The Twilight Hour

ELIZABETH WILSON has been a mental-health worker, a university lecturer and a feminist campaigner, was on the board of Liberty, is currently a school governor, a Trustee of the London Library and was until recently Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts, London. She is the author of a number of books on fashion and urban culture, as well as
Love Game: A History of Tennis from Victorian Pastime to Global Phenomenon
. She is also the author of four crime novels published by Serpent's Tail:
The Twilight Hour, War Damage, The Girl in Berlin
and
She Died Young
, to appear in early 2016. She lives with her partner in London.

Praise for
The Girl in Berlin

‘The picture of an earlier era of austerity Britain has a confident sweep and truthfulness that establishes
The Girl in Berlin
as something rather special in the espionage genre'
Independent

‘This is a clever, well-written and carefully plotted novel in which class, hypocrisy, moral corruption, treachery and taboos ancient and modern are cunningly interwoven. It's a thoughtful, clever read with a twist at the end that makes you want to turn back the pages to wonder how you missed the clues'
The Times

‘Wilson's third novel has all the strengths of her others. She's great on style; atmosphere (the foul taste of smog in your throat); and how the covertly interlinked milieus that ran the country operated'
Guardian

Praise for
The Twilight Hour

‘This is an atmospheric book in which foggy, half-ruined London is as much a character as the artists and good-time girls who wander through its pages. It would be selfish to hope for more thrillers from Wilson, who has other intellectual fish to fry, but
The Twilight Hour
is so good that such selfishness is inevitable'
Time Out

‘A vivid portrait of bohemian life in Fitzrovia during the austerity of 1947 and the coldest winter of the twentieth century'
Literary Review

‘Fantastically atmospheric … The cinematic quality of the novel, written as if it were a black and white film with the sort of breathy dialogue that reminds you of
Brief Encounter
, is its trump card'
Sunday Express

Praise for
War Damage

‘[A] first class whodunit … The portrait of Austerity Britain is masterfully done … the most fascinating character in this impressive work is the exhausted capital itself' Julia Handford,
Sunday Telegraph

‘[Wilson] evokes louche, bohemian NW3 with skill and relish' John O'Connell,
Guardian

‘The era of austerity after the Second World War makes an entertaining and convincing backdrop to Elizabeth Wilson's fine second novel … A delight to read' Marcel Berlins,
The Times

‘War Damage captures the murky, exhausted feel of post-war London. Buildings and lives are being reconstructed and shady pasts covered over. The atmosphere of secrecy and claustrophobia is as thick as the swirling dust of recently bombed buildings. Wilson excels at a good story set in exquisite period detail' Jane Cholmeley

The Twilight Hour

Elizabeth Wilson

A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

The right of Elizabeth Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Copyight © 2006 by Elizabeth Wilson

First published in the UK in 2006 by Serpent's Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
3 Holford Yard
Bevin Way
London WC1X 9HD
www.serpentstail.com

eISBN 978 1 84765 515 8

Thanks for their help and support to the usual suspects, and especially Ellie.

prologue

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, as you leant over, touched and ministered, as if you were saving, not ending a life. 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? 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. All the while you hurried, because you had to find what you'd come for, the things you needed so desperately. 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 one thing was missing, the most important thing of all.
It wasn't there
.

You dared 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 was nothing to worry about, nothing to connect you to that room and its sightless body, nothing, that is, but the very thing that gave you perfect protection.

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. You laughed and laughed again as the irony of it sank in. It must have been
meant
; no need to worry any more that what you'd done would catch up with you. The past was wiped out and now there was only the future. Your new life, your
real
life, the one you'd so nearly been cheated of, could begin.

one

THE DAY HIROSHIMA WAS BOMBED I WEPT
. The war was over. There'd be crowds singing in the street, they'd be waving flags in Trafalgar Square and doing the conga down Whitehall and cheering the King and Queen in front of Buckingham Palace – while I was in despair because the end of the war meant the end of my independence. I'd have to go home and live with my parents – like young women had done in that prehistoric era: Before the War.

Of course I was glad we'd won the war! Of course I was! But – I'd never be able to live on my own in London now it was all over. In the year since I'd left my boarding school, life in London had propelled me dizzily into adult life. The Nazis' new rocket, the doodlebug, whizzed out of the air without warning; you had to live for the moment, but the strange thing was that the big threat of war made everything else seem safe. I had no fear as I trod the blacked-out streets, the light from my torch veiled with tissue paper. My feet scrunched on glass and I passed craters and gaping holes where buildings should have been, but hope and excitement bubbled up within me as I made for my latest rendezvous.

Now the war was over and with it my new life. I'd be going back to Hampshire. The mushroom clouds of the atom bomb darkened the future as the truth of its devastation slowly leaked out. The blackout curtains had been down for nearly a year, but I contemplated my future prospects with deepening gloom.

Then I met Alan and the sun shone again. Marriage: it was the ideal solution.

.........

Cigarette smoke fogged the air, but at least it was warm in the pub, hot in fact. I loosened my musquash coat. Alan smiled down at me.

‘What'll you have?'

‘Cherry brandy please.' Huddled in with the crowd at the bar, I looked round, excited. Already I was drunk with the voices, the drifting smoke, the warm orange light and the familiar faces. There was the drunken old painter, smelling of pee, who muttered ‘Got any mun?' – money – as she leered up at Alan, then swerved away. Maclaren-Ross at the far end of the bar held court as usual, his cigarette holder at an aggressive angle. Hair swept back, eyes bloodshot, coat shabby, his lordly manner negated it all, force of will trumping reality.

There was a blast of freezing air as the door opened and shut. Hugh waved. With Colin he surged towards us, slapped Alan on the back and then bent with parodied homage over my hand. ‘Dinah! You look stunning this evening.' He turned to Alan. ‘The usual for me.'

‘They've run out. There's whisky, though.'

Colin, only recently demobbed, continued to wear his army greatcoat, which made him look larger than ever. He towered over me, with his horn-rimmed spectacles and shock of blond hair, savagely shaved up the nape of his neck, but erupting in massive waves above his forehead in a parody of an Eton crop. You could just imagine him striding about in the Spanish Civil War, he was so impressive, distinguished, commanding. Alan said he was tremendously clever; and a Communist. Cleverness and communism, which seemed mysteriously linked, surrounded him with an alarming aura, and I was afraid he thought I was stupid.

Now we were wedged round a table with our drinks. Hugh's face was alert with expectation. ‘Enescu's promised to look in.'

‘The Romanian?' Colin frowned. ‘
House of Shadows
? That Enescu?'

‘The very same, old dear. As if there could be more than one.'

Colin looked from Hugh to Alan and back again. ‘Why are we meeting
him
?'

Hugh's thin face broke into a smile. He tossed the long lock of hair foppishly back from his forehead. ‘We're cultivating him,' he said. ‘Good idea, eh? Working with the director of the moment?'

‘Why haven't you told me about this?' Colin looked very put out.

‘I met him by chance – I just took the initiative, that's all.'

Colin raised his eyebrows. ‘You should have asked me – after all, I know Romania, I was there, remember? The most fascist nation on earth.'

Hugh smiled winningly. ‘That's probably why he left.'

‘Oh, really? Rather depends on when he left, doesn't it? When did he leave, by the way?'

Hugh didn't know.

‘He just wants to make films,' said Alan mildly. ‘Not much chance of that in Romania at the moment.' He put a hand on Colin's arm. ‘You're right. We should have discussed it first, but Hugh just happened to meet him – it was too good an opportunity to miss. And they say he's brilliant at getting money, so … we took the plunge.' He paused. ‘Is Romania really the most fascist country? More than Germany?'

Colin didn't reply. He was still scowling. Alan and Hugh exchanged looks.

‘It's just a drink, old man.' Alan patted his shoulder.

‘We haven't been plotting behind your back.' But this remark of Hugh's seemed to irritate Colin even more.

I sympathised with Colin, because I felt excluded too. I did sometimes feel they treated me like a child. I was a married woman, after all, even if I was only twenty. But then again, they were so much older. Alan was thirty. That had worried my father. I know about these things, he'd said – he didn't do divorce work himself, but as a barrister he knew all about it. The war's caused havoc with marriage, he said and wanted us to wait, but I threatened to go off and live in sin or elope, so he more or less had to give his consent.

Well, anyway – I didn't care if the three of them ignored me. The prospect of meeting a film director was thrilling.

They were still arguing. ‘Rossellini;
Rome, Open City
, now that's cinema! Enescu's film is just Transylvanian gothic rubbish.' Colin could be awfully pompous.

‘Your ideological slip is showing, old man,' said Alan. ‘You have to admit it was pretty atmospheric.'

The door opened and shut continually. The extremes of heat and cold made me feel feverish, desperately excited, I was unsure what about.

‘I thought
House of Shadows
was beautiful,' I said. ‘Chilling, actually.'

‘
She's
coming,' said Hugh with a flirtatious glance sideways, as though that would win Colin round. ‘Of course, she can't really act, but she does look wonderful.' But Colin frowned even more.

‘She?' I looked from one to the other of my three musketeers. Alan smiled kindly.

‘Gwendolen Grey.'

‘The star!' I looked round at them. ‘Why are you laughing? She was marvellous. How thrilling to meet her!'

‘Darling,' said Alan, ‘Miranda in
The Tempest
! “Oh brave new world” and all that. I wish I were young again.'

‘You're only thirty! That's not old.'

More friendly laughter: ‘Oh yes it is,' said Hugh, ‘I feel terrible when I wake up in the morning. I bet you just leap out of bed, Dinah.'

‘Not if I have anything to do with it,' said Alan.

I blushed. Anyway, we all knew it was a question of experience, rather than age itself. Alan and Hugh had been with the Crown Film Unit pretty much all through the war, so they hadn't seen active service as Colin had, but they'd been right through the Blitz, and risked their lives doing fire duty and all that sort of thing. Besides, before the war they'd already been adults: students at Cambridge and involved in all the politics of that time; Alan had
nearly
gone to Spain to fight Franco in the Spanish Civil War. And Colin really had!

And where had I been? At boarding school in the windswept wastes of East Anglia, where the war had meant merely boredom and a sense of thwarted rebellion. Even a year in the lowliest reaches of the War Office couldn't compare with what they'd been through, the V2 doodlebugs notwithstanding. Although I'd been thirteen when war broke out, I hardly remembered what life had been like before 1939. Everything had always been: For the Duration of the War.

Then, finally, the Duration ended. The war was over. Perhaps it was because I was older now, a grown-up married woman, but the strange thing was, quite soon, everything seemed almost worse than the war itself. The joy and relief of victory leaked away and – well, abroad it seemed so grim, with the concentration camps and refugees all over Europe, and starvation, and a sort of dark cloud all over eastern Europe that was Soviet Russia. Meanwhile at home, in a different way the Duration still carried on: the queues and the drabness, the shortages and the discomfort, but without beating the Germans to give it all meaning.

My new rackety life with Alan outweighed all that, though. Life in London was absolutely thrilling.

The men had stopped arguing. Colin was outlining his plan for a film about refugees in Europe. He'd been all over the place, seen what was going on. It angered him that Germans were actually fleeing the Russian-occupied eastern zone. His face darkened. ‘They don't know what's good for them,' he muttered.

‘Some of the Russian troops are pretty brutal, I heard,' said Hugh with a sly smile, hoping to provoke, but Colin had turned away.

‘They're here,' he said in a completely different tone of voice.

A lull in the braying and chatter cleared a zone of quiet recognition around the film star. She was flanked by two men, positioned just behind her like a minor entourage, and was smaller than I'd expected. Nor was she beautiful exactly, and certainly not pretty; but the heavy-lidded eyes in her sad oval face suggested dark, tragic romance. And there was a brightness about her, setting her apart from the grey, postwar faces. Perhaps it was nothing more than good make-up, but because I'd seen her only in black and white on celluloid, her blue-black hair, blue eyes and white skin seemed vivid beneath her black astrakhan hat. With her red lips and spiky lashes she reminded me of the stepmother in
Snow White
.

It was only a moment; then the waves of talk rose as the newcomers bore down on our table. There was confusion; chairs scraped back, Alan, Colin and Hugh stood up, drinks were obtained, the circle widened. Eventually we were all sitting rather uncomfortably, knees squashed together, chair legs entangled. I inhaled her scent. It was heavy, intoxicating.

‘I love your scent,' I said, daring.

‘
L'Heure Bleue
,' she murmured, as if letting me into a secret: the twilight hour. Then: ‘Have you met Radu before?'

I shook my head and she and I both stared at the director, cornered by Alan and Hugh. My mother would have said he was a bit too good looking; in a bad mood my father might have used the word ‘dago'.

Radu Enescu certainly looked a bit spivvy, but perhaps it was just his astrakhan coat and the thick wavy hair oiled back from his forehead. His chestnut brown eyes darted around as he listened, bent slightly towards Alan because of the noise. A half smile curved his full red lips and when he laughed he showed dazzling white teeth. For a moment his eyes met mine and I felt the electric shock of his attention. Looking into my soul – or just undressing me; I wasn't sure which.

Colin looked on in belligerent silence. I wondered if he was going to pick a quarrel. He simply could not resist a political argument. But he suddenly turned his back and spoke to the third member of their party, whose name I hadn't heard. He too looked out of place in his pin-striped suit, among the Wheatsheaf crowd with their tweed jackets, corduroy and mouldy polo necks. Perhaps Gwendolen Grey and her escorts had been to some grand restaurant for dinner.

Colin said: ‘Not your usual watering hole? You're in films too?'

The stranger smiled. ‘I'm in the property business.' His grey homburg hat sat on his knees.

Colin bristled – well, perhaps not visibly, but I knew it would rile him. A real-life capitalist: Colin hated those. He held out his silver cigarette case. The man with the homburg hat shook his head. ‘Thanks. I don't.'

I put out a hand. ‘What about me? Please?'

‘I'm so sorry, of course.'

The non-smoking stranger had a lighter all the same, and it flared swiftly as he held it towards me. As I bent to the flame I lightly touched my hand over his, a sophisticated gesture I'd only just acquired. ‘I'm sorry, I didn't hear your name,' I said.

‘Stanley Colman.'

‘I'm Dinah Wentworth.' I nodded my head towards Alan. ‘He's my husband.'

He looked me over, seemed to find something amusing. ‘You often come here? Bit noisy, isn't it?'

‘I don't mind. I like it.' I more than liked it; it was our social centre,
the
place to be. ‘We come here all the time,' I said proudly, ‘we're regulars.'

Gwendolen Grey suddenly spoke, addressing Colin. ‘Stan has money to burn. He wants to invest in films. Talk to him. You'll find he's very generous.' She spoke with a kind of proprietorial contempt. Her diction was perfect, yet her voice had a metallic edge to it. I found myself thinking of a rusty blade, something harsh. It hadn't jarred like that in the film – or I hadn't noticed, anyway.

‘Not so fast, Gwenny. I thought you wanted me to underwrite Radu's latest plan.'