Time Squared by Lesley Krueger

Author:Lesley Krueger [Krueger, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781773058061
Google: qgw_EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2021-09-27T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

Kate had met them at Euston Station. Mrs. Crosby had taken their baggage off in a trap, planning to check into their hotel before going to the Ministry. David wasn’t long out of hospital, and Eleanor agreed to walk with Kate to his new studio in one of the enormous and shabby Victorian warehouses along the canal. Whenever she took the train to London, Eleanor looked out at the brick monstrosities and wondered what on earth went on in there. Hundreds, maybe thousands of windows, all of them too filthy to see through.

As they left the station, Kate told her that David had taken a room on a sixth floor, despite his painful leg, wanting something high enough to look over the other old buildings. They’d cleaned the windows, and afterwards he’d told Kate that the light off the greasy canal had the same jaundiced phosphorescence as the light in No Man’s Land. He was pleased. His nightmares got worse. Kate said it was like that now.

She led Eleanor into a warren of streets behind the station. Little sunlight made it to the ground, and the cobbles were green in the gutters, pond scum hanging from the metal sewerage grates. The whole area stank of wet horses and algae and mouldy bread. Sometimes when they passed an open door, there was a fugitive smell of hot metal. The streets were empty, although once a gang of workmen jostled around a corner and chaffed them—“Eh, luv, you lookin’ for summut, luv, lookin’ for me, luv . . .”—even though they were grandfathers or weedy lads, too old or young to serve.

Kate’s route was intricate, sometimes taking them through alleys barely wide enough for a single file of workmen to pass. Eleanor was uneasily aware she could never find her way out on her own. Turning a corner, they came across a solitary man leaning against a wall, who sang out in a fine tenor when he saw them, “There’s a rose that grows in No Man’s Land, and it’s beautiful to see.”

The singer was a uniformed soldier smoking a cigarette, his legs crossed, a wound badge visible. Eleanor smiled, but the soldier grabbed himself and thrust a handful at her, asking if she wanted some, the army had the rest. They hurried off, although Kate insisted that the men were harmless, ignore them, and remained intent on explaining Arden’s war and what he was painting before they got to the studio.

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