‘I think the buses have stopped for the night now, miss.’
Anna peered at his face, which was hard to see, and shifted rather from glance to glance. He had red hair like that young man she had met … she couldn’t quite think where.
‘There are night buses. I always used to catch the night bus,’ she assured him in as definite a voice as she could manage.
‘Where to, miss?’
‘I can’t remember. I’m so sorry. I can’t remember where I live.’
The policeman smiled at her. ‘Well, how do you imagine you’ll get home if you don’t know where it is you’re going?’
The next moment they were standing together just north of St Martin’s near where she used to wait for her bus to Forest Hill. Anna felt an odd sensation of pinching in the palm of her right hand and looking down, she realised with horror that she was holding hands with the policeman. She pulled away quickly, though he seemed unwilling to let her go.
‘I’m sorry,’ she told him. ‘I’m so sorry. I have to get my bus.’
She walked north up Charing Cross Road without once looking back, but she found then that her stop had vanished and with it the statue of Edith Cavell. Anna stood in the spot where Edith’s monolith should have been and then gazed warily up at the sky in case perhaps the statue had been rocketed into space and would descend again at any moment, crushing her where she stood. Fifty yards away the policeman raised his hand and waved to her as if to attract her attention to some new emergency. He seemed to be calling to her and Anna strained to make out the words.
‘Your bus is coming, miss!’
Anna turned and there it was, a great red metal tower charging onto the pavement towards her as she stood watching, paralysed, already doomed.
Anna woke, the sheet around her clammy with sweat. She untangled herself and got out of bed. There was a thunder of feet coming down the stairs outside the flat and Anna could hear Leonard’s voice speaking quickly and urgently. The footsteps passed by and she stood for a minute in the dark living room listening for what came next. The street outside was quiet; no traffic on Shaftesbury Avenue at this time. Footsteps climbed the stairs again and paused for a moment outside the door of the flat.
‘Leonard?’ Anna spoke his name almost without meaning to.
‘Anna?’
She fetched a dressing gown from the back of her door and pulled it tight around her. Leonard stood on the stairs outside the door dressed only in pyjama bottoms, his hair sweeping madly to one side, his eyes bloodshot.
‘What happened?’ Anna asked.
‘Benji’s sister’s sick. We’ve been up for the last hour trying to call people and now he’s gone to find a cab. Can I come in? No. Sorry. Scratch that. You need to get back to bed.’
‘No. It’s fine. I was having a rotten night anyway. What time is it?’
‘It’s five or half five. Do you want to come up? I’ve got proper coffee. Might even manage a bun.’
Anna had no great desire to sink back into her clammy bed. ‘Not like there’s a show tomorrow.’
‘Well, quite.’ And Leonard led the way.
Very Dark, the Georgians
For the first few months after Anna took the waitressing job at the Alabora she hadn’t minded the toing and froing from Forest Hill to Covent Garden because it seemed romantic – London seemed romantic, with its twisting parks and grime-covered frontages; its dark-stained river flanked by rictus-mouthed fish who held with their tails a trail of softly glowing lights: the epitome of grand metropolitan strangeness. It was a shifting city of light and dark; of strange shadows cast across the Thames at twilight, of grimy dark underpasses and roads which shone like sheets of metal on a summer’s day. The players in the theatre moved in packs, now lightness and colour, now darkness and gloom. Women in white and red and blue, flowing like a moving tricolour along the riverbanks and shopping streets, handbags swinging, heels clicking and clacking like discordant castanets. Then the men of the city in their work attire, the endless bowler hats, mackintoshes and dark striped suits – the extraordinary conformity of the ruling class, as if bankers and lawyers and politicians were actually some great branch of the Army or police.
After the first few months the endless travelling started to take its toll. She never got to bed before four and the bathroom above her was busy with noise by half past six – jolting her from sleep, dragging her from her bed, so that her head banged with cold and tiredness at two in the morning when the night bus was running late and her feet were aching in her broken shoes. But that was before she met Leonard.
She had just started to work lunchtimes as well as evenings at the Alabora and so had been introduced to a whole new selection of regular faces. Leonard Fleet owned the flat at the top of the building and worked in a theatre on Charing Cross Road. At least three times a week he would pop home for something or other – a book, a script, a pound for a night out – and he would use this journey as an excuse to eat lunch at the Alabora. The Alabora served a strange mixture of Turkish and English food and most lunchtimes you could choose from egg and chips, spinach and pea omelette, kiymali ispanak or kofte with simit and yoghurt. Leonard was an egg and chips kind of man – most of the customers were – but he liked the smell and sight of the Turkish food and he would drink the coffee and eat the little baklava that Ottmar always popped onto his saucer when he spotted that Leonard was in.
This particular lunchtime he was seated at the back of the restaurant, away from the draught near the door, and chatting to Ottmar through the hatch. It was February and the restaurant was only a quarter full because the wind was bitter cold and the shoppers and theatregoers were staying at home. A family came to the door, dark-haired with olive skin: Romanian perhaps or Bulgarian. There was a younger woman, an older woman and a baby in a perambulator. Ottmar hurried forward to open both the doors and let them in. The grandmother thanked him and pointed to a table where they’d all sit. The baby was tiny, maybe only two weeks old and swaddled in at least three knitted blankets against the cold. Ottmar nodded to Anna and she went to take their order.
The grandmother was the only one who spoke. The baby in the perambulator snuffled and the younger woman rubbed her still-gloved hands together and perused the table.
‘Does the kiymali ispanak have lots of meat or just a very little bit?’
‘I think about half and half with the spinach, ma’am.’
‘Good. I will have a plate of that. And my daughter-in-law … My daughter-in-law does not like foreign food. She will have an omelette.’
At this the daughter-in-law started to protest but was quickly silenced by the older woman. ‘If you eat, the milk will come.’
She shot Anna a fierce look for reasons that Anna could not discern. Anna decided to ignore it. ‘And to drink?’
‘A pot of tea. We will have that first, please. My daughter-in-law is freezing.’
‘Of course.’
While Anna was waiting for the tea she became aware of a struggle going on at the table by the door. The younger woman was trying to stand up, presumably to leave, and the older woman was pulling and pushing her back into her seat.
Leonard leaned towards the hatch and asked Ottmar: ‘What do you think they are?’
Ottmar leaned heavily over the wooden sill. ‘Georgian,’ he whispered. ‘Very dark, the Georgians.’
Anna carried the tea over to the two women, wondering as she did so whether Ottmar had been speaking about their skin or their temperament.
The younger woman had given up on her attempts to leave and had instead shifted into the far corner of the table away from her mother-in-law. Anna set the cups and saucers down and settled the pot away from the pram. The mother-in-law reached out and touched Anna lightly on the wrist. ‘Thank you, my dear. We did not mean to disturb the other customers.’
Anna refrained from pointing out that the other customers seemed to be enjoying the floor show. She simply smiled at the woman and left.
The older w
oman poured tea for the younger one and heaped sugar lumps into the cup, though no milk. A minute later Anna heard a cry and rushed out from the kitchen to find that the older woman had just pulled the younger woman’s hand out of the cup of scalding water.
‘Get her a dishcloth with cold water,’ Ottmar told Anna, and she did.
At the table Anna passed the wet dishcloth to the older woman, who attempted to wrap the younger woman’s hand. Anna stood across from them and moved all the scalding objects out of the way. The younger woman nodded dumbly as her hand was wrapped and then she looked up at Anna, her face streaming with tears.
‘I am going to kill my baby.’
‘Shhh. Shhh,’ the older woman soothed.
Anna was surprised to hear that the younger woman had no foreign accent. Instead her voice had a soft twang of east London to it.
‘If I don’t stop myself I’ll choke him in his sleep.’
‘Shhh.’
‘How old is the baby?’ Anna asked.
‘He is nineteen days,’ the grandmother said.
‘I think your daughter needs to see a doctor.’
‘The doctor tells her to sleep—’ the older woman started.
‘But I cannot sleep,’ the younger interrupted. ‘If I sleep, the dreams come.’
‘I knew a girl once,’ Anna said, ‘I knew a girl who was very young and when the baby came it seemed to make her mad. But she was not mad before.’
‘I know,’ the older woman told her, ‘I know of such things happening but we cannot make it stop. She will not feed him. She will not eat. She says she’s going to kill him if I leave them alone.’
‘Then you cannot leave her,’ Anna said.
The older woman’s eyes overflowed with tears. ‘I will not leave her. I do not leave her any second of the day. I don’t know how to make her better.’
Anna shook her head. The older woman’s face contorted into something more like control. ‘What happened to your friend? The young girl and the baby? Did she stay mad for ever?’
‘No. She didn’t. I don’t remember … I only knew her for a little while. A year after the baby came I heard that she was well again. She went back home.’
‘And the baby? The baby survived?’
‘Well, yes. I suppose. They took him away.’
‘Why did they take him away?’
‘Well, she was so young, you see. They were always going to do that.’
‘No father?’
‘No one who wanted to be a father.’
The older woman looked gratefully at Anna, as if she were relieved simply to be spoken to.
‘Would you still like me to bring your food?’
The older woman shook her head. ‘I pushed her out of the house too soon. I think we need to go home.’
Ottmar and Leonard were listening from across the little room. Ottmar shook his head at the woman. ‘No charge,’ he called out. ‘No charge.’
When they had gone Anna went and sat by Ottmar on the stools by the hatch. Ottmar introduced her to Leonard, who asked: ‘What were you saying to her? You seemed to be telling her a story.’
‘I knew someone … someone else who had a baby and then went a little mad for a while. It happens. I wanted her to know it happened to other people too. Their doctor … I don’t know what you do if your doctor doesn’t understand what’s happening. I mean, who else do you ask?’
‘God?’ Leonard suggested, but he seemed to be saying this almost as a joke.
Anna looked at him carefully. He was in his forties, middling in height with dark hair and a little hint of beard and moustache. He wore a navy V-neck with a flowered shirt beneath and bottle-green cords. She could not quite place him in terms of class and station. He seemed to be something of an oddity.
‘Well, I suppose if they have a god perhaps that’s better than nothing,’ she said at last. ‘Though I don’t know. Can you lean on something that offers no resistance?’
Leonard looked at Ottmar and raised his eyebrows. ‘She’s sharp.’
Ottmar grinned in turn at Anna. ‘Our Anna is a heathen. But a very clever heathen. Very clever indeed. No time for boys, our Anna. Work and study, books and words, always in her mind. She’s reading Lermontov. Very keen on Lermontov right now.’
Anna looked embarrassed. ‘I do like him very much.’
‘He’s a poet?’ Leonard asked her.
‘Poetry and a novel. A very good novel. Very modern and shocking. Upsetting in the strangest way … I could lend it to you, if you like,’ Anna offered.
Leonard studied her face through the hatch. She had a sharp chin with full cheeks and large dark eyes. She also had what people would call a strong nose and mouth.
‘You’re not Russian, are you, Anna?’
‘Russian! No.’
‘There’s something about your face. You have something … un-English about you. I was thinking Polish or German …’
‘German!’ Anna laughed.
‘Who knows? The Germans have all evaporated. The Baumanns are Bakers and the Krugers are all Crabtrees. I mean, if you were German it’s not as if you’d say …’
Anna shook her head. ‘Definitely not German. My mother’s family have a line of French relatives … generations back. None of us look quite the thing.’
‘Well,’ Leonard nodded, ‘that explains it.’
Ottmar leaned through the hatch and fixed Leonard with a smirking grin.
‘My dear friend Leonard …’
Leonard shot Anna a look. ‘He wants something.’
‘This poor young lady has to make the most terrible journey to and from my cafe every day. And I was thinking …’ He trailed off hopefully.
‘What? The second floor?’
‘You only have one tenant.’
Leonard looked apologetically at Anna. ‘The second bedroom is a shoebox. You can barely fit a bed in there. I don’t even like letting it out.’
‘But it would be so convenient. She would be just upstairs.’
‘Do you want to live in a shoebox?’ Leonard asked. And Anna thought about it. She did not relish the thought of living in a shoebox but a flat on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue …
‘What’s the rent?’
‘Three pounds, six shillings a week. Bills included.’
It was the same as she was paying for a room in Forest Hill but then she’d save on bus fares. ‘Who would I be sharing with?’
‘Well, the tenant in the main room changes. Normally I rent to actresses or dancers. I’d try not to lumber you with anyone too awful.’
Anna looked at Ottmar who was twinkling away at her expectantly. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘That would be most acceptable.’ She offered Leonard her hand through the hatch and he stood and then bowed and then kissed it with a great flourish of gentlemanly decorum.
For the first few weeks of their acquaintance Anna couldn’t tell whether Leonard was interested in her sexually or whether he simply wanted to take her under his wing. He made a fuss of her as she was moving in, bringing her little gifts and lending her clothes hangers and coffee and a table for the side of her bed. And then one morning, when she was on the way upstairs to let him know that the hob wouldn’t light at all and there was something up with the gas, she found him standing at the threshold to his flat kissing an older man with slick grey hair and a banker’s dark striped suit. Leonard broke away when he spotted her over his lover’s shoulder and for a moment he said nothing but his eyes searched her face for clues to her reaction. Anna wasn’t quite sure what to say so they stood on the stairs for a while and stared at one another.
‘Good morning, Miss Treadway,’ Leonard said at last.
‘Good morning, Mr Fleet.’
‘Can I help you?’
‘There’s something up with the gas. The hob won’t work.’
The grey-haired man in the stripy suit smiled briefly at her. ‘I’m sure Leonard can fix that for you.’
Anna nodded and shot him a brief smile back. ‘I’m su
re he can.’ And with that she padded quietly back down the stairs.
The very next day Leonard asked Anna – for the first time – if she’d like tickets to one of the matinees at his theatre. He offered to show her round backstage afterwards and take her to tea at Bunjies if anyone was playing that afternoon.
Anna was feeling sensitive to the fact that she had, as she saw it, thrown herself on the mercy of Ottmar and Leonard. She found that it was not in her nature to trust for too long. Her temperament seemed to fall into phases, like seasons of the year. She would blossom for a little while, establish friendships and socialise and then she would retreat and regroup, becoming watchful, even fearful, for months at a time. After the great leap from the anonymity of Forest Hill to her new life in Covent Garden she was experiencing a familiar feeling of fear, a sense of foreboding that such luck and apparent serendipity would be punished by a fall from grace. Every week Leonard would offer Anna a ticket for this or that performance and every week she gently but firmly refused his offers.
One evening she was clearing up after the dinner service when Ottmar cornered her, his face clouded with signs of worry.
‘Sit down,’ he told her. ‘We’ll have a little talk.’
They took seats either side of the gingham-clothed table and Ottmar played with the rim of the salt pot.
‘Did I do something wrong?’ Anna asked.
‘Leonard is my friend.’
‘I know.’
Ottmar could not bring himself to look at her but his hand crept across the table as he spoke and he caught her fingers gently in his large and dark-haired grip. ‘Do you know what he is, Anna?’
‘What? Leonard? Oh! Yes. I … Yes.’
Ottmar’s gaze rose gingerly until he almost met hers. ‘But you would not tell on him.’
‘Leonard? No. Why would I?’
‘He thinks you do not like him. He is trying to be your friend. He tried to give you tickets, an afternoon out. But you will not have tea with him … Now he is afraid …’
Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars Page 5
