Half Light

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Who’s this Lizzie? Does she do china? I need a good fixer. Anyone got a drink?’

  The conversation moved on: the fortunes of the dying afternoon drained away; Francis forgot what purpose to it there had ever been. The mention of Elisabeth made for no more than an uncomfortable sensation under the skin: the company was better than no company at all in the search for affordable but lovable paintings which had suddenly become such a sterile pursuit. How characterless I am, Francis thought, drinking from a plastic glass, to be so easily diverted. After one bottle of wine, shared but swift to act, he was suddenly charmed in turn by what he had first thought to be unsuitable, shallow, callous company, too feckless to understand law and retribution. By ten o’clock in the evening all of them blossomed into bonhomie: Annie’s pale skin and pink-shadowed eyes glowed like a siren’s. She had taken them home, fed them together with the other four who arrived clanking with cheap bottles of wine far worse than those Francis chose to provide, again to impress, on the way back to Annie’s place. Wine was his passport to an otherwise free evening, the same credentials waved by many at Annie’s door. And when they staggered home, Francis did not. He seemed to have recovered his taste for thin women and lost his desire for an orderly life.

  He could not recall quite when it was the decision was made, the die cast. Maybe it began when she kept pushing past his chair on her way to and from the food she was preparing with efficient ease, ruffling his hair and saying ‘All right? Comfortable?’ with the same possessive condescension she might have used to a child. She had somehow annexed him as her own for the evening, but could not bring herself to show him courtesy in front of her friends, in case the friends did not like him or found him a snob. But they reacted in the opposite way: opened to him, found him delightful (as she knew, with increasing resentment, they would tell her tomorrow). They hung on his words, actually asked his opinions as if he were a kind of domesticated god, which was the way he looked – taller, blonder, cleaner than they, who spent their days wilting behind spotlights and smoking in auctions. It is not fair, Annie was fuming, without analysing what was not fair. He was a hit, but she might have liked him better if he had looked and acted uglier and she could have protected him. In her own small home, he made her selfconscious and himself conspicuous: and every hard-bitten, insecure bone in her resented his effortless ability to attract. She was driven to continue all evening in the way she had begun. Dispensing food and drink with one hand, sneering at him simultaneously. No one else noticed except the victim. Annie often played games.

  ‘Are you sure that’s OK for you? Only I know you’re used to something better …

  In truth he ate little and drank too much. The hand which extended his glass for the offered refill of brandy was still steady, Annie’s deliberately rocky, so the liquid spilled on the beige gaberdine of his conventionally expensive trousers. ‘Oops, sorry,’ she murmured, offering as the only antidote a truly filthy dish cloth, which he refused.

  ‘I like my garments battle-scarred,’ he said, pretending to laugh. ‘You may have to take them off,’ someone remarked, and it might have been then the die was cast.

  Everyone left. They all expected him to stay. Not that he was in much condition to move. He went instead into Annie’s tiny, cluttered bathroom, full of frills and perfumes, feeling in himself a kind of fury. Oh yes, he had noticed the baiting. He relieved himself, looking at an angry face in a smeared mirror, came back belligerent.

  ‘Time you were home, sweetie,’ said Annie. ‘You’ll be needing your beauty sleep.’

  She was barefoot. The sweater had been abandoned for a T-shirt which clung over her small bosom, and her angular hips seemed tilted towards him as she sprawled on her sofa among the detritus of her bohemian entertaining. He sat beside her heavily.

  ‘Annie, you’ve been very kind, very generous, but why the hell have you been such a bitch?’

  ‘Who the fuck do you think you’re calling a bitch?’

  ‘The person who called Elisabeth a slut.’

  She launched herself at him in an anger which surprised them both, an animal growl in her throat and her fists raised. These he seized and pressed her back against the cushions. She made as if to spit, flailed her legs in the air in an effort to kick, but his fingers were bruising her wrists and his mouth was over hers which somehow opened in a response which was not a scream. When he let go of her hands, she clawed at his back, still subsumed in a violent kissing which was more the grinding of gums and teeth. The shirt ripped, the dampness of his brandy-soaked trousers pressed into her thigh and the smell of them rose into her nostrils. Then his hands were full of her sticky, spiky hair, while hers, satisfied with the tearing sound they had made, with no conscience for the scratches, were in his thick, glossy mane, and the kiss became a kiss. Hands transferred themselves, without words, the whole set of movements becoming less dangerous, more gentle but still aggressive. Finally she turned her head from his far too beautiful, finely chiselled mouth. Each stared into the black pupils of the other, neither in possession of themselves.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Don’t go. But not here. I’ve got a bloody bed …’

  Towards which they staggered, still locked in case the other might somehow get away. Fell without any more of the undressing which had taken place like a kind of involuntary shedding in transit. His mouth clamped on one of her nipples while she squirmed out of the leggings, a feat of gymnastics. She felt the smoothness of his buttocks, he the tinyness of hers in a cursory exploration of splayed fingers, making space for himself, without affection. A quick and violent coupling, audible with cries and the slapping of flesh on flesh, diminishing into little moist sounds. He was semi-conscious at her breast, slipping into sleep. She moved him then, dog-tired but wakeful, went into the bathroom he had vacated so recently. Saw in the same smeared mirror her own pinched face, with her dusty black T-shirt still round her neck like a collar.

  To sleep, then, there was nothing else. She knew she had not been raped and detested an empty bed: she was pragmatic, not entirely displeased with herself, despite his lying there, angled so he took all the room, like a log. Annie shoved him, positioned him so her back was warmed by his chest and her neck fanned by his breathing.

  Two o’clock: two slender bodies in search of something, each bringing to the other nothing more than the availability of flesh. Annie took no thought for their motives, only thought of the warmth.

  Until she heard him calling names in his sleep. Elisabeth, Elisabeth, a puzzled, interrogatory murmur in between deep, broken breathing. She squirmed not with resentment, not with guilt, which was an emotion quite foreign to her life, except for this sudden sensation of feeling cold. Cold, like Elisabeth’s flat had seemed on her own brief visits, even in summer. The cold of no money and her own dignified choice of needing so few friends. But not real cold, simply skimpy as far as home comforts were concerned, an interesting, colourful place, not built for entertaining and not built to house a man. Post-coital drowsiness brought dreaming into mind a series of discordant images, forgotten obligations, stray thoughts like yowling cats sent to torment. Odd sensations of frost and sudden surges of heat, all conscience, all suppressed thought, all memories, resting their hideous heads on her bosom, as Francis had deposited his. She could have killed him, sleeping thus. Heat took over.

  ‘Elisabeth,’ he said quite distinctly, then murmurings which were entirely confused and only served, not to reassure, but to transfix the clarity of her name as he had spoken it. Elisabeth, you bitch. Elisabeth, the stranger in Annie’s soft bed, creator of another stream of thought to add to the effluxion of others already out of control. If Annie were like Elisabeth, merely a name spoken in the night but disappeared in the day, a person who had become after so short a time no more than an inconvenient memory, who would look for her? If all those who knocked at Annie’s door should find that door closed more than once, how often would they bother to return? Would they turn their world upside down in troubling to fin
d her? Annie, trying desperately to think of something else while the smell of sex and brandy was still in her mouth and her nose, her dead mascara still in her eyes, doubted it. She lay, rigid and chilled in her own home, unable to hug this virtual stranger, remembering how it was they had come to be here. Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody: that was why, for both of them. That and a kind of revenge for what they both were and where they belonged. They would not like each other in the morning.

  ‘Don’t wash up,’ said Elisabeth gently. ‘I mean, just don’t. For God’s sake, I can do it, I’d have done it all along but I thought Maria did it. You still look grey. I thought you were better earlier, but I don’t think you are. All that walking. I’m sorry, I’ve been a bit insensitive, haven’t I? It’s the brandy you give me in the evening. I simply stagger off and sleep. I never see what you do.’

  ‘Grey? Who said I was grey? Only my hair. And I like to walk. The park was fun, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’ He turned his overlarge head in her direction in a kind of fierce interrogation. In that moment, as he straightened himself in his chair, forever wearing those smoked glasses, he looked as he had looked in the restaurant at lunch, in that pink and green restaurant, an occasion managed only by strength of will, while the pity in her had arrived in waves along with the courses, all militating against appetite. He ate like a machine, fussily, in small quantities, a deliberate, choosily greedy feeding and, throughout it all, when he remembered, as he did most of the time, to sit very upright, he looked like a pigeon. He still looked like a pigeon. Or a person pretending not to be weak, a small boy pretending to be strong brushing off help but needing an escort home. Elisabeth had re-entered this zone of light, space, occupation and acceptance out of concern for him: he had not been fit to climb all those stairs alone, adamantly refused the lift: he said it was unreliable and unnecessary but he might have died halfway. She knew this high flat was no longer the place of serenity she had first found, but she had come back with him all the same. Politeness, kindness, weakness, and above all pity, were all stronger forces than that desire for survival which had often eluded her.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘The park was fun. We must do it again. And you really must go to bed. I’m not sure the brandy was a good idea.’

  ‘But it’s early, for a girl like you. How old are you, anyway? About thirty?’

  You know very well, she thought: you are not so unobservant, but she simply laughed.

  ‘About that. Not too young for early nights. I’ve got work to do in the morning.’ He cleared his throat, rose to his feet.

  ‘Elisabeth?’

  ‘Yes?’

  He was moving out of the room, leaving her dominion over the fire, talking over his shoulder.

  ‘I do care for you, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  No doors slammed in his progress to rest. Usually, she departed first, to her self-contained suite on the other side of the hall, where the massive doors would close behind her without sound. Being left alone in front of the fire, charged with tidying the room and putting away dishes, jobs he always reserved for himself as a fussy, solicitous host, seemed awkward and intrusive. It should have made her feel more at home, like the relative freedoms of the day, but created the opposite effect, as if he had just given her some kind of authority and responsibility she wanted to resist. Rigid formality had been the hallmark of this liaison so far, a mark of value. In the confines of her own large bedroom, she did not mind: there was everything she wanted, books, warmth and dreams. The night-time silence of the place oppressed her: she was alive to any sound which might disturb it, full of the sleeplessness which was not energy but a quiet distress. Lying down fully clothed, reluctant to wash and render herself naked, she remained immobile on her bed for two long hours, attempting to conjure up those colours which always comforted, the images of what her work would look like at the end, forming a plan for tomorrow’s labours, rationalizing nameless fears, listening for him.

  She did not know what time it was when she heard him, only recognized a time of night when she invariably woke, her sleep interrupted, she supposed, by the brandy which had become such a ritual of luxury. Thomas was on the move: she knew it before she heard it from her supine position in the dark. The door to her room, almost opposite the kitchen, was framed in light from the hall. There was a faint clicking sound, Butler’s feet on the floor of the kitchen tapping out a subdued enthusiasm for the great outdoors, which was quickly quietened by the master with a shushing sound, no words either spoken or necessary. Then the sound of the hall cupboard opening, then the front door, sounds followed by a return for something forgotten, Butler’s lead, she guessed, left in a drawer which was opened now, then closed, slowly. Elisabeth cursed herself for her own immobility, slipped off the bed and moved towards the frame of light. She opened her door while those wordless sounds from the kitchen masked her movements. In time to see his back shuffling towards the front door, ushering the dog before him, pressing the buttons to activate the lock. Thomas’s working hand reached out to cancel the light, while under his right arm she saw for one split second a dark object, tipped with silver, flashing on the eye like a blade sticking out behind him before the door was closed and the only remaining light was a dim glow from the kitchen window. There was no sound at all now. Butler was obediently still on the other side of the prison door as she heard it close.

  She waited for a full minute, breathing deeply and counting the seconds to keep herself still, one, two, three, four, twenty, thirty, fifty, go, unable to keep the numbers continuous, skipping and going back like someone half numerate. Then she opened her door fully with ostentatious noise, stepped into the hall, turned on the light again, looked first in the cupboard to find her own coat hanging alone above the box full of sticks, dust-free. There was the impulse to go, immediately, to make up for having returned willingly that afternoon, like a credulous fool moved by pity she was no longer sure was appropriate, but she knew, before she hung on to the polished brass handle, that the front door would be locked, mocking her impotence. Loneliness, the splendid isolation she had craved for most of her life, was suddenly no longer an end in itself. I came back with him willingly. She repeated this like a litany. It was shameful. His will overbore my pathetic pretence of having a will at all, and he is keeping me a prisoner. And I did not run, I came back. Maybe with the man who haunted me, that man with a stick. No. Nothing could be as cruel.

  Elisabeth turned on the carpet, a graceless pirouette of indecision. Telephone, telephone, she repeated to herself. Find someone and remind them where you are, just in case. In case of what, and who to tell? There was nothing to tell which had not been written in a letter, but it was the voice she needed. Since she had scaled down her acquaintance to skeleton levels, she could only think of Francis. Well, Francis then, Annie perhaps but, Francis first, because she loved Francis. There had been a telephone in the living room: she remembered it from the first night, not seen since, nothing now but the connection point in the wall behind one of the wing chairs. She moved down the hall, timid but bold. Look, she was telling herself, he is only taking the dog for fresh air. Butler may be an incontinent beast; he may do this every night without my knowing, why should I? Locking me in is only the precaution of a man who locks the door each time he goes out himself. Thomas would have to traverse all those stairs back and forth first since he refused the lift: there was time to hunt for the telephone which must exist. His room, she supposed, banging down the long hall, opening the door to what she knew was his lair. A lair within a castle. Or, simply, one more large room.

  The window, of the same proportions as a porthole, was wide open, so the sharp breeze struck her first. Then the light showed up cream walls covered in nothing, with the bareness of an institution. There was a set of weights, signs of a regime of rigorous exercise: no wonder his flesh was as hard as bone. One wall was lined with books; there were books by the side of his bed. He had plenty to occupy him here. Looking as she moved, Elisabeth fo
und the telephone by the bed, held her breath as she dialled Francis’s number which had been implanted in her memory ever since she had first written it down. She was still counting: twenty, thirty, fifty.

  There was no answer. No answer despite her praying into the receiver, then lifting it away from her ear, then replacing it and dialling again. There never had been an answer from anyone whenever she had been in need. The greater the need the more obdurate the silence, she had always found and had thus almost forgotten how to ask. She might have known.

  Elisabeth sank on to the edge of Thomas’s large bed, rose again sharply, aware of the warmth his figure had imparted to the cheap coverlet thrown over it. A very hard bed, no luxuries in this room, no silk or satin or flounces, no sign of expense, but more like a cell equipped with necessities, nothing more. A bed, a chair, a chest of drawers, stacks of canvases against the wall. Against her will, Elisabeth’s mind went back to these, since paintings even now, could not lose that power to distract. Besides, their presence comforted her. A man who kept paintings stored in his room could not be a threat, could only be the harmless, half-disabled patron he seemed to be, a benign, if eccentric collector of beauty. Elisabeth looked closer, saw the first painting in the first stack.

  An interior with chairs. Like the room in which she worked here, also like the other, north-facing room in which they sat, ate, drank. Like the picture Annie had given her to restore so many months ago; the one she had been reluctant to return, kept so long that Annie had forgotten it.

  Not similar to that painting, the same. Next to it there lay a duster and a piece of stained bandage. Thomas had not quite tidied up. She fled from the room down the corridor, glanced into the open door of the studio. The rosary beads were still on the easel, swinging in some hidden breeze as she passed. Automatically, she crossed herself, ran into her own room, lay down, waited for the light of sanity and dawn.