The Shifting Fog

  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?’

  The music was infectious. Faster, louder, seeping through each pore, flowing into her blood, making her skin tingle. Driving rhythm that tugged at her core.

  Then Robbie’s voice in her ear. ‘I’m thirsty. Let’s go, find something to drink.’

  She hardly heard, shook her head. Realised she’d been holding her breath. ‘No. No, you go. I want to watch.’

  He hesitated. ‘I don’t want to leave you.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ Vaguely aware as his hand held firm a moment, then detached from hers. No time to watch him go, too much else to see. To hear. To feel.

  She wondered later whether she should have noticed something in his voice. Whether she should have realised then that the noise, the activity, the crowds were pressing in on him so that he could hardly breathe. But she didn’t. She was captivated.

  Robbie’s place was soon filled, someone else’s warm thigh pressed against hers. She glanced sideways. A short, stocky man with red whiskers, a brown felt hat.

  The man caught her eye, leaned close, cocked his thumb toward the dance floor. ‘Take a spin?’

  His breath was tinged with tobacco. His eyes were pale, blue, trained on her.

  ‘Oh . . . No,’ she smiled at him. ‘Thank you. I’m with someone.’ She looked over her shoulder, scanned for Robbie. Thought she saw him through the darkness on the other side of the street. Standing by a smoking barrel. ‘He won’t be long.’

  The man tilted his face. ‘Come on. Just a little one. Keep the both of us warm.’

  Hannah peered behind again. No sign now of Robbie. Had he said where he was going? How long he would be?

  ‘Well?’ The man. She turned back to him. Music was everywhere. It reminded her of a street she’d seen in Paris years before. On her honeymoon. She bit her lip. What would it hurt, just a little dance? What purpose life if not to seize at opportunity? ‘All right,’ she said, taking his hand. Smiling nervously. ‘Though I’m not sure I know how.’

  The man grinned. Pulled her up, dragged her into the centre of the swirling crowd.

  And she was dancing. Somehow, in his strong grip, she knew the steps. Knew them well enough. They skipped and turned, swept up in the current of the other couples. Violins sang, boots stomped, hands clapped. The man linked an arm through hers, elbow to elbow, and round they spun. She laughed, couldn’t help herself. She’d never felt such rushing freedom. She turned her face toward the night sky; closed her eyes, felt the kiss of cold air on her warm lids, warm cheeks. She opened them again, looked for Robbie as they went. Longed to dance with him. Be held by him. She stared into the sea of faces—surely there hadn’t been so many before?—but she was spinning too fast. They were a blur of eyes and mouths and words.

  ‘I . . .’ She was out of breath, clapped her hand to her bare neck. ‘I have to stop now. My friend will be back.’ She tapped the man’s shoulder as he continued to hold her, continued to spin. Said, right into his ear: ‘That’s enough. Thank you.’

  For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to stop, was going to continue, round and round, never letting her go. But then she felt a loss of momentum, a rush of dizziness, and they were near the bench again.

  It was full now of other spectators. Still no Robbie.

  ‘Where’s your friend?’ said the man. He’d lost his hat in the dance, ran his hand through a mat of red hair.

  ‘He’ll be here,’ said Hannah, scanning strange faces. Blinking to rid herself of giddiness. ‘Soon.’

  ‘No sense sitting out in the meantime,’ said the man. ‘You’ll catch a chill.’

  ‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘Thank you, but I’ll wait here.’

  The man gripped her wrist. ‘Come on. Keep a fellow company.’

  ‘No,’ said Hannah, firmly this time. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  The man’s grip loosened. He shrugged, ran his fingers over his whiskers, his neck. Turned to leave.

  Suddenly, out of the darkness, movement. A shadow.

  Upon them.

  Robbie.

  An elbow in her shoulder and she was falling.

  A shout. His? The man’s? Hers?

  Hannah collapsed into a wall of onlookers.

  The band continued; the clapping and stomping too.

  From where she fell she glanced upward. Robbie was on the man. Fist pounding. Pounding. Again. Again. Again.

  Panic. Heat. Fear.

  ‘Robbie!’ she called. ‘Robbie, stop!’

  She pushed her way through endless people, grabbing at anything she could.

  The music had stopped and people had gathered to the fray. Somehow she pressed between them, made her way to the front. Clutched at Robbie’s shirt. ‘Robbie!’

  He shook her off. Turned briefly toward her. Eyes blank, not meeting hers. Not seeing hers.

  The man’s fist met Robbie’s face. And he was atop.

  Blood.

  Hannah screamed. ‘No! Let him be. Please, let him be.’ She was crying now. ‘Somebody help.’

  She was never sure exactly how it ended. Never learned the fellow’s name who came to her assistance, to Robbie’s assistance. Pulled the whiskered man off; dragged Robbie to the wall. Fetched glasses of water, then of whisky. Told her to take her old man home and put him to bed.

  Whoever he was, he’d been unsurprised by the evening’s events. Had laughed and told them it wouldn’t be a Saturday night—or a Friday, or a Thursday, for that matter—if a couple of lads didn’t set one against the other. And then he’d shrugged, told them Red Wycliffe wasn’t a bad sort—he’d seen a bad war, that was all, hadn’t been the same since. Then he’d packed them off, Robbie leaning on Hannah for support.

  They attracted hardly a glance as they made their way along the street, leaving the dancing, the merriment, the clapping behind them.

  Later, back at the barge, she washed his face. He sat on a low timber stool and she knelt before him. He’d said little since they’d left the festival and she hadn’t wanted to ask. What had overcome him, why he’d pounced, where he’d been. She’d guessed he was asking himself the same sorts of questions, and she was right.

  ‘What might have happened?’ he said eventually. ‘What might have happened?’

  ‘Shhh,’ she said, pressing the damp flannel against his cheekbone. ‘It’s over.’

  Robbie shook his head. Closed his eyes. Beneath his thin lids, his thoughts flickered. Hannah barely heard him when he spoke. ‘I’d have killed him,’ he whispered. ‘So help me God, I’d have killed him.’

  They didn’t go out again. Not after that. Hannah blamed herself; berated herself for not listening to his protestations, for insisting they go. The lights, the noise, the crowds. She had read about shell shock: she should have known better. She resolved to care better for him in future. To remember all he’d been through. To treat him gently. And never to mention it again. It was over. It wouldn’t happen again. She’d make sure of it.

  A week or so later they were lying together, playing their game, imagining they lived in a tiny isolated village at the top of the Himalayas, when Robbie sat up and said, ‘I’m tired of this game.’

  Hannah propped herself on one side. ‘What would you like to do?’

  ‘I want it to be real.’

  ‘So do I,’ Hannah said. ‘Imagine if—’

  ‘No,’ Robbie said. ‘Why can’t we make it real?’

  ‘Darling,’ said Hannah gently, running a finger along his right cheekbone, across his recent scar. ‘I don’t know whether the fact had slipped your mind, but I’m already married.’ She was trying to be light-hearted. To make him laugh, but he didn’t
.

  ‘People get divorced.’

  She wondered who these people were. ‘Yes, but—’ ‘We could sail somewhere else, away from here, away from everyone we know. Don’t you want to?’

  ‘You know I do,’ said Hannah.

  ‘With the new law you only have to prove adultery.’

  Hannah nodded. ‘But Teddy hasn’t been adulterous.’

  ‘Surely,’ Robbie said, ‘in all this time that we’ve . . .’

  ‘It isn’t his way,’ said Hannah. ‘He’s never been particularly interested.’ She ran a finger over his lips. ‘Not even when we were first married. It wasn’t until I met you that I realised . . .’ She paused, leaned to kiss him. ‘That I realised.’

  ‘He’s a fool,’ said Robbie. He looked at her intensely and ran his hand lightly down her arm, from shoulder to wrist. ‘Leave him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t go to Riverton,’ he said. He was sitting now, had hold of her wrists. God he was beautiful. ‘Run away with me.’

  ‘You’re not being serious,’ she said uncertainly. ‘You’re teasing.’

  ‘I’ve never been more serious.’

  ‘Just disappear?’

  ‘Just disappear.’

  She was silent for a minute, thinking.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Why?’ He released her wrists roughly, left the bed and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Lots of reasons . . .’ She thought about it. ‘Emmeline—’ ‘Fuck Emmeline.’

  Hannah flinched. ‘She needs me.’

  ‘I need you.’

  And he did. She knew he did. A need both terrifying and intoxicating.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ said Robbie. ‘She’s tougher than you think.’

  He was sitting at the table now, smoking. He looked thinner than she remembered. He was thinner. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘Teddy would find me,’ she said. ‘His family would.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let them.’

  ‘You don’t know them. They couldn’t bear the scandal.’

  ‘We’d go somewhere they wouldn’t think to look. The world’s a big place.’

  He looked so fragile sitting there. Alone. She was all he had. She stood by him, cradled him in her arms so that his head rested against her stomach.

  ‘I can’t live without you,’ he said. ‘I’d rather die.’ He said it so plainly she shivered, disgusted herself by deriving some pleasure from his statement.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said.

  ‘I need to be with you,’ he said simply.

  ‘Let me think about it,’ said Hannah. She had learned that when Robbie got like this it was best to go along with him.

  And so, she let him plan it. Their great escape. He’d stopped writing poetry, his notebook only ever pulled out now to sketch escape ideas. She even helped sometimes. It was a game, she told herself, just like the others they’d always played. It made him happy, and besides, she often got swept up in the planning herself. Which faraway places they could live in, what they might see, the adventures they might have. A game. Their own game in their own secret world.

  She didn’t know, couldn’t know, where it would all lead.

  If she had, she told me later, she’d have kissed him one last time, turned and run as fast and as far as she could.

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  It hardly needs to be said: sooner or later secrets have a way of making themselves known. Hannah and Robbie managed to keep theirs long enough: right through 1923 and into the beginning of 1924. But, as with all impossible love affairs, it was destined to end.

  Downstairs, the servants had started to talk. It was Deborah’s new maid, Caroline, who lit the match. She was a snoopy little miss, come from serving at the house of the infamous Lady Penthrop (rumoured to have tangled with half the eligible lords in London). She’d been let go with a glowing recommendation, extracted, alongside a pretty sum, after catching her mistress in one too many compromising positions. Ironically, she needn’t have bothered: she didn’t need the reference when she came to us. Her reputation preceded her and it was her snooping rather than her cleaning that inclined Deborah to employ her.

  There are always signs if one knows where to look, and know where to look she did. Scraps of paper with strange addresses plucked from the fire before they burned, imprints of ardent notes left on writing blocks, shopping bags that contained little more than old ticket stubs. And it wasn’t difficult to get the other servants talking. Once she invoked the spectre of Divorce, reminded them that if scandal broke they’d likely find themselves without employment, they were pretty forthcoming.

  She knew better than to ask me, but in the end she didn’t need to. She learned Hannah’s secret well enough. I blame myself for that: I should have been more alert. If I hadn’t had my mind on other things, I would have noticed what Caroline was up to, I could have warned Hannah. But I’m afraid at that time I was not a good lady’s maid, was sadly remiss in my responsibilities to Hannah. I was distracted, you see; I’d suffered a disappointment of my own. From Riverton had come news of Alfred.

  Thus, the first either of us knew was the evening of the opera, when Deborah came to Hannah’s bedroom. I’d dressed Hannah in a slip of pale French silk, neither white nor pink, and was just fixing her hair into curls about her face when there came the knock at the door.

  ‘Almost ready, Teddy,’ said Hannah, rolling her eyes at my reflection. Teddy was religiously punctual. I drove a hairpin into a particularly errant curl.

  The door opened and Deborah swanned into the room, dramatic in a red dress with butterfly-wing sleeves. She sat on the end of Hannah’s bed and crossed one leg over the other, a flurry of red silk.

  Hannah’s eyes met mine. A visit from Deborah was unusual. ‘Looking forward to Tosca?’ said Hannah.

  ‘Immensely,’ said Deborah. ‘I adore Puccini.’ She withdrew a makeup compact from her purse and flicked it open, arranged her lips so they made a figure eight and stabbed at the corners for lipstick smears. ‘So sad, though, lovers torn apart like that.’

  ‘There aren’t many happy endings in opera,’ said Hannah.

  ‘No,’ said Deborah. ‘Nor in life, I fear.’

  Hannah pressed her lips together. Waited.

  ‘You realise, don’t you,’ said Deborah, smoothing her brows in the little mirror, ‘that I don’t give a damn who you’re sleeping with when my fool of a brother has his back turned.’

  Hannah’s eyes met mine. Shock made me fumble the hairpin, drop it on the floor.

  ‘It’s my father’s business I care about.’

  ‘I didn’t realise the business had anything to do with me,’ said Hannah. Despite her casual voice, I could hear her breaths grown shallow and quick.

  ‘Don’t play dumb,’ Deborah said, snapping her compact closed. ‘You know your part in all of this. People trust us because we represent the best of both worlds. Modern business approaches, with the old-fashioned assurance of your family heritage. Progress and tradition, side by side.’

  ‘Progressive tradition? I always suspected Teddy and I made rather an oxymoronic match,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Don’t be smart,’ Deborah said. ‘You and yours benefit from the union of our families just as much as we do. After the mess your father made of his inheritance—’ ‘My father did his best.’ Hannah’s cheeks flushed hotly.

  Deborah raised her brows. ‘Is that what you call it? Running his business into the ground?’

  ‘Pa lost his business because of the war. He was unlucky.’

  ‘Of course,’ Deborah said ‘terrible things, wars. So many unlucky people. And your father, such a decent man. So determined to hang on, turn his business around. He was a dreamer. Not a realist, like you.’ She laughed lightly, came to stand behind Hannah, forcing me aside. She leaned over Hannah’s shoulder and addressed her reflection. ‘It’s no secret he didn’t want you to marry Teddy. Did you know he cam
e to see my father one night? Oh, yes. Told him he knew what he was up to and he could forget about it, that you’d never consent.’ She straightened, smiled with subtle triumph as Hannah looked away. ‘But you did. Because you’re a smart girl. Broke your poor father’s heart, but you knew as well as he that you had little other choice. And you were right. Where would you be now if you hadn’t married my brother?’ She paused, cocked an overplucked brow. ‘With that poet of yours?’

  Standing against the wardrobe, unable to cross to the door, I wished to be anywhere else. Hannah, I saw, had lost her flush. Her body had taken on the stiffness of one preparing to receive a blow but with little idea from where.

  ‘And what of your sister?’ said Deborah. ‘What of little Emmeline?’

  ‘Emmeline has nothing to do with this,’ said Hannah, voice catching.

  ‘I beg to differ,’ said Deborah. ‘Where would she be if it weren’t for my family? A little orphan whose daddy lost the family’s fortune, put a bullet through his own head. Whose sister is carrying on with one of her boyfriends. Why, it could only be worse if those nasty little films were to resurface!’

  Hannah’s back stiffened.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Deborah. ‘I know all about them. You didn’t think my brother kept secrets from me, did you?’ She smiled and her nostrils flared. ‘He knows better than that. We’re family.’

  ‘What do you want, Deborah?’

  Deborah smiled thinly. ‘I just wanted you to see, to understand how much we all have to lose from even the whiff of scandal. Why it has to stop.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’

  Deborah sighed, collected Hannah’s purse from the end of the bed. ‘If you won’t stop seeing him of your own accord, I’ll make certain that you can’t.’ She snapped the purse shut and handed it to Hannah. ‘Men like him—war-damaged, artistic—disappear all the time, poor things. No one thinks anything of it.’ She straightened her dress and started for the door. ‘You get rid of him. Or I will.’