The Twilight Hour

by Nicci Gerrard

  ‘Yes.’

  Gil waited but she said nothing more, just looked over at the man sitting by the tree. Her mouth, he thought, was like a flower. He watched as she opened it wide enough for the last segment of orange.

  ‘Do you think of him a lot?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘I think of him on his birthday,’ Eleanor replied. ‘And on my birthday as well. And when anything momentous happens, I think of him and wonder what he would have made of it, and am sorry he’s missing it all. With all this talk of war, he’s in my mind a lot. That it will all happen again.’ She shivered. ‘You can feel the excitement in the air now that conscription has been announced. Young men, boys, wanting to be heroes. Young women wanting them to go, so they can wait with a white handkerchief pressed to their weeping eyes. Not the mothers, of course; mothers generally know better.’ She turned to look at him and he felt the force of her gaze.

  ‘Would you go?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course, if I was needed there and not here. I’m not a pacifist.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I would come back again.’ His tone was pleading. ‘Eleanor, I would come back.’

  ‘Everyone has to think like that. You all have to believe you’ll come back. You wouldn’t go otherwise. Death isn’t real to boys; war is a game.’

  ‘I’m not a boy.’

  ‘No, you’re not. But you’d go nevertheless.’

  ‘Would you care so very much?’ he asked, and then stopped. She didn’t say anything and he leant forward – very slowly, so that she could draw back at any time – and kissed her on her mouth that looked like a flower, and her white neck that reminded him of a stem.

  He hadn’t kissed her before, except on the cheek, when they met or parted. He had been so afraid of her pushing him gently, firmly, away. Part of being in love with Eleanor was his sense that she was out of reach: a grey-eyed, secret country girl. He put his hand behind her head and held her against him. She tasted clean and slightly salty, and he felt her lashes scrape against his cheek. A few yards from them, the sad Chinese man looked away politely, at the small white clouds and the green leaves that hung limply in the heat. Gil pulled away at last and looked at her and happiness coursed through him. She smiled at him, pushed his unruly hair back from his face.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, stupidly.

  ‘I was thinking we could go to the church and light a candle for my father. It’s what I used to do with my mother on his birthday. I’d like to do it with you too.’

  Eleven days later, he went to her bedsit. He had a rubber in his pocket and a bottle of champagne in his bag. They couldn’t go to his place; he still lived in his mother’s house in Chelsea. Eleanor had been there for lunch once. Mary Lee had sat across the table from her, holding her knife and fork tightly like weapons, her elbows pressed against her corseted body, and asked her a string of questions she seemed to have prepared in advance: what Eleanor’s father did, what kind of education she had received, what kind of school she taught in now, whether she spoke French or German. Eleanor felt that she was being interviewed for a job for which she was woefully unqualified. She became cool and withdrawn, and only understood many years later that Gil’s mother had been scared of her because she came from an unknown world and because her beloved son was so smitten and she dreaded losing him entirely. She had imagined a different kind of wife for Gil: someone petite, blonde and shy, who belonged to the old, disappearing order and was in awe of Mary Lee; above all, who wouldn’t take her son away from her. Eleanor failed on every count: she was modern, astringent, resolutely independent. She taught children who had nits and TB and whose fathers worked in factories – or not at all. She read poetry that didn’t rhyme and magazines that were left wing and vaguely racy. She liked TS Eliot and James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and she probably smoked and wore trousers. She rode a bike.

  Gil rang on the doorbell but before his finger was even off the button the door was yanked open and he found himself face to face with Gladys Bartoli from the ground floor (‘call me Signora’ she would say, winking excessively) whose Italian husband Eleanor had never seen and was pretty sure didn’t exist except as a glamorous fiction that allowed Gladys to keep her chin up. In spite of the warmth of the day she was wearing a moth-eaten fur coat and had unmatching daubs of rouge on her cheekbones. She admired Gil, liked Eleanor, disliked Terence (who in turn called her a disgrace to the neighbourhood). She kept a cat in her rooms, which wasn’t permitted by the landlord; she thought no one knew about it, though the animal’s mewing could be heard through the night and in the day it fought with other cats in the small back yard, or caught mice and sometimes even rats and left them by the door.

  ‘I was on my way out!’ she sang. ‘But you know your way.’

  Gil felt his purpose must be obvious. The rubber in his pocket might as well announce itself, the cork pop from the champagne bottle. He felt tawdry and wanted to retreat.

  ‘Thanks, Gladys,’ he said. ‘I do.’

  ‘I know she’s in because I heard the bath water. Getting ready for you.’

  Gil made his way up the two flights of stairs. He could hear Terence in his room on the first floor. He felt that he was wearing too many clothes. His collar was tight. His shoes creaked on the bare boards.

  ‘Come in.’

  Eleanor was standing before him in slacks and a white shirt. When she turned, he could see the shape of her shoulder blades beneath it. Her hair was still damp and lay in coils against her neck (the neck he’d pressed his lips against, he thought); she wore no shoes. Gil stepped into the room and kissed her on the cheek, constrained by the bat of Gladys’s heavy eyelids, by the smell of cooking coming from Terence’s room underneath them, by what was in his pocket. But Eleanor seemed quite relaxed, or at least unembarrassed. She took his coat and hung it on the chair. She offered him tea, moving easily round the table and the chairs of the kitchenette, telling him about the day she had had, mimicking a fellow teacher, pointing out of the window at St Pancras in the distance. He should have been putting her at her ease, but it was the other way round. The door that led to her bedroom was shut. He tried not to look towards it.

  ‘How do we do this?’ she said to him, smiling. ‘You’re the expert.’

  ‘I’m really not an expert, Eleanor! Believe me.’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Perhaps we should have a glass of champagne.’

  ‘All right.’

  He took the bottle from its bag. It was warm, and when he eased out the cork it only gave a stifled pop. He poured some into a glass tumbler and into Eleanor’s plastic toothpaste mug, which gave the champagne a minty taste, not unpleasant he thought, tipping it back, needing courage.

  ‘You don’t need to do this if you don’t want to,’ he said, half-hoping she would want to put it off.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You only have to say the word and—’

  ‘Gil. I know. It’s all right.’

  She came up to him, where he stood among the hard-backed chairs feeling lost and foolish, and put her arms around him and kissed him on his mouth. Then she took him by his hand and led him through the furniture to the door of her room, pushing it open, stepping inside. He sat on the narrow bed, feeling it sag and hearing it give a groan, wondering if Terence could hear it too. He took off his shoes, pulling clumsily at the laces that he had double-knotted that morning. She undid the buttons on her blouse and slid it off, letting it drop in a puddle on the floor. He stared at her pale arms, paler underneath, almost blue, and at her shallow breasts beneath the thinness of the camisole.

  ‘You’re not like other women,’ he said, holding one black brogue in his lap like a pet.

  ‘No woman is like other women. You should know that.’

  ‘You’re right, I should know that. You have to teach me these things.’

  He put his shoe down and she lifted off her camisole and undid her bra, turning away from him and then back again. The wind
ow was half-open and through the blowing folds of the striped curtain, voices floated up from the street. He felt heavy and blurred; the champagne still tingled in his nostrils. He pulled off the tie that had belonged to his father and let it dribble through his fingers on to the counterpane. He tried to undo his shirt, but his fingers fumbled on the buttons. It meant too much to him. He was numb and sluggish with love and could barely move. He tugged and felt a button give. In the street someone was giggling. On the dresser the photograph of a young man in uniform was smiling commiseratingly at him.

  Eleanor undid her slacks and stepped out of them, then stood before him.

  ‘Is this all right?’ she asked. She was being neither shy nor coy, simply asking for his advice.

  He held out his hand and she took it.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ he said thickly.

  ‘And you are still dressed. I feel at a disadvantage.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Her mother should have told her. As she lay on her bed with Gil beside her, lying on his stomach with one arm over her body, she said to herself that if she ever had a daughter she would make sure that she knew in advance what it was like. Was this what she had been holding out for? Blood, pain, sweat, sticky indignity, self-consciousness. The grunts and smells of another person, the unbearable nearness. The way he laboured determinedly above her, and she became an object, a task, a piece of earth he was toiling away at. His breath in her mouth and his stubble on her cheek, his sweat on her skin and his fingers where no one’s fingers had ever been. Worse than that, his sudden importunate need. He became like a child, not a man, and she became like his mother, cradling and comforting him. But perhaps her own mother was saving the advice up for the night before her wedding. She smiled, imagining the strangled embarrassment of the conversation. She felt dull and tranquil, and didn’t mind the sound of Gil’s breathing beside her now that he had rolled away, and of the voices filtering up from the streets, where children were playing hopscotch along the paving stones, the thud of their feet beating out a rhythm that took her back to her own childhood.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ asked Gil, turning over, propping himself up on one elbow.

  ‘Oh – everything and nothing.’

  ‘Everything and nothing.’ He studied her. ‘You know that I am hopelessly in love with you, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you—?’

  ‘Ssh. Not now. This is now.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I will never lie to you,’ said Eleanor, half-knowing even then that this itself was perhaps a lie.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ He sounded alarmed.

  ‘I don’t know. But it seems important to say it: I will never lie to you, Gil. I promise.’

  There was a deep silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames.

  ‘Did you keep your promise?’ asked Peter eventually.

  ‘What?’ Eleanor sounded as though he had woken her from a dream.

  ‘Your promise not to lie to Gil. Did you keep it?’

  ‘What’s a lie? I was very young, young and foolish as that song says. I thought that honesty was more important than kindness. I think that I never told him an untruth. But perhaps that is simply obeying the letter of the law and not the spirit. We all have to lie to each other, don’t we, in some way?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The truth would send us all mad.’

  Peter waited for her to continue but she said nothing. Her woollen tights had a large hole in them, he saw, and the collar of her blouse was frayed. One of the large buttons on her cardigan hung by a thread. She seemed to be coming apart.

  ‘What happened then?’ he asked, quietly because he feared that a direct question would shut her up.

  ‘Then?’ She blinked her unseeing eyes, then rubbed them with her knobbly hands. ‘I am rather tired now.’

  ‘I’ve kept you up,’ said Peter, wanting to shout: ‘Who was “M”?’

  ‘We can talk tomorrow,’ said Eleanor. ‘Not now.’

  ‘In the morning?’

  ‘No. You have your work then, and Jonah will be here.’

  ‘Jonah?’ He hadn’t met him since Kaitlin. Yet he had known that he would probably see him here; indeed, it was part of the reason he had accepted the job. The day of reckoning.

  ‘Yes. Everyone comes to make sure I’m still alive. Barely a day goes by; tomorrow it’s Jonah’s turn.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘They’re very kind.’ She sounded ironical.

  Eleanor fumbled for her cane and then dropped it so that it clattered across the floor. Peter picked it up and handed it to her, nudging her hand with the end of it so that she could feel it.

  ‘Would you help me up?’ she asked. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He stood and bent over her, taking her upper arm, tugging gently. He was half afraid that she would break, her arm slide out of her socket. She came up easily though, light as a child. She smelt musty; her hair was white and soft and he could see the pink scalp beneath. He felt her skin slide over her bone under her clothing.

  ‘Shall I help you upstairs?’ he asked.

  ‘If you would be so kind.’

  Even utterly exhausted, she retained her manners.

  He put one arm around her waist and the other beneath her elbow and steered her into the hall, bumping her against a wall, awkward on the stairs that wound round. They hobbled into the corridor, like a three-legged race gone wrong and he stopped before her bedroom door, then pushed it open.

  He had never been in her room before and didn’t know what he would find there; he hesitated.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said gently, dismissing him. Then: ‘Oh. I left my overnight bag in the hall. Could you perhaps fetch it for me?’

  Peter ran down the stairs two at a time and picked up the small carpet-bag, then flew up again. Her door was still ajar, but he knocked and waited for her to call him in. Eleanor was sitting on the bed with her hands in her lap. The room was large, with two windows that looked out over her rose garden. The walls were lined with books that she would never read again. There were even books in piles along the wall. Above her bed was a photograph of Gil as a young man and another of an even younger man, in uniform, faded over time so his outline was blurred. He was smiling very broadly. On her dressing table were a soft-bristled brush, a small jewellery box and a wedding photograph. He wanted to look at it more closely but didn’t feel that he could start wandering around her bedroom while she sat upright and fatigued on her bed.

  ‘Here.’ Peter laid the bag at her feet. He saw a thick cotton nightdress on top, inside out, and quietly, so she wouldn’t hear him, he took it out and turned it the right way round.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Is there anything else you need?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t want you to undress me, if that’s what you’re worrying about,’ she said. ‘Go away.’

  ‘Good night then.’

  ‘Good night, Peter.’

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ he said.

  11

  Peter was up before Eleanor; despite the tiredness behind his eyes, he forced himself out on his daily run. The morning was dark and damp. Birds struggled against sudden gusts of wind, and leaves were thick and wet underfoot. Many of the trees were nearly bare now. On the return loop, he stopped at the village shop for a packet of cigarettes, cancelling out his feeling of virtue. He couldn’t decide if he was healthier because of the exercise and good food, or unhealthier because of his sudden hike in tobacco consumption.

  ‘Hello, how are you today?’ he said on entering, as he always said. He was resolutely cheerful to anyone he met out here; he held on to the idea that it was a countryside duty: say hello to everyone you meet, strike up conversations, offer to help people whose cars have broken down. Above all, smile. He wrenched his wind-blown face into a grin.

  The woman nodded at him suspiciously.

  ‘It�
�s hard to get up in the mornings, isn’t it?’ continued Peter.

  ‘For some people,’ she replied, and he trotted off again, clutching his fags, grateful to Polly for her persistent loyalty, longing for the first mug of black coffee.

  Eleanor still hadn’t appeared, though one of the helpers was there, Gail. She’d brought provisions that she was stacking in the fridge and cupboards. Her small son was with her (‘Training day,’ she said, shaking her head from side to side. ‘Again!’), and he was keeping himself amused by climbing on to the stool with great difficulty, like a mountaineer traversing a ravine, and then jumping off. From time to time he would stumble, land on his knees, emit a howl, and then begin again. The window-cleaner had also arrived. He stood outside at the long window, rubbing on sudsy water and then sweeping his wiper down the panes. They could hear the squeak. It was faintly disconcerting, thought Peter, to drink coffee with a man staring in at you, making circling motions with his hands like a mime artist. He tried to smile at him, but the man didn’t seem to notice or even know that there were three people a few inches from him, on the other side of the glass.

  ‘I’ve taken coffee up to Mrs Lee,’ said Gail. ‘She’s tired this morning.’

  ‘She was up late.’

  ‘Poor thing.’ Gail gave a vast sigh.

  All of a sudden, there were two people standing on the other side of the glass, staring in: the window-cleaner, with his wiper suspended, and someone else, gazing into the kitchen as if he were a visitor at the aquarium. The coffee trembled in Peter’s mug and he set it down carefully.

  ‘Well, fuck,’ he said.

  ‘Ssh!’ Gail put her finger to her mouth and looked across at her son, who jumped from his stool and crashed to the floor.

  ‘It’s Jonah.’

  ‘Who’s Jonah?’

  ‘He’s early. I didn’t think he’d be so early. I’m not ready.’

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘Just, ready.’

  Jonah was still standing there, but the window-cleaner had sluiced the pane of glass with soapy water so that his face was obscured. He looked like one of those dodgy characters you see on television whose features have been smudged out. But his beautifully cut coat was clear, and his grey shoes with their blue laces. Then he was gone.