And Aloysius smiled because he heard that she was listening – that she understood, that she could feel something of what he was feeling. He opened his mouth to ask about her father – what language he had spoken if not English – but Anna leaned her head heavily against the window and closed her eyes, her mouth drawn up in pain.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.
‘I didn’t mean to … I don’t like to talk about them.’
‘Did they die?’ Aloysius asked.
‘No. They’re still alive. I just don’t talk about my childhood.’
‘Why not?’
‘I think because I tried to be someone and I failed.’
‘Who were you meant to be?’
‘I was meant to go to Oxford. I was meant to be a success.’
‘What happened?’
‘I screwed up my life. I was angry at my parents. I moved away. Went to Birmingham. Then London. Secretary. Waitress. Dresser. I couldn’t tell you if I’m working my way up or down.’
‘Do you see them?’
Anna shook her head.
‘You never made up?’
‘We just haven’t seen each other.’
‘But don’t you love them?’
‘I try but I can’t do it. I hate them. But I wish I didn’t.’ She rested her head against the cold window. ‘Sorry,’ she said. Though she wasn’t sure to whom. Aloysius gently touched her knee. Anna didn’t move.
‘I think sometimes it is very hard to go back home,’ he said. ‘When I was first living with her Mrs McDonald told me that I had come so far so that one day I could go back home. She said that children have to cut themselves away. They have to grow and make new lives and that when they know who they are meant to be, only then can they comfortably go back home and say to their parents this is me and that is you and we are on a level.’
Anna gave a dark laugh. ‘So it’s all about power? Just wanting not to be children any more.’
Aloysius shrugged. ‘Maybe. Do you want to be a child again?’
‘God, no.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Do you plan to go back home?’ she asked him. ‘In ten years, if you had the money and the success would you go back home?’
‘There are people that I know say we should be going back right now. I left before independence and now there’s this idea that things are changing, Jamaica is allowed to be anything she wants and we should all be there: making this new country.’
‘But will you go?’
‘I have a dirty secret, Anna.’ Aloysius’s eyes twinkled with humour above his puffed, misshapen face. ‘I don’t want to change the world. It sounds … impossible. Who am I to make a country good again? I want a house, Anna Treadway. I want a garden. With rose bushes in it. I want two children in school uniform coming in at four o’clock to do a jigsaw on the living-room carpet. I want roast beef on Sundays, crumpets at the weekend. A ticket once a year to watch the Proms.’
Anna was laughing now. Properly laughing. ‘You sound like the village spinster!’
Aloysius grinned at her. ‘I don’t care! I don’t care if I’m old-fashioned. Why should I want what everyone tells me I must want? I don’t like drugs, I’m not good at drinking and I don’t want to sleep with everything that moves. I’m just me. Boring, ordinary Aloysius. When I first came here I wanted to be an upper-class gentleman and I cannot be that. I understand. I get it. But I’m allowed to want a simpler version of that. I don’t want to be an anarchist or a Rastafarian. I want a paisley dressing gown, velvet slippers, a subscription to the TLS.’
Anna couldn’t tell if he was teasing her but she rather thought he wasn’t. ‘I don’t think I have ever before liked someone so wholeheartedly conservative.’
‘I’m not greedy, Anna,’ Aloysius told her. ‘I just want a small piece of success. That’s all.’ And his face grew cloudy.
By the time they arrived at Clacton-on-Sea darkness had settled over everything. They asked the station master about getting to Little Holland but the man looked so deeply alarmed by the sight of Aloysius that he was forced to wander off a little way and study a poster about seaside holidays. It was an old-style railway poster displayed beneath a painted sign: ‘100 years of fun and frolics’. A woman in a knitted swimming hat lounged on a stretch of bright yellow sand, smoking a cigarette. A handsome man lay on his belly beside her. ‘Clacton-on-Sea – For Modern Holidays’.
‘Is he bothering you, miss?’ the station master asked.
‘Aloysius! No. He’s fine. He’s my friend. He was in an accident. That’s why he looks like that.’
‘You sure?’ he asked, speaking very low. ‘’Cause if he’s got something over you just nod very slightly and I’ll take you somewhere safe.’
Anna smiled sweetly at the man – who was a good four inches shorter than herself – and told him: ‘Actually, Aloysius is my protection. I’m starting to think of him as a bodyguard who’s good at maths.’ She glanced across at Aloysius to see if he was smiling. He was not. ‘We just need to get to this cottage – Squaw’s Cottage – somewhere outside Little Holland. Do you think there’s a bus?’
‘Last one left at five, miss. I can call you a cab.’
‘Could we walk?’
‘I suppose so. You’re looking at about three miles but it’s along Marine Parade most of the way. When you get to Holland-on-Sea you’ll want to turn inland. But you’ll have to ask directions after that.’
‘Thank you very much. Aloysius, we’re walking!’
‘Oh, goody,’ came back the dry response and he followed her out of the station and down the road to the front. It was another cold night, but very sharp and clear and the air tasted icy in their mouths. The clouds which had gathered so thickly inland were parting here to expose little patches of a starry sky. A fat quarter-moon hung above the sea. Aloysius put on his gloves and then caught Anna’s sly sideways glance. He pulled the right one off again and handed it to her.
‘This time we’re sharing,’ he told her, not ungraciously. Anna put on the single glove.
‘Do you think we’ll see each other after tonight?’ she asked him. Aloysius stopped and looked at her, his face quite impossible to read behind the bruises and the swelling.
‘I don’t know,’ he told her. ‘I’m not going to assume anything. I mean, I’m not going to expect anything.’
‘Me neither,’ she told him. ‘But … Are we just going to work it out at some later point?’
‘I think we find Iolanthe and then we see what happens.’
‘Okay.’
‘One thing at a time.’
They walked on but after another couple of minutes Anna felt Aloysius’s bare right hand brush hers and she took hold of it.
There weren’t many other walkers out on the parade that night. Occasionally, they passed someone walking their dog or a woman returning home with her coat pulled up about her ears. To avoid odd glances they passed down the stone steps and walked the lower path for a while, in the shadow of the sea grasses and the stony banks, level with the churning sea.
Miles of sand stretched out in front of them, hugging the banks of the town, and for a while they forgot where it was they were going and who it was they were going to see. Without really meaning to they had come on holiday for a single night and walked like any other pair of lovers along the beach, enjoying the feel of the other’s hand in theirs. Anna thought of the old poster Aloysius had stared at in the railway station. Look at us, Anna thought, being modern.
At Holland-on-Sea they turned to face the town and walked inland. A lone fish and chip shop still showed its lighted windows to the world and Anna went inside to ask the way. Aloysius stood in the cold on the seafront, watched the waves and waited.
He could no longer extrapolate the feeling of physical numbness from the psychological numbness that had settled over him in the police station. He had thought that in finding Iolanthe he might rescue his sense of self but now he wondered whether he wasn’t just pushing
himself to stay awake, to keep walking so he didn’t have to go home to Mrs McDonald and the silence of his bedroom and the reality of everything that had happened to him since he’d last left the house. He thought of Mrs McDonald and he wanted to cry. Then he thought some more and realised that it wasn’t Mrs McDonald he wanted but really just the privacy to shake and cry and howl out all the pain. He felt as if some small part of him had been killed. No, he told himself, not a small part. Why are you embarrassed to admit this, even to yourself? He felt wounded, mortally wounded, quite undone.
It was foolish to think of seeing Anna again, not simply because he wasn’t entirely sure what he felt about her but also because he had a new life now as an informant and that to extricate himself from such a life would be something he would need to do alone. And yet the thought of burying himself in her embrace, in warmth and sympathy and kindness, was so deeply beguiling that it made his stomach turn and his heart beat a little faster.
She was walking back to him now, long, dark legs striding, hair swinging, face serious and bold and beautiful.
‘It’s the house of the district nurse. About fifteen minutes away, they think. Take the main road through town, up past the hall, then there’s a track where the country starts … At least it’ll be warm at the other end.’
‘If she’ll let us in.’
‘We’re being pessimistic, are we?’
‘I come and go.’
She took his bare hand in hers and led him at a steady clip back onto the main road and then past a rather grand building with a lake in front of it. Beyond this the town ended abruptly and it was all hedgerows and profound darkness. Their eyes adjusted slowly to the absence of light. The stars were out tonight and the moon shone above them. After a few minutes a car passed by and its beams showed them the gap in the hedge they had failed to find. Through it lay a dark track between two fields pale with snow. That was all they could discern and they had to trust the darkness to contain a path. They held hands and slid their feet in front of them, patting with their toes to check the firmness of the path ahead. After a long ten minutes they saw a glow of orange light behind a tree. There it was. A bungalow set to one side of the track, a bicycle tied to a tree and a large curtained window from which spilled soft light. A little hand-painted plaque by the door announced Squaw’s Cottage.
Anna knocked and waited and peered at the curtains, trying to make out shadows.
A woman opened the door on a chain and a nose and eye peered through the gap.
‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Were you after the district nurse?’
‘Yes. In a way. My name is Anna Treadway. I was Iolanthe Green’s dresser and I think you might have been looking after her while she’s sick.’
‘What makes you think she’s here?’ the woman asked.
‘I spoke with a lady called Hen in East Ham and then with her daughter. I haven’t brought anyone with me. Well, I have a friend called Aloysius. But no police or anyone from the theatre. I haven’t told anyone I’m coming here. We only want to know that Lanny’s okay. Is she?’
The door opened wide. A tall, bony woman of about fifty stood holding it; she wore a nurse’s uniform covered by a thick blue jumper and her feet were in slippers.
‘She’s gone,’ the woman told them, with a note in her voice somewhere between relief and despair. ‘I went to deliver a baby this morning. The midwife called me. Twin birth. And I left her in a little lean-to out the back with a hot water bottle and some lunch made for her and when I got home at three she was gone. She left me a note.’
Anna took a moment to register all of this. Lanny was alive but she was also gone. Found but not found. She looked at Aloysius.
‘At least she’s alive,’ he said and Anna nodded.
‘What did the note say?’ Anna asked and the nurse stood in silence for a moment as if struggling to remember.
‘I’m very tired,’ she said at last. ‘Would you like to come in? I was going to have some tea. My name’s Geri.’
‘Thank you,’ Anna told her and they stepped inside. The kitchen of the little cottage had pea-green cabinets and a pea-green set of table and chairs. Geri put the kettle on and Anna and Aloysius seated themselves as noiselessly as they could around the table and waited for her as she went about her rituals of tea-making.
‘You know, she’s really quite sick,’ Geri told them as she sat down at the table and slowly tilted the pot from side to side. ‘She poisoned herself thoroughly. There were a couple of days there where I thought it was all shutting down. I’ve seen women die before like that. Horrible death. Horrible. They do it to themselves with pain pills or with herbs. Seen it a hundred times and I still don’t understand. I took two days off work – two days as holiday – just so I could be with her. Didn’t want her to die alone.’
She poured milk into some cups and then the tea. The room smelled briefly of bracken and shoe leather.
‘What did the note say?’ Anna asked.
Geri didn’t reply. Anna and Aloysius watched as the nurse slowly folded in upon herself almost as if she were an umbrella. She pressed her chin to her chest and let out a gasp of pain. ‘Ayyyy.’ Her hands went to her face and she rocked forward, letting out one sob, then another.
Anna rose and went to her, took her arm and squeezed it. Geri was motionless for a moment, barely breathing. Then she prised Anna’s hand from where it held her and pushed the younger woman away. She breathed deeply, sat erect and swirled the tea in the pot. When she spoke her voice had been wiped clear of all emotion.
‘The note said something like: “Thanks for all your help. Cannot stay. Have made lots of long-distance calls. £10 note under biscuits for the bill.”’
‘Do you have it?’
‘No. I tore it up. I was feeling a bit angry at her just then.’
‘So you have no idea where she was going?’
‘No.’
‘Was she well enough to travel?’
‘Not really. She needs to be under a doctor. I’ve been feeding her glutathione but I’ve nothing here that can assess the state of her liver. If she goes into renal failure … Well, that’s it. And then there’s the termination. I couldn’t find any evidence the foetus had left her. She hadn’t bled at all. So, she might still be pregnant. Though what state any foetus would be in after all that pennyroyal I wouldn’t like to say.’
Geri poured herself another cup of tea while Anna and Aloysius sat and waited, quiet and a little horrified.
‘Sorry to come apart on you like that,’ Geri continued, her tone quite conversational. ‘One of the little boys died. The second one. They were twins we were delivering. The second little boy didn’t make it. Sometimes it gets you like that. Even after all these years.’
‘I can imagine,’ Anna said. Though of course she couldn’t. ‘Do you know who she called abroad?’
‘I was only here for a couple of them. I imagine she made most of her calls when I was out. And they must have been in just the last few days. She didn’t get out of bed for the first week she was here.’
‘Did you hear the conversations? Do you know who they were with?’
‘They were about money. I got that much. She talked about transferring money. I didn’t like to listen to the rest. Amounts and all that. Names. I was trying not to pry. I’m pretty sure they were business calls, though. Not personal. She didn’t have a personal kind of a voice on, if you know what I mean. She just didn’t really talk to me at all. I brought her food and drink. I checked her pulse, her blood pressure, her temperature. She didn’t offer to explain about the baby or who she was or when she was going. She was distracted mostly. Caught up in her worries. That’s what I’d say about her. She was a woman tangled up.’
The walk back to Clacton seemed to take much longer than the walk to Squaw’s Cottage had earlier in the evening. They were deflated. Filled with thoughts of the unfairness of their failure. If Geri hadn’t been called out to that birth … If they had only been a few hours earlier catching t
he train out here …
They kept their hands in their pockets – Aloysius neither offering his gloves nor putting them on himself – and they turned their faces down against the cold. There were no dog walkers now; no one at all on Marine Parade but them.
As they came into Clacton there was the odd car on the road and the pubs were lit up on the corners but the icy roads were otherwise deserted. They made their way wearily to the train station and Anna went in search of the station master but found only a train guard with his jacket off sitting on a tool box and drinking a cup of tea outside the dark doors of the refreshment rooms.
‘Sorry to bother you. I can see you’ve finished work. Are there any more trains back to London tonight?’
The train guard cast his eyes about the darkened platforms. ‘What do you think, love?’
Anna smiled and feigned abashment. ‘Sorry. One more question. There was a lady who possibly came through here today. Very beautiful. About forty … Lots of dark curly hair. She might have been in a black coat and heels. I don’t suppose that rings a bell, does it?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘Okay. Sorry. I’ll leave you alone.’
Anna turned to go, spying as she did so Aloysius who waited in the shadows by the entrance.
‘You could try Tom,’ the man called.
Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars Page 22
