Bleeding Heart Square (3 page)

Lydia was reading
A Room of One's Own
and feeling increasingly envious of Mrs. Woolf:

My aunt...died by a fall from her horse while she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy reached me one night about the same time that the act was passed that gave votes to women. A solicitor's letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever. Of the two--the vote and the money--the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more important.

Five hundred a year? The money shone like a mirage, a glittering pile of gold, in Lydia's mind. If a woman had that, she could do almost anything she wanted. She dropped the book on the table, dislodging puffs of dust and tobacco ash.

Her father had gone out, and she had the flat to herself. She wandered from the sitting room to her father's bedroom, which was larger than her own and looked out on a gloomy little yard surrounded on all sides by high walls of blackened brick. It was sparsely equipped with the sort of furniture Lydia would have considered inadequate for a servant's bedroom. The air smelled of stale cigar smoke, and there were two empty brandy bottles in the wastepaper basket. She resisted the temptation to look inside the chest of drawers and the wardrobe, partly because she felt it beneath her to pry, but more because she was afraid of what she might find. She pitied her father but pity was perilously close to disgust.

In the sitting room, kitchen and bedrooms, every surface seemed covered with a fine layer of sooty grime, slightly oily. Lydia found a moderately clean dishcloth under the kitchen sink and wiped the woodwork around the sitting-room windows. It was much harder work than she had expected, and much dirtier. Before moving to the mantelpiece, she tied up her hair with a silk headscarf. How did people manage without servants, she wondered for the first time in her life, and indeed how did servants themselves manage?

There were footsteps on the landing and she looked round. The door was open, and Mrs. Renton was staring at Lydia kneeling by the hearth. The old woman sniffed and moved away without speaking. But a few minutes later, she returned with an enamel bucket in her hand and a pinafore over her arm. In the bucket were dusters and rags. She put down the bucket in the doorway and draped the pinafore over the back of the nearest chair.

"The dustbins are out the back in the yard," Mrs. Renton said. "There's a door at the end of the hall."

She nodded at Lydia and marched away. The work seemed a little easier after that, and not just because she was better equipped for it. When she had finished the dusting, she filled the bucket and washed the windows. Even that was harder than it looked because one tended to smear the dirt on the glass rather than remove it.

Lydia worked on until her stomach told her it was lunchtime. There was still no sign of Captain Ingleby-Lewis--she suspected she might find him in the Crozier but she didn't want to put the theory to the test--and nothing to eat in the flat, except those wretched sardines. She would have to go out again. As she made herself ready, she noticed that there was a sooty line on her skirt. She tried to remove it without success. As for her hands, they looked red and wrinkled, like a washerwoman's. She had another vivid mental image of Frogmore Place, this time of her bedroom: the dressing table, with its array of silver-backed brushes and pots and jars; her clothes laid out for her, with her stockings rolled ready for her to put on; and Susan, her maid, hovering near the door, hands clasped, eyes down.

She found a shopping basket in the kitchen and went outside. The fog had lifted but the rain had grown heavier, and her feet slithered on the cobbles. She heard singing, faint but dreary, and guessed it came from the chapel. She walked to the Blue Dahlia in Fetter Passage again. Going there had almost become a habit, and a habit of any sort was reassuring in a world where almost everything was strange.

The cafe was crowded and full of noise and smoke. She found a place at a table laid for two. She was surprised to find herself much hungrier than usual and ordered cutlets and peas, with plum pie and custard to follow. It would cost her half a crown, plus perhaps a tip. In the last forty-eight hours, she had become conscious about money in a way she had never been before. Soon she would have to sell some jewelry.

While she was waiting for her cutlets, she returned to the crossword in
The Times
. Instead of attempting the clues, however, she jotted down items on a shopping list. Tea. Milk. Bread. As she was wondering whether she should economize and buy margarine rather than butter, somebody brushed her arm.

"Excuse me," a man said. "Do you mind if I join you? All the other tables are full."

She looked up and saw the young man who had come to inquire about the vacant flat. She had seen him in the cafe before, of course, so perhaps he worked nearby. She nodded and went back to her shopping list. He sat down and ordered the cutlets as well. After a moment, he cleared his throat.

"I say, I don't mean to interrupt, but didn't I see you earlier today at that house in Bleeding Heart Square?"

She looked up. His face was long and bony, with strongly marked eyebrows arching over the unexpectedly blue eyes. There was a small red scab on his jawbone, as if he had nicked himself while shaving that morning. No one could call him handsome but it was a face you could look at more than once. Should you wish to do so, of course.

"Yes--you came to ask about the flat upstairs."

He nodded. "What's it like? Have you seen it?"

"No." She crumbled her roll and allowed her eyes to drift back to
The Times
.

"Curious name, isn't it?"

"Bleeding Heart Square?"

"Yes--do you know where it comes from?"

She shook her head.

"That's what I like about London," he went on, showing no sign of discouragement. "These old corners with layers of history attached to them. They seem to exist in more dimensions than most places do."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not quite sure I know. I suppose I mean it exists in time as well as space. So there's always more to it than there seems. Only you don't quite know what."

She burst out laughing, not so much at what he said, though that was ridiculous enough, but at his face, whose features had realigned themselves into an expression of mock horror. Rather to her relief, the waitress arrived with her cutlets, which gave her the opportunity to break off the conversation. She ate a few mouthfuls and returned to the crossword.

"Not shown by game birds (two words) (5, 7)." The answer came to her in a pleasing flash. "White feather." She penciled the words into the grid and wondered how the man made his living. His own lunch arrived and for a few minutes they ate in silence. He could be worse, Lydia conceded--at least his table manners were reasonable. His hands were clean but his arms were too long for his sleeves, and the cuffs of his shirt were frayed and slightly grubby.

He coughed. "I don't know if I should mention this, but six down is 'hostile.'"

Startled, she looked up.

"Sorry," he said, and his face became a clown-like mask of unhappiness. "It's a bad habit. I can't help reading things upside down. Actually, it's one of the more useful things I learned at school."

"I was looking at the clues across first, actually." Nevertheless she filled in the solution to six down.

"It's very trusting of you," he said. "May I see it the right way up? Just to make sure."

There was no help for it. Lydia pushed the newspaper toward him. He would see her embryonic shopping list in the margin of the newspaper. The forced intimacy suddenly jarred on her. It was as though she were a silly little shopgirl, and he were trying to pick her up. Why the hell had she found the man interesting? Perfectly pleasant in his way, no doubt, but--well, not to mince one's words--rather common.

"Yes," he said. "'An exclamation at a crossing place is not friendly.' 'Ho' and 'stile,' you see. It can't be anything else."

Her pudding arrived. She ate it quickly and decided against coffee. When she pushed back her chair to leave, he put down his fork and rose politely to his feet. He handed her the newspaper.

"I hope I haven't spoiled your crossword," he said.

Lydia shook her head but avoided looking at him. She picked up her basket and said goodbye. As she left the cafe, she was sure that many eyes were watching her. The clerks and lady typists knew she didn't belong here, and so did the man who had shared her table.

The next forty-five minutes were devoted to shopping, which was on the whole an unsatisfactory experience, by turns mystifying and mortifying. How much bread should she buy? How did you tell whether a loaf was stale merely by looking at it? Was the milk fresh? It seemed to her that the shopkeepers treated her with a mixture of surliness and disdain.

With the basket on her arm growing steadily heavier, she walked through the rain to Bleeding Heart Square. The wind was stronger, and the umbrella swayed and bucked in her hand. A taxi had parked in the lee of the chapel, opposite the door of number seven. She put the shopping on the doorstep and opened her handbag, looking for the latchkey. There were footsteps behind her.

"Lydia!"

Panic surged through her. She wanted to scream. Marcus came up beside her and clumsily embraced her. She edged away from his arm.

"Lydia, darling. I didn't realize."

The smell of him turned her stomach. "Realize what?"

He stared down at her, his big pink face alive with concern, hope and even perhaps a form of love. "Oh darling. I didn't realize. It's wonderful news."