Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars. Miranda Emmerson

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

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