Bleeding Heart Square

by Andrew Taylor

  She looked up and saw the young man who had come to enquire about the vacant flat. She had seen him in the café before, of course, so perhaps he worked nearby. She nodded and went back to her shopping list. He sat down and ordered the cutlets as well. After a moment, he cleared his throat.

  ‘I say, I don’t mean to interrupt, but didn’t I see you earlier today at that house in Bleeding Heart Square?’

  She looked up. His face was long and bony, with strongly marked eyebrows arching over the unexpectedly blue eyes. There was a small red scab on his jawbone, as if he had nicked himself while shaving that morning. No one could call him handsome but it was a face you could look at more than once. Should you wish to do so, of course.

  ‘Yes – you came to ask about the flat upstairs.’

  He nodded. ‘What’s it like? Have you seen it?’

  ‘No.’ She crumbled her roll and allowed her eyes to drift back to The Times.

  ‘Curious name, isn’t it?’

  Bleeding Heart Square?’

  ―Yes – do you know where it comes from?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘That’s what I like about London,’ he went on, showing no sign of discouragement. ‘These old corners with layers of history attached to them. They seem to exist in more dimensions than most places do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I know. I suppose I mean it exists in time as well as space. So there’s always more to it than there seems. Only you don’t quite know what.’

  She burst out laughing, not so much at what he said, though that was ridiculous enough, but at his face, whose features had realigned themselves into an expression of mock horror. Rather to her relief, the waitress arrived with her cutlets, which gave her the opportunity to break off the conversation. She ate a few mouthfuls and returned to the crossword.

  ‘Not shown by game birds (two words) (5, 7.’ The answer came to her in a pleasing flash. ‘White feather.’ She pencilled the words into the grid and wondered how the man made his living. His own lunch arrived and for a few minutes they ate in silence. He could be worse, Lydia conceded – at least his table manners were reasonable. His hands were clean but his arms were too long for his sleeves, and the cuffs of his shirt were frayed and slightly grubby.

  He coughed. ‘I don’t know if I should mention this, but six down is “hostile”.’

  Startled, she looked up.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, and his face became a clown-like mask of unhappiness. ‘It’s a bad habit. I can’t help reading things upside down. Actually, it’s one of the more useful things I learned at school.’

  ‘I was looking at the clues across first, actually.’ Nevertheless she filled in the solution to six down.

  ‘It’s very trusting of you,’ he said. ‘May I see it the right way up? Just to make sure.’

  There was no help for it. Lydia pushed the newspaper towards him. He would see her embryonic shopping list in the margin of the newspaper. The forced intimacy suddenly jarred on her. It was as though she were a silly little shopgirl, and he were trying to pick her up. Why the hell had she found the man interesting? Perfectly pleasant in his way, no doubt, but – well, not to mince one’s words – rather common.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘“An exclamation at a crossing place is not friendly.” “Ho” and “stile”, you see. It can’t be anything else.’

  Her pudding arrived. She ate it quickly and decided against coffee. When she pushed back her chair to leave, he put down his fork and rose politely to his feet. He handed her the newspaper.

  ‘I hope I haven’t spoiled your crossword,’ he said.

  Lydia shook her head but avoided looking at him. She picked up her basket and said goodbye. As she left the café, she was sure that many eyes were watching her. The clerks and lady typists knew she didn’t belong here, and so did the man who had shared her table.

  The next forty-five minutes were devoted to shopping, which was on the whole an unsatisfactory experience, by turns mystifying and mortifying. How much bread should she buy? How did you tell whether a loaf was stale merely by looking at it? Was the milk fresh? It seemed to her that the shopkeepers treated her with a mixture of surliness and disdain.

  With the basket on her arm growing steadily heavier, she walked through the rain to Bleeding Heart Square. The wind was stronger, and the umbrella swayed and bucked in her hand. A taxi had parked in the lee of the chapel, opposite the door of number seven. She put the shopping on the doorstep and opened her handbag, looking for the latchkey. There were footsteps behind her.

  ‘Lydia!’

  Panic surged through her. She wanted to scream. Marcus came up beside her and clumsily embraced her. She edged away from his arm.

  ‘Lydia, darling. I didn’t realize.’

  The smell of him turned her stomach. ‘Realize what?’

  He stared down at her, his big pink face alive with concern, hope and even perhaps a form of love. ‘Oh darling. I didn’t realize. It’s wonderful news.’

  Cornwallis Grove lay north of Primrose Hill and south of Hampstead. It was a quiet street of detached red-brick houses, thirty or forty years old, set back from the road in small gardens full of trees. The Kensleys lived at number fifty-one, and so had Rory when he had studied with neither enthusiasm nor success for an MA degree in French literature at University College London.

  The four-storey house was divided into two maisonettes, the lower of which was leased to the Kensleys. Rory had rented a bedroom on the first floor from Fenella’s parents. Mr Kensley, who had once aspired to be a barrister, felt with some justification that he had come down in the world. With less justification he blamed this partly on his choice of wife, the daughter of a prosperous grocer in Lewisham, though he had lived for much of his adult life on an annuity purchased with the grocer’s money. A heart attack had carried off Mr Kensley in 1932, while Rory was in India. Then, in July 1934, Mrs Kensley herself had died and the annuity had died with her. That was one reason Rory had decided to come home to England.

  He walked from the Underground station at Swiss Cottage. It was already dusk, and housemaids were drawing curtains across windows in Eton Avenue. Leaves clogged the gullies and lay in swathes across the pavement. The first time Fenella touched him, they had been walking down to the station at this time of year; she had slipped on a drift of sodden leaves and seized his arm to steady herself; and somehow by the time they reached the station they had been arm in arm and, if not a couple, aware of the possibility that they might become one.

  Fenella was five years younger than he was. When he lived in Cornwallis Grove, she had been only seventeen. She attended a secretarial college for young ladies in Portland Place where you learned about flower arranging and table placements as much as typing and shorthand. Not that she had learned very much. Until her father died, she used to harbour vague ambitions of being an artist.

  She was small and slight and looked younger than she was. But what you noticed most of all – or at least Rory had – was how pretty she was. He had tried to write a description of her one evening but was unable to get much beyond a list of clichés. Hair waving like corn in the sunlight. Eyes of cornflower blue. Even, God help him, elfin grace and wayward charm. A pocket Venus.

  Of course marriage had been out of the question. He didn’t have a job. He could expect nothing from his family, and nor could she. They would need at least four or five hundred a year to set up home together, and jobs like that for someone without experience didn’t grow on trees. Which was why he had listened to Cousin Gordon’s suggestion. Cousin Gordon had a pal on the South Madras Times, a pal who was on the lookout for bright young men. There was an opening in the advertising department. In a year or two, Rory had thought, he would be established enough to send for Fenella, who promised she would come when the time was right.

  He hesitated at the gate of number fifty-one. The garden looked untended and desolate. Pushing open the gate, he skirted the patch of oil that marked
where Mr Kensley’s car had once stood and struck off towards the side of the house – the former front door was reserved for the occupants of the upper maisonette on the second and third floors.

  He rang the bell. When Fenella let him into the house, she led the way into the sitting room, where there was a very small fire.

  ‘How are things?’ he asked.

  ‘Pretty grim. I never thought I’d say this but I wish Miss Marr was still here. Or rather, I wish her rent was.’

  Miss Marr had replaced Rory as the Kensleys’ lodger until an encounter in October with a dead mouse under her bed had resulted in a bitter parting of the ways, accompanied by dark threats of a private action against Fenella under the Public Health Act.

  ‘Let’s not talk about her. You look tired. Do you want some tea?’

  He shook his head. ‘Listen, I went to Bleeding Heart Square yesterday.’

  Fenella sat down abruptly and stared up at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I know you don’t like the idea. But there’s no harm in it, surely?’

  ‘It makes me feel like a vulture.’

  ‘But darling, that’s absurd. Miss Penhow is your nearest relative. Of course you want to find out where she is. She may not even know your father’s died.’

  ‘I don’t think she wants to get in touch with us. I think my father was so rude the last time she saw us that she’s decided she’s better off without us. I can’t say I blame her.’

  ‘But your father was her half-brother. That must count for something.’ Rory sat down opposite her. ‘Anyway, things have changed since you saw her last. Your mother’s died. Quite apart from anything else, you’ve lost the income from the annuity. And now Miss Marr’s gone, too.’

  ‘I’ll find another lodger. It has to be the right sort of person, that’s all.’

  ‘And what’s going to happen when the lease comes up for renewal next year? You haven’t a hope in hell of finding the money. Not as things are.’

  She turned her head towards the fire. ‘I’ll manage. Perhaps I can sell something.’

  ‘What have you got left to sell?’ he asked. ‘You’ve already sold the car, and that was the only big asset you could dispose of. I thought I’d have a word with that chap Serridge. He must have some idea where she is.’

  ‘I don’t want you talking to him.’

  ‘But if your aunt—’

  ‘And I don’t want to think about Aunt Philippa. All right?’

  Her voice had risen, and so had her colour.

  ‘Two can live cheaper than one,’ he said, changing his line of attack. ‘We could get married now rather than wait.’

  ‘No. It wouldn’t be fair to you.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’He offered her a cigarette.

  She leant towards him, cupping her hands around the flame of the match. ‘Rory – it’s not just that it wouldn’t be fair to you. It’s also that – well, you know, we need time to get to know each other again. You’ve been away for so long. All we’ve had are letters.’

  He felt numb. ‘You want to break the engagement?’

  ‘No. Yes. Look, I don’t know what I want – that’s the point, can’t you see? And then there’s Mother. I – I have to grow used to the fact that she isn’t here. It was easier with Dad, somehow. But Mother … I don’t know, her dying came as rather a shock.’

  ‘I can wait,’ Rory said desperately. ‘Have as long as you need.’

  ‘You’d go mad. So should I. Look here, it’s not as if we’ve ever been officially engaged. I just want us to have a breathing space. It doesn’t change anything, not really.’

  Rory thought it changed everything. A moment before he had been engaged. Now he wasn’t.

  They smoked in silence. Embers rustled in the grate. The only light came from the standard lamp. He wanted to make love to Fenella more than ever. She might even let him if he kept on asking, he thought, but would she say yes out of pity? As a way of saying sorry? Or – and this thought shocked him – because she didn’t much care one way or the other?

  He threw the cigarette end into the heart of the fire. ‘I’m definitely not going back to India. I posted the letter yesterday morning. I’ll find something here.’

  ‘Still in journalism?’

  ‘Or advertising. I’ve got a few leads.’

  ‘Will your father help until you get a job?’

  He shook his head. ‘He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. He’s got my sisters to think of. Anyway, he’s only got his salary.’ He paused. ‘I’m looking for new digs. Somewhere more central.’

  ‘Will you be able to manage?’

  ‘For the time being.’

  He had saved a little from his salary in India. His grandmother had left him a hundred pounds when she died last year. He had enough for a few months in London, if not enough to marry on.

  ‘But I can’t stay where I am. It’s not convenient, and anyway Mrs Rutter’s idea of a square meal is tinned tongue and green slime. I don’t suppose you’d consider …?’

  Fenella stood up abruptly. ‘No. I’m sorry. It wouldn’t be decent for you to come and live here, and you know it.’

  ‘I could pay rent. I could—’ He broke off and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Sorry. It just seems so damned stupid. These conventions.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you were a woman, Rory. Can you even begin to imagine what people would say?’ She looked at the clock on the mantel.

  ‘I’d better go.’ He cleared his throat. He wanted to tell her about Narton and the flat in Bleeding Heart Square, despite what the Sergeant had said. He should also mention the improbably smart young lady who had been at both the house and the café.

  But she was already on her feet and moving towards the door. Rory felt light-headed when he stood up, as if unhappiness made one dizzy.

  ‘Are you all right for tomorrow evening still?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘I’ve got tickets.’

  ‘I’m surprised anyone’s willing to pay.’

  ‘It’s a good cause. And the speaker’s jolly good. I’ve heard him several times before.’

  ‘I’ll call for you about a quarter past seven, shall I?’

  The smell of cooking in the hall reminded him of Smith-field market yesterday afternoon, of meeting Sergeant Narton, of raw meat and blood.

  Fenella touched his arm. As he turned back to her, she stood on tiptoe and her lips brushed his cheek.

  He wound his scarf around his neck. I’m imagining things, he thought. I’m imagining the smell of unhappiness.

  4

  You see now Serridge was desperate for money. But it was more complicated than that.

  Tuesday, 14 January 1930

  Major Serridge came to tea this afternoon to show me his engraving. The presence of a bluff military man caused quite a stir among the old tabbies in the dining room, especially the six of them at the table in the bay window, which they treat as their personal property. I thought Miss Beale stared in really quite a rude manner. I know for a fact that she has been here for nearly 20 years. She celebrated her 75th birthday in September. So she must have been about my age when she came to live at the Rushmere. It quite chills the blood to think about it.

  But to return to Major Serridge. We had a most interesting conversation. He has served all over the Empire. He was even in China – he spoke very feelingly about the famine they are having at present, and said it was the children he felt most sorry for. He left the Army for a few years but he was soon back in uniform for the Great War. But when I asked him if he had been on the Western Front, he winked at me and said that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it, even now. I suspect he was in military intelligence.

  After tea the Major showed me the engraving. It’s not his, in fact, but belongs to a man who also lives in my house – some sort of scholar, I understand. It had the date 1778 at he bottom. It showed the splendid palace of the bishops of Rosington which once covered all the land now occupied
by Bleeding Heart Square, Rosington Place and several of the surrounding streets. It was a great Gothic building with cloisters, a great hall and a private chapel. Only the chapel now remains, and it’s just beside my house!

  There was a grand gatehouse, too, which Major Serridge believes must have stood roughly where the Beadle’s Lodge now stands at the bottom of Rosington Place. The whole area is still part of the See of Rosington and is known (rather quaintly) as the Rosington Liberty.

  Something else happened today. I don’t want to make too much of it, but it brightened my day. The Major paid me a compliment, which meant all the more because it was so obviously unforced and unplanned. He asked me why ‘a young lady like yourself’ was living among all the old pussies at the Rushmere – and then he looked quite embarrassed and apologized, saying that he hadn’t meant to seem impertinent. I said I wasn’t offended at all(!), and indeed I wasn’t, though not for the reason he thought!! Several residents are rather younger than I am (in chronological terms, at any rate!!), including Mrs Pargeter, who claims she’s not yet forty (!!!). I find that very hard to believe, and I’m sure she dyes her hair – no one can convince me that that brassy colour is natural. I happened to mention her to Major Serridge, in fact, and he said, ‘Who? The one sitting by herself? I don’t want to seem rude, but she reminded me of something my dear old mother used to say, mutton dressed up as lamb.’

  Isn’t it strange? Exactly the same words had passed through my mind, just before he spoke them!

  The Major also complimented me on my dress – I wore my new afternoon frock, the one with the charming floral pattern. He said what a pleasure it was to meet a lady who dressed as a lady! Then he apologized again! Partly to ease his embarrassment, I said how hard it was to find a good seamstress for repairs, etc., since the war – someone who had an eye for things, too, who knew how things should be done, and who didn’t charge the earth – and he said that, as it happened, one of my tenants, a Mrs Renton, was reckoned a very superior needlewoman and had worked in Bond Street in her time …

  Now you realize it was more complicated than you had thought. It wasn’t just that Philippa Penhow wanted Joe Serridge. It wasn’t just that she wanted a man, any man. It was also that she was terrified of staying where she was with all the ageing women, of growing older and dying at the Rushmere Hotel.