Anna turned back. ‘Who’s Tom?’
‘He works the ticket counter. He’ll be drinking in the Railway Club. It’s round to the right as you’re going out. Behind a little fence. Private members so they won’t let you drink.’
‘That’s okay,’ Anna told him. ‘Thank you.’
The Railway Club was really a glorified shed behind a wire fence beside the taxi rank. ‘I’ll wait outside,’ Aloysius told Anna and she didn’t disagree.
Inside, the shed was set with tables and there was a large wooden bar at one end. A thick cloud of smoke filled the room from shoulder to roof and the club buzzed with chatter and complaint. A number of heads turned as Anna walked in; she and the barmaid were the only women in there. Anna ignored the attention and focused her gaze above the sea of heads. She fixed her eye on the barmaid and made her way towards the bar. Before she’d even got there the young woman, barely more than a teenager, raised her hand. ‘Sorry, love. I have to serve them in turn.’
‘No. It’s not that. I have to find Tom. Who works at the station. Sorry. Quite urgent.’
‘He’s normally at the corner table, just on the right, back of the room. Yeah. He should be over there.’
The table in the corner was crowded with men, most of them in uniform. There were station staff and porters and what looked like conductors in a livery she didn’t recognise playing at something with matchsticks.
‘Tom?’ Anna called, to the table in general.
A man of about sixty looked up. ‘Lucky night!’ he said.
‘Sorry to disturb you …’
‘Don’t be silly, chick. Sit down!’
‘Sorry. I can’t. I’m on urgent business. I need to know if you’ve seen someone. A woman of about forty but very glamorous. Lots of dark curly hair. Black overcoat. Black heels. Handbag with lots of gold on it. She might have bought a ticket from you earlier.’
Tom smoothed the front of his waistcoat. ‘I might know who you’re talking about.’
‘We really are very anxious to find this lady. I have a fiancé, you see, and this is his aunt. She hasn’t been well and she’s set off on a journey without her medication and now everyone’s frantic.’
‘She didn’t look right, I’ll tell you that.’
‘No, she really isn’t. Do you remember where she bought a ticket for?’
‘London, pet. If it’s the same woman. Not our normal sort. I said to Pete here,’ and here he nodded across the table to a youngish porter who was watching Anna’s chest most intently, ‘I said to Pete here, she looked just like that actress type they think got herself murdered. Lanthy Green? Is that her name?’
Anna shot them her most winning smile. ‘London, you say? Very grateful. Do you remember what time?’
Tom fingered his pint. ‘After lunch. Might have caught the two o’clock for Liverpool Street. She bought first class. Lanthy Green. She looked like her. But funny-coloured skin …’
Anna rejoined Aloysius outside on the pavement where he seemed to be involved in a staring match with one of the taxi drivers.
‘She caught the two o’clock to Liverpool Street. She’ll have arrived at half past three. Just as we were catching the Clacton train out of there. We might almost have walked past her.’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Aloysius’s exhaustion was starting to show. ‘I don’t think the universe wants us to find Iolanthe Green.’
‘I don’t think Iolanthe Green wants us to find Iolanthe Green.’
‘But here we are. Carrying on as if she does!’ Aloysius stuffed his hands deep into his pockets and kicked the pavement.
‘She’s sick! She’s sick and alone and trying to get rid of a child. Think about it. Think what that would be like.’
‘I don’t know what that would be like because it would never be me.’
‘Yes. Because you’ll never be pregnant and you’ll never have to make those kinds of decisions. Aren’t you the lucky one.’
‘We don’t have abortions in Jamaica,’ Aloysius pointed out.
‘Neither do we.’
‘No. We really don’t have abortions. A woman gets pregnant, she has the child. She lives with it. She lives with her decision.’
‘Every time?’
‘Every time.’
‘Is that what your mummy told you?’
Despite the bruises and the swelling Anna could see the look Aloysius gave her. Oh God, she thought, don’t leave me here. ‘Sometimes reality wins out over belief,’ she told him quietly. ‘There’s nothing neat about it. Real things happen and they’re brutal.’
Aloysius gazed at his feet. ‘It’s been a very long two days.’
‘It has.’
‘I didn’t mean to start a fight. Do you think we could maybe go and get some sleep?’
‘Of course.’ Anna reached out a little cautiously and took his arm. They turned and walked back into town.
A single car was driving round and round the central square. The woman in the passenger seat pressed her cheek and the edge of an A–Z to the window, trying to read her map by the dim glow of the lights. Anna watched them pass by once, twice, three times. She and Aloysius were standing outside a B & B which showed the notice: ‘Vacancies’.
Aloysius squeezed her shoulder. ‘I don’t think I have the energy for this.’
‘They might be fine about it.’
‘I have no money left. I’m going to have to write a cheque. Are you going to say we’re married? Will they even take a cheque from me? We might be better off if I slept on a bench.’
‘It’s fine. We just give them a story. The worst they can say is “no”.’
So Anna rang the bell and when the owner opened the door they walked inside together. As they had predicted the lady of the house looked deeply alarmed at Aloysius’s swollen appearance, and possibly also his very existence. She was an older woman of fifty or sixty, dressed in a rather bobbly coral-pink twinset and a long tweed skirt. Her hair was neatly set in curls and she wore a pair of reading glasses on a little gold chain about her neck.
‘Please,’ Anna started in, ‘I know you must be frightened by the Reverend Weathers’ strange appearance but we’ve had the most awful day and I really need someone to show us some kindness. You see my name is Anna Treadway and I am the daughter of the Reverend Victor Treadway who ministers to a flock in the area of Walworth Road in London. We have a brother church in Nairobi and it’s there that Reverend Weathers normally preaches. Reverend Weathers is here on a cultural exchange and he’s been meeting with some young miscreants in a boys’ home just up the coast. A number of the miscreants reacted very badly to Reverend Weathers’ pronouncements on the existence of hell. The reverend was then attacked quite brutally and my father sent me out here to fetch him home. Except of course we missed the last train to London. Reverend Weathers does not have any money on him but he does have a chequebook and I can give you my father’s home address by way of a guarantee. We wondered if you might have two single rooms that we could take for the night. As you can see we are very much throwing ourselves upon your mercy.’
The woman didn’t speak for at least a full minute though she blinked a number of times. Anna examined her face and noticed at last that her eyes seemed to have become rather wet. The lady rubbed her hands together a few times and then she spoke directly to Aloysius.
‘This area used to be such a nice place, Father. I cannot think … We have seen a terrible amount of violence in the past few years. I am full of shame that you should come to this country—’
Aloysius raised a hand to stop her and when he spoke the voice that emerged was a strange one, approximating – Anna assumed – what he imagined to be a Kenyan accent. ‘Please, ma’am. You have done nothing wrong.’
A tear rolled down the lady’s cheek. ‘My husband was very badly injured last year in the violence along the front. The mods and all that nastiness … He’s a policeman, you know. He was a policeman,’ the lady corrected herself. ‘He had to retire. Head injury, yo
u see.’
Aloysius shot Anna a brief and somewhat angry glance but there was no way that Anna could back out of their story now.
‘I am sorry to say that we only have one room vacant at the moment. It’s quite a large double. The one on the front. I could try to arrange a second bed on the floor. Or perhaps you’d like to try somewhere else.’
‘A double and a bed on the floor will be perfect. Thank you. We’re most obliged,’ Anna told her. ‘Will you be able to accept a cheque from us in the morning?’
‘Goodness, child, there’ll be no charge. Would the Good Samaritan have asked for money?’
‘Oh no!’ Anna cried. ‘We insist. We have to pay.’
‘I will not hear of it,’ the woman said. ‘Let Reverend Weathers take his money back to Nairobi with the knowledge that there are still some good people left in England.’
Liverpool Street Station
Thursday, 11 November
It had been a cold day on Sun Street and Orla had lost track of time playing hide and seek under the beds with Gracie while their flapjacks had burned to black in the oven.
‘Never mind,’ Orla said, scraping the remains rather crossly into the bin. ‘They weren’t our favourite anyway.’
They put on coats and scarves and gloves and walked to the grocer’s to see if there was anything tasty going cheap. On the way they held hands and Orla swung Gracie round in circles while they waited for the lights to change and usher them across the road.
‘What’s a cousin?’ Gracie asked as her mother pulled her along.
‘A cousin?’ asked Orla.
‘Debbie has a cousin. Called Rory. And he’s coming to visit.’
‘Cousins are the children of your aunt or uncle,’ Orla told her.
‘Do I have cousins?’
Orla thought about this. ‘Not on your father’s side. He has a little sister but she doesn’t have any children. But, yes, you do have cousins.’
‘What are they called?’
Orla thought again. She had three brothers who she hadn’t seen since she left Ireland. They had written to her once or twice in the early years, though their letters had mostly chided her for leaving. She had not invited them to her wedding, nor told them about Gracie. It was easier, with the whole of the Irish Sea between them, to pretend that they didn’t exist.
‘How many do I have?’ Gracie prompted. ‘Are they girls or boys?’
Orla stopped in the street and stared at her daughter. How do you explain to a child who likes everyone in the world that adult life consists to a great extent of cutting people away?
‘I’m not entirely sure, my darling. I’ve never met them either. When I came here, Gracie, it was a very long way to come. And in a way Mammy had to start a new life. Because I didn’t know anyone. Not at first.’
‘Were you lonely?’
‘Was I lonely? No. I don’t think I was. Not then. I think I was just excited to be out in the world on my own.’
‘Didn’t you miss your mum?’
‘I didn’t have a mammy to miss, darling. She went when I was eight.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘I don’t know,’ Orla told her little girl. ‘But she didn’t take us with her.’
***
As Tom the ticket man was later to attest, at quarter to two that afternoon Lanny Green had bought a first-class single from Clacton-on-Sea to Liverpool Street station.
It had taken a great deal of strength and determination for her to climb the path up to Little Holland, to beg the man in the pub to call her a cab, to make it to the station and the train. Along the way people had stared at her, though whether it was because they recognised her or because she looked like she had bathed in turmeric she couldn’t say.
She sat in the silence of a first-class train compartment and examined the skin on the back of her hands. ‘Curry yellow,’ she said to herself aloud.
Geri had explained. The pain, her tight-full stomach, her yellow skin: her liver was trying to shut down. She had fourteen pills remaining in her bottle of glutathione; for now it was doing the work of her liver, keeping her alive. When she got to Liverpool Street she would take another one. Three a day, she thought. That’s another four days. I can keep going for another four days.
She opened her handbag to search for powder and stared at the array of letters inside. Half of them she hadn’t even opened. What would Cassidy be thinking of her now? Would he have found Nat? She had to warn her brother, to tell him to be on his guard. The thought of speaking to Nat after all this time made her stomach turn over. Out of nowhere she felt homesick for her mother’s lap.
Lanny pressed the letters to one side, took the powder and mirror from her bag and tried to tone down the colour of her face. There wasn’t much else she could do except perhaps to disguise her hair. She had a silk scarf with her. She tied it now around her head and lay down across the seats.
‘Liverpool Street. Final stop!’
Someone was shouting near the window. Lanny woke, prone on the first-class seats, her face half covered in drool. She waited for everyone else to get off the train then she levered herself up and wobbled to the door. Her heart was racing. She didn’t know Liverpool Street at all but there must be a cafe or a waiting room where she could stop for half an hour.
She walked gingerly down the platform, stopping to lean against columns as she went. The concourse was busy with people. She eyed jealously a pair of benches near the stairs but they were full. A lighted sign announced a buffet and waiting room on the far side of the concourse between the timetables. She made her way towards it. The station tilted oddly and she stopped. Her heart was banging in her chest and the scene before her was splitting into pieces, each of them disappearing in a different direction. She took a moment and allowed her breathing to settle. The space recomposed itself. She set off once again.
A tiled passage held the promise of a cafe beyond and Lanny’s steps quickened, longing for the security of a quiet room and a cup of coffee. Then she was on the floor, her legs gone from under her, her knees telegraphing pain. She raised her head and saw a large man in a city suit and winter coat staring down at her.
‘Sorry,’ the man said to her, not seeming sorry at all. ‘But you weren’t looking where you were going.’ He glanced towards the departures board and then hurried away. Lanny stayed for a moment on all fours, still confused as to what had happened. Then she slid onto one hip and looked at her knees. Her tights were torn and her left knee oozed blood.
‘I can’t believe he just walked away like that!’ a voice behind her said. ‘What a pig!’
Lanny felt in her pockets for a handkerchief but she couldn’t find one. A small child appeared in front of her and fished a handkerchief out of her coat sleeve.
‘I haven’t blown my nose on it,’ she said. It had a little picture of Mickey Mouse sewn in a wonky fashion on one corner. Lanny took it and thanked the child. She spat on the handkerchief and dabbed at her knee. The child watched her, fascinated.
‘Your tights are all torn,’ the child said.
‘I know.’
‘I don’t think that man was very nice.’
‘No. I don’t think …’ Lanny had to stop; everything had started to swim again. She propped herself up and waited for everything to settle.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking but are you ill?’ a woman’s voice asked. She had an accent, not an English accent, though it sounded familiar nonetheless.
‘What?’
‘Can I help you up? Shall we get you a cup of tea?’ The woman with the accent had appeared by the side of the little girl and was bending over and holding out her hand. Lanny turned her face away. She was meant to be getting through here without being spotted. Her hand went to her hair. She couldn’t feel a scarf. She searched the floor around her. The mother of the child walked behind her and picked it up, then she squatted down in front of Lanny and handed her the scarf.
‘It’s okay,’ the woman said, very quietly
. ‘I know who you are.’
Iolanthe paused in the act of tying up her hair and stared at the woman in front of her. She had short-cropped dark hair and a wide, beautiful face. ‘I won’t tell anyone. As long as you’re all right. I don’t have to say anything.’ Irish, that’s what she was. Though her accent sounded different from the Bostonian hum of Lanny’s youth.
‘I’m just a bit out of sorts,’ Lanny said. ‘I have to catch another train. But I don’t know where I’m going.’
The dark-haired lady cupped Lanny’s shoulders and helped her gently to her feet. ‘Do you want to go to the ticket office?’
‘I need to sit down. Just for five minutes. My legs aren’t great.’
‘Okay.’ The dark-haired woman nodded. ‘Let’s find you a table in the buffet.’
She led Lanny towards the lighted door and her little girl followed behind. The buffet was less than half full and the woman steered Lanny to a table in the corner where she could face away from the door. Lanny settled herself and unbuttoned her coat. The warmth of the buffet and the hiss of the tea urn were comforting.
‘Can I get you anything?’ the lady asked. ‘Would you like me to go and ask about trains at the ticket office?’
‘I don’t know where I’m going,’ Lanny confessed. ‘Would your little girl like a scone or a cake?’
The lady glanced towards the doors. ‘We don’t really have the money this afternoon.’
‘No. My treat. To say thank you. I made her handkerchief all mucky.’
‘Can I have a cake?’ the girl ventured. Her mother looked at her. Lanny fished in her handbag and drew out a pound note. ‘Why don’t you get us all some tea and a cake for the young lady and some toast for me and something for yourself.’
The woman took the pound note but she stayed where she stood.
‘You know,’ Lanny said, ‘it isn’t kindness at all, if that’s what you’re thinking. I actually need to ask another favour. I need someone to go to a pharmacy for me …’
‘Okay,’ the woman told her, ‘if you’re sure. That’s very kind of you. And in return we’ll go to the chemist for you afterwards.’ She went up to the counter. Her little girl stayed behind and slid into a seat across from Lanny.
Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars Page 23
