The Twilight Hour

by Nicci Gerrard

  Down by the river, it was a day of heat and heavy shifting light. The sky was turquoise and later violet, like a bruise. The sun shone through the new leaves. They all sat along the bank in groups. Eleanor laid out a rug under the willow tree that she used to climb. She remembered how she would drape herself along the length of the branch that stretched out over the river and lie like that for hours, the leaves like green streamers around her, gazing down into the eddies, dreaming, letting dreams drift through her.

  Gil sat beside her, not touching her but near enough for her to feel his body heat. He took off his shoes and socks, and rolled up his shirtsleeves. His hair was slightly damp and she could see dark circles forming under his armpits. She thought of him lowering his body on to hers and gave a tiny, involuntary shudder. She could feel the sweat between her breasts and on her back, but at the same time she was cold under her warmth, goosebumps on her skin, as if she were sickening for something.

  Emma joined them, lowering herself on to the rug, peeling off her stockings and stretching out her strong white legs luxuriously. She had freckles on her knees. She put her hat over her face and seemed to fall asleep. Eleanor slid off her sandals and curled her bare legs under her. She had her back turned to them both, facing the river. The voices behind her rose and fell. She knew she should make more of an effort, engage people in conversation: poor Clive Baines or that nice Lily Glover, who was Merry’s best friend from way back and whom Eleanor had taught to play ‘Sweet and Low Down’; and ‘Don’t Stay Up Too Late’ on their out-of-tune piano at home. She drank lemonade and toyed with a sandwich. It was too hot to eat. Gil was saying something to her about childhood holidays he remembered, and about how the government had transported tons of sand into St James’s Park, so that poorer children could play at being at the seaside. She let his hand slide over hers. Every part of her body was clear to her. She could feel the weight of her head on the stem of her neck, and the swell of her breasts, the way that the blood flowed through her and the rhythm of her heart. Heat pricking her skin. She turned her wrist under Gil’s hand and looked at the blue vein there. It was as if she were someone else. She tried out her voice on Gil, tried out her smile. The shadows of leaves fell on her arms and on Gil’s face.

  Everything had been a mistake. She shouldn’t be with Gil. The certainty lay like a cold shadow across her. She imagined saying that to him, now, as they sat here and the party went on behind them as if thrown up on a screen. She tore a morsel off her sandwich and pushed it into her mouth and chewed it, swallowed it, then another. Gil was speaking again and she nodded and smiled and her hand lay under his.

  ‘Have some strawberries,’ said a voice and pleasure splashed through her. She turned and there he was, his suit jacket off, his shirtsleeves rolled up like Gil’s, but his arms were thinner and browner. The sun of the south, she thought, taking a fruit and biting into it. To her left there was the streak of a semi-naked body and a young man was leaping into the river, hanging in the air momentarily, pale arms and legs outstretched, and then falling with a splash into the water. He rose with a shout and thrashed his arms about in triumph.

  ‘Are you going to swim?’ Michael asked them, as another figure, a woman, raced towards the bank, clad in a tight-fitting black swimming costume and a rubber hat decorated with squishy plastic flowers, and already squealing in expectation of the shock of the cold.

  ‘Shall we?’ Gil was enthusiastic, boyish, kneeling up and reaching for the towel where it hung over a low branch. ‘I need cooling off.’

  Emma sat up abruptly. She hadn’t been asleep after all.

  ‘Me too,’ she said, rising to her feet in one calm movement.

  ‘You go,’ Eleanor said. ‘I might join you.’

  Emma disappeared out of sight with her towel. Gil went into the undergrowth to pull on his bathing suit. Michael and Eleanor watched them go. They didn’t speak for a while. She pulled at the fringe on the rug and felt his eyes on her like fingers touching her.

  ‘Merry said you were the clever one.’

  She was the clever one; Merry the pretty one. That was how it had been. She turned her head from him, irritated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘That means nothing. I just like knowing things. I like reading.’

  ‘What are you reading now?’

  ‘I’m tempted to tell you that I’m reading To the Lighthouse, because that’s the novel I love above any other. But it would be a lie. I’m reading Rebecca.’

  ‘Is it good?’

  ‘Yes. It’s tremendous.’

  ‘But you prefer Virginia Woolf?’

  ‘I love Virginia Woolf.’

  ‘She’s a great snob.’

  ‘I don’t know. She stands for women.’

  ‘Privileged women.’

  ‘I’m not a privileged woman.’

  ‘Are you not?’

  ‘No. I am not.’

  ‘You’re a teacher,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘The East End, near the docks.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, as if she were simply confirming what he already knew. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I like it a great deal.’

  ‘Why?’

  Eleanor considered.

  ‘I like making children see,’ she said.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Sometimes things hook them. Often it’s just drill and things by rote, chanting out multiplication tables. But then suddenly they understand it. Not just the clever ones. Not just the ones who are the easiest to teach. There’s a girl called Mary, very poor, with a snotty nose and nits in her hair, a lumbering creature who wears hand-me-down clothes and hardly talks and keeps to herself. But she loves poetry. You can see it, a light going on inside her. Suddenly seeing there’s a larger world. That’s what I like. And,’ she added, ‘I like knowing I’m good at what I do.’

  ‘You’re a good teacher?’

  ‘Yes. Though I don’t want to be a teacher for the rest of my life; there’s so much else. But the point is that I like working. The others often moan about it; they want to be a rich man’s wife – but I like earning my own wage, even though it’s not much. I like living in a city, on my own, nobody telling me what to do or where to go or how to think. I like freedom. I need it.’

  He lay back, his head on his hands.

  ‘Everyone needs it.’

  ‘Yes. But they don’t have it. Women have never had it. It’s our turn.’

  She said it as though he might disagree, but he didn’t. He smiled at her and said: ‘Of course it is. We men have run things for long enough and look what a mess we’ve made.’

  They were silent. She gazed at the white bodies in the green water and wondered why Gil and Emma were taking so long.

  Then she asked, abruptly, ‘Does your leg hurt?’ although what she really wanted to know was what it had been like, being shot, perhaps thinking he was going to die in a strange country. What had he thought about? Had he known he was in history at last, not just a spectator on the sidelines?

  ‘Not so much,’ he said. He gave a smile that wasn’t really a smile at all, more a way of holding seriousness at bay. ‘It doesn’t tell me when it’s going to rain or snow. It’s not become my conscience.’

  Eleanor glanced sideways at him. ‘Were you there long?’

  ‘No; an embarrassingly short time.’

  ‘Was it very terrible?’

  ‘No, Eleanor.’ He spoke her name deliberately, separating it out into syllables. ‘For others, it was terrible. For the Spanish it is a tragedy. But as for me and my involvement, it was a farce.’ His face hardened; his smile was almost a sneer. ‘I’m not a hero, you know. You mustn’t be thinking that.’

  ‘I don’t think I was.’ She considered. ‘I’m not sure I believe in heroes.’

  ‘No?’ He scrutinized her. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I like to be on an equal footing with people, not better or worse or higher or lower
than them,’ she said, not really understanding what she meant by that, interested by her words and promising herself to think about them.

  This time the silence seemed to belong just to the two of them while outside of it, the bright sounds of the party continued.

  ‘I’m coming to London soon,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve been idling in the country long enough. Can I find you there?’

  The sentence had an odd construction. Can I, as in, am I able to? Or can I, meaning, do I have your permission? And the way he said it made it sound as though he was asking himself, not her, the question. Eleanor didn’t reply, but ate another strawberry and said, ‘What to do?’

  ‘This and that. I don’t have a trade, as your mother has probably told you. There are people I need to see. And after all, we’re all just waiting.’

  ‘For the war.’

  ‘Of course. Out of the frying pan and into the fire for me.’

  ‘Perhaps waiting’s almost the worst,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. No. We should make the most of this waiting time we have, before it all begins.’

  He made a gesture towards her, palms upwards; on his right hand she saw a white thick line snicker down from the thumb’s base.

  Eleanor looked at his hand and felt slightly sick. She glanced away, at the swimmers in the water, several of them now, pallid wavering underwater bodies like transparent fish beneath the green-filtered light. She sheltered her eyes with her hand and stared at them. Gil came and laid his clothes, neatly folded, beside her, then bent and kissed the top of her head lightly before striding to the bank. His towel was wrapped round his waist and he didn’t remove it until the last moment, as if he were shy. It was the first time Eleanor had properly seen his body. He had lain naked beside her but she hadn’t looked at him and anyway, it had been dark, the curtains drawn, her eyes mostly closed against the insistence of his gaze. Now he looked back towards her from the bank, like a boy needing permission, and she raised her hand. He slid himself into the flow.

  ‘Can I?’ Michael asked again, and she felt as if she were on a swing, at the top of its arc. Everything standing suspended and clear, before the world comes towards you again in a blurred whoosh. Then Merry was on them, with her friend Lily behind her. They looked like two summer flowers, with their fair hair and bright-coloured frocks.

  ‘Come on!’ they cried, and Michael let himself be led away.

  Later, Eleanor let herself down into the water alone. Emma went home, hugging her and saying they would meet in London soon; she had found a job there. Gil lay back on the grass, his hands behind his head and his eyes half-closed. Merry and her friends were clustered on the bank. Merry had her head on Michael’s shoulder, her blonde hair loose and almost dry. Her skin was pink; she looked very young.

  Eleanor swam upstream, beyond the group, and lay on her back in the dusky silence. She closed her eyes and saw the pattern of leaves against her eyelids. She must not. No, she must not. Monstrous, unthinkable. She must not think it. Or feel it or even let the thought touch her body. She swam further up the river, against the tug of the water.

  13

  The following day, two young women arrived at the house. Peter heard the car, the doorbell ringing, the sound of voices in the hall. About half an hour later, there was a tap on the door and immediately it was pushed open and they came in. One was carrying a large mug with coffee slopping over its brim, and the other a slice of cake on a small plate, holding it in front of her like an offering.

  ‘Peter?’ They advanced into the room. ‘Coffee?’

  He got to his feet. He had been leafing through a bundle of letters sent from grateful patients to Gil.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He thought he recognized the one with hair the colour of burnished conkers from the photos. She had the remains of freckles on the bridge of her nose and a wide, generous mouth. All the clothes she wore were loose and colourful and she had a bright bandana in her hair. The other one he didn’t recognize – but then, she was obviously in disguise. Her hair was cut very short and dyed a violent red; her face was artificially white with smudged black eyeliner round her eyes, and piercings in her lip, her nose, her eyebrows, and a thick ridge of them in her earlobes. She was spikily thin; he could make out her pelvic bone under her man’s suit trousers and her collarbone beneath her shirt. He tried to imagine what she would look like without her make-up and her rings, and found himself seeing a small, defenceless face, sweet and young and almost plain. They were both quite tall, like their grandmother, and had a rangy long-legged look that Peter associated, meaninglessly, with wealth and entitlement.

  ‘Sorry.’ The conker-haired one laughed. She had a lovely voice, low and clear. Eleanor’s voice, he thought. ‘I’m Rose, and this is Thea.’

  ‘Esther’s daughters,’ said Thea. Her voice was husky. Smoker, he thought and suddenly longed for a cigarette. ‘Her two youngest.’

  ‘Of course.’ He thought Rose must be a bit younger than him. Thea’s age was impossible to guess; her face was blank as a pebble.

  ‘You’re becoming quite the expert on our family, I gather,’ she said. He caught the whiff of patchouli oil and tobacco.

  ‘I’m just putting things in order.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Rose said, in a kindly fashion, oddly maternal. ‘We’re all very grateful. I wanted to do it but Gran was insistent it should be someone from outside the family. I don’t know why.’

  ‘So what have you found?’ Thea demanded. ‘What skeletons in the closet?’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but nothing like that.’

  ‘Oh surely. No one’s irreproachable.’ The way she rolled out the words reminded Peter of Jonah’s delivery: theatrical, ironic, self-mocking. Perhaps it was the Lee style. ‘Everyone has secrets.’

  ‘Not everyone has secrets they hide in filing cabinets,’ Rose said reasonably. ‘Most people’s secrets are just in their heads.’

  But Thea wandered off, picking up objects, turning them in her hands.

  ‘Look, Rose,’ she said. ‘Do you remember this?’ She held up a hexagonal brightly coloured shape, and shook it. It gave a surly rattle and she made a face. ‘It’s supposed to make a noise,’ she said. ‘It’s meant to be tuneful.’

  ‘What about these?’ Rose had pulled two of the string puppets out of the box that Peter had put them in and was carefully untangling them before standing them on their weighted, lozenge-shaped feet and twitching them forward, articulated arms lifting and knees giving way with each step. Their round wooden heads with painted-on faces lolled as they clomped in tiny steps along the floorboards. ‘Did we play with these?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Aren’t they a bit creepy?’

  ‘I’m going outside to have a cigarette,’ said Peter.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Thea rose eagerly, and the two of them went into the cool morning, thick and grey with the promise of rain. From where they stood, they could see Rose like a misty ghost on the other side of the glass, drifting among recovered objects of her childhood. Thea was a greedy smoker, sucking in so that her thin cheeks grew thinner, holding the smoke in her lungs and then exhaling slowly. Peter thought that there was something both bitter and childish about her.

  ‘So. You’re Gran’s latest find,’ she said at last, wreaths of smoke around her chalky face. It made him sound like an object that had been lying abandoned in one of those fusty antique shops, waiting for someone to pick up.

  ‘Jonah recommended me.’

  She dropped her cigarette on the ground and twisted the tip of her biker’s boot on to it, as if she were killing a squirming cockroach rather than extinguishing a spark. Then she lit another one. All her movements were impatient, slightly jerky.

  ‘It’s odd that Gran is finally leaving here,’ she said.

  ‘It must be.’

  ‘I don’t come much any more. Not as much as I should. The countryside is boring, don’t you think? But it feels like our childhood is being taken aw
ay. They used to have their flat in London of course, where their everyday life went on. Work and other adults and dinner parties and all Gran’s political things. She used to take us on marches and demonstrations, you know. She insisted, the way other parents and grandparents insist on homework and proper nights’ sleep. But this was away from all of that, and all of our lives. Far from politics and work. A land of dreaming. We used to spend weeks at a time here. All the cousins.’

  ‘Eight of you.’

  ‘We’d play all day, down in those woods. Sometimes we went to the sea, of course, but often we just spent the day here. Dawn till dusk. We were one big roaming group. Our parents were sometimes here as well, of course, but we barely noticed them. Except Samuel – he was different, but then he didn’t have children or responsibilities. I remember him once jumping across all those little box hedges there.’ She pointed to hedges that were now tall and straggly. ‘He was wearing a long coat that streamed out behind him and leaping like a racehorse. I’ve never forgotten that.’

  ‘It sounds …’

  She went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘It didn’t really matter what our other lives were like when we were here. Gran’s so old now, like a relic or something, but I used to think that she and Grandpa Gil were like the king and queen in a fairy tale. When the next generation were having crises and weeping and fucking up their lives, they were steady and serene, even when Grandpa was dying. They were always so polite to each other, it was ridiculous. Sometimes I used to spy on them, to try and catch them out. I thought they must be pretending. But even when they were alone, or thought they were alone, they were respectful and kind. Perhaps they knew I was there all the time. Ear to the door. Mum says she never heard them argue. God. I can’t get through a day without arguing with someone. Who will it be today? Rose probably. What about you?’