The Haunting of Henry Twist

by Rebecca F. John

  He does not imagine for a moment, as it glides away from him, that he will never post it. Or that he will have to rewrite it, two full weeks from now, and that the words will have distorted in the interim from happy, not only to sad, but also to desperate. That by that point, Jack will have very nearly lost his life.

  How could he possibly imagine that?

  The strike turns violent almost immediately. Whether it is a policeman who first raises a baton and clouts a striker, or a striker who first lifts a fist to a policeman’s jaw, the distinction becomes, in the main, irrelevant. With the British Gazette branding the strikers greedy revolutionaries, and the British Worker refuting the Gazette’s every inflated claim, it is inevitable – those stacks of tiny printed words become physical clashes.

  Soon, motorcars sit nose to tail all along Stratford Broadway, locked in the pointed shadow of the Church of St John the Evangelist’s spire, their engines chugging uselessly. Soldiers stand around the city, arms and legs clamped in military tension, rifles and bayonets thrust towards the foamy clouds. As barricaded, barbed-wired buses edge through London’s clogged arteries, their volunteer drivers gripping steering wheels with aching fingers, massed men march across Blackfriars Bridge towards Memorial Hall, their coats buttoned, their banners crackling when the breeze catches them, their footsteps beating away the sound of the Thames which meanders greyly beneath them.

  The days, chaotic, meld one into the next. On occasion, Henry and Jack take to the streets, their intimacy made invisible – or so Henry believes – by the thousands of other men who stand side by side, shoulders bumping as they stride or shuffle towards their collective aim. Nobody questions their motives as, some nights, they wander about together under jolly spring moons, and they take increasing advantage of the situation.

  They see lorries being relieved of giant milk urns by stony-faced men. They see food packages being stockpiled in the temporary army barracks which appear, as if by some magic spell, in Hyde Park. They see men sitting in rings around park benches or tables they have carried from their homes, smoking and drinking and planning, stubbing their cigarettes out on the soles of their boots and tipping back their hats as the conversation grows more frustrated.

  And they happen to be milling about amongst a large gathering one morning when a lady striker is arrested and the crowd turns on the police.

  It is not yet midday and the strikers are crushed together at a crossroads, watching a procession of volunteer-driven trucks creeping away from the docks to deposit their emergency cargos. At the strikers’ backs: an untidy mix of little bars and larger restaurants, lights off and doors locked, the occasional face visible fleetingly in the glass; a sign above a window which reads Wittenberg’s Leather Goods and another which shouts Oysters! Before them: tyres too close to their feet, beeping horns, a fruit-seller wheeling a near-empty barrow, students walking their bicycles and, closer still and more intimate, the scent of their neighbouring union members – an offensive blend of alcohol, cigars, sweat, and the sickly pervasive perfume of the women present.

  Far from the front of the crowd, Henry and Jack’s best view is of shoulders and hats – bowlers and pork pies and, most numerously, flat caps. But both men are tall and they catch glimpses of the odd pale-faced volunteer in the cavalcade. They notice, too, a concentration of domed police helmets, moving together in an organised diagonal. And behind them, a trail of people which, as it travels, swells outwards like pooling water.

  Henry turns to the man next to him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asks.

  ‘Lady striker, they’re saying,’ the man answers with a sniff and a twitch of his mouth. ‘The pigs’ll be making an example of her. Done nothing more than the rest of us, far as I know.’ He shrugs his shoulders and, pulling one hand from his pocket, offers it to Henry. ‘John,’ he says. It is Ruby’s father’s name. Henry doesn’t know, though, whether he has been offered a forename or a surname. ‘Railways. What are you, son? Building I’d say by the look on you.’ With a nod he indicates the breadth of Henry’s chest, which is level with the top of John’s head.

  ‘Henry Twist,’ Henry answers, covering both bases. ‘And no, I’m not anything. Jack’s down at the docks.’

  He thrusts a thumb at Jack, and Jack and John lean around him to pump hands.

  ‘Will they jail her?’ Henry asks.

  ‘They’ll arrest her,’ John answers. ‘After that, who knows? Even if they’ve got nothing to hold her on, that lot always do what they want. And they’re starting to get scared, too. Have you seen what they’ve been writing in the Gazette?’

  Henry shakes his head. He takes little notice of the newspapers these days. He had never been able to understand why they should report on what they called ‘society’ in the first place, but when, some months ago, he’d stumbled across an article about Mr Montague Thornton-Wells and his ‘garden of depravity’, he had given up on them altogether. Of course, Henry couldn’t bear a single one of that uppity lot Monty so enjoyed playing his games with, but really, who needed to know about what did or did not occur in one man’s private garden? All Monty was guilty of was trying to make himself happy. And Henry couldn’t think of a single person who wasn’t guilty of that.

  ‘Rubbish, all of it,’ John explains, his sneer obvious even beneath his stiff black moustache. ‘Revolutionaries, they say. Want something for nothing, they say. And it’s possible half the country believes it. What do we know?’

  ‘How long do you think it can last?’ Henry asks, meaning the strike.

  ‘Oh, a long while yet,’ John assures him. ‘We’ve got a lot to say, and they’re going to have to listen. Especially now the King himself is speaking up for us.’

  Everyone has heard rumour of King George’s plea to his countrymen, to try living on the miners’ wages before judging them, and Henry thinks this a particularly bold and wonderful statement for a man born in a royal mansion house to make. The King and the common man, unified in their disgust at the government. It hints at the possibility of another birth in Britain this spring – the birth of choice.

  The rich have always had their choices, Henry knows that. He even argued with Ruby about it once or twice. But here, right in the hands of a mob whose palms are blistered and scarred from decades of real work, is the opportunity to extend that luxury to even the poorest; an opportunity which might, eventually, lead to he and Jack being able to share a home together, free from the spectres of fear and shame. Henry’s excitement can carry him to no other conclusion. This strike, if successful, could mean a whole different life for them. That is why he has been insisting, since the start, that he stand alongside Jack amongst these men and women from time to time. Every body is a welcome one when the police are bearing down with batons poised, and Henry is determined to lend the weight of his body to this particular fight. It is an investment in his own future.

  Despite his optimism, he does not speak these thoughts to Jack. There are things Ruby might have coaxed him to say that he cannot conceive of saying to another man. He knows, for instance, that he will never tell Jack that he loves him. Never that, however sure he might be that if he looks far enough into Jack’s eyes he will see Ruby looking back.

  ‘Well, well,’ John says. ‘There she is. Have you got sight of her, lads?’

  John cannot see over the heads before him, but from the roar that has just gone up and the forward surge of the crowd, it is apparent that the lady has been seized. Henry stretches to catch a glimpse of her and sees a flash of fair hair unravelling from its pins as her hat is knocked to the ground and trampled by the pursuing protesters, the few inches of skirt which show beneath the hem of her coat rippling as she is rushed away, the sharp angles of her elbows, jutting out – her own tiny protest – at the men who hold her. He shoulders himself between the men in front, to keep her in his sights.

  ‘She looks a tough one,’ Jack tells John, and silently Henry agrees. Though she is becoming dishevelled, she has not once lowered her chin.
Neither has she craned around to see the people following her, their arms high as they shake eagerknuckled fists at the constables, their mouths open to words which, heard together, melt into a growl.

  John knows the words, though. He takes up the chant which, in the last week, has become the most familiar sentence in the country.

  ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day!’

  The phrase is well written. It beats easily off the tongue. It drums. Jack joins in immediately, his arm brushing against Henry’s side as he struggles to lift it in the jam of people, and Henry tries hard to disguise the shiver this contact sends through his shoulders. Always this. Always the same need. He closes his eyes to it, as he has become accustomed to doing, but it is not the usual thought that blares through his mind, chanting almost as loud as the workers that surely he cannot be a gay man. Instead, and for the first time, he thinks only later.

  ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day!’

  It’s different when they are at home, when they are alone. You can be anything you want, in secret. There are no repercussions, no validations, in the privacy of your own bedroom. But what is Henry, here and now?

  ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day!’

  Is he a man standing next to his lover, or a man standing next to a delusion? He had never once considered that his life might transmute this way. And perhaps, perhaps it is just his grief. It’s one thing to admit Jack to those idiot Bright Young People.

  ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day!’

  But in this crowd … In this crowd, they’d be killed, both of them. And would Henry be willing to risk his life for this man? Would he stand before the police and be identified as a deviant for a ghost? Now, right now, he would.

  ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day!’

  The voices rise and rise, crashing against the surrounding buildings and echoing off again, shaking the windowpanes, shaking the ground itself, it seems, since Henry can feel each syllable in his stomach: a low, even buzz. It is, he thinks, something like charging into war. And that is why, as the traffic is brought to a standstill and every last man and woman gets their chance to storm after the retreating police, Henry goes with them.

  This is the old camaraderie, the old thrill. He is advancing again towards a necessity, and it quiets his mind. He almost feels young Bingley alive once more in the throng. Bingley, the sapper who has haunted him most in the years since: a boy, really, who found himself a man of twenty-six, stronger in the arm and back, to fight with, and in whose shadow he thought he would be safe.

  ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day!’ Henry cries, and Jack, surprised, turns to him with a smile. He has never before heard such passion in Henry.

  ‘So,’ he says into Henry’s ear. ‘There it is.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your voice,’ Jack answers. ‘I’ve never heard you like that before. What’s it about?’

  And Henry realises then, inversely, that there are things he will say to Jack that he had failed to say to Ruby. Later, when they are alone, he will tell him about Bingley. About how badly he failed the boy. About how, when it came down to it, self-preservation was more important than the half-drunk promises he’d made with such ridiculous bravado. Of course he would not die for Bingley, brothers-in-arms or not. He would not have died for anyone then.

  ‘Something I need to tell you. Later.’

  ‘Later,’ Jack nods.

  There is another surge from the crowd, Henry and Jack stagger forward into sudden space, and it is not long before John is lost to the jostling. For long minutes then they sway and shuffle as one, the gathered strikers. Until, that is, they pick up a certain momentum and advance towards the police, who instantly form a line and raise their batons. Henry and Jack are somewhere in the middle of the pack, out of reach of the flailing batons but close enough to see, and hear, the blows they land on heads and shoulders and defensive forearms. Close enough to see the blood.

  The chanting speeds up, quickened by adrenaline, and perhaps a little fear.

  ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day! Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day!’

  The arrested woman has disappeared, ushered through waiting police van doors which were promptly slammed behind her, but still the men push on. Their voices strain. Their fists pummel the air. And when each man meets the police wall awaiting him, they stand their ground proudly as foot-long wooden weapons are swung at them. The constables not employed in causing injury blast shrill notes from their whistles, which sound in frantic pairs. And then comes the clattering of horses’ hooves on the pavements, a rapid triple beat, growing in volume until the horses, the musculature of their chests tautening and twisting, crash into the strikers, their eyes rolling in fear, their legs as sure as their training.

  ‘What should we do?’ Jack rasps, and Henry turns to see that Jack’s eyes, too, are flickering about in panic.

  What Henry wants to say is ‘fight – we should fight’, but he cannot. Whether it is because of some ingrained fear the war worked into the man Jack once was, or because he was never a soldier at all and does not know the sensation, it is obvious to Henry that Jack will not fight. That maybe he is not capable of inflicting that sort of hurt. Henry does not think for long.

  ‘Just stand your ground,’ he says. ‘They’ll go without you.’ He indicates the crowd with a nod. ‘Keep your legs locked, stand straight, and let them go.’

  Jack, silent for once, obeys. He straightens up, braces himself against the weight of furious people, and waits, his teeth working back and forth across each other as he concentrates on his stillness, the risen hairs on the back of his hand brushing against Henry’s. And even here, Henry cannot help but wonder if the contact is deliberate. How suddenly his whole life is shaped by these thoughts. How easily he is lost to them. But then, perhaps Henry Twist is a man who finds it easier to lose himself than to face what he might otherwise find.

  He snatches Jack’s hand within his own and holds it tight. Here I am, he thinks. He is here, and he is keeping Jack safe, and that is enough for now.

  It happens as Henry said it would. They stand braced against the flow of people and in time, they are released from the crowd. They are able then, Henry and Jack, to begin the walk home to Libby, leaving the strikers to plough on through the streets in pursuit of their hope. It is the hottest point of the day. The sun, large and filmy and white, glides about behind gossamers of cloud. Henry measures his and Jack’s shadows on the pavement before them as they walk. Their steps fall out of sync and, as each man takes his next pace forward, so his shadow bobs ahead of his companion’s.

  ‘Jack,’ he says eventually – one of the rare times he uses Jack’s name. He is thinking still about the choices which could bloom out of this strike. ‘Do you think the best things always start out badly?’

  ‘No,’ Jack answers. ‘I think the good things just happen to be good and the bad things just happen to be bad. I don’t want to think of anything beyond that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ Jack says with a grimace, ‘that’s how men drive themselves insane, with too much thinking. Far better to just do and be and hope for the best.’

  ‘And what about the worst?’ Henry asks.

  Jack shrugs. ‘Avoid it like you’d avoid the devil,’ he says.

  ‘How would you avoid the devil?’

  ‘With your gut, of course,’ Jack replies, punching at his own stomach. ‘With your gut.’

  Though Grayson tells her she shouldn’t be out and about during the strike, every day at nine o’clock Matilda Steck bursts through the front door of their building and marches the morning streets to Monty’s – or at least, that’s where she goes first. She holds her head high, so that passers-by will catch her eye and wonder at why she does not return their smiles or greetings. She steps quickly, so that her heart thunders in her chest and her upper lip moistens. And,
most of all, she carefully ignores the weather. Even when the rain wakes her by battering her windows, she does not bring an umbrella. She is feeling sorry for herself, and it would not do to attempt the misery she is aiming for with the comfort of such an apparatus so readily available.

  It is an art, misery. One Matilda is well practised in. And she knows that the most miserable do not consider their attire, or the weather, or any similar trivialities. They are too consumed by their hurt. She has taken therefore to wearing the same ensemble every day: a cotton square-necked day dress in an unhappy shade of faded rust, a cream cloche with a ribbon to match the dress, and a pair of cream shoes.

  Despite Matilda’s pain being quite real, though, she cannot bring herself to descend into the dirty depths of true carelessness. So that she may wash them, she has bought two identical dresses. The spare one she hides from Grayson in the back of her wardrobe.

  After what he has done, she will not allow her husband any reprieve from his guilt.

  At Monty’s, she lets herself inside with the key she carries and heads straight towards the tree, where she lies on the ground – filling the very space Henry did on the day of the funeral – and smokes until the coughing forces her to sit up. This is where she plans her next move. And she has had to plan carefully, since involving Ida did not work out as she’d expected. She has had to exercise more patience. She feels she ought to have a pen and a notebook, like a spy in an old story, so that she might scribble each new facet of information down, but that would give her away, of course. This plan shall have to be retained in only the most elusive way, in her memory. There have been days when she has been crazy over it all, she sees that much; when the image of those two men, lying together, has ripped through her body like a sickness, weakening her. But she is thinking more clearly now. She is reordering herself. She is becoming Matilda again.

  Today, as she smokes her way towards her next decision, she stares at the pallid sun and listens to the fracturing of the city. It has grown so much noisier this last week, the city, broken by shouts and plots and the bulk of tanks rolling through its narrow streets. It has grown chaotic. And it was that observation which first gave rise to the idea she has been nurturing of late. Initially, it was only a feeling: a vague sort of thing which took up residence somewhere at her middle – the place where a child should have grown – and begun, like a new-built clock, to tick towards an unknown chime. People, she had realised, can be bought when they’re desperate. People can be persuaded to provide certain information when they feel the order of their lives slipping away, when they have only dirt left to bargain with. And she has used their desperation well. Soon, she thinks, soon, she will be able to take real action.