by Nina Dreyer
‘Oh don’t worry,’ said Hettie, ‘I see that look on your face, I know what you’re thinking. But my mother didn’t force me to marry Brock,’ she nodded in the direction of the house again, ‘I did that to myself. He seemed kind then. Dependable. Solid as the rock upon which the church is built and all that. And I’d been alone for two years, it’s a long time when you’re young. And you know, we all thought there might not be any men left to marry at all.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘But sometimes,’ she drew up her shoulders, ‘one does wonder, you know. What it would have been like, with Paulie.’ She began to cry, softly.
Marion lowered her head and watched the snowflakes melt on the cold stone balustrade.
She considered telling Hettie what the dead boy wanted, how he seemed to have no solid memories other than his need for her, how he had anchored his splintered shade to her and wished her to die in her sleep. But that would be unkind. Very unkind.
‘My mother said that now, I’d have a beautiful house,’ Hettie glared at the bare brick facade, shrouded in cold winds, ‘but this is nothing but another garrison. With guards in the garden and staff officers pounding around in the parlours. Do you know, I still find bits left over by the previous happy lady of this house? It’s true. Heaps of things. Pens, hair clips, a blue silk camisole. Left scattered here and there when her husband got another posting.’ She shivered. ‘It’s like the place is haunted, because she left in such a hurry. And why wouldn’t she?’
Marion stood silently by her side for a moment, looking away. ‘You have your husband with you, at least. You’re not alone in this strange place.’
‘Oh yes, and hurrah for that,’ Hettie’s eyes spilled over again, and she swept her cheek with her fingers. ‘He doesn’t even have the courtesy to feign jealousy. That might at least flatter me. Oh no. All he has for me are those petty little jibes.’
Marion nodded. ‘He was frightened by it, I think. Men like to hide their fear behind bluster. And military men often make difficult husbands. Very difficult.’ It felt like a betrayal, to share something like that with an English woman, with any woman in fact. Marion sighed and scratched her wrist. It was true, after all.
‘And what would you know about that?’ Hettie pursed her lips. ‘You’re not married, and what are you? My age? You’re not one of those ones, are you?’
Marion let the sting pass. It was often so with people, just after a painful sitting. Spite and spit sometimes followed the tears, and wine never helped.
‘I’m sorry. God.’ Hettie rubbed her forehead, further dislodging the glittering headband. ‘Beastly of me. Have you got any cigarettes on you? I’m frightfully sorry.’
Marion dug into a pocket and took out a pack and a crumpled book of matches. Cheap, flimsy things. She didn’t smoke, but she always carried a pack with her when she went into strange places and unfamiliar houses. It was a habit she’d picked up during the war. Tobacco could buy a moment’s friendly intimacy, a helpful word. She plucked out a cigarette for Hettie and lit a match for her, cupping the flame carefully in the gusts of wet wind.
‘Ta,’ Hettie exhaled smoke, ‘you must think I’m a horrid hostess. A right Hun of a hostess.’ She smiled wryly. Tear streaks gleamed in her dimples.
‘Oh, I’ve seen far worse, Mrs. Brockhurst.’ Marion smiled cautiously, feeling the atmosphere between them like a wanderer on a frozen lake, one half-step at a time. ‘Once, a woman wanted to imprison me in her back parlour so I could help her contact her lost son every day and every night. Another time, a young man tried to sue me in court because his dead uncle had produced an unfavourable answer to his query about a testament during a seance.’
‘God,’ said Hettie, ‘God. How ghastly. Call me Hettie.’ She flicked ash onto the stone balustrade. ‘It’s actually Henrietta, but I detest the name. So frilly. Like a profusion of doilies, everywhere, like my mother used to have. And so clearly a we desperately wanted a Henry, actually sort of name, don’t you think?’
Marion smiled. ‘Call me Marion,’ she said.
Hettie looked at her, teetering in between laughing and crying. Suddenly, she threw her arms around Marion and hugged her, hard. Marion tensed. Hettie’s breath smelled of wine and tobacco, her hair of expensive bath oils.
‘God,’ said Hettie, clinging to her, ‘I haven’t talked to anyone properly for ages and ages and ages. We’ll be friends, won’t we? Yes, I feel it already, right down to my toes.’
Marion patted her back a little. She felt like crying herself, for this woman trapped in a cold house full of soldiers and ugliness, and for herself, a guest in such a house, a guest in such a city.
Hettie drew back, smiling. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and squeezed Marion’s upper arm warmly. ‘And who knows? Maybe you won’t be a little Miss for much longer now, eh? You seemed to have caught John’s eye. Quite the catch, I say, well done, I can imagine armies of women having tried for years.’
Marion lowered her head and suppressed a smile.
‘We should go back in.’ Hettie sighed.
Marion nodded.
‘Oh, and Marion?’ Hettie grinned and looked up, fluttering her eyelashes as she tried to sweep the mascara streaks away. ‘You don’t actually think that anyone seriously believes that you’re from Belgium, do you? Vith ze accent zat you haff? You know, we’re all educated people. Did you think you could hide here?’
Marion’s gut dropped into a sea of churning ice. Her heart skipped a beat, then another.
‘Honestly, darling,’ Hettie took Marion’s limp arm and dragged her along to the door, ‘I don’t know why you bother. Do you know what?’
‘No.’ Marion looked straight ahead, her heart pounding.
‘They don’t give a toss.’ Hettie opened the door. ‘They really don’t. I mean, you’re doing it for the benefit of the menfolk, I imagine? To spare their feelings from having to confront the fact that they are taking supper with the vanquished enemy, the barbaric Hun? Don’t bother. We’re only the ladies. More like backdrop. They wouldn’t think to hate you anymore than they’d think to hate a German chair. Or a German pipe. Trust me.’ She squeezed Marion’s hand. ‘But you and I shall be fast friends. Shan’t we?’
Marion nodded stiffly.
Chapter Seventeen
An hour later, Marion sat clinging to the seat of a rattling old hackney coach, shielding her face from the gusts of sleet and rain. She felt raw, as if she had no skin, flayed by Hettie’s words, by the dead soldier-lover coming back when he shouldn’t be, by her own poisoned memories. Beside her on the squeaky old leather seat sat John, grinning in the night wind. ‘Ah, good old Brock,’ he said, ‘God love him, one of these days Hettie will gather up the courage to point out to him that his uniform’s getting a little snug around the waist, sure did you see him, he could hardly breathe.’
Marion tried to smile, swallowing back the rising smell of pungent lilies and poisoned gas still burning the back of her throat. She glanced at John sideways and tried to compose the words in her mind, won’t you come in with me for a cup of tea, but no, that was stupid, nobody drank tea at this hour, so John, why don’t you come in and join me for a drink? Yes, she’d say that, in her lightest, most casual tone, as if it had just occurred to her, as if it really didn’t matter to her at all if he said no.
The coach clattered and swayed around a corner.
‘Poor old Hettie, she’s such a good sport,’ John chuckled, ‘did she tell you about their holiday? Brock made her join his hunting party up in Pitlochry in Scotland, but what does he do except prop her up on this enormous old dray horse, trotting her up and down the mountains, the poor girl was black and blue for a week after.’
Marion swallowed again and opened her mouth to speak. There must be no strain of weakness in her voice, no hint of what she really meant. Please, please come in with me. I don’t want to be alone in the dark.
The coachman tugged on his reins, and the coach ground to a halt outside her door.
John jumped out and thr
ew the coachman a coin. The little brown horse tossed its blinkered head in the whipping wind.
Marion dug her key out of her pocket. ‘Come in,’ she croaked, hurriedly tripping up the granite steps and avoiding John’s eyes in case he said no and turned away.
In the cold marble hallway, she kicked off her boots and shed her coat and hat. Behind her, she heard him following her, closing the door him with a soft click. She dragged herself into the parlour, feeling heavy from too much grief laced with wine.
The fire had all but burnt down in the grate, and the embers glowed red and orange, dimly illuminating the patterned rug.
John ambled into the parlour, twirling his silver lighter in his fingers. ‘So. You made quite an impression on Hettie, I must say. Even managed to win over good old Brock.’ He was smiling, rainwater glinting in his ruffled black hair.
Marion sank down onto the horsehair divan by the dying embers, leaned her elbow on the scrolled mahogany armrest and pressed her fingers over her aching eyes. She felt John approaching, the smell of sleet and snow on his shoulders.
The springs in the divan creaked when he sat down by her side. ‘What’s troubling you,’ he said quietly.
She closed her fists over her forehead. ‘Do you ever get the feeling that it’s all completely hopeless,’ she murmured, ‘all this loss, all this grief, darkness and pain everywhere, I feel like everything is coming apart.’
‘Hopeless? Oh, Marion…’
‘It used to be such a gentle thing,’ she whispered, ‘our seances. Before the war. There was grief, but it was quiet, intimate grief. There were such few widows, especially young widows. And when one did come to our table, we all treated her like a delicate dove. Now they’re everywhere, the widows, everywhere.’ Spat out in their thousands from some hulking great industrial assembly line belching fire and smoke. Marion turned her face towards the crackling embers, feeling the heat prickle her face. ‘Maybe Mr. Sidney was right.’
‘Sid? Right? I somehow doubt it.’ John rose and went to a little glass cabinet, returning with two glasses and a bottle of Cointreau.
Marion sighed. ‘He said it’s impossible to accomplish proper mediumship because the times are so violent. He said it’s all completely useless.’
‘Sid also thinks motorcars are useless. Did he tell you that?’ John grinned and imitated Sid’s sonorous voice, ‘sure who wants to be bouncing around in those mechanical contraptions, it’s undignified I tell you, farting smoke and alarming my horses!’
Marion smiled despite herself.
‘And as for those aeroplanes,’ John continued, stabbing his finger in the air, ‘what man in his right mind would think of appearing before the public on a glorified winged bicycle, flapping around like some great goggled loon, it’ll never catch on, I tell you!’
Marion shook her head and laughed behind her fingers.
‘It’s not hopeless at all, Marion. You’ve been working too hard, and you’re exhausted, that’s all.’
She drew in a ragged breath.
A burst of sparks rose from the grate, briefly glittering in the shadows.
John slipped off the divan and knelt before her, crossing his arms and resting them on her thighs. She stiffened, her heartbeat quivering, gripped with fear that he might see through her, see right into all her dirty secrets, might think her gown smelled musty, might draw back-
‘Look at me, Marion.’
She caught his eye and swallowed dryly. This close, she could see the faint white harelip scar puckering his crooked smile. Smell the scent of his crisply laundered shirt, his skin. He held her gaze for a long moment.
‘You know what I always used to do when I felt like that?’ He smiled. ‘You’ll think I’m completely ridiculous.’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘Promise?’
Marion nodded.
‘Try it with me, then. I used to imagine that there was a switch, right here,’ he reached up and gently stroked the back of her neck, trailing a finger along her ear, ‘right there, behind my left ear. Like an electrical switch. And I could just turn it off. Like this,’ he flicked his finger and made a little click sound, ‘off. All my troubles, off. And then I could just switch it back on again tomorrow and worry about it then. See?’
Marion smiled.
‘Of course, a stiff drink never hurts, either.’ He winked at her, clinking his glass against hers. ‘Bottoms up.’
She took a sip, savouring the orange-bitter warmth and glanced at him sideways.
‘It’s not all hopeless,’ he said quietly. ‘All progress is painful, but look at all you’ve done. You’ve gone into abandoned houses when nobody else dared. You’ve helped a hanged man into death when nobody else would. You’ve brought immense solace to poor Hettie. You’ve shown so many people that there is life after death, hope after death. You’re helping, just like you set out to do.’
He reached out and stroked her neck, gently, with the back of one finger. Marion shivered.
‘You’re a marvel of the modern world,’ he whispered, ‘you are so important. You’re so important to me.’
She smiled, her eyes blurring, liquor-heat easing her stiff shoulders, her sore throat. She wanted to frame this moment forever, to preserve it in amber.
The distant church bells struck eleven. The curfew hour.
John went quiet and gazed up at her. ‘I’ll take myself off now, if you want.’
‘No, don’t go.’
‘See? That’s how kind you are. Wouldn’t send me out into that filthy night.’
‘Maybe I’m being selfish.’ She smiled cautiously, biting her lip.
‘You?’ He grinned. ‘Selfish?’
A gust of wind clattered the windows and howled in the chimney shaft.
He reached up and trailed a finger around her earlobe, then slid his hand into her loosened hair. Marion’s breath deepened, and she drew him to her, sliding a hand under his collar and over his warm shoulder.
‘You know what I sometimes forget,’ she whispered, ‘we’re still alive, John. We’re still alive.’ She slid down under the weight of him as he buried his face in her hair, trailing his breath over her neck. She felt his hand on her hip, sliding over old silk, his lips grazing hers, and she leaned her head to one side and drew him closer, leaning into a long, hard kiss. A deep shimmer of joy hardened in her chest.
She let her empty glass tumble from her hand onto the thick rug.
‘I win again.’ John winked and flicked down three queens on the mattress. His eyes shone in the pale glimmer of moonlight through the lacy bedroom curtains. On the oak floor by the bed, the eiderdown quilts lay flung in a crumpled heap. Marion’s fish-scale evening gown lay tossed somewhere near the door. Most of the buttons had come off on their stumbled, panting way up the stairs. John’s shirt was slung over the bedpost.
Marion smiled and leaned back into the thick pillows. She tried to focus on her own hand of cards, but her gaze kept slipping back to his shoulders, his hard, slim waist in that tight cotton vest. He lay on his side, one elbow resting on the mattress. His black hair was dishevelled, falling over his forehead. ‘I swear,’ he said, catching her eye, ‘you’re staring at me like you’re trying to read my mind.’ He ran a finger along her bared ankle, right up to the inside of her knee. ‘I hope you realise that would be cheating.’
She shuddered with joy. ‘I don’t need to read your mind, John, I can tell what you’re thinking.’
He cocked his head. ‘Can you indeed…’ He wrapped his hand around her ankle and pulled her closer, sliding her over the mattress. Her cotton shift wrinkled under her.
‘Yes,’ she laughed, ‘you’re thinking that you’re pleased that you’ve beat me three times in a row in this silly card game.’
‘Quite so,’ he grinned, ‘and now I’m going to beat you again. There.’ He flicked down a joker card on her belly.
‘Now that is cheating,’ she said, sighing happily, ‘it was my turn.’
He rose and leaned over
her, resting his elbows on either side of her and cradling her head in his arms.
The cards tumbled to the floor, all aces and hearts.
She gazed up at him, his taught neck, his sharp collarbone, and a deep heat tightened in her.
‘You’re doing it again,’ he whispered, ‘staring at me. Maybe you’re trying to hypnotise me? Well,’ he grazed his lips over her cheek, her neck, ‘there’s really no need for you to hypnotise me.’ Goosebumps rose down her back, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Outside, the church bells rang hollowly.
John raised himself a little and fumbled for his wristwatch in the dark. Marion gazed up at him, wishing she could stop time, make the night last a little longer, just a little bit longer.
‘I should go, before your maid sneaks in on us.’ John smiled his crooked smile. ‘We won’t want to scandalise her,’ he whispered into her hair, ‘she’d have the shock of her little life.’
‘I thought you liked scandalising people.’ Marion slid her inner thigh against his waist and curled her leg around him, resting her ankle on the small of his back.
‘Only you,’ he grinned, kissing her again. ‘I very much enjoy scandalising you. Very, very much. I’d explain to you exactly how much,’ he murmured, running a warm hand over her waist, ‘but I wouldn’t dream of using words like that in front of a woman like you.’
Marion smiled and pulled him closer.
He lingered there, breathing softly into her neck, then pulled back sharply with a sigh and a shake of his head. ‘No, that’s it.’ He swung his legs over the bed. ‘I swear to jaysus, woman, I’ll have to watch myself, or you’ll trap me here forever and make me late for everything.’
Marion smiled. ‘I’d never dream of it,’ she lied.