Shadows of the Evening

by Marion Husband

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Return to the northern town of Thorp in this moving new addition to Marion Husband's bestselling The Boy I Love series. 'You, me, Eric, Paul Harris - even Margot - even Adele. All of us so messed up by the war we couldn't tell right from wrong.' 1964. The town of Thorp in the North of England has always kept its secrets. With so many husbands returned from the war changed men, there are some truths that can never be spoken. And yet, Bobby Harris is determined to find out the truth about his father, Paul. Horrified by Paul's scandalous posthumous biography, Bobby must discover if he really has been lied to all his life. But in uncovering his father's secrets, he soon learns that it is not only his own family who will be affected by his search for the truth. Praise for Marion Husband: 'As with all the best novelists, Husband's talent seems to draw its energy from the experience of writing from perspectives far removed from her own as she inhabits other genders, other sexualities, other eras' Patrick Gale ' Don't miss this series - if you love the power of words, words rich in layer and tone . . . you will love them. Can't recommend them enough. ' Goodreads Reviewer

Release date: June 10, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 256

Sample

Thorp, April 1964

From the sitting-room window Adele watched the removal men through the gap in the fence. Earlier her brand-new neighbour had brought out a tray of tea and placed it on the bird table and the men had gathered around at once, jostling and joking; four men, strapping and sweaty. One had a tattoo. Adele had peered more closely at this one; he was the boss, she thought; perhaps he had once been a sailor to have a tattoo like that. His arms were very muscular; he had a crooked, gap-toothed smile which he turned on the woman who had brought out the tea and she had smiled back in that way that some women have, accepting such a smile as her due, used to men noticing her and smiling, eyes roving. The woman – her new neighbour – had been brisk. ‘Tea, boys,’ she had said, and the mugs had clinked together as she’d placed the tray down and a little of the tea had slopped so that the mugs dripped as the men drank, as they watched the woman walk back into her new house, hips swaying: sashaying, she supposed.

Behind her, Bea said, ‘Adele, what on earth are you doing?’

‘She’s moving in.’

‘Yes.’ Bea stepped closer so that they were side by side at the window. ‘I can see that. And I heard the commotion.’

‘They’re a happy band of men.’

Bea snorted. ‘They’ll see you spying on them. They’ll think you’re odd.’

‘So?’ Adele watched as, tea break over, two of the men manoeuvred a table from the van with grunts of effort and barked directions. Turning to her sister she said, ‘Earlier they brought out a painting. The blanket covering it fell off. A Francis Law.’

‘A reproduction.’

Adele turned back to the window. ‘Perhaps not if she was Mark’s wife. Mark and Law were related, after all. She’s an actress. Not as famous as Mark was, of course.’

‘Have we seen her on the goggle-box?’

‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

‘Well, we’ll introduce ourselves in good time. Won’t let on we know too much.’

This was the line that Bea liked to take: innocent ignorance. When eventually they introduced themselves to their new neighbour, Bea would take the lead in presenting a united front of not knowing. They knew nothing but would not feign surprise at anything they were told; they must always be inscrutable, never vulgar enough to ask questions. If information was offered, all well and good, although Bea’s interest was a queer thing and rather furtive, Adele thought, like a well-trained dog catching the scent of a roasting chicken.

The two sisters stood side by side in silence, watching as the table disappeared into the house, followed by two dining chairs elaborately carved in an ugly, near-black wood. The men came out again, back into the van; rugs were retrieved, rolled and slung over shoulders to make inverted Vs. A brass bedstead, a mirror, an armchair with greasy, worn-away arms; there was a hat-stand, naked as a winter oak, and a bookshelf. Tea chests followed, mostly carried by the youngest man, no more than a boy, who was teased and chided by the others. Weaving her way through all this was the woman, who pointed into the van and then into the house; who said ‘Careful!’ and ‘For goodness’ sake!’ and ‘That’s for the room at the front.’ Adele noticed how her hair had fallen from its grips and that she was becoming almost as sweaty as the men. Frazzled, she supposed. She wondered if she had drunk tea inside the house, away from the men and their eyes, or had only got on, unpacking and arranging.

Adele knew her neighbour’s house well; during her childhood it had stood empty for years, her own giant play house, there to accommodate any kind of game or make-believe. When Havelock Redpath bought it in 1922 she had been quite put out: wasn’t it her house? Even if she was too old for games, she had still liked to walk through its empty rooms, imagining what might be made of them because one day Eric would buy it for her and they would live there like proper grown-ups, all their happy childhood memories kept safe. But eventually Havelock brought his own bride, Margot, to decorate its rooms, and Margot’s taste was not hers and she had always felt as though Margot didn’t understand the house and that she played too much to its darkness. Poor Margot, who couldn’t be told this – she had enough to contend with. But oh, that wallpaper, brown and purple like stains, or that other room – a rush of red and black: she couldn’t comment on it, couldn’t lie so said nothing; only décor, after all.

Now she watched as someone else’s furniture was carried through the wide front door, imagining where that table, that mirror, might be placed. She knew the bedrooms and the attics, the pantry and the outhouse and the garden, that place in the summerhouse where the sun slanted through the dusty windows, where she and Eric had hidden from Bea and Charles. Where Eric had kissed her, there, in that shaft of sunlight, amongst all the forgotten hoes and spades and the smell of earth. Years ago now; that kiss was as ancient as could be and it was foolish to think of it after so many years.

Bea drew breath, powering herself up for action. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘no good standing here. We should have some lunch. Eggs, I think. There are far too many eggs.’

The implied fault was hers; they were her chickens, after all, productive little busybodies, clucking and scratching away with such silly lack of foresight. ‘Perhaps we could give some to next door,’ Adele said, ‘when she’s settled in. Or I could bake an egg custard.’

Bea’s nose wrinkled and her mouth pursed – her thoughtful look, used when she was considering her options. Gazing out of the window at the woman, who was now climbing inside the van, she said, ‘I’m not sure she looks the egg-custard type.’

‘No. I’m sure you’re right.’

Bea turned to her. ‘Thirty, thirty-five, would you say?’

Adele watched the woman jump from the van, untidy in slacks and an untucked white shirt, her hair still everywhere; there was a bright, determined hardness about her eyes, her mouth was set in a thin line, as though the men had lost or broken something and now there would be hell to pay. ‘Around thirty,’ Adele agreed. ‘Isn’t she pretty? Her name is Cathy.’

Bea nodded as though she knew this. Then, all at once brisk, she turned from the window. ‘I think we’ve wasted enough time. Let’s leave Cathy to it, shall we?’

Cathy stood in her new kitchen and accepted the tray of dirty mugs from the boy. He said, ‘I’ll wash up for you, if you like.’

He looked so eager and he was blushing, so that Doug the foreman laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair so roughly he staggered. Such strength, these men had, even the boy, she needn’t have worried so much, nothing had been a problem for them, not even the piano. The piano stood just where she had told them to place it in the front room – she would call that room her study once the removal men were gone – the piano stool full of Mark’s sheet music set just so, as though Mark was about to sit down and play.

Doug said, ‘Thanks for the tea.’

He had pocketed the money she had given him, along with his tip; she had tipped each man in turn, as Mark would have, thanking them each individually. Mark would have been the one to deal with all this manly stuff, the men would have taken him seriously and not smirked as he handed out the money. As she showed them to the door, thanking them again, she supposed they had been more or less respectful, not asking questions about why she, as a single woman, was moving into this great big brute of a house. They had been surprisingly quiet and serious, on the whole, as though the effort of moving her furniture was a grave business and not to be taken lightly. Doug had recognised the Law painting, of course, being a local man. Wonderful, he had called it. Very poignant. She didn’t say, ‘Oh, do you really think so?’ as she usually did when others praised the picture, didn’t raise her eyebrows in ironic surprise at such an unsurprising comment. She had been respectful, as he had been, and said nothing at all.

No doubt Doug had believed the painting was a fake – a copy. She had been too nonchalant around it, too careless, she realised now with a little jolt of panic. If Doug had believed it was an original Francis Law then surely he’d believe she would have had them treat it more carefully, she would have warned them and not just flung an old blanket over it. She would have transported it herself in her car, or had some specialist arrange its safe arrival. If Doug had known its worth he wouldn’t have left it in the kitchen, propped up against a tea chest full of pans.

The removal men left. Relieved to have the house to herself, she went to the picture and lifted it onto the table, laying it flat. An oil on canvas, it took up half of the Formica table, and was a portrait of a boy of around twenty, lying on his back in a meadow. He wore an army uniform, minus the tunic, his khaki shirt undone at the neck, its sleeves rolled up past his elbows, his braces hanging at his sides. He wore puttees and boots and his cap lay on the grass within reach of his hand. The grass was quite long in places, and full of cowslips and what looked like buttercups and daisies but only the cowslips recognisable and not simply blurs of white, gold, and silver. A sandy-haired boy, his eyes closed against the sun, or perhaps he was sleeping, but not dead, as some boys were in Francis Law’s paintings; and he was handsome in that fey way of Law’s models. No one knew who the boy was. Mark had believed Law had invented him. The painting was titled Yesterday, and she had always thought that this title was horribly manipulative, crassly sentimental. It was worth more than her new house, this pretty picture, and Mark had wanted her to keep it and never give it up.

Mark; she put her hand to her chest because sometimes the thought of him left her gasping for breath; no, not the thought of him – the thought that he was dead and that she would never see him again. She closed her hand into a tight fist, pushing it against her heart so that she wouldn’t panic or give in to her memories and imagining: his car, skidding across that icy road, how he would have tried to take control but there was no help for it – there was nothing he could do – this was fate. Fate; she took a deep breath; what was there to do other than accept fate, the will of God; there had to be some comfort in this – there was comfort in Christ, the vicar had said at his funeral. The vicar was a good man; if only she had his faith. If only. She mustn’t go down the if-only path.

Cathy sat down on the armchair the men had left beside the kitchen range. She lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke impatiently; after all, she had things to do and shouldn’t be sitting down, no matter what. There was her bed to be made, at least. Last time she had moved Mark had told her to make her bed first thing. ‘Otherwise, come midnight, you’ll fall upstairs exhausted and be utterly dismayed by your bare mattress.’ The day before she had moved into that London flat he had reached out and touched her cheek. ‘Sure you don’t want me to help?’

‘I’ve hardly enough to fill my car – I don’t need any help.’

‘All right, gypsy. I’ll bring an aspidistra when you’re settled in. No one moves house again once they’ve an aspidistra.’

He had wanted her to stay put in that little flat above the hairdresser’s, Gina’s, where the smell of peroxide flashed through the floorboards, where the nights were quiet because all the women had gone and only the plastic pink domes of the hairdryers could be seen through the plate glass window, other-worldly amongst the clutter of magazines and hairbrushes, the trolleys spilling over with colour-graded rollers. A short walk from the tube station, Mark could be at her door only minutes after leaving the theatre; the applause would be ringing in his ears still, a part of him still more or less bearing the impression of whatever character he had just played. If he spoke more quickly or more slowly, if he held his cigarette in a way that was quite new to her; if he couldn’t sit still, or sat too comfortably, then such un-Mark-ness helped her understand just how high as a kite he was. And she would draw him down with food and wine, with listening and not too many questions asked until he returned to her, not fully – he was Mark again only after he had slept – but at least as the public man she had first met, who was an actor and all front and charm.

These memories were all right; she didn’t have to pummel her fist at her breastbone, the panic wouldn’t come because the memories were comforting – and there were many of them, happy and glorious, she managed to smile to herself; she was lucky to have met him, to have known him; he was still in her heart, and would be there for the rest of her life, and this was a blessing. She was blessed to have loved him and to have his love in return.

She finished her cigarette and looked around for something that would do as an ashtray; nothing sprang immediately to view and so she stood up and stubbed it out in the sink, turning on the tap to swill the ash away. As it had when she’d filled the kettle earlier, the tap gurgled and shook alarmingly and the water came out brown; she noticed how stained the pot sink was, with a chip the size and shape of a coffee bean. For all its grandeur, the house was shabby and long neglected. There would be mice, she thought, and all kinds of problems that would need men. She turned off the tap, turned it on again, and, as she hoped, the water was a little less tea-coloured, the tap less shudderingly reluctant. There may be less need for men – she certainly hoped so. Already the whole business was beginning to bore her: the house would be a terrible chore. Yet, here she was, against her better judgement; at least she had kept her London flat. She could go back; no one would blame her.

Remembering Mark’s advice about beds, she went upstairs, along the landing that dog-legged to another, shorter flight of stairs, and went on further still to the quiet, sunny room at the back of the house that she had decided would be her bedroom. There was a fireplace – rather grand blue-grey marble – a polished wood floor, and two tall sash windows looking out over the garden. She wouldn’t think about the garden, but turned her attention to the cardboard boxes and suitcases dumped in the alcoves where they were a dull foil against the heavily patterned wallpaper, a William Morris, she thought, pink and mostly brown and ugly as the brink-of-rotten fruit it seemed to portray. Margot, her mother-in-law, had had some kind of taste – bad or mad, Cathy couldn’t decide. Other rooms in this house had walls depicting lambs and shepherdesses; Chinamen, pagodas, and bridges. One room, the nursery, still had its frieze of grinning Humpty Dumpties dangling spindly legs from the red-brick wall. Below the red bricks, nursery-rhyme characters gambolled up and down their hills, a confusion of busyness for a child to lose himself in; she thought of Mark, who had always needed calm to bring him down from the dizzy heights, and knew she wouldn’t go into the nursery today, and probably not for a while.

Now, though, her bed needed to be made and she opened the box labelled in her own hand. At once the room began to smell more like hers, her perfume on her sheets. There were her pillows, blankets, and eiderdown, the sheets folded on top ready to cover the mattress the men had placed on the fancy, wrought-iron bedstead she had asked them to reassemble. The bed had seemed enormous in her flat; here, centred on the wall opposite the windows, it looked just right, looked in fact as if it had always been there, a longed-for retreat for all who had lived and died here. Such a lot of sex and death in this room, she had no doubt about that. But she didn’t believe in ghosts; the dead were dead and gone.

The sun laid its rectangular patches on the floor and the room became warmer as she worked. Once the bed was made she didn’t stop, but emptied the suitcases of her clothes and toiletries, lining up perfume bottles on the mantelpiece to make a pretty display. Next to these, obscuring the wallpaper that little bit more, she placed her jewellery box: midnight blue padded satin, its lid embroidered with a silver chrysanthemum, a lovely box for the rubbish it contained. She had never been a diamonds and pearls girl, although others presumed she was, even Mark, at first.

Mark, at first, had said, ‘Would you consider having supper with me?’

They had been introduced a few minutes earlier by David Black, whose arm was still around her waist. She remembered how David had squeezed her to him so that she was squashed against the great, fat bulk of him; she had hooked her own arm around his waist and was happy to lean against him because her heels were too high and the soles of her feet burned. When Mark asked her to supper, David had roared his great, famous laugh and had prodded Mark in the chest, spilling a little from the glass of champagne he has holding; there was a brief frothing of bubbles on Mark’s lapel.

‘She’s my girl, darling boy. Isn’t that so, my dear one?’

‘Not really so.’ She had smiled at Mark, liking him as she liked all handsome men. Of course, David had rather dwarfed him, but David dwarfed everyone, and Mark was actually tall and quite solid-looking, less fey than he appeared on screen. He had been playing opposite David in a television series about an RAF squadron during the war; David as the grand and terrifying Squadron Leader, Mark in the role of the bravest and most glamorous of the Spitfire pilots: the character the camera crew gave the longest odds against being killed off.

David had released her, stepping away so that she wobbled on her heels. ‘Now, the idea makes me quite heart-broken,’ David said. ‘But truly, I do think you two lovelies would make a perfectly gorgeous couple. Now, both of you – stand back to back.’

Mark had looked puzzled; she had found this puzzled look endearing.

‘Just do it,’ David said. ‘It’s terribly important. And Cathy – you must take off your charmingly ridiculous shoes.’

She did so, laughing, relieved to have an excuse. . .