Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

by Miranda Emmerson

  Hours passed and then Gracie woke, crying, having dreamed about a shoal of tiny fish who were circling her bed and blocking out the light. Orla kissed her daughter’s cheeks and settled her back. Gracie’s little hand moved to the blind.

  ‘Look!’ she said.

  They raised the blind together.

  ‘Will Father Christmas come tonight?’ Gracie asked. ‘Does he bring snow with him?’

  ‘No, darling,’ Orla told her. ‘Father Christmas has millions more presents to make before the big night.’

  ‘Who brings the snow?’

  ‘Just the clouds, my darling. Just weather and science and all that sort of stuff.’

  ‘Jack Frost?’ Gracie asked and Orla couldn’t remember what she had said, if anything, about him.

  ‘Well now, Gracie, that’s a good point you make. What about Jack Frost? I’ve never seen him myself. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. Maybe Daddy’s seen him.’

  ‘Is Daddy home now?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Will you go and see?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  So Orla searched the rooms of the house for the man who was never there but when she returned to Gracie the child had gone to sleep, one hand resting on the windowsill as if to stop the snow from running away before it became another day.

  Orla and Brennan

  They met at a funeral. It was June and the grass in the graveyard shone emerald, a slice of colour beaming upwards beside the churning dust and dirt of the Commercial Road. Orla Keane was wearing a poppy in the buttonhole of her black coat and as she entered the church the eyes of three elderly ladies standing to one side settled upon this single discordant note in a sea of black cloth.

  Brennan Hayes arrived late for the service, the doors already closing, everybody seated. Orla, sitting beside the aisle a third of the way down the church turned in her pew and looked to see who had entered. Brennan’s eye, dashing madly across the sea of hats and half-turned faces, spied the poppy and above it the calm, strong face of a young woman with short-cropped hair who – just for a very fraction of a second – met his eye. Orla gathered the skirt of her coat and shuffled sideways along the pew. Brennan trotted as lightly as he could along the chequerboard aisle and slipped into the space beside her. The priest spoke.

  ‘May the Father of mercies, the God of all consolation, be with you.’

  Brennan was aware of the long, pale face turning towards him. He wondered if he had misinterpreted Orla’s gesture and whether he should start to move before the first hymn. He glanced sideways and saw that the young woman was looking at him, not with annoyance or distress, but with what seemed like an abundance of good humour. And when she spoke the words, her dark eyes creased into a smile, letting Brennan know that she was talking specifically to him.

  ‘And also with you.’

  After the hearse had drawn off and the mourners had started the long walk to Bow Cemetery, Orla and Brennan lingered on the grass by the side of the church. They had walked out together without speaking and stood patiently as the coffin was carried out and the mourners hugged and chattered and exchanged their blessings. Lorries rumbled past, filling the air with fumes.

  ‘Aren’t you going to the burial?’ he asked her.

  ‘I didn’t have a plan. I thought perhaps …’

  ‘How did you know her?’

  ‘Oh, everyone knew her.’

  ‘I know, but how did you?’

  Orla looked at him and her eyes crinkled again. ‘I didn’t. It was a morning off work.’

  Brennan’s face stilled and furrowed. Orla unbuttoned her coat, letting him see a flash of bright blue dress. ‘I only have three dresses and none of them black. None of them long, either, come to that.’

  Brennan still stared at her, a look of puzzlement fixed in his gaze. ‘Why would you come to a funeral? Why would you use a funeral to take a morning off work? If you hate your job so much, then lie. Don’t use the rites of a person’s soul …’

  She made a last-ditch attempt at charm. Drawing herself up tall, she faced him straight on and offered him her hand to shake.

  ‘Orla Keane. I’ve been in London ten weeks and I know no one. Absolutely no one. Not a soul. I have no friends and my family is four hundred miles away, give or take a bad road. Will you have a cup of tea with me – and a bun, perhaps …? Else there was no point in playing fast and foolish with souls or rites or any of it. And I meant no harm. So don’t be cross. Or I’ll have no friends and one enemy and might as well swim home in my clothes.’

  In the end they had a cup of tea. And a bun. And Brennan walked her back to the offices of Kavanagh and Hill – attorneys at law – where Orla was newly made a secretary to Mr Hill. And on the following Tuesday, when he was not on duty, he picked her up from work and walked her to Wapping Rose Garden for an early-evening picnic of egg sandwiches and pound cake. And Orla laughed because when they finally arrived there were no roses to be seen. But they sat in their summer clothes and drank dandelion and burdock and then Orla, kneeling in the grass in her dress of green and yellow daisies, performed for him her impression of Mr Kavanagh asking Mr Hill to a dance.

  ‘I shall lead you, Hill, up brook and down dale – I will dance you into next week and you and I will take our little ledgers and live as snug as any two bunnies in dreamland with just our shillings and our pence and our sound contractual services.’

  And Orla laughed at her own invention and threw herself down in the grass muttering about bunnies and cocoa and not minding at all that the gardener was staring his disapproval at them both and Brennan knew that he was a little bit besotted with this woman and a small part of him regretted ever asking her to the rose garden for he was only twenty-five and had hoped he had a few years left to himself.

  Brennan worried about his family back home in Londonderry. His elder sister had died a year after he left and his younger sister who wrote every month provided a running commentary on their mother’s grief and their father’s descent into silence. But he had yearned to leave, to fly the nest and all the sleepy blue/grey corners of his youth, so he headed first for St Columb’s in the streets of Derry, then on to a scholarship at Queen’s in Belfast studying politics and philosophy.

  At Queen’s he had been befriended by an Anglo-Irish political scientist latterly of Imperial College who longed to return home and who had filled Brennan’s head with dreams of London and the expanse of life that waited for him across the sea. To the open disgust of many of his friends he had used his connection with Dr Devlin to make enquiries first about the civil service – not a fruitful exercise as it turned out – and then about a place at the Police Staff College in Warwickshire.

  ‘How do we change the system, Brennan?’ Devlin repeated this often. ‘How do we change it?’ And Brennan would smile at him over his glass and wait for Devlin to give his answer. ‘We change it from within. Put one thinking man, one thinking Irishman, amongst the lackeys and the sops of the Establishment and we might have ourselves a social revolution.’ Brennan smiled and said nothing.

  Dr Devlin was just the latest in a long line of men to have inspired his admiration. For Brennan had a weakness for charismatic know-it-alls: lecturers, priests and politicians. He loved a fine, sound, moral idea; he loved the suggestion of a sense of purpose. Above all he loved certainty and the breathless allure of those who have it.

  As it turned out, far from being friendless, within days of arriving in London Orla had assembled around her a gaggle of strange and interesting people. There was Marjorie Bendigen who ran a sort of informal home for human waifs and strays. As well as housing and feeding up to fifteen children at a time in her cramped and dark little home off the Commercial Road, she held open house on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the shop girls and secretaries who lived in the rented rooms all around her.

  Orla invited Brennan to one of these after they’d been stepping out for a month or more and Brennan – having no idea what to expect – arrived with
a bunch of late summer flowers and a small box of truffles. Walking into the dirt and shambles of Marjorie’s living room – where old magazines and newspapers littered the floor, a boy was drawing dogs in crayon on the skirting board and Mrs Bendigen’s underwear hung on strings in front of the fire – Brennan knew he had misunderstood the nature of the invitation. A clutch of young women in nylon suits turned to look at him from the orange velvet sofa as Marjorie hauled herself up from the floor and enacted a wobbly curtsey. Orla, who was sitting on a stool by the fire, laughed into her tea so hard that she spurted some across the room. But that was Orla’s way. Nothing mattered so very much and everything was funny.

  Then there was Eddie Miller, who worked as a runner for ATV and who got Brennan and Orla in to watch recordings of Take Your Pick at the Hackney Empire. The chance to watch television ‘from the inside’, as Orla put it, was quite a novelty for two young people who’d never lived in a house with a TV.

  ‘The month I left home,’ Orla told Brennan, ‘my parents took in a lodger and used the money to hire a television. My father hasn’t left the lounge since.’

  Sitting on the top deck of the 106 on the way home, Brennan found himself dwelling on the way that Orla had laughed and flirted with Eddie after the recording.

  ‘Do you like Eddie Miller?’

  ‘I like that he gets me in to see the television being made. I like that he’s funny and gossipy and he tells me things about the women in the studio. I like that he fancies me because it makes him nice and kind and I’ll never say no to a bit of nice and kind.’

  ‘Well, that was honest.’

  ‘Ask me another question,’ Orla said.

  ‘Do you really like me or am I just a good prospect?’ He had thought he could make it sound like a joke but when it came out of his mouth his tone was all wrong.

  Orla was silent for a long half-minute. When she spoke her voice was quiet and filled with pain. ‘You’re a Mick in the Met, Brennan Hayes. The idea you’re going to get anywhere is a bloody fantasy. But up to about a minute ago I really liked you and respected you because you were trying to do something proper with your life. I earn my own wage. I always have. I pay my own way. Live on my own terms. I …’ But she couldn’t finish the sentence because her voice had broken.

  She swung herself up on one of the poles and pressed the bell. She pushed roughly past Brennan’s knees and juddered down the stairs. Brennan watched as she burst out onto the pavement and walked back the way they’d come. He had her bus ticket in his wallet. He wondered if she had enough for another fare. He didn’t get up or try to chase her. He rode the bus all the way to Commercial Road and then on to Poplar and Barking; far past the stage his ticket would allow. And as he rode the bus he watched the people outside the window and he thought very, very carefully about what he would do next.

  At Chitty’s Lane in Becontree Brennan got off. He had made a plan to find a little cafe or a pub where the bus drivers would welcome him in with a silent nod and the possible offer of a cigarette but he found instead that he had been marooned within a large housing estate where all the little windows stared blankly out at him and there were no shops or pubs or greasy spoons to be seen. Brennan walked the streets of the strange new town thinking about Orla and trying to separate out what part of him just wanted to sleep with her and what part of him actually liked her enough to consider making a life with her.

  He wondered to himself why he had asked her the prospect question. He wasn’t the kind of man to believe that all girls wanted was a ring on their finger and the excuse to stop working. He knew for just about certain that Orla Keane was not a girl like that. But all the same, the men that he worked for in the Met seemed to be married to women who lived to play house and spend their monthly allowances on clothes and wallpaper and magazines and shoes. Or at least that’s what his colleagues told him their wives were like. He remembered Mary Lawler, a student from his time at Queen’s, whose eyes had shone with a kind of rage when asked one evening by his friend Barry Dunne if she was on the lookout for a husband.

  ‘What makes you think I want a husband?’

  ‘I thought that’s what all you clever girls wanted. Three years away from home to hook your fish then back to the countryside to make babies and take up sewing.’

  ‘Why would I give my life away so lightly?’

  ‘For the money, Mary – it’s always for the money.’

  ‘And what happens when I can earn my own?’

  Barry Dunne refilled their glasses as Mary’s cold eyes watched him think.

  ‘Then society crumbles for there’ll be no more bairns.’ Mary smiled and Barry added, ‘But it isn’t going to happen. You can only keep up a front for so many years. By the time you’re thirty you’ll have got tired of all the anger. Your looks will go. You’ll realise that having a job is harder work than having babies and you’ll take your pick from the stragglers and the fags who never quite got round to it the first time. You’re all front, Mary. All front and no follow-through.’

  Brennan sat in silence and listened to them fight and when Mary started to look tired he picked up her coat and bag and offered to walk her home.

  ‘Another offer you think I can’t refuse?’

  ‘I just think maybe we’ll leave Barry to argue with his glass.’ Mary took back her coat and together they left the bar.

  It was a warm night – warm for Belfast, anyway – and they walked for a while in silence along the paths by the Botanic Gardens. They paused near the palm house and Mary sat and shared a cigarette with Brennan.

  ‘I don’t really know what to do with the likes of Barry Dunne. It’s like he thinks that all the knowledge in the world has been transported to his head and nothing he can ever hear or study will change it. He’s a dinosaur. A nineteen-year-old dinosaur. And some poor bugger will up and marry him one day and then her life will be well and truly over.’

  ‘The thing is …’ It was the first time Brennan had spoken since they’d left the pub but it was too soon for Mary. Her head swivelled sharply. ‘Yes?’

  ‘The thing is, Mary, I’d put money on the idea that he was flirting with you.’

  ‘Flirting with me?’

  ‘It’s what he does. He thinks it’s charming. He thinks you’ll get really angry and then rip off all your clothes and supplicate to him.’

  She was still staring at him and he wondered if the ripping-off-clothes image had been a step too far. Mary thought about this for a moment and then she shrugged and slumped back onto the bench.

  ‘How is this ever going to work, Brennan? How are we ever going to make things work if men are walking round with these idiot ideas branded into their very soul and womankind is dividing herself up into those who will play the game and die inside and those who cannot even imagine making a life with a man because they say things that make you want to put their eyes out?’

  ‘Dr Devlin would say you have to change the system from within.’

  ‘Jesus, does that mean I have to marry Barry Dunne? I’d sooner die.’

  ‘I wish …’ Brennan started and then stopped. ‘I wish I had the answers, Mary. But I don’t.’

  ‘Well, at least that’s honest. If nothing else stay honest, Brennan.’ She paused, looked at him and stretched her back as she stood. ‘You’re one of the better ones. We need you to stay as you are.’ And Mary walked off into the night, blowing smoke signals up into the air.

  In Becontree, Brennan found himself outside a tube station so he bought a ticket and took a train heading west. He allowed the joggling of the carriage to soothe his body. He felt parts of it unfurl. If he really wanted he needn’t see Orla again. She didn’t have to be the one for him, but he had a suspicion that she was.

  Orla was funny and clever, in a sharp-toothed kind of a way. She didn’t care much for convention and even less for religion though she never laughed at his faith. She said once that she accepted faith in God as a kind of ‘common affliction or sign of the norm’. She was the one wit
h yellow eyes while everyone else had blue or brown.

  Between Gunnersbury and Kew he rattled across the River Thames, the calm expanse of water reflecting a deep blue sky shot through with shards of white. The river was low this evening and the muddy banks led his eye up to the half-timbered houses on either side, the vast chestnut trees, the fat black cars sitting outside the fat white houses. Did he want success? Did he want a home and a child and a car of his own? He had taken on a job that had already started to change him. Was he ready for a marriage that would restrict his choices?

  At Richmond station the train came to its conclusion. Brennan got out and stood on the platform wondering where he could go next. He glanced up at the station clock. It was six fifty. In twelve hours and ten minutes he was back on shift. The thought of this made his heart rattle unhappily in his chest. These hours with Orla, they were meant to be his escape.

  Some days he felt as if he were drowning. He didn’t understand where the acts of violence came from but there seemed to be a great wave of malevolence that washed over the whole of the city each and every evening. Working men pounding the bones, chopping and mincing the cartilage of other men: on the steps of pubs, in the yards beside the high-piled kegs of beer, on the shore of the heaving, reeking river. Of course you didn’t see anything like that round here. The colours were brighter at the western end of the lines, the sounds of affluence sharper and clearer, the screams almost entirely muffled by thick and well-made walls. He was starting to learn London. He had written this in a letter to his sister Maggie a year ago and she had written back that he was Dorothy trying to understand the topography of Oz, never properly realising that it wasn’t real.

  Brennan got back on the same train, still idling on the platform, the lighted sign indicating that it would shortly be leaving for Upminster. He rattled back across the River Thames and in the twilight he could imagine Orla in her dress of green and yellow daisies dancing with a bottle of beer along its narrow banks. He could imagine Orla in one of the fat white houses singing to a child in a cradle as she sat with her feet on the windowsill reading the evening paper. He could imagine Orla welcoming him into bed, surrounding him with heat and love and kisses. He could imagine Orla dancing in the garden on a warm, spring day – swinging their child into the air, both of them screaming with glee. She would be a good mother, he could see that already. She had a light inside that shone on the people around her. Everyone loved Orla.