Paying Guests (16 page)

‘My dear Mrs Quentin,’ he said with some emphasis. ‘I am so sorry I interrupted your tête-à-tête with Miss Oliver. I would not have intruded for the world.’

‘Oh, it was no intrusion,’ Sophie said merrily. ‘I am an old friend of the family, Mr Geddes, you understand. Calling on a sudden whim after many years of silence. Aunt Tilly was quite
bouleversée
.’

‘Aunt –’ Silas skewed his head round to look at Tilly. ‘Your niece?’

‘No,’ Tilly said shortly. ‘The daughter of – the daughter of someone I used to know.’

‘Indeed yes,’ Sophie said, still sunnily. ‘I lived here in this house for some time, you know, Mr Geddes! When I was a very little girl, of course, and dreadfully naughty, I recollect. I used to tease darling little Duff so much.’ She laughed reminiscently, a sweet tinkling sound. ‘One quite blushes when one remembers the sins of one’s infancy, don’t you find, Mr Geddes?’

‘Oh, I never look back!’ he said. ‘Too distressing for words to look back.’

‘My own sentiments entirely!’ Sophie cried and clapped her hands together softly. ‘Why, you are a man after my own heart, sir.’

‘I am glad to hear it. And will you be coming to stay in this house again, Miss Oliver?’

She opened her eyes wide and stared at him and then looked at Tilly. ‘Why, Mr Geddes, I had not even – well, what a thought! Dear me!’ She looked quite nonplussed and turned her head to Tilly and lifted both hands in a pretty gesture of confusion. ‘Does that
seem a good notion to you, Aunt Tilly? That I should visit for a while? It would be so agreeable to see dear Duff again.’

‘He is away,’ Tilly said in a dampening tone. ‘He has gone on an extended visit to Leicestershire. He went this very afternoon.’

‘But he will be –’ Silas began and Tilly turned her head to look at him and he stopped at once, seeming to realize that he had made a
betise
. She turned back to Sophie and spoke as smoothly as she could.

‘It is a charming idea of course, Sophie, but I doubt it will be practical for you. I am, I’m afraid, running a profitable enterprise here.’ She shook her head in what she knew to be mock regrets. ‘The pleasure of inviting people simply to be personal guests is one I must deny myself if I am to take proper care of my establishment. It is only
paying
guests we have here at Quentin’s, you see. I am indeed sorry to have to seem so inhospitable but –’

‘Not at all!’ Sophie said heartily. ‘I fully understand. And I am glad you have been so honest with me, Aunt Tilly – not that you could ever be anything else, of course. As I told dear Aunt Tilly downstairs, Mr Geddes, she is the most honest creature alive with the most speaking of countenances. I could always tell what she was thinking, even as a tiny child.’

‘I know Mrs Quentin to be the soul of probity and goodness,’ Silas said and looked at Tilly with a smile. It was as though he was using his eyes to beg her pardon for speaking out of turn, but she refused to look at him with equal directness.

‘That’s as may be,’ she said a little sharply. ‘But as to staying here –’

‘But of course I shall!’ Sophie said. ‘I can think of nothing more delightful! I have taken a dislike to my present lodgings since they are in a part of town where the ambiance is most depressing. To come here to the outer parts of town will be most agreeable.’

Tilly almost gaped at her. ‘You live in lodgings alone?’ she said.

‘Why yes.’ Sophie smiled, with an unreadable glitter in her eyes; was she being brave or brazen? Tilly could not tell. ‘I am not able to have my own establishment just yet, Aunt Tilly, though I hope to one day – a house, you know – a pretty little house, somewhere
agreeable and quiet where I may have a garden.’ She sighed. ‘I cannot see my way clear to it just yet, but I will, one day. But in the meantime,’ she brightened, ‘I think the idea of coming to room here is enchanting. I recall how very comfortable this house always was. To come back would be a delight.’

‘But – I am not sure,’ Tilly said and then gathered strength. ‘What of – your mother? Do you not live together?’

There was a sharp little silence and Silas looked from one to the other, his eyes intent, and then back at Sophie who was sitting once again smoothing her gloved fingers in what was clearly a characteristic gesture for her.

‘No,’ she said at length, lifting her chin to look steadily at Tilly. ‘That was not possible.’

‘Why not?’ Tilly was blunt. ‘You are after all very young, Sophie. Not yet eighteen.’

‘Turned eighteen,’ Sophie said and a glimmer of a smile flickered over her face. ‘I am getting quite old, compared with Duff, who is, as I recall, my junior by some months. I am well able to live in my own lodgings, I do assure you. And I am able to pay my way, you know!’

‘Oh, you have an allowance then? Your mother –?’ Tilly stopped, aware again of Silas’s curiosity. Had he any manners, she thought with sudden warmth, he would have made his excuses and gone before this. But he is clearly far too interested for his own good.

‘I have sufficient income,’ Sophie said calmly. ‘I depend on no one but myself. As to my – any other persons, suffice it to say I am an independent and quite free individual. I do as I choose and will continue to do so.’ She lifted her chin with a suddenly hard expression on her face, which vanished at once as she became aware of their somewhat startled expressions, and looked up at Tilly with her original insouciance. ‘So do tell me, dear Aunt, may I be one of your paying guests? I would like it above all things.’

‘I – I am not sure,’ Tilly said, aware she was stammering and wishing she were a good liar. If she could look this girl in the eyes and announce she had every room full it would be so much easier, but the second floor back on the far side of the house was empty, as
Silas well knew since it was only three rooms away from his own. She could not lie to Sophie anyway. The girl was right. She had never been able to hide her feelings.

‘Oh, please, Aunt Tilly!’ Sophie jumped up and became all at once a pliant, charming half-child, half-woman that only the hardest of hearts could resist, and she came running across the room and sank to the ground at Tilly’s feet, and took her hands in her own gloved ones. ‘Do say yes. I had not thought of this until just now, but now I have, it is the one thing I want most in all the world! Please let me come home, Aunt Tilly. For that is what it would be like for me. Coming home.’

DINNER THAT EVENING was a difficult meal for Tilly, although for everyone else it was delightful. There was not a person at the table, it seemed, apart perhaps from Miss Barnetsen who displayed some signs of jealousy, who was not most taken with the charms of Miss Oliver. Even the two American girls who received less than their usual share of attention from Mr Hancock and Mr Cumming hung on her every word as she chattered brightly to all of them and distributed her attractions with apparent artlessness. She turned from one to another with the sweetest of smiles, never paid more heed to the men than to the women but managed somehow always to have the men’s attention on her when she chattered girlishly to the female members of the company. And through it all she managed to make an excellent dinner, taking comfortable portions of every dish offered to her by the very attentive men who appointed themselves her guardians as they hurried from sideboard to table (for this was the normal practice on Eliza’s cold collation nights) and loaded her plate with delicacies.

‘What a pity dear Duff could not be here tonight!’ said Miss Fleetwood. ‘I remember, don’t you, dear Priscilla, just how devoted he was to our little Sophie when they were small.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ said Miss Knapp. ‘It would be interesting to hear what he recalls as well.’

Tilly looked at her sharply. Miss Knapp had said little since Sophie had joined the table, only acknowledging that she remembered her from the old days and now she looked back at Tilly with
a blank expression on her face that to Tilly seemed to say far more than it hid.

When they had dined and repaired to the drawing room, to which Rosie had single-handedly fetched the tea and coffee, for Lucy too had her evening out tonight, Sophie somehow communicated to the company, without actually boasting, that she was much in demand as a pianist and singer at evening parties, which action resulted in a pretty little display of eager invitation (by the men) and bashful refusal (by Sophie) and Miss Knapp watched with a slightly sardonic eye as, at last, Sophie yielded to their demands and made her way to the piano.

She did indeed play and sing very pleasantly, her voice being a throbbing and slightly husky one that clearly captivated the men and had Mrs Grayling and the American elders sitting happily bobbing their heads in time to her song, a sprightly tale of wistful love.

‘Everyone seems very captivated by Sophie,’ Tilly murmured in Miss Knapp’s ear during a particularly energetic chorus of the song which covered their conversation. ‘She seems to have grown up very sweetly.’

‘Hmm,’ said Miss Knapp. ‘Sweet is as sweetly does.’

Tilly lifted her brows at that. ‘Now why do you say that, Miss Knapp?’

‘I have a better memory than some,’ she said. ‘Better than Miss Fleetwood’s, and she should know better. We had the teaching of Miss Sophie, you will recall, when she was small and my memory is of a most wilful little minx who demanded her own way in all things. And in my experience, as bends the twig so grows the tree.’

‘But there is no sign that she is being wilful or demanding her own way tonight,’ Tilly said, not sure why she was defending Sophie, but feeling a need to argue with Miss Knapp. Perhaps for her own sake? she wondered briefly and then fixed her attention on her companion again.

Miss Knapp held out her cup for more tea and shook her head. ‘You must not be beguiled,’ she said. ‘She is at present having what she most desires. Everyone’s attention. If for any reason the party
stopped being so taken with her music and conversation I think you would find her in a very different humour.’

‘She wants to come and live here again,’ Tilly said abruptly and Miss Knapp turned and looked at her closely.

‘Does she, then?’ she said after a long pause. ‘Well, well. And her mother?’

‘Well, no. It seems they do not live together. I have the impression Sophie has her own income and largely runs her own life.’

‘At her age?’ Miss Knapp was scandalized. ‘I believe strongly in women’s education, Mrs Quentin, and the right of girls to show their capabilities as well as do their brothers, but that does not mean I countenance hoydenish behaviour. And for a girl of eighteen – for that is her age, is it not? – to live alone seems to me to be quite shocking.’

‘I find it odd, too,’ Tilly murmured as the song finished to a spatter of applause and somewhat noisy demands were made for an encore. ‘But it is difficult to know what to do. She tells me she has disagreeable lodgings in Covent Garden and had intended to move herself in the not too distant future. She says she came to Brompton by chance and called on me only for old memories’ sake and – and now she wishes to remain here.’

‘Hmm,’ Miss Knapp said and sat and brooded, watching the people clustered around the piano as at last Sophie insisted on giving way at the keyboard and her place was taken by Mr Cumming and Mr Hancock, who offered to sing a comic duet.

‘It must not be outrageous, now, gentlemen!’ said Mr Lampeter in a jocular tone. ‘It would never do to see us on our way to Paris tomorrow with the refrain of a bawdy song in our ears, now would it?’

‘I am sure,’ Sophie said, ‘that no guest of my dear Aunt Tilly would ever sing any song that was not perfectly respectable. That is what is so delightful about this house. It clearly offers all the comforts of a well-conducted residence with none of the drawbacks of the usual sort of accommodation that is offered to those who lack a home of their own. Isn’t that so, Mr Geddes?’

‘Very much so,’ Silas said and smiled at her, and then at Tilly. He
was sitting in a chair not too far from the piano, almost a part of the group around it and yet aloof, but his attention, Tilly had not been able to help noticing, had been fixed throughout on Sophie. ‘That is why we are all here, after all.’

‘Well, I have to say,’ Mr Lampeter said in his easy American way, ‘it’s suited us down to the ground! A real home from home – only sorry we have to leave tomorrow for Paris, as this charming young lady would have been so nice a friend for our two young ones here –’ His comprehensive gesture took in Miss McCool as well as Miss Lampeter, both of whom simpered a little. ‘But perhaps we’ll try to stop by with you on our way back home, Mrs Quentin, so that we can all meet up again.’

‘It will be delightful to have you here among us, Miss Oliver,’ Mrs Grayling put in eagerly, ‘if you will always sing so charmingly in the evenings.’ And she beamed happily at Sophie, who smiled sweetly back.

Not to be outdone, the two young men, now sitting side by side at the piano and waiting to start their song, nodded and cried, ‘Yes, indeed, yes!’ and, ‘The sooner the better, Miss Oliver!’ Sophie cast a glance over her shoulder at Tilly as if to say, ‘You see how it is? What can I do but come here? You cannot refuse me.’