Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars. Miranda Emmerson

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СКАЧАТЬ without sugar. She had carried with her a copy of the book she had treated herself to from the basement of a Charing Cross bookshop and Ottmar had read over her shoulder words he loved though hardly knew in English.

      ‘Oh, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise

      To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;

      One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;

      The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.’

      Anna sat quietly, politely, as he read aloud from her book and then she turned and smiled at him and he felt unutterably foolish. He cleared her plate, though he never normally waited on the tables, and then he begged her pardon.

      ‘I got … I got carried away. Not so many people read poetry.’

      ‘Even here?’ she asked.

      ‘In my coffee house?’

      ‘In London. In Covent Garden. I thought it would have been full of poets.’

      ‘If it is they are not coming into my coffee house. London is full of …’ Ottmar waved his hands, tipping the spoon from Anna’s saucer. He bent down to retrieve it from under a table then knelt for a moment on the tiled floor. He looked up at Anna and she stared back at him. ‘London is full of … hare-brained people. Chancers. Gamblers. Opium fiends.’ He laughed to himself at his own exaggeration.

      ‘You make it sound Victorian.’

      ‘Do I?’

      ‘Like something out of Conan Doyle.’

      ‘I don’t—’

      ‘He wrote Sherlock Holmes.’

      ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles.’

      ‘That kind of thing.’

      ‘My uncle read me Omar Khayyám. In Arabic. Not Turkish or even English. I tried so hard to understand it. I would ask him what it all meant but he always said the pleasure was in the finding out … the discovery. He said you can keep some poems by you your whole life and they will only reveal parts of themselves to you when you are ready to hear them. So at twenty I would understand one little part of it and then at forty something else. I’m probably not making any sense.’

      ‘Not at all. You’re making lots of sense. I think … I think that would make me impatient. I don’t want to understand poetry when I’m fifty. I want to understand it now. What if I don’t make it to fifty? Do I have to be cheated out of all that understanding?’

      Ottmar smiled apologetically. ‘I think perhaps you do. We can only grow old in days and weeks and months. There is not a short cut. Nobody can know the world at fifteen.’

      ‘When I was at school it used to drive me up the wall listening to the teachers go on about the folly of youth. If someone is ugly you don’t say to them: “Hey you, stop being ugly over there!” so why is it okay to mock the young for being inexperienced?’

      ‘I was not meaning to mock you, miss!’

      ‘No! Sorry. I didn’t mean you were. I meant that it sometimes feels hard to be young when no one has a good word to say about youth.’

      Ottmar set down her cup and saucer. He frowned at someone out of her line of sight. ‘If we are grumpy it is because we had to leave the party and you are still there.’

      ‘And the party is a stupid party?’

      Ottmar laughed. ‘Yes. A very stupid party. Very loud and drunken and disgusting.’ His eyes crinkled in all directions. ‘But so much fun!’

      Anna laughed and Ottmar felt his heart glow in his chest.

      ‘Will you have anything else, miss? We have cake. We have sweets. We have baklava.’

      Anna held her book at arm’s length and glared at it. ‘I spent my lunch money on something else to cheer me up. But your coffee was wonderful.’

      ‘Why do you need cheering up? Is it a stupid boy?’

      ‘A stupid boy of fifty.’

      ‘Too old for you. Forget him.’

      ‘I was called to interview at Jamiesons on Waldorf Street. And I borrowed five pounds from my landlady to buy this suit because it said: “Professional position. Business attire is requisite.” But when I got there, there were fifteen girls in the waiting room and I had hardly sat down when Mr Jamieson said: “You mustn’t be too disappointed. We had no idea we’d be so popular.” And that was that. With lunch and fares I’m out by six pounds and five shillings and I can’t conjure that kind of money out of the air.’

      ‘You need a job?’

      ‘I only have a short-term contract and it’s almost over.’

      ‘We have a job.’

      ‘Do you?’

      ‘Waitressing. It’s not professional, I’m afraid. I’m not sure what you’d do with the suit.’

      ‘I don’t mind. I mean, I have waitressed before. How many days would you want me?’

      ‘All week. Six days. You could start this weekend. In the evenings. If that was convenient.’

      ‘That would be very convenient. My name is Anna. And thank you so much.’

      ‘I think you should have some baklava to celebrate.’

      ‘I’m sorry. I’ve nothing left to spend.’

      ‘It’s on the house,’ said Ottmar expansively. ‘Our waiters eat for free.’

      This was not strictly true.

      ***

      Anna caught the bus from Forest Hill to Cambridge Circus every evening at 5 p.m. She worked from 6 p.m. until 11 p.m. and then stayed on until midnight helping to clean up and tidy and sitting around with the other waiters and waitresses playing pontoon for matchsticks and drinking the ends of bottles. Then she walked down to Trafalgar Square and sat for an hour in a shelter on the east side near St Martin-in-the-Fields waiting for a night bus to take her near to home. She became fascinated by the statue of Edith Cavell and would stand at the base of it in the freezing cold of a December morning, looking up.

       Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.

      Sometimes those words made her cry. The tears would come uncontrollably and they would not stop. And in those moments Anna found forgiveness and it made her free. But they were only moments. Forgiveness is a hard thing to hang on to.

       The Deplorable Word

      Monday, 8 November

      Orla Hayes climbed the stairs СКАЧАТЬ