‘What? No! The one thing has nothing to do with … I didn’t like to ask for time off.’
‘He thinks it is because you do not approve.’
‘No. I really don’t care one way or … If anything it makes it easier to rent from someone, to live beneath someone, who I know is not …’
Ottmar’s fingers sprang open and he withdrew his hand. He looked at the tablecloth again. ‘So you will let him take you to the theatre?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘You can have the lunch service off. Not holiday. Just off.’
‘Thank you. Ottmar … I didn’t mean to say—’
But Ottmar held up a hand and, rising from the table, pronounced, ‘We are fine.’
***
Anna had rather hoped that she might get to go to some Shakespeare, or even Ibsen or Chekhov, but these writers were not the kind of writers to set the West End stage alight. Rather the play that Leonard got her tickets for involved a pair of newlyweds living in the house of an overbearing father and failing to consummate their marriage.
In the dress circle with the pensioners and the students Anna felt at first entranced – by the drama of the interior, the brightness of this strange world with its gilt and its velvet and its baroque loveliness. This was not the grimy air of Shaftesbury Avenue or the bus-jammed filth of Tottenham Court Road. This was like a miniature Versailles. A world of angel faces, ribbons and masks; opera glasses in their little cages, pill-box-hatted ice-cream girls in sharply starched black and white. It was a world seemingly unchanged in the past fifty years, a place suspended in time.
Onstage the characters danced and sang their way through a vulgar wedding party. They embraced and argued and traded insults. They were a big, tight, dysfunctional mass of connectedness and frustration and wild, spiralling hopes. Nothing like Anna’s family. Nothing like the world she had grown up in or indeed any of the other various worlds she had become privy to in the past ten months. The Covent Garden world of dirty commerce, where everyone was a spiv or an interloper from some unloved foreign country. The insular planet of the Alabora Coffee House, which was governed by Ottmar’s wild extravagance and the unstinting need of the customers always to be fed and watered like grubby, grasping children. The world of Leonard’s theatre where the ladies all affected a better class of voice and every painted surface shone with a rose-gold light. She honestly could not tell if she loved London or she loathed it. For she could not decide for herself what London was at all.
After the show Leonard took her to Bunjies and plied her with Cinzano and asked her if she’d ever thought about leaving the Alabora because as much as he loved Ottmar he thought that she must be rather bored waitressing when she had a good head on her shoulders. Anna allowed herself to get rather drunk and by the bottom of her second glass she had somehow agreed to give notice at the coffee house and spend a month on probation as a dresser to the leading lady who could not – to quote Leonard – ‘focus around the young male staff’.
That evening, after the other waitresses had left for home, Anna sat down with Ottmar over coffee and cake and told him she was running away to join the theatre. Ottmar extended his large dark paws and cradled Anna’s hands between his. When she looked, a little fearfully, into his eyes they were tired and dark and wet.
‘Will you still come and have lunch with us sometimes, little Anna?’
‘I’ll be living just upstairs.’
‘I know. But life. It rushes by and then you think you’ll see people … You think you’ll do things and have time for this and time for that … And then there is never time. This is what I have learned, Anna, I have learned that there is never as much time as you think there is.’
‘I’ll come and have coffee with you every evening if you’ll promise not to be so maudlin,’ Anna joked.
‘Am I maudlin?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s mostly tiredness.’
‘I know,’ she said and she reached across and briefly touched his cheek. ‘I know it is.’
Let’s
Tuesday, 9 November
Leonard’s sitting room was large and white and somewhat bare for Anna’s tastes. There were two blue sofas and a tall white bookcase holding what looked like a double layer of paperback books. A record player and speakers stood on the floor against a wall that held one gold-framed picture of the Buddha and an alarming poster for Genet’s The Balcony. The low coffee table was decorated with orange and turquoise tiles and piled high with papers and files and notes.
‘Sit down. I’ll fill the coffee maker.’
Anna studied the bookshelves and called through to Leonard who was getting dressed somewhere else in the flat. ‘What’s happened to Benji’s sister?’
‘She’s in hospital for … women’s problems.’
‘Right.’ Anna was never really sure what this meant.
‘They phoned his parents two hours ago. She lost a lot of blood when they operated. They’re saying they all have to go in and be with her. We weren’t really expecting … It just came out of the blue.’
Anna slumped into a ball on one of the sofas. ‘Everything seems to come out of the blue at the moment. The policeman was nice enough but he didn’t have a single idea what had happened to Lanny and he’s meant to have been looking for her for a week.’
‘If there are no clues, there are no clues.’
‘Well, she’s gone somewhere. What about that boy that got taken from the station in Manchester? The one the Brady couple beat to death. If the brother-in-law hadn’t gone to the police would he have been found? And the little girl in the moor? She’d been missing ten months. Why did no one find her sooner?’
Leonard was back now, dressed and peering into the little silver coffee pot that perched on the stove. ‘No one’s suggesting she’s dead.’
‘Well, why aren’t they? Just because there isn’t a body doesn’t mean she’s okay.’
Leonard frowned at her. ‘Anna, come on. We’re all a bit scared but really … She’ll turn up. It’s just a horrid time.’
‘It’s a horrid time for us, but what about Lanny? What if we’re all sitting round saying, isn’t this awful, this worrying is so exhausting, and in the meantime someone’s doing something to Lanny? What if they’re hurting her? What if she’s trapped?’
Leonard shook his head and set out cups.
‘I was thinking of going down to the club tomorrow, the one she talked about in the interview,’ Anna said, though really it had only occurred to her just now. ‘I mean, what was she doing there? Was she meeting a man? Was she buying drugs?’
‘Depends on the club.’
‘I’m going to start with Roaring Twenties.’
‘See, no,’ Leonard said, putting a couple of teacakes under the grill to toast, ‘I don’t see Iolanthe in there. They’re playing reggae and ska and all sorts of weird Caribbean stuff. It’s mostly a club for coloured kids.’
‘I’ve never been in. What’s it like?’
‘Not really my kind of place. I’m not a nightclub man. It was white when it started. White-owned, white-run. You know … Jewish kids down from Hampstead pretending to be cool. Coloured musicians on the stage, whites only on the dance floor. Not overly popular with the musicians, as you can imagine. I went there a couple of times in the early days and it was fine. Quite small. Good for a night out and an ounce of weed. Few years went by and it shifted. Musicians hated the colour bar, got antsy. They got themselves a coloured manager for real. Count Suckle, playing all this Caribbean music from his enormous sound system. Honestly, it was the size of a car and the floors would shake underneath you, the whole place bouncing and rolling. He disappeared a while back. I heard he got sick of all the drugs being sold and got himself another gig up on Praed Street. So now it’s Duke Vin but very popular with the pop music lot. Ringo Starr’s been seen drinking there, Daltrey, Keith Moon, Freddie Garrity. Whoever owns it must be raking it in.’
Leonard carried over plates of teacakes
and tiny black enamelled cups of coffee, while Anna shifted in her seat. She herself had long ago learned to avoid any mention of a person’s skin or nationality, and she wondered at the carelessness of Leonard’s language.
Leonard was talking again. ‘You know the big coloured guy on the door, Charlie Brown? He was John Christie’s landlord.’
‘At Rillington Place?’ Anna asked.
‘London’s much smaller than you think. Everyone is somehow connected to everyone else. Even if they do all hate each other.’
There were no curtains at the windows, only offices overlooked the room and Anna searched the sky for signs of light. She hated winter mornings, that irresistible pull back to bed. ‘Do you really think we all hate each other, Leonard?’
‘D’you know what I think?’ Leonard plonked himself down on the sofa next to her. ‘I think it’s all about money. I think we all come for the same reason and we call it jobs or houses or culture but what we really mean is money. Money makes places shiny. It makes them glitter. The rich come flooding in because they have things to do with their money. They can spend, show it off, make more of it. The poor come flooding in because poverty is terrifying and they gravitate to the place where there’s the most work. The immigrants come here because if you don’t head for where the money is you’re going to be going back on the next boat. My parents came here because the pogroms laid waste to their town and there were Jewish boarding houses and Jewish companies. Why’s Ottmar here? Why are you? We all come looking for the shiny and then we find that there isn’t very much to go around. And if all that’s binding you together is a search for shininess … well … those are very dangerous ropes to bind any group of people together.’
Anna stared, perhaps a little too intently, at Leonard’s face. ‘You never said you were Jewish.’
Leonard looked taken aback. ‘I assumed you knew.’
‘I think I thought you must be but then you never mentioned it.’
‘I don’t practise.’
‘There just … there weren’t any Jewish kids at my school. I think sometimes I just assume everyone who seems English is English.’
‘I am English,’ said Leonard. Pointedly.
‘I know … but I meant Anglo-Saxon Protestant English. Fruit scones; Book of Common Prayer; Henry-the-Eighth-had-six-wives English. You know. English English.’
‘You’re eating a bloody teacake; what more d’you want?’ Leonard worked a currant out from between his teeth. ‘Nothing can ever be too English, can it? Nothing can ever be too pure. It’s like there’s an entry test for Englishness and only twenty people pass it every year. Are you clever? Are you virtuous? Are you kind? It doesn’t fucking matter. All that matters is that you’re English.’
Anna made an apologetic face but Leonard was now in full flow.
‘It’s like the bloody countryside. Benji’s English, of course. Went to the right school. Carries the right blood. And we’re all meant to love the countryside. Wellingtons, dogs; all that bollocks. Of course we never get invited anywhere. Too queer for country houses. Too faggoty for gaudies or hunts. We have to do it ourselves. Discreetly. He makes me go on driving holidays to Wiltshire and Somerset. And I sit there, with my sunglasses on, blocking out the scenery, reading Barthes just to piss him off. “Look at that view!” he cries. But no, I will not look at the bloody view. It’s all the same anyway. Vulgar, garish greenery. Ancient oaks. God, I hate it. It’s so small. So unimportant. So fucking parochial. I hate it and it hates me back.’
Anna looked at him. There was a manic grief in his expression, alongside the annoyance and humour. She realised suddenly that she didn’t know Leonard very well at all. At work he was professional and friendly and precise but there was so much messiness to this other Leonard, this angry Leonard who lived in a half-bare flat with his city-suited lover and his odd neuroses. Anna knew the kind thing would be to hug him; to tell him to be any way he wanted. But even that little outpouring of intimacy seemed too great a leap. For a little outpouring of intimacy could easily become something more, something familiar, something desired, essential, habitual.
‘I’ve made you uncomfortable, haven’t I?’ Leonard said.
‘No. No!’ Anna assured him.
‘Shall we be English again?’ Leonard asked with a small, watery smile.
And Anna smiled back. ‘Let’s.’
Going Out
Wednesday, 10 November
The wind blew fiercely down Regent Street and the secretaries and shop girls in their black and white winter coats squealed and skittered, handbags swinging wildly, hands reaching out and grabbing for a friendly arm. Hayes watched them all bowling towards the tube stations as the lights in the department stores went dark. Then he crossed the street and headed into Soho. It was half past five and he’d soon be off shift but he’d been warned that the clubs didn’t open until early evening. He wanted to have an informal chat with Charlie Brown or anyone else he could find before the evening rush started.
He was frustrated by the lack of urgency in the office. Inspector Knight seemed convinced that Iolanthe had left of her own accord. He had gone to speak to his boss that morning, to ask for backing in investigating the multiple bank accounts, but Knight had dismissed him without thought.
‘Dead end, Hayes. Not worth your time. She’ll be off her head or knocked up. That’s why women run. She was seen at Roaring Twenties, which says to me she didn’t care much what happened to her. Older woman. Single. Lonely. Probably sleeping around. She’ll have been buying dope or worse and getting herself felt up by the lower classes. We’ll get a call, sometime, you mark my words … She’ll be found dead. Overdose. Heroin. Suicide. In the stained sheets of some coloured’s bed.’
‘But how can we be certain, sir, that it wasn’t about money? She was earning well. It could be robbery or extortion or kidnap.’
‘Trust me, she’s just another low-rent Monroe. Childless. Looks going. Nothing to live for. Waste of our bloody time.’
Two hours later, as Brennan pored over the meagre round of witness statements for the fifteenth time, he was called to the phone.
‘Detective Sergeant Hayes? It’s Anna Treadway. You interviewed me yesterday.’
‘I remember it well, Miss Treadway. How can I help?’
‘Well, I was talking with someone last night and it sparked in me a realisation … silly, really … and you probably know this. But Yolanda and Iolanthe are the same name.’
‘Oh …’ And then there was silence on DS Hayes’ end of the line.
‘I know … I felt very silly when I realised. And since you hadn’t said anything about this in interview …’
‘No. Of course. From violet. And flower. I even did Greek at school.’
‘And there’s something else. The last day, the Saturday, she got a phone message from an American man by the name of Cassidy. Second name I’m guessing.’
‘What was the message?’
‘Well, nothing really. Just to say he’d called. And the boy on the stage door said that it wasn’t the first time he’d rung the theatre.’
‘Do you know who Cassidy is?’
‘No idea. Sorry. Someone from back home, I guess. If I can be of any more help, Sergeant Hayes, please let me know.’
‘Of course, Miss Treadway. Thank you for calling.’
And now Hayes stood on Carnaby Street in a light drizzle and watched a young coloured man unloading equipment in front of the door of number 50. An older man in a rumpled suit was scooping up wires and helping him through the doors. Brennan drew himself up to his full height of Barnabyness and approached the suited man.
‘Good evening, I was wondering if you were Charlie Brown?’
The suited man gazed quizzically at Brennan. He nodded, a little noncommittally. ‘I’m Charlie.’
Brennan held out his hand. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Barnaby Hayes. I’m with the Metropolitan Police and I’m working on a missing persons case. I’m looking for Iolanthe Green. Do you know
who that is?’
Charlie nodded. ‘Actress. She came in here a few times.’
‘Was she with anyone?’
‘I don’t think so. I think she came on her own. Couldn’t swear to it though.’
‘Did she leave alone too?’
‘Couldn’t say. I’m watching them coming in more than going out. They pass me by, I say goodnight, that’s all.’
‘Was there any gossip about her, do you know? Was she seeing anyone? Was she drinking a lot? Was she behaving wildly, perhaps?’
‘So many people, Sergeant. They come, they dance. We get musicians and actors in here sometimes. Not such a strange thing. Mostly it’s just very chilled. You know, the whole place is just quite chilled. We don’t go in for violence.’ Charlie smiled broadly and Brennan found himself smiling back though he didn’t know quite why. He had a momentary impulse to ask Brown about John Christie but Barnaby stamped on that quite firmly.
‘Thank you, Mr Brown,’ Hayes said.
‘My pleasure.’ Charlie nodded him away. Hayes walked slowly through the rain, back towards Regent Street, then he turned north towards Oxford Circus and started to walk as swiftly as he could into the wind. All along Oxford Street commuters were waiting for their buses and women in expensive coats with fur collars were hailing cabs. Hayes wondered at this great sea of the oblivious. He wondered at so many people tripping gaily through life when so much in the world was wrong. And then he wondered, as he often did, which of them was out of step. Was he the freak? Choosing to know, to actively seek out the unpleasant and the animal and the cruel. He stopped to pull on gloves and button his coat by the window of John Lewis. His reflection was half visible, laid over the headless form of a man in an argyle golfing jumper. He tidied his hair and watched in the reflection how men in mackintoshes queued to get on their bus. How foolish of him to assume that they were all happy. Of course they felt pain. Each one of them might well be spilling over with grief or self-loathing. But, still, their misery was all their own. The misery he dealt with was other people’s; which can often seem more terrible than the kind you know.
Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars Page 6
