Paying Guests

by Claire Rayner

She bent her head and finished writing her letter. ‘I look forward most eagerly to reading your response to my invitation, dear Sophie, and do assure you that I regard myself very much as your own dear Aunt, Tilly Quentin.’

  So, I can be as devious as you, Miss, she told herself in a flash of amusement as she blotted and sealed her letter. I too can pursue an unpleasant means to an end I desire, as I am sure you have many, many times. Let us see what sort of haul this bait brings ashore.

  There was a sudden scratching on her door panels, an urgent anxious sound and she lifted her head and called, ‘Enter!’ and it was Eliza who stood there, her face redder than usual and her forehead creased in anxiety.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Oh, Mum, do come and see. I do ‘ope as I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. You’d best come and look for yourself, for if I’m right and saw what I saw, oh dear, oh dear!’ And she actually pulled up her apron and wiped her face with it, as though she were still the little tweeny Tilly had taught not to behave in such a way. And Tilly, her pulse thumping a little as she caught Eliza’s anxiety, got to her feet and hurried out of the room after her.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ELIZA HURRIED HER along the hallway and into the dining room, where the long table was already set for dinner and looking very attractive with glossy laurel leaves as the table decoration and the faint glitter of silver and crystal (for the room was unlit, though it received a good deal of light from the hallway). The windows had been shrouded in their dark-green plush curtains, all except for one sliver on the left-hand curve where the dimness outside the windows could be seen; and it was to that point that Eliza took her.

  ‘Look up,’ she whispered, even though there was no possible chance that anyone outside the closed windows could hear her. ‘I was just drawing the curtains ready to light the lamps and all, and I saw – so I left ‘em like this so’s I could show you – see?’

  Mystified, Tilly went to the sliver of uncurtained window and peered out. It took her a few moments to adjust her eyes and then she was able to see, for it was after all only late afternoon, and not totally dark yet.

  There were the steps up to her own front door and the curve of the doorstep behind the pilasters that held up the porch. There were the railings and the pavement. That was all there was to see in the immediate foreground and beyond that there was a repeat of the same as the steps up to the front door of the empty house next door and its matching pilasters and porch echoed her own, and on and on to the end of the street in retreating perspective. The cobbles of the roadway shone a little greasily in the light thrown out by one or two windows along the street as well as from her own drawing room on the floor above, where some of the guests were already congregating to wait for the summons to the dining room and dinner, and beyond those rectangles she could see the shadows of the houses on the other side of the road.

  And that was all. There was no traffic at all, not so much as a tradesman’s donkey chaise, or a street seller; they had long ago scuttled back to the safety of their own homes, for few people liked to be abroad in the dark in Brompton, even though the village had become much more respectable and, therefore, safer in recent years. Sensible citizens tended to be warmly within their own doors on such a cold and dismal winter afternoon.

  ‘Well?’ Tilly said, puzzled, and turned to took at Eliza. Was she having some sort of megrim, due to her condition? Tilly herself had never suffered in that way when she had been carrying Duff all those years ago, but she could remember very vividly how easily she was startled and alarmed by unusual sights or sounds. So she said more gently, ‘There is nothing there to see, Eliza. What alarmed you?’

  ‘Oh, pish!’ Eliza said a little surprisingly and almost pushed past Tilly to peer out through the crack in the curtains herself. ‘I was feared she’d do that the minute I come to fetch you. Maybe she’s gone in, then.’

  ‘Who has gone in where?’ Tilly said, a little irritable now. Had Eliza thought she had seen some sort of man skulking about, then her fears might be justified; fear of robbers was a commonplace. But she had said ‘she’; clearly this was no more than some servant girl misbehaving and Eliza being avid for a bit of gossip. Or perhaps –

  ‘Is it one of our girls you saw? Is someone slipping out when she is supposed to be at work? Rosie?’ Rosie was an excellent housemaid, and very good at her work, but undoubtedly pretty and sometimes pert; if anyone had a follower she was sneaking out to meet when she should be working, it must surely be Rosie.

  ‘No, Mum. Would I worry you over such a thing? I can deal with our girls and need never bother you and never you think otherwise – it was just that I thought I saw – and there! You see?’ And she almost pulled on Tilly’s arm to get her back to the window.

  Another rectangle of light had appeared on the cobbles; a softer, wavering one and Tilly thought, that’s from a room that is candlelit, and was about to withdraw herself from the window and expostulate with Eliza for fussing over nothing at all, when she realized just what was odd about it, and froze.

  ‘That’s from next door,’ she said. ‘The drawing-room window, isn’t it? You see how it matches with the light from ours? Oh!’ For now the light had dwindled and vanished as though whoever had been holding up a candle in the drawing room next door had left the room. Tilly straightened her back and said slowly, ‘I see. Someone has gone in there?’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ Eliza said grimly. ‘It’s been empty this twelve month and more and not a sign of no one coming near nor by, and now there was someone – I saw her.’

  ‘Perhaps the house has been sold,’ Tilly said slowly and made a little grimace. ‘I had hoped it would stay empty so long that the price would come down far enough for me to buy it. I am not quite ready yet to enlarge but I hope the time will come – but if it is taken,’ she shrugged, ‘well, Eliza, there is nothing we can do about it. Though I must say this is a strange time of day to come looking at empty houses, is it not? Impossible to see anything inside and as for checking the drains and so forth –’

  ‘But I saw her,’ Eliza cried again. ‘I saw who it was, Mum – and it wasn’t just someone comin’ to look at a house with a view to takin’ it. Or I don’t think so. I pray it’s not so!’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles, Eliza,’ Tilly said, knowing how much Eliza liked to make the most out of every happening; she had always been a natural dramatist. ‘Who are you speaking of?’

  ‘Oh, Mum!’ Eliza said, turning back to the window to peer out once more. ‘I only caught a glimpse like, and I don’t want to – there! Look Mum, she’s comin’ out.’

  Tilly looked out and now she could see that someone was standing on the front porch of the next-door house. She was holding a well-protected candle, using her hand to make a shield against the movement of the air in the street and was standing with her back to Tilly’s windows as she leaned and peered down into the area. It was hard to see much, for the person was turned away from Tilly, but there was no doubt of the femininity of the shape: a full skirt of a somewhat old-fashioned cut with a pelisse over it and a high bonnet. Tilly frowned, trying to see some detail which might reveal the figure’s identity.

  And then the woman turned and looked over her shoulder, towards Quentin’s, and the light of her candle, which was guttering a little wildly in spite of that curved hand held in front of the flame, lit the face beneath the bonnet. Tilly caught her breath and stared, trying to be sure of what she had seen as the woman completed her turn and went back into the house and the door closed behind her.

  ‘Well, Mum? Did you see what I saw? I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Tilly said, trying to recreate that fleeting moment when she had seen the face leap out of the darkness as its owner turned away. ‘There wasn’t enough time.’

  ‘I’m goin’ in there,’ Eliza said stoutly. ‘I mean, we’re respectable ‘ere, and we’ve every right to go checkin’ when we sees people goin’ in and out of empty houses! I’ll fetch my shawl.�
�� And she was gone, pattering across the dining room so fast that Tilly could not stop her.

  Tilly was standing at the front door when Eliza returned, her shawl about her shoulders and pulled up over her head. Tilly too had fetched a pelisse from the hall stand and was wrapped up against the cold.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said shortly as Eliza opened her mouth to protest and to assure Tilly she could manage perfectly well on her own. ‘I too am concerned. Come along.’

  She took the lead, going down her own steps in a steady manner and turning immediately left to reach the steps that led up to the adjoining premises. She stopped as she reached them, however, and looked up at the front door.

  It was a shabby one indeed. The paint had long ago blistered and in places peeled away and the steps were dull and broken-edged. Tilly’s own front door was a far more elegant affair, painted every year into a rich glossy black surface in which her guests could see their own faces and her door step and the steps down to the street were scrubbed and whitened with a stone every single day of the week, including Sunday. Tilly’s railings were painted in the same high gloss as the front door and the area they enclosed was clean-swept and neat. The area beneath the rusted railings of this house was a drift of dead leaves and all sorts of detritus (Tilly shuddered to think what might have found its way down there) and the whole house’s general shabbiness had long been an irritant to her. If she could buy the place, it would not only rid her of a disagreeable eyesore, but it would also enable her to make Quentin’s more successful by providing her not just with space for an extra dozen guests, but also a writing room and a study for those who preferred to spend their evenings in contemplation rather than the busyness and occasional noisiness of the drawing room. It had long been her hope that she would be able to, but the various set-backs she had suffered – including her financial losses over the absconding Mr Greenwall – had made such hopes remote, so she had not given much thought to the house next door for some time.

  But all that had changed now. If what she had seen was as she feared –

  She lifted her chin, pulled her pelisse closer around her, and went up the steps, moving carefully to avoid the broken edges. The door was closed fast and she lifted the dull knocker and released it twice.

  She heard it echo through the house behind it, imagined the waves of sound moving across the dusty hallway and up the naked stairs and through dusty, empty rooms, and she stood there, very aware of Eliza’s rather heavy breathing behind her, and listened.

  Nothing happened and she knocked again, more peremptorily this time, rattling the iron against its clapper several times; and this time, when the echoes died away she heard it clearly; footsteps clattering along naked boards. She straightened her shoulders and prepared herself.

  The door opened and then the gap widened, and whoever stood there, a candle still in her hand, stepped back almost behind it.

  ‘I wondered how long it would be before you noticed I was here,’ the once so familiar voice said. Tilly knew it immediately, though it was deeper now and had a roughness about it she did not recall. ‘Do come in. I cannot entertain you very well, but you’re welcome all the same.’

  Tilly sat on a wooden packing case in the middle of what should have been a dining room, looking at the woman sitting on a similar object in front of her. Eliza had gone, after some firmness from Tilly who had assured her she would deal perfectly well on her own and that Eliza was needed in the kitchen at Quentin’s, and now they were free to talk.

  Tilly looked steadily at the other and said carefully, ‘Well, Dorcas? I do not ask you how you are, for I can see that you are far from well. You’ve become very thin, I fear. I trust it is not a severe illness.’

  ‘If you’re asking if I have consumption the answer is no, by some miracle.’ When they had last talked Dorcas’s voice had had a fluting sound to it, much like Sophie’s, but now there was a depth there that was quite marked; and Tilly remembered suddenly how the same thing had happened to her mother. Her change of voice had been due to her intake of spiritous liquors; was this the case with Dorcas? It might well be. ‘It’s because I’ve lived on the most vile of slops this past two years, and as little of that as I dared.’

  ‘Oh,’ Tilly said, and no more. All she could do was look at Dorcas, and though she tried not to let her opinion show on her face, she feared it was impossible to hide how shocked she was.

  Dorcas had been more than pretty when she was young. There had been a vitality about her, a liveliness that clothed every part of her with the sort of allure that the plain and then very timid Tilly had envied sorely. Her eyes, her hair, her teeth, her smile, all had glittered with a raw life and animal energy that had been very attractive. Certainly men had found her almost irresistible. Hadn’t Tilly’s own husband, Francis, on their wedding day – but she would not remember that, no matter what. She just looked at the wreck of the Dorcas she had known, and marvelled.

  She looked like a woman at least ten years older than she was. Tilly could compute it easily. If she, Tilly, was thirty-five, then Dorcas was past forty. But the lacklustre hair with distinct areas of grey in it, the sagging skin, sallow and even yellowish in the light of the candle and the reddened, dull eyes spoke of much greater wear and tear than a mere two and forty years. The hands that were crossed on the lap of the gown she was wearing (which was not particularly cheap, Tilly could not help but notice, but which looked far from clean and certainly was not pressed) were reddened and cracked and the nails broken and discoloured.

  Dorcas saw the direction of her gaze and glanced down and then curled her fingers inwards, and laughed. There was no amusement in the sound.

  ‘If you had been picking oakum for two years your hands would be in a similar state,’ she said, and Tilly blushed and looked at her face instead.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I truly am, Dorcas.’ And it was true. No matter how cruel and selfish Dorcas had been in her dealings with Tilly all those years ago, however much distress she had caused her as a child – and later – they were still tied by memories of their shared young years, when she, Tilly, had been the daughter of the house and Dorcas but the daughter of the housekeeper, Mrs Leander. To see her now, cast down and destroyed by her experiences, was dispiriting in the extreme, and could not be deserved, no matter what she had done. And on an impulse she tried to say as much.

  ‘I know you were in prison, Dorcas. I found out when – I had to go to the court at Clerkenwell, to seek information for someone, and I saw your name in the ledgers. I am not sure what you did to warrant such a sentence but whatever it was, this cannot be right.’ And she reached forward and set her hand over Dorcas’s closed fists.

  Dorcas sat with her head bent, looking down at her lap and for a moment Tilly thought she was about to weep. But not Dorcas; with a momentary return of her old insouciance she lifted her chin and said, ‘Well, as to that, I’m no beak! I can’t say what goes on in their minds. If they had to keep body and soul together in a hard world, and had skirts instead of the rubbish that fills their damned trousers, they’d make the same sort of shifts I had to, I dare say. Especially if one of their kind dropped them in the midden as happened to me, the bastard!’

  Tilly drew back, chilled. ‘I don’t ask questions, Dorcas –’ she began, but Dorcas laughed.

  ‘There is no need, I shall tell you. I was arraigned for keeping a bawdy house. I have no objection to such establishments, of course – but that had not been my intention then. So I had not made the usual arrangements with the law to protect myself. It was that which landed me in prison, you know! The proper palms had not been oiled, and they were vindictive. But how was I to know? I had planned with that man – a friend, or so I thought him, called Nicholas Rees – that we should run a proper gaming house – and that was risky enough, God knows and costs a fair amount in bribes on its own account. But there it was. He did things behind my back and arranged matters so that – well, let it be. I have no wish to rehearse it
all again now. Why should I? Enough that I’ve spent the past two years in the most stinking place in the world picking that God-forsaken oakum.’

  She opened her fingers suddenly and stared down at them. ‘Have you any notion what that is like, Tilly? Have you? I had such pretty hands once, did I not? Even when I was washing dishes and emptying slops and the like in your papa’s house, I kept them white and nice, with pigs’ fat rubbed in every night and lemon juice stolen from the larder – and now look!’

  She held her hands up and they were indeed a pathetic sight, with half-healed cuts and sores as well as the roughness and redness that clearly went deep. ‘They make you unpick rope, d’you see. Ends of rope soaked in tar and as stiff as these boards here –’ she stamped a foot on the floor ‘– and having to be shredded into tow to use for ships’ caulking, and no implements to do it – it was work set aside for the men, but they hated me in there, oh, they hated me, those warders, and made my life such hell and only fed me what little they did if I picked their oakum to their satisfaction and so they wore me down.’

  She lifted her chin and laughed aloud. ‘But I’ve defeated them, haven’t I? I’ve shown them they can’t put an end to me the way they did the others! Here I am, and I have my house and I shall do as I choose this time and no man shall ever again see me into such straits, I swear it and I mean it, by God I do.’

  The words were ordinary enough but the venom with which she spoke them made Tilly want to curl up away from her. She was without doubt the most angry person Tilly had ever seen or heard and the sight made her quail.

  But then Dorcas relaxed, set her hands back in her lap and lifted her head from her contemplation of them and looked at Tilly.

  ‘It won’t take too long, Tilly! Give me a little time and I shall soon be plump and well again. I shall heal – skin heals, you know. I shall fatten up now that I can get decent victuals again.’ She laughed richly. ‘That was what made them angriest of all. They knew I had tucked away money and more and yet they could not get their hands on it or make me tell them. I served my time and now I’ll have my property –’