The Twilight Hour

by Nicci Gerrard

  ‘I saw him as often as I could over the weeks that followed. We knew that he would soon be sent to training camp and then he would go to fight. Everything was too intense; war and love became indistinguishable. Once or twice, I smuggled him into my rooms when we couldn’t go to his friend’s place. Or we went to horrible cheap hotels where we had to sign ourselves in with a married name.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘Mr and Mrs Ramsay, after Virginia Woolf’s novel, which we had talked of the first time that we met. Damp walls and stains on the floors, flickering bulbs. It didn’t matter. Once, we made love in Epping Forest. We could hear families nearby. He put a hand over my mouth to stop me crying out loud. My nails made marks on his back that he carried for weeks. I was in love. I was so in love that I felt sick and ill with it: ashamed, exultant, consumed. Very scared.

  ‘We listened to war being announced on the wireless together. The whole country was listening, I think, everyone gathered round their set, a silence lying over cities and towns. We didn’t say anything. He got up and made us both a mug of tea and we drank it in silence. I knew—’ She stopped.

  ‘What? What did you know?’

  ‘I knew this couldn’t last. These days, our secret life, my secret self. But still I could not bring myself to tell Merry. I told myself it was out of kindness, but it was cowardice that prevented me. I didn’t want to see myself the way she would see me, after she knew what I’d done. And the thought of what my mother would feel was too much for me. And Robert, who had always been good to me, would hate me. So for a short while I existed in a no man’s land, after the deed but before the confession; something done but not yet discovered. My own ticking bomb.

  ‘It all happened too quickly. Suddenly, we were at war; of course, it was inevitable but at the same time it was shocking. Every man between the age of eighteen and forty was called up. They didn’t go at once but it was the beginning of the end. I thought that perhaps Michael would be exempt because of his leg. But it was just a small limp; not enough to stop him killing men or getting killed.’

  Gladys called up to Eleanor from the hall: there was a call for her from her mother. Sally still wasn’t used to speaking on the phone, and she was stiff and formal, talking too loud and artificially separating each word.

  ‘Are you coming home for my birthday this weekend?’

  ‘I don’t think I can. Sorry. I should have said.’

  ‘Why not? You always come. We’ve been expecting you.’

  ‘It’s hard to get away. What with everything.’

  ‘Hard to get away.’ Sally’s voice was flat. ‘What makes you so special?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just because you live in the great city now, it doesn’t make you better than us.’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘And just because we’re at war, doesn’t mean family no longer matters. It matters more.’

  ‘I know. You’re right.’

  ‘So come and see us.’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘Come and see us or we’ll think you’re avoiding us. Are you avoiding us?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ She held the receiver tight and felt the jolt of her heart.

  ‘I don’t know; why would you? I’ll make up your bed.’

  ‘News from home?’ asked Gladys, head to one side like a tipsy little bird.

  Eleanor was uncomfortable with her neighbour nowadays, who knew when she wasn’t at home, who saw her creeping back at dawn, and whose shrewd gaze took in the change that Eleanor could see in the mirror.

  The days leading up to her visit home were filled with an ugly anticipation. Eleanor felt cold and shivery; there was a tight knot in her stomach. She tried to imagine what she would say, sitting round the little table and making light conversation, lying in bed beside Merry and listening to her confidences. She felt clotted with deceit.

  ‘Don’t go,’ said Michael. He turned from the open window, where he was smoking a cigarette, and stared at her. She could feel the way his gaze took her in, her nakedness under the thin sheet, the sweat still on her body.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘No.’ He stubbed the cigarette out on the windowsill and let it fall to the pavement outside. ‘No you do not. You can stay. We have so little time. I go for training in four days’ time. And then—’ he gave a small sharp wince, ‘Then I will be sent to fight. Who knows when we will next meet? Stay with me until then.’

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  ‘How do I know that?’

  She tried to laugh, although she too was full of a kind of foreboding.

  ‘You know because I’m telling you. Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not in this.’ He knelt by the bed. His hand was between her thighs that were still sticky. ‘You want to do the right thing.’

  ‘Don’t you also want to do the right thing?’

  ‘No. I just want you. I would sell my soul for you.’

  She wanted to say that some things are more important even than love or happiness, but his mouth was on hers and the words were blotted out.

  Robert met her at the station and drove her to the house. Even the weather seemed uneasy and full of foreboding. The sky was a dark, ominous brown and wind whipped at the tops of the trees. A few large drops of rain fell. A storm was brewing.

  Even before Eleanor was in the car, he had told her that they were worried about Merry.

  ‘Why is that?’ asked Eleanor, staring out of the window at the road running towards them, the corn in the fields on either side. Her voice was tight and cool. Surely he must hear.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘All the spirit seems to have gone out of her. It’s that dratted young man of hers. I always knew he’d be trouble, from the moment I set eyes on him.’

  ‘Did you?’ Eleanor repeated, turning her face from her stepfather so that he wouldn’t see the shame written on it. There was no way of speaking in a manner that sounded normal. Her words, her light, brisk tone, her pretended ignorance, grated on her own ears.

  ‘I saw what he was like. And I was right, wasn’t I? He courted her and made her fall for him and then just disappeared off the face of the earth.’

  ‘Mmm.’ What else could she say?

  ‘She’s not like you. She’s delicate and emotional, ruled by her heart. She thought she would marry him. She still thinks so.’

  ‘You mean she still thinks she’ll marry him?’

  ‘She insists that he’s coming back. She says that she knows he loves her and it’s just this war that’s keeping him away. She says she trusts him and gets very angry if we say anything sympathetic. She’s proud, you see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I knew as soon as I set eyes on him.’

  ‘What did you know?’

  ‘I knew no good would come from him.’

  They sat at the table and ate boiled fish with potatoes from the garden, whose skins were slightly bitter. It was a beige meal, thought Eleanor, moving it round the plate with her fork. Beige and soggy, dispiriting somehow. Robert drank beer and the three women water, and they talked of the war as everyone, all over the country was doing – it was that strange time of limbo, when the country was at war but nothing was happening. Sally lit a stub of candle and there were wild flowers that she had gathered in a jug. Eleanor had bought her a pair of smart suede gloves that Sally said she’d never have occasion to wear. She was still making out that her daughter had become too grand for their country ways. Outside the wind strengthened, until it sounded like a waterfall through the trees.

  Merry was wearing a loose dress made of soft dark material and her hair was scraped up on the top of her head, making her face look smaller than usual, her blue eyes larger. She looked like a waif, thought Eleanor; perhaps that was the point. There was something slightly artificial about her manner, as if she was in a melodrama, and her eyes glittered. She reminded Eleanor of cracked glass, through which the light shone crookedly. Her voice was brittle, her laugh high, unsteady. She
couldn’t seem to keep still, shifting in her chair, fidgeting at things with her hands, picking up her tumbler and then putting it down again untouched. Robert and Sally were very solicitous towards her. They kept praising her and asking Eleanor to agree with them – which of course she did. It was like a strained and worn-out version of the way things had always been.

  After their meal, Merry suddenly stood up and said to Eleanor: ‘Will you take a walk with me before we go to bed?’

  ‘A walk! But it’s raining,’ said Sally, alarmed. ‘You’ll both get pneumonia.’

  ‘It’s hardly raining yet. Just for a few minutes, in the garden.’ She spoke directly to her sister, her face white and pinched with determination. It was as though Sally and Robert weren’t in the room with them. ‘There is something I need to ask you.’

  ‘Why not use the parlour?’ asked Sally.

  Eleanor stood up. ‘All right,’ she said to Merry. ‘Before the rains start.’

  ‘I’ll clear up.’ Robert rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing his pale freckled arms. ‘Go on, the two of you, but not for long. We don’t want to send out the search parties.’

  So they put on their coats and stepped outside, into the damp and gusting wind. Merry tucked her arm through Eleanor’s and matched her step to her sister’s. Eleanor tried to think of something to talk about, but her mind was quite blank. She waited to see what would happen.

  ‘Ellie,’ said Merry at last, as they crossed the grass together. ‘Will you promise to do something for me, please?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re supposed to say yes. If I ask you for a favour, you’re supposed to agree before even knowing what it is. Because you’re my only sister and we love each other—’ she paused, and then added, ‘unconditionally,’ separating out each syllable so that the word sounded nonsensical. ‘So if I say that it means everything to me, will you do it? I would for you.’

  ‘I would never ask you.’

  ‘You mean you won’t?’

  ‘What is it you want from me, Merry?’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re so cold with me.’

  ‘I do not mean to be cold.’

  ‘You know that he’s gone?’

  Eleanor didn’t pretend not to understand. ‘Michael?’ she said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you bring him back?’

  ‘How can I do that?’

  ‘Will you?’ Her fingers pressed Eleanor’s wrist.

  Eleanor stopped and turned, took her sister by the shoulders.

  ‘Listen, Merry,’ she said, trying to keep her voice level. ‘How can you want someone if he does not want you? Let him go.’

  ‘I can make him want me. Look at me!’

  She pulled away from Eleanor and stepped back, flinging out her arms and turning in a circle, her dress ballooning out and her hair coming untied in the wind. As she whirled, she let out a small, hysterical yelp that sent a shiver through Eleanor.

  ‘Merry, please don’t. Come inside now.’

  Merry stopped suddenly, her arms dropping to her sides. Eleanor could smell the fear on her, a sharp high odour of distress.

  ‘You’ve always been jealous of me.’

  Eleanor considered this. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said at last, gravely. ‘Or not in the way that you mean.’

  ‘I won’t let you get away with it. I’d rather die.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

  ‘I’m not a child.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I can ruin everything for you.’

  ‘Can you?’ She felt tired to her bones now. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Don’t think I won’t.’

  Then all of a sudden the rain started in earnest, as if the stretched and swollen sky had split and water was at last gushing through. Merry ran inside, shouting something, but Eleanor stood for a while, welcoming the heavy downpour and the scouring wind.

  When she returned to the house, soaked to the skin and cold, only Sally remained in the kitchen.

  ‘What have you said to Merry?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘She doesn’t seem to think so.’

  Eleanor took off her coat and hung it from the hook on the door. She towelled the ends of her hair and then said, ‘There’s something you should know.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I have left Gil.’

  Sally stared at Eleanor as though she were a stranger.

  ‘Why would you go and do such a foolish thing?’

  ‘Because I’ve fallen in love with someone else.’ Eleanor tried to keep her voice calm. She could feel the drunken galloping of her heart.

  ‘No,’ said Sally. ‘You mustn’t. You just mustn’t—’ As if it hadn’t happened yet.

  ‘I’ve told Gil it is over between us.’

  ‘No!’ her mother said again, more urgently. ‘It won’t be too late. You can make everything right again. He’ll take you back.’

  ‘I don’t want to be taken back. And it is too late. I’ve committed myself, and there’s no going back.’

  Sally actually lifted her hands to ward off the blow. Eleanor could see that her mother knew what she meant. She came from a different world and thought her daughter had brought shame on the family and on herself. She was spoilt, a damaged fruit.

  ‘I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to know anything else.’

  ‘I thought I could tell you,’ said Eleanor. ‘I wanted to talk to someone about it all. I need to. You’re my mother. Perhaps you can help me. I don’t know who else to talk to. Please.’

  ‘You should have thought about that before,’ said Sally, her mouth in a thin, grim line. ‘I thought you had more sense. I must say I am disappointed in you, Eleanor.’

  ‘When I had children myself,’ Eleanor said to Peter now, ‘I made a pledge that I would never say such a thing to them. Anger is a hundred times better; it’s clean and honest. Disappointment is all about the other person; it’s a form of emotional blackmail. Anyway, even if I had been going to, it was quite impossible to tell her about Michael after that – and maybe that was her intention, for I don’t know to this day if she guessed. Perhaps she knew and didn’t want to; or perhaps she had no idea. What I understood then, however, was what I already really knew: that I could look for no support or understanding in that quarter.

  ‘Years later, when she lay dying, there was a moment when I thought we would talk, and I would ask her – but what? She was a stranger to me as I was to her. She had become as thin as a skeleton so that all her features looked as though they were too big for her, as if they belonged to someone else, and I could barely recognize her. She was very scared. Robert was long dead and I was the only one to sit at her bedside and hold her hand and see her over the threshold. My children came, but not at the end. She didn’t want them. I think they made her realize her time was drawing near and she didn’t want to know. I sat in that hospital and I thought about when I was a little girl and it was just the two of us looking out for each other. I don’t know what she was thinking about. What do people think about as they lie dying? I imagine I will find out before long, when my children are round my bed, holding my hand. I wonder if I’ll be scared.’

  ‘Are you scared now?’

  ‘I don’t know. We shall see.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Well now, Peter. Listen.’

  Eleanor sat for a long time in the kitchen, by the dwindling fire, her wet clothes gradually drying on her. She could hear movements in the rooms above her and then it was silent inside the little house, while outside the clamorous roar of the wind and rain swept round it, shrieking in the eaves and banging at the thin panes of glass in the window so that Eleanor thought they would break. She thought of Merry’s words – ‘I can ruin everything for you’ – and of her mother’s implacable refusal to hear her out. She thought of Michael waiting for her, wanting her, and of the war ahead, the darkness into which they must all go.

&nb
sp; At last, when it was late, she stood and went up the little stairs to the room that she and Merry had shared, the twin beds. The air was slightly sour, and she could hear the rasp of Merry’s breathing in the close darkness. She was asleep, or pretending to be, and at least they would not have to talk. Tomorrow she would rise before her sister woke and leave on the first train; she didn’t know when she would return. This was no longer her home.

  She felt exhausted but also janglingly awake, and could not bring herself to lie in the narrow bed, just a few inches from Merry. She unlaced her boots and eased them off, untied her hair and sat in the chair beside the bed. She pressed her cold fingers against her scorching eyes under their closed lids and listened to the moans of the wind, the creaking of trees and the rustling of their leaves.

  She must have fallen asleep. When she woke, like a swimmer plunging up to the surface, she had no sense of how long she had slept or of what the time was now. All she knew – and how she knew, she could not say – was that she was alone in the room. She stretched out her arm to Merry’s bed and found only a jumble of sheets over a patch of vague warmth where a body had lain. She rose, feeling her way blindly, catching her ankle, knocking against furniture, and made her way down the stairs. Past the dull embers, pushing her feet into boots that were too large for her, and out into the streaming wildness that took her breath from her as she ran.

  Her mind was a whirling chaos, but her feet carried her. Her body knew where Merry had gone and what she had set out to do. Rage and despair gave Eleanor power: she sped over the sodden ground and through the thickets, barely minding how they tore at her clothes and hair, how her skirts wrapped round her legs. Fury so strong it was almost euphoric lifted her from the bank of the river in a leap that carried her to the surging centre of the river. As she hung in the air waiting for the fall, she realized that the storm had died away, that stars shone in the great sky above her, that an owl was shrieking nearby, the loneliest sound, that she didn’t want to die. For a moment, she thought not of Merry, nor Michael, but of her father and his brave wide smile. What a short stretch of life he had had. How sad he must have been to go.