The Haunting of Henry Twist Page 20

  She walks past a huddle of men, arranged in a circle, their heads bowed conspiratorially inwards so that they resemble one dark, wilting flower, and is whistled at. She pulls her coat tighter over her chest, huffs, and is careful not to break her hurried stride. Luckily, none of them follows her. She does not speculate as to whether this is because they are too drunk and apathetic, or because she is no longer worth the effort.

  She moves on. And as she goes, she tries to remember the last time she was truly happy. There must have been times, with Grayson, but she has lost any enthusiasm for the memories and they hide now, like scolded children, amongst her bad feelings. Before that, though. Before that … There had been a night, near the end of her time at training college, when she and her girlfriends had bunked at Miriam’s parents’ house while the couple were taking their holidays. Miriam. Matilda has not thought of the name in so long that it snags in her mind. In fact, she has not thought of any of them – Miriam, Bernadette, Joan, Eileen – in years. Peculiar, since they were her best friends that night. They were her confidantes, her allies, her support network. She could not envisage her life without a single one of them.

  It was the sultriest night of the summer. The air outside the flung-open doors was still and thick as porridge. In the garden, a hedgehog snuffled along the hedgerows; a rat scurried worriedly back towards her den; the grass did not move. Beyond, the neighbours tossed about under their bed sheets, almost asleep and yet denied that easy state by the fidgety, pressing heat. The city was quiet, mostly. If the girls had listened, they might have been able to hear one lonely motorcar, chugging its way home, or a couple squabbling at the end of the street. But they were not listening. They were all of them nineteen, full of ambition and expectation and drink. They were sprawled over the arms of big, cushioned chairs, pencilslim legs kicked up to catch the falling moonlight. They were comfortable, and too ready to smile, and they didn’t care about anything, just then, but themselves.

  ‘I can’t wait to see the end of this bloody training,’ Bernadette said, tipping her head back and pouring more wine into her mouth. ‘I’m going to teach for two years, at the absolute most, then I’m packing it in to get married and have hundreds of babies.’

  ‘Really?’ Eileen said. ‘But, you don’t even like the children at school.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Bernadette replied. ‘I’ve discovered I haven’t the tolerance for other people’s children. So I thought, better my own than theirs.’

  ‘Better none at all, I’d say,’ Joan, the straightest of them, suggested.

  ‘The thought of it,’ Eileen put in. ‘Of it ramming its way out of you!’

  ‘Perhaps ‘ramming’ isn’t the best word to use,’ Matilda said. And they’d laughed at that, as they had laughed at everything else that night, because what else was there to do but laugh? At the heat. At the dark. At the drink. At the approaching end of their teacher training. At the boys they had courted. At the men some of them were only now beginning to court. At the prospect of one day owning a house like Miriam’s parents’. At the prospect of failing to do so. At the frightening vastness of what their lives might become.

  They were in it together, though. Perhaps that’s what made it a happy night.

  After they’d drunk themselves into a torpor, then recovered from it slightly by shovelling down an entire apple and raspberry tart, Miriam dragged them all out into the rear garden, where they sang and danced, catching hands and twirling around each other, until lights flicked on in the neighbouring houses and they were urged, not at all politely, to keep it down.

  Grayson, Matilda thinks, probably can’t even remember the girl he met shortly afterwards. Matilda was a different character altogether before she became Mrs Steck, before she fell in love. It is possible that she was just never strong enough for that sudden descent.

  She picks up her pace, stomping the thoughts out through her feet.

  As she had suspected, there are plenty of sad huddles of men dotted along the embankment. They might be lingering in last night, mourning the failures of yesterday. They might be anticipating the dawn and the opportunities of tomorrow. Matilda isn’t sure. But their presence here convinces her that they are desperate. And desperate men are just what she needs. Desperate men will talk at only the slight persuasion she has to offer.

  Grayson does not expect his words to be answered with tears. And yet, she cries. Sally cries. She stands in the street and she looks up at him and she cries.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, hands curled around her upper arms.

  Sally shakes her head. ‘Don’t be sorry.’

  ‘Then don’t cry,’ Gray pleads. He can feel the ridiculous expression on his face, the desperation, the panic all men wear when women cry. It is, he thinks, the result of some trick of nature that men cannot cope with a woman’s tears; it is what weakens them, what brings the two sexes that fraction closer to parity.

  Sally smiles. ‘It’s too late for that,’ she says. ‘But, if it helps, I feel like an idiot.’ She struggles to keep her voice steady. ‘Take me home, will you?’

  They step slowly back in the direction of the flat, wound into each other, Sally’s ribs pulsing outwards now and again as she tries to calm herself. Gray waits and waits for her to say something. Hadn’t she wanted, after all, to be his? Hadn’t she said so? But then, he is used to people saying one thing and meaning another. Tilda has long since perfected the practice. Each morning, when Grayson leaves for work, she says she is going to Monty’s, but she can’t, surely she can’t be spending every day there, alone, just waiting for him. Gray is convinced she goes directly to Henry’s. And he doesn’t want to imagine what happens there. Nor does he feel able to challenge her, considering what he has done – is doing.

  Leaving Matilda is an idea which wades about his mind, heavy, like a fisherman slumberously setting about his early labour. He sees himself and Sally, always busy, always laughing, in a house with enormous windows; the sun leaning in to settle in her gemstone hair; every wall painted white so that she – strawberry-lipped, emerald-eyed, milky-skinned – would shine all the more. They would sing while they prepared their breakfast in that house. They would host dinner parties the guests would refuse to leave until they had forgotten the chime of midnight. They would rush home from work just to slump onto the settee together, Sally half-reading a book, her head cradled by Grayson’s legs, Gray watching the top of her head for clues as to whether the story was funny or sad or frightening. They would knock ornaments to the floor chasing each other about and not care when the porcelain smashed and scattered. They would miss appointments because they refused to rise from bed. They would giggle and cry and moan and fight, and Sally Steck – as she can never be – would be a wonder.

  When they reach the flat door, Sally has still not broken her silence. Gray wonders if she too has lived an imaginary lifetime in the minutes it has taken them to walk past the Rose Inn, along a length of stacked-up terraces, and through the shared hallway of Sally’s building. He wonders how you might communicate such an old man’s idea to a woman in her twenties. Then, finally, she speaks and his thoughts melt to nothing.

  ‘I’ve spent my whole life afraid nobody would ever say that to me,’ Sally whispers.

  And Grayson laughs: he shakes his head and closes his eyes and truly, unapologetically, laughs. ‘But Sally, you lovely girl,’ he says. ‘Why?’

  When those groups of nestled men grow scarcer, Matilda turns and walks back the way she has come, the Thames on her left now, the men to her right, her ankles aching in her high-heeled shoes. Ahead of her, ramshackle warehouse buildings shove black shadows out over the water, and Matilda tries to avoid looking at them. For a long time now, she has felt her shadow to be her only company. She has come to regard it as a sort of friend, an attachment unique to her. She does not like to think of a thing so lifeless as a building possessing one.

  It is a paradox, she thinks, that loving another human being – two, even – can make a person feel so i
solated. But then she supposes Henry is a sort of paradox, in a way. She loves him though he will never love her. She needs him though she understands now that he will never need her. She thinks of him constantly though he probably never thinks of her. And, God she hopes for him. She knows beyond any doubt that she will never have him, and yet she cannot stop hoping for him. Her body – her tingling skin, her opening pupils, the roaming of her eyes over his waist and his back and his shoulders, the pathetic tightening at her core when she sees him – her body acts without her permission, and it hopes, hopelessly, for Henry Twist. Matilda enjoys as much control then as a fish caught on a hook, or a sparrow stuck in an updraft. And that, surely, is one of the cruellest things about unreturned love – it is the loved person, the person who is not hurting, who gets to make all the decisions.

  She considers the nearest bunch of men, finds them wanting, and immediately scans the next. What criteria she is measuring these men against she does not know. She is working on instinct, really. But she is sure she must choose cautiously, find the right mix of age and sense and anger.

  She stops before a clutch of four. They cease talking and turn slowly towards her, moving as one, their faces flat, their anger burning off them like real physical heat. It feels, Matilda guesses, like being sized up by a pride of lions. There is nothing she can do now but press on with her plan. She steps close and – having decided to play it bold long before she arrived here – plucks a just-lit cigarette from between thick, poised fingers. She takes a deep drag, battling the tickle the unfamiliar brand starts up in her throat.

  ‘So,’ she says. ‘Any of you gents in need of some business?’

  The one she has relieved of his smoke smirks at her. His head is as smooth as eggshell; his teeth thrust chaotically through his gums; his shoulders, clearly well-used, push out through the torn-off arms of his shirt. He’s good for the job. An easy job, really. He does not immediately answer her, though. Instead, he bends down to retrieve something from a cloth bag which sits between the men’s feet. As he rummages around in it, she sees, low on his back where his shirt has ridden up, a small tattoo of a misshapen anchor. When he rights himself, there is a fresh cigarette dangling from between his lips.

  ‘We’re not looking for any more trouble, missus. The strike, it’s over. We don’t need no more –’

  ‘Who mentioned trouble?’ Matilda answers. ‘All I’m asking for is a little favour. You do something for me, and I’ll give you a wage in return. I’d call that an honest day’s work.’ She takes another pull on the cigarette, hoping it will stop her hands from trembling. It doesn’t. Never before has she known this sort of fear. The immediate sort. The sort where there is a chance, any minute, of her being really physically hurt. Killed, even. She is surprised to feel a knife edge of excitement, cutting through her stomach. She wishes she was drunk.

  There is a prolonged pause before one of the other men nudges his friend with an elbow. ‘I could do with the money,’ he mutters.

  And Matilda seizes on his need. ‘There we are, then,’ she says, as though a deal has already been struck. ‘Let’s keep talking. Perhaps we’ll find ourselves in perfect agreement.’

  The larger, bald-headed man, clearly the fellow in charge, emits a short laugh. But his eyes give him away. He needs this, no, any opportunity. He needs a break. He leans towards her.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he says. ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘I’m looking for some information,’ she says, ‘on a man called Jack Turner.’ She pulls a scrap of paper out of her handbag and holds it out to them, loath to let go. It had taken all her charm to obtain the few shreds of information which led to this address. ‘He’s not at this address any longer, but I need you to get in there, find all the information you can on him. It’s a bar, so there should be a certain ease of access.’

  The men trade glances.

  ‘You’re looking for anything on a Roderick Miller – I believe that’s the name he went by then. Roderick Miller.’

  MISSING

  Henry tumbles into the morning on the back of a horrible dream. In it, he is standing beneath the vaulted ceiling of a gloomy church, dressed in his wedding suit, hand in hand with his bride. To his left, a stooped priest bumbles through his lines, dropping the words onto the floor where they scuffle away to hide under the pews. To his right, a dark pack of people wait, heads thrust eagerly forward, for him to utter his promise. Henry feels them, pressing him small. He glances about, seeking some detail with which to secure himself in the scene: the stem of a flower in a nearby arrangement; a guest’s hat; the soothing curve of a baptismal font; an image of Christ; the outward flick of Ruby’s eyelashes. But he can see nothing clearly. He can only feel, and what the church feels is tomb-like.

  In reality, Ruby had worn a long fitted dress, decorated with the tiniest pearls, which other girls might have teetered about in, fearful of ripping or bursting or tearing or snagging. But Ruby had soared about in it. She had danced and thrown back drinks, sworn and kicked off her heels, laughed until her eye make-up wiggled down her cheeks. She’d worn too, for an hour or so anyway, a birdcage veil which left intricate crisscrossed shadows on her skin, and when later she’d grown frustrated and unpinned her hair to remove it, Henry had basked in how easy and wonderful it was to see that deep brown hair unwinding down her back and be able to reach out and touch it, whenever he wanted, forever.

  In the dream, Ruby is invisible, buried beneath the puffs and creases of an extensive, pure white gown. Still, Henry recognises the size of her under there: her diminutive height, the inward arrows of her waist, the sweet swell of her hips. Here is his Ruby, brought back to him, and he needs to touch her, just once more, so he puts out his hands to turn back her veil and reveal her face, to trace his fingertips along the length of her neck, to brush his knuckles over her lips, to press his wrist to that place beneath her collarbone and feel their pulses beat out of sync. But of course it is not her. Things are never as they should be, in dreams. The face he first sees is Ida’s, and then it is as if the record sticks, the dream plays on repeat, and always Henry is lifting that veil to see someone different staring back: Monty, Matilda, Jack, Grayson, Vivian, Bingley. And when he runs short of familiar faces, he sees instead all those abandoned faces he’d caught sight of, or averted his gaze from, or stopped to stare at in Belgium; their eyes screwed shut or shocked open; their mouths clenched closed or forced wide by a final scream; their noses releasing bloody rivulets; the skin of their cheeks blasted away or hanging from the bone, limp as just-cut beef; their freshly revealed bones glinting in weak sunlight or shining slick against misty rain; their jaws decimated; their ears ruined and peeled from their heads; their tongues stripped naked; their necks impacted into loose, stringy things, incapable of supporting the weight above. Their entire selves removed, from the outside in.

  He surfaces with a gasp into near daylight. At his side, that newly familiar weight sleeps on, curved in on himself like a baby. Cwtched, Ruby would have said. Jack is cwtched in, but – and perhaps because Henry wills him so hard to wake – he soon stirs and stretches out with a groan. In her cot, Libby slumbers, peaceable, the way she does when they all lie together in the same room, Henry and Jack and Libby, held safe.

  ‘Is it early?’ Jack susurrates, his eyes still closed. ‘Please say it’s early.’

  ‘Not for you,’ Henry answers. ‘Sorry, but you’re probably late.’

  Jack’s entire body creaks as he stretches again. Henry catches, spilling from under a raised arm, the stale smell of a night’s sleep on the other man’s skin, and attempts, subtly, to inhale it.

  ‘I’m always late,’ Jack says.

  ‘Then don’t go today.’

  ‘I have to go. You know I do. It’s the first day back. Besides, how else would we afford to stay here?’

  Henry hums in response to this, unwilling to say what he must say. The fight has gone out of him rather, now that the strike is over, now that the changes it was to bring have beco
me impossible again.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ Jack suggests. ‘I’ll wake you when I come back.’

  ‘I won’t sleep,’ Henry answers. ‘I might take Libby for a walk.’

  Jack, dragging on his clothes, nods, and Henry wonders again whether this is the sort of conversation Mr Turner once exchanged with a Mrs Turner – that woman in his dream who laughed so happily as her sons played in the garden. He wants to ask Jack if those dreams still come to him; if, perhaps, his sleeping hours are cheerier than his waking ones. But he doesn’t, in case the answer is yes. Instead, he proposes they make that trip to Pwll, to see Ida and John and Elizabeth.

  Jack, halfway into his trousers, pauses. ‘Both of us?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ Henry replies, sitting up. ‘Well, no, I mean, we could travel down together, and you could stay nearby while Libby and I visit, and then maybe we could, I don’t know, take a look around.’

  Secretly, he is still harbouring some part of that idea which sustained him through so many monotonous shifts at the bank – that he would one day go to Wales, and stay. He imagines choosing, over many weeks, just the right grassy spot and beginning to dig out his foundations, his head wet with the effort, his shirt removed and tossed aside, his shovel cracking like a fired gun when it hits something hard in the earth. He sees himself building a small stone cottage, the cold scratch of the stone turning his palms red, the labour leaving an ache in his lower back which would persist into old age, the repetition of lifting and laying sculpting the muscles in his shoulders so that he resembles again the man he was when he fought for his country. He fancies himself sitting atop the rafters, placing slates and hammering them down and hunching like a tired crow against the grey rain which slices into him. Jack would mock him for that, for battling the weather when he might have just waited for a fine day. He would stand on the grass below and cup his hands around his mouth and shout something like, ‘Come down, you idiot. If you have to build something, come and build us a fire.’ Because that is what Jack does for him. That is what Ruby did for him. They make him stop and take his time.