The Haunting of Henry Twist

by Rebecca F. John

Sally slides her hands around his jaw and lifts his face to hers. ‘Then you should talk about her, Gray,’ she says. ‘Did you love her a little?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that. She just … Do you believe in ghosts, Sal?’

  Sally shakes her head slowly. ‘I don’t. And I don’t think you do, either.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Grayson confirms. ‘I just … I think Ruby’s husband might be in need of some help. We might need to help him.’

  ‘Then we will,’ Sally answers. ‘All right? We will.’

  ‘All right.’ Grayson nods and is quiet again.

  What he doesn’t admit – what he doesn’t want to admit, even to himself – is that his reasons for dragging Sally into his friends’ company are almost entirely selfish; that they have nothing much at all to do with Henry, but everything to do with him, Grayson Steck, a man who is finally chasing what he wants.

  Matilda reaches the flat not long after day has broken over London. Its streets, its buildings, its trees, its motorcars, its people – all are shattered by splinters of rose-pink light. Before unlocking the front door, she steals half a minute to turn and study her corner of the city, to commit to memory the illuminated portions of it. She feels, for some reason, as though she is never coming back.

  Pressing her palms to the door behind her, she ponders what Grayson is doing inside. It is not yet time for him to leave for work. He’ll be sweating out last night’s drink, then: perhaps dangling halfway out of their bed, perhaps stretched across the bedroom floor. He’ll have the smell of wine and cigars on him and, binding those two scents together, the smells of him, just him – a unique combination that only she knows.

  Or that only she and this Sally know.

  They have not yet dared talk about what happened when he visited the girl. Matilda is exercising a new restraint. She is waiting for him to come to her, volunteer the details. Gray, she imagines, is stalling so as to reinvent the story, make it more palatable: he’ll be trying to find a way to deliver it without once mentioning the girl’s name. That damn girl! Though she has no right to her jealousy, Matilda cannot pretend it does not exist. She cannot keep her mind from painting pictures of Gray and her, flinging insults and teacups at each other, cowering from the smash before rising to rearm themselves, getting weakened by their anger and falling into one another, coming together for a final kiss, deciding that they can’t give this up after all.

  Her brain rumbles on, inventing scenarios, because he hasn’t told her what really happened. He hasn’t told her. And he hasn’t told her because he hasn’t told her! The realisation hits Matilda like a moving vehicle. It sprawls her across her own doorstep and she winces at the thud of her back meeting her front door, the sharp crack of her tailbone against stone, the crick of her ankle turning the wrong way underneath her. She stays down for only a second or two, long enough to see a gentleman approaching, his hurried strides flapping the sides of his black coat, his hand moving to remove his hat. He is about to break into a run, rush to her aid. Horrified, Matilda grabs the door knob for leverage and, dragging herself up, clatters inside before he can reach her.

  She slams shut the door and presses herself to its cool surface – as she had the other, warmer side short moments before – and attempts to slow her breathing. She does not know why she is breathless, in any case. Then, having only partly calmed herself, she hastens up the stairs, her heels landing with a sound as hollow as her stomach feels.

  ‘Grayson,’ she shouts, bursting through yet another door. There are so many doors suddenly between her and her husband. ‘Grayson!’

  She knows instantly that he is not there. The air is unbroken. The flat has been empty all night. But still, she searches for him. She goes about and about their dining table, circling as though she is riding a fairground ride, before flying into the bedroom, the bathroom, then back again. She throws the bed sheets to the floor, she knocks a ticking clock from its shelf, she slams a fist into the bathroom mirror and, when she fails to break it, removes it from its hook, sets it down at her feet, and proceeds to stamp her way through its glassy face. Matilda turns the flat inside out, seeking nothing but relief, and when finally she accepts that there is none to be found, she coils herself up on the bed, their bed, and closes her eyes to the blackness behind them.

  They were supposed to be arguing now. She’d disappeared, been gone all night. And they were going to argue long and hard and loud about it – that much she’d been prepared for. Then they were going to draw a line under it. She had decided so on the walk home. They were going to forgive every argument they’d ever had. They were going to continue in a new way.

  For once, it is Gray who has denied them their chance at contentment.

  As Matilda drops into sleep, though, she cannot sustain her swollen anger towards him. She is already half-dreaming, about a years-ago day when they did not yet know they couldn’t have children and they had suspected she might be pregnant. Gray, too excited to stay still, was skipping around the flat, singing some invented song and whipping his arms about as though he were a famous tenor. And Matilda, laughing, laughing, was reaching out for him. Just that – reaching out for him.

  They meet, as arranged, at the Rose Inn that early evening. Sally is already seated near the door when Grayson arrives, her hands tucked in her lap as though they are the shell around a pearl, her eyes roving anxiously from person to person. When she spots Gray, her whole body softens with relief, and Gray is careful not to laugh at her as he approaches and bends to kiss her cheek. He hasn’t seen her like this before: edgy, nervous. He likes it. It makes him feel more of a man.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Relax.’ He smiles. ‘I’ll be back in a flash.’ Immediately he regrets the choice of phrase. It makes him sound old. But Sally doesn’t seem to notice. Or perhaps she does. Perhaps she just expects it of him, because he is old, to her.

  ‘But what if we,’ she pauses, flicking her eyes left and right, then drops her voice to a whisper, ‘see someone we know?’

  Grayson, one hand on her shoulder, leans closer to her ear.

  ‘Then we’ll ask them to congratulate us.’

  ‘On what?’ Sally is horrified. Her eyes bulge: surely, they can’t tell anyone about the baby?

  ‘Us,’ he answers, winking. ‘And just how spectacular we are.’

  ‘Don’t joke, Gray.’

  ‘Then don’t worry,’ he counters.

  He smiles as he kisses her again, his lips meeting the top of her head this time, because suddenly he is not sure he wants to look further into her eyes. They are not as scared as they should be. They do not match her newly timid body. He suspects another performance. But if he has been played from the off, well then, he has been played too well. What choice does he have now but to finish the game? What choice does he have but to embrace it?

  When he returns from the bar, a cold-misted glass held in each hand, he motions for her to take a new table and they settle in a duskier corner, sitting shoulder to shoulder now so that they can both see the movements of the room. It is still early, just a tick or two past six, and there are only three customers in: a pair of old fellows, swapping insults like cards, and, perched at the bar, a habitual whisky man, his yellowed eyes rolling from the bar top to the barman to the bar top as he murmurs to the devils in his glass.

  The Rose, Gray decides, is a nice enough little drinker. The lines of round tables shine, cleaned and cleaned again. Broad sunbeams infiltrate the shadows, searching dust spots to drag to the ground but finding none. The air, so often stale with booze in other pubs, is made rich by the recent grinding of coffee beans. Tricked or not, he could spend his entire life here, watching Sally begin to unfurl, avoiding his wife and the hurt he must inflict on her.

  Here, he will have to say, is everything I’ve ever wanted. Here, within my grasp, finally, is everything you’ve failed to give me. And that Sally has given it so easily – accidentally, probably – that is what makes it so cruel.


  He watches her sip at her fruit juice; the ripple of her throat as it descends towards her stomach; the turn of her wrist as she sets the glass back down on the table.

  ‘Do you know,’ he says, ‘when I was about eighteen, I set myself up in front of a mirror with a gin and a cigar – an unfortunate mix if you ask me – to teach myself how to look like a grown-up.’

  Sally smirks: the intended effect. The admission is entirely true, though. He’d been in his parents’ otherwise unoccupied house, prowling around his father’s desk and wondering whether he would ever buy himself a decanter; whether he would ever possess the patience, the willpower, to lock himself into one square room, his back to the only window, and work for hours on paperwork his family would never know the true purpose of; whether he would ever meet the expectations they had had for him, Mr and Mrs Steck, long before he was conscious of the strange ambitions parents submit to in their most private minds.

  ‘All right,’ Sally says, ‘so you got me to smile. Why are we here?’

  ‘I needed a drink,’ Grayson answers.

  ‘And you knew that this morning, did you? Before you’d even left for work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Gray!’ She slaps at his leg, her palm finding the jut of his kneecap.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stop being so cryptic.’

  Laughing, Grayson pours back another gulp of his pint. He folds up his tongue and uses it as a barrier, to keep the liquid in his mouth and let the cold of it tingle against his teeth. The words he needs have not yet come to him. He does not know how he will explain it to her, what he intends will happen next. He does not know how it will all pan out. He does not know, either, why he is so inclined to laughter. This is no laughing matter. He is taking Sally across town to present her to his friends because he has to, doesn’t he, if she is ever going to be welcome amongst them? And because, if he’s honest, he wants her to know Henry as he now is, locked in his delusion and his strange new relationship, so that there is no chance of her too falling in love with him. And because he wants to be able to tell them – doesn’t he, very soon – that he’s going to be a father. And, most importantly, because he wants to break Matilda’s heart in company.

  He’s thought hard about this, and he knows that it is only in company that she will be able to bear it. Whatever his faults, Grayson has been an attentive enough man, in the past, to know his wife. And what he knows is this: Matilda Steck is a woman who is better with an audience; a being better seen, whatever the circumstances, than unseen.

  Matilda is woken by a shifting of the light: a flattening perhaps, which – she will decide momentarily, when she rises and moves to the window to consider it – marks the end of the heatwave. It is warm still, but the sky has dropped lower, paled to white. She must have slept for hours, for presently the day is drifting away over the city, carried seemingly on the backs of the birds, in their hundreds, which fleck London’s wide-arched ceiling. Tomorrow, the morning will be chill.

  Matilda’s sleeping hours have brought her to a decision. A very simple one, really, though she knows she will struggle with it. She will make no more unconsidered promises: not to Gray, not to Henry or to Ruby’s ghost, not even to herself.

  She had expected Gray would be home by now, so that she could put her hand to his neck and force his eyes onto hers and tell him, but as she wanders back into their bedroom to pick out a dress, something, something tight and low in her stomach, is telling her that he will not return to the flat today. She will have to seek him out. And where better to start than at Monty’s? That’s where he’ll be, seeking refuge, the way she has so often done lately. She’s certain of it.

  She pulls a light coffee-coloured dress from her wardrobe. Somewhere, she has a pair of shoes, and a cloche in the softest cream, to match it; and there’s a stole, too, a fur stole which will do nicely. Demure is the look she is aiming for. It is just one small part of her apology. Or it is just the beginning, rather, because she is aware that this apology must be a lengthy one. She supposes it will last for the rest of her life.

  It strikes her, as it invariably does now, that the thought is lazy. The rest of her life. How many times did Ruby have that same thought and envisage herself as an old woman, with an even older husband by her side; as the cotton-haired mother of a beautiful daughter, or maybe two, out there in the world, building lives for themselves that would make her proud? How awful for her that she has missed all of that. And how awful of Matilda to be wasting her time with spiteful actions, with the pursuit of misery, when her time might have been cut short just as easily as Ruby’s. Can you forgive me, too? she thinks, and she closes her eyes to picture the question as a string of airborne letters, floating up and up, through the darkening firmament, through the black endlessness of space and towards, finally, some vague idea of Heaven. She knows that Ruby would pardon her. Ruby would extend that kindness to anyone earnest. What Matilda does not know is whether she deserves it.

  But enough! She cannot right it all in one afternoon. She has begun – that is what is important. She has begun. She pulls on her shoes, then pauses to consider herself in the mirror. She removes her cloche, fluffs up her wilted hair, replaces the hat and steps towards the door.

  ‘Enough,’ she says to the empty room. ‘That’s enough.’ Then she descends the stairs, walks out, with the deepest of breaths, into a new evening, and sets off on the march towards her husband. Always, now, she will move towards her husband.

  First, though, she must make her apology to another man.

  At Notting Hill Police Station, Matilda marches towards the desk where first she reported Jack Turner’s crimes, and demands to speak to a Constable Howard. Her stomach is loose with dread and it is quite possible, she thinks as she waits, that she might vomit right here on the station floor if the man does not hurry up. She swallows and swallows, trying to shift the saliva pooling on her tongue, but it returns, as though somewhere inside her a tap has been left running. Her eyes, too, are threatening to leak. Perspiration pours from her hairline and down each side of her face.

  If she does not play this right, it is she who might end up in a prison cell.

  Constable Howard appears fast through a flung-open door, his uniform sharp as the most brutal of words, his buttons shining like sovereigns, the polished MP at his collar flashing. He is an impressive man: tall and black-haired and serious. He knows without the slightest of doubts that his is the most important, the absolutely most important, of jobs.

  ‘Mrs Steck,’ he says, offering her his hand. ‘What can we do for you?’ He is frowning, confused by her reappearance. He wants to help. Guilt swirls at Matilda’s middle. She does not want to embarrass him, but how else can she do it, without implicating herself? There is no other way to free them all.

  ‘You,’ she begins, her chin high, her eyes narrowed, ‘made a mistake.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs –’ Constable Howard begins, but she cuts him short. She does not want him to voice her married name again. It does not belong to her any more. She has not yet earned it back.

  ‘You made a mistake!’ Her words are too big in the crammed little entrance space: they slap the stone walls, crack against the tiled floor; they bring heads snapping up to inspect their authenticity.

  ‘But, I don’t understand.’

  ‘I came here to report a crime,’ Matilda begins. It will not be difficult to grow hysterical. Truly, she feels it. It is not Constable Howard’s doing, poor man, but Matilda Steck is hurting, and she is scared, and she wants to rant and bawl the fright away. And here is the perfect excuse. It will lend her story credibility while it ruins Constable Howard’s. ‘I came here, to report a low-down sort of crime …’ She lets the tears come. ‘And to see a contemptible man removed from the streets. And you, you, promised you would help.’

  Glancing about himself, Constable Howard, already rose-cheeked, motions towards a room where they can speak privately, but Matilda shakes her head.

  ‘No. N
o,’ she says. ‘I shan’t stay.’

  ‘But, a drink of water, perhaps …’

  ‘I am not in need of a drink of water,’ she replies. ‘I am in need of having my faith restored.’

  She is gaining an audience now. Three other constables, clearly rattled by her behaviour, have abandoned their duties and stand awaiting her revelation, wondering what it is they could have got so wrong.

  She continues. ‘Some days ago now, I informed you that I had uncovered …’ she riffles through the catalogue of words she had considered on the way here, ‘… deplorable behaviour in a certain individual! I told you that the man involved was a thief and a trickster and you, Constable Howard, assured me that you would arrest him that very morning.’

  ‘And I ensured that the man was –’

  ‘You did not!’

  ‘Mrs Steck. The man in question is at Pentonville –’

  ‘Is he? Is he? Are you sure, sir? Because I have seen him just last night, with my very own eyes, strutting along Piccadilly without a devil’s care.’ She flaps her arms as she speaks, like a prey animal scaring off a predator with more noise, more bravado.

  Constable Howard leans in closer, speaks quietly. ‘That’s impossible, Mrs Steck,’ he says kindly. ‘The man has been –’

  Matilda lifts her left hand and thrusts it into his face to silence him. The ploy works.

  ‘Didn’t I report this ring stolen to you, Constable? Didn’t I tell you that fraudster had taken it from me?’ She had retrieved it no more than an hour ago, scrabbling around on her knees on Henry’s doorstep. She was lucky no one had noticed it, glinting there in the dirty guttering, and plucked it from the ground. She has been lucky in that much, at least. ‘Clearly you did not even investigate my claims.’

  ‘We were coming to it,’ Constable Howard replies. ‘We were. But the strike has left us rather overwhelmed. I’m sure you can understand –’

  ‘Well!’ Matilda spins around. He is offering the correct responses to her accusations, but Constable Howard’s anger is rippling off him now, like heat from an open fire, and whilst she trusts he will stay true to his training, she knows that it is time to make her exit. She sashays towards the door like an actress in an epic film, executing her last devastating goodbyes. ‘I’m sure you feel glad that I have a husband brave enough to bargain this back for me,’ she says, flaunting her wedding ring again. ‘But believe me, constables, the real Jack Turner is still out there, as free as you and I, and I’ve warned you where his interests lie. Perhaps you might think about paying a little more attention to the moral integrity of this city. When you have the time, gentlemen. When you’re not quite so busy.’