The Twilight Hour (31 page)

Alan ran after him, but he soon came back, out of breath and dishevelled. Hugh made himself scarce. Noel escorted Colin's mother to a taxi. The guests dribbled away. Soon there were just the four of us; Alan, Julius, Naomi and me.

‘Venomous chap, your friend Palmer-Green,' said Julius. ‘Just as well he's going back to Hollywood.'

‘He probably didn't even mean any harm.' Alan was deeply dejected. ‘It's just gossip to him, that's all.'

‘But it isn't gossip, is it?' Julius looked at Alan. His expression hardly changed, yet it conveyed his immense appreciation of human folly. ‘You do see why the Party couldn't support him – certainly not openly.'

Involuntarily I put my hand to my mouth. What was he saying? That Colin was … what? That he was really working for the Russians? Now? Still?

I looked at Alan's stonily downcast face. ‘He never said anything to me. I don't mind what he does. I just wish he'd told me.'

‘A friend of mine came across Colin in Spain,' said Naomi. ‘He said he thought the war suited Colin rather too well. Colin was in his element out there. That's what he said, anyway. And you know I think there are some chaps who just find normality too dull. Like those French resistance types, some of them haven't been able to cope with peacetime, or so you hear – turned to revenge attacks on collaborators, even got into gangsterism and crime.'

‘I think it's more he felt guilty,' said Alan slowly, ‘guilty for being what he is, for being a queer, that he might not be quite a man and so he had to be braver, take more risks, in order to prove that he is.'

The four of us sat there in silence. Alan was holding my hand very hard. ‘Let's drink to him anyway,' he said. ‘I'll always think of him as my friend.'

epilogue

AFTERWARDS YOU RETCHED WITH LAUGHTER
. The sound ripped through the stagnant air. Then silence seeped back, stifling. Solitude; a moment before, there'd been two of you, but now you were alone.

It had been more difficult than you'd expected. It had been so intimate. You'd had to
embrace
the unconscious body, the body that was so like yours. You'd had to lean over your spitting image, you'd had to touch, to
minister
to it as though you were saving, not ending a life. The chloroform first; you came round behind her and took her by surprise. Then you pressed and pressed until you thought your arms would give way and the breath would burst from your lungs.
You
were the one gasping for air. It was hand-to-hand combat with a primitive force, a blind, unthinking will to live, distinct from the shell that housed it, a force that fought and struggled and clung to that body as you crushed the life out of it.

At last it gave up the ghost and left its inert and cloddish house of flesh just lying there stupidly. You staggered back. Who was it laughing and laughing? You'd killed yourself too, that was what was so
great
. You were
reborn
. With a different name and a different destiny. You weren't a working-class skivvy any more; you were a
lady
.

Who was it standing there, turned to stone?

But you had to get on. There was still so much to do. You shook yourself back into life. You rearranged the body so that it looked less peculiar, more
natural
. You found a half-empty bottle of brandy on the floor and poured it around in the hope of disguising the smell of chloroform. All the while you hurried, because you had to find what you'd come for, the things you needed so desperately, the documents and the painting, above all the painting. You wished now you'd talked more beforehand. There was so much you didn't know.

Too late for talk now. You searched everywhere, in cupboards, in boxes and cases and drawers. You hadn't expected so much
stuff
, it took much longer than you'd thought. And you hadn't expected to be so clumsy, and as you dropped things and tripped on the rubbish you were terrified someone would hear. The place was empty, but you kept stopping to listen for the sound of a key in the lock, for voices, a footstep on the stair.

Finally when you'd almost given up hope, you found what you were looking for – but only part of it. The identity card and the ration book and the rest of it were all in a box at the back of the cupboard. So that was all right. You took hers and left yours. But one thing was missing, the most important thing of all: the painting
wasn't there
. And then you remembered. Of course it wasn't there. She'd told you. The painter had taken it, the faithless lover, he'd taken the painting as well.

You dare not look any longer. You had to get away. You clicked the door shut, crept down the stairs and stepped out into the freezing afternoon. It would soon be getting dark. You pulled your hat down and hurried away, but not walking too quickly, trying to look casual and ordinary.

From now on, you'd listen to the wireless and buy a paper every day. Of course, it might not make the national news. Not that it mattered; there were corpses everywhere in wartime. There was nothing to worry about anyway, nothing to connect you to that room and its sightless body, nothing, that is, but the very thing that gave you perfect protection: that you were her double.

Then you had a huge piece of luck, your first real lucky break – after all those years of being the unlucky one. It was in the news all right, the very next morning, but for a very different reason. Another air raid; there were raids every night, bombs all over London. The Blitz and the blackout had obliterated what you'd done. It was as if it had never happened. You laughed and laughed again as the irony of it sank in. It must have been
meant
. She'd have died anyway. The whole house was flattened. So now there was only the future. Your new life, your
real
life, the one you'd so nearly been cheated of, could begin.

You walked on as twilight fell.

ALSO BY ELIZABETH WILSON