The Shifting Fog (54 page)

She’d been reading Freud on repression and had some idea that if she could get Robbie to speak about it, perhaps he would be cured. She held her breath, wondered if she dared to ask. ‘Is it because you killed somebody?’

He looked at her profile, took a drag of his cigarette, exhaled and shook his head. Then he started to laugh softly, without humour. He reached out to lay his hand gently along the side of her face.

‘Is that it?’ she whispered, still not looking at him.

He didn’t answer and she took another tack.

‘Who is it you dream about?’

He removed his hand. ‘You know the answer to that,’ he said. ‘I only ever dream of you.’

‘I hope not,’ said Hannah. ‘They’re not very nice dreams.’

He took a drag of his cigarette, exhaled. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said.

‘It’s shell shock, isn’t it?’ she said, turning to him. ‘I’ve been reading about it.’

His eyes met hers. Such dark eyes. Like wet paint; full of secrets.

‘Shell shock,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wondered who came up with that. I suppose they needed a nice name to describe the unspeakable for the nice ladies back home.’

‘Nice ladies like me, you mean,’ said Hannah.

‘You’re not a nice lady,’ he said, teasing.

She was put out. Was not in the mood to be fobbed off. She sat up and slipped her petticoat over her head. Started to pull her stockings on.

He sighed. She knew he didn’t want her to leave like this. Angry with him.

‘You’ve read Darwin?’ he said.

‘Charles Darwin?’ she said, turning to him. ‘Of course.’

‘Ought to have known,’ he said. ‘Smart girl like you.’

‘But what does Charles Darwin have to do with—’

‘Adaptation. Survival is a matter of successful adaptation. Some of us are better at it than others.’

‘Adaptation to what?’

‘To war. To living by your wits. The new rules of the game.’

Hannah thought about this.

‘I’m alive,’ Robbie said plainly, ‘because some other bugger isn’t. Plenty of others.’

So now she knew.

She wondered how she felt about it. ‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ she said, but she felt a shiver from deep down inside. And when his fingers stroked her wrist she withdrew it despite herself.

‘That’s why nobody talks about it,’ he said. ‘They know that if they do, people will see them for what they really are. Members of the devil’s party moving amid the regular people as though they still belong. As if they’re not monsters returned from a murderous rampage.’

‘Don’t say that,’ said Hannah sharply. ‘You’re not a murderer.’

‘I’m a killer.’

‘It’s different. It was war. It was self-defence. Defence of others.’

He shrugged. ‘Still a bullet through some fellow’s brain.’

‘Stop it,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t like it when you talk like that.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have asked.’

She didn’t like it. She didn’t like to think of him that way, and yet she found she couldn’t stop. That someone she knew, someone she knew intimately, whose hands had run gently, lightly, over her body, whom she trusted implicitly, should have killed … Well, it changed things. It changed him. Not for the worse. She didn’t love him any less. But she looked at him differently. He had killed a man. Men. Countless, nameless men.

She was thinking that one afternoon, watching him as he stalked about a friend’s apartment in Fulham. He had his pants on, but his shirt was still draped across the bed end. She was watching his lean muscled arms, his bare shoulders, his beautiful, brutal hands, when it happened.

A knock at the door.

They both froze, stared at each other; Robbie lifted his shoulders.

It came again. More urgent this time. Then a voice, ‘Hello, Robbie? Open up. It’s just me.’

Emmeline’s voice.

Hannah slid off the side of the bed and quickly gathered her clothing.

Robbie held his finger to his lips and tiptoed to the door.

‘I know you’re in there,’ said Emmeline. ‘There’s a lovely old man downstairs who said he saw you come in and that you haven’t been out all afternoon. Let me in, it’s bloody freezing out here.’

Robbie signalled Hannah to hide in the water closet.

Hannah nodded, tiptoed across the room, snibbed the door quickly behind her. Her heart was pounding against her rib cage. She fumbled with her dress, pulled it over her head and knelt to peer through the keyhole.

Robbie opened the door. ‘How’d you know I was staying here?’

‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said Emmeline, sauntering into the centre of the room. Hannah noticed she was wearing her new yellow dress. ‘Desmond told Freddy, Freddy told Jane. You know how those kids are.’ She paused and ran her wide-eyed gaze over everything. ‘Basic but homely.’ She raised her brows when she saw the tangle of sheets on the bed and turned back to Robbie, smiling as she assessed his state of undress. ‘I haven’t interrupted anything?’

Hannah inhaled.

‘I was sleeping,’ said Robbie.

‘At quarter to four?’

He shrugged, found his shirt and put it on.

‘I wondered what you did all day. Here was I thinking you’d be busy writing poetry.’

‘I was. I do.’ He rubbed his neck, exhaled angrily. ‘What do you want?’

Hannah winced at the harshness of his voice. It was Emmeline’s mention of poetry: Robbie hadn’t written in weeks. Emmeline didn’t seem to notice any unkindness. ‘I wanted to know if you were coming tonight. To Desmond’s place.’

‘I told you I wasn’t.’

‘I know that’s what you said but I thought you might have changed your mind.’

‘I haven’t.’

There was a silence as Robbie glanced back toward the door and Emmeline looked longingly around the flat. ‘Perhaps I could—’

‘You have to go,’ said Robbie quickly. ‘I’m working.’

‘But I could help out,’ she used her purse to lift the edge of a dirty plate, ‘tidy up or—’

‘I said no.’ Robbie opened the door.

Hannah watched as Emmeline forced her lips into a breezy smile. ‘I was joking, darling. You didn’t really think I’d have nothing better to do on a lovely afternoon than clean house?’

Robbie didn’t say anything.

Emmeline strolled toward the door. Straightened his collar. ‘You’re still coming to Freddy’s?’

He nodded.

‘Pick me up at six?’

‘Yeah,’ said Robbie, and he closed the door behind her.

Hannah came out of the bathroom then. She felt dirty. Like a rat slinking out of its hidey-hole.

‘Perhaps we should leave it a while?’ said Hannah. ‘A week or so?’

‘No,’ said Robbie. ‘I’ve told Emmeline not to drop around. I’ll tell her again. I’ll make sure she understands.’

Hannah nodded, wondered why she felt so guilty. She reminded herself, as she always did, that it had to be this way. That Emmeline wasn’t being harmed. Robbie had long ago explained that his feelings were not romantic. He said she’d laughed and wondered why on earth he ever imagined she thought otherwise. And yet. Something in Emmeline’s voice, a strain beneath the practised flippancy. And the yellow dress. Emmeline’s favourite …

Hannah looked at the wall clock. There was still half an hour before she had to leave. ‘I might go,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Stay.’

‘I really—’

‘At least a few minutes. Give Emmeline time to find her way.’

Hannah nodded as Robbie came toward her. He ran a hand over each side of her face to grip the back of her neck, then pulled her lips to his.

A sudden, jagged kiss that caught her off balance and silenced, utterly, the niggling voices of misgiving.

An afternoon in December, when they were sitting one each end of a deep bath, Hannah said, ‘I won’t be able to meet for two weeks.’ She ran a washcloth over his hand. ‘It’s Teddy. He has guests from America for the next fortnight and I’m expected to play the good wife. Take them places, entertain them.’

‘I hate to think of you like that,’ he said. ‘Fawning all over him.’

‘I certainly don’t fawn all over him. Teddy wouldn’t know what was happening if I did.’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Robbie. ‘Living with him, sleeping with him.’

‘We don’t,’ said Hannah. ‘You know we don’t.’

‘But people think you do,’ said Robbie. ‘They think you’re a pair.’

She reached to take his fingers in the soapy water that was fast becoming cool. ‘I hate it too,’ said Hannah. ‘I’d do anything so that I never had to leave you.’

‘Anything?’

‘Almost anything.’ She stood, shivered when the cold air hit her wet skin. She climbed out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel. Sat on a wooden seat by the window. ‘Arrange to see Emmeline sometime next week; let me know when and where we can meet, after New Year?’

He slid deeper beneath the water so that only his head was visible. ‘I want to break it off with Emmeline.’

‘No,’ said Hannah, looking up suddenly. ‘Not yet. How will we see each other? How will I know where to find you?’

‘Wouldn’t be a problem if you lived with me. We’d always be able to find one another. We wouldn’t be able to lose each other.’

‘I know, I know.’ She pulled her slip over her head. ‘But until then … how can you think of breaking it off?’

‘You were right. She’s becoming too attached.’

‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘She’s ebullient. It’s just her way. Why? What makes you say that?’

Robbie shook his head.

‘What is it?’ said Hannah.

‘Nothing,’ said Robbie. ‘You’re right. It’s probably nothing.’

‘I know it’s nothing,’ said Hannah firmly. And in that moment she believed it. Would have said it even if she didn’t. Love is like that. Urgent and insistent; it conquers easily one’s sense of satisfaction.

She was dressed now, and it was his turn to sit on the chair wrapped in a towel. She knelt before him, slipped his left shirt sleeve up over his arm. ‘You’re cold,’ she said. ‘Here.’ He shrugged his right arm into the shirt and Hannah started on the buttons. She didn’t look at him when she said, ‘Teddy wants us to move back to Riverton.’

‘When?’

‘March. He’s going to have it restored, build a new summer house.’ She spoke dryly. ‘He imagines himself quite the country squire.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t want to think of it,’ she said helplessly. ‘I kept hoping he’d change his mind.’ She reached the top button, slipped it through and ran her hand down the middle of his chest. ‘You have to keep contact with Emmeline. I can’t invite you to stay, but she can. She’s bound to have friends up for weekends, country parties.’

He nodded, wouldn’t meet her eyes.

‘Please,’ said Hannah. ‘For me. I have to know you’re coming.’

‘And we’ll become one of those country-house couples?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘We’ll play the same games as countless couples before us. Sneak around in the night, pretend to be distantly acquainted in the day?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly.

‘They’re not our rules.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s not enough,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said again.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But only for you.’

One evening in early 1924, with Teddy away on business and Deborah visiting friends, they arranged to meet. It was a part of London Hannah had never entered. As the taxi wended its way deeper into the tangled East End, she watched out the windows. Night had fallen and for the most part there was little to see: grey buildings; horse-drawn carts with lanterns suspended over their top; occasional red-cheeked children in woollen jumpers, tossing jacks, rolling marbles, pointing at the taxi. Then, down one street, the shock of coloured lights, people thronging, music.

Hannah leaned forward, rapped on the screen behind the driver. ‘What is this? What’s happening here?’

‘New Year festival,’ he said in a heavy cockney accent. ‘Bloody barmy, the lot of ’em. Middle o’ winter; should be inside.’

Hannah watched, fascinated, as the taxi crawled down the street. Lights had been strung between buildings so that they zigzagged right the way along. A band of men playing fiddles and a piano accordion had gathered quite a crowd, clapping and laughing. Children wove between adults, dragging streamers and blowing whistles; men and women mingled around great metal drums, roasting chestnuts, drinking ale from mugs. The taxi driver had to hit his horn and call out at them to clear the way. ‘Mad, the lot of ’em,’ he said as the taxi emerged at the other end of the street and turned the corner into a darkened road. ‘Stark raving.’

Hannah felt as if she’d passed through a sort of fairyland. When the driver pulled up finally at the address she’d given him, she ran breathlessly to find Robbie. To tell him what she’d seen.

Robbie was resistant but Hannah pleaded, convinced him finally to accompany her back to the festival. They got out so little, she said, and when might they have opportunity again to visit a party together? No one would know them here. It was safe.

She led the way from memory, half convinced she’d be unable to find it again. Half convinced the festival would have disappeared like a fairy ring in a children’s tale. But soon enough, the frenetic strains of the violin band, children’s whistles, jovial shouts, and she knew it lay ahead.

Moments later they turned the corner into wonderland, began to wander down the street. The cool breeze brought with it mingling wafts of roasting nuts, sweat, and good cheer. People hung out of windows, calling to those below, singing, toasting the new year, farewelling the old. Hannah watched wide-eyed, held tightly to Robbie’s arm, pointing this way and that, laughing with delight at the people who’d started dancing on a makeshift floor.

They stopped to watch, joined the growing crowd, found seats together on a plank of wood stretched across timber boxes. A large woman with red cheeks and masses of dark curling hair perched on a stool by the fiddlers, singing and slapping a tambourine against her padded thigh. Whoops from the audience, shouts of encouragement, flowing skirts whipping past.

Hannah was enthralled. She’d never seen such revelry. Oh, she’d attended her fair share of parties, but compared to this they seemed so orchestrated. So tame. She clapped, laughed, squeezed Robbie’s hand vehemently. ‘They’re wonderful,’ she said, unable to shift her eyes from the couples. Men and women of all shapes and sizes, arms linked as they swirled and stomped and clapped. ‘Aren’t they wonderful?’