Some Old Lover's Ghost (12 page)

‘Emily gave me one of her nicest hats, and lent me a pair of scissors. Then I ran to the station to catch the London train.’

‘Scissors?’ I asked, confused.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Tilda cut her hair in a third-class compartment of the London train. A woman sitting opposite her said, ‘You could get a nice price for that, love, in one of them London hairdresser’s,’ so she bundled the plait up in a scarf, and shoved it in her bag.

Liverpool Street Station was an inferno of black smoke and hissing steam. Tilda checked Emily’s instructions, and searched for the Underground train. Long moving staircases devoured her, a great serpent roared and rushed at her through the darkness. In the carriage, crushed between an enormously fat woman clutching a bag stuffed with newspapers and a city gentleman with a bowler hat, Tilda glanced at her reflection in the window and saw that her hair was two inches longer on one side than the other. She counted the stops: Moorgate, Barbican, Farringdon. Then the train spat her out onto the platform and she ran up the stairs.

Roland Potter’s address was 15 Pargeter Street. Tilda asked directions of passers-by. The streets were a cacophony of screaming engines and imperious car horns and news-vendors shouting in an unrecognizable language. The smell of the city – a thick blend of diesel and smoke and rotting vegetation – was new and
exciting. People hurried importantly, their expressions serious and preoccupied.

Fifteen Pargeter Street faced a square patched with sooty plane trees and gnarled hawthorns. Beside the front door were over half a dozen brass bells, with names scribbled on little cards beneath. Tilda found ‘Potter’, and pressed. There was a distant jangling, and, about five minutes later, footsteps on bare boards. The door opened.

Roland Potter was wearing a vest, trousers and braces. He looked as though he had just got out of bed. His eyelids struggled to prise themselves apart, and he said, gaping at her, ‘
Tilda
.’

‘Roland?’ Suddenly, she felt nervous. ‘Emily gave me your address. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Of course not. Come in. You must be frozen.’ Tilda stepped inside, and Roland shut the door behind her. ‘I apologize for the togs, but I’ve been covering the graveyard shift. Literally. Bodies in the mortuary … Follow me.’ His short, toffee-coloured hair was uncombed and stood up in spikes all over his head.

The house was a warren of winding stairs and dark, narrow passageways studded with doors. Passing one of the doors, Roland yelled, ‘A friend of mine, Anna!’ and muttered to Tilda, ‘Landlady. She likes to know what’s going on. I say, give me your bag. There’s miles of stairs.’

Roland’s room was on the third floor. He pushed open the door. ‘Sorry. Bit of a mess.’ The floor was littered with discarded socks and shirts, and the table, washstand and fire-surround heaved with dirty dishes. Roland shrugged a jacket over his vest. ‘Wasn’t expecting company. So sorry—’

‘Roland,
please
. It’s me who should be apologizing. Turning up like this …’

‘Oh no. I’m thrilled to see you. Really.’ Roland flung open a window, replacing the frowsty air with a cold breeze. ‘How’s Em?’

‘Emily is fine. Well – bored.’

‘She’ll grow out of it,’ said Roland, with elder brotherly lack of interest. He dumped a pile of books and newspapers from a chair to the floor. ‘Sit down, Tilda. Tea?’

Tilda nodded and looked out of the window. A milk cart, laden with empty bottles, clanked down the road, and children played tag in the square. She ran her fingers through her thick, bobbed hair, and knew that she had done something irretrievable, that she had changed her life, that she had started again. She had to swallow hard to suppress the sudden rush of grief and excitement.

Roland reappeared with the tea. ‘Shopping trip?’ he said tentatively, and Tilda shook her head.

‘I’ve come to stay. I’ve left home,’ she added, making it perfectly clear. ‘Emily thought you might know where I could find a room.’

His eyes widened. ‘I say … is it—’ He broke off. ‘Sorry. None of my business. Um.’ He thought for a moment. ‘There’s a little room on the second floor – a boxroom, really, absolutely minute. Anna keeps her dresses in it. Tell you what – finish your tea and we’ll go and see her.’

Tilda followed Roland back to the ground floor, where he tapped at a door. A voice invited them in. At first Tilda could not see anything. The curtains were drawn, and the room was illuminated only by the golden gleam of oil lamps. Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, she saw the beaded curtains, the gilt portraits, the embroidered screens and brass candlesticks, and the green parrot in a cage suspended from the ceiling.

Anna was seated in a corner of the room, swathed in shawls and beads. Shadows emphasized the high planes of her cheekbones and her long, slanted black eyes. In the dim light, Tilda could not guess her age.

‘Anna,’ said Roland, ‘let me introduce my friend, Miss Tilda Greenlees. Tilda, this is Anna. She has another name, but none of us can pronounce it. Anna – Tilda’s come to live in London, but she has nowhere to stay. I wondered about the boxroom … a bit small, I know, but she hasn’t a lot of luggage.’

‘Come here, child.’ Tilda stepped forward. Two thin, gloved palms were laid against her cheeks, tipping her face to the light.
‘Let me look at you. Aah—’ Anna’s cry was echoed by the parrot. ‘What have you done to your hair?’

Tilda took the scissors out of her pocket. ‘I cut it on the train.’

Anna’s tilted eyes narrowed. She looked up. ‘Run away, Roland darling – we do not need you. Tilda and I shall talk.’

Roland left the room. Anna said, ‘When I left Russia, I threw my rings onto the snow as I rode away. A diamond here, a sapphire there. I do believe in the romantic gesture.’ She rolled the r of ‘romantic’, making it last for an age. ‘Don’t you?’

Tilda smiled. Anna said, ‘Now, I shall tidy up your hair, and then we shall clear my dresses out of the boxroom. It is only a little room, but you are only a little girl. And then you shall tell me why you have run away from home. I suspect a man – a lover – no?’

Cooking supper that evening in the tiny shared kitchen, Roland told Tilda about the other tenants of 15 Pargeter Street.

‘There’s another Russian on the ground floor. Stefan something. Has a black beard, never says a word except to Anna. And a couple of ballet dancers – Maureen and June – on the first floor.’

A young man in a fraying jersey and corduroy trousers ambled into the kitchen.

‘Tilda, this is Michael Harris. He’s a chemistry student at Imperial College – makes foul stinks and tries to set the place on fire once in a while.’

‘Vile slander,’ said Michael amiably. He shook Tilda’s hand. ‘Are you planning to live in this hell-hole, Tilda, or are you very wisely just passing through?’

‘Tilda’s taken the boxroom on the second floor.’

‘Good grief. Brave girl.’

Roland placed a pan of water on the gas ring. ‘How many eggs, Tilda?’

‘Two, please, Roland.’

‘And there’s Fergus—’ Roland carefully lowered four eggs into the water. ‘Scots. Huge.’

‘Drinks a lot.’

‘He’s homesick, poor old Ferg.’

‘And Giles Parker has the room opposite me. He’s a poet, knows loads of frightfully famous people. And Celia. Michael is in love with her, aren’t you, Michael?’

‘Shut up, Roland.’ Michael opened a tin of soup.

‘Celia sleeps all day and works all night. She is terribly vague about what she does, but she is always stunningly glamorous.’ Roland scraped the black bits off the toast, and daubed it with butter. ‘That’s the lot.’

‘Max,’ said Michael.

‘Of course, Max. He has the attic. Max does some stuff for the paper. He’s away at the moment.’

‘Came back this morning,’ said Michael.

‘Oh. I might give him a shout. Then again …’ Roland dumped boiled eggs and toast on the table. ‘Tea’s ready, Tilda. Terrific fellow, Max.’

‘He’s a sarcastic bastard,’ said Michael, turning down the gas as his soup boiled over.

Half a dozen of June’s friends came round that evening with bottles of beer and cider. As the sleet stuck to the window panes, sliding down in small crystalline trails, they spilled from the kitchen into Michael’s room, sitting on stacks of books and papers. Roland brought down his gramophone, and Celia, wearing a chic little hat with a black velvet flower, called farewells as she left the house. The party sprawled through the rooms of the house, becoming noisier, happier, wilder.

Someone pushed a glass of cider into Tilda’s hands and she drank it, perched on a window sill, watching one of the ballet dancers’ friends mimic the prima ballerina: ‘Thirty-two fouettés, darling – Lesley can hardly manage half a dozen.’ The dancer was black-haired, dark-eyed, and wore a neat little knitted suit and smoked a cigarette in a holder.

‘So
unkind, Christine,’ said June, stuffing her hands in her mouth to stop herself laughing.

The night became for Tilda a series of vignettes: herself and Roland foxtrotting along the corridor; Michael making cocoa in the kitchen with a flask and retort; Fergus, the Scotsman, singing while Stefan played ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ on the balalaika. Tilda drank cider and smoked a cigarette. Michael wandered off to find her another drink. From the doorway, someone called out, ‘Stop this bloody racket, can’t you?’ and there was a chorus of groans and whistles.

‘Too boring, Max.’

‘Have a drink, for heaven’s sake.’

Max was in his mid to late twenties, Tilda guessed, and he had straight silky dark hair, a quarter-inch of stubble on his chin, and the red-eyed, pale-faced look of a man seriously overdrawn on sleep. He was wearing battered corduroy trousers and a white shirt, unbuttoned, and his chest and feet were bare.

‘Max,
darling,’
said the black-haired dancer, pouting. ‘You should have told me you were back. I’ve missed you, sweetie.’ Christine ran her fingers through his hair, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

Fergus shouted, ‘A drink for the man!’ but Max shook his head.

‘Michael is making cocoa,’ said June, and Max, muttering, shuffled away.

Anna materialized out of the lower reaches of the house, swathed in sparkling shawls and iridescent beads, the parrot cage clasped in her arms. The speed and noise of the party ratcheted up a notch. The hands of the clock showed that it was half past one in the morning. Roland disappeared in search of more beer, leaving Tilda sandwiched between Fergus and one of the dancers. Fergus’s hand gripped her waist too tightly, and when he leaned over and kissed her she began to feel suddenly rather sick. Sliding out of the circle, she left the room.

The corridor was dark and cool. Tilda’s head spun. Two entwined black figures lounged against the banister, their voices piercing the darkness. She recognized Max and Christine. Christine’s back was to her.

‘Who’s the baby?’

‘One of Roland’s.’ Christine giggled.

Tilda stood, frozen in the passageway. Christine’s voice floated back to her through the darkness.

‘She looks like a gypsy, doesn’t she, Max darling? She must have bought that dress at a Salvation Army jumble sale. And those boots!’

Tilda walked back down the corridor to the kitchen. It was empty now, littered with cocoa powder and milk bottles and fragments of biscuit. Standing at the sink, she watched the tears splash against the dirty cups and slide into the murky water.

A voice said, ‘She’s a bitch, you know. You shouldn’t take any notice.’

She spun round. Max stood in the doorway.

Tilda said stiffly, ‘I’m not crying. The cigarette smoke has made my eyes water.’

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘As you wish,’ and left the kitchen.

He found Roland in Giles’s room, playing poker. Bending over, Max whispered in Roland’s ear, ‘Your little friend’s weeping into the kitchen sink,’ and then, having done his duty, crawled up the attic stairs, kicked the door shut behind him, and sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, savouring the comparative quiet.

Because he knew that he wouldn’t sleep, and because images from the month he had just spent abroad flickered constantly in his head, Max lit himself a cigarette and went to the window. The sleet had chilled to snow, which dissolved as soon as it struck the pavement. The tops of the plane trees, level with his window, shivered in the wind. The attic rooms were always cold, but Max never noticed. They were his sanctuary. None of the parties which ran through the remainder of 15 Pargeter Street like a wildly infectious disease were ever allowed to spread to the attic. The two rooms were tidy, ordered, almost Spartan. Only Anna ever came up here, once every couple of months or so, to share a cup
of lemon tea and reminisce about her past. None of the others – not Fergus, nor Michael, nor that idiot Roland Potter who’d let that poor kid get plastered tonight, were ever invited up to the attic. Nor Christine: when Max slept with Christine – something he did every now and then but always slightly regretted – he did so at her rooms in Fulham.

The weather did not look bad enough to prevent him going to Brighton the following day. He had missed Christmas: he felt a mixture of guilt and relief. Max glanced at his watch. It was two o’clock in the morning, and he knew that if he started work now he could finish the article, give it to Roland to hand in to the rag, and catch the seven-thirty from Victoria. Then they’d be able to make a day of it.

Lighting himself a second cigarette from the butt of the first, Max sat down at the table and began to type.

The snow cleared overnight, and Brighton sparkled in the clear blue early morning light. Max pressed his finger on the doorbell, and from inside heard yapping.

The door opened. ‘Max, darling!’

‘Mother.’ He hugged her; the dog scrabbled at his legs.

‘Brutus,’ said his mother feebly to the dog, a little, yelping white-furred creature. She stood back, and Max looked into the flat beyond.

Her eyes followed his gaze. She said quickly, ‘I haven’t been well, darling—’