is in the drawing-room, Sir,’ the maid said and there was a flatness about her voice that made Tilly glance at her.

  ‘We shall go up at once,’ Freddy said and tossed his hat and stick to Mary and ushered Tilly upstairs, chattering all the way of the work that had been done.

  It did indeed look very good. There was pristine white paint and crimson carpet and gleaming brass everywhere, as well as the most elegant of flowered wallpapers and handsome dark mahogany furniture in the latest taste, which was richer and more embellished than the rather more delicate, older furniture in Tilly’s house.

  The drawing-room, which contained many sofas and chairs as well as plenty of occasional tables well laden with pictures in frames, knick-knacks and kickshaws of all sorts, was as handsome as the staircase and hall. Alice, resplendent in a gown of lemon silk with green braid, was sitting in a large armchair beside the fireplace which was hidden behind a very grand arrangement of ferns. She leapt up as the door opened and cried, ‘Freddy,’ in a high happy note and ran towards him, arms prettily outstretched. And then stopped short as she caught sight of Tilly.

  ‘Oh,’ she said blankly and stood very still.

  Tilly was nonplussed. This was not at all as Alice had been the last time they met. ‘I was coming to see you, Alice,’ Tilly said. ‘And met Freddy on the doorstep. I was about to return home for fear of discommoding you, for I had not thought how late it is, but he insisted that –’

  ‘Of course I did!’ Freddy said. ‘It does not discommode us in the least, does it, Alice? It is a pleasure to see you. Now sit down, and we shall deal cosily.’ He moved towards the fireplace and indicated a chair for Tilly.

  She followed him and sat down, spreading her black silk skirts neatly and letting her shawl fall from her shoulders and looked across at Alice, who had come to take her chair again and pick up her embroidery.

  ‘I am sorry to be a nuisance, Alice,’ she said. ‘But I am in a – well – I have a dilemma and I don’t quite know what to do about it. And I hoped that you would advise me. I can think of no one better to guide me.’

  Quite why she lied she did not know. It was Freddy’s advice she wanted, not Alice’s. She knew perfectly that only a fool would seek the counsel of such a flibberty-gibbet as Alice Compton, but it seeme
d politic to let her think otherwise.

  Alice showed no sign of being mollified. She sat with her face still and her head bent. ‘Oh?’ was all she said.

  ‘It is my father,’ Tilly said and then stopped, ashamed to realize that her voice had tightened as though she were about to weep.

  Alice looked up sharply and tilted her head to one side. ‘Your father? What of him?’

  ‘He –’ Tilly shook her head. ‘It is hard to explain. I feel I am bothering you when I should not. I did not mean to intrude. I –’ She stood up, sure now that Alice was angry with her for some reason and feeling unable to cope with that. She could imagine no reason why Alice should be, except for the possibility that she wanted to be alone with Freddy and resented Tilly’s intrusion. If so, that was natural enough, she supposed, and ached with a sense of deep loneliness. She had never felt that close to her Frank. Alice was indeed fortunate. ‘I will leave you now. Perhaps another time –’

  ‘Oh no, now, my dear,’ Freddy said warmly. ‘If you are so anxious we are glad to help, are we not, Alice? Clearly you have a cause for some anxiety? Tell us what it is and we will see what we can do to help you.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Alice said, but there was no matching warmth in her tone.

  ‘I –’ Tilly sat down again with a small thump. ‘He has not been home for five days. Ever since 1 told him of Mrs Leander’s departure, when he was as I feared he would be, most put about. And now I have hardly any money left and I do not know what to do.’

  Alice was staring at her, round-eyed. Clearly whatever had annoyed her had been set aside in the rush of intense curiosity that now filled her. ‘Your father has vanished? Oh, goodness me, what can have happened? Do you think he has been set upon and murdered? Or that – and what is this about Mrs Leander? Is she, too, vanished?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tilly said. ‘I was so glad of that, for she was – well – I will tell you all about it one day. She went as soon as Freddy told her to go and I was so grateful. But now Papa has gone and I dare say he is at his club. But I expected he would have returned by now. It has been five days and I – it is not like him, you see. Although he is – I cannot pretend he is – well, I cannot speak unkindly of him, of course, but oh dear, I am running on and I should not. I am so worried, you see.’ And she folded her hands on her lap, bit her lower lip hard and bent her head in an effort to prevent the rush of tears that threatened to overwhelm her. She did now know why she was so distressed. It was not love of her father surely, just fear, just uncertainty, just…She stopped trying to think and concentrated instead on not weeping. It was easier.

  Freddy was on his feet. ‘Five days? That is the outside of enough! He is quite wrong to leave you alone in your house, and you a widow and in your condition! I shall –’

  ‘Condition?’ Alice cried and looked sharply from one to the other. ‘You are increasing?’

  Tilly allowed herself only a nod.

  ‘Oh!’ Alice said again in that rather odd hard voice and this time Tilly stole a glance at her, and saw the cold, closed expression had returned to her face. But she did not have time to consider it further, for Freddy was now at the door.

  ‘I shall find him, never fear,’ he said. ‘Alice, I shall return as soon as may be. Stay here with Tilly, will you? Look after her. I shall let you know as soon as I am able what is happening.’ And he was gone, leaping down the stairs to the hall below, calling loudly to Mary to give him his hat, leaving the two women sitting staring at each other.

  ‘Well,’ Alice said, and her voice was tight with anger. ‘Well now, what a situation this is to be sure! There is much we must talk about, Madam Tilly, you and I! Just what have you been doing with my husband while my back has been turned, hey? What have you been doing? Tell me now and all of it, or I swear to you I shall scratch your wicked eyes out of your nasty scheming little head!’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘BUT I DO assure you Alice, I have done nothing wrong! I cannot think why you should even consider it possible.’ Tilly said again and put one hand up to her head, for it was aching now. Alice’s attack had been so unexpected and so altogether repugnant that it had made her ears sing and her eyes become hot and sandy. She yearned to get to her feet and run back to the security of her own home, but she knew she could not do that, not while Alice still remained so incensed and so determined not to believe her.

  ‘Oh, do not pretend to be ailing, just to get out of it,’ Alice cried. ‘I have no doubt you were cheerful enough when you set out to come here, not knowing I was here.’

  ‘I do not deny that I was not certain whether you were here or not,’ Tilly said. ‘I am glad you were, however. I needed advice and I could think of no one better to give it than –’

  ‘My husband,’ snapped Alice. ‘No sooner was my back turned and I was away on a necessary visit to sick friends, than you are in here, weaselling your way into –’

  ‘Alice!’ Tilly cried, bewildered. ‘Where did you get such a foolish notion? My husband has just died under dreadful circumstances and I am quite bereft – How can you think I would – who would make you believe such a nonsense?’

  ‘Nonsense, is it?’ Alice leapt to her feet and was marching about her elegant drawing-room at such a rate that her skirts threatened to sweep the occasional tables clear of all their ornaments at every turn. ‘I wish it were, indeed I do. But how can it be a nonsense when all those about me assure me they have seen you with their own eyes, positively flirting with him, sitting on the floor with him! That you are but recently widowed makes such behaviour the more reprehensible.’

  ‘All those about you?’ Tilly said, and shook her head. ‘Talking about me? But how can – who can – Oh!’ She stopped as the thought came to her.

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ snapped Alice, whipping up her wrath even more. ‘Well may you say, “Oh!”’

  ‘Have you been listening to servants’ surmises?’ Tilly said and managed to put such withering scorn into her voice that even the thoroughly agitated Alice was made to stop short in her perambulations. There is no other about you, as you say it, who could have observed me sitting on your drawing-room floor! We did so because your furniture had not yet been delivered and for no other reason. My call that day was a perfectly normal neighbourly one, yet you allow a servant’s assumptions and gossip to convert it into something disagreeable! To listen to such talk should be beneath you!’ Tilly warmed to her theme as her anger grew. ‘And to listen to it from such a one as that Mary – I have never seen so sour a countenance nor so unpleasant a stare! There has been nothing between Freddy and me that has not been totally innocent. Had we been flirting, do you suppose we would have done so in the view of a woman as disagreeable as your servant? That you should believe such malice is a poor reflection on the quality of your judgement, Alice, and so I tell you. Flirting, indeed! How could anyone think such a thing of so kind and generous a person as your good husband? How could you think it? I am a widow. I am, as you now know, increasing. I have great problems at home and I am in need of true caring friendship, not attacks from those who profess friendship for me!’ She jumped to her feet and stood there, her fists clenched at each side. ‘I see that I am in the wrong entirely in believing that you meant kindly when you first called on me again after all the years of separation between our first acquaintance and this, and will no longer bother you. I greatly regret that your husband has used his time on my behalf, and beg you to assure him that I will manage very well indeed, thank you, without his or your further aid. I leave you to your servant-woman, Ma’am, and wish you well of her company and her poisonous conversation!’ And she swept to the door, turned and dropped a curtsey and went, rushing down the stairs, to see Mary the maid gawping up at her from the hall below.

  She stopped and stared her straight in the eyes, and let every atom of her now flaming anger show in her face and her voice.

  ‘As for you – you object you, allow me to advise you to mind your manners and bite your evil tongue. You should be a
shamed of yourself to fill your foolish mistress’s ears with the sort of venom you have been dripping into them, and you should fall on your knees and pray for forgiveness from your Maker. I assure you, you will never have mine for the way you have gossiped and lied! Now, get out of my way.’ And with that she marched to the front door and slammed it behind her, and ran up the steps to her own house and leaned on the bell for Eliza to let her in. She was weeping copiously now and felt very shaky indeed, and was so glad when the door opened that she nearly tumbled in.

  Eliza gawped, protested and then reached for her and with strong young arms bore her as far as the chair in the hall beside the foot of the stairs. She turned back to the front door just as Alice came running up the steps.

  ‘Close the door, close it!’ Tilly cried and Eliza promptly did so, so firmly that it amounted to slamming the door in Alice’s face; and that made Tilly feel a little better for a moment. But not for long; the memory of the things Alice had said to her and of her own tirade – and she could still see Alice’s slack-jawed amazement as the words had flooded out of her – made her feel quite sick. She wept more bitterly than ever.

  ‘Oh, lawks, Mum, this’ll do you no good,’ Eliza said, and without any hindrance from Tilly and with a constant stream of scolding chatter, she swept her upstairs, undressed her and put her into her bed.

  ‘There,’ she said when at last Tilly lay exhausted against her pillows. ‘That’s better! No need to fret yourself the way you do – you’ll make your baby come with a frown already set on its poor little face. If you want a nice baby that sleeps a lot and cries but little, why then you must be the same while you carry him.’