There was a quickening, a livening – Frances could think of nothing to compare it with save some culinary process. This being a Waters novel, it is clear where such an intimacy is headed: "They smiled at each other across the table, and some sort of shift occurred between them. The first half of the novel concerns Frances's developing relationship with the Barbers, moving from the oddity of hearing strangers in the house and awkward meetings on the landing to tentative socialising and the beginning of a surprising intimacy with Lilian. Lilian wears a "gipsyish" fringed skirt and Turkish slippers, and plays at keeping house, sleeping in and overloading their rooms with tchotchkes, ostrich feathers and macramé. Leonard is brash and arrogant, and enjoys flirting with Frances to make her uncomfortable.
A young couple of the "clerk" class – a clear step below the Wrays, whatever their reduced circumstances – their sudden presence in the house is unsettling. To make ends meet, the Wrays decide to take in lodgers, or "paying guests", and Leonard and Lilian Barber move in. There was no point dwelling on the scuffs." The vital thing was to make the most of the moments of brightness. The gloss would fade in about five minutes as the surface dried but everything faded. Frances battles against dust and grime, beating carpets and cushions, dusting furniture, sweeping the stairs and scrubbing the floor with vinegar: "There! How pleasing each glossy tile was.
Waters is particularly good at building up the details of domesticity in an age when there were not yet the labour-saving devices to make it easier and less time-consuming. Frances's life is one of constant drudgery, punctuated by visits with her mother to the cinema every Wednesday, the weekly trip up to "Town", and the nightly cigarette sneaked in her bedroom. A young woman of her class is not meant to be boiling eggs, laying fires, emptying chamber pots, and she goes to great lengths to shield her frail mother and friends and neighbours from having to witness her perform such menial tasks. At a time when it is difficult for a middle-class woman to work, Frances has had to take on the housekeeping rather than employ a maid. Frances's father and two brothers, all of whom died during the Great War, have left behind debts. It is 1922, and Frances Wray and her mother live in genteel poverty in a south London house.
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