Half Light

by Frances Fyfield

  The opening of the bag, the trying on, the examination of how the dress, gown, robe, was made, took her from the last of the half light to darkness: from the time when the windows in her bedroom changed from solid planes of blue to black, and the dress, dark against her olive skin, shone in the unassisted glare of electric light. With her hair still pinned in untidy magnificence and her feet still bare, Elisabeth stepped unsteadily over the wide corridor outside, ready to share the madness of Thomas. The dress moved with her in a thousand shades of lapis lazuli.

  Thomas sat in the room which was for night. He had lit the fire and sat in one of the wing chairs, not waiting, simply acting the role of a man in a reverie, turned away from the door.

  ‘Did you get my note?’ he said sharply. ‘I left it in the kitchen. Communication by note seems better than none at all. Maria is back tomorrow. I thought you’d be pleased to know. Listen, we must talk.’ He did not look round, but was addressing the steps he had heard. The arrogance made her furious, his strange, not quite discourteous failing to turn, confident enough in his captive to assume she would not be sneaking up behind him with a kitchen knife. It might have come to that, she thought, if I could have found such a knife, but I could not. It might still come to that, violence less alien than it had ever been. Butler, the guardian savage, made more response than the master, ambled across the carpet with his tail raised in greeting, a study in slow hypocrisy.

  ‘Oh …!’

  The sound emerged from Thomas almost like a cry of pain as she crossed before him to the sideboard where a row of decanters gleamed. ‘Oh … darling …’ the last syllables a sentiment rather than a word, breathed on an outward breath, choked back into a cough as if to deny it was said at all as he stood up awkwardly, supporting himself on the arm of his chair, sat back again abruptly, his body pushed in the chest by an invisible hand. Elisabeth found the sherry decanter and poured a generous measure into a wine glass. Way too much after half a litre of wine, but the alcohol had congealed rather than inebriated. All the same, her hands were clumsy. She crashed the sherry decanter against the brandy as she replaced it. The sound was sharp: Butler stirred. There was a louder rustling of silk as she moved.

  ‘Well?’ she said aggressively. ‘Well? Is this what you wanted?’

  He stared.

  ‘Is this what you wanted?’ she repeated. ‘A piece of perfect horseflesh, dressed in your colours? Something to look at until you can’t stand it? Something to feel? Here I am.’ She sat. The robe rustled. She stood again, the sound of the fabric a deafening whisper as she swigged a throatful so recklessly that tears came to her eyes. The fire caught the reflection of their moisture: the tiny pearl buttons gleamed.

  ‘This thing must have cost a thousand,’ she added conversationally. ‘And I don’t know for what.’

  ‘For you,’ he said into a long silence. ‘Only for you. You and you only.’ The humbleness of the singsong tone grated on her nerves: temper, subdued for years, flared into desperate life.

  ‘For me!’ she shouted. ‘For me? What crap. It’s for you. It has nothing to do with me. It’s all for you, and all your mad obsessions about beauty, to hide you from all those realities outside. Something to save you from being a poor little rich man, from being a pathetic creature as mad as his bloody dog. Oh for God’s sake at least try to be honest. Don’t try and tell me it has anything to do with caring for me or any rubbish like that. You can’t care for me and trap me like a butterfly. You can’t care for Maria if you make Butler bite her. You can’t be a loving gaoler, there’s no such thing, you bastard. Come on, then. Come and get me.’

  He hesitated, struggling for words, moistening his lips as if to retrieve the spittle in advance.

  ‘What do I want? I want you to be as beautiful, perfect, safe and happy as you can be. That is my pleasure. I also want you to be loved.’ His face by the fire was a mirror of sly, earnest devotion, lit by the constant smile. The room was as hot as a furnace.

  Elisabeth’s voice rose to a wail. ‘Loved? Is that it? Loved by you? Oh how simple. Just a quick fuck, or something more complex? If only I knew. I’d rather be hated: it’s easier to deal with.’ She threw the rest of the sherry down her throat. Butler growled. She looked at him in contempt.

  ‘And this damned dog is the guardian of your morals too, is he? Let’s see what you want and get rid of all this splendour at the same time, shall we? Since you don’t know the truth, finding out is trial and error. Only I can’t stand dishonesty and I can’t stand the suspense.’

  The alcohol suddenly burned as her fingers gathered speed undoing the buttons. She began by bending, unbuttoning from the ankle, her forehead almost touching the floor while the combs escaped from her hair, the hands moving faster and faster. The robe was designed to be worn next to the skin: it was moulded thus and thus she had worn it. She stood with the garment undone and her hair over her face as she freed the last fastenings at the cuffs, and then, with a dexterity owing more to the rage pounding at her temples than to elegance, she was suddenly naked. Not shyly naked, either, but taunting, standing tall and straight with her arms by her side, not coyly covering herself. She bent again with her full suppleness, retrieved the combs from where they had fallen among the glorious folds of ultramarine at her feet, raised her arms above her head to secure the hair back as it had been. Her breasts were raised with the action of her arms, hung heavy, soft and golden. She was perfectly calm.

  ‘Was this what you wanted, Thomas? Come on, let’s get it over. The attempt, at least.’

  His dead eye burned. Elisabeth stepped out of the dress neatly. Thomas did not move. She crossed over to the sideboard again, refilled another glass, this time with brandy. Dutch courage, alcoholic nonchalance: she felt she could drink a lake, thought of acrobats on the flying trapeze psyching themselves into bravery. She waited for him, determined now to say nothing, let him do whatever he would do. It did not matter much any more. A body was only a body. Freedom was another matter altogether.

  Movement, as slight as a sigh. Heavy movement, Thomas hauling the barrel of his body out of his chair, Elisabeth bracing herself, looking at the yellow colour of the sherry under glass in the decanter, like a specimen of vintage urine. Thomas moving, slowly, like an old man. A click of his fingers, a signal to the dog, who shifted too and then slumped again. She heard Thomas pause in his dragging footsteps. The door shut and only then did she dare look away from the wall she faced and move to the fire.

  The dog lay across the dress, making himself comfortable, sticking his wet nose among the folds, lifting a hind leg to lick in a vulgar instinct of cleanliness. Elisabeth stood alone by the fire, resting her head on her arm as the warmth hit her body and the light of the flames played over her naked skin.

  Butler did not like the smell of the dress. Elisabeth went back to her own bathroom, where she was violently sick.

  The flat faded back into silence.

  No fire for Maria: she did not deserve a fire. She had nursed the legs for a day, not because she wished to do so, but because she was obeying his orders. His instructions, her own lord and master. There had been more than one saint named Thomas, she was thinking inconsequentially before he arrived this morning. First, there was doubting Thomas, who had insisted on touching the wounds of the risen Christ, touched with his hand the wound in the side, to prove that it was indeed he who had died and risen again. Then there was Thomas Becket, who should have been an example to her own Thomas. A dubious saint, she thought, one who had first served his king until he changed his allegiance back to his God and was murdered for that devotion. Oh, there was time for her own Thomas yet. He would free himself of all temptations yet. Maria liked saints who learned.

  She had shown her Thomas a picture of his patron when he had ventured below stairs today, but he was not interested, brushed it away. He had only come down to tell her to stay where she was and not bother him. Elisabeth is being difficult, he had said: she is not such a good girl, all spoken vaguely, with an air o
f distraction as he sniffed his distaste for the meanness of her surroundings. Oh, she adored him; hated him, too. Since the morning she had been sitting still for most of the day, thinking.

  On the single rickety table lay a selection of metal things she had rescued from the pockets of her coat, where she kept everything secret. There was a kitchen knife and a penknife, both preserved from confiscation, used to trim the edges of her paper pictures. She always preferred knives to scissors. There were also the keys to the window locks in the flat upstairs.

  Maria addressed her picture of St Sebastian. ‘He’d be very cross if he knew,’ she chuckled. ‘Very. He thinks he knows everything. He’s keeping me hidden. Why? What’s he doing?’ Thomas had been so impatient to be gone when he visited today. ‘She is not the good woman we thought,’ he had said to her so earnestly the afternoon before. ‘She is not what she seems, Maria. You must not make a friend of her. Don’t talk to her, Maria. Don’t talk to her, don’t tell her things, the way you did. That’s all. What were you trying to do? Make her hate me? I don’t want her to hate me, sister. I don’t really want her to hate you, either. But she will if you talk to her. So don’t.’

  Maria had nodded, just to make him hug her again, but he didn’t. Now, she was bored, and her legs ached less, so that she had to scratch to make sure there had been a real reason for all that pain and still some pain behind it. She looked with satisfaction. Just like St Sebastian: it would go on for a long time. But into that strange contentment came a worry which hurt more, a chronic mistrust which was becoming second nature. Maria tapped her nose, not a natural gesture but one she had seen used. ‘I know,’ said the gesture, and at the same time she said, ‘I know, I know, I know. A thing or two. Just a thing or two. Maybe three.’

  Not what she seemed. A woman, not a saint, Elisabeth. Someone who might drag him away back into the worldly muck from which Maria had rescued him. Drag him with the ease of all those pictures. He was so vulnerable to his own eye.

  The realization hurt more fiercely than the wounds: she could feel the flush of blood rise in her chest and a stickiness of sweat form in her groin and beneath her arms. What were they doing up there, brother Thomas whom she tried to save and the girl who he said was no good? Oh God, was he killing her soul? Doing what else with their loneliness? Being what? Maria stumbled towards her tiny bathroom. No, no, no. She used the soft toilet paper which Thomas encouraged her to buy along with his own shopping, scrubbed at her face, crotch, under her arms, and sat thinking with the paper scrunched in her hand. She did not put any depictions of Jesus or saints in the lavatory: that would be sacrilegious, so the walls were bare and there was nothing to look at, less to distract. Her ablutions in here were always done with a modest speed, often, like now, without light. Struggling up and out in the dark, she struck one shin on the door and howled in pain. She had tried to save his soul. She had tried to save him from all the temptations of the eyes. From flesh. She had loved that girl and she was betrayed.

  Enid did not cry. It was more a snorting sound, which Annie found contrived. Francis and Annie sat before her like the inquisitors they were, both of them rigid with lack of sympathy.

  ‘The car,’ Francis was saying harshly. ‘Can you remember when she last used the car?’

  Enid coughed, recovered herself. ‘The car,’ Francis repeated.

  ‘No, I don’t remember. Only that she took it when she went. And …’ The voice, made deliberately girlish and plaintive, trailed away while she wafted a hand in front of her face as though trying to flick away a fly. In a shocking gesture of familiarity, Annie leaned forward, snatched the drifting hand and deposited it back in Enid’s lap. The effect was as salutary as a public slap from teacher.

  ‘No. It was all smashed up, I tried to tell her but she wouldn’t listen. You know, someone hit it when they came round the corner, they’re always doing that, everyone goes so fast. But that man, well, he knew about it being smashed up. I wondered how he did know. I think he said it. I tried to tell her …’

  ‘Does he come here in a car himself? The uncle?’

  ‘No, yes. No, not as far as I know, not usually. I asked him, because I thought I’d seen a car before, I mean, when he used to wait outside …’

  ‘He used to what?’ Annie’s voice again, sharp and snappy.

  ‘Wait outside. Walk up and down, with a stick. I didn’t know it was the same person then, of course. It was only later when he came, and I thought about the stick. I used to hear it. Anyway, when I asked him about the car he said to mind my own business, but then he said, yes he did have a car, only ever used it at night, when he could park, and on Sundays. He came here once on a Sunday. With his dog. I kept asking him where she was, I was beginning to worry, but when I cried, he made his dog bite me …’

  ‘Some uncle,’ Francis murmured.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Enid, more comfortably. ‘I don’t know about that, do I? She knew a lot of men. She might have had a lot of… uncles.’

  ‘You’re a wicked old woman,’ said Annie quietly. ‘A horrible old bitch. Why didn’t you warn her about someone walking up and down outside? You nasty old cow.’

  Even Francis was slightly discomfited by the venom in Annie’s hissed words and threatening stance, as she leaned forward like a snake about to strike. Enid’s composure had mended itself only to dissolve completely and the snorting sound gained a genuine grief. Enid was afraid and did not want anyone to hit her.

  ‘How could I tell her?’ she blubbed. ‘When I didn’t know there was anything wrong? I didn’t know that the someone outside, hanging around, was this uncle, how could I? Besides, she wouldn’t have listened to me. She never would.’

  ‘Why not tell someone else, then? Like us when we came here, instead of all those lies? The police even?’

  ‘Because she wouldn’t ever listen to me. She wouldn’t ever listen to me or let me in. She wouldn’t let anyone need her and I needed her. I couldn’t tell anyone else because it was me broke into her place, just to see. Uncle knew that, but he said it was our secret, so he gave me some money to paint over the paint where I’d made a mess, told me it was my place now, took some of her clothes, pictures and things, squared the landlord, took her post away, told me what to say. I had to, I had to. I couldn’t tell that nice policeman it was me after all… I couldn’t. Could I?’

  ‘No,’ said Francis, without meaning to reassure, sorry for her at last, thinking of all his clients and their various justifications for the sudden suspensions of free will. ‘No. I suppose you couldn’t.’ He rose and towered above her, pleasant but menacing.

  ‘Give us the telephone number, then.’ Enid shrank back.

  ‘Come on, the number he gave you. Or did he give you a card? He must have done, Enid. He’d have wanted you to get in touch if anything happened, wouldn’t he? Like a fire. Like when the police searched, or someone like us coming round and asking a whole lot more questions than we did. Come on, come on, give.’ He clicked his fingers while she watched him, mesmerized. Then slowly she got to her feet, went over to her mantelpiece, as heaped with ghastly glass ornaments as the chintzy tables in the room, brought back a card which was laid face down. The only calling card she has, Annie thought maliciously, hardly surprising. By now, Enid had crumpled completely. She looked very old.

  ‘Only I wasn’t to phone him,’ she said. ‘Never. I was to write him a postcard. Or I was to phone his sister, in the evenings. He’d call back next day. There.’ She pointed to a second number under the embossed digits of the first. Both Annie and Francis looked at the card as if it might contain the answer to everything.

  ‘The dealer,’ Annie murmured. ‘The fucking dealer who left messages. The chap who probably bought paintings. The one who took his messages out of her fucking answer-phone. Oh fuck.’

  Francis was registering the telephone number with a shock of satisfaction. It was the same as the one he had, the confirmation he needed, together with the address. The very same.

  ‘But I�
��ve never phoned,’ said Enid sadly, revealing the desert of an entirely uneventful life. ‘There’s been no need.’

  No, thought Francis. No need in nearly a month’s absence, no hue and cry, how appallingly, horribly dreadful. They had got what they wanted here. Bullying, pushing, persuading, insulting. Enid remained more than faintly repellent. Annie was set up and ready to go. Her bag swung dangerously and indifferently near the glass ornaments. He watched it with anxiety. She needed taking away. They moved.

  ‘He wanted something else,’ Enid volunteered.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘The cat. He wanted me to let him know if no one looked after the cat. He was worried about the cat. I s’pose that’s one reason why I never did phone, not even after you came.’

  Francis remembered the cat, insolently possessive, but someone else’s cat.

  ‘Why should the cat make any difference?’

  ‘It’s gone. Went off. Lost. I didn’t dare tell him.’

  ‘Thanks for the tea,’ said Annie, with a sweetness which reminded Francis of the cloying and sickening taste of saccharine.

  In unspoken accord they walked swiftly down the street which had lost all of the summer and most of the autumn clothes which gave it any pretension to dignity. Now the trees were bare, and the houses revealed in faded splendour, big, old, shabby and spacious, made for their occupants’ gossip before the success of moving on. With the same unity, they found themselves hailing a taxi at the same moment. Part of the original plan, argued over before they had set out, was to go once again (for the last time, Annie said) down to Elisabeth’s flat, but they had not had the heart. The original plan had gone for nothing when Enid had appeared, poking a lizardlike head out of her door, and Annie, with the instinct of a terrier, had pounced on her and shaken her about until all that snorting and confessing began. It was not a pleasant way to spend an evening: both of them were in a state of subdued shock. Francis directed the cab back to his flat. At least there he could vouch for the quality of the wine and the remnants of order. The sense of urgency was again a paralysis. They felt like two people pursued by their own shadows: they needed each other and the rights or wrongs of the needing were irrelevant.