The Haunting of Henry Twist

by Rebecca F. John

  ‘One more drink, then?’ Monty asks and Sally, agreeing, steps after him along the hallway. Even here, even now, Grayson is rapt: that feline way she has of walking; the long, pale delicacy of her limbs. His child will stretch and rip and deform that body. He will ruin the girl, inside and out. And he needs to tell her how sorry he is, truly, before it begins. He starts after her, but as he does, so Matilda steps forward to fill the new space at his side. He tenses slightly. He does not know how long she will stay calm like this, but he’s sure it cannot last forever. Nothing ever does, with Matilda. Then again, didn’t he fall in love with a woman who was unpredictable? Didn’t he commit to that constant worry? He supposes he did. He supposes he had been excited by it once.

  ‘I am sorry, you know.’

  Matilda, sobering now, smiles sadly. ‘I do know.’

  Grayson nods and waits, unreasonably or not, for Tilda to return his apology. Because, yes, he deserves that much. He does. He did not destroy their marriage on his own. She is just as culpable, with her … But before he can complete the thought, there is a movement at his side – a little fluttering, which puts him in mind of a butterfly, its wings folding on and around the air, its tiny form propelling itself bravely towards the sky. And it is Matilda, saying sorry the only way she knows how. It is Matilda, tangling her fingers into his and holding his hand.

  AN OVERDUE VISIT

  If he narrows his eyes just far enough and keeps his head high, it is possible to see in front of him only trees – a fine, unnaturally straight line of them, pulled along the boundary of the place like one long strand of a cobweb. Beyond that green periphery, there is, he knows, a street, carrying motorcars toward and away from countless unknown destinations: he can hear the low grind of their wheels turning, their exhaust pipes rattling. And beyond that street sits London – a hotchpotch of houses and pubs, department stores and courts of law, churches and hospitals and prisons so full of people that he cannot stand to think of it. Everyone important is in London. So he’s heard it said, anyway. And he supposes that must be true, because here – no longer visible perhaps, no longer corporeal, no longer able to stop his tears, but here all the same – is Ruby. She is beneath the ground at his feet. She is still a part of her adopted city, still as close to him as she can manage to be, still wearing his name like a crown. She is still Ruby Elizabeth Twist, wife and mother, though her husband cannot extend his fingers to touch her and her daughter never will.

  He indulges, now and then, in daydreams where they grow older together, the three of them. He imagines Libby as she will be: round-eyed and round-bellied as she sways from foot to foot, discovering the freedom of walking; or dancing about to show off the new ribbon looped around the base of her slow-growing ponytail; or, later, rushing in from the garden to open her slimming hand and present him with a ladybird or a caterpillar or some less appealing variety of insect. And there, next to her, always next to her, is Ruby, crouching down to smile into her daughter’s face, or lifting the little girl to her hip to allow her a better view of a cat tiptoeing along a wall or a rainbow cupping a grey span of the world.

  He’d seen her like that with a child once. They’d been sitting on the steps in Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery at their backs, watching a warm summer moon rise. The little boy had appeared from nowhere, barrelling frantically amongst the remaining light crowds. He was perhaps four and ran on a forward tilt, his head working faster than his feet as he cried out for his Mummy. Before Henry could even think of what to do for him, Ruby was squatting before him and gathering him together, as naturally as though he was simply coins spilled from a purse, in need of collecting up again.

  ‘Come on, little man,’ she said. ‘Come on, bachgen. You’re not hurt.’ But even as she spoke the words, she was checking him over, searching for cuts and bruises. She was fussing. She was mothering.

  Afterwards, they walked the child about the square, his left hand held in Ruby’s, his right hand in Henry’s, until his mother discovered them and bombarded them with thank-yous, her blue eyes drowning in what Henry imagined to be equal measures of fear and gratitude … But, were they blue, those eyes? He’s not entirely sure. He recalls that the night had been muggy, and that the air had been shot through with the vinegary tang of jellied eels a nearby hawker was selling, and that he’d sniffed at the dip of Ruby’s collarbone, at that postage stamp of skin on which she always dabbed her perfume, searching the more pleasing scent of vanilla, and that that had made her laugh and clutch the back of his head and call him her ‘sniffer dog’. Whether that woman’s eyes were blue or not, though – he really would not be willing to wager a penny on it now. And if he cannot accurately remember that simple detail, then there must be a thousand other things he is misremembering.

  The idea that his memories of Ruby might be flawed, even on the most microscopic level, floods through him like a cold current of water. He might be fooling himself, about the way she looked at him, or the timbre of her voice, or the texture of her hair, or how happy he made her, or how much she loved him … But no, never that. There is no doubt about that. Ruby had loved him. Ruby had loved him so honestly, so fully, that he could have crushed her with a single word. He’d known that, and he’d revelled in it.

  ‘Ruby,’ he whispers now. Still, he does not look down at her headstone, but glances around the cemetery, checking that no one can hear him. Only one other mourner is visible, perhaps ten rows away, her head bowed over her clasped hands, her hat obscuring her face. She is not listening to him.

  He clears his throat and continues. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been before, I just … I couldn’t, you know, and … I –’ He stops, scrubs his hand through his hair. He speaks to his knees. ‘Ah, woman, how can it be that I can’t have you?’

  Ruby would laugh at such a question. She would position herself behind him and brush her hands across the wing-shaped width of his upper back – easily her favourite physical part of him – and, leaning into his neck, say something like ‘I am not for the having, Henry Twist. I am for the wanting.’

  Always, Ruby had made him understand that he thought in the wrong way.

  The woman to Henry’s right concludes her mourning and steps away between the gravestones, her feet swishing through the grass. Henry watches her until she is gone.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he begins. What he had intended to explain was how Jack had come to haunt his every moment; how, when he looked at that man, he saw his wife staring right back; how he had decided, in that fraction of a heartbeat when he first spotted Jack leaving Pentonville, to forgive Jack Turner anything. It is, he knows, the only way to love – to decide beforehand that you will allow your lover their darknesses, their absences, and wait quietly for them to return to you. That’s what love is made of, staying silent while you hurt. And so how can he protest now at having to make this sacrifice for Jack? It is no sacrifice at all. It is just another duty of love to know that Jack has chewed up and spat out all those poor grieving souls, that he had planned to do the very same thing to Henry, that his life has been one long string of lies, tied one to another with broken hearts, and to forget it, as best he can. That’s what he had wanted to tell Ruby, because that way, she would understand that he’d been listening all along; that he’d heard every last word she’d said to him.

  But of course he has nothing now to tell the girl he buried here. There is nothing worth saying except, ‘I’m taking her home, Ruby. To Ida. I’m taking our baby home.’ And so he utters those sentences – he manages to keep his voice steady, just, long enough to speak them – and after that, he says nothing more. For hours, he says nothing more. There are no words big enough for the thoughts he needs to voice. There is no way to converse with his dead.

  The rain starts. It falls soft as feathers and settles on Henry’s shoulders, in Henry’s hair, and Henry does not move. London grows rowdier for a time then quietens again as morning surrenders to afternoon, and Henry does not move. The sky thickens, like s
tirred paint, before thinning into evening. All over the city, women are puckering their lips to sweep on their lipstick, men are buttoning their shirts, jazz clubs are unlocking their doors and awaiting their crowds. London strips off its day clothes, ready for another frantic night, and Henry does not move. How can he? He is being separated again from his wife.

  Jack appears with the fattening of the rain, pushing Libby ahead of him, a fedora tipped jauntily over one eye. He flashes Henry a smile.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he says. He means the hat: it is not his.

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘You might say I liberated it from a life of slavery and torment,’ he answers. ‘You might also say I stole it, but that would be a far less attractive perspective, if you ask me.’

  Henry smiles. ‘I always did suspect you were a thief. In a previous life.’

  ‘In a previous life,’ Jack returns, ‘this hat sat atop a very ugly head indeed. So perhaps all previous lives are to be improved upon.’

  He positions Libby’s pram so that it is stationary on the grass in front of them, then, sitting down next to Henry, shuffles closer until their thighs touch. Jack’s leg is slighter than Henry’s, and Henry wants to put his hand around the slender width of it, to feel the heat of that man’s body against his skin. But he refrains. They can gamble nothing now. They are making their way out. He trusts Jack was more than careful about the hat.

  ‘How long has she been sleeping?’ he asks, to distract himself from the need that is pulling through him now, stronger than any man he ever fought beside: the need to turn to Jack and pin him to the ground with want. It is a need which quickens his breathing.

  ‘An hour or so,’ Jack answers. ‘She’s not moaned all day, not once.’

  ‘Where did you take her?’ Henry knows that Jack has simply been walking the city, gifting him some time alone with Ruby. He must have walked twenty miles in all these hours.

  ‘Around and about. Just, showed her the sights, you know. Told her some stories.’

  ‘Really? Stories?’

  ‘Of course. She’s going to be a scholar, our little girl, and I thought –’

  Jack stops when he realises what he has said. Our little girl: it is a phrase Henry has never yet been able to use. He catches his nose between his forefinger and thumb and breathes through the shock of it. It is as if he’s been winded, caught unawares by a kick from a standard-issue boot, perhaps, or the butt of a gun, turned around in close combat and thrust into his stomach. He is compelled to lash out, to meet force with force, as his service years taught him. This compulsion, too, he breathes away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jack says. ‘I’m sorry, Henry, I just …’

  ‘No,’ Henry replies. ‘It’s fine. It’s … It was a shock, that’s all. But, I suppose … that’s what she’ll be, won’t she, in Wales? Ours. Ours and Ida’s.’

  ‘Ida’s?’

  ‘She’ll need a mother, Jack.’

  ‘And what will you need?’

  Henry considers this carefully. Need is such a tricky thing to him now. All he had needed as a boy was for his parents to stop screaming each other into unconsciousness every night and fall quietly towards sleep instead. All he had needed through the mess and noise of 1915 was a hot meal and to be free, for a solitary fleeting heartbeat, of the itching. He and Bingley had spoken once about what they would sacrifice for those simple pleasures. Bingley had opted for nearly all of his digits. Henry had decided on a limb, but definitely just the one. And then he’d come home and there had been only Ruby. For those few easy years he had needed only Ruby. But what of now? Perhaps he has it all, right here beside him. Perhaps all he will need as 1926 ages into summer and autumns away, is his baby, and this man, and the ghost of his wife. He braces himself to take a glance, finally, at that baldly worded head-stone. Wife and mother. Wife and mother. Why hadn’t he opted for ‘everything’?

  He is scared, though, of the enormity of everything. He had been everything to his parents, and he had not managed to make them happy. He had been everything to Bingley, and he had not done enough to protect the boy. He had been everything to Ruby, and he had failed, hadn’t he, in his promise to keep her safe? He’d failed in the most spectacular way.

  He answers Jack finally. ‘Nothing more than I’ve got,’ he says. And he means it, because here, within reach of his fingertips, is his family as it now exists. He has his everything.

  They begin, Jack and Henry, two men designing a life together, on the pavement near Paddington Station. They have walked and walked some more, deciding on a place to stop and talking stupidly about what will happen in Wales. Stupidly because neither of them has ever visited, they have admitted, and now, as Jack tweaks another newspaper into its individual sheets and lays them over the ground, they are taking turns to propose some imagined truth about the place. They have it, so far, as a country far less populated than it truly is, and flatter too, with mountains only at its very middle.

  ‘I’ll bet you can see the sea from almost any part of Wales,’ Jack says.

  Henry nods, not knowing whether he agrees or not. ‘I’d like to wake up to the sea every morning.’ He crouches in the concealed doorway they have chosen, rocking Libby’s pram gently and watching Jack build their bed for the night. They had had to leave even their pillows behind, being unable to carry all of their belongings and unable to pay for their conveyance. What is left of their money they will need for the train.

  ‘Me, too,’ Jack replies. ‘Happen we could catch fish for our breakfast.’

  ‘And farm meat.’

  ‘Ah, but who would kill it?’

  Henry smiles. ‘Well, maybe not then.’

  ‘Coward,’ Jack teases.

  ‘In that case, you can kill it.’

  ‘I cannot! Perhaps we could train Lib up to do it. She can be a real little country girl.’

  Henry adjusts his position to look into the pram at his still-sleeping daughter. God, the impossibility of her! Just months old, only now starting to strengthen into her developing body, and already she has endured a lifetime’s difficulties. And Henry is about to ask her to start her life all over again, in a new place. How is that fair? He leans closer to breathe in the powdery smell of her. Her hair has grown fast in these last weeks and it is long enough now to curl at the ends: he threads his smallest finger through the largest shining coil and wears it like a ring. On his opposite hand, his wedding band sits loose about his knuckle. He has lost weight. But, he finds himself promising Libby, in Wales he will eat until he grows broad again. In Wales, he will always be strong enough to protect her.

  Just then, as if she has felt someone watching her, Libby opens her eyes. She does not cry. She only blinks a few times, finding her focus, and recognising Henry above her, smiles for him. And yes, he thinks, it must be for him, not at him, for she has no reason to smile for herself.

  ‘I promise,’ he says.

  Jack, pulling a blanket from their bag and testing the newspaper bed he has made, questions the sentiment with a warning glance. ‘What are you promising her now?’

  And Henry, without heeding the warning, answers, ‘Everything.’

  Jack sighs and stands again, then, putting his hands to his hips and scanning his surroundings, declares that they need something thicker than the newspaper to keep the cold off their arses.

  Henry laughs. ‘Will you be so indecisive when we build our cottage?’

  What had begun as a vague daydream has become, for Henry, a near-certainty. He cannot shake the image now of he and Jack lugging stones towards some grassy scrap of land, measuring out their boundaries, stopping when their hands are blistered to sit in the shade of a wall they have raised from the ground and drink beers, sweat darkening their hair and shirts. This will be his reality. He has decided to make it so.

  ‘What?’ Jack asks.

  ‘When we build our cottage.’

  ‘We’re going to build a cottage?’

  ‘Of course. What else would w
e live in?’

  ‘Well …’ Jack abandons his task and moves to stand behind Henry, where he too can look down at Libby. He speaks in a whisper. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d be willing to brave it, you know – living under the same roof. I mean, we might even be safer doing that here still. There are certain circles to move in, aren’t there …?’

  ‘I just don’t want to be here any more.’

  Jack nods. ‘All right,’ he says. And, with a vigilant check down the street, he puts his palms to the width of Henry’s back and runs them slowly, impiously, across the plane of his shoulders and towards his neck, which he bends to kiss. ‘All right,’ he murmurs. ‘Wales it is.’

  And, ‘Yes,’ Henry answers. ‘Yes.’ Though he can’t say for sure what it is he is agreeing to.

  At some biting hour of the night that follows, Henry wakes to find himself face to face with Jack. For a few sweet moments, he believes them in bed together on Bayswater Road and he watches the other man’s nostrils pulsating: the only evidence of the slow dance that is his breathing, the only evidence that he is alive. It is when he reaches to pull the blankets over his shoulders that he remembers where he is, and why. They are curled around Libby like the shell of a clam, Henry and Jack, their meeting foreheads the hinge joint of that protective casing. And isn’t this how it will be from now on?

  Henry has always been wary of thoughts that come so easily. He’s long known how dangerous they can be.

  But his ideas about a future in Wales are just as easy, just as dangerous. He is making untenable assumptions. He is imagining, just as he did during the strike, that there is something better ahead of them. What a senseless man he has become. Then again, Henry thinks as he sags back towards sleep, isn’t that what love means – becoming hopeful and senseless and ridiculous all at once? How else could you pour all your life into another human being? And that’s what he’ll do in the morning, when they board their train – he’ll pour all of his life into Jack’s, and they will sit in the empty must of a carriage occupied only by yesterday’s scents at that hour and wait for the ticket man to ask them where it is they are travelling to. They’ll watch occasional strangers parading along the platforms, coats hung over their arms, hats removed in the developing warmth of the morning, and, wanting to make Henry laugh, Jack will invent lives for them so outlandish that they could never be true. They’ll listen to the mechanical workings of Paddington: the clicking and cranking, the hissing and whistling. They’ll sniff all the flavour from their steaming coffees. And, when they tire of waiting for the train to lumber out of the station, they’ll snap open second-hand newspapers and attempt to distract themselves with other people’s words.