THE GATHERING of HOPE

Matilda arrives at Monty’s alone and, slotting her key into the lock, rests a hand on the black iron scrolls of the gate briefly before letting herself through. It is early, before nine, and the sky is low with undropped rain. Laces of liquorice cloud weave their way between the highest buildings. She left home as soon as Grayson departed for work.

They are not meeting until four, but over the last week she has observed Henry’s movements and she knows that, most days now, he walks Libby through the city as the first thin chinks of morning appear. Ida has been a good influence on him. And a bad influence on Matilda, who, from the first second she saw Ruby’s sister, felt the belief she had so carefully been building race impossibly away from her, like a yacht caught on stormy waves. How could she replace Ruby, when her sister was so much better fitted for the job? How could she mother that child, when a younger woman was there to snap up the role?

The jealousy, upon seeing another beautiful woman standing at Henry’s side, and seeing strangers assume she was his wife, and seeing that Ida was somehow immune to the feelings this assumption would bring about in most, no, all other women, was to Matilda akin to the surging hatred she is gripped by when she passes careless mothers pushing prams in the street.

She has been forced, once again, to admit to herself love which will not be returned.

As an adolescent, she had been too arrogant to believe she would ever know this sort of hurt. In her earliest years, Matilda and her parents existed – and exist still – within a triangle of freely given affection. When she first met Grayson, that triangle bulged out into a square. And she had imagined, innocently, that the shape would continue to grow as she delivered one, two, three children.

On her wedding day, she already had their names picked out, ready to present to Grayson on their wedding night. First, there would be Victoria. Then Michael. And finally, little Leo. She spaced them an even three years apart, so that Victoria, six by the time Leo made his appearance, would have the pleasure of helping her mother nurse a baby. There was no detail of these predicted children too small for Matilda to have pictured. The freckles which would scatter Victoria’s nose; the lick in the front of Michael’s hair which would flick it forever outwards; the shrill rise of Leo’s overtired cry; the gleaming black locks they would all share; the squeals they would emit as they chased each other up and down the staircase of the house the Stecks would live in when they were a family of five. Matilda knew these things. Nature, she thought, must have implanted traces of knowledge somewhere deep inside her, to encourage her in the act of procreation.

If she were a better person, Matilda would have asked Ruby if she felt the same way before she fell pregnant; she would have shared the anticipatory joy of it. By then, though, Matilda had been childless for more than a decade. And bitter for at least three quarters of that time. She could not allow her friend the happiness she herself had been denied by … she does not know what by.

Reaching the sycamore, she drops onto a blanket which sags sadly on the grass, abandoned by some clutch of Bright Young People last night, no doubt. Matilda wrinkles her nose. An article in the papers yesterday had lambasted them for tearing up an unoccupied house on Kensington Park Road whilst the owners were away on the Continent, and Matilda looks now at the mess surrounding her and imagines the destruction those poor people had returned to. But this is always the way, afterwards: a smashed glass, a wine-stained dress, cake crumbs trampled into the floor – the next day, they make a party a sad thing to remember. Or so Matilda has always thought. But there, in the moment … She recalls lifting her feet and straightening her legs in front of her on the swings at the White Party; she recalls swaying wildly forwards then back, forwards then back, grinning as she studied the swell and ripple of her skirts. She had anticipated each backward swing, preferring it to the forward tilt which made her feel she was falling, and she wonders now whether it is the same for other people. It could be that it is only she who sees sadness in the mess happiness leaves behind, only she who feels an affinity for the particular direction in which a swing swings.

And, yes, the more she thinks about it, the more she begins to see that she has never allowed herself to venture towards middle ground. It is too vague, and, therefore, too scary a place. So, she loves Gray, or she hates him. She blames her childlessness on herself or, by turns, on anyone and everyone else. And perhaps that is why, when she cannot bring herself to love Grayson, she loves Henry – because he is silent while Gray likes to talk, and he is serious while Gray likes to joke. Henry Twist and Grayson Steck are opposed in every possible way.

Matilda cannot begin to predict how Henry would react if she shamed him as she has shamed Grayson. She does not believe Henry would endure it. Not without retaliating. And though she does not think him capable of it really, she is bombarded by the thought that another man might strike her, should she neglect him the way she has Grayson, and the man in her mind is Henry, and the prospect of him looming over her, fist clenched, sparks within her a flash of excitement.

Sometimes, she deserves to be punished.

At midday, when Monty wanders into the garden in search of company, Matilda is still there. Some clutch of younglings has fashioned a swing in the sycamore, like those which were suspended from the trees at the White Party, and Matilda is swinging further and faster than she ought to given the makeshift design, her head tipped far back, her hat upturned on the grass beyond her where the wind has cast it, hours-old tears shining shaky lines down her face. The branch above her creaks and groans like a hundred-year-old man. The liquorice clouds of hours before have not burst: they have ruptured and drifted apart in their own soft way to reveal, piece by irregular piece, a day as mild as single cream.

‘Tilda,’ Monty calls.

She rights her head. ‘Monty,’ she says, smiling. ‘I was waiting for someone.’

‘And did he come?’

‘Who?’ she asks, pretending ignorance.

‘Someone, of course.’ He winks.

Matilda thrusts her heels into the earth to still herself, scuffing the navy leather. ‘No,’ she answers. ‘Actually, he didn’t. But you’re here now, Monty dear, and I couldn’t be happier to see you.’

Cheeks are kissed and Monty stands tall – though not quite as tall as he used to, even so short a time as a year ago. He pretends to adjust his tie with a grin. ‘Nor I you,’ he says. ‘Though had I known I had a hot date waiting for me, I wouldn’t have lingered so long over breakfast.’

‘You should never linger, Montague dearest,’ Matilda says. ‘It’ll make an old man of you. Of all of us.’

‘I don’t suppose there are many things that could make an old man of you.’

She slaps his arm gently as he settles a shoulder, a hip, against the tree trunk. ‘You know what I mean, cheeky.’

‘I’m not sure I do,’ Monty answers. ‘Are we being serious for once?’

‘I think we might be.’

‘Wait a moment then while I put on my best serious expression.’

Even on those rare occasions when they do discuss the important things, they do so in this same playful way. It is, Matilda thinks, an affliction of their generation. No, of their time. Many years more will have to pass before anyone can complain or worry about anything much without feeling outrageously hypocritical.

‘Do you think he is the way he is because of the war?’

‘Henry?’ Monty asks.

‘Yes.’ She might well have been talking about her husband. He saw it, too: whatever ‘it’ consisted of. Grayson had told her once that she would never be able to visualise it, and that she must never try.

Monty sighs kindly. ‘What do you really want to know, Matilda?’

‘I don’t know.’ She stares across the garden at the summer house, so that she doesn’t have to look Monty in the eye. The wind, which has blown itself into some other part of the city now, has left the door ajar but she has not been inside. They hardly ever use it. You cannot watch the sky from in there. ‘I suppose …’ She feels a fool, but she also feels that if she doesn’t speak these words, they might just burst out of her some other time. ‘I suppose I want to know if there’s a chance.’

‘What do your instincts tell you?’

‘Instinct is a liar,’ Matilda answers. ‘And a sycophant. It only tells you what you want to hear.’

‘Some people might call that hope,’ Monty offers.

She swings apart from him so that it seems she is moving forward while he moves back, and they become in her mind the two mechanisms of a clock, one the tick, one the tock, which must never come together. And perhaps this is Monty’s curse, she thinks, glimpsing him at perfect arcing intervals, because despite his best efforts to keep them close, people are forever moving away from Montague Thornton-Wells. She’s noticed the tendency amongst the Bright Young People lately, too: how they always have to ‘rush off’ once the wine bottles are emptied; the cruel way they laugh, sometimes, when he asks them to stay a little longer. Monty gives his entire self to his friends, and they are quite willing to take it. Poor man.

She ought to stop this childish swinging and give him her full attention. But she can’t, not yet. Beyond the garden walls London clatters on timelessly, never pausing, never resting, and Matilda finds herself exhausted by it today. She concentrates on the clock sounds she is imagining until they start to grow louder in her mind: loud enough to drown out everything but the awful onward march of her hope. Monty is right. It’s hope. She has wasted most of her life on hope. And now, at forty-one, she has no choice but to conclude that it is not the positive disposition everyone supposes it to be. Really, she must learn to stop.

Some crowded miles away, Grayson stands before the second-storey window of an old Gothic building and addresses five rows of young, uninterested faces. At intervals, he taps his blackboard with his cane, but more to snap the boys awake than to emphasise a fact. ‘I would like one of you –’ tap ‘– to please tell me –’ tap ‘– in which year –’ tap … Weak sunlight separates into long fingers, like a spread hand, as it falls through the glass, but it does not irradiate the room. There is no penetrating the gloomy depths of Classroom F: the ceiling is too high, the window too narrow, its occupants too eager to be released. Naturally, there are always one or two children who are keen to learn. In this particular class, there is just one – Baker – who sits straight in his chair and writes in his lap in an attempt to hide his application. He knows the answers to every one of Mr Steck’s questions, but he will answer none, and Grayson is too sympathetic to single him out.

‘Thompson?’ he says, sensing the forced response will be wildly inaccurate.

‘Not sure, sir,’ Thompson replies.

‘Then make an educated guess,’ Grayson coaxes. The boy next to Thompson yawns, wide and apologetic, behind his hand.

Grayson has never had much time for the Education Officers or the Institute of Education or the Board of Education, or whatever other titles the rule-makers have attributed to themselves over the years, but he thinks there is something in the idea being tossed about recently that open-air schools, or at least upgraded ventilation, could improve learning. Wouldn’t it be more pleasant to lift up the desks and shuffle outside with them on a fine day like this than to file behind these heavy wooden things boys were carving their initials into fifty years before Grayson was born?

It would be more pleasant for him, at least. Especially now that the days are protracting, growing milder. He would like to witness the odd flower blooming.

He turns to write something on the blackboard, performing an elaborate rotation so that he can glance out through the window at the sky. By four o’clock, he will be at Monty’s, swilling the day away with a glass of something strong.

‘Was it 1603, sir?’

‘Yes!’ Grayson spins back round to face his class. ‘Yes it was, Thompson.’ He points his cane at the boy. ‘I am thoroughly impressed with you.’

Thompson looks down at his hands and fights the smile which pulls at his lips. And it is in moments like these, when Gray manages to impart some sliver of knowledge, that he remembers he would have made a good father. Possibly even an inspiring one. He mourns his could-have-been children in fleeting public silences. Then he clears his throat, pushes his reading glasses up his nose, and returns to the matter at hand – teaching.

A decade of disappointment is quite enough.

The great dark slab of his classroom door edges open and he calls for his visitor to enter. One hand around the wood, she leans in.

‘Miss Emory. What can I do for you?’

‘I wondered if we might have a word after class, Mr Steck?’

‘Of course,’ he answers. ‘I’ll wait at the end of the day.’

Sally throws him a small, red-lipped smile and ducks back out of the doorway, almost as though she is curtsying. From the corner of his eye, Grayson catches Thompson miming a whistle. He slaps the blackboard, hard.

‘Master Thompson, did you have to spoil your moment of glory? I was almost feeling proud of you just then.’

‘Sorry, sir,’ Thompson mumbles. But Gray understands why he did it. Miss Emory – all of what? Twenty-two? – is the school’s newest recruit. Big-eyed and pink-cheeked, she tiptoes through the corridors, sending her skirts fluttering around her slender calves. Her hair, blonde, almost-red, is cut into a pretty bob and forever shining. Her lips part into ready smiles as she fixes you with the unfathomable emerald stare of a cat. And there is something undeniably deliberate about it all, Grayson has decided. Miss Emory is a performer.

As he turns again to the blackboard, Grayson hopes, abstractly, that his students think his face is flushed with anger at Thompson. One night last week, after he and Matilda had one of their quarrels, he had dreamt about Sally Emory. He had dreamt the messy, brain-swamping sort of dream he imagines artists know; the sort that induces them to work at smashing layer upon layer of paint over a canvas, or teasing lines of poetry from pen nibs only to ball up the sheet of paper and begin again. In short, a fantasy seeped into his head – as real and tactile in those sleeping hours as his wife was next to him when he woke – and he’s not sure he’s ever known that to happen before.

If he were a wiser man, he thinks, he would not meet Sally Emory after school hours for any purpose. And yet, he knows he will.

Grayson does not reach Monty’s until gone six o’clock. During his short walk from the train station, darkness plummets over the city, streetlamps flicker on and build to a steady blaze, the cold turns his nostrils to smoking chimneys. As he strolls along the pavement, dragging the back of one hand against the garden’s perimeter wall, he spots Henry coming in the opposite direction. They wave, nod a greeting, and, a few steps and a handshake later, push through the gate together to find Matilda already blind-drunk.

Monty sits at her side, passing her glasses of water which she holds but does not imbibe. Over the top of her own coat, she wears one of his, but she shivers and it slips off and Monty is forced to keep wrapping it back around her. All about them, cream-coloured blankets and cushions are scattered, waiting to be settled onto, and at the centre of this familiar arrangement is a large basket full of dark, glinting bottles. Monty has provided again.

‘How long have you been here?’ Grayson asks, confused by her state.

‘All day,’ she answers, flinging her glass in his direction so that much of the water slops out. Her eyes stay closed. ‘I was waiting.’

Grayson does not ask what for. He knows. He is standing next to him. ‘Perhaps we should head home?’ he offers.

At this, Matilda throws her arms out to embrace the air and smiles a long, slow, liquefied smile. ‘You’re here now,’ she declares. ‘You’re all here, all my beautiful men, all together, and I, and I, I –’

‘She’s really not as bad as she seems,’ Monty says. ‘The cold air must have got to her, that’s all. She hasn’t had a drink in hours.’

‘Shall I pour you one, Monty?’ Grayson sighs, lowering himself onto his knees and reaching for the basket Monty has always supplied, jammed with litres of this wine or that rum or some exotic concoction they’ve never cared to learn the ingredients of. He really ought to take Matilda home. But he’s tired and thirsty and home will be a lonely place tonight. Besides, he needs to drink, to flood his thoughts of Sally. ‘Henry?’

He measures three glasses, ignoring Matilda’s pleas for another, and they sit to a habitual toast.

Monty raises his hand. ‘To … To what? Anyone have an idea?’

‘To the abandonment of hope,’ Matilda slurs and the men smile indulgently at one another.

‘That’s depressing, Tilda,’ Monty warns. ‘How about, to the gathering of hope?’

‘Hope for what?’ Grayson asks.

‘The future,’ Monty suggests.

‘The future,’ Henry agrees quietly, and they clink their glasses and murmur ‘Cheers, cheers,’ as they settle onto the mounded material for the evening.

‘And to taking Ruby there with us,’ Monty adds.

It is the first time since Ruby died that they have done this properly, the way they used to, with nothing but drinks and daft talk and soft furnishings. In the short silence that follows Monty’s words, they sip and swig and reposition their tired limbs, and Henry drifts towards the echoes of his wife the place holds. He sees ghostly strokes of her midway down the length of the garden: the flip of her hair as she tosses her head in frustration at her failure to hit a ball through one of Monty’s old croquet hoops.

When they had arrived that day, Monty had the game already set up and was waiting for them amongst the hoops, spinning a ball skilfully between his fingers.

‘When I was a scrawny young lad,’ he’d said, by way of explanation, ‘I was something of a competitor. I thought we might give it a go.’

And they had all done quite well, excepting Ruby.

‘Do you remember how bad she was at croquet?’ Henry says now.

‘Oh, no one could forget that,’ Monty laughs. ‘The way she growled and stomped and growled some more!’

‘And kept swinging the stick over her head.’ Grayson demonstrates, arcing his empty hand upwards. “You’ve done something to my stick!”

‘Really,’ Monty says, ‘it’s not a stick, it’s a mallet.’

Grayson smiles. ‘That’s exactly what you said to her.’

Henry draws the remembered lines of her onto the emptiness before him, colouring her dress in a deep, charcoal grey – though of course he can’t be sure any more what she wore that particular day. What he can be sure of is the scowl which burrowed further into her face with each miss, the way her shoulders rose higher and higher.

‘She wasn’t sold on your teaching, Monty,’ he says.

‘She certainly was not.’

‘She was as quick-witted as ever, though,’ Matilda offers, a little smile creasing her lips. ‘Remember, Monty was boasting on about being a croquet champion in ’65 or something –’

Monty coughs. ‘Excuse me. It was ’66 and ’67, actually.’

‘And what did Ruby say?’ Matilda smirks.

‘“What about ’68?”’ Henry replies.

‘Everyone started playing tennis in ’68,’ Monty had returned, and all – bar Ruby – had laughed. An hour later, when Henry, Monty, Matilda and Grayson were enjoying their second drink, she was still chasing the little ball through the grass, scooping clumps of earth up with her haphazard mallet action and knocking down the hoops with her increasingly forceful hitting.

‘Ruby,’ Monty called. ‘You’re beaten, sweet girl. Give up. It’s just a game.’

‘Maybe,’ Ruby replied. ‘But then again, most things are. Doesn’t mean you should give up on them.’

Matilda sighs. ‘I always wished I could quip the way she did.’

‘Ah,’ Monty replies, ‘no one could equal Ruby on that front.’

They had attempted for long minutes to persuade her to sit to drinks with them, but Ruby had not capitulated, and Henry had dropped back onto his elbows and smiled as he watched his woman turn laps of the garden without even marginally improving her technique. When, eventually, a fluke ball rolled beautifully through a battered hoop and she yelped with excitement, he rushed over and lifted her and twirled her about like a child, because he knew it would keep her smiling. There was nothing that brought him more pleasure than to cause Ruby Twist to keep smiling.

‘Are you still with us, chap?’ Monty asks now.

Henry nods.

‘Good,’ Monty continues. ‘I thought we’d lost you to the beard for a minute there.’

‘The beard really is becoming … something, you know,’ Grayson says. ‘Quite something …’

‘Something!’ Monty laughs. ‘Would you listen to him? He’s being polite, Twist. It’s a catastrophe, that beard. You look like a wild man. You look like you’ve been attacked by some mysterious hairy creature. In fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if moons started orbiting that beard. Have a shave, man, for God’s sake.’

Henry touches his beard and smiles with just his lips. ‘I hadn’t noticed it was that bad.’

‘Oh, trust us,’ Monty says. ‘It’s worse.’

‘I can’t disagree,’ Grayson whispers. They are all whispering now. Matilda, propped against Gray’s shoulder, is sliding into sleep.

‘The little lady will think her father’s been eaten by a bear,’ Monty adds. ‘Where is she, anyway? With the old woman upstairs?’

‘That old woman,’ Henry answers, ‘is probably younger than you. Or a similar age, at least.’

Monty flaps a hand at Henry. ‘Everyone my age is old.’

‘Is that why you don’t bother with any of them?’ Grayson asks.

‘That’s exactly why,’ Monty says, though they all know there’s more to it than that. Monty needs something from the young people he surrounds himself with. He’s a man moved by nothing so much as desperation. ‘And if Henry’s going to become one of them,’ he continues, ‘sitting about in his flat every day, alone, I’m afraid I’ll have to ditch him, too.’

‘I haven’t been alone.’

They turn to him for an explanation, two heads moving as one. Henry can see they’re afraid to ask if there is a woman. Yes, no – either way it would be uncomfortable for them: hiding their disgust if he has moved on this quickly; hiding their shame if they have mistakenly supposed he would. And they are right to feel torn. Despite his secret convictions about Jack, Henry is very much still mourning Ruby. After all, Jack does not remember Henry; he does not love him; he does not know how it feels to be loved by him in return. Meeting Jack, however much of herself Ruby has managed to leave with him, is like meeting someone new. And Henry has no idea how to explain it.

‘I mean, I won’t be alone. An old friend is going to be staying with me,’ he says, because he wants to believe it. ‘Jack Turner.’

Last night, when Jack had finally appeared, Henry had been beyond anger. He had not attempted to stop him stepping through the front door, though. However angry he was, he still wanted Jack nearby. Making sure the curtains were properly drawn, he demanded an explanation with all the fury typical of any jilted lover. ‘So, are you going to tell me where you’ve been?’ he spat. Or something similar. He forgets now. Because when he reeled around, ready for his argument, Jack was sitting cross-legged on the bed, matching the sole of one foot to the other, just as she used to, and it was disarming.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I should have told you –’

‘Actually,’ Henry interrupted, slumping down onto the settee and rubbing at his forehead, ‘you shouldn’t have had to, should you?’

‘Why not?’ Jack shrugged. ‘I felt I should have, and so I should have. Let’s not quibble about it. And I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve just, well, I got myself a spot of work. Not a lot, considering this.’ He tapped his temple with a fingertip. ‘Just donkey-work really, down at the docks. You know, it’s surprisingly hard to find a trade when you’ve forgotten yours.’ Grinning, he pulled off his newsboy and jacket and flung them aside. He moved easier now than he had before. His arm did not stall as it bent.

‘You’re feeling better, then?’ Henry asked.

‘Much.’ Jack lifted both arms and flexed like a bodybuilder. ‘I’m like a new man.’

There was no evidence of bloating muscle beneath his shirt sleeves – he is too lean for that – but Henry has not mistaken his trimness for weakness. He still hasn’t shaken the habit of measuring Jack as a threat.

‘And what sort of man is that?’ Henry asked.

‘A cautious one, I suppose,’ Jack answered. ‘Because, I’ll be straight with you here, Henry, I’ve been keeping an eye on you, on the flat.’ He lifted his hands in surrender, but Henry did not want an explanation as to why Jack had been watching. He wanted only to believe that Jack was feeling something of what he was, that Jack too had recognised that strange pull. ‘Now,’ Jack continued, ‘God knows that sounds creepy, but what choice have I got but to be careful?’

Henry swivelled around and leant over the back of the settee so that he was pupil to pupil with Jack. The masked moonlight made a marble sculpture of his face – all carved angles and flattened surfaces. His usually tanned skin was milk-like. His dark eyes shone. His hair was a confusion of perfect kinks. If Henry were a woman, he might have known then that Jack was beautiful.

‘Perhaps,’ Henry smiled, ‘you’re an honest man, too.’

‘I’d like to think so. But do you know what I intend to be most of all?’ Henry shook his head. ‘A happy man,’ Jack concluded.

‘That’s admirable,’ Henry answered. He turned back towards the unlit fire, rubbing again at his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Behind him, he felt Jack shifting closer, then a touch on the point where his vest displayed his bare shoulder.

‘Tell me, then,’ Jack said.

‘What?’

‘What you’re so worried about.’

Henry hunched forward and, elbows pointed into his thighs, pushed his hands over his face. Exhaling loudly, he attempted to summon the courage to speak words he could not yet locate. The thought was there, fully formed in his mind, but he could not translate it into a sentence he could deliver to Jack. He was afraid. Not that Jack would attack him – he could bear that. He was simply afraid that if Jack left again, he would not come back.

‘What sort of man do you think I am?’ Henry mumbled. ‘I mean, do you think I’m a … you know, a … Because I’m not. I’ve never … It’s just, perhaps I know who you are better than you do, and perhaps that makes me feel …’

For once, Jack was quiet. He waited patiently for Henry to stumble through his questions, hand unmoving on the smooth orb of his shoulder. But Henry could not say the word he needed to say.

‘Do you think I’m a … I’m not a …’ He cut out like a car engine.

‘Henry?’ Jack said, slowly. Without lifting his head, Henry nodded into his hands. ‘Do you know what I think? I think, given what you’ve told me, that maybe I remind you of Ruby. And I think maybe that’s all right.’

When Henry felt Jack’s lips on his neck – a cool, firm contact – he remained still, bent into his own hands. He was not fearful, not any longer. How could he be now? With one easy movement, Jack had vanquished all his worries. But he did not want to show Jack the tears his lips were drawing from him, as steady and flowing as silk handkerchiefs being pulled from a magician’s sleeve. That joy, that shame, was his alone.

‘Jack Turner.’ Monty repeats his name. ‘Jack Turner. Do we know him? Whose circles does he run in?’

Henry shakes his head. ‘No, you don’t know him.’

‘Then tell us more,’ Monty coaxes.

‘I can’t,’ Henry says, setting his drink down. It’s time he got home to Libby. ‘I’m not sure I know him myself yet.’