Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars

Aloysius insisted on paying both their fares. ‘I’m dragging you across London. It’s the least I can do. Really. We’ll have a little walk at the other end unless we change but I love this journey, there’s this view over the river and … You don’t mind a little walk?’ Anna shook her head with a smile, the bell clanged, the 2A drew into a stream of traffic and they went to find themselves seats upstairs.

For the first few minutes neither of them spoke. In that strange and hurried conversation on the corner of the Edgware Road Anna had found herself caught up in the excitement of chasing Iolanthe. At last she had a clue, a lead; she knew something Sergeant Hayes did not. She had sped through the streets to Baker Street, Aloysius taking her arm as they crossed each road. She had felt daring and unconstrained. A single woman running through the darkness with a handsome black man at her side. She hoped that people would see them and wonder who they were. She hoped that people thought they might be lovers.

But now, under the unromantic glow of London bus lighting, she felt sweaty and unkempt. The two men travelling at the front of the bus had turned round and stared at her and Aloysius and then they’d laughed a hard and dirty laugh that had no hint of generosity about it. Aloysius himself seemed much more uncomfortable now that they had settled in for the journey and when the men started making monkey noises he asked her: ‘Would you like me to go and sit in the seat behind? Then no one would think anything about it.’

‘No!’ said Anna, though a little part of her wanted to answer ‘Yes’. Aloysius touched her hand very briefly then he picked up his briefcase and slid quietly into the seat behind her. Anna turned, knowing that she should say something but Aloysius smiled a weary smile at her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘We can still talk.’

Anna turned in her seat so that they would be face to face and she’d feel less ashamed in her acceptance that they should sit apart.

‘Will you tell me again what the man in the club said? It was so loud on that corner I only caught half of it.’