Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

Anna nodded to Count Suckle and – giving Hayes a wide berth – went to take up one of the seats by the bar. As it was she didn’t really want to drink, nor did she particularly want to stay, for she was having one of her antisocial patches. But she couldn’t leave now. Not when Hayes had suggested that that’s what she should do.

‘What’ll it be?’ the barman asked.

‘Single Scotch, thanks.’ Anna watched Hayes as he talked to Count Suckle. There was a lot of serious nodding going on and Count Suckle was struggling to explain something, his hands conjuring in the air between them both.

The Scotch was a little harsh but it did its job; Anna sank lower in her chair. She was vaguely aware that a second person had joined her at the bar but she refused to take her eyes off Sergeant Hayes.

‘Are you here for the band? Or are you with the band?’ Anna looked up to find that a tall, thin black man in a moddish suit was leaning against the bar looking at her. His neatly cut hair held the suggestion of a quiff and he wore thick, dark-rimmed spectacles.

‘Neither,’ she answered, ‘I was speaking with Count Suckle.’

‘And having a drink.’ The man sat down two seats away from her and the barman, Martin, handed him a tall glass of something.

‘Are you a friend of Wilbert, then?’ the man went on, drinking down half his glass in one great gulp. He saw Anna watching him and laughed: ‘It’s Coke. I haven’t got the legs to drink rum like that.’

Anna smiled, embarrassed, aware now that her judgement had been written on her face. ‘I’m not really a friend of Wilbert – is that Count Suckle’s name? I’m more of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. I’m asking around because someone I know went missing.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry. Can I help? Would I have seen him? Or her?’

‘It’s Iolanthe Green. The actress. I was her dresser at the theatre and eleven days ago she walked down Charing Cross Road and …’ Anna gestured a little wildly and slopped Scotch down her skirt.

The tall, thin man drew a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it over: ‘It’s clean.’

Anna wiped herself down and replaced her glass on the bar. She handed the man back his handkerchief. ‘Sorry. I don’t drink very often and I’m not very good at it when I do.’

The man laughed and repocketed the damp hanky. ‘My name’s Aloysius. I’m Count Suckle’s accountant. Pleased to meet you.’

Anna shook his hand and as she did so her eyes slid over to the table in the corner where Count Suckle now sat alone.

‘When did the policeman leave? I didn’t see him go.’

‘I’ve no idea. You know, I read about Miss Green in the newspaper. It’s a strange thing. Why d’you think Wilbert knows where she is?’

‘Lanny – Iolanthe – had been going to Roaring Twenties before she disappeared, but when I went and asked the men there, they just didn’t seem to want to answer my questions. And Leo … my boss told me that Count Suckle used to work there and I thought maybe he could help me.’

‘What did Wilbert say?’

‘He said he hadn’t seen her and yes, there were drugs, but he couldn’t imagine her getting herself into much trouble at the Twenties unless it was maybe with a man.’

‘D’you think she ran away?’

‘In a way, I hope she did. Every other possibility just seems so bleak.’ Anna stared at the band setting up on the stage and figured that it was probably time to leave. She felt out of place here and she certainly wouldn’t know what to do with herself at a proper nightclub when the music started and the crowds arrived. She glanced over at Aloysius, who was watching her with a strange and thoughtful expression on his face. ‘I think it’s time I went home,’ she told him and she stood.

Aloysius put out his hand and touched hers briefly. ‘It was nice to meet you, Miss …’

‘Treadway. Anna. I’m sorry. I really need to go. I barely slept last night.’

‘Take care of yourself, Miss Treadway,’ Aloysius called as she disappeared up the stairs.

Outside, Praed Street was bitterly cold. Buses shunted slowly past in a queue of traffic. Anna stared at the bus stops but she didn’t know the routes, and the crowds of people huddling about the shelters put her off. She started to walk towards the Edgware Road with an idea of finding her way home along the least windy thoroughfares.

She stood at the traffic lights at the top of Edgware Road in a crowd of people waiting for the little man in green to appear. Fingers plucked at her shoulder but she pulled herself further inside her coat and ignored them.

‘Miss Treadway.’ She recognised the Jamaican accent without quite being able to remember who the voice belonged to. The lights were changing and she was pushed and shuffled into the road amongst the other bodies.

‘Miss Treadway!’ There was the voice again. She turned but could only see the man and woman directly behind her, forcing their way forward with grim-faced determination. Anna started to trip, righted herself and kept on towards the pavement.

Once safely on the other side, she pushed her way over to stand under an awning and survey the crowd. A man bundled into a great grey army coat sat in a little shelter behind a pile of newspapers. He was shouting the name of the paper from behind his hands, which he’d cupped over his face to warm himself. His fingers were filthy and Anna found herself disgusted by the sight of the blackened nails. Did he have a wife? she wondered. Did he touch a woman with those filthy hands? Did he touch himself?

Aloysius’s figure appeared to the right of her. With his face shaded from the sodium by a wide-brimmed fedora he looked to Anna as if he had arrived from another time. He reminded her of men of her father’s generation, the gentlemen of the thirties and forties with their smart, conservative clothes and their smart, conservative lives. What kind of a name was Aloysius anyway? Had he been to Eton? Well, obviously not, but he seemed to be playing up to something. Standing there in his mackintosh and his fedora, looking for all the world like some fellow from a black and white movie, he reminded her of Jimmy Stewart … if Jimmy Stewart had been black. The image of a coloured James Stewart momentarily confused her and Anna realised that she didn’t quite know how to think about black men, for she really had no frame of reference. As he stepped under the awning Aloysius took off his hat. ‘Miss Treadway, I don’t mean to gossip. But I might have an idea of what has happened to your friend.’

Dr Jones Is Having Supper (#ulink_1e002b80-e5df-5ab8-9d4a-6538074613f6)

Wednesday, 10 November

Ottmar’s eyes followed every woman who walked past the cafe window. Samira had not come home from school and it was dark already. She’s still so small, he thought, my baby girl. He could see her at once as a baby and a five-year-old and a young woman of thirteen. He saw every part of her, every stage, every moment of strength and rage, determination. She was her mother’s daughter.

Ever since she’d turned sixteen, she’d been going out in the evenings, staying out late, school nights, every night.

‘Where have you been?’ they asked her as she wandered up the stairs to the flat at midnight or one o’clock.

‘Becky’s house.’ ‘Mary’s house.’ ‘I went to the late show with Bernie.’

‘Who’s Bernie?’ they asked.

‘Short for Bernadette.’

‘Where does she get the money?’ Ekin asked and Ottmar shook his head, too scared to suggest any of the possible answers that presented themselves.

Back in February, during Ramadan, Sami had told them that she would no longer be attending the mosque. Ekin, the only one of the family who bothered to fast during the day, screamed at her daughter: ‘Idiot! Do you want to burn in hell?’

‘I think I want to be a Marxist,’ Samira told her.

‘Then be a Muslim and a Marxist.’

Samira thought about this for a moment. ‘I don’t think I can.’

Ekin’s hands rose in the air and marshalled a heart suspended in space. ‘How can you turn your back on the love of Allah when nothing in the world is more beautiful?’

Her daughter stared back at her with a look of sheer bemusement.

Ottmar thought of Rashida in her posh girls’ school. And Samira, poor clever Samira, who hadn’t quite made the grade. He blamed himself, he blamed Ekin, he blamed the whole world. Neither Ekin nor he had been able to read English when they arrived so Sami had had to pull herself through school. Struggling and failing and making all the mistakes so that Rashida might succeed after her. Yet she was the clever one, Ottmar always felt this – Samira was the talker, the thinker. It was their fault she’d failed the eleven-plus and a piece of supreme injustice that Rashida had passed. Samira, who would have loved that girls’ school so much, who would have sucked up every piece of knowledge available, who would have carved a greater path in the world than the one she would carve now.

She’s only sixteen, he told himself: there’s time. But a terrible, sick part of himself said it was already too late. He’d had a clever uncle and a good mind but without the right education, without the private income, he’d had nothing to protect him. When the hard times came he had lived without a shell. He told his girls that in the Alabora he had built himself a little world from his dreams and that was – in part – true. The Alabora, with its turquoise walls and sunset-coloured chairs, its silver-framed mirrors and red and gold embroidered bunting was a vision from a dream he had; but it was a dream of childhood. It was a dream of visiting his uncle in Istanbul and sitting in the coffee shops watching the men smoking and playing chess. It was not, as Ottmar would have them believe, a dream that he wished to recreate in adult life.

He was a cafe owner – little more than a serf, what with business partners and taxes and the local council. His daughter did not tell her fellow students what her father did, though she did sometimes mention her great-uncle who had lectured on the epic poets in the great university at Istanbul. He would, he thought now, become the forgotten generation. Oh, Ottmar – he was the one who came from Cyprus to England. His great achievement: a boat ride across the sea.

***