The Twilight Hour

by Nicci Gerrard

  He didn’t say anything, but took a seat to one side. Eleanor played on. He didn’t recognize the music, but it was plain and slow, full of repeating combinations of notes. At last, she lifted her hands from the keys and turned her head towards him.

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ said Peter.

  ‘You’re not. It’s nice to have you here. However tired I am, there are some nights when sleep will not come and then it’s best not to lie in bed, with the hours of dread before one.’

  ‘Hours of dread?’

  ‘We all have them. Gil was the calmest man alive, and yet at three in the morning, oh dear. He used to call it the scuttle of crabs’ claws.’

  ‘What do you dread?’

  ‘If I could name it, it would no longer be dread, just fear.’

  ‘Is fear better then?’

  ‘I think you can do battle with fear, whereas dread is more shapeless.’

  ‘Does playing the piano help?’

  ‘Things gradually drain away. But I find I am full of the past, which I blame on you, of course.’

  14

  On the train back to London after Merry’s birthday picnic, it started to rain, softly at first and then with a violence that felt like relief, the heavy sky splitting open and letting water splash over the parched lands. Eleanor sat with her face to the window, staring out at the fields and the woods that were pelted by rain. Gil didn’t press her. He said how much he had liked meeting her family and made a few amiable remarks about the day without needing a response. Then he had brought out his book and Eleanor continued looking through the streaming glass at the drowned countryside, and then at London as it returned, with its fumes and noise. The street lamps were just being lit.

  Gil insisted on a taxi, and then on getting out to escort her to her front door. She didn’t invite him in, saying she was tired. She could feel the heat of the day in her skin and her eyeballs throbbed. Gladys was in the hall talking loudly to someone on the phone and when she saw Eleanor she rolled her eyes and made extravagant gestures at the mouthpiece, indicating some lunatic at the other end.

  In her room, Eleanor took off her hat and loosened her hair. She stepped out of the green dress that she had liked so much that morning but that now seemed creased and stale, and pulled off her shoes. Her feet were sore. The rain stopped, and she opened the window so that the cool air slid in, filling the room with the noises of the street, and sat on the bed in her slip. The evening stretched out in front of her. Usually she loved to be alone, with a novel and a mug of tea. She never minded her own company, and sometimes had to force herself to make an effort and go out to meet friends, be sociable. One of the ways she treated herself was to eat out sometimes in the evening, sitting at a table by the window of the cheap restaurant a few minutes’ walk from her rooms, eating an omelette or a lamb chop, drinking a single glass of wine. Occasionally people would try to strike up a conversation with her, sometimes trying it on of course, but often just feeling sorry for her – a young woman alone – but she politely rebuffed them.

  She took delight in providing for herself. Most of the women she had met since arriving in London complained bitterly about their poverty, the struggle to make ends meet; her fellow teachers talked about finding a man who would take care of them. Teaching was the interim between growing up and getting married, having children of their own. The word ‘spinster’ was a comic insult, a thing to be feared. Eleanor didn’t want to be taken care of; she wanted to take care of herself. She loved teaching, and she took pride in living within her means, finding the cheapest food and patching and mending clothes. She had always thought that she wanted freedom more than she wanted love. She loved Gil but she hadn’t fallen for him, if falling meant losing one’s head, one’s heart, one’s sense of self. She had remained intact and in a way that was Gil’s attraction and strength. Apart from his kindliness, his steadiness, his adoration for her, he allowed her to be herself. Only during sex did he seem to want to absorb and obliterate her. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t really enjoyed it: she was reluctant to let herself go. She wanted to belong to herself and not to anyone else.

  But now she was in danger. She knew, as she sat on the side of the bed with the breeze blowing in from the evening outside, that her walls were crumbling. She was intensely aware of her physical self: her hot cheeks, the thickness in her throat and the looseness in her stomach, her throbbing head and heart. She almost felt sick, if feeling sick could be half-pleasurable, and she was restless but sluggish at the same time. Sitting there with a powerful sense of longing flowing and flooding through her, unable to move.

  At last she rose. The water was cold because she’d forgotten to feed coins into the meter, so she just washed herself at the basin, and then put on her oldest clothes. She wanted to feel shapeless and comfy. Hidden, with no eyes on her. She stared at herself in the little mirror; her eyes glittered back at her and her face burned with a shame and excitement that she didn’t want to see. She closed her eyes against herself, and pressed her forehead briefly to the glass, needing its cold solidity.

  Picking up her jacket, she made her way down the stairs again, past Terence talking to himself in his room, and Gladys’s closed door, out into the street. She walked briskly along the wet, gleaming streets to the restaurant she occasionally went to. It was shabby but good value, and she knew the women who worked there: the young one with a livid birthmark on her cheek, and her mother, who had a creased face and eyes the colour of wet sand. Eleanor ordered a mug of tea and a bun. Although she had only eaten a bit of a sandwich and some strawberries that day, she wasn’t hungry, yet she needed something to settle and comfort her.

  It was nearly empty, with just two cadaverous young men sitting in the shadows of the interior, leaning across a round table and talking in low voices like spies. Eleanor took her preferred place by the window, where she would watch the flow of life in the street outside. How she had come to love summer evenings in London, the hot stew of the day quite ebbed away and in its place air that was warm, clear, and still. Her mother hadn’t wanted her to come to the city; she had begged Eleanor to find work closer to home, and she had rarely come to visit her daughter. She didn’t like traffic and crowds, shrank from smoke-filled halls and pubs, was scared to walk at night past narrow alleyways and round dark corners where unknown dangers lurked. She always complained about the fog that left a dirty bloom on her skin and made her clothes unfit for wear after a single day. She didn’t understand why Eleanor scrimped and saved in order to live in a poky bedsit in a loud, scary city of strangers and strangeness, rather than live in relative comfort with her family.

  Eleanor drank her tea and took a few bites of the bun. Her heart was beginning to calm down and her hands no longer trembled. What had all that been about? she asked herself. Nothing. A sudden rush of turbulent longing had seized her but it would quickly recede. She needed to keep hold of herself until the danger had passed: work, read, walk through the park with Gil at her side, and remember what she most wanted from her life. She didn’t want to throw herself away – the phrase rose unbidden into her mind and she considered it. It wasn’t that she in any way believed, as her mother and Robert did, that young women squandered their value when they allowed themselves to have flings. (In her head she heard her mother’s words hiss: ‘No better than they should be … damaged goods.’) She had read enough novels that talked about women’s bloom being rubbed off if a man touched them, as if they were soft ripe peaches that could only be handled with delicacy or they would be blemished, but she had always felt scornful of such notions of female innocence and decorum. No. When she thought of throwing herself away, the image of precipitous descent came into her mind – hurtling down a fathomless cliff, disappearing from her own life. Love as self-extinction.

  And anyway, it was out of the question. Of course it was. Merry had set her heart on this young man, and even if he didn’t seem to have set his heart on her, Merry was her sister and she trusted Eleanor. She made up
her mind that if Michael called on her, which of course he wouldn’t, she would refuse to see him. When she met him next – and if he were to be Merry’s beau (despite her best intentions, the thought sent a hot sizzle of jealousy searing through her) this would inevitably happen – she would be prepared and be armed against him. She would be friendly but cool. She imagined herself holding out a limp hand, offering a tepid smile and a brittle phrase, and then turning away. Soon enough, she wouldn’t have to pretend.

  Eleanor sipped at her cooling tea and turned her thoughts to Gil. Had anything changed? Of course it hadn’t, although that afternoon, sitting on the train opposite him, she had wanted to escape him for a while, with such urgency it had made her feel dry-mouthed and desperate. She knew that Gil would ask her to marry him. Perhaps he would ask her soon, though war, like a creeping shadow, might hold him back. But if he did ask, what would she say? She imagined the scene: the tenderness and grateful delight on his face when she said yes; the way he would take her hands in both of his and press them and then gather her against his solid warmth, telling her that he would devote his life to making her happy. Then, the way his face would daze and numb and shut down if she said no. He wouldn’t argue with her or be angry, but would accept her decision as just. He didn’t think he was worthy of her.

  Eleanor held these two faces in her mind. She had never liked anyone as much as she liked Gil; nor had she ever met anyone else who let her feel both cherished and free. Michael, he was just a quick hot flame that had leapt into life and would quickly die down again, melting back into grey ash. She finished her tea, gazed into the bottom of the mug as if she would find an answer there, set it down firmly on the table and for an instant closed her eyes. She felt sad and stern. She would say yes.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘Oh my darling. My most lovely Eleanor.’ He stared at her, his face illuminated. ‘You will?’

  In the park where the sun poured down like honey through the leaves and where birds sang. She could even see the blackbird in the tree above, throat pulsing rapidly as sound poured out of its sharp yellow beak.

  ‘I will,’ she said.

  For a moment, she thought that Gil would cry, and was scared by his happiness. Ashamed. She took one of his hands and lifted it to her cheek, closed her eyes briefly so she wouldn’t have to see the blaze of his joy.

  ‘From the first moment, the very first second—’ he began, then stopped and took her into his arms, kissing her lips, her eyelids, her neck. ‘I’m happy,’ he whispered. ‘So happy.’

  ‘I am too,’ said Eleanor, and perhaps she was. She felt solemn and a bit shy.

  Later, over dinner in a restaurant that was dark and slightly grand, with banquettes to sit on and rich red wine that made Eleanor’s head feel heavy, they discussed their plans. Every so often, Gil would reach out and touch one of Eleanor’s hands, as if to make sure this was real. He kept breaking off mid-sentence to stare at her and murmur endearments.

  ‘Can I tell my mother?’ he asked.

  Eleanor felt a sudden spasm of panic at the thought of everything becoming public, and especially of Gil’s mother hearing the news – how her tight face would pucker and become sour with barely suppressed disappointment. Later, she would probably want to talk about wedding presents and household duties, her life as Mrs Lee. Yet what was she expecting?

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘And you must tell yours. And Robert. I don’t have to ask permission, do I? Or do I? Would they expect that?’

  She laughed. ‘Certainly not. Although they’d say yes.’

  ‘Would they?’

  ‘Of course! A handsome doctor – it’s what my mother has dreamt of. I can’t think the same is true of your mother.’

  Gil laid his hand on her arm.

  ‘She’s scared of you.’

  ‘I hardly think that can be true.’

  ‘No. She is. She’s too used to having me with her, and now she thinks you’ll take me away from her. And of course you will. You already have.’

  ‘Oh dear, that’s sad.’

  ‘That’s life.’

  ‘But still sad.’

  ‘She’ll be lonely. We won’t live with her though.’ He said it with a questioning note.

  ‘No Gil. We won’t.’

  ‘Where will we live? Where would you like?’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t the slightest idea.’

  Eleanor felt slightly dazed; her future was suddenly unscrolling before her. A house, a husband, a mother-in-law.

  ‘And more importantly, when will it be?’ he asked, looking at her over the rim of his glass.

  ‘We’ve only just decided to get married. Shall we think about the date later?’

  ‘I want to say it should be at once, but I think that we should wait until after the war.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It will come soon. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so. It almost feels that people want it to come now.’

  ‘But then it can’t last long. Months only. It might be better to wait, my darling. And if anything should happen, then you’ll be free.’

  ‘You mean, if you should die.’

  ‘Yes. But I won’t die. I probably won’t even go away. I’m a doctor, after all. I might be needed here.’

  Eleanor thought of the young people who had gathered for Merry’s birthday picnic just a few days ago, with their callow, innocent faces. How they’d bragged of their readiness for combat, looked forward to being heroes. How the young women – girls, really – had looked adoringly into their faces then. She shivered suddenly, and when Gil told her affectionately not to worry about him, couldn’t tell him that she hadn’t been thinking of him at all.

  ‘Perhaps if we are going to wait, then we shouldn’t tell anyone yet,’ she said carefully.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We could have it as our secret, our private world, just for a few weeks more. Nobody can have opinions about us or interfere.’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘I think so, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t mind anything any more. We know and that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She touched the side of his face. He had a stain on his tie and she saw he had done the buttons of his shirt up crookedly. She liked his absent-minded disregard for his appearance; she had never taken to carefully dressed, dapper men. There would always be an air of disarray about Gil, she thought – and she imagined them as old people, sitting together over a meal like this, with all their years behind them, talking about the voyage they had made together. It made her feel strange, washed through by emotions she couldn’t recognize or name.

  He took her back to her door but didn’t come in. It was that time of the month, she told him, which was true. He smoothed her hair back from her lifted face and told her that he would never forget this day as long as he lived.

  Because it was a secret, Eleanor didn’t want a ring, but on the following Saturday she and Gil walked to Hatton Garden, home of goldsmiths and makers and menders of clocks and watches. In a little shop on the corner, he bought her a gold chain – so thin you could barely notice it against her skin.

  ‘I wear it still,’ Eleanor said to Peter in a voice that was soft and cracked with tiredness. She pulled at the neck on her blue dress and he saw the faintest glimmer. ‘I never take it off, except once when the catch broke and I had to have it mended. I suppose, as I told Thea, that they will bury me with it. That would be right.’

  With difficulty she rose from her seat and Peter came forward and took the crook of her elbow to guide her.

  ‘I suppose I’m telling you a love story,’ she said as they left the room linked together. ‘And I loved Gil.’

  Instead of going upstairs to her room, she insisted on going into the kitchen. She was very cold and needed a warm drink. Peter made her herbal tea in a big cup that she wrapped her jumbled fingers around, sighing as the steam rose into her
face. He took the shawl that was lying on the old sofa where the cats usually slept and wrapped it round her shoulders, feeling the sharpness of her bones.

  ‘Now I’ve begun,’ she said, ‘how can I stop?’

  15

  Eleanor Wright came out of the school door. She was tired after a long day and was thinking about how she would have a boiled egg for supper and then an early night with a novel. To save money, she had not taken a bus that morning but had walked to work; now her feet were hurting in their cheap black shoes. She saw that the cuffs of her white blouse were slightly grubby, even though she’d put it on clean that morning, and there was a ladder in her stockings. She would mend it this evening and if there was hot water she would wash her hair. Her skin was damp in the heat. She allowed herself to think nostalgically of the countryside, with its soft air; the mild, clean wind blowing through the branches of the old plum tree.

  She started to cross the road, but then stopped because she had seen a figure on the other side, leaning against a lamppost. She raised her hand to protect her eyes from the glare of the sun, which was turning people into cut-out shapes. Yet although she couldn’t make out his face, she knew that it was him. A horn blared; someone shouted at her. She tried to keep her pace steady and her expression blank as she made her way on to the other pavement, though her bones felt rubbery.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, straightening himself up from the lamppost and coming towards her. She saw he had on the same suit as he had worn on the picnic, and that it was old and worn. He wasn’t wearing his public smile but was grave and quiet. His face was thinner than she remembered. ‘I’ve been waiting hours!’

  ‘Why are you here at all?’

  ‘To see you,’ he answered, not perturbed by her curtness.

  ‘I haven’t got time. I’m going to meet friends.’

  ‘Perhaps I could walk with you?’