On Monday morning the sitting room stood bare enough to make me doubt the size of everything we had taken out. The sofa filled the hall. The table leaned on its side in the dining room. Our piano, wrapped in an old sheet, resembled an animal I had persuaded to sleep in a corner.
The painter spread his cloths and asked whether he could begin at the window. I told him yes, then carried a cup of tea down to the kitchen and forgot to drink it.
There was a letter for Mrs Hesketh on the table. I had written it the night before, confirming the dates and saying the deposit would reach her that day. I had eighteen names. Fourteen had paid. Two of the remaining four had promised to bring the money during the week, one at the first meeting; the last had not replied to my reminder.
In the subscription book the names looked orderly. They had become less definite when I imagined each woman opening her purse.
I went upstairs and took out the cash box.
There were bills due at the end of the week, the money from the subscriptions, the ordinary house cash and Nell’s envelope. I had put off separating things more carefully because the figures were written down. We knew what belonged to whom. That morning I could see how much of what lay before me had already been promised elsewhere.
Nell was at the shop. She had left early, carrying a page she wanted to discuss with Mr Abel before his customers arrived. From downstairs came the scrape of paper leaving the wall.
I counted two guineas out of the house money, put them beside Mrs Hesketh’s letter, and looked at what remained. Not enough for the bills. Not enough for the chairs arriving the next day. I could have told the painter to stop. There would have been a bare place above the window, a charge for what he had begun, and my own embarrassment to explain.
Instead I opened the envelope on which Nell had written For the new room.
The coins came out easily. I took two guineas, replaced the money I had set beside the letter, and put the envelope back. Ten pounds eight remained. The fifth of June was a week away.
I would replace it before then. I could ask Mrs Norridge to pay for another supper in advance. I could press the four women who had promised. Minnie had spoken of a friend; a woman who came for one evening might pay for all six once she saw the room. If I had to, I could sell something. There were things in the house I had not used for years.
The possibilities came quickly, each as reassuring as if it had already occurred.
I locked the box and took the letter downstairs. The painter asked me to look at the wall before he covered it. Without the paper it had an unprotected look, rough places showing where the old plaster had been mended.
“Better to do it properly,” he said.
I agreed and went out to take the deposit to Mrs Hesketh.
She gave me a receipt. I had expected the meeting to feel ceremonial: six evenings secured, a new undertaking properly begun. Instead she asked if the books we had discussed could be found at the house and whether I would like her to bring two extra copies. I said I would. She put the dates in her diary and offered me tea.
I declined because I had to get back. At the door she said she looked forward to it.
“So do I.”
The words were true. That was what made the journey home so confusing. I wanted what I had bought. I wanted the women in my room, the talk, my own few words at the front. I had not taken the money for a thing I could admit to despising.
The painter finished the first wall that afternoon. The green was quieter than I had expected, less like a declaration than a breath after a crowded room. Grace stood in the doorway with her head on one side.
“Yes,” she said. “That was the one.”
I looked at it with her. For a moment all I felt was pleasure.
Nell came home with two letters and a narrow parcel from the dressmaker. She saw the wall, stopped and smiled.
“Oh. It does make a difference.”
“Doesn’t it?”
She handed me one letter. It was another subscriber paying for herself and her sister. Fifteen shillings, carefully wrapped. Sixteen paid now. I put it in the subscription book and felt relief so strong I failed to notice how little of the difficulty it answered.
That night I slept until three, then woke thinking of the chairs.
The man from the yard would expect payment on delivery. I had ordered twelve because the price was fair and they matched; now I could see them arriving in a cart, one after another, while Nell stood in the hall. I would have to say I could not pay, ask him to carry them back, then explain why I had begun so much before having the means to finish.
At breakfast I mentioned that the chairs were coming. Nell asked how many. I told her. She set her cup down.
“Twelve?”
“They were a set.”
“I know what a set is.”
I reached for the toast. “We won’t have to borrow from the bedrooms every week.”
“What did they cost?”
“Seven and six each.”
She did the sum without moving her lips. I watched her arrive at it.
“We didn’t put that in.”
“I have put it in now.”
“Mother.”
“I am not asking you to pay for it.”
I said it so sharply that Mrs Keene looked up from her plate. Nell went very still. I had made an argument out of her question because I could not give her the answer it deserved.
“Then I hope you can afford it,” she said.
She left for the shop after breakfast. I carried the dishes down, washed them and put them away. At eleven the cart arrived.
The chairs looked better in the hall than they had in the yard. The man set two down, then another two, their dark backs making a row like people waiting to be admitted. Mr Leach came out to inspect them and said he had told me they were sound. He had said no such thing. He helped carry them into the dining room while I went upstairs for the money.
I took four pounds ten from Nell’s envelope.
There was no pretending now that I had forgotten which money lay where. I counted it, wrapped it in paper and wrote the amount on the outside. In the envelope remained five pounds eighteen. I kept that figure in my mind while the man signed the receipt, as if knowing it accurately could preserve something of my honesty.
The painter would finish on Wednesday. I paid him that evening because he needed to buy materials for his next job, and because I could not bear another night calculating a debt I had already incurred. Two pounds twelve and six. He put the receipt in my hand, thanked me and said the room looked as if it belonged to somebody.
I stood in it after he had gone. The paper had dried smooth. The light from the old lamp was yellow and uncertain against it.
I ordered the new lamp.
That is the part I cannot arrange into an accident. The deposit had secured the talks. The chairs had been ordered. The painter had worked. The lamp could still have stayed in the shop, perfectly handsome and unlit, without costing me a penny.
I bought it for seventeen shillings and sixpence, with money that was not mine.
On Thursday I paid the printer’s eight shillings. When the last receipt was folded the envelope held two pounds. I had taken ten pounds ten from Nell.
I had asked Dora’s circle to move its Tuesday reading to Thursday for this week only, so the paper could dry and the furniture be put back. They had agreed. All afternoon I listened to the sounds from the new chairs as the house warmed, wondering whether they would creak when the women sat down.
I sat at the kitchen table with the little pile of bills. In the account book I wrote the expenses under the evenings. There was room beside them to say where the money had come from. I put Temporary advance, then drew a line beneath it before I could add the name.
Bessie arrived at seven for the reading. She stood in the doorway, taking in the wall, the lamp, the chairs which Arthur had helped move into place.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
I thanked her. She took off her coat and asked if I had the money for her evening put aside. I said yes, at once, and gave it to her before the women came. I could still feel the indignation with which I had insisted Ada do the same.
When Dora arrived she stood under the new light and looked round the room.
“Mrs Bellamy. We shall have to behave better.”
“Please don’t,” I said.
She laughed and took her place. The reading began. Across the room Nell opened a book and did not look at me. I could not tell whether she was still angry about breakfast or simply occupied by what she had come to do.
I waited for a moment when I might speak to her. One appeared during the interval: she was alone at the sideboard, setting her cup down. I crossed the room with a hand already reaching for her sleeve.
She turned. “Look at this,” she said, showing me a line she had marked. “It’s just what Miss Holt was trying to say.”
I looked at the page. Nell read it aloud, laughing at the end, and I laughed with her. Behind us the new lamp made the green wall warm. I kept my hand on her sleeve until she moved away.