Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

by Miranda Emmerson

  ‘Anna,’ Aloysius said at last, ‘I am very cold. Can we please go inside?’

  Anna stopped bouncing and narrowed her eyes. Aloysius raised a placatory hand. ‘Or you can go home. I’m not trying anything. But I cannot feel my toes. And we are standing outside my house, which is nearly always warm.’

  The temperature had dropped noticeably since they had waited outside the doctor’s office. There was frost in the air. Anna contemplated her walk to Tulse Hill and her wait at the bus stop. Now she came to think of it she was terribly hungry.

  ‘You know,’ Aloysius continued, ‘I have a very nice landlady who would make us tea and toast. It would all be perfectly correct. And I would walk you to the bus stop before the last bus of the night.’

  The mention of the landlady swung Anna, as Aloysius had hoped it would. He found his latch-key and they walked in together.

  There was a radio playing in the kitchen and the lights blazed from the back room of the house. Aloysius helped Anna off with her coat and hung it beside his on the hallstand.

  ‘Mrs McDonald? I’ve brought a young lady for tea. I hope that’s okay.’

  A tall and rather busty lady appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, drying teacups with a cloth. She wore a jade-green dress and a scarlet hand-knitted cardigan. Her hair was a mass of pale brown curls and her skin was honey-brown and freckled. Anna could see that she must be fifty at least, but she was still strikingly beautiful.

  ‘Hello, young lady,’ said Mrs McDonald with a nod.

  ‘Hello. I’m Anna. Aloysius was helping me with something for a friend.’

  Mrs McDonald looked at Aloysius while Aloysius ignored her with some intensity.

  ‘We wondered if we could have some tea,’ Anna asked.

  ‘Surely.’

  ‘And toast,’ added Aloysius, pretending to be interested in something through the doorway of the darkened living room.

  ‘I’ll bring them both up.’

  Anna looked a little alarmed. ‘I think we’re quite happy to eat down here, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Mrs McDonald said. ‘Go on, upstairs now. You’ll be much comfier.’ And she flapped her tea towel in the direction of the stairs.

  Anna ascended first, Aloysius close behind her, and she heard Mrs McDonald whisper to him through the banisters, ‘A girl!’ and Aloysius answer, ‘Hush.’

  At the top of four flights of stairs, Aloysius showed her into an oddly angled room, the ceiling sloping under the eaves on one side and the curve of the crescent window looking out onto the street. A large single bed stood along one wall and beside it a bookcase and a little lamp. There was a wardrobe and green velvet armchair and a very small coffee table and almost nothing else. Aloysius picked up a number of socks from the floor and threw them behind the wardrobe door. Without them the room appeared quite tidy. From the evidence of books spread across the bed he was reading The Odyssey, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and Black Mischief.

  ‘Do you like Evelyn Waugh?’ Anna asked.

  Aloysius smiled at the question. ‘Despite myself, I do. But he makes me angry as well.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s clever and funny and crude. I don’t know if it’s good literature; Dr Gillespie would not have thought so.’

  Anna wanted to ask if Dr Gillespie was black but she couldn’t think how best to put the question. Aloysius ushered her into the green armchair.

  ‘I will leave the door open,’ he said. ‘Just so everyone knows where they are.’ He kept his coat on and perched on the edge of the bed. ‘So, what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Well, the sensible thing would be to go to the police, to go to Sergeant Hayes and tell him.’ Aloysius raised his eyebrows so she added, ‘But of course I’m not going to do that because we promised Dr Jones. Which means the onus is rather on me to follow it up.’ Anna stared at the light from the street, which was bleaching the glass of the lunette window. ‘I think, truthfully, I’m a bit scared of going further.’

  ‘Because you’re frightened of what has happened?’

  ‘Because I’m frightened of the kind of people I might have to meet. I’m scared to ask people about abortion. I’m happier not knowing.’

  ‘You probably shouldn’t become a policewoman then.’ Aloysius was teasing her, but the tone of his voice was gentle. She looked at him now, really looked at him. He had long narrow bright eyes and an almost snub nose. His lips and his cheeks were full but the impression his face gave you was of someone long and lean and serious. He wore black-framed NHS spectacles and looked like someone who would grow up to be a wacky professor. Or a man who gives talks on mathematics late at night on the radio. She did not quite think him handsome but he was rather beautiful – though whether his beauty came from his features and his colouring or whether it came from the kindliness he exuded she could not yet decide.

  ‘You know, I never thought how scary it might be to be a policeman,’ Anna said. ‘I always saw them in their uniform and I think I imagined them to be like robots. They have this thing about them where they seem not quite to be human. But of course they must be human. And they must be afraid, too. Imagine needing to find out the worst thing you could hear? Or wanting to? Waiting to be told something awful in almost every conversation you had at work. What must that do to a person?’

  They sat in silence for a moment. ‘I want the world to be a gentler place than it is,’ Aloysius told her. ‘I want to believe the good in people. I don’t think that is a manly sentiment to have.’ He stared at his feet.

  Speckles of black pitted the glow from the light on the windowpanes. Anna moved to the window. Outside the world was swirling. She turned to Aloysius and grinned. ‘It’s snowing.’

  Aloysius gazed up at Anna framed against the half-moon glass. She was smiling like a child and her happiness floated through the room and lifted his heart as if in a pair of hands and kissed it. He joined her and side by side they stood, watching the flurry of white flakes blot out the details of the other buildings and obscure the road and cars.

  ‘How will you get home?’ he asked.

  Anna laughed. ‘There’ll still be buses. There are always buses.’ She had forgotten Iolanthe and Dr Jones and Sergeant Hayes. They stood there, side by side, arms touching, the cold of the glass threatening to burn their fingertips.

  ‘Toast!’ cried Mrs McDonald and they turned together. The landlady was standing in the doorway with a large tray covered with tea things and plates of toast and knives and spoons. She watched them for a moment with a look of real gentleness, then she set the tray down on the bed and nodded towards the cups.

  ‘Don’t give her anything with a chip in it,’ she told Aloysius and left again, pulling the door closed behind her.

  They sat cross-legged on Aloysius’s bed and ate the toast. Anna sat at the head, leaning back on pillows that Aloysius had arranged for her and he sat beside his little pile of books and poured the tea.

  ‘Did you go to university?’ he asked her, not quite knowing if this was a silly question one way or the other.

  ‘No. No university. School. A-levels. I wasn’t very happy when I was seventeen. I mucked things up. What about you?’

  ‘University of the West Indies.’

  ‘Oh. I see,’ said Anna, nodding enthusiastically.

  Aloysius flashed her a knowing smile.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You did the white person nod.’

  ‘Well, what other nod am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No, it does matter. You’re making fun of me. What did I do?’ Anna put down her teacup. She looked quite upset.

  ‘It’s just when you say things like University of the West Indies there are two reactions, okay? So the first one is when people say, “Where the hell’s that? I didn’t even know they had universities where you come from. What’s your speciality: boiling missionaries?” and then everyone laughs: “Ha ha ha ha ha”. And the second one is the white person nod. That’s wh
en the person wants to seem really knowledgeable so they do this fast nod like they were just thinking: “Oh, yes, University of the West Indies; that’s where we were thinking of sending Cedric. Excellent cricket team, no doubt. More Pimm’s?”’

  ‘So basically I can’t win. I’m either an idiot or an idiot with manners.’

  Aloysius thought about this. ‘Before I came to this country I thought I would see hansom cabs on the streets of London. I thought that all manner of men would speak perfect English and no one would ever swear. I thought that you could get on a red bus at the weekend and it would take you up to Scotland for bagpipe concerts. I thought that I would live in a little flat next to Big Ben. I thought that pubs would be clean and friendly and the beer would come in a metal tankard. I thought I would meet a girl and walk in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and there would be fire-eaters and I would propose to her one summer night surrounded by rose-trees. I thought I would work in an office with wooden panels on the walls and my children would be educated at Eton. I thought I would be welcome in the best restaurants and invited to join the gentlemen’s clubs for I had taken a degree from a proper university. We are all idiots, Anna. There’s no great shame in that. I think it must be the human condition, because I haven’t met a woman or man in my life – not even the wisest soul – who wasn’t an idiot in some way or another.’

  ‘It’s not exactly a compliment, though, is it?’

  ‘If you want to hear nothing but compliments you must find yourself a liar.’

  Anna looked at Aloysius. She wasn’t sure any more if he even liked her. She felt foolish and deflated and confused. Aloysius read this in her face and saw that he had gone too far. They’d only met four hours ago and he was behaving as if she were a friend of many years. He stretched his hand across the bed, although what he meant for her to do with it he didn’t quite know.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. This has been a very strange evening. I thought I could talk to you like a friend but you don’t really know me at all. If it helps you should know that I wouldn’t speak honestly if I didn’t respect you. I have lived in this country for four years and I have the pleasure of an honest conversation about twice a year.’

  Anna gave a small smile. ‘Welcome to Britain.’

  Aloysius’s hand dropped back into his lap and he executed a little bow. ‘I’m very pleased to be here.’

  ‘Are you really, though?’

  ‘Most of the time … yes, I am.’ Aloysius laughed. ‘We are allowed to go back home, you know. Some people even advocate it.’

  He was teasing her again and Anna suddenly felt quite exhausted. The tea and the toast were warming her bones. The relentless strangeness of the day had caught up with her and she was realising with a certain abruptness that her world – her city – was filled to the brim with people and experiences that she had thought nothing about. She lay back against the pillows and her eyelids drooped.

  ‘Do we need to get you home?’ Aloysius asked her, looking behind him at the snowy curtains falling on the wrong side of the glass.

  ‘Do you think perhaps that you could fly me there?’

  ‘On a magic carpet?’

  ‘I was thinking more of a winged horse.’

  ‘I can lend you a pair of gloves and walk you to the bus stop.’

  ‘That will have to do.’

  So Anna dragged herself off the bed and pulled on her shoes and Aloysius went downstairs to fetch their coats. When Anna got to the hallway, Mrs McDonald was standing there waiting for her. She passed Anna a little parcel wrapped in baking paper.

  ‘Oaty biscuits. For the journey home. In case you get stuck in the snow and are tempted to eat Louis.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Aloysius was already hovering in the open doorway. He handed her his gloves – ‘just till you get home’ – and they made their way outside.

  Snow tipped down on them from the skies and stung their eyes when they tried to peer at it. Aloysius took Anna by the hand and they walked as fast as they could manage along the wet pavements, shaking their heads every so often to clear the snow from their brows and lashes and the bridges of their noses.

  Amesbury Avenue. Hillside Road. Palace Road. The vast houses flicked by, marking time and space. There were no cars on the roads now. The living-room windows shone yellow and orange in the darkness. Here and there Anna was aware of faces pressed to the glass, watching the snow fall, watching a black man lead a white woman through the streets.

  Neither she nor Aloysius said a word; their lips and noses were stinging from the cold. And what was there to say, after all? It was most probably a mistake to be on the streets in this weather but the alternative was spending the night in the house or even in the room of a man she’d just met. A man who she might very well be attracted to and therefore must on no account share intimacy with.

  On Tulse Hill Aloysius guided her south. ‘There’s a shelter somewhere down here. I don’t think the bus will be on time tonight.’ They made it inside the shelter and stood looking at each other, one yeti figure blinking in confusion at the other.

  Anna wiped the snow off her face and front. ‘Was this a terrible mistake?’

  ‘I think it probably was.’ Aloysius laughed and leaned against the glass wall. He stuck his head out briefly to check if there was anything coming. Every minute or so a lone car would pass them, headlights full glare, windscreen wipers pumping back and forth. The pavements and the roads were already wearing a thick coat of snow. The hedges had turned white and the roofs of the houses formed a long white line against the sky.

  Aloysius was trying and failing to wipe his glasses clean. Finally, he gave up and hung them on the front of his coat. ‘You know, I’m going to have to come with you into town.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s horrible. Because the bus only gets you as far as Oxford Street. Because it might break down and I’m guessing you have no money for a cab. Because I want my gloves back but I can’t take them away from you in a snowstorm. Pick your reason.’

  ‘But what are you going to do once you’ve walked me home?’

  ‘I have a friend in Soho. I can get myself a sofa for the night.’ And he stuck his head out of the shelter again to check for a bus. Every time he did this he got a faceful of snow and every time he drew his head back in in its yetified state Anna laughed and liked him more. Aloysius was easy to be with. He was – she thought – comfortable in his own skin and that made her feel more comfortable in hers.

  Aloysius wiped the snow off his head for the fifth time and glanced across at Anna, who was huddled into a corner trying to keep warm.

  ‘You know, Dr Gillespie used to say that English people think all the rest of the world are like onions. Like …’ He waved his hands. ‘Have you read Peer Gynt?’

  ‘Yes. The onion seller. He peels Peer at the end of the play. Takes off all his layers.’

  ‘Yes, so, Dr Gillespie said that the English, the British, they think everyone is secretly an Englishman at heart and if you peel all the other layers away – the silly accents and the rotten manners and not understanding the rules of bridge – then at the heart you will find an Englishman.’

  ‘But the onion has no heart. Isn’t that the point?’

  ‘Exactly. Englishness is just another layer of swaddling. But the English haven’t yet figured that out.’

  ‘Bus!’ Anna leapt towards Aloysius, nearly knocking him over and together – almost in each other’s arms – they stumbled out of the shelter and onto the kerb. The bus stopped, the exhaust blew smoke. They bought their tickets from the grey-faced conductor who was slumped on a seat on the lower deck.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ said Anna. ‘We might as well try for a view.’

  The bus was almost completely empty so they walked down the aisle of the top deck waiting to feel a puff of hot air at their feet announcing a heating vent.

  ‘There it is,’ cried Anna and they settled themselves, side by side, as clo
se to the heat as they could manage. The bus continued on its way, the windows misted, the swirling cloth of snow reframing – reimagining – familiar streets into the landscape of another town or time. Anna and Aloysius sat in silence, each holding tight to the metal bar in front, each allowing themselves to thaw from the feet upwards.

  It took the bus more than an hour to make the journey into central London. By Stockwell, when their bodies had relaxed, Anna and Aloysius fell again to comparing books they’d read and books they’d loved. Brave New World: Aloysius but not Anna. 1984: them both, though Anna honestly hadn’t ever loved Orwell. Brighton Rock: Aloysius hadn’t read any Graham Greene but yes, of course he meant to. Evelyn Waugh: Anna liked A Handful of Dust because it was human, Aloysius preferred Decline and Fall because the comedy was better. Then Anna pretended to have read Bleak House and Aloysius pretended to have finished Dombey and Son. Then they agreed that Shirley was a better novel than most people thought but only in the first half. They couldn’t agree on Austen and Aloysius found himself slightly embarrassed at being the one to champion her so they dropped it and both pretended to have read Tom Jones instead.

  On Oxford Street, they descended the stairs together and, seeing them, the conductor approached Anna.

  ‘Where you going, love?’

  ‘Covent Garden.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be counting on any more buses tonight.’

  ‘It’s all right, sir, I’m walking with her,’ Aloysius told him and the conductor breathed heavily through his nose like a horse snorting and turned away from them both.

  The snow had abated a little but the wind was blowing fast down Oxford Street. There were a few cabs but they were mostly parked up with their lights turned off.

  ‘Do you think the tubes are still running?’ Anna asked and they cautiously made their way towards Bond Street station. But as they came to the top of the stairs the lights were being turned off down below. They trudged on towards Oxford Circus, both too cold to speak.

  ***

  Just west of Liverpool Street Orla and Gracie lay together on Gracie’s bed. Orla had been reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe while they waited for the sound of Daddy coming home. But then Gracie had fallen asleep on Orla’s chest, and Orla had been so soothed by the warmth and weight of Gracie’s little body that she had wedged herself against a wall and fallen asleep herself.