‘Yeah,’ he said, after a while. ‘Betty said something.’
‘What?’ said Kate.
Andrew nodded, and looked at his feet. ‘Hey, it’s no big deal. She said some guy screwed you over. Something bad happened to you in London.’
She loved the way certain Americans always said the word ‘London’, investing it with a certain amount of reverence. ‘You could say that,’ she said. She winced, and looked up at him, not sure how he was taking all of this. ‘Hey –’ she began.
‘It’s no big deal,’ he said. ‘Really, it isn’t.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘You wanna cab?’
‘Sure,’ said Kate. ‘That’d be –’
Andrew whistled, and almost immediately, as if he were calling up the Batmobile, a cab zoomed around the corner. ‘So,’ he said. He held the door open. ‘See you around, I guess.’
‘Sure,’ said Kate. ‘Yeah. Upper West Side, Eightieth and Broadway. Thanks.’
The cab pulled off; through its greasy window she watched Andrew as he turned and walked off. Kate touched her fingers to her lips as the car sped through mid-town. She was shaking, and she didn’t know why.
The traffic was light, miraculously. Please go through Times Square, she willed the cab driver. Please, go on. Out of the window the lights of Broadway grew closer and they headed past Macy’s, and a sense of disgust came over her. Why had she let that happen with Andrew? Why couldn’t she just have kissed him and jumped into a cab? Maybe arranged to see him when she got back? Why did she have to behave like that? What was she going to say to him, to Betty?
I’m too good at running away, she said softly under her breath. She put her head against the glass, watching the reflection of her skin as the streets rushed by and they came to Times Square. Kate loved Times Square, much to Oscar and her mother’s horror. She couldn’t tell them why she loved it, quite, it never seemed to make sense. She loved the anonymity of it, the adrenaline that came with it. You could be wholly yourself, a unit of one, walking on its concrete, neon-lit stage. You could stand in the centre of the traffic all day and twirl around – and no one would look at you. She loved the contradiction of it – when she first came to see her mother, and went looking for Times Square, she had spent ages trying to find an actual square. She didn’t know now what she’d been picturing in her head: a stately square of London houses, with a garden in the centre, railings around the edge, perhaps? And when she’d realized this was it, this grey meeting of roads, stretched out over three or so blocks, she had laughed. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen before, it was utterly unlike London.
Twenty-four hours’ time, and she’d be on the plane. Twenty-four hours’ time, and her dad’s stay in hospital would nearly be over. Less than forty-eight hours till she saw him
again. Till she was back there again … The lights of Manhattan flickered and flashed into Kate’s cab, the theatre signs, the road signs, the bars and restaurants and clubs, flickering on her face, keeping her alert, but then, suddenly, she was very tired.
There was a backlog at Heathrow, and Kate’s plane circled over London, coming in from the east, flying straight across the centre of the city. It was the perfect bird’s-eye view. Kate shifted in her window seat, her hands resting lightly on the stack of magazines she’d been reading, and stared down at the view, craning her neck in excitement. The huge jet followed the path of the Thames, its tiny black shadow flickering through the streets and places below. The river was bluer than she remembered. She’d forgotten how green it all was, how many open spaces there were. They flew over the Houses of Parliament, glowing gold in the early morning light, as the centre of the city stretched away in front of them. Kate twisted in her seat, following the path of Regent Street all the way up to Regent’s Park, the Telecom Tower, King’s Cross away to the side, as they headed west.
It looked like a toytown, Legoland, and she couldn’t reconcile it with what had gone on before. In those tiny streets below her, in that park there, in that tall building just beyond the river – yes, it was all still there.
The wheel on Kate’s trolley didn’t work. Of course it didn’t,
they never did. It got stuck, and whirled around on its own, and consequently the trolley made a loud, juddering noise, like a goods train thundering through the night, which caused the other passengers and those waiting to greet them to look at Kate with a stare of disapproval, as if she personally was making the noise herself, had taken a large mallet to it and bashed it repeatedly, to cause maximum annoyance to others.
Kate never understood people who said airports were full of romance or love. Not only had no one ever met her at an airport (except her mother, and that hardly counted), she wouldn’t want them to meet her. Reunited with the love of your life under polystyrene ceiling tiles, strip lighting and grey upholstery? No thanks. She struggled with the trolley, flaring her elbows out to manoeuvre it around corners, trying not to let hopelessness and the strangeness of the situation overwhelm her. Taxi. She needed a taxi. A good old black London cab and she pushed on through to the arrivals hall, vaguely registering the expectant faces of people waiting as she went. Kate had learnt, now. She didn’t even bother to look around. She had long given up playing that game in her head.
It was a sunny day. Warm and fresh, with a cool little breeze whipping about. It smelled of spring, of something in the air, even there at the airport. Spring had come to London, and she felt it as she crossed the tarmac to the cab rank, as a man in a blue sou’wester waved her into a cab, and nodded politely as she said ‘thank you’. He helped her in with her bags, the cab driver tutted proprietorially over her and said, ‘Mind your head, love,’ as they both heaved the heavier of her suitcases into the back with her. She thought of JFK, of how fast it all was, how the director of the cab rank barked questions at you, of how fast the cab drivers went, manically swerving from lane to lane, talking wildly to their friends on an earpiece.
But although she kept expecting something dramatic to happen, for someone to leap at her and stop her, or yell at her, nothing did, and so the taxi moved off, gliding along smoothly. They reached the Heathrow roundabout, where the daffodils bobbed in the sunny breeze and the motorway opened up in front of her and they headed into London.
On a grey motorway, how prosaic, but there she was, and as the redbrick streets flew past she looked for the old familiar signs, like the old Lucozade sign, but that was gone; the blue and gold dome of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Fuller’s Brewery at the roundabout. She stopped trying to think and simply sat there, drinking it all in, wondering how she’d got there, and most of all, how her father was, and what would happen now.
And then suddenly they were there, turning off Maida Vale, into the long tree-lined boulevard, where the buds on the elms were just visible, and they were grinding to a halt outside the red-brick building, and the bin with the face painted onto the lid was still outside. Kate didn’t get out of the car. She looked around only as the cab driver pulled her bags out onto the pavement, puffing, and said,
‘Alright, love?’
He opened the door, regarding her curiously. She knew he was probably thinking, Uh-oh. Is she actually a bit … mad. Kate blinked at him, suddenly, as if he were speaking Martian.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
‘Is this where you want?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate, stepping out onto the pavement, though actually what she really wanted to say was, I’ve changed my mind, can we go back to the airport? ‘Yes, it is.’
She gave him money and thanked him; he drove away, with a hand-wave out of the window. She felt like an alien, she couldn’t remember how to behave. She looked down at
the paving slabs on the pavement. Rectangular, scratchy dark grey, slightly cracked. It was silly. She’d forgotten what they were like here.
Shoulders squared, Kate picked up the bags, and stood at the foot of the stairs up to the hallway of the flats. A bird called in a nearby tree, a large black car hummed next to her, its engine running, but otherwise it was silent.
It’s strange, the things that are stored in your brain, but that you haven’t thought about for years. The black front door of her old building was really heavy, on a spring. You had to wedge your body really firmly against the door to stop it clapping shut in your face; she forgot. It banged shut behind Kate, practically trapping her with its force, as she dragged her bags into the hallway and looked rather blankly around her, at the large, beige, sunny hall, quiet and dusty in the cool sunshine.
How she was going to get her huge suitcase upstairs? The thought of lugging it to the first floor, her body already bone-tired, made her feel rather blue. Impossible not to think about the first time she’d come here, with him, impossible not to think about how it had been, the day they’d moved in, over three years ago, in deepest winter. Then the pigeonholes had been over there; they’d moved around now. Kate peered inside the box marked Flat 4; two catalogues, five pizza delivery leaflets, four minicab cards, three Chinese takeaway menus, and a plethora of random letters addressed to assorted names she didn’t know, and some bills, addressed to her, greeted her. Flat 4’s pigeon-hole had obviously become the storage depot for everyone’s unwanted post; and Gemma the tenant had only moved out last week. Lovely.
Kate looked down at her bags, and decided she’d deal with the post later. She stuffed the letters back in their box and pulled her suitcases across the hall. She was not usually
given to moments of girlish weakness, but she was suddenly overcome with fatigue. Up till now coming back to London had been anonymous, impersonal. The taxi driver, the man at customs, the lady on the passport desk; they didn’t know her. Now she was here and she was in the flat where people knew who she was. This was when it started to get … messy. Somewhere above her a door opened; she heard voices. Kate shrank back against the wall, like a prisoner on the run. Perhaps this was a mistake, a big mistake, perhaps she should just turn around and …
Suddenly there was a loud noise, a thudding sound, and boots on feet thumping across the landing, coming downstairs, several pairs of feet, she thought. Kate pushed her bag up into the nook by the bannisters and peered up. There was muffled cursing; they were obviously carrying something heavy, and she heard an old, familiar voice say,
‘Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll see you later then.’
Kate peered up through the bannisters. There was a coffin coming down the stairs. A coffin. She blinked, and to her alarm an hysterical, horrifying urge to laugh bubbled up inside her, before she swallowed it down, frantically scrabbling to push her suitcase out of the way.
‘Can you open the door, Fred?’
‘No mate,’ Fred answered. ‘You’ve got the front, you take it.’
‘It’s heavy, remember?’
They were turning the last corner, outside her own flat, just appearing at the top of the stairs, and Kate called up,
‘I’m down here. I’ll hold the door open.’
‘She’s down there,’ said the other man. ‘There’s someone down there.’
‘Thanks love,’ Fred said. ‘We’ve got a coffin here, you know.’
‘Yes, a coffin,’ the other man added.
‘Yes,’ said Kate gravely, wondering if she were being filmed as an extra in a hidden-camera Pinter play. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stay here.’
She leant against the door, holding it flat open, and frowned at the driver, who had left the engine running, which always annoyed her. Questions ran through her head. Who was it? What did you say in the way of pleasantries to undertakers? And how did you tell someone to turn their engine off without sounding self-righteous? She caught the thought escaping into the dim recesses of her mind that she didn’t think like this in New York.
It was, indeed, a coffin, sleek and brown, borne gently by its bearers to the bottom of the stairs, held only at a slight diagonal angle. She stared at it as they reached the bottom step and gingerly readjusted their load.
‘Been on holiday?’ Fred said politely. He nodded at her suitcase as they walked towards the front door.
‘I’ve been away,’ said Kate vaguely. ‘Just got back, yes. This is – er – sad.’ She gestured pathetically at the coffin. ‘Who – who is it?’
‘Old lady who lived upstairs. Had a husband. Nice fellow.’ Fred jerked his head up, indicating where in the labyrinthine view they might live. Kate followed his gaze.
They passed through the front door and left her standing there on the threshold.
‘Second floor?’ said Kate, her voice faint.
‘Yep,’ said Fred, nodding kindly at her.
‘Mrs – not Mrs Allan?’
‘Yes, love,’ he answered her. ‘Sorry. Not the best welcome back for you, is it now?’
Kate loved him then for apologizing, as if he were personally responsible for Mrs Allan’s death. She smiled at him and shook her head, as if to say please, don’t worry. She followed
them onto the pavement as they slid the coffin gently into the hearse – she hadn’t realized it was a hearse.
‘There he is,’ one of them said under his breath to the other. ‘Ah,’ and they looked up. There in the window, two floors above Kate’s, an old face looked out through the glass. She recognized him then, of course she did – it was Mr Allan. Mr Allan pressed a hand to the glass, looking down at the street, his face impassive. He was much older than she remembered.
The car drove off. Kate raised a hand in greeting to Mr Allan, not sure whether to smile or not. Once again, she wasn’t sure what to do, how to behave. What did you yell up to a neighbour in circumstances like this? ‘Hiya! How are you! Haven’t seen you for ages! I know, I moved to New York. So, what’s new with you? Apart from your wife dying?’
She hadn’t spoken to them since she’d left. They’d written to her in New York. Kind, sweet Mrs Allan had sent her newspaper clippings, articles she thought she might like, but Kate hadn’t written back, and the communication had dried up. Mr Allan’s face now looked down at her, grey and yellow through the sun on the glass, and she waved again, uncertainty flowering within her, and looked around to realize she was standing on the pavement alone. She pointed in, towards the flats, as if to say I’m back, and looked up – but he had gone.
‘I’ll –’ she started to say out loud. I’ll see you later. Climbing up the steps, she shut the front door behind her, picked up her heavy bag and dragged it upstairs.