The Twilight Hour

by Nicci Gerrard

  She should ring Gil, she told herself, but she didn’t know what to say to him. She lowered her head into her hands and forced herself to think. She had told Michael that she would on no account see him again. She had said that she was going to marry Gil and that her sister Merry loved him, and she didn’t want to do something that she would feel guilty about for the rest of her life. This was a great mistake, a moment of madness that they needed to put behind them and never repeat. All the time she was speaking, he had gazed at her so that her voice had faltered. And then he had seized her and kissed her once more, stopping the words. But she had pulled away and left, walking out of the churchyard without once looking back at him, though she could feel him there in every nerve of her body.

  ‘Hello, Gil. It’s me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I am very well. I got us those tickets for the doctors’ ball.’

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘A week on Saturday. You remember we talked about it – you can still come?’

  ‘Of course. I’m not sure I have anything suitable to wear.’

  ‘Whatever you wear will be lovely.’

  ‘Hmm. I need to get a dress. Perhaps I can borrow one.’

  ‘Will you perhaps allow me to—?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right,’ he said peaceably. ‘And Eleanor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps we can find a time when we can tell my mother.’

  ‘Tell her what?’ Though of course she knew.

  ‘About our engagement.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I can’t think of it just at the moment, Gil. I’ve got a bit of a headache.’

  ‘I thought something was wrong.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘You sound a bit tense.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s been a long day.’

  ‘You have an early night,’ he said, tenderly. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. We agreed to see a picture together.’

  ‘Of course. I forgot. Lovely.’

  ‘Sleep well, my darling,’ he said.

  The following morning, Eleanor came down the stairs and found a letter addressed to her lying on the mat. It hadn’t come with the ordinary post, so someone must have posted it by hand. She didn’t recognize the handwriting but knew at once it was from him. She stared at it for a moment, as though it were a bomb that might explode if she touched it, then bent down and lifted it up. Still, she didn’t open it at once. She had the sense that with every step she took a door swung open, a door clicked shut. If she threw away the letter without opening it, she was saying no. If she opened and read it, she was letting him speak to her.

  Nellie, my beloved, she read, and then closed her eyes for an instant before continuing, feeling the sharp gust of pleasure at the words. What have you done to me? What shall I do with myself now that I know you? I feel quite wild, my darling. I cannot tell if it is wild with joy or with despair. How is it that no one can tell that my heart is bursting? I want to keep you secret and deep and I want to shout your name out loud (don’t worry: I won’t). I have to see you again and hold you again and feel the softness of your skin and smell your clean, beautiful hair and press you to me until I don’t hurt with this terrible desire. Tell me you feel the same, Nellie. You must. I know you must.

  She folded the letter in half and then in half again. Gladys’s door opened and her small, inquisitive face peered out. It was too early in the morning for her. Her skin was shiny with cold cream and she had curlers in her thin hair.

  ‘I thought I heard someone in the hall,’ she said. Eleanor saw how her eyes moved at once to the letter in her hand.

  ‘I’m about to leave for work.’

  ‘You’re ahead of yourself.’ Gladys, wearing a quilted robe that looked more like a bedspread, came out into the hall. Her face was still puffy with sleep and her knobbly feet were bare on the tiles.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to eat in my rooms. I’m going to stop on the way for breakfast.’

  ‘That’s good, dear. No unwelcome news I hope?’

  Eleanor glanced down at the letter she was clutching in her hand. ‘Just an arrangement,’ she said coolly, but then spoilt it by adding unnecessarily, ‘for the doctors’ dance.’

  ‘With your young man?’

  ‘Yes. With Gil.’

  Gladys put up her hand and patted Eleanor on her cheek, a playful stinging slap.

  ‘Be good,’ she said and withdrew into her own rooms.

  Eleanor pushed the ridiculous, calamitous letter into her pocket and stepped out into the windless day.

  He stood up from the wall on which he was sitting, dropping the cigarette on to the pavement and slinging his jacket over one arm. Eleanor looked at him. Her heart didn’t roar; she felt almost calm, almost dispassionate. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. His shoes were ancient. His stubble was almost a beard and his hair was unkempt. The romance of the evening had gone from him; this morning, he looked poor and ragged. His face was too gaunt and as he came towards her with his limping gait, he reminded her of the countless men who hung around by the docks or sat in huddles in the parks during the day in their rusty work clothes, hope gradually falling from them. And as she thought this, pity ripped through her and she heard herself draw in her breath sharply. It was one thing to arm herself against his charms; another to resist his weaknesses. Later, he said his poverty had been his secret weapon. ‘If I’d been middle-class and prosperous and professional, I’d have got nowhere. But think of it: a poor young man from the north who’d been injured fighting against Franco in Spain and who dreamt of becoming a writer one day.’ And he’d laughed self-mockingly.

  He laid these things at her feet: his homelessness, his self-hatred, his threadbare freedom, his lack of a future.

  ‘How did you know where I live?’ she asked sharply, drawing back from the hand he held out to touch her.

  ‘I followed you.’

  ‘You followed me! When?’

  ‘Last night. I walked behind you and I stood right there.’ He pointed. ‘And watched you go inside. Then I sat and looked at the light go on upstairs so I knew which was your room. I waited until the lights went out and then I left.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she said, her face flaming.

  ‘I know. But what was I to do?’

  ‘I told you I could never see you again.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’ He shook another cigarette out of its packet and put it in his mouth, lighting a match behind a cupped hand. ‘Don’t you see?’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  ‘Shall we walk? I think your neighbour is looking at us.’

  Eleanor glanced round and saw the curtains in Gladys’s room move.

  ‘Now look,’ she said crossly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are indiscreet.’

  ‘Indiscreet. Terrible thing that.’

  She stopped and faced him. ‘You’re a man and I’m a woman! It makes a difference, or do you not understand that?’

  ‘I do understand,’ he answered, almost humbly. Later, she would often find that with him: she would be roused to anger and then he would take the wind out of her sails by his ready apology, his sudden surprising meekness.

  ‘But you must leave me alone.’

  ‘I cannot leave you alone.’

  ‘Come in here.’ She led him into the café where she often had her breakfast, or at least a mug of tea. ‘We should talk.’

  They took a seat at the back of the room and a woman came to take their orders.

  ‘What will you have?’ Eleanor asked him. She saw him hesitate, his eyes scanning the blackboard for the cheapest item. She thought of saying that she was paying but knew that he would hate that.

  ‘Coffee,’ he said.

  ‘If I have some toast, will you share it with me? I’m not very hungry.’

  ‘No.’ When the woman had gone, he leant over the table t
owards her. ‘If you tell me that you don’t feel the same way as I feel, I’ll be gone at once, never fear. But you can’t tell me that, can you?’

  ‘Gil asked me to marry him, and I said yes.’

  ‘You can’t marry a man you aren’t in love with.’

  ‘Who says I don’t love Gil? I do. I love him and I like him and I trust him. He is clever and kind and the best man I ever met. He’s too good for me,’ she added.

  ‘You love him but you kissed me in the churchyard.’

  ‘I was wrong.’

  ‘You were right.’

  ‘I shouldn’t even be sitting here with you now. Merry loves you—’

  ‘I like Merry of course, and she has been very sweet to me at a time when I needed sweetness, but I don’t believe she really loves me, not the way you mean, and I don’t love her.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have made her feel that you did.’

  ‘I didn’t know what I felt about her until I saw you. After that, nothing else mattered.’

  Their drinks and toast arrived. Eleanor pushed the plate to one side. She put her hand over his. Their eyes locked.

  ‘It’s too late,’ she said. The words were a knell in her ears.

  ‘Please don’t say that.’

  ‘I would always hate myself.’

  ‘But you love me.’

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘You know what you feel.’ He turned his hand sharply and grasped her by the wrist. He leant further towards her; she could see how long his lashes were and how there was a tiny scar on his temple, and she could see her own face in his eyes, and if she looked any longer she would drown. ‘I have to be with you,’ he whispered. ‘I could go mad with love.’

  ‘Ssh.’

  His other hand was on her knee now, under the table.

  ‘You are the loveliest woman I’ve ever set eyes on.’

  ‘I have to go now. I’ll be late.’

  ‘You haven’t finished your coffee or even touched your toast.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Meet me this evening.’

  ‘No. I’ve promised Gil—’ She knew as she said it, that an excuse for not meeting him weakened her resistance.

  ‘Then tomorrow. Meet me tomorrow.’

  She pulled her hand away. ‘I don’t know. Michael, I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what to do—’

  ‘No!’ The intensity of her refusal took them both aback. She tried to keep her voice down and speak more calmly. ‘You will not tell me what to do; no one will tell me what to do. I will decide for myself.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. It’s just that I’m scared that as soon as you leave me you’ll push away what you feel and you’ll decide against me.’

  ‘Will you promise me something?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘If I do decide against you, will you abide by that and not try to convince me?’

  Michael looked at her, frowning. Then he said, slowly: ‘All right. I promise that if you decide not to see me, I will leave you alone. But please don’t do that. Please.’ He took her hand again between both his own and brought it against his cheek, closing his eyes for a moment. Then he kissed her knuckles and turned her hand to press his lips against her wrist, where the pulse beat. Eleanor looked at his bent head, the soft whorl of hair at his crown. Before she could stop herself she leant forward and kissed him there and heard him give a sigh. Then she stood up, leaving the toast and coffee untouched, and raised her hand in farewell.

  ‘I remember it all with such clarity,’ Eleanor said to Peter. ‘I remember it as it happened, minute by minute: the words he said to me and how I felt, how the sun shone through the window, how the air felt on my skin, what it was to be young. I remember what the woman who served us that day looked like – her name was Dorothy and she had a daughter called Biddy and a husband with a weak heart. There are days, weeks, months even, that have all been swallowed up by time, gone into a fog of forgetfulness, but I remember that time as if I was back in it once more, like a room whose door I have at last pushed open and now I can simply step inside and it’s all there undisturbed, undimmed.

  ‘Sometimes I think that I will turn my head and see him standing there – blind old fool that I am – and he will be young still, and so will I, and he will call me Nellie in that way he had. Then I think my heart will break with longing, because I am back there, I am that young woman in love.’

  And she placed her swollen hand where her heart was and her old, lined face wore on it a look of such sadness that Peter stood up and went over to her, crouching down before her and putting his hands on the bony ridges of her shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Ach. It’s long ago and I’ve had a good and happy life. But they say that everything passes and I’ve found this isn’t true. Or at least, there are some things that also return with a freshness that is shocking.’

  Peter rose again, hearing his knees creak, and poked at the fire until the flames blazed again. He poured some more wine into both their glasses.

  ‘I met Gil that evening,’ continued Eleanor. ‘We went to see a not-very-good film about a boxer and also about a young woman who was working in a milk bar, I think. I didn’t concentrate. We sat in the dark and Gil held my hand and every so often I could sense his eyes on me. I could feel his happiness and love. Then we went and had a cocktail and I had a chicken sandwich, I remember. Rubbery, salty chicken. I don’t think I could eat it. He asked about my headache and I said it was still there, a bit, and he said he wanted to tell his mother about us soon. He said that he could be called up soon enough, and he wanted her to have time to get used to the idea in case he had to go. I remember how he looked dishevelled and solemn and glad, and he held my hand and twisted the bangle round and round on my wrist. He was so tender and protective, so brim-full of happiness.

  ‘I felt sick. There was an upwelling of feeling in me and I thought I would have to fall apart under its weight. In the end, I just burst into tears. Like a weak girl,’ she added, disgustedly. ‘He thought I was crying because the war was coming and he would perhaps go away. Although he never did go away. He stayed throughout the Blitz, tending to the sick and the dying. But he thought I was scared to lose him. He was so nice to me, so understanding – although of course he understood nothing. There were tears in his eyes too, but he said he was joyful as well as sad, because I loved him enough to weep at his going. I had thought I would tell him it was all over between us that evening, that although I knew I couldn’t be with Michael, nor could I be with Gil. But I found that I couldn’t, I couldn’t look into his face and see it change. I was a coward. And I had never loved him as much as I loved him that evening.’

  ‘So you didn’t tell him?’

  ‘No. I even said we would tell his mother next week perhaps. And then he took me home and saw me through the door. There were two letters waiting. One was from my mother and had been posted the day before. It was a long, rambling letter, but I only really noticed the paragraph in which she said that Merry’s young man seemed to have disappeared off the scene and that she and Robert were rather relieved but that Merry seemed wretched and on edge. They were worried about her, although in the end it was for the best. She asked me if I would come up soon to cheer Merry up and perhaps give her some sisterly advice.

  ‘The other was from him. It wasn’t a letter at all, just a scrap of a note in a gummed envelope that had been pushed through the letterbox.’

  Tomorrow evening, by the quince tree. I’ll be there as soon after six as I can. I will wait for you until nine xxxx

  19

  It started quite well. He reversed the old car slowly out of the garage without any mishap and manoeuvred backwards to the entrance of the house. Perhaps his driving had improved with rest. The car smelt musty. There was a newspaper folded in the back seat that dated back to 2002 and a bag of boiled sweets that were welded together in the glove compartment.

>   Eleanor was waiting. She had on a long dark-green coat with a velvet collar and a woollen scarf, deep blue in colour, and looked vigorous and purposeful as she tapped her way towards the car, refusing Peter’s arm.

  ‘This is a treat,’ she said, taking off her coat and folding it neatly before handing it to Peter to put into the back. Then she settled herself into the passenger seat and fastened the safety belt. ‘A day out.’

  ‘I don’t actually know where we’re going.’

  ‘I’ll direct you,’ she said. Peter looked at her sightless face dubiously. ‘Turn left at the end of the drive.’

  He revved the engine, sat forward and put the car into first, then took his foot off the clutch. The car leapt forward with a spurt of gravel under the wheels. Eleanor jerked in her seat.

  ‘Whoops! Sorry about that,’ said Peter.

  ‘That’s all right. You’ll get used to it.’

  He turned on to the lane rather sharply, knocking against the verge. The branch of a tree slapped the windscreen. His hands were sweating on the wheel and he felt that everything was happening a bit too fast. He swerved to avoid a pothole. The map on the dashboard slid forward and landed in Eleanor’s lap.

  ‘Perhaps you should change gear,’ she remarked, not seeming at all bothered by the commotion.

  ‘Of course.’

  He changed into second and the car stopped whining so loudly.

  ‘And again,’ said Eleanor.

  The car ground into third, the gearstick biting his hand.

  He wanted to wipe his forehead but didn’t dare take his hand off the steering wheel. He remembered that he’d left his mobile at the house: if something went wrong, he wouldn’t be able to call for help.

  ‘There’s a junction coming up,’ he said, and stopped abruptly several yards from the turning.

  ‘Right here. Soon we’ll be on a main road, then you’ll be able to relax.’

  Peter didn’t think that was necessarily true. It started to rain and he turned on the headlights and the indicators before finding the wipers.

  ‘All right?’ asked Eleanor mildly.

  ‘I think so.’

  There was a car behind him now, very close, too close. He could see the man’s cross face in his mirror. He put his foot on the accelerator, surged forward, then braked to a crawl. The car bumped into them.