The Twilight Hour

by Nicci Gerrard

  When she had been rolled over and over by the surging river until she was nothing but bursting lungs and flailing arms, when she had dragged Merry to the bank and hauled her inch by inch out of the flooding river on to the muddy grass, when she had pumped her chest and blown breath into her lungs and seen her sister turn her face to vomit a thin trickle of river water on to the earth, seen her eyes flutter open, Eleanor lay back and stared at the great bowl of soft darkness above her. She felt nauseous herself, and cold gripped and cramped her limbs. Her body was spent, like a discarded object that had served its purpose and now had no meaning or function left. She knew that she should get Merry home before she died of hypothermia, having been saved from drowning, but for a moment she couldn’t bring herself to move, or to stir herself to any kind of action. Particularly not for this sister of hers, who had played her trump card. She thought of the panicky flurry her arrival would cause, all the explanations and recriminations. And she thought of what lay beyond, the wasteland where her hopes had been. Better just to lie on the grass, feeling the tilt of the earth beneath her, and stare at the beautiful impersonal sky and listen to the wind blowing the last of itself out in soft sighs.

  Merry gave a moan and a liquid cough. Eleanor forced herself to sit up. She looked at her sister, illuminated by the moon so that she looked like a figure out of a Gothic illustration, with her hair spread out around her and her torn white nightgown. There was vomit over her chin, and her lips were bloodless. Her eyes flicked open and gazed sightlessly.

  ‘Right,’ said Eleanor. She stood up and collected her sodden skirt and boots, putting them on with difficulty, then considered. A fireman’s lift, that was it: the head and upper body slung down the back. She bent down and seized Merry by her shoulders, pulling her into a sitting position, feeling how the head lolled. She smelt of sick and mud, and her skin was cold and rubbery. But she was breathing in shallow, panting gasps and making odd sounds. Eleanor hauled her half-upright in a strange embrace and struggled to pull her body over her shoulders. She was like a rag doll, but surprisingly heavy for such a slender creature, her arms bouncing around and her legs dragging at the ground. At last Eleanor had her in position. She grasped her upper legs firmly and started to walk home. She could hear Merry groaning and making little exclamations, and hear too her own ragged breathing. Her back ached and pain tore at her arms. She tried to think of nothing – not what had just happened, nor of what was to come, not of Michael, just one step in front of the other over the meadow, through thick brambles and thin, whipping branches, back on to the road. How long ago had she run along here with her hair streaming behind her like a banner? Her throat hurt, her eyes hurt, her head was thick. Her ankle, where she had turned it, throbbed at each step. Merry’s head banged against her back. It must hurt her, too. Good. She imagined letting the body crash to the hard surface and leaving it there.

  At last she was home, standing on the threshold with her burden. She couldn’t open the door and when she tried to call out she could only croak, so she simply kicked hard and repeatedly at the wooden panels until at last Robert was there in front of her in his plaid dressing gown and his bleary, freckled face.

  ‘What—?’ he began before his eyes took in Eleanor, ripped and wild and streaked with river mud, and then the body slung like a sack over her shoulders with the blonde hair streaming down, heard the burbling sound coming from it. He gathered Merry from her, making crooning noises as though she were a baby bird. Eleanor stood just inside the door, dripping muddy water on to the newly washed floor, shivering. She watched as Robert pulled her wet clothes off Merry and heaped blankets on top of her. Then he started to blow the embers back into life, puffing specks of ash over his own face in the process. Now Sally was there too, her hair in curlers, her face greasy with cold cream and her mouth in an almost-comical ‘o’ of dismay. Her hands flew up to her lips. She turned on Eleanor.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Her voice was a terrified hiss. And then: ‘What have you done?’

  The doctor came, irritated to be called out on such a night as this but quickly reassuring. Milk heated with honey and whisky, a hot fire, bricks warmed in the oven and put at Merry’s icy feet, more blankets over her until she was a thick, soft mound with her face emerging from the top, small and pinched. She slept and she woke; she smiled at the three of them. Eleanor went upstairs and took off her skirt and blouse and undergarments, pushing them into the basket; she wouldn’t wear them again. She pulled on the old robe that was left on the hook for her use and went downstairs again. Merry was propped up on her pillow now with a mug of sweet tea. Her face had more colour in it and she seemed almost contented. Perhaps triumphant. She darted smiling glances at Eleanor every now and then.

  ‘What happened?’ Sally asked again.

  ‘Merry went down to the river and fell in,’ Eleanor replied, aware of how nonsensical her words were.

  ‘Went to the river? In the storm? And you went with her?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What? You went down to the river too?’

  Eleanor looked at her mother’s sharp, frightened face and at Robert, silent and bent towards his daughter at a crooked, uncomfortable angle. His ginger hair stood up in little peaks and tufts and he was white around the eyes.

  ‘I woke to find her gone so went to find her,’ she said. ‘I saw her in the river and pulled her out.’ That terrifying tussle that had seemed to go on for half her lifetime but must have lasted just a few minutes. ‘You’ll have to ask Merry why she was in the river in the first place. That’s for her to say, not me.’

  They were talking about Merry as if she wasn’t there – and indeed, she seemed largely absent, with her vague expression and wandering eyes.

  ‘But you suspect—’ began Robert. He lifted his face towards her and she saw how utterly bewildered and frightened he was; all his sprightly optimism had drained away and he looked old and frail.

  ‘She fell,’ interrupted Sally, her voice harsh and loud. ‘Of course she fell. She’s had a lucky escape.’ She turned and tutted comfortingly to Merry. ‘How stupid to go out on a night like this. What were you thinking.’ It wasn’t a question; she certainly didn’t want an answer. She wanted a story: two young women running into the storm for a dare, for a jaunt.

  ‘Stupid,’ said Merry, her voice like a chime. ‘Stupid.’ She gave a laugh, a spiteful, tinkling sound. And silence fell. The three of them stared at her; Eleanor felt that someone had taken her heart and her guts in a great hand and twisted them.

  ‘Silly me,’ Merry said again, in a shriller tone. And she smiled at Eleanor, showing her small white teeth. Eleanor saw the tip of her pink tongue and the dimple that appeared on her cheek. Sally used to say that an angel had put a finger there – Merry had liked that.

  Robert gave his daughter a perplexed stare and patted her where he thought her knee must be under the pile of covers.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked Merry.

  ‘Right as rain,’ she replied, lightly, with another liquid, bubbling giggle, as if the river had entered her.

  Eleanor saw the slight lopsidedness of her sister’s mouth; the strange expression on her face and the way her eyes darted around and then rested on random objects. What if—? She thought and then stopped herself.

  ‘What if?’ asked Peter, after a long pause while Eleanor stared into the twisting flames that threw strange shapes over the room.

  ‘What if there was something wrong with her, of course,’ Eleanor replied matter-of-factly. ‘What if she was brain-damaged in some way.’

  ‘And was there? Was she?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was clear, ringing out into the room. ‘She was never quite the same again. Or no, that’s not right. She was almost too the same, too like a caricature of the old Merry, as if she had been arrested – or drowned – into a version of herself.’

  ‘That’s—’ Peter hesitated. ‘That must have been very hard. For you, I mean.’

  ‘Because it was my
fault, you mean?’

  ‘No. Of course it wasn’t your fault. She did it to herself, and to you – but you already felt guilty.’

  ‘Guilty, oh yes. For the rest of my life. And so angry – with her, with myself. The blight.’ She gave a deep sigh and repeated the word. ‘The blight.’

  ‘But she married?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I just thought – well, she couldn’t have been so bad if someone wanted to marry her.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Or at least, of sound mind.’

  ‘Sound mind? I have no idea what that means. All I know is that she was like a girl for the rest of her life. A sweet, flirtatious girl. In my experience, that’s what lots of men want in the women they marry.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You’ve met her; she’s still like a girl.’

  ‘Yes.’ Peter remembered the old woman smiling up at him and grasping his hands as if they shared a secret together.

  ‘I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I also knew it was. For the rest of my life, not a day went by that I didn’t feel guilt about Merry. And I hated her for that even while I looked after her and did my duty. And she hated me, smilingly, insidiously, implacably. My sister is a good hater. Though neither of us ever said a word after that terrible night about Michael, nor about what she had tried to do. Nor did Sally and Robert. It was unmentionable, unforgettable. It was a secret that flourished in the silence and the dark. I have never told anyone until now.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She made her familiar gesture, palms upwards. ‘I’m not sure it’s a gift I’m giving you.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell Michael?’

  Eleanor stared into the flames, no doubt seeing the past in that indistinct brightness.

  ‘Oh. Michael …’

  23

  Eleanor returned to London the following afternoon, in borrowed clothes and with a sprained ankle. Like Michael, she thought with desolation: now we both limp.

  As she turned into her road she saw him, sitting where he’d sat before, on the low wall across the road from where she lived. He had his back half-turned to her, but she recognized him at once from the shape of his back, the cut of his shabby suit, the way he was smoking, a ghost of smoke rising up in the bright air. She stopped as abruptly as if she’d been struck, and for a few seconds she didn’t move. If he had turned then to see her, she didn’t know what she would have done. But he didn’t turn, only dropped his cigarette on the ground and put one foot on it to extinguish it, then straightened up again, watching for her but in the wrong direction.

  Eleanor ran, hobbling, back from where she had come. When she was out of sight she stopped to catch her breath. She didn’t know what she was feeling, she only knew that she couldn’t meet him. Not now, with the memory of last night crouched behind her like some ghastly hobgoblin and the image of Merry as she’d last seen her – her fixedly smiling face and her thin sing-song voice – hovering in front of her.

  She stood for a while in indecision, then made up her mind and walked to Emma’s flat, her carpet-bag empty of clothes swinging beside her and her sprained ankle throbbing with each step. She welcomed the pain; it prevented her from thinking or feeling.

  Emma opened the door and took in the sorry sight of her with a single, sweeping glance.

  ‘Gin,’ she said, taking Eleanor by the elbow and tugging her into the damp little hall. ‘That’s what you need.’

  They drank the gin, which Emma kept on her window sill and was slightly warm, with water. Eleanor sat on the bed, her back against the wall, and felt the clear slightly greasy liquid wash through her. The room was pleasantly untidy. The sharp contours of the day dissolved. She was blurred and sad now. She looked at the wavering face of her friend.

  ‘Do you want to tell me?’ Emma asked.

  ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Is it Gil?’

  ‘Oh, Gil. No, that’s all over.’

  ‘For good?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eleanor. ‘For good.’ Good seemed the wrong word in the circumstances. She could scarcely remember Gil’s face now, but she could remember, vividly, the shape of his hands and how warm and strong they had felt, clasping hers.

  ‘He was nice,’ said Emma.

  ‘Yes. He was. Is.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘I fell in love with someone else,’ said Eleanor. Her words dropped from her lips and she heard and considered them. How insubstantial they sounded.

  ‘There’s no arguing with that,’ said Emma. ‘What fools we are.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who did you fall in love with?’ She spoke with a mild, unobtrusive curiosity.

  ‘That doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Is it finished with, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was he a rotter?’

  ‘No.’

  Oh God, if she could hold on to him one more time, his stubble against her cheek and his fingers pressing her flesh. For a moment she thought she would howl out loud.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Emma. ‘Our world’s ending anyway; we’re all going to hell now, one way or another. More gin?’

  Eleanor held out her tumbler.

  ‘Can I stay here tonight?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks. And Emma, if I write a letter, do you think we can get someone to deliver it?’

  ‘Where to?’

  Eleanor shrugged and Emma didn’t press her.

  ‘The boy downstairs has a bike and he does errands for me sometimes,’ she said. ‘I can ask him.’

  ‘I don’t have any money on me.’

  ‘You can owe me.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Emma went out for food and Eleanor wrote a letter, the pad of paper on her knees. The gin loosened her normally neat copperplate handwriting and the pen slipped between her fingers in the heat.

  Dear Michael, she wrote, then stopped, crossed out the words, tore the paper from the pad.

  I cannot see you again, she began once more. Merry tried to drown herself in the river. We have done too much damage and I cannot live with myself if we continue. She halted for a few seconds, considering. A headache was starting up, pressing against her eyeballs. You have meant everything to me, she continued. But everything is not enough. I always knew it but did not want to see. You will be angry, I know, and think I am a coward. Perhaps I am. I don’t know anything any more, except I can’t continue. It would destroy me and that would destroy us, everything we’ve been together. But I will always— She stopped. She couldn’t say that she loved him, not while she was telling him goodbye. I will always hold you in my heart.

  Not a minute will go by, she didn’t write, that I will not think of you and want you and miss you.

  She told the boy with the bike to take it to her road in Islington.

  ‘There will be a man waiting across the road from number 57. Give it to him.’

  ‘A man?’

  ‘Young, thin, wearing a suit that’s held up by a tie, maybe smoking a cigarette.’

  ‘Does he have a name?’

  Eleanor hesitated. She was reluctant to identify him even to this boy whom after today she would probably have nothing to do with.

  ‘Michael,’ she said at last in a low voice, as if someone might overhear her.

  ‘And I just give him the letter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do I wait for a reply?’

  ‘No.’

  She stayed with Emma for three days, knowing after that Michael would have gone north for his training and wouldn’t be able to find her. When she returned to her bedsit, there were two letters from him in the hallway – a thick envelope and a slimmer one. She picked them both up and took them outside. An old man with a cigarette in his mouth walked past and she asked him if he had a light. When he produced one she lit the corners of both envelopes and held them till they were burning well. Then she dropped them to the ground and watched u
ntil they turned to ash. It was the only way she knew of keeping to her resolve. Gladys told her, for once tactfully turning away from Eleanor and speaking in a casual tone, that there had been a man outside the house, waiting. But he had eventually gone, she said. There was no need to worry.

  She was as unhappy as she had ever been, but she pushed the feeling deep inside her and would not give it the light and air of thought. She met friends and she worked and read and every day she took long walks through a city that was gradually emptying itself of its young men. She was tight and hard with grief. She didn’t cry; she thought that she would never cry again. She felt that her life was over almost before it had begun. In a single summer.

  Her pupils left clutching bags and wearing their best clothes, their hair washed and combed. Eleanor went to the station. She watched them board the train. Some were sobbing and others looked jubilant. The older ones held the hands of their younger siblings, trying to be more grown-up than they were. They didn’t know where they were going; they waved handkerchiefs out of windows or pressed their faces to the glass, noses squashed and eyes wide. They left her with a letter saying goodbye that Peter found more than seventy-five years later. Eleanor signed up for the Women’s Voluntary Services. She wanted to be part of history, swimming in its currents. She was alone, without Michael and without Gil, without her family.

  Winter arrived, hard and terrible; one of the coldest winters anyone could remember. She didn’t go home; she thought perhaps she didn’t have a home any more and she didn’t mind.

  At the beginning of March, coming back to her bedsit in the twilight, with damp wind blowing against her face, she saw him and for a moment she thought it must be a waking dream: a shifting, unreliable glimpse of the face she had tried not to picture and had come to believe she would never see again. She stopped. She couldn’t work out what she was feeling. Terror perhaps, or was it joy? Something frozen melting and something hard crumbling, like the coming of spring at last after a long winter. He was waiting, as he had waited so many times before, opposite her rooms. He was no longer in his thin shabby suit, but wore a uniform. As she drew closer, she could see that his soft hair was cropped so that she could almost make out the scalp beneath. And as she approached him and they stood face to face, she noticed that he had a broken blood vessel in one eye. She put her hand to her heart as if to prevent its painful beating.