Andrew Taylor
Bleeding Heart Square
For Ann and Christopher
…don’t go of a night into Bleeding Heart Square, It’s a dark, little, dirty, black, ill-looking yard, With queer people about… -Extracted with modest modifications from “The Housewarming!!: A Legend of Bleedingheart Yard” (The Rev’d Richard Harris Barham: The Ingoldsby Legends, or Mirth and Marvels, Third Series, 1847)
1
SOMETIMES you frighten yourself. So what is it, exactly? A punishment? A distraction? A relief? You’re not sure. You tell yourself that it happened more than four years ago, that it doesn’t matter anymore and nothing you can do can change a thing. But you don’t listen, do you? All you do is go back to that nasty little green book.
Thursday, 2 January 1930 Tomorrow I shall go to Bleeding Heart Square for the first time. It was young Mr. Orburn’s idea. I always think of him as young Mr. Orburn, though he must be 35 or 40 if he’s a day. He is young compared with his father, who used to call at my aunt’s, and she would give him Madeira and seed cake. All those years ago-how time flies. This is my first entry in the diary, and I feel rather awkward as though I were talking to someone I had only just met. My niece gave me the diary when I spent Christmas Day with my brother and his family. I suppose it was kind of them to ask me, and it was certainly better than having to eat my Christmas dinner at the Rushmere Hotel with the other residents who don’t have a family to ask them elsewhere. All the same, it was a little awkward. Anyway, this is the beginning of a new year and I’m going to put my best foot forward. I have made several resolutions-I shall be cheerful, I shall think of others less fortunate than myself and try to help them, I shall reread every book in the New Testament and make notes as I go. I shall keep this diary. I shall record in it interesting impressions, conversations, thoughts, etc. that come my way. I need to keep active because we all know who finds work for idle hands! So-back to Bleeding Heart Square. It’s such a strange name. I asked Mr. Orburn where it came from but he didn’t know. Memo to myself: find out what the name means.
It’s as if you hear her talking, as if she’s standing at your shoulder. When it’s really bad, you imagine you smell her perfume. You think her thoughts, you dream her dreams.
Now there’s a thought: Miss Philippa May Penhow is not dead, only sleeping.
At ten past three on Tuesday, 6 November 1934, Lydia Langstone fumbled in her handbag for the latchkey. The house loomed over her like a dirty wedding cake. A cold wind, flecked with rain, nipped at her ankles. In her haste, she dropped the key and found herself laughing with a sort of idiot joy as she stooped to pick it up.
Leaves shuffled along the pavement. The taxi pulled away from the curb and she glanced over her shoulder at the sound of its engine. The front door was several feet above the level of the pavement and framed by a pair of white pillars.
But this, she thought, will make everything all right. Now. At last.
The key turned in the lock. She pushed open the door. The house was silent, wrapped in the calm that descended on it between lunch and tea when for an hour or two the servants became invisible, wrapped in the mystery of their own lives.
Marcus’s hat lay on the polished chest at the foot of the stairs. For once she was pleased to see it. He had been lunching at his club and had said nothing about when he would return. She registered the presence of a second hat, one she did not recognize, but failed in her absorption to draw the obvious conclusion that its owner must be in the house too.
Marcus would be upstairs in his study or the drawing room. Still in her hat and coat, Lydia went in search of him. She ran up the stairs, which were far too large and imposing for the hall below and the landing above. It was that sort of house-it strove to impress and succeeded in sacrificing comfort and convenience.
On the landing, she hesitated a moment and then tried the drawing-room door. The room was empty, the fire unlit. She darted across to the study and opened the door without knocking. Marcus was sitting in one of the armchairs in front of the fire with a cigar in his hand and a glass of whisky at his elbow. He looked up at her and she stopped in the doorway. He stared at her, his face flushed and his eyes wide open.
The visitor stood up and turned toward her. He was slim and dark, with a small moustache and a face like a determined seal’s. Marcus, too, rose to his feet, though without enthusiasm, as if reluctantly obeying the dictates of a higher power.
“Ah, Lydia, my dear,” he said, articulating his words with the precision of the almost drunk. “I don’t think you know Rex Fisher.” He turned to his guest. “Rex, this is my wife.”
Fisher limped toward her, holding out his hand and smiling. “Indeed, we have met, Mrs. Langstone.”
“Of course we have, Sir Rex,” Lydia said. “You came down to Monkshill for a weekend. It must have been just after the war.”
They shook hands. Fisher had a trick of looking very keenly at you as if you were, for the moment, the most interesting thing in the world. It was at once flattering and alarming.
“And how are Lord and Lady Cassington?” he asked.
“Very well, thank you.” She smiled at him. “I know it must sound awfully rude, but would you mind if I took Marcus away for a moment? There’s something I need to tell him.”
Fisher stood back, the smile still in place. “Of course not, Mrs. Langstone.”
Marcus made an inarticulate sound that might have been a murmur of protest. But she gave him no time to think. She left the room and crossed the landing to the drawing room. She heard her husband apologizing to his guest, the closing of the study door and his footsteps behind her.
Once they were both in the drawing room, he shut the door. Irritation made him puff out his lips in what was almost a pout, and his eyes looked larger than ever. When they were children she had thought of it as his angry frog face, though of course she had never told him that. She realized with dismay that he was drunker than she had thought.
“You bloody little fool,” he said. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”
“Marcus, there’s something I-”
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” he interrupted in a low voice. “You’ve probably scuppered my political career before it’s even begun.”
“That’s nonsense, you know-”
“Rex has got Mosley’s ear. But he’s prickly as hell, always ready to take offense. And he was about to offer me-”
She took a step toward him, her hands outstretched. “You don’t understand,” she began. “I-”
“I understand only too well,” he snapped. “Marrying you was the worst thing I ever did in my life.”
It was as if her mind was seized by a sudden frost. She felt nothing but cold. She could not think, let alone move. She stared blankly at her husband. Something about her passivity seemed to enrage him further. He lunged forward and slapped her cheek with the palm of his right hand. It was a relatively light blow that made her head jerk to one side. She gasped and lifted her left hand to cover the spot where his blow had fallen.
“Dear Christ,” he said. “You’re such a silly little bitch.”
As he was speaking, she knew he was going to hit her again. It was in a sense a continuation of the first blow. Having slapped her cheek with the palm of his right hand, he reversed the thrust of his arm and increased the impetus of the swing. The back of his hand smashed into her cheekbone. The force of the blow was enough to drive her against a chair. The top of its seat caught her just below the knee. She lost her balance and fell inelegantly so her body sprawled partly on the floor and partly on the chair. A jolt ran through her. She cried out with the snaking pain it brought in its wake. She was dimly aware of Marcus standing over her.