Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

Very Dark, the Georgians

For the first few months after Anna took the waitressing job at the Alabora she hadn’t minded the toing and froing from Forest Hill to Covent Garden because it seemed romantic – London seemed romantic, with its twisting parks and grime-covered frontages; its dark-stained river flanked by rictus-mouthed fish who held with their tails a trail of softly glowing lights: the epitome of grand metropolitan strangeness. It was a shifting city of light and dark; of strange shadows cast across the Thames at twilight, of grimy dark underpasses and roads which shone like sheets of metal on a summer’s day. The players in the theatre moved in packs, now lightness and colour, now darkness and gloom. Women in white and red and blue, flowing like a moving tricolour along the riverbanks and shopping streets, handbags swinging, heels clicking and clacking like discordant castanets. Then the men of the city in their work attire, the endless bowler hats, mackintoshes and dark striped suits – the extraordinary conformity of the ruling class, as if bankers and lawyers and politicians were actually some great branch of the Army or police.

After the first few months the endless travelling started to take its toll. She never got to bed before four and the bathroom above her was busy with noise by half past six – jolting her from sleep, dragging her from her bed, so that her head banged with cold and tiredness at two in the morning when the night bus was running late and her feet were aching in her broken shoes. But that was before she met Leonard.

She had just started to work lunchtimes as well as evenings at the Alabora and so had been introduced to a whole new selection of regular faces. Leonard Fleet owned the flat at the top of the building and worked in a theatre on Charing Cross Road. At least three times a week he would pop home for something or other – a book, a script, a pound for a night out – and he would use this journey as an excuse to eat lunch at the Alabora. The Alabora served a strange mixture of Turkish and English food and most lunchtimes you could choose from egg and chips, spinach and pea omelette, kiymali ispanak or kofte with simit and yoghurt. Leonard was an egg and chips kind of man – most of the customers were – but he liked the smell and sight of the Turkish food and he would drink the coffee and eat the little baklava that Ottmar always popped onto his saucer when he spotted that Leonard was in.

This particular lunchtime he was seated at the back of the restaurant, away from the draught near the door, and chatting to Ottmar through the hatch. It was February and the restaurant was only a quarter full because the wind was bitter cold and the shoppers and theatregoers were staying at home. A family came to the door, dark-haired with olive skin: Romanian perhaps or Bulgarian. There was a younger woman, an older woman and a baby in a perambulator. Ottmar hurried forward to open both the doors and let them in. The grandmother thanked him and pointed to a table where they’d all sit. The baby was tiny, maybe only two weeks old and swaddled in at least three knitted blankets against the cold. Ottmar nodded to Anna and she went to take their order.

The grandmother was the only one who spoke. The baby in the perambulator snuffled and the younger woman rubbed her still-gloved hands together and perused the table.

‘Does the kiymali ispanak have lots of meat or just a very little bit?’

‘I think about half and half with the spinach, ma’am.’

‘Good. I will have a plate of that. And my daughter-in-law … My daughter-in-law does not like foreign food. She will have an omelette.’

At this the daughter-in-law started to protest but was quickly silenced by the older woman. ‘If you eat, the milk will come.’

She shot Anna a fierce look for reasons that Anna could not discern. Anna decided to ignore it. ‘And to drink?’

‘A pot of tea. We will have that first, please. My daughter-in-law is freezing.’

‘Of course.’

While Anna was waiting for the tea she became aware of a struggle going on at the table by the door. The younger woman was trying to stand up, presumably to leave, and the older woman was pulling and pushing her back into her seat.

Leonard leaned towards the hatch and asked Ottmar: ‘What do you think they are?’

Ottmar leaned heavily over the wooden sill. ‘Georgian,’ he whispered. ‘Very dark, the Georgians.’

Anna carried the tea over to the two women, wondering as she did so whether Ottmar had been speaking about their skin or their temperament.

The younger woman had given up on her attempts to leave and had instead shifted into the far corner of the table away from her mother-in-law. Anna set the cups and saucers down and settled the pot away from the pram. The mother-in-law reached out and touched Anna lightly on the wrist. ‘Thank you, my dear. We did not mean to disturb the other customers.’

Anna refrained from pointing out that the other customers seemed to be enjoying the floor show. She simply smiled at the woman and left.

The older woman poured tea for the younger one and heaped sugar lumps into the cup, though no milk. A minute later Anna heard a cry and rushed out from the kitchen to find that the older woman had just pulled the younger woman’s hand out of the cup of scalding water.

‘Get her a dishcloth with cold water,’ Ottmar told Anna, and she did.

At the table Anna passed the wet dishcloth to the older woman, who attempted to wrap the younger woman’s hand. Anna stood across from them and moved all the scalding objects out of the way. The younger woman nodded dumbly as her hand was wrapped and then she looked up at Anna, her face streaming with tears.

‘I am going to kill my baby.’

‘Shhh. Shhh,’ the older woman soothed.

Anna was surprised to hear that the younger woman had no foreign accent. Instead her voice had a soft twang of east London to it.

‘If I don’t stop myself I’ll choke him in his sleep.’

‘Shhh.’

‘How old is the baby?’ Anna asked.

‘He is nineteen days,’ the grandmother said.

‘I think your daughter needs to see a doctor.’

‘The doctor tells her to sleep—’ the older woman started.

‘But I cannot sleep,’ the younger interrupted. ‘If I sleep, the dreams come.’

‘I knew a girl once,’ Anna said, ‘I knew a girl who was very young and when the baby came it seemed to make her mad. But she was not mad before.’

‘I know,’ the older woman told her, ‘I know of such things happening but we cannot make it stop. She will not feed him. She will not eat. She says she’s going to kill him if I leave them alone.’

‘Then you cannot leave her,’ Anna said.

The older woman’s eyes overflowed with tears. ‘I will not leave her. I do not leave her any second of the day. I don’t know how to make her better.’

Anna shook her head. The older woman’s face contorted into something more like control. ‘What happened to your friend? The young girl and the baby? Did she stay mad for ever?’

‘No. She didn’t. I don’t remember … I only knew her for a little while. A year after the baby came I heard that she was well again. She went back home.’

‘And the baby? The baby survived?’

‘Well, yes. I suppose. They took him away.’

‘Why did they take him away?’

‘Well, she was so young, you see. They were always going to do that.’

‘No father?’

‘No one who wanted to be a father.’

The older woman looked gratefully at Anna, as if she were relieved simply to be spoken to.

‘Would you still like me to bring your food?’

The older woman shook her head. ‘I pushed her out of the house too soon. I think we need to go home.’

Ottmar and Leonard were listening from across the little room. Ottmar shook his head at the woman. ‘No charge,’ he called out. ‘No charge.’

When they had gone Anna went and sat by Ottmar on the stools by the hatch. Ottmar introduced her to Leonard, who asked: ‘What were you saying to her? You seemed to be telling her a story.’

‘I knew someone … someone else who had a baby and then went a little mad for a while. It happens. I wanted her to know it happened to other people too. Their doctor … I don’t know what you do if your doctor doesn’t understand what’s happening. I mean, who else do you ask?’

‘God?’ Leonard suggested, but he seemed to be saying this almost as a joke.

Anna looked at him carefully. He was in his forties, middling in height with dark hair and a little hint of beard and moustache. He wore a navy V-neck with a flowered shirt beneath and bottle-green cords. She could not quite place him in terms of class and station. He seemed to be something of an oddity.

‘Well, I suppose if they have a god perhaps that’s better than nothing,’ she said at last. ‘Though I don’t know. Can you lean on something that offers no resistance?’

Leonard looked at Ottmar and raised his eyebrows. ‘She’s sharp.’

Ottmar grinned in turn at Anna. ‘Our Anna is a heathen. But a very clever heathen. Very clever indeed. No time for boys, our Anna. Work and study, books and words, always in her mind. She’s reading Lermontov. Very keen on Lermontov right now.’

Anna looked embarrassed. ‘I do like him very much.’

‘He’s a poet?’ Leonard asked her.

‘Poetry and a novel. A very good novel. Very modern and shocking. Upsetting in the strangest way … I could lend it to you, if you like,’ Anna offered.

Leonard studied her face through the hatch. She had a sharp chin with full cheeks and large dark eyes. She also had what people would call a strong nose and mouth.

‘You’re not Russian, are you, Anna?’

‘Russian! No.’

‘There’s something about your face. You have something … un-English about you. I was thinking Polish or German …’

‘German!’ Anna laughed.

‘Who knows? The Germans have all evaporated. The Baumanns are Bakers and the Krugers are all Crabtrees. I mean, if you were German it’s not as if you’d say …’

Anna shook her head. ‘Definitely not German. My mother’s family have a line of French relatives … generations back. None of us look quite the thing.’

‘Well,’ Leonard nodded, ‘that explains it.’

Ottmar leaned through the hatch and fixed Leonard with a smirking grin.

‘My dear friend Leonard …’

Leonard shot Anna a look. ‘He wants something.’

‘This poor young lady has to make the most terrible journey to and from my cafe every day. And I was thinking …’ He trailed off hopefully.

‘What? The second floor?’

‘You only have one tenant.’

Leonard looked apologetically at Anna. ‘The second bedroom is a shoebox. You can barely fit a bed in there. I don’t even like letting it out.’

‘But it would be so convenient. She would be just upstairs.’

‘Do you want to live in a shoebox?’ Leonard asked. And Anna thought about it. She did not relish the thought of living in a shoebox but a flat on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue …

‘What’s the rent?’

‘Three pounds, six shillings a week. Bills included.’

It was the same as she was paying for a room in Forest Hill but then she’d save on bus fares. ‘Who would I be sharing with?’

‘Well, the tenant in the main room changes. Normally I rent to actresses or dancers. I’d try not to lumber you with anyone too awful.’

Anna looked at Ottmar who was twinkling away at her expectantly. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘That would be most acceptable.’ She offered Leonard her hand through the hatch and he stood and then bowed and then kissed it with a great flourish of gentlemanly decorum.

For the first few weeks of their acquaintance Anna couldn’t tell whether Leonard was interested in her sexually or whether he simply wanted to take her under his wing. He made a fuss of her as she was moving in, bringing her little gifts and lending her clothes hangers and coffee and a table for the side of her bed. And then one morning, when she was on the way upstairs to let him know that the hob wouldn’t light at all and there was something up with the gas, she found him standing at the threshold to his flat kissing an older man with slick grey hair and a banker’s dark striped suit. Leonard broke away when he spotted her over his lover’s shoulder and for a moment he said nothing but his eyes searched her face for clues to her reaction. Anna wasn’t quite sure what to say so they stood on the stairs for a while and stared at one another.

‘Good morning, Miss Treadway,’ Leonard said at last.

‘Good morning, Mr Fleet.’

‘Can I help you?’

‘There’s something up with the gas. The hob won’t work.’

The grey-haired man in the stripy suit smiled briefly at her. ‘I’m sure Leonard can fix that for you.’

Anna nodded and shot him a brief smile back. ‘I’m sure he can.’ And with that she padded quietly back down the stairs.

The very next day Leonard asked Anna – for the first time – if she’d like tickets to one of the matinees at his theatre. He offered to show her round backstage afterwards and take her to tea at Bunjies if anyone was playing that afternoon.

Anna was feeling sensitive to the fact that she had, as she saw it, thrown herself on the mercy of Ottmar and Leonard. She found that it was not in her nature to trust for too long. Her temperament seemed to fall into phases, like seasons of the year. She would blossom for a little while, establish friendships and socialise and then she would retreat and regroup, becoming watchful, even fearful, for months at a time. After the great leap from the anonymity of Forest Hill to her new life in Covent Garden she was experiencing a familiar feeling of fear, a sense of foreboding that such luck and apparent serendipity would be punished by a fall from grace. Every week Leonard would offer Anna a ticket for this or that performance and every week she gently but firmly refused his offers.

One evening she was clearing up after the dinner service when Ottmar cornered her, his face clouded with signs of worry.

‘Sit down,’ he told her. ‘We’ll have a little talk.’

They took seats either side of the gingham-clothed table and Ottmar played with the rim of the salt pot.

‘Did I do something wrong?’ Anna asked.

‘Leonard is my friend.’

‘I know.’

Ottmar could not bring himself to look at her but his hand crept across the table as he spoke and he caught her fingers gently in his large and dark-haired grip. ‘Do you know what he is, Anna?’

‘What? Leonard? Oh! Yes. I … Yes.’

Ottmar’s gaze rose gingerly until he almost met hers. ‘But you would not tell on him.’

‘Leonard? No. Why would I?’

‘He thinks you do not like him. He is trying to be your friend. He tried to give you tickets, an afternoon out. But you will not have tea with him … Now he is afraid …’

‘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.’