had no one.
Mr Benn and Mr George had lost the laid-back sunshine swagger of their holiday. Back in North West London they had become different people. Or, rather, they had settled back into the lives they had paused. The gentlemen owned a large Georgian terraced home set a little way back from the main Heath Street that led into Hampstead. The bohemian suburb attracted a vibrant palette of artists, many of whom came to call at our house, each more peculiar than the previous. Mr Benn and Mr George ran an art gallery on one of the back streets behind Piccadilly. I navigated my way there on my first day off. I stood upon the wooden slats of the tube carriage of the Bakerloo line, turning in a pitiful performance of confidence. Truth was, I could barely read the map in time to work out which stop was mine, so thick was the tiny carriage of others’ cigarette smoke. It reminded me of my father.
When I did arrive I was too embarrassed to step inside. I remained on the pavement, ignoring the rain. I stared at the painting in the window. Giant swirls of yellow with flecks of turquoise stuck to the canvas in stubborn blobs. Angry spurts of red protested across the central spiral. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Nothing before me could, in my opinion, be judged as art, yet the image was intimidating in the compelling way it hooked my gaze. The artist and frame had had a fight, and I couldn’t decide who had won.
I left the stalemate and found a tiny booth in the sweaty New Piccadilly Café, sandwiched between the Piccadilly Theatre and a number of salubrious shop fronts. It was hard to decipher the goods on offer, but I had a hunch it had a lot to do with the young women huddled nearby.
It took me a couple of minutes to realize that I had understood every word of what the proprietor had said to the waitress. Before I congratulated myself on my progress in English it dawned on me that the dialect I had tuned in to was Neapolitan.
‘Signori – you from the old country, si?’
I looked up at the man, unsure of what my answer ought to be. ‘Positano.’
‘I know a Napoletana when I see one!’
He scooted around the counter, leaving the blaze of short order cooks whipping up omelettes behind him.
‘You’re not long here, am I right, signorina?’
I had an inkling to suggest that I’d never met a Neapolitan man who ever thought he wasn’t right about anything, but thought better of it.
‘You working? Lavori?’
‘Yes,’ I began, realizing how much I’d cherished my anonymity until this interrogation, how the incessant Positanese prying was very much part of my past not present, ‘for two gentlemen. In Hampstead.’
His eyebrows raised and his head tilted.
‘Hey, Carla!’ he yelled over to the waitress zipping between tables with egg-smeared plates balanced just the right side of equilibrium. ‘This signorina is up with the Hampstead crowd! Not one gentleman! Two! Not bad for a fishing village girl, no?’
I was back on my narrow streets, gossip climbing cobbles. I took a breath to speak without knowing what I wanted to say. He quashed my indecision before I could. ‘Listen, if it doesn’t work out with the Lords up there, you call me, si? Wait – two men you say? Together in one house? Brothers?’
I shook my head. His eyebrows furrowed. I wasn’t convinced that he didn’t mutter something to the Virgin Mary and the saints.
‘I always have work for a paesan.’ I didn’t want to be a paesan. I wanted to be a Londoner. ‘This Soho,’ he continued, twiddling his fingers in the air like someone sprinkling Parmigiano, ‘this patch belongs to us Italiani. Out there we’re immigrants. But in Soho we help each other – capisce?’
I nodded, but I didn’t understand. Or didn’t want to.
I tried to let go of the vague sense that his approach was more of an offensive than a welcome. Wisdom, and scrawled number on limp paper imparted, he turned and walked across the café, waving sing-song arms at an English couple who were sat at another Formica booth, dipping their rectangular strips of toast into soft-boiled eggs. I took a final sip and left, all remnants of homesickness hanging in the sweaty tea-smudged air of that café.
My attic room is etched in my memory. It was clean and simple. My routine was described to me in great detail and it didn’t take me long to adjust to the gentlemen’s habits, which, it would seem, never altered independent of the day. To her credit, Signora Cavaldi’s terse grip had stood me in fine stead for London life.
I hadn’t meant to, nor planned to, but on my sixth visit to the police station the first cracks appeared. Small but prominent fissures. I was the tenth in line to have my Certificate of Registration stamped. I held it in my hand, trying to not let my nerves crease it too much. At the top was my number: 096818. And below the words: ALIENS ORDER 1956. Every other visit, I had felt like it would only be a matter of time until I would no longer be alien; I would belong, click into the puzzle, be that final missing piece. But that day, as the drizzle left a damp trail on my hair like half-dried tears, I felt the sting of being the outsider. It was the first time I’d noticed the sideways glances of the people going about their regular days. Or perhaps they had always looked at us like that. I was used to being alone, I told myself. Life here was a world better than the one I’d left behind. I almost convinced myself.
Autumn and winter trundled by, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Mr Benn and Mr George were not impressed by my work. There was nothing major I could pinpoint about the shift in our day to day lives. A wave of frustration drew in, a little snatched remark here, an almost imperceptible roll of the eye; the toast being over-done, under-done, too early, not early enough. The minutiae of small failures tripped into an impressive collection, the way insignificant disappointments ferment into resentment between lovers till they can no longer bear to be together but cannot define exactly what pressure has pushed them apart. All three of us knew that I would not be working there much longer.
One morning in early May, the bell rang of a Saturday afternoon, a surprising sun casting boastful rays across the black and white tiles of the wide hallway, as if it too had joined in to celebrate my imminent termination of employment. I knew it would be my final weekend here, and I would, against my better judgement, give the owner of New Piccadilly Café a call after all. I turned the latch and opened the door.
Upon the step stood a man and a woman. She had a mane of strawberry blonde locks cascading in defiant curls past her shoulders. They bounced over the deep purple of her full-length woollen cardigan. Her long red chiffon slip beneath danced on the spring breeze by her bare feet, slipped into simple roman sandals. His beard was a thing to behold, waves of thick blond tuft with streaks of red. A wide-brimmed leather hat perched on his head at an angle. His heavy leather boots stamped a few times upon the mat, scraping off imaginary snow or the memory of yet another wet day. At once they reminded me of the painting in the window. Only this splash of color and verve came with its very own halo surround, courtesy of the bitter white sun.
I noticed I was staring just before they did, and stepped aside to let them in. The woman flashed me a wide smile, flicked the hair off her face and removed her shoes, before floating into the front room where Mr Benn had insisted I light a fire. She wrapped her arms around him, and I pretended not to notice when she kissed him on the lips and sat on his knee. So did the gentleman who accompanied her. He, rather, shook Mr George’s hand, who then nodded for me to open the wine.
I filled four glasses with prosecco and handed them out. Mr Benn and Mr George carried on talking. The man and the woman thanked me. I returned to the tray and lifted the small bowl of nuts Mr Benn
