The Paying Guests

Things begin to change after Frances’s talk with Christina. Lilian and Frances take advantage of Mrs. Wray being out of the house; but Mrs. Wray suddenly returns and nearly walks in on them. Lilian rushes off; Frances lies that Lilian was teaching her a dance move. Frances finds what her mother was looking for, and Mrs. Wray leaves again—but she is still suspicious of Frances’s behavior.

Frances is worried that her mother will guess what was going on. They realize that they need to be more careful. Lilian says she does not care if Leonard finds out. Lilian says, “‘It isn’t as though I’m going with a man, is it?’” (208). This hurts Frances; it seems to minimize the importance of their love.

Later, Mrs. Wray brings up the topic of Lilian. She believes they are spending too much time together and that the household chores have been suffering. Frances wondered if her mother’s objections were due to Lilian’s lower class or Frances’s past affairs with women.

Frances and Lilian grow more cautious. They spend less time together. Frances helps her mother with her charity work. Their lovemaking becomes more intimate and passionate; it means more to them now.

Frances asks Lilian about her and Leonard’s sex life. Lilian is uncomfortable; she does not want to answer. She has sex with her husband infrequently, only enough to appease him, even though she does not like it. To Frances, this seems obscene. Lilian explains that it is one of the duties of wifehood that Frances would not understand.

Hesitating, Frances asks why Lilian does not leave Leonard. They could live together in a flat like Christina and Stevie. They talk about it, but Frances realizes that the idea is in the realm of fantasy.

Frances does not know what she really wants. She does not know if she could leave her mother and Champion Hill. The summer runs on and the affair becomes more intense. However, Leonard is a constant obstacle. The worst is the “routine casual intimacies of married life” that Frances observes (217). Frances begins to hate Leonard.

Lilian and Leonard are going on a week-long summer vacation. Lilian wants to take Frances somewhere as a surprise to make up for it. Frances attempts to guess where they are going. They arrive at the roller-skating rink; Lilian remembered Frances saying that she used to like to skate.

Frances helps Lilian learn to skate. Frances realizes that this is the one public place where they can hold onto each other without scrutiny. They skate until they are exhausted, then leave. Frances feels “it was something worse than sad to push back out through the door and find themselves in Brixton again, to re-join the commonplace” (222).

Frances cannot bring herself to go straight home. Instead, they stop at the park where they first spent time together. Frances tries to recapture the feelings she felt that first time, but she cannot.

They discuss living together. Lilian does not think that Frances believes it. Lilian cares too much about what people think of her. She thinks Frances will leave her, just as she left Christina. She wants to keep going the way they have been. Frances does not want to keep sharing her with Leonard. Frances almost hopes something will happen to Leonard. Two boys call them “spoony,” and Frances and Lilian leave.

There are no more opportunities for them to be alone. They are not even able to say a proper goodbye before Lilian leaves with Leonard for vacation. 

Frances is nearly relieved with Lilian’s absence: a great tension has left the house. She realizes how she has neglected her chores and sets about putting the house back into place, and dusting and scrubbing the floors. However, each day she hopes the mailman will bring her a letter from Lilian—which never comes. To distract herself, she goes to the cinema with Christina. In the theater, she feels a deep affection for her friend, something almost beyond friendship.

One day, a visitor arrives at the Wray’s house. It is Edith, John Arthur’s fiancée. Frances and Mrs. Wray are surprised: Edith usually visits a month later, around the anniversary of John Arthur’s death. Frances notes her clothing. She has never seen Edith so well-dressed or stylish.

Mrs. Wray is eager to get out the old photo albums and reminisce, as is their custom when Edith visits. Frances wonders when Edith became “so fashionable, so glossy,” then thinks “her family had simply kept to its level, while she and her mother had started tipping down the scale” (228). Edith is reluctant to make herself at home. When Edith finally removes her gloves, the reason for her behavior becomes clear: she has an engagement ring on her finger.

Edith is to be married to a man named Mr. Pacy, a widower with two children. Frances is legitimately happy for her, but she can detect the artificiality of Mrs. Wray’s congratulations. She is too full of grief to be properly happy for her.

Frances walks Edith to the train station. The two reminisce along the way. Edith comments that Frances seems to be nicely settling into her role. She boards her train and leaves. Frances is disconcerted by her remark. Something about Edith’s visit makes her lose confidence in her relationship with Lilian. The engagement ring reminds her of the stability that heterosexual relationships afford in her society.

When she returns and finds that Lilian has finally written her a letter, she is unnerved. When she sees Mrs. Wray and deduces that she had been weeping, it is “a final blow to her spirits” (236). By the time she finally opens the letter, she is convinced it is a breakup letter.

Instead, Lilian’s letter describes how much she loves and misses Frances. She is worried to return and find Frances has forgotten her. She writes, “Sometimes it seems so astonishing that you should love me that I think you must only want me because you lost so many other things” (237). The letter resurrects Frances’s confidence.

Lilian and Leonard return to Champion Hill the next day. Thinking of Frances was the only thing that got Lilian through the vacation. Frances wants Lilian to leave Leonard. They could find work, and Frances could sell her few valuable possessions. Lilian is hard to convince—she is too worried about what people would think of her and of her whole life being upended. She wishes Leonard would just die; that would make it easier for them. Frances tells her to refuse any more of Leonard’s advances. She gently removes Lilian’s wedding ring.

Lilian tells Frances that it is not that simple: She thinks she is pregnant. 

Leonard had failed to be careful on night a month ago when he and Lilian had sex. Frances is mortified: this seems to be the end of their plans to run away. Lilian wants to seek an abortion. There are pills now that can terminate early pregnancy. Lilian has done it before.

Frances is shocked. She objects to abortion, but Lilian is determined. It forces Frances to think of the intimacy Lilian and Leonard continue to share. Lilian’s determination makes Frances realize that she is the reason Lilian wants to get rid of the baby. Lilian downplays it, comparing the pregnancy to a tooth that must be extracted.

Frances can no longer meet her mother or Leonard’s gaze. Her excitement for a future with Lilian has vanished. Her very idea of love begins to unravel as she lies sleepless in bed that night.

The next day, Lilian looks better than she has in a while. Lilian fixes Friday as the day for the abortion because Mrs. Wray and Leonard will be gone most of the day. She insists on visiting the chemist alone.

Frances escorts Lilian partway, and they agree to meet at four. She unwisely decides to visit Christina. However, the visit reminds her that she can have a life like Christina and Stevie’s. When she sees Lilian again, she feels a “jolt of uncomplicated love in her heart” (249). Lilian shows her the packet of pills dubbed “Dr. Ridley’s Pills, for the Treatment of Female Irregularities” (249). To Frances’s horror, Lilian swallows one in public. She must take one a day for three days and all the rest on the fourth.

The pills begin taking effect on Wednesday. Frances cannot believe how her life has “taken such a swerve,” becoming “this morbid stalking of Lilian’s insides, this monitoring of blood and bowels” (250). Lilian begins to feel ill.

By Friday, Lilian is in bad shape, and the pills have still not done their job. There is still no bleeding, which worries her. Frances is incredibly worried about her health and visits her as often as she can.

Late in the afternoon, the bleeding starts, but it is accompanied by horrible pain and cramping. The abortion is not complete. Frances tends to her, but she feels useless as Lilian is wracked with waves of agony. Frances finds a bottle of morphine and administers some to Lilian.

Lilian tells Frances to go have tea with Mrs. Wray in order to avoid suspicion. Mrs. Wray takes her time getting ready to go to Mrs. Playfair’s house. The moment she leaves, Lilian flies down to the water closet. She emerges a while later: it is over. The toilet is full of black blood, and Frances cleans it.

Frances is amazed: the whole ordeal worked out just as Lilian had predicted. However, Lilian continues to bleed, and Frances helps her clean herself. She tells Lilian how brave she has been. Frances feels that “she had never in her life loved anyone so much, nor so purely” (258).

Taking out a bowl of bloody water and clothing, Frances runs into Leonard on the landing. He has just returned from a night out with his friend Charles Wismuth. Frances is paralyzed, unable to speak. Seeing the blood, Leonard realizes something is wrong and rushes to Lilian. The women try to quiet him down and try to reassure him Lilian is just experiencing a heavy period; however, he persists in hounding them with questions. Lilian, exhausted, tells him it was a miscarriage.

Leonard wants to take Lilian to a doctor. By their reactions, he begins to piece together what actually happened. He begins to harass Lilian to confess, and Frances intervenes. He realizes that she must have been in on it.

Lilian and Leonard begin to fight. Finally, she tells him, “‘I want a separation! Why do you think I’ve done all this?’” (262). Leonard immediately asks her who the other man is, unwilling to believe that there could be any other reason she would want a separation. He hounds them about it, working himself into a rage. He thinks she had aborted another man’s child. The women grow frightened. Leonard starts tearing up the room, searching for evidence.

Leonard begins shaking Lilian. Frances tries to separate them, but he shoves her away. Something breaks inside Frances. She tells him, “‘I’m the man, Leonard!’” (264). Leonard pauses, then tries to push her from the room, crying, “‘Get away from my wife, you unnatural bitch!’” (265). The two struggle, tangled together in an almost intimate way.

Leonard suddenly crumples to the floor. Lilian smashed him in the back of the head with the marble stand-ashtray. He lies on the floor, breathing but motionless, bleeding profusely from the head. Lilian panics: she had not meant to do it. She just wanted him to get off of Frances. Leonard’s breath begins to bubble, and then it ceases entirely. They attempt to revive him, but “[he’d] become not a man, but something resembling a man, something bulky and empty and wrong” (267). He is dead.

Lilian begins to grow hysterical. She and Frances fall into a state of disbelief: it seems unreal. Frances suggests sending for a doctor. Lilian tries to make up excuses to cover up what she has done. She suggests taking him outside so someone else can find him. The thought of her mother coming home to a house in chaos finally gets Frances to agree.

Frances ties a yellow cushion to Leonard’s head with a scarf in order to stymie the bleeding. They struggle to move his body. Frances puts on Leonard’s hat so they will not forget it. Now that they have moved the body from the scene of the crime, there is no going back. Lilian’s already taxed strength begins to fail. They manage to get Leonard’s body to the lane beyond the garden, with Frances bearing most of the weight, before their strength gives out completely. She removes the cushion, conscious of the evidence that they may be leaving behind.

Frances finds a stone roughly the size and shape of the ashtray and places it under Leonard’s head. Leaving his body alone in the dark “seemed almost worse than killing him” (276). She throws the hat out into the darkness.

Back inside, they frantically begin to cover up what they have done. Frances knows she must get rid of anything with Leonard’s blood on it. She burns what she can in the fireplace. The carpet is the hardest to clean; stains remain even after Frances scrubs it.

Frances does a remarkably good job of cleaning up the crime scene. They hear footsteps on the porch; Mrs. Wray has returned with a neighbor, Mr. Lamb, who has escorted her home. Frances rushes downstairs. She manages to make pleasantries. Mrs. Lamb leaves. Mrs. Wray suspects something is wrong. Frances manages to smooth over the situation, and Mrs. Wray goes to bed.

Back upstairs, Frances tells Lilian they must go to bed as usual. They cannot afford to raise suspicion. However, Lilian begs for them to go to bed together, and Frances relents.

Frances thinks of going out to arrange Leonard into a more realistic, fallen position; however, it begins to rain. The rain will help wash away evidence. Frances lies awake, “sick to her bones with relief and shame” (283).