The Twilight Hour

by Nicci Gerrard

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said at last, stopping and turning towards her. Eleanor could hear the rain dripping on the umbrella’s canvas and see it streaming off the edges. ‘I don’t understand in any way. We’ve just been dancing and you’ve met my friends and talked with them. You were a bit quiet but everything seemed all right, and now you tell me that you cannot marry me?’

  ‘I thought it was what I wanted, but I was wrong. I have behaved very badly towards you, Gil.’

  ‘You cannot marry me,’ he repeated. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not ready to marry anyone.’

  ‘Those are words a woman would speak to a fool,’ he said. ‘To let him down gently. I’m not a fool.’

  ‘I don’t have the words,’ she said wretchedly. ‘I just know that I made a mistake.’

  ‘A mistake,’ he repeated, dragging out the words. ‘Which bit? The loving me, or simply the agreeing to marry me?’

  ‘I don’t want to marry you. That’s all I can say.’

  ‘Then I can wait. I can wait as long as you want.’

  ‘Gil—’

  ‘We don’t have to tell my mother or anyone else. We don’t even have to get married, if you don’t want to marry. We can just be together, as we were.’

  She made herself look into his face. ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What are you saying? Are you saying you don’t want to be with me?’

  ‘I am saying that it’s over. I have made a terrible mistake and I am very sorry. Sorry for the pain.’

  ‘Pain.’ His voice was dull. ‘Sorry for the pain. I don’t understand you. Why?’

  ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t have been nicer or kinder or better to me. It’s just me.’

  ‘But what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’ For she couldn’t tell him.

  ‘But I thought we were happy.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘Weren’t you happy, Eleanor?’

  ‘I was. But it’s over.’

  ‘I was happy,’ he went on. ‘I was so happy. Happier than I’ve ever been in my life. Until this very moment, and these words. Where do they come from?’

  ‘I have thought about this a great deal, and—’

  ‘How can you have been thinking about it when you haven’t said anything to me?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated miserably.

  ‘When did you start thinking this? When?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She thought back to the picnic, the last fresh days of spring. ‘It’s crept up on me and now I know I just need to be single for a while longer.’

  ‘All right. All right. You can be single. We don’t need to be married yet. We were going to wait anyway. But you don’t really mean you want to end it.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘There’s someone else.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ She couldn’t lie outright.

  ‘So it’s just me.’

  ‘No – it’s just me, Gil.’

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘No,’ he said. His face looked heavy and his body bulky with wretchedness.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she repeated. She felt that at any minute she would have to break free of him and run through the wet streets, just to be away from the expression on his face and the terror that was engulfing her at what she was doing.

  He stared down at her. ‘But I love you. Don’t you love me?’

  ‘I do,’ she replied, and at that moment she wanted so badly to take him in her arms and comfort him that she could feel her body straining to do so. She clenched her fists. ‘I love you very much. But not the way you want.’

  ‘This is really happening? This is the end?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said once more.

  ‘You mean, we’re going to part and I won’t see you? We’ll go our separate ways?’

  ‘Oh Gil.’ She suppressed a sob; she would not weep when she was the one who was hurting him. ‘It would be better not to see each other.’

  He insisted on walking her home, holding the umbrella carefully to shield her from the rain. He waited at the door until she had found her key and unlocked it. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, his dark messy hair falling forward. She would have much preferred his anger or his contempt to this terrible kindness.

  That night, she sat for many hours in her chair near the window. She wasn’t really thinking, though thoughts drifted through her, and she wasn’t really feeling, though emotions clutched at her and then let go. It was more as though she were keeping vigil, saying goodbye to her old life, before entering the new one.

  When she pictured Gil she felt pain, like a toothache sending electric throbs through her whole body, surprising her by its sharpness. And when she let herself imagine Michael, waiting for her in that little room, she felt a dizzying fear. Vertigo. She didn’t know him; she didn’t know his world; she no longer knew herself. She was stepping over the edge, into darkness.

  At last she shivered and rose from her chair. The stars had faded and there was a faint rim of light on the horizon; birds sang from the plane trees. The sounds of the street were filtering into her room. She was exhausted but fully awake, and quite emptied of desire, of hope, of love even. All she knew was that there was no returning to the old familiar ways.

  She did not go to Michael that day, although she knew that he would be expecting her. She wandered through the streets for hours, letting her feet take her: past houses where families were sitting down to their Sunday lunch, into little parks, along the canal glinting brownly in the sunlight. At one point, she found herself by the churchyard where she and Michael had met but she did not go into it. That frenzy of desire seemed like a dream now. Her body was placid. Her bruises were fading, her lips losing their chapped soreness.

  She went into a tea shop and asked for a glass of milk which she drank sitting on the stool at the far end of the counter, feeling it coat the inside of her mouth and slide smoothly down her tired throat. The sun came in spears of gold through the clear glass at the top of the door and spread out over the floor, but where she sat in the recesses was dim and cool, like a cave or like the little church at home where she’d been christened and confirmed. She thought she could sit here always, not going back into the bright hot clamorous world.

  When she arrived back at her bedsit, it was early evening. The blue sky was turning silver. She climbed the stairs and opened her door, stared in at the tidy space. What should she do now? She stood in front of the fly-blown mirror and re-fastened her hair. She washed her face in cold water. She put on a clean blouse, seeing as she did so Gil’s gold chain round her neck. Perhaps she should return it. Her eyes filled with unexpected tears but she blinked them away.

  Then she left once more, closing the door quietly so that Gladys would not hear and put her head round the door, observe her with those inquisitive knowing eyes of hers, and walked through the dusk, towards the place where Michael was staying. She had been there only once, and that was in the dark and dazed, but she found she knew the way. She ignored the stares of the men standing in groups on corners. She felt as though she were making her way towards a place that might not be real; that the building would have disappeared or that nobody there would know who she meant when she asked for Michael.

  And indeed, when she was let in, going up the stairs to the room, the man who opened the door at her knock wasn’t Michael at all. He was older, with grizzled dark hair, a pitted face and a crease between his brown eyes.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was looking for Michael.’

  ‘He’s not here.’ He must have sensed her anxiety, for he added quickly, in his gravelly smoker’s voice. ‘But he’ll be back soon. You’re to step inside.’ And he held the door wide open, standing back to let her through.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  The man smiled. ‘He said if anyone turned up I was not to let them leave. I imagine he meant you.’

  ‘Will he be long?’

  ‘No. He h
as barely stepped out for a minute these last two days. Waiting, he was, though he wouldn’t say. Standing at the window smoking and looking out. Pacing the room. Scribbling things and then tearing them up. So I’m guessing he won’t be long. I am leaving in a few minutes myself. You can stay here till he comes. Please.’ And he gestured again into the bare, neat room.

  Eleanor went inside. The man lifted clothes off the chair and she sat. He was big but slow and graceful; she saw his calloused hands and his frayed shirt cuffs. He offered her a cigarette and she shook her head. He held up the whisky bottle – the same one she and Michael had drunk from – and she shook her head. She didn’t know what she would do if she had even one sip of alcohol, what would happen. Everything seemed misty and immensely far off; when she lifted her hand to smooth her skirt, it was like the hand of a stranger.

  The man – she would never discover his name – handed her a mug of tea, stewed and bitter, and she sipped it. He was sweeping the floor, pulling the covers over the bed, putting on his jacket, whistling to himself softly. Then he stood before her.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said.

  She rose. ‘Goodbye. Thank you.’

  ‘Good luck,’ he said. Her eyes filled with tears. She smiled at him and he put a hand on her shoulder and turned and left.

  She sat down once more. At last the door opened and Michael stepped inside, slim and jacketless, carrying a bag, his hair swept back from his face. It was twilight outside now and the room was dim and full of shadows. He didn’t see her at once, sitting silently to one side. When he did, his face became illuminated for a moment. But then – making out her expression and her upright, withholding posture – he stood quite still, staring down at her, not smiling but searching her face for answers.

  ‘You told him then?’ he said at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  If he had tried to embrace or kiss her, she would have pushed him away. But he did not. He just looked at her.

  ‘I bought us some supper, in case you came,’ he said. ‘And some wine. Do you like wine?’

  ‘Yes.’ But how would she put food or wine into her body?

  He took two tall candles out of the bag and screwed them into empty bottles, then struck a match to light them.

  ‘Are you cold?’ he asked.

  She nodded and he took the cover from the bed and draped it over her shoulders and on to her lap, careful not to touch her. It was hard to believe they had ever lain naked together, mouth to mouth and body to body.

  She watched him as he moved about the room in his stockinged feet, noiseless and deft, putting a cold roast chicken on to a plate, unwrapping a piece of cheese, cutting slices of bread, easing the cork from the bottle of wine, laying two apples and two yellow pears out on the window sill. Only when everything was prepared did he turn to her.

  ‘Was it very bad?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was—’ She flinched under his gaze. ‘He was very kind.’

  ‘I see. And now you’re wondering what on earth you’re doing here, with me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you came.’

  ‘I came.’

  He poured purple wine into two tumblers and handed her one. She took an experimental sip. It was harsh and sour, not like the elegant wines Gil ordered in restaurants or served up in his polished and airy dining room. Michael sat on the edge of the bed and rolled himself a thin cigarette. The smoke made her eyes sting.

  ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I didn’t sleep.’

  ‘Eat some food.’

  He stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette in a saucer on the floor and stood to carve her some chicken. He laid it on a small plate with a forget-me-not painted on its rim, alongside a slice of bread, cut off a wedge of cheese. She saw how he tried to arrange them to look appetising.

  ‘I have no butter.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She took a bite. She was suddenly ravenous, trembling with hunger and exhaustion. She pushed bread into her mouth and chewed, took another mouthful of wine.

  ‘All right?’ he asked her.

  She nodded. She finished the food and he quartered a pear for her and she ate it slowly, its sweet juice running down her chin. And then he took his own sheets from under the bed, laid them across the ones his room-mate used, and gestured.

  ‘Try to sleep,’ he said, adding quickly: ‘Don’t worry. I’m just going to sit in the chair awhile.’

  She was too dazed to argue. She took off her shoes and her skirt, and then climbed under the sheets. She closed her eyes and felt herself being sucked under, sinking down into a thick darkness of dreams.

  When she woke, she opened her eyes to see him sitting at the small table, writing in a notebook by the light of the guttering candle. He had a glass of wine in front of him and his hair fell over his forehead. He was frowning in concentration. Her body felt soft and sluggish with sleep. She could taste the wine she had drunk. She closed her eyes again.

  The next time that she woke, he was still in the chair and the candle was still flickering, nearly burnt down to its base and throwing strange lights. But he was asleep, his head tipped to one side and resting on the wing of the chair, his hand half-curled. The notebook had fallen to the floor. She sat up in bed. She no longer felt tired and her confusion had lifted, the way a mist burns off. It was very quiet; she could not hear any sounds from the street, or from the other occupants in the house. She slid her legs out of the bed and stood up, going over to where Michael sat. He had long eyelashes, she thought, spiky on his cheek in the candlelight, and under the lids she could see his eyes move rapidly. He mouth was slightly open. She could see the rise and fall of his breathing through his thin shirt. She bent and picked up the notebook, put it back on the table, and he frowned and murmured something, sounding distressed. She put a hand very gently on his shoulder and he surged awake, like a swimmer thrashing towards the surface, coming to his feet in one movement before his eyes were properly open.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’re all right. We’re all right.’

  ‘Oh.’ His arms were slack by his side. ‘I was having such a dream, Nellie.’

  ‘You’re awake now.’ They weren’t touching but were very close.

  ‘Yes.’ He rubbed his face and looked at her. ‘But why are you? I thought you would sleep till morning.’

  ‘Come to bed.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Come to bed, Michael. Just to hold each other, keep off the nightmares. We can talk later.’

  He nodded. She unbuttoned his shirt, his breath on her cheek. He unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his trousers. How thin he was, she thought. Thin and strong: her breath caught in her throat. Half-clothed, they lay in the bed, a sheet over them, her head in the hollow of his neck and his arm around her, their legs tangled. He smelt unfamiliar.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ he said into her hair. ‘Sweet dreams, my dearest Nell.’

  The following morning, early, he went out and bought eggs and boiled them two each, which they ate sitting in bed, dipping bread into the yolks and salt, drinking coffee that he’d made in a pewter jug.

  ‘Will you tell me?’ he asked at last.

  She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing to tell. I told him it was over. I had to repeat it several times. It was as if he couldn’t make sense of the words.’

  ‘Did you say anything about—?’

  ‘I couldn’t. I didn’t know if it would be cruel, for no reason – or perhaps I simply couldn’t bring myself to say the words and see his face. And anyway—’ She stopped, licked her salty fingers, looked into Michael’s face. ‘Anyway, I can’t tell anyone until I’ve told Merry.’

  ‘When will you do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t decide what is the right thing. I mean, right for her. And then, I want—’ She stopped.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Michael, after a pause.

  ‘I want us to be secret, safe from the eyes of the world. I don’t want people ta
lking about us or making judgements.’

  ‘Does it matter what other people think?’

  ‘We’re causing pain and distress.’

  ‘We don’t have a choice, Nellie.’

  Eleanor looked at him with something like wonder.

  ‘Of course we have a choice. I am choosing my own happiness over Merry’s.’

  ‘I was never going to be with Merry; you know that.’

  ‘I know. But that’s not the point. All her life Merry has been sure of her loveliness, her charm, her capacity to captivate. And all her life I have been her audience, admiring and applauding her. She’s like an actress on the stage, performing the only part that she knows, and we have stood in the wings. It’s not that she will be upset, Michael – it’s that her whole sense of who she is will be threatened. Her sister going off with the man she has set her heart on. I know that; I have to be honest and clear-eyed with myself. I can’t pretend it’s not a betrayal. We come to each other out of a fearful tangle of other people’s distress.’

  ‘But we do come together.’

  ‘Yes.’ It felt strangely domestic and unsettling to be sitting having breakfast together. ‘We do come together.’

  22

  ‘So then you told Merry?’ asked Peter after a long pause.

  They were sitting by the fire again after eating supper.

  ‘It was rather more complicated than that.’ Eleanor’s tone was dry, almost harsh. ‘I wanted to put it off as long as I could. It seemed that the whole country was waiting for the war to properly begin, like a storm to burst. I was waiting too – for the war, of course, and for my own private resolution. I don’t know. Perhaps deep down and hidden even from myself – I had the thought, and this is still hard to admit, all these decades later – that I should wait to see if Michael survived the war before I told Merry. That perhaps there wouldn’t be the need.’

  ‘You mean, because he might die?’

  ‘That’s what happens in wars. Young men die. And I perhaps let myself imagine telling Merry, causing such damage, for no reason. This must sound cold-blooded. It didn’t feel that way. It was more like a succession of thoughts and images that whirled through my mind during those tumultuous and heightened times.