The Twilight Hour (2 page)

‘I'd rather you didn't call me Gwenny, sweetie.'

Colin unbent a little. ‘Are you seriously interested in films?' Either he no longer cared that he was dealing with an evil capitalist, or else ambition had driven out doubt. Anyway, as he'd already told me more than once, for a Communist the end justifies the means.

‘So which one is your husband?' the rusty voice murmured. She made me feel terribly shy. ‘Alan – Alan Wentworth.' I smiled bashfully sideways.

‘Yes, but which one is he, angel? I can't tell them apart.'

‘The one with black hair.'

‘Lucky you – the handsome one.'

I felt myself blushing, which was ridiculous, but I couldn't help it. ‘Oh … I don't know,' I stammered, but of course Alan
was
good looking with his beautiful straight nose, rosy skin and narrow eyes – something about those dark eyes signalled intelligence.

‘And what do you do?'

‘Do?' Now my voice sounded squeaky. Normally I was quite confident, but for some reason she made me feel shy. ‘Well – nothing much – at the moment. We haven't been married long.' I hesitated. Did I dare say it or would I look idiotic? I had to take the chance: ‘What I really want to do is act.'

It was as if she hadn't heard. I felt snubbed by her blank silence. Still, I had to keep my end up, so I tried flattery. ‘I just loved your film. I thought you acted so beautifully.'

‘Thank you,' she said, but she didn't seem especially pleased. ‘Really, you know, it was all due to Radu. It's the director who makes a film, the actors are so very secondary.' She was watching the Romanian as she spoke. ‘He has an extraordinary talent, you know.' She stared across the table at Enescu for a moment. Then her tragic gaze beamed itself at me. ‘You should talk to him about acting. He might find you a part.'

This was so exciting I could hardly speak. ‘Oh –' and my voice came out all squeaky, ‘that's … thank you! Thank you so much.'

The men were all still listening to Colin's pitch. Perhaps Gwendolen Grey didn't like not having the full attention of all the men in the vicinity, for as soon as Colin finished speaking, she murmured: ‘Chuck me a cigarette, would you, angel?' And she smiled at him. ‘Colin, is it?'

Colin sprang to attention, but I could tell she wasn't his type. Colin was a bit of a dark horse where women were concerned; or perhaps it was just that he was too serious to flirt.

Later we walked in a crowd up Charlotte Street to Tommy's basement café. It was a steamy, dirty, friendly place. Mother would have thought it dreadfully unhygienic, but the pub shut at ten, so if the conversations and projects and plans and gossip were to continue it was Tommy's or nothing.

Stanley Colman stared around with a look of amusement – you could tell he felt he was slumming – tipped the homburg hat back on his head, then removed it altogether. I hadn't noticed before, but he was good looking. He had masses of curly hair, a noble face, a Grecian profile and his greenish eyes with their long lashes tinged his expression with melancholy. He had broad shoulders too, but he wasn't as tall as you'd expect if you saw him sitting down; the lower half of his body dwindled away to short legs. Still, I liked the way he stood, planted firmly on his feet, what you might call a commanding presence.

We sat at two rickety tables. Tommy's minion, a weedy-looking boy of about fifteen, came over and wiped the shiny tablecloths. Soon he returned with thick, chipped white plates piled with bacon and eggs, fried cabbage and bread and fried potatoes. There was tea in mugs. Our new friends weren't eating. The two men ordered coffee, but when it came, Enescu nearly choked. ‘You call this coffee? My God, you British. Never have I eaten such terrible food,' he said tactlessly. ‘I tell you, in the war, and during my escape, and all through Europe, never, never did I eat food so terrible as what I eat since I come here. Your food is a crime!'

I felt a faint, resentful flicker of patriotic pride. Didn't he know we'd had rationing, shortages, fair shares? That's how we'd won the war. And I'd heard that the French had had to make coffee out of acorns. But before I could speak Colin cut in.

‘Fighting the Nazis, were you?' he enquired in a dangerously neutral voice. I stared at Alan, willing him to head Colin off, but Enescu smiled dazzlingly. ‘One day I hope to make a film on this subject. The time is not yet. What you and I –' and with the hand holding his cigarette he gestured at their circle – ‘what we should be doing is a different project. I am telling you, the success of my film, this is what should be pursued. People are wanting fantasy, escape, beauty. They are not yet ready to hear more about the war, about horrors. Later that will come. For now it is romance, excitement, yes, but in history – historical drama. Look at Olivier in
Henry the Fifth
.'

Alan said, rather ponderously: ‘But that was about
this
war in a way. It was extremely patriotic.'

Radu smiled harder than ever. ‘Your Gainsborough films then –
The Wicked Lady
! What a film. A tragedy Gwendolen has not starred in this film. Margaret Lockwood was okay, she was good fun, you might say, but with Gwendolen –' and he kissed the tips of his fingers – ‘it would have been unbelievable.'

I waited for the explosion. I knew they all despised the Gainsborough films, tosh for housewives, they thought those costume dramas. But there was merely a chilly silence.

‘What subject exactly,' began Alan cautiously, ‘had you in mind?'

Radu looked round at them. He must have caught the atmosphere, for he changed tack. ‘Maybe it is possible – the refugee idea. But this has to be done in dramatic way, romance, passion. Otherwise, it is too much for audiences.'

All the while, Gwendolen Grey smoked languidly.

‘How did you get into films?' I asked her.

Her long lips curved in a faint smile. ‘Oh, it's a long story.'

A story she evidently wasn't going to tell me.

.........

Someone had heard about a party. We all squeezed into the back of Stanley Colman's Bentley. I was on Alan's knee. Gwendolen Grey sat in the front.

The party was in a lofty, battered stucco terrace overlooking Regent's Park. We passed under the scaffolding that seemed to be keeping the house from collapsing altogether, and trudged up magnificent flights of stairs. Bomb damage had torn the plaster away from the walls in places and the lower floors looked uninhabitable. A howling draught came through badly boarded up windows from which all the glass had long since been blown out. It was not completely dark, for candles had been perilously placed at intervals on the stairs and sent long shadows up the walls.

At the top of the house the windows had somehow remained intact, held together by criss-crossed strips of brown sticky paper. You could still feel the wind coming up through the floorboards, but that didn't matter. The rooms were jammed.

‘We're drinking home-made mead,' said our host. I hadn't met him before, but he knew Hugh.

Enescu, Stanley Colman and Gwendolen Grey followed along behind. Heads turned when Gwendolen appeared in the doorway. It wasn't that everyone recognised her, so much as that her strange looks couldn't pass unnoticed. She slayed them, just as she'd slayed the crowd in the Wheatsheaf.

She and I left our coats in a little side room. ‘Who are these people?' said Gwendolen in a low voice.

‘I don't know them! We're practically gate crashing.'

‘Your friends – your husband –' Gwen put a hand on my arm. Her voice was hoarse and low. ‘Stanley's taking them for a ride, you know. He's only interested in films because of me.' I stared at her, surprised and discouraged. It was the very opposite of what she'd said earlier. ‘Radu might get something out of him, but I doubt if he has as much as he claims. Men like him, they're all so boastful. That's how they make their money in the first place.' She put her hand – such long, dark red nails – on my arm. The hand looked so white against my dark blue velvet sleeve. ‘Still, Enescu deserves the money,' she said. ‘He's a genius. You know that.'

Her sudden change of mood startled me. But it was less a change of mood than a feeling that the different things she said didn't quite add up; there was something dislocated about her. Perhaps that was part of being an actress. Now, she changed again. She turned to the mirror and patted her hair. ‘Are you in love with your husband?' She paused again. ‘Oh – I'm sorry, I've shocked you. Of course you are!' She leaned against the wall. ‘I suppose you'll be having babies.'

I felt myself blushing, thinking of the awkward, grown-up business of birth control, French letters, or the slippery dutch cap, and that other, more shocking method, causing first pain, but then a fiercer, darker thrill, a rush of sensation that left me shaken. ‘Well, perhaps not quite yet, but … of course I expect … eventually …'

‘Don't,' she said coldly. And moved away into the room where the party was in full swing. I followed her, but at a distance. Our little group had stuck together, the men still talking film business. Gwendolen sank onto a sofa. A couple of admirers bent towards her. The mead was very sweet. I stood near the door, drinking greedily.

A rotund man with wild carrot curls and a pink face reeled against the wall beside me. ‘I say – haven't got a cigarette, have you?'

I silently passed him my packet. He lit up. ‘Just had a bit of a shock. Saw my ex. She bloody cut me dead. That's a bit rich, don't you think? Didn't even
acknowledge my existence
.' He giggled. ‘Who are you anyway?' He leaned close to me.

Close to, he smelled of drink and that ear-wax smell, the smell of a man who doesn't wash a lot. I glanced at my friends, but they'd forgotten about me. I didn't care; I could flirt with this rather unsavoury specimen of manhood. ‘I'm Dinah. Who are you?'

‘Who am I?' He giggled again. ‘What a very existential question. Who – am – I! Name's Titus Mavor, dearie, ex-gentleman, ex-communist, ex-Surrealist, ex-painter, exhausted.' With that he planted a pudgy hand on my breast and made an attempt to kiss me.

Already things had gone too far. I didn't think I could cope in my present state. The mead was making me feel woozy, and, worse than woozy, queasy. I feared I might actually be going to be sick. ‘Excuse me,' I muttered and tried to move away.

‘Wassa matter?' He looked at me blearily. ‘Cocktails too much for you? That silly ass Simon spiked the drinks with Benzedrine. Said it'd make the party go with a swing.'

Now I was feeling I really might be sick. I pushed past him and made for the passage, hoping there'd be a lavatory close by, but instead I found myself in the room with the coats, and lay down. The bed at once swooped up – up in the air and then sank down – down, then up – up and down again. I lay there with my eyes closed. Either I should soon be sick, or the feeling would pass off.

Dimly I heard voices in the corridor. I listened, to take my mind off the nausea.

‘Mavor, isn't it? I'm Noel Valentine. I've been trying to get hold of you. I'm an art dealer – I believe you own some paintings that–'

‘Of course I own some paintings – I'm a bloody painter, aren't I?'

‘Naturally your own work would be of interest, but … I heard …'

The bed was still lurching up and down like a ship in a storm.

‘… major Surrealists …'

‘Wassa supposed to mean …'m a
major Surrealist
in m'own … are you saying …'

‘I was just interested … just a proposition–'

‘Oh, push off, you … wretched little … uaargh–'

Someone invaded the room, my refuge. It was the redhead again. He fell heavily on the end of the bed. ‘Oh –' he reared up and looked blearily in my direction, ‘didn't see you at first. Feeling rotten? Home-made alcohol is the devil, it really is. Got a fearful headache myself.' He began to stroke my foot. That was the last thing I needed.

I pulled my foot away, almost kicking him. ‘Please don't do that!'

‘Don't be such a frigid little bitch.' But then he keeled forward, and was sick. ‘Need the lavatory …' He rose, swaying, to his feet. ‘If you'll excuse me … feeling a little strange … think I'll just …'

He staggered towards the doorway and toppled through it. A moment later I heard more violent retching.

The next thing I knew Alan was standing over me. ‘You all right? I couldn't think where you'd gone.' He looked at me sternly, and, as so often, I felt he was accusing me of something, that whatever it was must be my fault. ‘They're leaving,' he said. ‘Gwendolen's had enough. They'll give us a lift if we go with them. You don't want to stay, do you?'

I shook my head. I sat up slowly. I was feeling a little better. I stood up, staggering slightly.

Alan steered me downstairs. ‘That mead was pretty lethal.'

Outside, the freezing air sobered me up. I took a great gulp of it, but then nearly slipped on the ice. It was so cold – colder than I ever remembered it.

We crushed ourselves into the car again. Stanley Colman dropped Gwendolen and the Romanian near Marble Arch. Hugh replaced Gwendolen in the front seat.

We drove on through the freezing wastes of London. It was one o'clock in the morning. And in spite of feeling sick, I was so happy. Life was so exciting; new things happening all the time.

I'd never have dreamed how quickly it was all going to get much too exciting – excitement toppling over into dark hysteria.

two

THAT WAS THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT FREEZE
. It was darkest winter, dark, endless winter. Every time you left the house you faced ice, blizzards, biting wind. Simply to keep going was an effort. Standing in the queue for rations was torture. By the end of February there'd been twenty-one straight days with no sunshine. Disaster and bankruptcy threatened as the nation ground to a standstill. Coal couldn't get to the power stations. The trains couldn't run. There were fuel cuts, no electricity. Street lighting returned to blackout levels. London became a black and grey world of frozen shadows.

Yet there was a thrill in these
extremes
and I wasn't going to be a prisoner in this undiscovered country, even if I risked slipping and breaking a leg the moment I set foot outside the front door (precipitous steps). Alan worried when I went out on my own, not because of fractures, but we lived in Murder Mile, near the Notting Hill hotel where Neville Heath had murdered his first victim the previous year. Gentlemanly Neville Heath had been hanged, but prostitutes lingered in the shadows of decayed stucco terraces along the Bayswater Road and in the last few months two had been stabbed and strangled. I shuddered when I thought of the mangled corpses of those women, and when I passed the few tarts desperate enough still to stand out in the freezing cold, in their platform shoes and bedraggled fox furs, I thought how brave they were. I'd never be able to do that: stand there exposed to all comers, putting my life on the line.

There was another murder trial on now, a woman who'd done away with her husband, with the help of her lover. How could love turn to sordid crime, I wondered. For love was so thrilling.

Every morning I opened my eyes to see Alan's dark hair so close on the pillow and his shoulders turned away from me as he slept. I could slide my hand under his pyjamas and stroke his back until he woke and rolled over to look at me with the serious, intense look I found so exciting. Still waters ran deep, they said. At times his passion almost scared me. Even at his gentlest, there was always a sense of withheld violence. I was not
quite
a virgin when I married him, but I hadn't dreamt sex could be like this. Dangerous; there were troubling depths to my need for him – or was it just for the dark sensations he aroused in me. I did things with him that would have made me die of shame a year ago, which still half shamed me when I recalled them in the light of day. He triumphed in wrenching cries and moans from far within me. He led me into areas I'd thought were forbidden territory. He gave me
Women in Love
to read and I saw that our love was Lawrentian: thrilling, yet disturbing too, when I sensed I was out of my depth, submerged in his domination, losing my grip on my ambitions, on my sense of an independent self.

.........

There were times when it really was just too cold to venture out, the streets swept with flurries driven by a Siberian wind. Then we stayed in bed all day. Not just to make love; it was the warmest place – the only warm place – especially during the power cuts, and hour after hour we put off the leap from the warmth of our marriage bed and the eiderdown out into the freezing cold. ‘Nine months later there'll be a huge rise in the birthrate,' said Alan. ‘That'll please the government – so worried about the declining population.'

We'd used up our coal ration weeks ago, but Alan found some packing cases and smashed them up for firewood. I sometimes wore my fur coat indoors now and in the street I felt I must look like a tramp with an old plaid blanket thrown over it and Alan's sweaters bulking it out underneath.

So for me the world was not dingy and drab even if London lay waste all around. Austerity couldn't dim my glorious excitement. Life was opening out in the most amazing way. It was an adventure to scavenge for firewood, to search round Soho for little treats, to sit in the loud, beery pub of an evening and then stagger home along the icy wastes of road, blackened snow banked up by the kerb, treacherous ice along the pavements.

We led a hand-to-mouth existence on hardly any money. Colin had a private income, Alan told me, but most of it went to the Party, the Communist Party, that is. Alan had had a few savings, but he'd blown them on a short-lived little film company he and Hugh had formed. It went bust after one brief documentary and now they subsisted on bits of freelance work. When push came to shove I could cadge a fiver off my parents, and Alan's occasional meagre little cheques for articles and short stories seemed like a windfall, a free gift, manna from heaven, so we always blew the lot at Fava's or Chez Victor, after which we'd go on a pub crawl, eventually fall into bed and wake up next morning to start all over again.

How happy we were! I lived in a bubble of happiness, seeing life through its iridescent glitter. But bubbles are transient, and after the murder everything changed.

.........

Hugh had inconveniently moved to digs in South London. One Saturday we set off on the lengthy journey to Lavender Hill, by way of Islington to pick up Colin. We got off the Circle Line at King's Cross and struggled up the Pentonville Road to the battered terraces of Islington. It was the first time I'd been in a district where everyone looked so poor. Colin was living in a slum! Perhaps he had to, because of the Communist Party. I was shocked. In spite of the war, I'd led a sheltered life: ‘class privilege' Colin said, irritated by my naïve dismay at the poverty all around.

At the Angel station it was like going down a coal mine as a gaunt industrial lift jerked us down into the bowels of the earth. At the bottom a flight of steps ended in the horror of a single narrow platform between two live rails. I clung to the balustrade. Alan was impatient: ‘There's nothing to be frightened of! What is the matter with you!'

I took a few paces out onto the tightrope, but: ‘I'm sorry, I can't do it,' I cried, ‘I know I'm a coward.'

A wind whirled hotly out of the tunnel as the train roared towards us with stupendous force.

Hours later, it seemed, we came out of a different station into another shabby slum. A winding road meandered without purpose into the distance, no end in sight, frozen in the arctic cold. The odd gap where a stray bomb had hit a house gaped, the houses like a row of rotting teeth, grey, discoloured, dreary. Some of the shops, more like hovels, were shut. Some still had boarded-up windows, where the glass had been knocked out by bomb blast.

At last we turned up a side road and came to the house. Inside, at least it was warm, and Hugh's bedsitter was quite comfortable. ‘She charges me five shillings for lighting and hot water, and there's a meter for the gas. Rent's only fifteen bob a week.'

The flames of the gas fire made a little popping noise and roasted the front of my legs. The smell of gas – like Benzedrine or menthol, sharp, slightly sweet, intoxicating – tainted the room, yet made it feel even cosier.

Hugh handed me a toasting fork and some slices of bread while he made tea. I held the slices against the ceramic filigree that caged the flames of the gas fire, and the three of them plotted and planned.

Before the war they'd been so close, Alan said, thick as thieves. They were the Three Musketeers of documentary film. But now …

My father said that when you're young you're all in an undefined lump with your friends, you're all unformed like molten toffee, but as you get older you harden out and separate. Peculiarities of character stiffen into incompatibility. It had sounded a bit lonely. I wondered, too, if it also applied to marriage – you might wake up one morning and find the person you'd married had gradually turned into somebody else. I hoped that wouldn't happen to Alan and me.

I was beginning to think it was happening to the three of them, though. Colin returned from the war a grimmer person, Alan said. What he'd seen had hardened his political views, but if only he didn't throw his weight about so pompously: ‘You weren't there – I was'. He always fell back on that.

Hugh with his effete Noel Coward manner had changed in the opposite direction, Alan said, more of a gadfly, skating along on the surface of life. He said he was still a socialist, but he hadn't a good word for the government. He just seemed utterly disillusioned and did nothing but sneer and make cynical little jokes.

‘You're incurably frivolous,' Colin glowered.

‘You've no sense of fun, old dear.'

‘Life isn't much fun.'

I wondered if Colin was hopelessly in love with some girl. That might explain a lot. I went out of my way to be nice to him, and he took more notice of me than Hugh ever did – or for that matter Alan at times.

Since the film company had folded they'd been plotting how to start another one, or at least get money for the film they were desperate to make. ‘We
need
Enescu.' Hugh's hair flopped forward. ‘His film has done so well – investors will be falling over themselves. That friend of theirs, Stanley Colman, for example.'

‘But Enescu would be the director,' protested Colin. ‘He'd be in charge.'

‘Not if we played our cards right.'

‘But what have we got to offer?' insisted Colin.

Alan and Hugh
did
have something to offer, because
Home Front
, their wartime documentary, had been a critical success, especially for Alan as the main scriptwriter. I hadn't seen it and didn't remember it at any cinema, but that's what they said, anyway; all the right people had taken notice. The little documentary they'd made about post-war reconstruction had got less attention, but they weren't letting that discourage them. It was Colin who'd been out of the picture. Colin needed them more than they needed him.

‘We have to make important films, films that tell the world what is really happening. Enescu won't want that. He won't want anything with a message.' Colin stared at his friends defiantly.

Hugh attempted his most winning smile. ‘We can work round this,' he murmured. He flicked ash delicately off the end of his cigarette. ‘You're the brains, you can get the message into the story – and we're right behind you. An audience likes a story. They want to identify with the characters. They have enough austerity in their daily lives.'

‘You mean the masses are stupid. They just want escapism.'

‘That's not what I mean, not at all. Surely art has to inspire, to energise, to arouse our sympathies …'

‘To
entertain
. That great American word.'

‘Hang on – I didn't say that. But people are tired. There's not a lot of sympathy around. We have to create it, we have to
show
what it's like in Europe today. There's a Little England mentality in this country at the moment. It's not anyone's fault, and it's not surprising people are fed up. We won the war, didn't we, but what have we got to show for it? That's what people are thinking. You can't blame them. They're not interested in how much worse things are in Poland or Germany – least of all Germany. But a story – a romance, I'm not afraid of that word – a love story will get them to
feel
, it'll arouse their pity, they'll stop thinking about the rations and the fuel shortage, and start to think how lucky we are by comparison and how we can
help
.'

‘That isn't Enescu's agenda. He's just a little fascist toerag. His film's hit a reactionary chord and–'

‘Don't be so bigoted,' interrupted Alan. It was the match to light the tinder, and with one impatient remark he'd ruined all Hugh's attempts at diplomacy.

‘Bigoted! Me!' Colin leaned forward, menacing. And now the real problem began to emerge: the Party. ‘I can't go along with capitalist lies!' shouted Colin. ‘I'm already in trouble with London District for querying the line on post-war reconstruction.'

Alan leaned forward, genuinely interested. ‘You've never said anything about that.'

Colin wouldn't look at them. He pushed his hair back, staring downwards, possibly at his own feet. ‘That's not relevant. It doesn't matter.' I knew he already regretted letting it slip out.

‘You're in trouble with the Party?' Alan, of course, wouldn't let it go. ‘Why didn't you tell us?'

Colin's twisted smile was closer to a grimace. ‘You think friendship's all-important, don't you. But for me, you see–'

‘No one wants you to say anything you don't want to,' soothed Hugh. ‘And the Party doesn't even come into it.'

‘The Party comes into everything.'

An awkward silence. Then Hugh tried again. ‘I'm sure there's a way round this.'

‘A way round
what
?' muttered Colin.

‘Look,' said Alan, ‘I know it won't be easy. You're right – Radu wants melodrama and a vehicle for Gwendolen Grey. It's not just you that wants something better than that. We do too. But we
can
get there with Radu. It'll be in the way we write it – get the right kind of hero into the plot–'