The Haunting of Henry Twist Page 6

  A young woman passes and, without stopping, inserts a white rose between two of Henry’s shirt buttons.

  Grayson shrugs and indicates his own jacket pocket. ‘One for every guest. Don’t bother trying to rid yourself of it.’

  Henry feels he has stepped into a theatre, or a circus, or a fantasy. Instantly, he is glad he decided to come. Do the normal things, Vivian had said. Don’t forget the normal things. And he supposes that is advice he has to live by, if he wants to keep Libby a secret; if he wants to push Jack from his mind. He had known without searching that he didn’t have any suitable clothes, and he hadn’t tried to find any, so he wears a white shirt, a vest beneath it, a pair of lightest brown slacks, and a coat, which he removes now that he is in the midst of all this pale decoration, to make himself less conspicuous. Tonight is his first attempt at enjoying company and he doesn’t want to attract attention. Rather, he wants simply to be functional amongst people again. And he is glad he does not have to attempt that at Monty’s. Not yet.

  It had occurred to him that he might not return to Monty’s at all; that it was a place too full of Ruby. But he cannot avoid every street she walked, every room she entered, every place he stood or sat or passed through and thought of her. He cannot avoid London.

  ‘Gray,’ Henry ventures. ‘I meant to thank you, for that week. I –’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Grayson says, his words carried on a cloud of smoke. ‘I won’t have you thanking me for a damned thing. I’m surprised you survived that week, Twist, I really am. But I’ll tell you something, I would’ve done a lot more than I did do if I’d thought it would’ve helped.’

  Henry nods at the ground.

  ‘I’ve tried to tell Tilda to lay off, you know,’ Grayson continues. ‘She’s just … headstrong. I’m sure she’ll calm down soon enough, once the grief eases a bit.’

  Grayson knows this is not true, but he thinks his delivery fairly convincing. Henry will not reflect on something so insignificant as his words anyway. Not yet.

  Grief, for Grayson, has only visited once – when his mother, the only parent worth investing anything in, submitted quietly but moodily to the Spanish Flu. He had always thought she would be the stoic sort, slipping away with squeezes of hands and promises that she’d be watching, but that flu left her confused and nasty and, though he still doesn’t want to admit it, bloody frightened.

  ‘So,’ he says, to keep his thoughts in the present. ‘You’re back at work.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Henry replies.

  ‘Needs must, I suppose.’

  Henry nods and Grayson tries to think of something hopeful to say, something inspiring, but he is distracted by the idea that he is experiencing a sort of grief too: a different, lesser sort, yes, but he is grieving all the same. For his marriage. And though it is not intentional, Henry is the cause of that. And for a moment, a shot of time as ephemeral as a raindrop, Grayson hates him for it.

  ‘I’ll get us some drinks,’ he says, and strides away, persuading himself as he goes that when he returns with two glasses of wine and a fresh cigarette, he will have forgiven Henry. It is Matilda, after all, who does not deserve his understanding.

  Four or five emptied wine glasses later, Henry stands near a piano, listening hazily to Monty as he teases the keys. In this white world, the deep polished mahogany draws the guests towards it as though it has a gravity of its own, and they sing along as Monty skips from song to song, sometimes finding the right notes, sometimes stumbling onto the wrong ones. Voices drown out his mistakes.

  Eventually, Monty stands and stretches out his arms and everyone groans.

  ‘That’s all I’ve got,’ he declares, holding up his old hands. ‘Who’s next?’

  A woman in furs is thrust forward to take his place, and as she settles herself on the stool and runs her fingers along a scale to get a feel for the instrument, Monty curls an arm around Henry’s shoulders and steers him towards the deserted trees. There, they slump into a pair of fabric swings. Monty clears his throat to speak, but Henry beats him to it.

  ‘I can’t talk about her yet,’ he says.

  ‘Actually, I was going to ask you about you,’ Monty replies.

  ‘It’s the same question, isn’t it?’

  ‘For the moment, perhaps.’

  Monty straightens his legs to push himself backwards and his trousers lift to reveal a pair of skinny ankles. Henry studies the fine taper of ageing bone beneath the socks, thinking that Montague seems decades older now than when they first met, just a few weeks after he met Ruby.

  Henry was waiting for her outside the theatre, where they had arranged to see a late showing. It was half past ten and should have been dark, but it was midsummer and the sky retained a thin, royal blue hue: against it, the street-lamps looked too yellow, like the flesh of a pineapple. Midges swirled on the air. Each time he heard approaching footsteps, he scanned the street, anticipating her new dainty presence. Ruby was living at that time over on Strawberry Hill, sharing a muddled, slanting-roofed attic flat with a large-chested girl named Daisy, and it took forever to get there. As a result, they usually met halfway between Strawberry Hill and Bayswater Road. Tonight, though, Henry had insisted Ruby come closer to him, so that he could persuade her back to the flat and keep her until the next day.

  He was unsure how well received this plan would be, but he was chancing a bad reaction, because he couldn’t quite believe his initial attraction hadn’t faded. In fact, it was getting stronger, and he’d never known that before.

  By eleven o’clock, he was still standing on the same spot, just in front of the poster for the film they had missed.

  As Henry recalls, it was some drama of Daisy’s that kept Ruby away that night. She appeared on his doorstep at seven the following morning with a bag of jelly babies, a smile, and no apology. Before he gave up on her and left the theatre, though, Monty had stepped out of the café across the street and, when Henry snapped his head around at the sound of shoes on the pavement, laughed and said, ‘If you’re not waiting for a woman, I’ll give you all the money on my person.’

  ‘Guilty,’ Henry smiled.

  ‘Shame,’ Monty replied, pulling a wallet from his pocket to show Henry the stack of pound notes within. He winked. ‘A single ticket might have made you rich tonight. But then, perhaps you’re rich enough already. What’s her name?’

  Henry flicked his eyes at the ground then back at Monty. He didn’t know how to talk frankly, as this stranger in an expensive silk cravat seemed to. He’d never learned. ‘Ruby,’ he said.

  ‘Ah,’ Monty nodded. ‘A jewel. Then you’re a wealthy man indeed. But since she’s late, how about a nightcap?’ He indicated the café he had just stepped out of, dimly lit but clearly still serving. Low, slinking conversation slipped out under the door. Shadows hunched over table tops, dealing and laying cards. ‘We’re one short for the next hand.’

  When Ruby knocked at his door the next morning, Henry did not tell her that he’d been asleep for only two or three hours. He did not tell her either that he was so many pounds richer than before. Instead, he bought her a ring.

  ‘Why did you introduce yourself to me, that night outside the theatre?’ Henry asks now. Suddenly, there are so many obvious questions that no one has bothered to ask Monty; questions that hadn’t occurred to Henry when he was happy. Perhaps they haven’t occurred to the others either.

  Monty begins swinging, without lifting his feet off the floor. ‘Because you looked lonely.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I looked pretty swift, I’d say, for a man of my age.’ Monty lets out one of his crackling laughs, and Henry turns to face him.

  ‘Were you ever married, Monty?’

  Monty stops swinging and looks at Henry properly. ‘No.’

  ‘Is that why you fill your garden with people, because you’re lonely?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you marry? Even after the war, you could have. For compani
onship, even.’

  ‘Would you have married any of the women you had before your Ruby?’ Monty asks, and Henry colours a little at the old man’s phrasing. His father would never have spoken such a sentence. These were the kind of things Ruby said though, in private, and gradually Henry had learned to stop blushing. In private.

  ‘No.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t have married anyone apart from my Alice. Still wouldn’t, for that matter.’

  ‘You’ve never spoken about an Alice before.’

  ‘It’s not a very happy subject.’

  ‘Did she die?’ Henry blurts, and instantly he regrets his candour.

  ‘She did not. She still lives in Bloomsbury, with her husband. They had four children, so I imagine she has a few grandchildren by now too. What else would you like to know?’

  Ordinarily, Henry wouldn’t say anything more. But Monty is wearing a little smile and nodding encouragement, and Henry thinks maybe Monty needs to talk as much as he needs to listen.

  ‘Was she already married when you met her?’

  ‘No. I proposed myself, the next day, but –’

  ‘The next day!’ Henry interjects. ‘No wonder she turned you down.’

  They share a quiet laugh and Monty shoves Henry so that he rocks away from him. ‘That’s more like it,’ he says. ‘Always so hard to shock lately. I knew you weren’t gone forever. Now, do you want to hear about it or not?’

  ‘Yes,’ Henry says.

  ‘Good. She was nearly as tall as you are, my Alice – though a deal more pleasant in the body, of course – and she had the brightest red hair, and the gentlest way of laughing. It was her eyes that really did it, though. They were the purest green you could imagine. Clear as a good cut of diamond. Clearer, even.’ He tries not to sigh, but Henry can hear it, gathering up inside him, the breathy sadness.

  ‘Why do you stay so close?’

  ‘Because she loved me, and I loved her, and being further away wouldn’t change it.’

  The woman in the fur stops playing and a cheer goes up around the piano. Henry sees Matilda peering around her, neck stretched long, as another player is pushed forward; then Gray, at her side, putting a hand to her waist and speaking into her ear. Perhaps he is inviting her to dance. She doesn’t meet her husband’s eye. Instead of enjoying the party, she continues to search it. For Henry.

  ‘Why did she refuse you?’ Henry asks.

  ‘Because she loved him more,’ Monty answers.

  ‘I’m sorry, Monty. I shouldn’t have asked. I probably wouldn’t have if I weren’t so drunk.’

  Monty laughs and he and Henry watch as the guests divide into pairs to jitter around the dance floor. Within three or four bars they’re up to speed, some intuited knowledge spinning them away from collisions. From where Henry and Monty sit, they blend, one couple into the next: ashen limbs tangle up in each other; the dance floor crinkles and shifts under scores of feet; dark hair whips around dizzyingly. Above, the clouds peel away to reveal a perfect spherical moon and everything below is turned to silver.

  ‘I probably wouldn’t have answered if you weren’t so drunk,’ Monty admits finally. ‘But listen, if second-best does come along, well, I’d say second-best isn’t so bad, that’s all. In time.’

  Dawn crawls up the sky, the delicate pink of flushed skin. London is not yet awake. They lie, the guests, all across the garden; arms spread wide or folded under their heads; heads back to view the beginning of the day or resting on lovers’ chests. They are warmed by last night’s drink and the morning’s new light and the still-burning braziers and the somnolent pleasure of a successful party. Deep within the host’s rambling house, a cook clatters pans and the sound rings distantly through an open window slat, but it does not disturb them. Occasionally, a lone figure passes on the other side of the boundary wall and they count its progress together, the creak of every frosty forward pace loud in the silence of this, the most clandestine part of the day.

  ‘Who are the most miserable people in the world?’ someone asks. They take turns to speak, holding one sprawling conversation rather than breaking into smaller groups. They are subdued and peaceful. It is the perfect time to talk nonsense.

  ‘Our parents,’ someone answers.

  ‘Prime ministers’ wives,’ a female voice offers.

  ‘Lovers,’ a man suggests gruffly.

  Monty interrupts. ‘This is a depressing subject,’ he says. ‘I propose a change.’

  ‘Proposal approved,’ says the boy Henry believes to be the owner of the property. He is young and foppish and embodies the Bright Young People perfectly, Henry thinks. ‘New subject,’ he calls. ‘Anyone?’

  ‘All right. Who are the happiest people in the world?’

  ‘The ignorant ones.’

  ‘It’s got to be us, surely?’

  ‘Not compared to children. I say children.’

  ‘I say lovers,’ the gruff man suggests again.

  ‘You can’t use the same answer for both questions.’

  ‘I can if it’s true.’

  ‘Adjudication Mr Chairman,’ someone calls, and they titter as one, like a flock of birds turning on the same invisible current, feathers twitching in perfect unison.

  ‘You’ve got to appoint a chairman before appealing to him.’

  ‘Well, that sounds like an awful lot of effort. I submit new subject.’

  ‘I concur.’

  This time, Matilda suggests the topic. ‘The most important people,’ she says. She is lying with her head propped between Henry’s feet. Grayson is to her left, hands slotted into each other over his stomach. He could easily put an arm around Tilda or pull her to him, and Henry wills him to move, but he doesn’t: he breathes the slow, unbroken breaths of a sleeper.

  ‘You can’t say “lovers” this time.’

  ‘Soldiers, then.’

  ‘Not much call for soldiers these days.’

  ‘Charlie Chaplin.’

  ‘Anyone but Baldwin, ay?’

  They cheer this, but not too loudly. They know the right volume, the right pace for their words. The immutability of the hours between these perimeter walls has led to a regression. A hundred years might have passed since they stepped through those ribboned gates, and they have become, in the interval, an embodiment of the more primitive version of their species. They are a pack of humans.

  At least, this is how it feels, to be so drunk and so tired and so free. Work calls none of these people, especially on a Saturday morning, and Henry wonders how many of them have children to return to – though most, he supposes, employ nannies. He soon empties these thoughts from his mind, however, because he has an uneasy feeling that even his thoughts are not confidential here; that they might be accessed by some telepathic trick. Still, he does not banish Ruby. He will willingly share Ruby before he will push her aside, and today he sees her sulking at the foot of the stairs, the early weeks of her pregnancy making her nauseated and slow-eyed. He shapes her from the head down – as though he is encountering her from the front doorway, as he did months before – urgently recalling the slope of her tired shoulders, the tilt of her head against the stair spindles, the curl of her arms around her legs, the layers of clothes she had piled on because, she said, she couldn’t remember what warm felt like.

  ‘Enough of people,’ someone says. ‘Let’s do words.’

  ‘What, the saddest and the happiest?’

  ‘I have one that’s both. Happy and sad.’

  ‘Well? Don’t keep us in suspense.’

  ‘Home,’ the woman concludes. ‘Happy when you’re there, sad when you’re not.’

  ‘Or the other way around, dear,’ an older woman quips.

  And so it continues, until the pavements beyond the property are noisy with walkers and motorcars stutter into life and horses snort against the weight at their backs. The beginning of real life, it seems, marks the end of the collective night-time existence of all these bodies, and they rise from the ground like ghosts and glide away.<
br />
  Henry suspects he will never meet any one of them again, and that is apt, really. Last night, he stepped out of his life. Now, he is disgusted by his behaviour. However well he might have dressed it up, he had come here because he wanted to escape.

  On the corner where Matilda and Grayson part ways with Henry, the three stop. They slump at the window of a book-shop, turned away from the displayed spines and pages, puffing heat into their hands. Shoppers swerve fluidly around them, bags bumping legs.

  ‘Why not have breakfast with us?’ Matilda asks. Though all three’s eyes hang heavy in their faces, though she aches for her bed, though she knows Henry will want to get back to Libby, she cannot relinquish the hope of extending their time together.

  She has not told Gray about the baby. She knows she should have. Yes, she knew that as she walked home from Henry’s, alone but not frightened by the city; and when, that night, Grayson brought her a drink and settled by the fire to ask how Henry was doing; and later, as she lay beside her sleeping husband, trying to recall the last time they had touched. Keeping her secret, though, was more of a thrill. It was something she and Henry could share. For now, its promise will have to be enough.

  ‘You’re more than welcome, Twist,’ Grayson says. ‘You know that.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Henry answers. He fixes Matilda with one of those looks. She knows it is not for her – he snares everyone the same way, with a narrowing of his eyes and a hardening of his jaw as he takes in every detail – but she feels it: it breaks over her, like a raincloud collapsing just inches above her head. ‘Will you explain everything, to Gray, when you get home?’