The Haunting of Henry Twist

by Rebecca F. John

  But Sally wouldn’t speak. Or couldn’t. She shook her head, considering the floor as though intrigued by the arrangement of their feet there: hers bare and slim and grey in the moonlight; his larger, shoed, and altogether clumsier. When he gave up trying to look at Sally, he took to staring out through that enormous sash window and attempting to ignore that it was forcing him to see the world through a series of small rectangular frames. Hadn’t he been doing that his entire life? The answer was yes, of course. He lived inside a box. He always had.

  Sally had been his only stab at escape.

  ‘Tell me something else, then,’ he said. ‘Anything at all.’ He couldn’t say exactly why, but he wanted so much to hear her voice. She had uttered only one word since he’d arrived. ‘No,’ she’d said. ‘No.’ And Grayson needed more. He needed her to be that force he watched walking the school corridors, a sway of colour in the drabness. He needed her to be the woman he’d been to bed with, so poised and self-assured. But something had drained all that from her, and he suspected that something was him.

  ‘Tell me,’ he insisted, ‘… about a time when you were so embarrassed you thought you might explode if you were stuck in the situation for one second longer.’

  Sally very nearly smiled.

  ‘Go on,’ Gray pushed. ‘Then I’ll tell you mine. It’s a good one, I promise.’

  ‘It was that day.’

  ‘Which day?’ He rested his chin on her shoulder and pressed the tip of his nose to her jawbone.

  ‘That day. The day I came into your classroom.’

  Grayson kissed her cheek. ‘That was very brave.’

  ‘I knew all those boys were laughing at me.’

  ‘Not for long they weren’t.’

  ‘What was yours?’

  Grayson kissed her again. ‘I didn’t have one in mind,’ he admitted, smiling. ‘I just wanted to hear your voice.’

  ‘Sneaky. Think of one.’

  But he hadn’t been able to. His mind was racing ahead to the revelation he was dreading and aching for all at once.

  ‘Sir.’ One of the boys, Hunt perhaps, is calling to him, as though he is a man who has collapsed in the street, as though he has not been present for some time. He can’t imagine why. Here he is, discussing the War of the Roses, and trying to recollect long-ago dates, and struggling not to snap at the children who are temporarily in his care, and avoiding contemplating the fact that, though Matilda thinks he has, he still has not broken it off with Sally, and all the while his son or his daughter is just down the corridor, sprouting into life. His son or his daughter. His daughter or his son. A tiny seed of a thing who could become just about anyone: a doctor or an artist or an explorer or the prime minister. Grayson is uncomfortable thinking in these terms. He has never indulged his hopes like this before, but already names are darting into his mind. He considers them as though they are some fragile antique item he might want to purchase: he seems to hold them in his hands, the letters solid and heavy, and turn them about, looking from all possible angles, searching for the faults. Just this morning he has found four options he wants to share with Sally.

  And the thoughts are exciting, of course they are, but they are also laden, laden with guilt. At some point, he is going to have to tell Matilda; his poor, unknowing Matilda. And he has no doubt that the words are going to kill her.

  AN ADMISSION

  It keeps them out of their homes that night, the sluggish, slow swirling heat. It calls all of London onto the streets. Cafés stay open. Theatres hasten to throw together an additional late-night performance. Jazz bands cram extra venues into their schedules, for the right price. The city plays. And Henry walks the long path from his flat to Monty’s garden, not wanting to admit why. He has so much to do tonight that he cannot afford the time to sit to drinks with any man, especially a man so unhurried as Montague Thornton-Wells. Part of Henry is hoping he will not be there; the other part is desperate for the company. But more importantly than that, he has a favour he must call in.

  Ruby’s echo walks alongside him, five months pregnant, talking about the baby.

  ‘I don’t think I’d want a Welsh name, you know. I mean, it would grow up here, wouldn’t it, and imagine having to explain how your name was pronounced, over and over again.’

  They had been on their way to lunch. The late November day was low, charcoal-coloured and damp. As they stepped along the pavements, little droplets of fallen rain arced up to wet their ankles, motorcars splashed through puddles, a constellation of magpies beat their way noisily across the sky. Ruby was all in burgundy: a woollen dress with matching court shoes, a calf-length coat, a small hat beneath which she had tucked most of her hair. Her hands – which she waved about as she spoke – were warm inside brown leather gloves. Her lips were dark with cherry lipstick. It was as if someone had cut open the day’s chest and Henry was looking at the beating heart revealed within.

  ‘And I was thinking I’d like it to sing, Henry. Properly. It could have music lessons, and …’

  Ruby was forever singing: whilst she bathed, whilst she pressed on her face powder, whilst she cleaned the flat. She sang as Jack whistles, to fill the day’s silent spaces. When she was not thinking about it, she sang in Welsh and the words, though he could not decipher them, were beautiful to Henry: they sounded, he thought, like they were closer to the soul than their English counterparts. They set his skin tingling. And not only because his wife released them so expressively, but because one night, uniformed and hunkered in a bullet-holed barn, he’d stayed in the shadows and listened as four Welsh men gathered around a fire and sang themselves back to their country, their voices hushed, yes, but strong too; as strong as the earth they sat upon.

  Gwlad, gwlad, pleidiol wyf i’m gwlad.

  He could have told her what a blessing it was, to feel those voices trembling through his body. But he had found reasons not to. He had convinced himself that it would spoil her mood to interrupt her speculations about the life ahead of them with stories of the life behind him. Now, he is certain she would have loved hearing about those four men. He had been cowardly, not speaking of them.

  He had been cowardly a thousand times.

  It is edging towards twelve when he reaches Monty’s. He stands for a while on the pavement, trying to decipher sounds on the other side of the wall. He doesn’t want to go in if there’s a party on. And he can’t bear to rid himself yet of Ruby: not now that he is missing Jack, too. She had still been making plans after they had eaten their lunch and made their way to Monty’s for drinks. She had stood on this very spot and said, ‘And I want it to look like you. Just like you. Our baby is going to be a Twist, right down to its soul.’

  ‘But, you’re a Twist now,’ Henry had pointed out.

  ‘Yes,’ Ruby had replied. ‘Yes, I suppose I am. Funny, that. Twist.’ She’d tested the word, tasted it. ‘I love that word.’

  ‘Do you? Why?’

  ‘Because it’s the sound of you.’

  And Henry understands that now. It is important, the sound of her. ‘Ruby Twist,’ he whispers. But no one answers him. She is gone. And now Jack has gone with her.

  Again, he listens for life on the other side of the wall then, hearing nothing, lets himself through the gate. Grayson, Matilda and Monty sit around a large wooden table which is a new addition to the garden. They are illuminated by a line of mismatching candles. On top of the table are a bowl of red apples, built into a pyramid; a square of cheese, already cut into; an empty vase; and three wine glasses, their grape-white contents at various glinting levels. There is a fourth vacant chair, pulled under the table. There is also a spare wine glass. They are waiting for him.

  As he steps towards them, he raises an awkward hand. Suddenly, he feels stupid, an imposition. What if they have each been pretending all this time? What if they’ve been acting a man into their lives for him, the crazy soldier, the lunatic widower? What if, when he sits down, they acknowledge Jack Turner as present amongst them? If it happens,
he thinks he might go along with it, out of shame.

  ‘Twist!’ Monty calls, expansive as ever. ‘Come and sit down, man. For some obscure reason, we’re discussing the economy, and I don’t know that I can take much more of it. Come and save me.’

  Matilda gives a little smile and rolls her eyes. ‘Is there any need for such exaggeration?’ she asks.

  ‘Always,’ Monty replies. ‘Life is one long series of exaggerations, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that,’ Grayson puts in.

  Henry drags out his chair and, settling into it, pours himself a glass of wine.

  ‘Of course it is,’ Monty argues. ‘I love you, I need you, I hate you, I want you! It’s all such a drama. You can’t disagree with me, Steck. I saw the way her eyes lit up when you arrived. Something’s afoot here.’ He winks at Matilda, who puts her hand – her right hand, so as not to draw attention to her missing wedding ring – over Grayson’s.

  Grayson breathes deep, fighting hard against the urge to remove it. Though Matilda doesn’t seem to notice, all the intimacy of a few days back has been lost.

  ‘There might and there might not be,’ Matilda teases. ‘I’m sure it’s a private matter.’

  Now it is Monty’s turn to roll his eyes, and he exults in the opportunity, tossing his head back and letting his mouth gape open. They laugh, then release a collective sigh, the four of them, their breaths the coolest thing in a hundred-mile radius. Somewhere not too far off, they can hear music playing: a trumpeter is meandering his way through ‘Tin Roof Blues’, the heavy four-four beat perfect in the heat. They begin nodding their heads to the lazy rhythm, their chins lifting and falling in exact synchronisation with the bundle of people who lounge about, invisible to them but just a few buildings distant, before five perspiring musicians. Under the table, Grayson’s foot drums the grass flat. Henry’s fingers tap the wooden dining surface. The air cracks under the strain of twenty-one midnight degrees.

  ‘So,’ Monty enquires, ‘no Jack tonight?’

  And time stops.

  Matilda has been waiting for this question. She has been dreading and wishing for it since that moment, down at the docks, when she shook hands on her deal; since she stepped, already sorry, out of the police station. A blush begins at her feet and scuttles up her body, insect-like, reaching her face before she has a chance to turn away or hide it behind a tilted wine glass. She does not turn her eyes on Henry. She sits, quite still, and she waits. This she will have to gauge carefully.

  She had insisted on making the full payment only after the job was done. She had had to offer a small deposit, an incentive, but she had hoped she would appear a shrewd business-woman in withholding the rest. The truth was she had simply needed time, to decide on what she should sell to meet the sum. She had settled, in the end, on a brooch of her mother’s: a hideous thing, really, in the slinking shape of a cat, its eyes two slanting garnets jammed amongst a mass of minute diamonds. Its ugliness did not excuse her behaviour in selling it, though. It had been gifted to her, after all, in her mother’s will – to pass on, down the female line.

  Since, Matilda has attempted to convince herself that, seeing as there will be no female line – no line at all, in fact – its sale does not matter. But she knows this is not true. If it were, she would not have been forced to fight tears as she exited the jewellers. She had remembered then, the memory coming too late to save her from her actions, that she had played dress-up with that brooch as a very small girl. She had stabbed the pin through her nightdress and balanced a great flopping hat on her head and staggered around in her mother’s heels, admiring herself in every mirror as she paraded from one room of the family townhouse to the next.

  She had sold that memory.

  She chances a glance at Henry. He is lifting his glass to his lips, tarrying over taking a gulp. She wonders if her blush is visible in the candlelight. She wonders what Grayson thinks of it.

  And the answer is nothing. Nothing much. Gray is struggling to concentrate on the sense of the conversation, let alone his wife’s response to it. He feels as though he is floating away – from the garden, from London, from the planet, even. He is a balloon, cut free of its string. But no, he is heavier than that, more cumbersome: he is a hot-air balloon, too weighty, too prone to sinking down the sky without that necessary burst of flame.

  It has taken him all day to work out where, or rather when, he recognises this feeling from. He has it now and it constricts his throat. He recognises it from the months after he lost his mother. It feels like grief.

  He notices a certain feeling of anticipation around him and it causes him to swim back to himself temporarily. But everyone’s attention is fixed on Henry: they are waiting for him to say something. No one has noticed that Grayson is growing absent, and that is useful, very useful indeed, because already he feels closer to that sinuous trumpet melody, the angled confusion of slate roofs surrounding the garden, the rich orb moon. Monty and Matilda and Henry are small, far away. He is gliding apart from these people. His life is becoming a separate thing. And there is nothing he can do to stop it.

  ‘Not tonight,’ Henry says.

  ‘Got a better offer, did he?’ Monty teases. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. We are, I suppose, exceedingly old in Jack’s eyes. How young is he anyway?’

  Henry does not know how to answer. The first thought in his mind is, twenty-five. He’s twenty-five; must be. But perhaps he’s twenty-six. Or twenty-eight. Or perhaps Henry is just making this up. He stays silent. He has not yet waded through the relief that swamped him when Monty asked that simple question. No Jack tonight? Because no, there is no Jack tonight, or last night, and it is worrying, painfully so, but at least now he can safely assume that the man is real. Monty would not ask after a glitch in his imagination.

  But if Jack is not here tonight, where is he? It might be that his memory has failed him again, or that those people who beat his identity loose in January have returned to finish the job, or that he’s had an accident at work, or – the realisation of Henry’s newest fear – that his memory has somehow been restored and he’s gone back to wherever he came from. He might just be Jack. Mr Jack Turner: husband, lover, father, worker, criminal, drunk, campaigner, believer. He could be anything. He could have pushed that glimmer of Ruby out. He could have robbed Henry of the person he loves for a second time, and Henry does not think he can endure it. He is not sure he wants to. Not again.

  When the silence grows uncomfortable, Henry plumps for ‘Twenty-five. Around that.’ But he cannot think about conversation now. He is cold all over. He has to find Jack.

  ‘Around that?’ Monty laughs. ‘The man shares your bed and you don’t know old he is. I never appreciated what a tart you were until now. Bravo, Henry. Bravo!’ Monty claps his hands twice in quick succession. The sound is dulled by the warmth.

  ‘Monty!’ Matilda protests, her voice a semitone shriller than usual.

  ‘What?’ Monty pretends at innocence, opening his eyes up wide.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Oh, I think we’re past sensitivity, aren’t we?’ Monty answers. ‘Haven’t we been friends long enough?’

  ‘I’d say so,’ Grayson puts in.

  ‘So would I,’ Monty agrees. ‘Now, how long are we all staying? There’s this Dawn Party happening tonight. Or in the morning, rather. They’re arriving around four and drinking until the sun comes up.’

  ‘I’ll have left before that,’ Henry answers.

  ‘Why not stay?’ Monty says.

  ‘I’m not in the mood for a party.’ He has more pressing matters to attend to: like packing up his belongings, getting Libby ready, finding Jack. He has not paid the rent. He has promised Mr Larkin he will be out by the morning. While the Bright Young People dance and flirt and laugh, Henry will be saying goodbye to the home where he built his family; where he lost his wife and found her again; where, for however brief a time, he raised his daughter.

  ‘Well, then,’ Monty replies, �
��I’ll have to keep pouring you drinks until you find yourself in a better mood.’

  ‘Yes,’ Matilda agrees, holding out her drained glass. ‘Please do.’

  ‘There’s no risk of that,’ Henry answers. But he smiles sadly as he says it, because now that he must give up the flat, this is the place where he is closest to Ruby; here, where other people remember her too. His smile falters and Matilda reaches over and pats his hand.

  ‘You don’t like it, do you Henry, darling – seeing so many people here, trampling over her memory?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just … I came to ask a favour, of Monty.’

  ‘Go ahead, then,’ Monty urges. ‘I’m going to say yes, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s big.’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s bigger than Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘Well,’ Henry lowers his voice and begins mumbling. ‘I was wondering … the thing is, I’m going to be made homeless very soon, and I was wondering whether, Libby and I … whether you might have room, for me and Libby … at yours … For me and Libby. And Jack.’

  ‘You want to stay?’ Monty enquires.

  ‘Just for a short while. I mean, we’ll go as soon as possible.’

  Monty sits forward. ‘You’ll go when you’re able,’ he says. ‘And not even then, if you don’t want to. It’s a big old house, Henry. I’d be glad of the company.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘Of course all of you,’ Monty replies. ‘Surely it’s all of you or none of you, isn’t it? That’s how it is, with family.’

  ‘Yes,’ Henry replies, standing. ‘Yes it is.’ But is that what they are now, a family? Are he and Jack really going to grow old like this, living the half-life the rest of the world will allow them? He holds out his hand. Monty takes it up and they shake, too roughly for Monty’s thinning bones, but the old man laughs anyway. He is happy to have made someone else happy. That is all he hopes for now. That is what keeps him alive.