Paying Guests (48 page)

‘We cannot possibly understand it all until you do.
All
of it,’ Duff went on with a slight edge of asperity in his voice, for she had not answered, but sat staring down at her lap.

She lifted her head at that and peeped at him with a scared look in her eyes and bobbed her head and said breathlessly, ‘Yes, sir, Mr Duff.’

‘Well?’ he said, impatiently, and she took a long breath.

‘Well, it was like – what Mr Silas said to Missus and what Missus said an’ all, and anyway, there was always so much ‘ere, and any amount of it wasted, one way and another and no one never noticed if a bit went, so I thought it no ‘arm –’

‘I said from the beginning, Polly,’ Duff said.

‘I am tellin’ you,’ she protested. ‘I got to explain properly, don’t I?’ For a brief moment there was a hint of the old combative Polly there.

‘Then be clear about it. It is very late and we are all much in need of sleep, you included. So – what did Mr Silas say to my mother that is germane – that led to whatever it led to?’ For a moment Duff sounded very young again, and Tilly wanted to reach out to him. But she managed not to.

‘He said as ‘ow it was all wrong that some people should be beggin’ and some should be so comfortable like. ’e said we all ‘ad a responsibility to everyone, in a fair world. ’e said as ‘ow –’

‘I know what I said!’ Silas interrupted wrathfully. ‘But what my philosophy has to do with –’

‘Please, Silas,’ Duff said sharply. ‘Let her go on.’ Silas scowled and subsided.

‘And Missus, ‘ere, ‘elpin’ me and the boys like and the ‘ospital and everyone bein’ so good about taking in me and Georgie – and me bein’ that grateful and – well, I took Georgie for a walk didn’t I? Along down the park, pushin’ ‘im in that old baby carriage, Mr Duff, what Missus said was yours when you was a baby.’

Duff reddened and said stiffly, ‘Well? So you took a walk – what has this to do with what happened next door?’

‘I’m comin’ to it, Mr Duff! Well, I met some of me old muckers –’ She saw the look of mystification on his face then and said quickly, ‘Old friends, like, people what I knew when we was beggin’. Before you all rescued us like, me and the boys and Georgie.’

‘Ah!’ Tilly said and her gaze sharpened. She began to have an inkling of what was to come. Hadn’t Eliza told her how surprised she was that so much more was being eaten in the kitchen since Polly came? Hadn’t they thought simply that the girl was making up for the years of half starvation she had suffered?

She glanced at Eliza and saw the same dawning awareness in her expression and at the same time began to feel sick. Had she accused her own dear Eliza for no reason? Oh, God, please let Eliza understand and forgive me if I did.

‘Well, they was most took with the way we looked, me and Georgie. They never reckernized us, first off. I ‘ad to speak to them – and then they was that jealous!’ Her lips curved reminiscently. ‘Specially Joe. ’e was right put about, ’e was –’

‘Joe?’ Duff said, mystified, and also to bring her back to speech, for she was staring down at her lap again and her expression had become more remote.

‘Feller,’ Polly said succinctly. “Bout your age, like. Nice feller.’

‘Ah,’ said Tilly again, but no one paid her any attention.

‘So what did you do when he was jealous of your good fortune, Polly?’ Duff said softly and she threw a glance at him, frightened now.

‘Well, I said as ‘ow – well, I thought, there’s all this food ‘ere and Miss Eliza and Missus they said I could eat what I wanted any time, just to go an’ take anythin’, as long as it was a dish what ‘ad bin started like, and not a fresh one as’d been made for upstairs, and I thought, Joe an’ ‘is old man, they looked shockin’ thin. An’ I said – well – I told ‘em if they come late, I’d give ‘em some vittles.’ She looked at Eliza this time, appealingly. ‘I meant no ‘arm, honest I didn’t. It was just I ‘ad so much and they ‘ad nothin’ and Missus and Mr Silas they talked about takin’ care of beggars like, so I didn’t think no ‘arm to it.’

‘There was no harm in it,’ Tilly said. ‘But you did not need to steal it for them, Polly. You should have asked me. Or Eliza. Could you not have trusted us?’

‘I di’n’t know if I could, Missus,’ Polly said simply. ‘I mean, wouldn’t you ‘ave said well, ‘ow many’s likely to ‘ear of this and all turn up together? Eh? Ain’t that what you’d a’ said?’

Tilly was silent, aware of the wisdom of Polly’s question. Would she have been so willing to feed these people? It was so easy now to say so, but in reality –

‘Anyway, it was all right to start with. It was just Joe and ‘is old man and I never ‘ad no trouble. But then they said as ‘ow they ‘ad one or two others as wanted a bit of vittles and I said it was ‘ard, like, to take so much, but I’d try – and then –’

‘Then what?’ Duff said. ‘You’ll have to tell us now, Polly. You’ve come this far, after all.’

‘You won’t get the law on them, Mr Duff?’ she said, breathless with anxiety, but he shook his head.

‘At this stage, Polly, I can make no promises. Just tell us. Then what?’

‘Joe saw the ‘ouse next door was empty,’ she said in a small voice.

‘And?’

‘And – and ’e said it was bleedin’ cold sleepin’ out and the old
man ‘ad the pneumony, ’e didn’t doubt, and ’e was goin’ to get in and sleep dry and warm of a night – and it’d make it easier for me to give ‘em the food if they did. I wouldn’t ‘ave to come down in the middle of the night and meet ‘em ‘ere at the back door.’

Eliza drew in her breath sharply and Polly bit her lip and avoided her eyes. ‘Well, it seemed all right to me! I never saw no one there, I don’t know nothin’ about the place. So they got in, di’n’t they?’

‘How?’ Duff said and Polly shrugged.

‘Don’t know. Never asked. I didn’t
want
to know, to tell the truth. I mean, I was gettin’ scared. Joe used to be so nice, but ’e was gettin’ a bit rough – wanted me to – well, never mind. ’e just got a bit tough, like, and I didn’t want to cross ‘im. ’e said ‘e’d found ‘is own way in and I was to leave the vittles, much as I could, down the area. Round behind the steps, like. All I ‘ad to do was go out when it was convenient like – early mornin’ was good – an’ leave the stuff there an’ I ‘ad to do nothin’ else –’

‘You’re sure?’ Silas said sharply, for again she had stopped and she looked at him with that scared rabbit glance of hers and went pink.

‘They wanted coals’n all,’ she muttered after a long pause.

‘Coals!’ Eliza cried. ‘Coals? Are you telling me that you took
coals
to these beggarmen as well as our good food?’

‘Yes, Miss Eliza,’ Polly whispered. “E’d ‘ave ‘it me if I ‘adn’t. I di’n’t dare not to. ’e said he’d mark me so as you’d all see and ask and then I’d get into trouble, wouldn’t I? And you’d throw me out –’

‘Oh, Polly, of course I wouldn’t!’ Tilly cried. ‘As if I would!’

‘I wasn’t to know that, was I?’ Polly said with a sudden access of passion. ‘You’ve been nice enough, o’ course you ‘ave and I’m as grateful as I know ‘ow to be, what with Georgie doin’ so well an’ all, but if you’d known as I was givin’ your vittles and firin’ to beggars next door, wouldn’t you ‘ave been in a takin’? Stands to reason you would!’

Tilly opened her mouth to answer, but Duff forestalled her. ‘How could they risk lighting fires?’ he said with a note of amazement in
his voice. ‘Surely they wouldn’t risk someone seeing the chimney smoke.’

Polly shook her head at that. ‘They never used the fireplaces, Mr Duff! No one never uses fireplaces when they take over an empty drum like that. You gets a bit of good iron, see, from somewhere like the railway – they sometimes ‘as bits lyin’ around – and you lights the coals on that. You soon get used to a bit o’ smoke in your eyes when you’re used to sleepin’ out in the cold. You
likes
it. It makes you feel warmer.’

Tilly shivered suddenly, and it was not just the icy chill from the gaping window which could not be defeated by the brave fire that Eliza was keeping going in the grate. It was the glimpse of the sort of life these people lived and of which she had so little understanding that made her feel so cold. In a curious way she was sick with shame and guilt as though she had herself seen to it that this should be their lot. It was an absurd notion, she told herself; but all the same she couldn’t be rid of it.

‘Oh, no,’ Silas said slowly. ‘They set a sheet of cast iron on wooden floorboards and burned coals on them. Is it any wonder that eventually they scorched and burned through? The hot coals must have tumbled through to the cellar beneath and set the whole place alight.’

There was a long silence as the five of them sat and thought; Polly, her head down and staring once more at her apron, but seeming somehow more at peace than she had been; Eliza with her face a study of anger and pity; and the two men blank with disbelief. Tilly herself was almost as blank as they were. She could see what had happened and how it had happened and understood Polly’s role in its happening. But that no longer concerned her. It was Eliza she was thinking about now. Suddenly she turned and looked at her and seized her hand and stared up into her face.

‘Eliza?’ she said.

Eliza turned her head and looked at her, and there was no expression in her eyes at all. But after a long moment she seemed to soften and she lifted her other hand and set it against Tilly’s cheek.

‘There, Mum,’ she said huskily. ‘Don’t take on. There ain’t no need. It’s all right, Mum.’

‘Are you sure?’ Tilly said, needing to apologize, but unable to get the words out before this audience. And Eliza seemed to understand and nodded.

‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Everything’s fine, all right. You see if it ain’t. Now we know.’

Tilly slept till almost eight that evening, rolled into her counterpane and sunk in so deep a slumber that she did not even dream. When she woke, with a start, she was ravenously hungry and curiously light-headed. Her house, she recalled with a sort of shock of surprise, was in a state of squalor and upheaval. Her business had been struck cruelly and she had no idea what was to happen to her and her guests in the time to come, or how much permanent damage had been done; but she was deeply content and she lay there blinking at the dimness of her bedroom ceiling.

She tried to understand why she should feel so. And finally did. It was that Duff was home and Eliza had done nothing to hurt her and had forgiven her for suspecting that she might. Whatever had happened, the most important people in her life were safe and secure and as they had always been – part of her and now totally with her. In such a case, she could, she told herself, cope with anything and everything.

It was not until she had dressed and was hurrying downstairs that she realized that, in her analysis of how she felt about her current situation, she had given no thought at all to Silas, the man to whom she was supposed to be engaged to be married, albeit secretly. And she stopped halfway down the stairs to contemplate that thought and decide what she must do.

He would have to be told that under the circumstances she would release him from his offer of marriage. She would be much too occupied in the coming weeks, months even, with cleaning and renovating Quentin’s, she would tell him, to be able to pay him the attention a husband-to-be was entitled to enjoy. He must understand
that, surely? And she completed her journey downstairs, guiltily aware that the truth had to be faced by both of them at some time.

She did not love him enough to wed him. The need for physical excitement had been a sorry guide, she thought, as she made her way a little fearfully towards her drawing room to see the damage that had been done there; it had led her into a most complicated situation that she really did not want. And the thought came as a relief. At least she now had a full understanding of her true feelings.

She pushed open the drawing-room door with trepidation. Quite what she expected to see she did not know. In her memory she saw the great jet of water from the hoses hit the windows and the glass shatter. The place must surely be awash with water and her heart almost contracted as she thought of her good Turkey carpet as well as shards of broken glass. But look she must.

She was so amazed that she could only stand and stare. The floorboards were not under water, as she had feared, but bare and swept. There was no broken glass to be seen. The boards were somewhat dull for want of polish, but clearly drying, encouraged by a great roaring fire in the twin fireplaces that decorated each end of the long room. The carpet had vanished, but otherwise things looked well enough. The great deep-green curtains had been drawn and all over the room lamps and candles had been lit as usual, so that it looked welcoming and agreeable. It was not its usual elegant self, of course, but far from unpleasant.

She went over to the curtains and peeped behind them and saw that someone had nailed boards over the spaces where the glass had been shattered and she marvelled. She had slept all day. Who had dealt with all this?

She hurried downstairs to the dining room, to find the same sort of rough and ready order there. Here too windows had been broken but the glass remnants were gone and the spaces nailed up and again the carpet had been removed and a roaring fire in the grate was doing its best to get rid of the smell of damp that came from the drying floorboards. The table had been set for dinner in its usual way and she blinked at it. It was not laid for as many covers as usual, but it had been set.

In the kitchen she found the source of all this success in clearing up. Eliza was moving about the kitchen happily, with Lucy and Rosie helping her as usual, and beside the fire, in the great rocker, Duff sat, his head on one side and his mouth half open, snoring gently. He looked exhausted and yet contented. Eliza smiled at Tilly as she came hurrying down the stairs, her skirts billowing up in her hurry, and said softly, ‘He’s all right, Mum. He’ll be fine for his dinner, he said, and then he’ll go to bed. I gave up arguing, for he’s so young and strong and seemed to be happy to be up and doing it all.’

‘But it is all most miraculous!’ Tilly said. ‘The carpets – where are they? And the windows –’

‘Oh, he sent a message to Charlie, Mum. Charlie Harrod. Lucy took it, and he sent round one of his men to fix the windows temporary like, and put in hand the glazing – they’re comin’ tomorrow to do that – and had the carpets took up to be sent away to be cleaned. He’s got a man that does that sort of work, Charlie said, and he’d fix it all up for us, and what was friends for, after all? And Rosie and Lucy, they bustled about and cleared glass and scrubbed out down here, once the water’d drained away, and look at it, Mum! Not so bad is it? We’ll soon get it back to its old shine. Polly, she scrubbed fit to bust, she did.’