Saints and Sinners (5 page)

Smell was Delia's strongest sense, and when these paying guests arrived that morning, she smelt the woman's perfume and the daughter's, identical, and yet nothing else about them seemed similar. The daughter, Samantha, was cocksure, with toffee-colored hair, narrowing her eyes as if she were thinking something mathematical, when all she was thinking was, "Look at me, spoil me." Her long hair was her chief weapon, which she swept along the table as she scrutinized the wallpaper, or a picture over the whatnot of pussycats who were trying to move the hands of a clock close to feeding time. She kept insisting that her parents have a bite of the iced cake, because it was yummy. Although the price quoted only included bed and breakfast, Delia liked to give her guests a cup of tea when they arrived and whatever cake happened to be in the tin. Samantha's short skirt drew attention to her thighs, which were like pillars of solid nougat inside her cream lace stockings. She wore two-tone shoes that buttoned across the instep. The mother was dark and plump and made a habit of touching the daughter whenever she jumped up in one of her fits of exuberance. The father smoked a pipe. He was a handsome man, tall and distant, who seemed like a professor of something.

After the tea and cake, they wondered ifthey might have a picnic basket with some sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, as they were taking a boating expedition. She explained then that they must make their own arrangements for dinner, as she was really just bed and breakfast.

When they returned, after midnight, she heard them say, "Shhh shhh shhh," repeatedly as they climbed the stairs. They used the bathroom in turn. She could tell by their footsteps and had to concede that they were doing their best to be quiet, that is, until something went crash, crash. She reckoned it was the china tooth mug. She loved that tooth mug, cream with green fluting and little garlands of shamrock, and she wanted to get up and tackle them, but something stopped her. Also, she did not have a dressing gown. Would they be in their dressing gowns? The woman possibly yes, and the man in his shirtsleeves. She would miss that tooth mug, she would mourn it. Her things had become her faithfuls, what with all else gone or scattered. She knew, yes, she knew, that the love from children became fainter and more intermittent with time, not unlike a garment washed and rewashed, until it is only a suggestion of its original color. Their daughter, their Samantha, would be like that soon, would skedaddle once she had other interests, boyfriends and so forth.

The parents had the blue room, which had been her and her husband's bridal room, the one where her children were born and where, as the years went on, she slept as little as possible, visiting her husband only when she was compelled to and afterwards washing and rinsing herself thoroughly. Five children were enough for any woman. Four scattered, one dead, and a daughter-in-law who had made her son, her only son, the essence of graspingness. Still, she must not be too hard on them, too judgmental. The girls remembered when they remembered, they sent gifts, especially the younger daughter, and next time, when asked what she wanted for her birthday, she would say a dressing gown so that she could confront her lodgers in a crucial moment.

She only kept people in summer, partly because that was when tourists came, but also to heat the whole house in winter would be extravagant, as oil was so expensive. Moreover, she never kept people for more than two or three nights, believing they might get forward and start to thinking that the house was theirs, opening wardrobes and drawers, finding the souvenirs of her past, handkerchiefs with mottos embroidered on them, a lavender dance frock and coatee, and a fan of black gauze with an ebony handle. Her other reason was more covert. She was afraid she might grow attached to them and ask them to stay longer, for the company. With the takings from summer guests she made improvements to the house and the grounds, and her only luxury was a large tin of raspberry-and-custard biscuits, for which she had a kind of craving.

Yes, the couple were in her marriage bed, a wide bed with an oak headboard that rattled, and a rose-colored quilt that she had made during her betrothal, stitching all her dreams into it. She imagined them, professorial man and plump wife, lying side by side, the square pouches of the quilt rising and sinking with their breathing, and she remembered the clutching of it as her husband made wrathful and unloving love to her. With the years he had become a little kinder, the husband she would have wished for at the outset, and he never touched a drink after the age of fifty-five, which was why she indulged him by making him tea at all hours of day and night.

Samantha was probably not asleep, but shaping her eyebrows or brushing the long spill of hair, brushing it slowly and maybe surveying herself in the wardrobe mirror, admiring her plump, firm little figure inside her short nightgown. After they went out to dinner, she had peered into their rooms. She did not open their suitcases, as a point of honor, but she studied some of their possessions—the woman's string of pearls, her cosmetics, and a dark brown hairnet lying stealthily next to her husband's pipes, pipes of different-colored wood, and a folded swag of mulchy tobacco. Their money, their English money, was piled into two little neat banks, his money and her money, as Delia felt. On the girl's dressing table there was only a hairbrush, cotton buds, and a bottle of baby oil. The diaphanous pink nightie was laid out on her pillow and looked lifelike, or as if there were a doll inside it.

Sleep would not come.

She got up, intending to go and look at the broken tooth mug, but as soon as she reached the door something prevented her. She was ashamed of being heard by them, and it was as if the house had become theirs. She had some peculiar reservation about them, how overfriendly they were with each other and blowing about what a brilliant hol they were having, yes, something unnerved her. She paced in her room. She could not go into the hall and pace, as was her habit, and put her hand on the cold plaster statue of the Virgin, for protection.

Exactly half an hour after they had retired, it happened. She heard a creak, then the girl's door opening slowly, and she thought it was a bathroom need, but instead she heard her go towards the parents' room on tiptoe, then a tap, a series of taps, light and playful, not the tapping of a sick or overwrought child, not the tapping of a child frightened by dark, or disturbed by a crow in the chimney, not that at all, and in seconds, Delia twigged. Her whole body stiffened in revulsion. She heard the girl go into their room and then she was out of bed, her hand on her own doorknob, opening it very softly, as she moved across the landing barefoot, in their direction, not knowing exactly what she would do. The whole house listened. They were not talking, yet something appalling was transpiring in there, whispers and tittering and giggles. She could not see, yet her eyes seemed to penetrate through the paneled door as if it were transparent, and she pictured them, their hands, their mouths, their limbs, all seeking one another out. They had not dared to put on a light. The girl was probably naked and yielding, allowing them to fondle her, the man fondling her in one way, the woman in another, and before long she knew that it would reach the vileness of an orgy. She would have to go in there and catch them out—the man, lord of his harem, straddled over a girl who was in no way his daughter, and the woman ministering, because that was the surest way she could hold on to a husband. This was no daughter of theirs. Maybe she was a hitchhiker to whom they had given a lift, or perhaps they had placed an advertisement, the words cunningly couched, in their local paper, in the Midlands of England, where they came from, or where they said they came from. There was a poker in that room, laid into the coal scuttle, left there since her last confinement thirty years previous, and she was already picking it up and breaking it on their bare, romping bodies. What detained her she could not say. Everything determined that she could go in and yet she faltered. Then came the exclamations, the three pitches of sound so different—the woman's loud and gloating, the girl's helpless, as if she were almost crying, and the man, like a jackass down in the woods with his lady loves. She hurried back to her room and sat on the edge of her bed, trembling. From a little round box in her bedside drawer, she felt for the sleeping tablet that was turquoise in color, identical to the sea on a postcard that her youngest daughter had once sent from the Riviera. For thrift's sake she halved it, she always halved them. The powder on her tongue tasted bitter, poisonous, and she had no glass of water to wash it down.

Sleep came and with it a glut of dreams. She was with a group of women who were about to be photographed by two men, obvious rivals who bickered and elbowed each other out of the way. For the actual photograph all were ordered to undress, but she could not, she would not. Stoutly she refused to remove her camisole, which was of coarse, unbleached linen. The woman next to her, whom she recognized as Ellie, the local dressmaker, did undress and waddled about as would a hussy. Then suddenly the dream shifted. She was alone in a big church that was regal, but very profane. The saints, Joseph and Jude and Anthony and Theresa the Little Flower, were all stripped of their robes, and if that was not sacrilege enough, the priest sang lustily, as ifhewere in a beer garden. Then a little altar boy in cardinal red started to prance about and help himself to wine from the chalice. She kept believing that she was not dreaming, except that she was. When she wakened suddenly, at once she remembered the paying guests, their panting, the vile happenings, and how she would have to fry rashers and eggs and sausages for their loathsome breakfasts.

She threw her clothes on, fumbled with her stockings, which would not draw up as quickly as they should, and swept her hair back severely with side combs.

Their breakfasts were on the table for when they sat down—the fry, a pot of tea, a jug of hot water, and a jug of instant coffee. She had also left a small dish of mandarin oranges. They were to help themselves. Often with guests, she would linger in the breakfast room and learn of faraway places — the coral reefs, or the wildly contrasting climates in different parts of Australia, or Table Mountain in Cape Town, where it seemed the condensation formed a tablecloth of cloud over the flat plateau. But she did not talk to this bunch, did not even pop her head through the door to ask if they required more toast or more coffee.

It was as they were leaving that she took her revenge. There they were, a family tableau of harmlessness, with their suitcases, the wife's of black fiber, the girl with a blue rucksack, and the husband with a brown leather attache case. She was, as she said, only charging them for the one room, since, by her reckoning, only one room was fully occupied. She saw that they understood but chose maddeningly not to react. The husband handed her a five-pound note, some single notes, and silver that covered the cost of the two rooms. She insisted he take some back, but he refused, as did his wife. It got quite spiteful then. The husband showed his displeasure by baring his upper teeth and the wife remarked on the scarcity of towels in the bathroom and as for the jerky, antediluvian lavatory chain, that went out with the Ark. The daughter smirked as she sucked on tiny crescents of mandarin orange. Eventually, the husband thrust the three notes and the coins inside the dipping pocket of her overall, and determined not to be outdone, she hurled them lasso-wise along the chipstone gravel. The coins glittered in the bright morning sunshine.

They were on the other side of the gate now, the parents putting the luggage into the boot, when the daughter ran back to pick up the money, then stuck her tongue out in brazen defiance.

She watched until the car was well out of sight. Then she flopped onto the grass and began to cry. She cried from the pit of her being. Why was she crying? "Why am I crying?" she asked aloud. It was not over them or the unsavouriness of the night. It was to do with herself. Her heart had walled up a long time ago, she had forgotten the little things, the little pleasures, the give-and-take that is life. She had even forgotten her own sins.

The grass was soft and silken and not too dry, nourished from rain and spells of sunshine.

AT LAST AT LAST. I have been perambulating for the best part of an hour ... luckily I had my brolly to keep off that glaring sunshine. It must be at least twenty-three Celsius ... the poor earth is baked ... even the old weeds are passing out and the foxglove expiring. I always love the way the bees snuggle into the foxglove ... for the coolth and the nectar ... make themselves at home—"Where the harebell grows and the foxglove purple and white" ... a favorite verse ... from the anthologies.

My, my ... what a pretty caravan ... so gaily colored and flowers, flowers. Steps painted in three different shades. Madame Cassandra—how beautiful, how ancient. You know your mythology I am glad to see. It says "No appointment necessary" but Madame your door is shut ... your half door is shut and your heavy red curtain is drawn all along your picture window. I am a little weary ... trudging here and so forth ... not to mention the inconvenience of having to ask people directions, when I alighted from the bus. I shall rest a little on one of your steps, on one of your painted steps.