Bleeding Heart Square

by Andrew Taylor

  The attic flat cost twenty-five shillings a week, unfurnished, and for an extra five shillings Mr Serridge agreed to bring up some furniture from the cellar. All the necessities would be there, he assured Mr Wentwood. Shared kitchen, shared bathroom on the floor below, both with water heater. The electricity had recently been installed, at considerable expense. That was metered, naturally, as was the gas supply.

  ‘I was rather hoping I could move in within a day or two,’ Mr Wentwood said as they came down the stairs to the first floor and paused on the landing. ‘I’m out in Kentish Town and it’s not very convenient.’

  ‘Convenient for what?’ Mr Serridge said.

  ‘Looking for jobs.’

  ‘Oh – so you’re out of work, are you?’

  ‘I’m just back from India,’ Mr Wentwood said. ‘I’ve a number of irons in the fire.’

  ‘But no regular income, eh?’

  ‘Not at present. But I do have savings. There won’t be a problem.’

  ‘There’d better not be, Mr Wentwood. I tell you what. You pay me a month’s rent in advance as a returnable deposit, and you can move in on Monday. I’ll need references, naturally. All right?’

  ‘Absolutely, Mr Serridge.’

  ‘Rent day is Saturday.’

  ‘I’ll write you a cheque now, shall I?’

  ‘I’d prefer cash, if you have it. You know where you are with cash, I always say.’

  Mr Wentwood looked embarrassed. ‘Of course.’ He took out his wallet.

  ‘Four weeks at twenty-five bob a week,’ Serridge said cheerfully. ‘A five-pound note will do nicely.’ He turned to Lydia, who was assembling cups and saucers in the kitchen. ‘And now, Mrs Langstone. All the talking’s made me parched. What about that tea?’

  The speaker addressed his audience as comrades. His name was Julian Dawlish, and he wore very wide flannel bags, a grey pullover and muddy brown shoes. Horn-rimmed glasses gave the only touch of stern angularity to a round, smooth-skinned face.

  The international situation was very bad indeed, he told them in a high-pitched, well-bred voice, because of Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini, who were now revealing themselves in their true colours. Even in England’s green and pleasant land, Fascism was on the march, grinding the poor and the vulnerable beneath its jackboots. But all was not lost. There were gleams of hope in Spain and a positive beacon of light in Russia. If the workers of the world united, there was nothing they could not achieve.

  Mr Dawlish’s talk was followed by questions from the floor which had a habit of turning into lengthy statements. The meeting tailed away a little after nine o’clock. Afterwards, tea, orange squash and stale biscuits were served. The audience stood about smoking, chatting and relishing the fact that they were no longer sitting on chairs designed for children.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Rory said. ‘I’m dead beat.’

  ‘All right.’ Fenella glanced towards the knot of people around the speaker. ‘I was going to ask the time of the next meeting, but they’ll put up a notice.’

  They joined the trickle of comrades slipping out of the church hall. In Albion Lane, the pavements shone with rain.

  She took his arm. ‘It was interesting, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was a lot of hot air. I don’t believe that chap’s done a day’s work in his life. Silly ass.’

  ‘I think what Mr Dawlish says makes a lot of sense. He can’t help his background. In a way that makes what he does for the cause all the better.’

  ‘You know him, do you?’

  ‘I’ve met him once or twice.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. Early thirties? Why?’

  He grunted. ‘Old enough to know better.’

  They walked in silence.

  ‘You’re angry with me, aren’t you?’ she said after a moment. ‘About not being engaged.’

  ‘Of course I’m not angry.’

  ‘Of course you are. But it’s better this way, truly.’

  ‘Better for who?’

  ‘For both of us. We’ve talked about this.’

  Rory let the silence lengthen. Then he said, ‘I’ve found a flat.’

  ‘That’s wonderful. Where?’

  ‘In Bleeding Heart Square.’

  Fenella snatched her arm away. ‘In Aunt Philippa’s house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought we agreed to leave all that.’

  ‘We agreed nothing. Listen, it’s a perfectly good flat in exactly the right place for me. I can walk into the City, I can walk into the West End. They know nothing about us, nothing about my connection with your aunt. There’s no harm in it. Besides, I’m fed up with Mrs Rutter’s.’

  All this was perfectly true. There was also a small malicious pleasure in going against Fenella’s wishes, something Rory did not choose to examine too closely. If she had given him any encouragement, he might also have told her about Sergeant Narton. But she didn’t. They turned into Cornwallis Grove.

  ‘Did you hear anything about Aunt Philippa while you were there?’ Fenella asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who did you meet?’

  ‘Some of the lodgers. There’s a dressmaker, and an old chap and his daughter. Perhaps other people. And the landlord keeps a room on, but I gather he’s not always in residence.’

  ‘So you saw him too? Mr Serridge?’

  ‘Yes. How often did you meet him?’

  ‘Once or twice. Mother didn’t take to him, and Father was awfully rude. Aunt Philippa was furious. She wanted us to like him.’ Fenella walked on in silence for a moment. Staring straight ahead, she said, ‘What did you think of him?’

  They paused at the gate of number fifty-one. He sensed that she didn’t intend to ask him in.

  ‘Bit of a brute, probably, but quite straightforward in his way,’ Rory said. ‘I shouldn’t have thought he’d have much in common with your aunt, or she with him.’

  Fenella lifted the latch. ‘Aunt thought he was wonderful.’ She pushed open the gate with such violence that it clattered against the retaining wall of the lawn. ‘Aunt thought he was God.’

  There was a time very early in their acquaintance when Lydia had considered Marcus to be a god. Not God himself, whom they visited every Sunday in church, and who was supposed to be uncomfortably omnipresent, seeing everything one did or failed to do; Marcus’s divinity was of a different kind.

  When Lydia was nine, she had had a governess who told her stories from Greek and Roman mythology. Marcus was the sort of god who appeared in classical legends. There was something anarchic and capricious about him. Though enormously powerful in some areas, he was weak, even powerless, in others. He could be cruel and he could be kind, switching from one to the other with bewildering rapidity. But he was always impersonal, for gods are like that. It was she who interpreted his actions as cruel or kind, whereas for him such labels were meaningless.

  His standing as a god was further supported by the fact that he was six years older than her, and by the brief and unpredictable incursions he made into her life. Also, she later came to realize, if she came to see him as a god it was partly because she wanted a god and he was the only realistic candidate available.

  Even at the time, she bore him no malice for the episode of the child-eating slugs at Monkshill Park. Later, she looked back on what had happened in the shed at the end of the kitchen garden almost with pleasure. After all, it had been the first time she had met Marcus. Moreover, she had never been in any real danger, either from the allegedly man-eating slugs or from the less obvious but more serious risk of falling off the shelf from sheer terror. Nor had he actually put the slugs on her legs. And there had been, at least in retrospect, something almost pleasurable in being so utterly powerless and so utterly terrified.

  It was true that Marcus had examined what Nanny used to call her ‘front bottom’. Lydia had known for as long as she had known anything that this part of her anatomy was something to be ashamed of, which it was best to cover u
p and pretend did not exist. But Marcus clearly thought it was not something to be ashamed of: on the contrary, it was something he found profoundly fascinating. That was rather flattering, if anything. He examined it for what seemed like hours and probably was at least a couple of minutes, moving her legs this way and that, so he could get a better view. Finally he touched her, very gently, at the point where the crack was, the very epicentre of all that shame.

  When he had finished his inspection, he had lifted her down and they had walked on, hand in hand, as far as the lake. He said in a casual voice on the way back that what she had shown him in the shed was of course a secret. She had to promise that she would tell no one. Otherwise he would not be able to stop the slugs tracking her down and eating her. She had sucked the first two fingers of her right hand and nodded vigorously.

  During the war, Lydia had had a recurring nightmare that Marcus had become a soldier and been killed. She never told anybody about this, even Marcus when the war was over, but she prayed every night that the fighting would end before he was old enough to join up. Her prayers were answered but, as is so often the case, there was a catch. Marcus lied about his age and tried to join up in 1916 but he was rejected as unfit because of flat feet. Marcus’s elder brother was not so lucky.

  The Cassingtons were staying in Upper Mount Street when they heard the news. Her stepfather saw it in The Times, in the list of fallen officers near the Court Circular.

  ‘Poor Wilfred Langstone,’ he said heavily, setting down his coffee cup.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Lady Cassington said.

  Lydia’s stepsister Pamela, who was spoilt by everyone including Lydia and allowed to get away with murder, continued banging the top of her boiled egg with a spoon.

  ‘Died of wounds, poor chap. I didn’t know he’d transferred to the Royal Flying Corps.’

  ‘I must write to his mother. Poor Maud.’

  Lydia stared at her plate. Pamela continued to hit her egg. The saucer around her egg cup was now a mass of shell fragments.

  ‘This frightful slaughter.’ Lord Cassington put his elbows on the table, leant forwards and turned down the corners of his mouth; he looked like a gnome with indigestion. ‘We can’t carry on like this. There will be a revolution. You mark my words.’

  Lady Cassington was pursuing a different line of thought. ‘At least she has another son. That must be some consolation. Thank heavens they wouldn’t take him.’

  Pamela dug the tip of the spoon violently into the top of her egg. Yolk spurted out and a few drops fell on the tablecloth.

  ‘Marcus?’ Lord Cassington said. ‘Yes. What’s he doing now?’

  ‘According to Maud, he’s running errands for Charlie Verschoyle at the War Office. Pammy darling, don’t do that. Either eat it or leave it. Fin, could you cut off Pammy’s crusts?’

  Lord Cassington obeyed. He was called Fin within the family because of a long-standing joke so old that its origins were lost in the mists of time: it was believed to have had something to do with the shape of his hands. He removed the crusts from his daughter’s toast and cut what was left into soldiers.

  But his mind was still running on the Langstones. ‘It’s a shame Jack died in the spring,’ he said, wiping his fingers on his napkin.

  ‘Isn’t it better for them? It must be awful if your son dies before you.’

  ‘The point is, it means two lots of death duties within a year. One has to be practical.’

  ‘Perhaps we should ask Marcus to dinner. Or even down to Monkshill for a weekend. It might help him take his mind off things.’

  ‘If you like.’

  Lord Cassington’s eyes returned to the casualties. The egg cup toppled over and fragments of ruined egg sprayed across the tablecloth.

  Lady Cassington smiled. ‘He’s much better-looking than Wilfred,’ she said. ‘And really quite grown-up.’

  On Friday evening, Captain Ingleby-Lewis returned from the Crozier humming the opening bars of Offenbach’s Barcarolle over and over again. He let himself into the house and, still humming, zigzagged from side to side of the hall in the general direction of the stairs. At this moment, Mrs Renton came out of her room carrying a pair of sheets. He collided with her, and the sheets fell to the floor.

  ‘Madam,’ said Captain Ingleby-Lewis, wrapping an affectionate arm around the newel post. ‘I can only apologize. The fault is entirely mine.’

  Alerted by the noise, Lydia appeared at the head of the stairs. ‘Is everything all right?’

  Mrs Renton stared up at her, and said nothing. The Captain began to hum again and hauled himself steadily up the stairs. Mrs Renton picked up the sheets.

  Lydia came down to help her fold them. ‘Mr Fimberry’s?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Renton said shortly. ‘No, no, Mrs Langstone – you take the corners, all right, and then bring them towards my corners.’

  Above their heads, the Captain and his Barcarolle moved across the landing and finally came to harbour in the sitting room.

  Lydia said, ‘Does the name Penhow mean anything to you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The sheets reminded me. I found a laundry mark on my sheet that said Penhow.’

  The folding of the sheet had brought the faces of Mrs Renton and Lydia only a few inches apart. The dark little eyes examined her.

  ‘Now we fold it this way,’ Mrs Renton said. ‘This house used to belong to Miss Penhow.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She went away.’ Mrs Renton stepped back and put the folded sheet outside Mr Fimberry’s door. ‘Shall we do the other one?’

  6

  Philippa Penhow liked music. You had forgotten that. She considered that a taste for good music was doubly refined, both spiritual and genteel. Serridge played on that. He was good at finding out exactly what people wanted and then giving it to them.

  Thursday, 13 February 1930

  Yesterday evening I met Major Serridge at the Tube station at Oxford Circus. We had an early dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant in Soho whose name I forget. I had a glass and a half of wine and my head began to swim! Afterwards he was all for getting a taxi, but I said I should prefer to walk.

  We reached the Wigmore Hall at a quarter past eight. Major Serridge had bought the expensive seats, at 12 shillings each. He refused to allow me to pay for mine. The recital began at half-past. Moiseiwitsch played divinely. I have never heard Chopin played with such feeling. The Prelude in A-flat major was particularly moving. I distinctly saw Major Serridge touch his eyes with his handkerchief.

  When it was over we stood for a moment outside the hall. It was a dank, foggy evening but I felt as if I was floating on air. He said, ‘After music like that, we should by rights have moonlight and roses.’ The more I get to know him, the more I realize how sensitive he is. I was quite happy to catch a bus home but this time he positively insisted on hailing a taxi. At the Rushmere, he took me up to the door and thanked me for a wonderful evening. As we said goodnight, I fancy he gave my hand a little extra pressure.

  This morning, imagine my surprise when I found an envelope waiting at my breakfast table. A Valentine!! A day early, but never mind! Of course I don’t know who it was from, but I can’t help wondering.

  Who else could it be?

  On Saturday afternoon, Mr Howlett came to Bleeding Heart Square with a young assistant, a hungry-looking man who stared at Lydia as though he would have liked to devour her. Mr Serridge had arranged for them to move the furniture from the cellar into Mr Wentwood’s flat.

  Mr Howlett was out of uniform. His brown canvas coat deflated him and made him ordinary. Nipper followed the men into the house. He sniffed Lydia’s ankles and would only leave her alone when Mr Howlett kicked him aside. Afterwards, he tried to make friends with Mrs Renton but she pushed him away.

  ‘I don’t like dogs,’ she said. ‘Stupid animals. Watch he doesn’t bring mud in the house or scratch the paint.’

  Howlett and his assistant tramped up and down the stairs b
etween the cellar and the attic flat. Nipper followed them from floor to floor, his claws scratching and rattling on the linoleum and the bare boards.

  The furniture was old, dark and heavy. The men swore at the weight of it. They rammed a chest of drawers against the newel post on the first-floor landing and left a dent in the wood nearly half an inch deep. It was quite good furniture too, Lydia noticed, old-fashioned and gloomy but rather better than the pieces in her father’s flat. Perhaps it was a sign that Mr Serridge valued Mr Wentwood more than Captain Ingleby-Lewis.

  Mr Serridge supervised the work. Pipe in mouth, he wandered from attic to cellar. Lydia, as she passed to and fro between the kitchen, her bedroom and the sitting room, found him staring at her on several occasions. It was unsettling, but not in the usual way when men stared at her. It seemed to her that there was nothing lustful in his face, at most a look of curiosity and concentration, as if he were trying to work out a mathematical problem in his head.

  Once or twice, he nodded to her and said, ‘All serene, Mrs Langstone?’

  Later that day, a smell of liver and onions spread through the hall and up the stairs.

  ‘That smells good,’ Howlett said to Mrs Renton as he came down the stairs for the last time with the dog at his heels. ‘I wish I had that waiting at home for my tea.’

  ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,’ Mrs Renton said. ‘Good evening, Mr Howlett.’

  He grunted. The front door banged behind him, the hungry-looking assistant and Nipper. Mrs Renton glanced at Lydia, who was coming downstairs with the rubbish.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said in a confidential whisper, ‘it’s not liver I’m cooking. It’s Mr Serridge’s heart. Shame to waste it.’

  Lydia disliked Sundays. She did not believe in God but she had endured for most of her life the necessity of paying her respects to him at least once a week. The Langstones, of course, were churchgoers. When they were in Gloucester-shire, they attended church with the same unthinking regularity that they voted Conservative or complained about their servants. Marcus’s mother said the Langstones were obliged to set an example. Privilege conferred its responsibilities.