The Haunting of Henry Twist Page 16

Listening to Jack speak, though, he realises that he has asked too little of him really. He should have demanded wheres and whens and hows. He could not ensure Libby’s safety around a man he did not know. And yet, he has seen Jack lift his daughter from her cot and cup her so carefully against his chest that you would suppose her made of the finest glass. He has seen him sit her on his lap to play the silly clapping games which so thrill her. He knows – with a certainty so absolute that it cannot be challenged, even in retrospect – that Elizabeth Twist adores Jack Turner, and that the reason for that adoration is familiarity.

  Libby recognised Jack the instant she first saw him.

  As they talk, another morning blooms gold over the city, spreading in wide warming slants over rooftops and alleyways, streets and parkland, and eventually forming a sort of halo around Ida, who listens intently to Jack, blinking away her tiredness. Henry has seen a thousand London dawns. Now, he wonders again what it would be like to watch the sun emerge each day over the tops of the Welsh mountains. He should have taken Ruby home. He should have insisted. She would have fought him at first, yes; she would have shouted and raged at his going against her wishes. A fight, though – one simple argument or a hundred more complicated contests, it matters little now – might just have kept her alive.

  And then there is Jack. Who or what could have kept him alive, as he was before he was attacked?

  Henry has not forgotten the woman and the two boys who visit Jack’s dreams. When he is brave enough, he sees them for what they are. And he considers then that the smallest of their choices – to meet him from work or to wait for him at home, to take a walk with him or to join him later – might have ensured that a woman still had her husband and two children still had their father. These meaningless moments, these are the points lives pivot on.

  ‘Can I be blunt, Mr Turner?’ Ida asks.

  Jack, perched now on the back of the settee, opens his hands, as though he is releasing from them a snared bird. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, it seems to me that there is nothing for you here but Henry. You can’t be after his money, or his home. And, in any case, it would be far easier to acquire a rich wife if security was what you sought. You don’t have to persuade me of your good intention. But what I can’t understand – and you must forgive my impudence here, Jack – is what Henry wants with you.’

  They turn their eyes on Henry, who feels his colour rising.

  ‘I mean,’ Ida stutters on, ‘he’s not a man who is inclined towards … men. Not in the way … Not as …’ She huffs, exasperated by her own spinelessness. ‘You married my sister, Henry. You adored her.’

  Standing, Henry removes his waistcoat and unbuttons the neck of his shirt. He needs breathing space. It has always been the same for Henry – that what he needs most in times of crisis is physical space. War had given him that, at least. But the bank hadn’t, and London doesn’t, and his parents’ house had not. As a young man, he had rushed off in any which direction in search of it. When he was sixteen and his mother disappeared for a fortnight with a man she met at the pub, he had walked a hundred miles – he’d measured them – just to tramp the thoughts out of his head. A year or so later, when his father fell down the stairs and snapped his ankle and his mother lolled about on the settee in tears for days, finally blaming herself for her husband’s pain, Henry had cycled London small; he had learned every last ugly angle of it; he had folded the map of it into his mind so that he could open it up again, whenever he needed, and view the sprawling scale of the place.

  He hasn’t been able to do anything like that since Ruby.

  ‘Ida,’ he says finally. ‘Do you believe in the afterlife?’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘No. Neither did I.’

  ‘But,’ Ida prompts.

  ‘But –’

  From above, as though in response to the subject matter, there comes a loud crack: the sound of thick ice fracturing, or wood splitting under an axe. It makes them all jump. They look around the room, searching the inexplicable interruption. Though it is not apparent they continue, in silence, to seek it – as people will. And then there comes a second sound, a voice, and Henry realises that the crack was that of a door, long since unopened, being wrenched from its frame.

  He strides into the hallway.

  At the top of the stairs, the heavy oak divide between his flat and the Mosses’ creaks ajar. A dust-storm plumes and swirls at ankle height. And, as Vivian steps from her own home into Henry’s and descends towards the odd gang below, so she obliterates the letters he had so carefully marked out. Ruby’s name, running continually across her path, goes unnoticed as Vivian edges down, Libby pinned to her side. So too does the spot where the letters R u b y are replaced by four different letters: J a c k.

  Vivian’s bedroom-slippered feet return the dust to simple dust.

  ‘Everything all right?’ she mouths as she passes the baby over.

  Henry nods.

  ‘You had me getting worried there, you know.’ She keeps to a whisper. ‘Talk, talk, talk, and you not coming up to fetch the child. I hope you don’t mind –’ She indicates the door.

  ‘Not at all,’ Henry answers.

  Jack and Ida appear in the hallway and Vivian, embarrassed at being seen in her dressing gown and fidgeting with its collar, sends them a little smile.

  ‘We had some things we needed to discuss,’ Henry explains. ‘This is Ida. Ruby’s sister.’

  Ida offers Vivian her hand and they shake.

  ‘A beauty,’ Viv says. ‘A real beauty. And you are?’ She extends her hand to Jack.

  ‘Jack,’ Henry says. ‘This is Jack.’

  ‘Jack?’

  There is a stroke of silence, as thinly unpleasant as a note dragged out across violin strings.

  And then: ‘My fiancé,’ Ida announces, slipping her hand around his waist. ‘He’s my fiancé. We came to visit this little lady.’ She releases Jack again and moves forward to take Libby from Henry. ‘And haven’t you grown big?’ she says to Libby, who studies her from beneath a serious brow.

  ‘She certainly has,’ Viv agrees, standing slightly taller. Perhaps, Henry thinks, she is proud of her part in his daughter’s life. And really she ought to be. She has fed her and sung to her and rocked her to sleep.

  Henry is proud, too: not of what he has done for Libby, but of what she has done for herself. Shortly after her birth, when that clever, skinny doctor had told him that her traumatic arrival would make her weak, he had appealed to one of the nurses, who – likely out of pity for a man who had become a widower and a new father on the same day – had insisted that it could go either way. His daughter might long be affected by the circumstances of her delivery, she explained. She might be weaker than the average child, her brain might be slower to develop. Or, she might thrive just the same as any other full-term baby. Libby, like Ruby before her – and like Ida, Henry supposes, considering how she is taking the news of he and Jack – is strong. And he takes no responsibility for that. She has grown strong all on her own.

  As if hearing Henry’s thoughts, Jack says, ‘She’s a tough little thing.’

  And they all hum in agreement, united and quieted by their admiration for Libby, bending towards her like flowers reaching for sunlight.

  When the clock in the next room rouses its hands to shudder and click past eight, Jack, Ida and Vivian are still lingering in the hallway, discussing Libby’s many virtues. Standing idly between them, Henry listens, saying nothing. The opportunity to explain Jack to Vivian has, thankfully, been denied him. With it, however, went his chance to inform Ida of the appointment Monty helped him make in a clutch of stolen moments last night. ‘Ten tomorrow morning,’ Monty had said with a wink. ‘Don’t be late.’

  And Henry doesn’t intend to be. He would not dream of keeping Miss Sybil Brown waiting – not when he has such important questions to ask her.

  SYBIL BROWN

  By ten minutes to nine, Henry already has them seated in a café around
the corner from Sybil Brown’s flat. He had been too eager in ushering them out, too ridiculous in dashing them down the moving stairs for the Tube. Neither Jack nor Ida had challenged him, though. They are gathered now at a window table – round and too small for the three to eat comfortably from – sipping steaming coffee and watching chains of suited men file to work. Libby, asleep in her pram, is positioned alongside Ida. Naturally, everyone presumes they are mother and daughter and, when they coo, it is to Ida alone they turn their eyes.

  Ida accepts their compliments with a little nod and a side-ward glance at Henry.

  ‘Have you ever believed in this sort of thing, Ida?’ Jack asks. ‘The psychics? The mystics? You don’t strike me as a believer.’

  ‘Can’t say I am,’ Ida replies, shaking her head. ‘Although, having been awake all night, I might be quite receptive to anything.’

  The two share a smile.

  Henry does not comment on how comfortably they converse, Jack and Ida – two supposed strangers. But he notes it. Perhaps it is something he can mention to Miss Brown, if she doesn’t seem a total phoney.

  The café is busy. At every table, there sits at least one man, bending his bowler-hatted head over a broadsheet, or one lady, red lips puckering around the end of her cigarette holder as she attempts – or so it appears to Henry – to stave off the urge to indulge in a sweet tea and a chunk of toasted bread: it is an urge Ruby would never have fought. Dawn light spreads through the wide windows and into clouds of bitter smoke, draping the room in nebulous veils and obscuring those people on the furthest side, who are crammed back to back along the peach-coloured Vitrolite walls. Behind the counter, three girls skitter about, pinched fingers snatching browned bread from the metal cages of electric toasters and flinging them onto plates; pouring from tea or coffee pots, their heads held back to avoid the steam scald rising from the spout; brushing loose strands of hair back with their forearms. They are accompanied in their chaotic dance by the whirring of electric appliances, the tinging of silverware, the gurgling of just-boiling water, and, on this side of the counter, a swelling sea of chatter and calls for service.

  Against Henry’s wishes, Jack and Ida had decided they should order breakfast: they had an hour to waste. Henry had been on edge, convincing himself silently that their order would not come, and that they’d be late to Sybil’s and that the lady medium would refuse to entertain her tardy clients. Now though, with the smell of toast settled in his nostrils, Henry is glad Ida insisted on two rounds for each of them.

  Jack, tired but no less enthusiastic for it, had declared that it did not feel like breakfast time and ordered two slices of the pineapple upside-down cake. The waitress, frowning, complained that the cake was for later in the day and that cutting it now would make the edge go hard, but a grin and a ‘please’ was all it took for Jack to persuade her into ruining the creation.

  He possesses, Henry has observed, a matchless talent for charming women. Men, too, it seems. Hadn’t everyone liked him last night? Henry both envies him the quality and wishes it onto him. It is another echo of his wife.

  Finally, their order is plonked before them and Jack immediately shovels in a mouthful of cake. He demolishes one slice in the time it takes Ida to butter her toast, then starts in on the next, speaking between chews.

  ‘What are you going to tell her?’ he asks Henry, and the three grow still as they each contemplate the question. Their surroundings suddenly seem so much louder.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Henry answers. ‘If she’s genuine, she won’t need us to tell her anything.’

  ‘If she’s genuine,’ Ida agrees, nodding.

  ‘Monty wouldn’t have put us onto her if he thought she was bogus,’ Jack says.

  ‘No,’ Henry replies. ‘Maybe not. Hopefully not.’

  He lifts his coffee cup to his mouth but does not drink, and Jack raises his eyebrows at Ida, who purses her lips in response.

  They can see his doubt beginning to show: in the new groove at the bridge of his nose, and the small crescent-shaped wrinkles which dimple his cheeks. He is tense. They have agreed, though – earlier, in the few minutes it took Henry to escort Vivian back upstairs – to just let him do this. They understand it is what he needs. They are willing to allow him his belief in anything Sybil Brown tells him.

  Why not? If it stops him hurting.

  Some hours earlier, Grayson reclines and counts the individual squares of glass in the window. He does not know if it is because of some trick of the panelled design, the light bending around the wood perhaps, but he is positive it is always sunnier in Sally’s flat than in his own. Next to him, Sally lies on her front, propped up on her elbows, and kisses the ball of his shoulder. The day shines her long back almost to pure white, and Gray runs a single finger unthinkingly up and down the dip of her spine. Already he has broken his word. Monday was to be his last visit. He has now visited twice since.

  Today, though, he blames Matilda for that. The way she behaved last night. He had been humiliated.

  He is not ready yet to think about Henry and this Jack character and the truth of the situation. And really, it is not his business anyway. What it has done to Matilda though is obvious, and despite himself, Gray does feel a little sorry for her. To be passed over for a man, however handsome or charming – and Jack Turner is certainly those things – must surely be the worst possible insult for a woman so hopelessly in love.

  She had not spoken a word on the way home. And Grayson had not prompted her to. The beats of their mismatched steps on the pavement, hers sharp, his more muted, were their only accompaniment. Inside the flat, he had simply navigated her to their bed, tucked her in, and left her there to sleep off her shock. Then, once her breathing had slowed, he had ducked out and headed straight to Sally’s.

  Sally – who, upon opening the door, had jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist. Sally – who makes him feel like the most exciting man in the world.

  ‘Tell me about when you were young,’ she demands now.

  He adjusts his arm so she can press herself right up against him, ribcage to ribcage, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. Though it wouldn’t have twenty years ago, this simple contact excites him these days. He is more of a man, somehow, when a beautiful woman wants to know the intimacies of his body.

  ‘How young?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know. My age.’ She grins as she says this, the tip of her tongue playing right to left along her teeth. She knows Grayson enjoys her teasing.

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Well, when I was your age, they hadn’t yet figured how to hitch a horse up to a cart, so they’d employ boys to run deliveries around London. Five or six of us, sometimes, if it was a heavy load, all trussed together with rope. And we’d have a real lark, you know, spilling the food deliveries so we could eat what was ruined and …’ He stops once he has her laughing.

  Sally brushes her hand through the greying hair on his stomach, sweeping it back and forth as though she is polishing some dull surface. She plucks one of the hairs between thumb and forefinger and tweaks it out, making Gray twitch.

  ‘Now seriously,’ she says. ‘Tell me about your first love.’

  ‘You don’t want to know about all that.’

  ‘I do,’ Sally protests. ‘Please.’ She reaches forward and kisses his neck. ‘Please.’

  He huffs and settles himself more comfortably. ‘All right. There was only one woman,’ Gray recalls, ‘before … Before. Her name was Helen. She was all of twenty. I was only just seventeen so I thought her a real adult, at the time. In fact, I thought her a marvel.’

  ‘Did she break your heart, Gray?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she did.’

  ‘Do you regret it?’

  Grayson sits up a little and pulls Sally with him, bringing them face to face.

  ‘Having my heart broken?’ he says. ‘No. It didn’t last all that long. It got itself back together again.’

  Sally scowls at this. ‘Do you think that’s because you didn’t
really love her?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he concedes. ‘Or maybe I just wasn’t ready to love her. Wasn’t committed enough, or wise enough, or honest enough.’

  ‘Is it really so important,’ Sally muses, ‘honesty?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And yet,’ she answers, ‘you’re here.’ And rolling away from him, she gets out of bed and slinks across the room, dragging his eyes with her.

  As she skirts around the desk, feet pointing and bending like an acrobat’s, her hand hovering over books piled into toppling towers, Grayson watches the easy sway of her shoulders and tries to guess at which exact moment she will turn around. Not that he wants her to. He enjoys the back of her neck, slender as bone, and the light honey-quartz sheen of her hair. He enjoys the red flushes on her skin, like flower blossoms, where he has held her too tight. And, perhaps most of all, he enjoys the fact that she wants him to watch her. Matilda has never performed for him like this.

  Sally picks a book from halfway down one tower and swivels it out.

  ‘Do you know what I love about books?’ she asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not so much the reading them. It’s not the characters or the images or any of that stuff I talk to the children about. It’s not even about the look of words on a page – although I do love that, don’t you?’

  She flips the book open and holds it out towards him, demonstrating the black on white text, and Grayson waits in silence for her to continue. She is not finished yet. He knows this. Despite his intentions for his particular affair to pan out otherwise, he has come to learn things about Sally Emory during their too-brief meetings: things he did not want to know, like whether she has had a bad day, or whether she wants to talk before they make love, or whether she will be frustrated with him for pretending to be a better husband than he is. He is savouring solving the puzzle of her, slotting the pieces together in one arrangement only to have to break them up and begin again. And he is too far into this now, he realises, to cease before he has all the pieces set in their proper places.