The Twilight Hour

by Nicci Gerrard

  ‘Thank you,’ she said instead. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘We women should help each other.’

  ‘You’re right. We should.’

  Gladys got up and gave Eleanor one of her friendly nudges.

  ‘You come and find me if you want something.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Let me know how you get on!’ As if it were a job interview or a date.

  ‘I will.’

  It was the third chemist she went to. By now she was stiff with a kind of furious embarrassment. She lurked among the shelves until there were no other customers, sure as she did so that they all knew anyway. It was written all over her: in her breasts and belly and skin. She hated the middle-aged man behind the counter and the way he seemed to eye her with a mixture of contempt and curiosity. She caught him looking at her ringless fingers and her stomach and he hardly bothered to look away. His arch politeness thinly disguised his distaste, and there was something else in his voice and his eyes as well – lechery perhaps? She was a fallen woman. She had given in to her desires, or someone else’s. A man’s hands had travelled over her body; he had been inside her. She imagined swiping violently at the glass bottles neatly lined up, looking so decorative, knocking them to the ground with a shattering of glass, coloured pills rolling on to the floor.

  He gave her a bottle and instructions as to dosage. He called her ‘Madam’ and wished her a return to her health as if he were mocking her. Or perhaps, she thought later, he was quite sincere but her paranoia poisoned everything.

  She hadn’t known how ill she would feel. After the first day, she simply lay in bed with the curtains closed and the sheet pulled over her, shivering and appalled. Her body was like an alien object. Horrible things were happening to it; strange obscene sensations. Her skin crawled and pain uncurled and blossomed in her guts. There was a dull, heavy ache in her lower back and whichever position she lay in, she couldn’t find a place of comfort. She drank tumbler after tumbler of water, but remained thirsty, her mouth parched and tasting of metal. Was this what was meant to happen? Did this mean it was working? She had no idea. She was violently sick and worried that she had vomited up the medicine as well. She had diarrhoea too. She had turned to foul liquid. Everything was spilling out of her except the thing itself. No blood, except for a few spots after the third day.

  Gladys brought her chicken soup and sat by her to make sure she swallowed it down. She tried. It tasted of rubbish. There was nothing that wasn’t polluted. She remembered Michael, the way he had been those last days, but the memory was defiled. He had died and left his life inside her, and now she felt like a corpse because of it.

  It wasn’t working. She had one pill left and nothing was happening. She was washed up and grey and empty of everything except the baby. The foetus. Gladys had told her she must never call it a baby; that was to make it alive in her imagination. The foetus then, curled up inside her. She thought she had felt it move – like a feather tickling at her. Sinister little feather. She looked at the pair of knitting needles on the top of her chest, pushed into a ball of blue wool with a few inches of some garment strung along one of them. She had been going to knit Michael a scarf; that’s what women did, they sat at home knitting for their men at the front. She picked up the free needle and looked at it, running her fingers along its edge to the point. But she had read that’s what desperate women did: heated a thin metal knitting needle and pushed it deep inside, although how did the hand not tremble, slip? She twisted her face at the thought of it. She pictured squatting on the floor, legs apart, and sinking her body down so that the needle pierced her, like a monstrous inversion of the act of love. Could she do that? She put down the needle. Nothing could make her slide a thin hot blade in between her legs.

  The war seemed far off. She heard of Dunkirk on the wireless, and in the street outside her window everyone was talking about it. Gladys was full of it when she came to check on her. A flotilla of boats bobbing on the sea. It was like a fairy tale of rescue; it didn’t seem real. People had gas masks, ration books; every evening they put up their blackout curtains. Trains full of baby-faced men in uniforms were pulling out from stations. Men were dying in their thousands, bombs dropping, buildings toppling, but her world was shrinking to this room, this bed, this toxic, swollen body.

  She dreamt she was swimming. That was the whole of her dream: naked and swimming all alone across an expanse of clear water, seeing her limbs white and strong beneath her. But she knew that she was lithe and free and she woke with a feeling of gladness in her throat that gradually slipped from her as she remembered.

  It hadn’t worked. She was still pregnant. With child, that was how the Bible put it. Yet this morning, now that all the pills were done with and the poisoning over, she felt better, stronger. She got out of her bed, wobbling as she stood up, the room tipping. She took a bath and washed her hair for the first time in more than a week. The water was cold. She put on clean, loose-fitting clothes and tied her hair back in a single thick plait. She was no longer disgusted by her body, although it felt as if it belonged to someone else entirely. When she looked at herself in the mirror, her face shocked her: it looked older, thinner, with a greyish tinge, as if her skin were slightly dirty. There was a cold sore on the side of her mouth. No one would call her beautiful now, but she couldn’t care less about that. She pulled open the curtains to let the summer day into her sour-smelling room. A lilt of gladness caught at her. She put her hand against her belly and kept it there. She had a sudden and ludicrous picture of herself living in a little cottage in the country, pegging sheets out on the line and a baby in a basket beside her. A stupid fantasy from a child’s picture book of motherhood, all about clean living and simple virtue: an escape from the noisy, crowded, soiled world of London, where people of all ages and colours and creeds rubbed against each other and the gas lamps chased the night away. But what was she going to do?

  She went downstairs slowly, gripping the banisters, still weak and slightly dizzy, and out of the front door. She hadn’t eaten a proper meal for many days and now she made her way along the street like a convalescent. Familiar things seemed as new as when she had arrived in London for the first time with her cardboard suitcase, her ill-cut fringe and her bulky black shoes. She went to her usual café. It was emptier than normal. She took her seat by the window and asked for a pot of tea and a toasted fruit bun with butter, and didn’t mind that she was spending money she should be saving up. She ate it very slowly, tearing off tiny mouthfuls. She almost cried at the goodness of it, and of the hot tea trickling down her parched throat.

  She sat there for a long time, while the light faded and a moon appeared above the chimneys, shining faintly through the foggy darkness. She felt quite placid now. She would let the baby grow inside her; she would see what happened. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to continue teaching afterwards. They didn’t allow married women to be teachers, let alone unmarried mothers.

  She ordered herself a poached egg and another cup of tea so that she didn’t have to leave this cosy space. And at last, sitting looking out on to the streets with people flowing past, she let herself think of Michael. She pictured his dear face – the secret face no one knew but her. She let herself remember him as he promised her that he would soon return. And she pledged to herself that however long she lived and whatever happened along the way, she wouldn’t forget him. She would keep him alive in her memory long after everyone else had forgotten him: his curiosity, his quickness, his loneliness, his anger, the terrible strength of his hope, the way he would read a book as if he were devouring it; the way he laid his love at her feet; the way he had chosen her. Her lost love, her dearest heart, with his limp and his shabby clothes and his pale torso and his strong arms that would never, not ever, hold her again. His eyes that would never gaze into hers again, and the unnerving way that he looked at her as she took off her clothes, making her doubly naked, as if her soul were stripped. The way that he said her name, called her
Nellie. No one would call her Nellie again. No one would ever make her lose herself again, not like that. How she would miss him, down the corridor of years. How she would be sad for him, that he had missed life. She would return to being Eleanor. Even as a single mother with the world judging her – she instinctively put her hand on her belly – she would be Eleanor. Self-possessed, in control, defended against the world and all its gifts and curses; nobody would know her secret life.

  She drank her tea and ate the egg, mopping it up with white bread. She would think of what she should do tomorrow. Tonight, she would sleep and perhaps she would dream of him. Perhaps she would even be able to cry at last, for him and for herself.

  But when she finally returned to her bedsit, Gladys met her in the hall. Her little face was alight with a scared kind of glee.

  ‘Someone’s here for you,’ she whispered, jerking her head upwards towards Eleanor’s room. ‘He came an hour ago and wouldn’t leave.’

  For a moment, Eleanor thought that she meant Michael and she felt quite giddy, as if a world had opened up inside her and underneath her and there was no firm ground anywhere. She put a hand against the wall to steady herself. Gladys saw her expression.

  ‘Oh no dear,’ she said. ‘It’s your Dr Lee.’

  ‘Gil.’

  ‘I said I didn’t know when you’d be back but he insisted on waiting for you. He said it was important. You left your door unlocked so I let him in. My room isn’t really fit for visitors. Is it all right?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Eleanor replied dully. The sudden elation had drained away, swilling through her heart and then running out of it, leaving her feeling dusty and drab. ‘I’ll go up.’

  ‘That medicine that made you so badly—’ Gladys hesitated.

  ‘It hasn’t worked.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘But I feel well again.’

  ‘I suppose that’s something,’ Gladys said doubtfully.

  ‘Yes.’

  She mounted the stairs. The last time she had seen Gil, he had been walking with that other woman, who was pretty and who gazed up at his face with the kind of love he deserved. The last time she had met him, she had danced with him and then, at the end of the evening, told him it was over. She remembered his face under the umbrella he held over them both, blank and heavy with disbelief.

  She hesitated in front of her door and then pushed at it. He was sitting at the small table by the window and stood up as she entered, his face serious but not grim. He had lost a bit of weight and looked older. His untidy hair had been cut short. He wasn’t in uniform but he looked like a soldier on leave. All young men looked like soldiers on leave nowadays.

  ‘Hello Gil.’ She went forward and gave him her hand as though she were some lady out of a Victorian novel. He took it and pressed it, then let it go.

  ‘Eleanor,’ he said.

  His eyes were on her and she felt sharply conscious of the change that he was seeing in her. Her face was thinner and her figure fuller. Her skin had lost its radiance. She was no longer the woman he had fallen for.

  ‘You’ve been ill,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.

  She nodded and turned away. Her bed was unmade; there was a faint smell of illness in the room.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh.’ She made a gesture of indifference. ‘Men are dying all over Europe. I’ve just been a bit unwell.’ She turned towards him again. ‘Why have you come, Gil?’

  ‘I’ve come to ask you something.’ But he paused.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I hope you won’t feel I’m—’ He put his hand up to his face. ‘I know you told me that it was over.’

  ‘Gil—’

  ‘Perhaps I should have argued, tried to hold on to you. But that’s not my way. I took what you had said and tried to get on with my life. I did get on with my life. I told myself that it was the end. But now, now I’ve come to ask you if you will not change your mind. Will you please marry me, Eleanor?’

  ‘Why?’ she said, staring at him almost aghast. ‘Why are you asking?’

  ‘Because I love you, and—’

  ‘No! Why are you asking me now? Why are you here?’

  ‘I thought perhaps things might have changed for you.’

  ‘Changed. You need to say the words out loud, Gil.’

  ‘I thought perhaps I could help you.’

  ‘You saw me the other day, in the street.’

  He nodded. ‘I did see you.’

  ‘And you realised I was in trouble.’

  ‘I thought you might be.’

  ‘How?’ She was horrified. ‘How can anyone know?’

  ‘I don’t know. It came on me in a flash: the way you looked. Your shape ever so slightly changed.’ His cheeks flushed. ‘And you had your hand laid on your stomach, the way expecting women do.’

  ‘Of course, you’re the doctor.’ She nodded. ‘So you’ve come here to do the gentlemanly thing – although it’s not you who has got me into trouble.’

  ‘I’ve come here because it would make me very happy if you would consent to be my wife.’

  He was talking in a jarringly old-fashioned way. Shyness made him stiff and awkward.

  ‘You were with another woman that day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She looked nice.’

  ‘She is very nice.’ He considered for a moment. ‘Her name is Annie and she is a nurse.’

  ‘And she also looked as though she liked you. You looked happy with her.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘And yet you’re here asking me to marry you because you think I need your help. I don’t want your charity, Gil.’

  He sat down suddenly on her unmade bed, the bed they had lain in together once. He had deep eyes and his hands had felt inside bodies. Eleanor instinctively put her own hand against her stomach, then just as quickly removed it. Her cheeks were burning with shame.

  ‘The truth is,’ Gil said, speaking now in the quiet and simple way she was familiar with. ‘The truth is, Eleanor, that after you left me I was in a bad way. I don’t know if others saw it, but it was an effort for me to get through each day adequately. The zest was gone from everything. I was in the shadow. It lasted a long time, this feeling of dreariness and absence. I worked, I ate and drank, I slept, I saw people, I played several games of tennis and of course war doesn’t allow you to be too turned in on yourself, even those of us whose duty lies here at home. And then I met Annie, who is so sunny and optimistic. I thought I had survived you, until I saw you in the street, forlorn and alone, and I realized that I was still in love with you after all.’

  ‘Poor Annie.’

  ‘That’s as may be. It hadn’t gone far between her and me. We were just in those early days. Not like with us. I don’t give myself easily, Eleanor.’

  ‘I know.’ She wanted to say that neither did she, but stopped herself.

  ‘So that’s why I’ve come, because I want to marry you. I know you’re in trouble, but that’s not why I want to marry you – that’s why I think you might agree to marry me.’

  ‘I’m in love with another man,’ she said.

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘How do you know I’m not going to marry him?’

  ‘Are you?’

  Eleanor looked out of the window. Her eyes stung with tears.

  ‘He’s dead,’ she said, adding, ‘but I still love him.’

  ‘And you are carrying his child.’

  ‘Yes. In spite of all my best efforts.’

  ‘Merry’s young man.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know until this moment, but I saw the way it was between you at that picnic.’

  ‘You never said you suspected. Even at the end.’

  ‘What would I have said? I trusted you.’ He paused, clenching and unclenching his hands. ‘I believed it was the only way I could keep you: by trusting you, by waiting for your feelings to return to me. I thought your passion for this other person wou
ld die down again and I would still be there.’

  ‘Poor Gil. I felt that too, for a while. I tried to make that true. But you see, you were wrong to trust me. I betrayed you.’

  ‘You followed your heart. I just wish it had led you to me, not him.’

  ‘Why are you being so dreadfully forgiving? It’s – it’s horrible. The better you behave, the more I become the abject sinner. Don’t you see that it’s impossible, Gil. It would be like that always – you forgiving me, and me, unworthy, being forgiven by you.’ She grimaced. ‘Impossible!’

  ‘No!’ He stood up in agitation. For a moment he didn’t look like himself, but a man Eleanor didn’t know yet: the colour was up in his cheeks, his fists were clenched and his eyes glowed. ‘I’m not like that. If you accepted me, I would always be grateful that you gave me a second chance. That in spite of everything, we had endured this and come through. I could make you happy, I know I could. It would be my life’s work.’

  ‘Oh, Gil. You’re quite mad. But the fact of the matter is that I’m not in love with you. I’m in love with him. With a dead man.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Which means that however much trouble I’m in, I can’t marry you.’

  ‘I’ve thought it all through. We could marry at once, before you begin to properly show – show to the outside world, I mean. And then—’ He faltered momentarily. ‘Then we live together as friends. I won’t ask you for anything you don’t want to give me.’

  ‘You mean, no sex?’

  ‘Until – or unless – you wanted it.’

  ‘You’d end up hating me.’

  ‘Never that.’

  ‘Yes. You’d think of her – Annie – who loved you, looked up at you. And you’d curse me, and you’d curse him, too.’

  ‘You can say his name, you know.’

  ‘Michael,’ she said. ‘His name was Michael.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Of course. But isn’t it odd that you are the only person I can speak to about him? The one person with whom out of common kindness and decency I should remain silent.’

  ‘You can if you want,’ he said. ‘If it helps you.’