At the Dark Hour

by John Wilson

  ****

  The gipsy had prepared the car for the journey to Lowestoft and wanted to ride with her, but she held him off and told him that she was perfectly capable of getting there under her own steam. She had ignored Deborah’s entreaties and threatened her with an early bed before leaving. In her pocket she had two freshly laid eggs. They were brown and she had carefully washed the farmyard dirt off them. She was taking them with her in the hope that, perhaps, things would go well and there would be something to talk about on the drive back to the farm.

  It was getting dark as she climbed into the car. She had ensured that there was sufficient time for her to make the five-mile journey to the station in good time for his arrival. The air was crisp and her breath turned to frost around her. She struggled with the clutch and, as the engine spluttered into life, wrenched the car through the gears – with the change from second to third she broke a nail. She rarely had, or needed, the opportunity to drive in London. The roads were empty and she drove slowly, partly in deference to the blackout and partly because a journey without headlights was inherently hazardous.

  “What is a defining moment? What is being defined?”

  She tried to work out in her mind how she found herself driving to a railway station in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve in wartime to confront her husband over something that was so ill-defined and yet, in her mind, with growing clarity, so certain. The temptation to say nothing grew with every telegraph pole she passed. And with every mile that disappeared behind, her doubts increased. She had no evidence of anything. There was nothing definite. Only the certainty that she had always had when she knew she was right. The knowledge that the future was now, subject to errant bombs, broadly determined.

  “If I choose to act – to say something – it is I who am seeking some sort of definition. I will be defining myself. My past. My future. My marriage. My relationship with Adam. If I say nothing, then events will probably occur in much the same way but I will lose the ability to put my stamp on them. I’ll be a passenger on this train of events.”

  And so she wrestled with her dilemma and decided, ultimately, that her one chance of some autonomy required action.

  ****

  The platforms were empty. It was nearly four o’clock on Christmas Eve and most sensible people were at home preparing for an attenuated Christmas. Catherine looked around her. Two platforms. Railings. A sign swinging languidly in the light wind. All the lights had been extinguished. The solid shapes were turning into shadows. She took a seat on an empty bench and rearranged her hair under her scarf. The chill of the wind crept under her cuffs and she thought of the fire burning back on the farm. Her cheeks were cold. This station. This platform was her chosen battleground.

  ****

  She heard the train before she saw it – a shoosing noise as it slowed – and then it was pulling in with large clouds of steam rising from the locomotive and cab, half obscuring them. She took a photograph in her mind: the train rushing towards her and filling her view – steam rising – and the noise – and told herself that she would remember this. A few passengers filed off and she looked, without anxiety, for Adam. Finally, she saw him: a straggler at the back in his heavy overcoat, lugging a suitcase and carrying some sort of cage – a hint of cigarette smoke rising over his shoulder. Another photograph for her memory bank as she watched him turning into a silhouette. He looked thinner even than forty-eight hours ago.

  “Lost,”

  she thought.

  “Detached, uncoupled and disengaged.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  (Tuesday 24th December 1940)

  – Where’s Deborah? I thought she would be with you. I was looking forward to seeing her.

  – If you’d come up with me you would have had a whole extra day with her.

  – Didn’t she want to meet me?

  – You’ll see her soon enough.

  – What’s wrong?

  – You haven’t been eating properly. You never did know how to look after yourself.

  Catherine smelt stale smoke on him and looked instinctively for his handkerchief but it was out of sight.

  – You’ve been smoking all the way up, haven’t you?

  – A small luxury I allow myself. It clears my catarrh for me.

  And as if to prove his point, he let out a long and retching cough. Catherine noticed how he reached for his pocket and then held back from producing his handkerchief.

  – I know that we have about two hundred pounds in savings – I checked with the bank last week – but it isn’t much; I don’t like watching it go up in your smoke.

  – Why did you go to the bank?

  Her first move and it had produced the reaction she had expected. He began coughing again and this time pulled out his handkerchief, making no effort to hide the blood that coated it.

  – You’re looking beautiful this evening. It’s really good to see you. I can’t wait to see Deborah. I’ve brought her a present.

  He was swinging the cage and she noticed for the first time that it contained a kitten. She would not be distracted.

  – What’s going on, Adam?

  – What are you talking about?

  – We’re not going home until you tell me.

  – It’s Christmas, Catherine.

  Find the pressure point and apply the pressure. Don’t let up until you get what you want.

  She looked into his eyes, knowing that hers were looking beautiful and seeing that his were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He could never hide from her eyes. And she saw something break, and a glitter of resignation, and his thin shoulders slumped.

  – Look. It’s not good and I’m very sorry. But it is not as bad as it may seem.

  She knew at once that it was worse than she could ever imagine, but kept her voice calm.

  – What’s going on, Adam?

  – Look …

  He put his suitcase and the cage down at last and opened his arms in entreaty. He looked, she thought, like the silhouette of a scarecrow and would have been almost comical but for the blood-stained rag in his right hand. She watched as he struggled for breath. She was not to know that he was debating in his mind whether or not Julia had been right when, in Hamleys, she told him how things were going to unfold.

  – I think I’m going to be cited in a petition for divorce.

  – What?!

  Catherine was genuinely shocked and could not control her reaction. She felt as though she had, perhaps, moved her pieces too well. There was a pause and she tried to make a mental picture of this for her memory as well: a man and a woman in their thirties caught in a ghastly tableau on an anonymous station platform as the darkness fell around them. She imagined an omniscient eye, rising from them and circling around, watching them in their predicament from every angle – shadows frozen in time with the ghosts of their breath rising.

  – But, it’s not what it looks like.

  – Tell me what it is before you tell me what it looks like, Adam.

  She was surprised at how quickly she had regained herself.

  – What do you mean?

  – Just tell me what you think is going to happen.

  She watched him as he appeared to shrink before her. He took an ostentiously deep breath before continuing:

  – I think Jeremy Pemberton is going to divorce Julia. I think that he is going to cite me as the Co-Respondent … I think that I will be served soon after New Year.

  Now Catherine was struggling for breath. She wondered to herself whether, if she had not forced the issue, he would have confessed.

  – What makes you think this is going to happen?

  – I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.

  – You don’t expect me to believe that do you?

  – I don’t understand.

  – You don’t expect me to believe that you would tell me something as … as … horrible as this because you have a feeling?

  – I … I –

  – Who told you this, A
dam?

  – It’s just a feeling. Honestly. You saw how Pemberton was behaving at his party the other week. Why did he invite us when he has never shown any interest in me – or us? That anxiety to talk to me? Getting me the Bateman case? And all that innuendo? All those references to Julia?

  Catherine did recall now her curiosity at the circumstances of the party, but was not satisfied with this explanation.

  – Is that it?

  – Well … no … it wasn’t just at the party. There have been all sorts of snide little remarks. It’s as though he saw parallels between the Bateman case and the case he’s trying to build against me and Julia … I mean against me.

  – So he told you, did he, that he will probably be serving you with a petition in the New Year?

  She could not keep the contempt from her voice.

  – No. No. It’s not like that, it’s just that …

  Adam slumped down and sat on his suitcase and said nothing. Just sat there with his head bowed, looking at the ground.

  – So, what makes you so sure there will be a petition in the New Year?

  She sensed that things were about to get a lot worse.

  – Catherine. I’m really sorry. I don’t know why I did it. Truly I don’t.

  – Did … what?

  He had put his handkerchief away and his head was in his hands.

  – You see. I’ve been seeing a prostitute …

  She opened her mouth to speak but could not.

  – I’ve been seeing this prostitute and taking her to the Stafford Hotel off Green Park …

  Her mind filled with obscene images and she looked at her husband again and began to retch uncontrollably.

  – I’m sorry Catherine. I’m so sorry.

  She found again her ice and her steel.

  – How much have you been spending?

  – I don’t know. I haven’t been keeping records.

  – And why did you have to take a prostitute to an expensive hotel?

  – I … I don’t know. I think I was trying to impress her.

  – So you are telling me you have been taking the same prostitute, again and again, to the Stafford Hotel?

  – I’m so sorry, Catherine.

  – Stop saying that! What’s her name?

  She could see that the question threw him and he struggled for too long before saying that she was called Betty. His hesitation was enough for her.

  – And what has this got to do with being cited as a Co-Respondent in the Pemberton divorce?

  – Pemberton always employs the same snoop. I had to sign the register and Jackson found out. The man on reception let me know about it. It had to be Jackson from the description he gave – told the man that he was working on a case for an important barrister; in a personal capacity. What else could it mean – with all those hints that Jeremy’s been throwing at me?

  Catherine looked at the crumpled man.

  – So you’re telling me that you’ve been taking the same prostitute to an expensive hotel over a period of months – or is it years? – and Pemberton has found out about it and has jumped to the conclusion that you’ve been taking his wife there?

  – I suppose that is what I’m saying, yes. I’m so sorry.

  – And what does … does Betty look like?

  – Oh, I don’t know … I mean … she’s blonde and about five foot four.

  – She does seem to look rather like Julia. But why would you need to see prostitutes, Adam? We had a better marriage than that, surely?

  – I don’t know … I just don’t know.

  And as she looked down at the man she had married some fifteen years ago, she began to see.

  – You bloody fool!

  Her voice was a mixture of anger and frustration and something approaching love.

  – You bloody fool. Tell me the truth. We can get through this. I’ll give you a chance. Have you any idea what you’re unleashing? Tell me the truth and I’ll stand by you.

  – But I’m telling the truth.

  – I’m offering you a lifeline, Adam. If you don’t accept it you’re on your own.

  – I’m telling you the truth. Please believe me. I haven’t been having an affair with Julia. I promise to stop seeing Betty. Thank you for standing by me on this.

  – I’ll stand by you if you tell the truth. You’re running out of time.

  – Catherine, please! We’re two articulate adults. Surely we can talk this through?

  – I’m articulate, Adam. You’re merely eloquent. There is a difference. I think that your time is up.

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the two brown eggs.

  – I brought these with me in case things turned out differently. So we could have something nice to talk about on the way back to the farm. I haven’t seen a real egg for so long. I thought that we could bake something special with them – for Christmas. Deborah was looking forward to helping me with the baking.

  – We can still use them in the cooking.

  She took the eggs and smashed them, one by one, on his face.

  – We shall have a civilized Christmas, Adam. For Deborah’s sake. And then you will take the first available train back to London.

  He was wiping the albumen and yolk away with his handkerchief.

  – Please, Catherine!

  – And when you return to London you will take steps to move out of our house into some other place. I don’t want you under my roof.

  – But I have nowhere to go.

  – You will find somewhere, I am sure. Perhaps you can stay wherever you stayed when you didn’t come home last Wednesday.

  He pulled himself to his feet and picked up the suitcase and the cage.

  – I hope Deborah likes the kitten I’ve brought for her.

  – Socks had four white paws. This one only has three. You can take the cat back with you as well.

  And so they made their way to the car for the journey back to a very uncomfortable Christmas Day.

  – Oh, and Adam?

  – Yes?

  – I suppose you have thought through the implications of your Head of Chambers citing you in a petition for divorce against his wife?

  – What do you mean?

  – You do realise, don’t you, that you won’t be able to continue to practise from Stirrup Court? That you will be without Chambers?

  – I … I hadn’t thought of that.

  – No, Adam. I’m sure you hadn’t.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  (Sunday 29th December 1940)

  Inner Temple Lane is accessible through a large wooden gate fronting onto Fleet Street. In a matter of steps one leaves behind the rush and dirt of the Strand and Chancery Lane and enters a world of almost monastic calm. Adam had been in his early twenties when he had first entered the Temple that way after dark. And he felt as though he had been entering paradise. There was a full moon, which washed everything in silver, and all the gas lamps were alight – a bearded man in blue overalls would go round every evening at sunset with his lamplighter applying a flame. All was peaceful and quiet and the glow of lights from windows in Dr Johnson’s Buildings, Goldsmiths Buildings and, at the bottom of the lane, Hare Court, testified to the industry of members of the Bar as they prepared for the following day in Court. That first moment had always been special to him, and in his memory, it was as if the whole lane was phosphorescent with all the different kinds of light. It was then that he knew for certain that this was where he wanted to live and work – among the tangle of sixteenth and seventeenth century buildings in a place where the twentieth century had not penetrated. He had been in his first few months of pupillage, and with a decent degree from Cambridge the opportunities available to him and Catherine seemed endless and intoxicating.

  But that was in the autumn of 1923. As he made his way down the lane on Sunday morning, carrying two suitcases and balancing the kitten in its cage, everything was very different. Blackout shades were still in evidence and there was a thick layer o
f dust over everything. He hadn’t been able to get a train back from Suffolk until the Saturday, and the days between his confrontation with Catherine at the station and his return to the same station, driven by the gipsy, had been slow and very painful. Catherine had made him hide the cat in a barn so Deborah would not see it, and as a result he had no Christmas present for his daughter. They had put on a pantomime of marital harmony for her benefit whenever their daughter was present, but when she was not a curtain of ice fell between them. Catherine seemed to be revelling in the play-acting and went out of her way to humiliate him in subtle ways whilst at the same time ensuring that he realised what he was on the verge of losing. If she had brought him a present she did not give it to him. He gave her the straw hat and she mimicked gratitude in front of Deborah but then threw it to one side with disdain when they were alone in their bedroom that night. And Deborah just looked miserable. She did her best to show her father all the things she had found to do and see on the farm, but it was plain that she knew that something was very wrong. The only relief for him was that every day he and Deborah would be able to go off for long walks in the morning after breakfast, and then again after lunch and before dusk.