The Twilight Hour (4 page)

Gwendolen smiled her slow, world-weary smile. ‘Oh … so far as that goes. I can tell you already exactly what will happen. Radu will get money for his film, he's probably going to New York soon to talk to his distributors over there, but he won't get the money from Stanley. That boy isn't serious – he's too busy buying up bombed buildings, he's making a fortune, he won't want to risk it investing in some crazy film idea. He knows Radu's been successful so far, but the movies are far too risky for him. It's just that he likes hanging around with arty people, he thinks we're all frightfully bohemian, he loves all that.'

‘I thought it was because he's in love with you,' I said boldly.

Gwen smiled. ‘You don't miss a trick, do you, although you seem such an innocent. But in love … that's a bit of an exaggeration,' and she gracefully shrugged away the idea of an admirer. ‘He's trying to educate himself. Those East End Jews have a touching faith in learning and culture, you know.'

‘I didn't know he was Jewish.'

‘Oh darling, of course he's a yid! You
are
green, aren't you? Anyway, never mind about him, I'm just telling you – your husband and his friends, they shouldn't expect any shekels from that direction, they're wasting their time. They should get some money from the government and make documentaries about the welfare state, the new post-war Britain.'

Her dismissive tone hurt me. In spite of the quarrel I utterly believed in Alan, and rushed to his defence. ‘Alan's really talented, you know. His wartime film was a huge success.'

Gwendolen smiled faintly: ‘It's a difficult, difficult business, the movies. And the economy's in such a mess, you know. These awful Labourites dragging everything down.'

That startled me. Everyone I knew supported the Labour government – apart from my father, but that was different and to be expected.

‘Don't you …' I began, but my own ideas were so unformed I didn't want an argument. I stared at my reflection. I looked like a scarecrow compared to her. My hair just grew and fell about my face in messy curls. Even my lipstick, so carefully applied (blot three times and press your lips together), looked amateurish. I wished I were twenty-five, an ideal age.

‘Anyway,' said Gwendolen, ‘who wants to talk about politics. Tell me what you're doing with yourself.'

‘I want to get a job,' I said. ‘Well – what I really want is to get into the theatre, but … well, we haven't any money just at the moment, so anything really.'

She looked at me via the mirror – two reflections and a single gaze. ‘I see. Yes.' She smoothed her glossy hair and replaced her hat for the second time. ‘I remember you said you wanted to act. You should talk to Radu. He might be able to get you something. I'll mention it to him if you like.'

‘Oh, would you? That would be marvellous!' She'd said it before, and nothing had happened, but this time surely she'd remember!

She continued to stare in the mirror, looking at herself now. Then: ‘We'd better be getting back. They'll be wondering where we are. Might even send a search party.' And suddenly she laughed, a jarring laugh and rather coarse, out of keeping with her graceful, stilted movements. She paused with her hand on the doorknob. ‘You know, you should visit me one afternoon. Radu and I are off to Paris soon, but after we get back … come and have tea. I'm resting at present. I get quite bored – and if Radu goes to New York I'll be all on my own.'

New York – Paris – it all sounded so exciting. ‘I'd love to.'

The men hardly looked up when we returned. Enescu was holding forth. Stanley sat a little back from the group – as he had when we'd met them before, but the other three were clenched round Enescu. His melting brown eyes would have charmed anyone – he really was persuasive. ‘And then you see – I imagine this wonderful dream sequence. It will be this wonderful surrealist dream, when Gwendolen imagines what her new life might be – and then perhaps it will turn dark and she will remember the nightmare that was.' His hands were as voluble as his words as he sketched his ideas.

‘Surrealism? What's that? I don't understand all that stuff,' interrupted Stanley. ‘Sounds a bit phoney to me. But then I'm ignorant about these things.'

Only Hugh could have explained an artistic movement to a self-confessed philistine with such exquisite good manners; he didn't once sound patronising. The property developer listened doggedly. ‘Not much money in experimental films, I should have thought,' was his only comment when Hugh had ended his exposition.

‘And for this sequence I have found a wonderful artist –' He paused. Alan stiffened. Hugh looked strained. ‘You must know him – Titus Mavor.'

Colin exploded. ‘Mavor! Are you insane?' He swivelled round towards his two friends. ‘Did you know about this? The last person on earth I'd ever work with!'

Gwen looked on, expressionless. Hugh tried to calm Colin down.

‘He did some scenery and stage sets for the leftwing theatre movement before the war – the Unity Theatre – it's not as though he doesn't have some experience.'

‘I know
that
, you bloody fool!' Colin was in a towering rage.

Unexpectedly Gwendolen spoke. ‘They say he's destroyed himself with drink, darling. He may not be capable …'

‘I'm afraid that is true, Radu,' said Hugh, placating. ‘Drinks like a fish – hardly does any work these days.'

If he'd hoped to head Colin off, he failed. ‘Surrealism is the absolute end. Bourgeois rubbish. But that's not the point. Mavor's a degenerate–'

Radu sprang to his feet. He was angry now. ‘You're crazy, crazy, stupid anglo-saxon moralists.' He walked off angrily towards the bar.

Stanley Colman came to the rescue. ‘What about going for a spot to eat at the Café Royal – how about that? My treat.'

We all jumped at the idea with relief. Only afterwards, much later, did it occur to me that it might have been a plot – that Radu might have put Stanley up to it, knowing that Titus Mavor spent most of his time at the Café Royal, even when he was broke.

‘Dinah and I will go on ahead to get a table.' Stanley Colman smiled at me in the friendliest possible way.

This was startling. Why me? Downstairs the porter rang for a taxi – another taxi! Such incredible extravagance, all these taxis! And for such a short distance! But then it was so cold. It was
so cold
and the pavements so slippery.

‘Shouldn't we wait for the others? I mean – four of us at least could get in one taxi …'

If I hadn't felt certain he was sweet on Gwendolen, I'd have wondered if he wanted to get me alone in order to try something on. If I'd imagined getting married would put a stop to that sort of thing, well, I couldn't have been more wrong. I was quite used to it now, and knew how to deal with it. But the way he smiled told me that while he found me an attractive young woman, I had nothing to fear. He was entirely respectful. ‘I've had enough of their arguing, frankly. And I thought perhaps you had, too.'

It was nice of him to have noticed my discomfort. All the same, I hoped the others would join us before the taxi arrived, for I felt shy with this stranger, although I couldn't help quite liking him, even if he was a spiv. Anyway, the taxi came and the two of us were driven along Piccadilly. I remembered Mother's advice concerning men: get them to talk about themselves.

‘How did you come to be in the property business?' It came out as both prim and intrusive, but he didn't seem to notice.

‘I was wounded early on in the war, never saw active service. It happened during training, literally shot myself in the foot. Sounds like a bad joke, doesn't it? But in a business sense I have to admit it was a lucky break.' He smiled sideways at me. Shooting yourself in the foot was suspiciously like dodging the call-up, or rather, getting out of it. My companion seemed almost to read my thoughts, for he continued, ‘On the other hand, doesn't look good, not to have seen action. It can give the impression you're a bit dodgy – that you wriggled out of it somehow.'

My face felt hot, I hoped I wasn't blushing.

‘I don't think you and your friends have met many people like me, have you,' he remarked, as if reading my thoughts. ‘I suppose you were just about old enough to be called up for war work, but …?' His voice trailed off into a question.

‘I worked at the War Office the last year of the war, I was a secretary. I saw life then,' I said.

As he talked I was trying to pin down his accent. It wasn't common, wasn't cockney, but it wasn't public school either. It was also difficult to guess his age, but it came as a shock when I found out he was only the same age as Alan and the others – he somehow seemed older, and even more grown up.

‘The war shook everyone up, but now things'll revert to type, whatever the government does. It'll take a while, but when things have settled down … mind you, it'll still be a
different
world, but not in the way your friend supposes. There ain't going to be no soviet utopia.'

‘You mean Colin?'

‘All of you – not much idea how most people live. Take me. I left school at fourteen, left school on the Friday and started work on the Monday. My first job was with a landlord. My boss–'

But we'd arrived. The cab drew into the kerb, Stanley paid, and we slid across the frozen pavement and into the Café Royal. I'd been there before, of course, but I had a feeling it was Colman's first visit, although he appeared cool enough.

‘I'm not really properly dressed,' I said, aware of my shabby old black jumper and tweed skirt, but Stanley brushed that aside. ‘A fur coat is always good. And no one will notice once you've sat down.'

We were shown to the room at the back. I sat beside him on the red velvet banquette. Stanley looked round, taking in the Edwardian opulence of the place, the cloudy gilt mirrors, the mahogany, overripe, yet at the same time faded. I watched the drinkers and diners. Even if they weren't famous writers or artists, they acted and dressed as if they were. It was all so glamorous.

Stanley ordered me a sherry, and as I sat beside him waiting for the others, I was happy and excited, my row with Alan forgotten. I looked round. ‘I say, look over there: there
is
Titus Mavor.' I recognised him at once.

Stanley looked across the room. ‘How convenient,' he said with an enigmatic little smile. ‘Well then, when the others arrive, they can ask him to join us, can't they? That'll please Radu – and … well, depending on how he behaves it might settle the issue anyway.'

I wished I hadn't pointed him out. ‘Oh no, don't let's tell the others,' I said quickly, ‘Colin's so touchy about him – we don't want another row. Let's just hope they don't notice him.'

Stanley looked at me. ‘Not much chance of that, is there?' He was right.

four

I WAS ON MY SECOND SHERRY BY THE TIME
Alan, Colin and Hugh arrived, having walked through the freezing streets from Green Park.

‘Gwenny not with you?' Stanley tried to sound casual.

‘They should have been here by now,' said Hugh, looking round as if expecting to find them behind a pillar. He caught sight of Mavor, stared sharply, but didn't say anything. ‘They were taking a taxi – they'll be along any moment.'

The waiter came to our table with menus and a jug of water. By the time he returned some minutes later to take our order, Stanley was fidgety. ‘Where
are
they?'

‘Let's order anyway,' said Alan. ‘What about roast beef followed by apple pie, Dinah?' He beamed at me, my childish behaviour was forgiven, but he didn't wait for me to reply. I agreed meekly, because although I'd wanted to choose for myself, I wasn't going to risk another quarrel.

When Radu and Gwendolen finally turned up it was with some story of their taxi running out of petrol. ‘And me in these shoes!' Gwendolen gestured at her feet and we all stared at her elegant, silk-stockinged legs and high heels. She laughed, but I thought she was nervous, as she headed off to the ladies. We all laughed – a bit too loudly.

My eyes flickered to where Titus Mavor sat at the opposite side of the restaurant. He had his arm round a girl with black hair in a bob with a fringe. He looked up at the loud burst of laughter. He'd seen us. I looked quickly away.

The next thing I knew he was looming over our table, the girl dragged along with him, his arm still round her shoulders. ‘Well, look who's here,' he said, swaying slightly. I concentrated on the girl. She was wearing a red bouclé sweater with large wooden buttons marching diagonally across the bosom. Mavor looked more than ever like a cherub gone to seed.

I realised that, drunk as Mavor was – as they both were, I think – they were waiting for me, the only woman present, to invite them to sit down, so of course I had to. Alan kicked my ankle under the table. Mavor slumped on the banquette next to me.

Gwendolen wove her way back from the ladies between the tables. Mavor stared at her as she sat down at the opposite end of the table, next to Colin. A strange, unpleasant smile twitched his rubbery lips and he half rose in what seemed a parody of good manners. ‘Lovely to see you, Gwendolen.' She smiled back, a tight, tense smile. His fat fingers spread over his girlfriend's shoulder and stretched towards the highest button as if they were thinking of undoing it, but his eyes swivelled biliously towards me.

‘So you're the little girl hitched up with Alan Wentworth. Finally settled down, has he?' I knew all about Alan's colourful past, and it didn't bother me, not at all. I ignored the leering innuendo. I took out a cigarette. His hand shook as he lit it. ‘And still knocking round with Comrade Harris,' he continued, speaking to me, but of course it was meant for them. He was looking at them all the time. ‘Wentworth never quite took the plunge, did he, just hung about on the edge of the pool, not quite daring to jump in. But Colin Harris – my God, it's
so true
what they say about converts. He's worse than St Paul. And the funny thing is, his road to Damascus was the Nazi Soviet Pact. My Party right or wrong. Just when anyone with any sense was getting out, he took it as the great test, the supreme test of loyalty. Since then, of course, I've become a
rotten element
.' He sagged against the red velvet bench and laughed, but the laugh turned into a bubbling, heaving cough. Spittle sprayed. His poached-egg eyes watered. ‘What's
your
assessment of Comrade Stalin? Think he's the people's hero, eh?' As his voice rose I could feel the sweat under my arms. This was horrible. Mavor leant towards me, but the words were directed towards Colin. His thicket of red curls fell over his sweating forehead. He had bad breath and bad teeth. And then he spoke directly to Colin. ‘How are the comrades these days, old chap?' And he smiled with insulting insistence.

‘We're making advances,' said Colin, tight-lipped.

Titus snorted. ‘
Making advances
! Advances on what? You make it sound like a seduction; making advances on the great British people. Or is it a military campaign? Advancing over difficult terrain, what,' he said in a Blimpish accent.

Colin should have laughed it off, but of course he didn't. He scowled. ‘Things are obviously more difficult than they were during the war. There's so much anti-Soviet propaganda now – everyone's forgotten who really won the war. The reason we're sitting here, y'know, is the battle of Stalingrad. The Yanks seem to think they won the war, but it was the Soviet Union that saved us.'

‘I thought it was the Battle of Britain,' said Hugh rather sharply.

‘If you take my advice, old man …' Titus leaned forwards in a distinctly hostile way. I wondered if he was ever sober. ‘If you take my advice, your lot should shut up about the Soviet bloody Union. There's a lot more going on in Russia than we get to hear about, and even if there wasn't, the Soviet Union is the Soviet Union and England is England,
it is a different animal
,' he said, with a drunken wiseacre nod, ‘and old Comrade Stalin will do what he thinks is good for him and possibly them, like he did with the Nazi Soviet Pact. Or have we forgotten all about that?'

Hugh leaned forward. ‘Let's leave politics out of it, Titus.'

But Titus wouldn't be shifted. ‘That's precisely the problem. You can't separate art and politics. You'd agree with that I think, Colin. Art is always political. The comrades are very hot on that. Unfortunately, the result is the incredible idea that the highest form of painting is a huge canvas showing burly factory workers or alternatively what are actually the conquered inhabitants of Uzbekistan rejoicing in their slavery, in the most disgustingly sentimental Victorian style you can imagine. Now for a humble Surrealist, such as myself, that's just a little hard to take.'

‘Look, hang on –' began Hugh, and Colin had gone very red, but now the three men at the next table began to get involved. Two were dishevelled arty types, in the usual corduroy and dusty hair, cut long to touch the collar; the third, who looked younger than his companions, at the same time dressed older, in an uncared-for suit with a waistcoat, a conventional shirt and tie. He was going bald, wore glasses and had buck teeth that seemed too large for his pale, round, schoolboy's face. He leaned forward, holding a card towards Mavor.

‘Remember – we met the other evening – I've opened a gallery–'

‘He thinks the moment has come for a great revival of Surrealism,' said one of his companions, rather jeeringly. ‘He's after those Dalí paintings you're always banging on about, Mavor.'

Mavor took the proffered card, and leered craftily at his fellow painter: ‘Who says I own any Dalís?'

The man laughed. ‘Well you, mostly, old boy.'

Colin couldn't hold back any longer. ‘Revive Surrealism? People want something uplifting, not that sick Freudian fantasy stuff. It's degenerate, utterly degenerate.'

Weirdly, he was beginning to sound like my father.

‘So my work's degenerate, is it? Salvador Dalí's degenerate, Max Ernst, André Breton. It's degenerate to paint the unconscious, to unleash the imagination, to explore the erotic. That's degenerate. But it's not degenerate to sell your soul to the Party, to lap up their propaganda, for all we know you were one of their double agents, one of their spies. What exactly
were
you up to in the Balkans, Harris? Doing the Russians' dirty work for them?'

There was a horrified silence. He'd gone too far. I looked round the table, seeing them for a split second frozen, as if caught in a flashbulb photograph: faces distorted with anger, or apprehension; only the onlookers, Radu and Stanley, detached and even amused, while Gwen's face was a blank white disc, expressionless as ever as she gazed at Mavor.

Colin leaned forward, his face even bonier in rage. ‘You
are
degenerate, you absurd, drunken aesthete, with your effete, ephemeral paintings and your … look at you, if you weren't so drunk I'd knock you down, I'd kick you all the way to–'

‘Colin!
Shut up
!' Alan laid a hand on his friend's arm. Titus was smiling and smiling. He was enjoying himself. Colin had responded exactly as he'd hoped.

‘Oh dear, I must have touched a raw nerve there, hit a chord. We have a spy in our midst. Spying was heroic, of course, during the war. We should be grateful to you, Colin, just as we should be grateful to the glorious Soviet Union.'

Seeing the look on Colin's face, the girlfriend was agitated now. ‘
Titus
,' she whined.

‘Shut up, Fiona.'

Colin stood up, lurching slightly. Perhaps he was a bit drunk too. ‘Shall I tell you something – I hate people like you. You're the scum of the earth and after the revolution, there won't be a place for people like you.'

‘I'll be liquidated, I suppose.'

‘That would be a very good idea.' Colin stepped dramatically backwards and his chair fell over. He left it where it was and strode out of the Café. The two artists at the next table clapped. Not the little bald man – he seemed appalled.

Titus stared stupidly, his mouth open. Then he started to laugh and splutter. I felt a pinpoint of spittle on my cheek.

‘What the hell were you thinking of?' muttered Alan.

Titus blustered, but he was looking a bit shaken. ‘It was only a joke – no need to go off the deep end like that. You heard! He threatened to kill me!'

The food arrived. What a relief. Now we could all eat. It covered the thick, awkward silence.

Stanley said calmly: ‘You know, I think we were all in a state of chronic hysteria during the war. Everything was mad and crazy. Extraordinary things could happen. The street I was living in then, there was a bomb and a woman in her bath was lifted right out of her house by the blast – still in the bath, stark naked – and landed on the pavement. She was completely unhurt. How could that happen? But things like that happened all the time. We were permanently on this hysterical plane where everything was exaggerated. Now we've come down and we can't cope with it. And nothing really
is
back to normal anyway.'

Titus said: ‘I like the woman in the bath – that's pure surrealism.'

I watched him, repelled. His flaccid lips, his mouth gaping open; the whole of him was incomplete, soft at the edges, a monstrous mollusc without its shell. His appetite amazed me. We'd hardly started and he'd cleared his plate and started to grab bits from his girlfriend's. He was appetite incarnate, a giant baby, a mouth, an orifice. Now the mouth was nuzzling Fiona's cheek and neck, grazing snail-like, slimy. I squirmed inwardly, felt suddenly very prim, but at the same time unpleasantly fascinated. He was a kind of life force, something rising from the primeval slime, in a primitive way more alive than any of us with his viscous, oozing extremities and the malice gleaming from his eyes.

Yet within a few weeks he was dead.