Blood runs, spilling over the floors.

The barroom rabble-rousers

give off a stench of vodka and onion.

YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO

She took the Underground to the East End and went to the address her Dresden fiancé had given her. It was a Red Cross shelter. Once she had filled out the forms and registered as a stateless person, she was assigned a room with a plank bed, a washbasin, a clothes rail, and a radio. She took a long shower in the communal bathroom, threw herself onto the bed, and fell into a comatose sleep that lasted more than twelve hours.

Hunger woke her. She went outside, bought herself fish and chips at the first shop she came across, and ate them as if it were a meal fit for a king, sitting on the pavement and watching the passers-by, trying to work out what she was feeling. He had not deceived her. He had kept his promise, and Kitty knew that whoever he was she would keep him in her life, that she wasn’t willing to let him go, that she wanted him always, always to speak to her and call her by her name. And one day, perhaps, she would find him — would set eyes on him, put a face to the voice, and thank him.

She was given temporary papers. She was sent to the Red Cross offices, given warm clothes, and enrolled in an English-language course. She wasn’t asked any questions she couldn’t answer. The friendly lady from Social Services sent her to a soup kitchen, where she was given regular meals. Two weeks after she registered, a Jamaican woman who worked at the shelter stopped Kitty on the stairs and told her that a cousin of hers ran a pub in the East End and was looking for someone to do occasional shifts. He wasn’t bothered about a work permit, she said; Kitty should get in touch, that way she could earn a bit of pocket money until everything else was settled. Overwhelmed by such kindness, yet suspicious, wondering whether she could really trust the woman with the brightly coloured headscarf and benevolent eyes, Kitty had stood uncertainly on the stairs, chewing her thumb. But the woman was accustomed to such reticence; she put her arm around her and offered to go with her.

The following day, Kitty had a job at the pub.

*

She was frightened of words. And of the friendly smile she had to conjure onto her face. Over the past two years, she had grown accustomed to being alone. Crowds of people made her panic. During her first few days at work, she had to keep disappearing into the toilet in order to catch her breath, wipe the sweat off her forehead, look in the mirror, and remind herself to stay calm. But most of the customers who came to the pub paid her no attention; they didn’t want words, they wanted alcohol. The people who strayed in here hardly ever smiled themselves. Construction workers, taxi drivers, drug dealers, cooks, prostitutes; all just looking for diversion, a moment’s distraction, glad to escape their daily routine for a few hours. Many of them were immigrants, too. They came from India, from Pakistan, from Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, Guyana.

Kitty quickly felt at home among them. She liked their rough voices, their jokes, their different languages and accents, even their vulgarity. They didn’t look at her with pity: they were just as inconsiderate, crude, and indifferent towards her as they were with their friends, their companions, and themselves. Nonetheless, the hours Kitty liked best were always when she stayed on in the pub on her own after everyone else had gone, putting stools on tables and scrubbing the floor, washing glasses and sorting crates. When the customers had gone, when the pub had closed and the owner had gone back to his family — that was when she felt good, felt safe. She would put a coin in the jukebox and listen to the loud music, and her body would move to the different rhythms of its own accord.

The hard work exhausted her, but she was grateful for it, because afterwards the night would be dreamless and her mind too tired to think. When she wasn’t working she would stay in her room and play her guitar — listlessly, aimlessly, and without much passion, but at least she played. Apart from her physical work, the guitar was the best way for her to take her mind off things.

I’ve come this far / searching for ghosts / you promised they’d wait for us. / But they’re gone, just like you / gone so far away. / So I’m walking through the city of ghosts / just walking ahead, asking myself / Should I go on, should I begin? / Should I wish or should I die? / ’Cause you’ve not come as far as I…

If I’m not mistaken, this was the first song Kitty wrote in London. Initially, she wrote it in her mother tongue; the song was translated only later, and she would sing it in English with her strong but unidentifiable foreign accent. I remember, Brilka, how we listened to this song together in the car, how you explained to me then that it marked a new direction in Kitty’s music. I love this song, but I love it mainly because of you, Brilka; because you sang it to me, and you sang it so passionately, with such abandon. And I love it because it doesn’t make me feel sad, like most of Kitty’s songs, because at that moment I was driving along the endless, dusty coastal roads with you by my side, and I was happy, even if I didn’t know at the time that it was happiness I was feeling.

*

The city had been wearing its Christmas costume for weeks now. On Christmas Eve, the customers left the pub early. Even the poorest among them seemed to be preparing for the holiday, readying themselves to enjoy the time with their families. The owner left the pub earlier than usual, too, as there were hardly any customers; he told her to treat herself to a couple of drinks on him, and put a few extra coins on the counter for her. She’d earned it, he said. Then he wished her a happy Christmas and left her on her own. Kitty was in no hurry. Christmas was something they used to celebrate in her country before she was born. After that, those festivals stopped; after that, God was replaced by the Generalissimus, and people celebrated the anniversary of the Revolution, or the Leader’s birthday. It was only her deeply religious Aunt Lida who used to light candles on this day, in silent devotion, and retire to pray.

One after the other, all the customers left. She had soon finished tidying up, but she didn’t want to head back to the shelter just yet. She wasn’t tired enough, and the city was so alarmingly quiet: her memories would return and take her hostage. She sat at the bar and, after some initial hesitation, poured herself her first whisky. She had never drunk whisky before; the strong drink warmed and burned her throat pleasantly. She allowed herself another. The alcohol, which she had forbidden herself in her former exile, soon took effect. In Prague, she could not have afforded to be sentimental. It might have had unpleasant consequences. Here, that no longer applied; here, she could let herself go, especially when she was alone. No one cared.

She felt relaxed, and the dreaded melancholy did not materialise. On the contrary, she was cheerful; she could have danced all night. She started to hum one of her songs; her voice grew stronger, louder, until she was singing as loud as she could. She let herself be carried away by her own voice, grabbed the whisky bottle and held it to her mouth like a microphone. She whirled around the pub with all the showmanship she could muster, then closed her eyes and bowed to her imaginary audience.

Suddenly she heard clapping coming from the street. A tall, sturdy woman in a strikingly fashionable red coat was standing at one of the windows, applauding enthusiastically. Kitty came down to earth with a bump; mortified, she put the bottle down on the table and staggered backwards. She hoped the woman would disappear, but she stayed where she was and went on clapping, then knocked on the window. Kitty felt obliged to go to the door.

‘We’re closed,’ she said, opening the glass door a crack.

‘Your singing is fantastic. Fan-tas-tic! Incredible! What language was that?’

‘I only speak a little English.’

‘Was that your language you were singing in just now?’

‘That was Georgian.’

‘Oh … Isn’t that somewhere in Russia?’

‘No, it’s in Georgia.’

The woman laughed, and indicated to Kitty that she wanted to come in.

‘But we’re closed, and I’ve already —’

‘I’m not a demanding customer.’

Kitty turned the light on again above the bar and put a glass down on a coaster in front of the woman. She had asked for a whisky, too. Her soft blonde hair was pinned back on one side with a hair slide, and she had clear, friendly features, harmonious and symmetrical. Everything about her was inviting, but although Kitty sensed that she could trust her, she felt uncomfortable: she was ashamed of her own inability to speak, and annoyed that she had let herself go like that in front of her. Initially, their conversation was stilted, but the woman persevered. She introduced herself as Amy — just Amy. No Miss, no Mrs. She questioned Kitty about where she came from, and about her songs. How had she learned to sing so well? What songs were they? What was she doing in London?

Although one wouldn’t have thought it, judging by her elegant outfit and genteel way of speaking (ladies like her were an unusual sight in this part of town), she drank every bit as much as the regulars at this pub, and let Kitty keep refilling her glass. Kitty’s tension had dissipated, and she too carried on drinking steadily. When the woman asked her for the third time if she would sing something, she relented, and began, quietly at first, hesitantly, then louder and more confidently, to sing her songs. Songs she hadn’t sung for two years. Songs that were there in her head, that accompanied her everywhere, that went on writing themselves in her mind, that wanted to be sung.

The woman didn’t take her eyes off her. Her expression was tense, attentive, and at the same time blissfully content. From time to time, she raised her eyebrows or closed her eyes when she wanted to concentrate especially hard.

‘I may not know much, but I know what good music is. Music is my passion, and I can tell you that your music is good — very good, even. You should do something with it.’

Before she left, she gave Kitty an extravagant tip, and wrote her address and telephone number on a beermat.

‘If you want to take your music further, give me a call. I’d be happy to help you,’ she said, shaking Kitty’s hand.

‘I have one more question,’ said Kitty. She couldn’t contain her curiosity. ‘Aren’t you celebrating Christmas? Why are you here on your own at this time of night?’

‘I’m a staunch atheist, darling.’

*

Kitty was driven by mistrust: a profound, inherent mistrust of other people. As if all she wanted was to assure herself that other people never meant well by her, that they never kept their promises. It was with this mistrust that she called Amy’s number in early January, and when Amy sounded genuinely excited that she had called and immediately suggested that she come and visit, her mistrust only increased.

Kitty took the Underground to King’s Cross, a part of town she had never been to before. Amy’s was a modest but respectable brick house in a tranquil street, concealed by a black iron gate.

Kitty stopped outside the gate. For a moment she hesitated, wondering whether it wouldn’t be better for her to turn round. She had become used to the East End. It was full of people like her. There, she wasn’t conspicuous. Here, even the shadow she cast on the street seemed conspicuous in its poverty: too big, too coarse, too proletarian for this pavement, these walls, these windowpanes. Then she summoned her courage and rang the bell. The glossy black door with the gold knob flew open, and there was Amy in a navy-blue dress, stepping towards her guest and beaming from ear to ear.

Kitty’s sense of being out of place here was reinforced on entering the house. She had assumed that Amy lived in a flat, not that she was the mistress of this three-storey abode. She was led into the drawing room and offered Earl Grey tea and apple cake. Sitting there on the floral sofa, she felt like a Siberian bird that had strayed into the tropics. Embarrassed by her plain Red Cross smock, she kept her arms crossed over her chest at first, as if she could conceal the ugliness of her clothes. And when an immaculately dressed maid entered the room and asked her mistress if she could bring them anything else, Kitty felt a powerful urge to flee.

But the lady of the house didn’t really comport herself in a manner suited to the genteel atmosphere. Her laughter was too loud and too immodest, revealing her big white teeth and pink gums; her gestures were too uncontrolled; and the way her eyebrows shot up when something surprised her, the way she pursed her lips when she was particularly delighted by something, or the way she left her mouth open when she wanted to emphasise something she had said — none of this seemed at all fitting for a sophisticated lady with a parlour maid and a floral sofa. In spite of her expensive clothes and the patchouli scent she wore, she was simply too unpolished for this environment, too lacking in self-possession.

This time, too, their conversation was very stilted. However, once Kitty had stifled her discomfort, she proved more talkative than during their previous meeting in the pub. If she got stuck she would reach into her pocket for the tattered English dictionary she had bought in Prague — the only souvenir of her banishment — and point to the word she was looking for. Each time, Amy nodded to show that she understood, and was delighted, as if it were a miracle that the same word appeared in both their languages.

Amy had been born in India, and had lived there until the age of fifteen. She was the youngest child and only daughter of a British officer who had married the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Her father had served in the British Army almost all his life, and had spent two decades in Calcutta. For many years, Amy and her three older brothers, whom she idolised, knew no other home. In India, Amy could run and climb, play cricket and roll in the mud, skip and run races, tell dirty jokes and stick her tongue out at people — as long as she was with her brothers, as long as they kept her with them. For it was only with them that she could escape all the awful doll-filled prisons and the tedious poetry evenings, the pale English girls with their bloodless dreams who all suffered so in the tropical climate, the violin and singing lessons — all the things her mother intended for her. Later, though, all three of her brothers joined the Army, one after the other, in great despair at having to leave behind their Indian life, their carefree games and adventures. At the age of fifteen, Amy was put on a steamer and sent to an English boarding school. She arrived at a school for upper-class girls in Devon, and everything changed. Her childhood remained her secret garden, which gave her so much that was good and wonderful that she was able to nourish an entire unhappy life on the memory of it. Two of her brothers lost their lives in the war; Amy herself escaped an arranged marriage when war broke out, and so, after finishing school, she found herself alone in London, though she was now financially independent, thanks to a sizeable inheritance from her parents.

She and her brother John had always shared a passion for music. Music was a secret language of symbols that, in their family, only the two of them had mastered. They had always loved Chopin and Schubert, but they had also listened to the disreputable music called jazz, had danced wildly to be-bop — still an insider tip at the time — had vied with each other as to who was the better musician, who knew more pieces, who had the better ear, who was more knowledgeable about music history. However, they were both sufficiently realistic to know that neither of them would ever be more than mediocre as a musician, and so they decided to become the best listeners in the world. Amy went dancing in Blitz-ravaged London, a city hungry for resurrection; she went to the East End in search of the newest clubs where the wildest, most exciting, most offbeat musicians played. She developed an infallible intuition for good music. She befriended dubious club owners, frequented pubs and basements that lived in fear of the vice squad; she didn’t shy away from even the most out-of-the-way venues and the shabbiest houseboats in the harbour if she thought that was where she might discover an unknown talent.

It was around this time that she spent her first night with a woman. Her brother John, the only one she spoke to openly about her inclination, introduced her to a friend of his, Magnus, whose reticence and sensitivity reminded Amy of her second-eldest brother. Magnus’ father had made his money — and there was a lot of it — in the diamond trade, and it meant a great deal to him that his homosexual son and only male heir should at least appear to live in a socially acceptable manner. The wedding was hastily organised, and Magnus and Amy were finally at liberty to do whatever they felt like doing with their lives. Amy bought the red-brick house in King’s Cross, which she decorated according to her parents’ taste as a way of maintaining the appearance of normality. Magnus spent most of his time in his country house in Wales, which served as his retreat and love-nest, and which Amy, out of consideration for his privacy, never visited. Instead, she stayed in London. Magnus treated her with equal discretion and never came to town unexpectedly. He was sufficiently tactful not to want to put his wife in an awkward situation. Without having to lift a finger, through mere fact of their existence, and this absurd state of being man and wife, they gave each other what they most needed in order to be happy: freedom.

*

In one of Magnus’ regular haunts in Soho, between hidden erotic cinemas and houses of ill repute, Amy met Fred, the red-haired sorceress.

A little-known Austrian-Jewish painter, her full name was Friederike Lieblich, and she compensated for her lack of success in the artistic arena with a legendary love life. Rumour had it that the number of her conquests would have made Sappho pale with envy.

By day, restless, cold as a stone, insolent, hurtful, egocentric, and offensively unconventional, by night, she was, in equal measure, permissive and uninhibited, morbidly passionate, a real nymphomaniac. People said that any good-looking woman, regardless of sexual orientation, would do better to steer well clear of her: she always got them in the end. People also said she was nothing but trouble: she had no money, and no permanent abode; she would crash in like a November wind, flay you, take everything you owned, and vanish again as quickly as she had appeared. The consensus was that it was best to beware of the sorceress.

To Amy’s ears, however, all the less-than-flattering rumours about Fred Lieblich sounded like compliments and enchanting promises. And when she saw the strange, slender woman sitting at the bar, and all the other customers whispering about her, she was determined to get the redhead to approach her, and sent over a glass of the most expensive whisky the bar had to offer.

Fred didn’t have to be asked twice, and came to sit at Amy’s table. She had a dreadful German accent and narrow cat’s eyes; she was wearing a man’s white shirt and working-men’s trousers turned up at the bottom. In the dim light of the bar, her hair glowed fiery red, like a warning.

Although Amy left the bar that first evening without returning Fred’s advances, and didn’t show her face there for weeks afterwards, her curiosity had been roused. She wanted to know whether the sorceress really could cast a love spell. Despite the various experiences she had accumulated in this field over time, in bars, on houseboats, in clubs, and at private parties, Amy still felt gauche: she was ashamed of her lust, ashamed of her preferences, and never knew to what extent it was acceptable to express her desires. So Amy went back to Soho, and after three nights during which she spent several hours sitting at the bar, drinking a lot of gin and tonics and trying to look as indifferent as possible, Fred finally appeared. This time, she didn’t have to buy her a whisky; Fred marched straight up to Amy and shook her hand. She told her she had sold a painting and was feeling flush. It was her turn to buy the drinks, and show her a few places that were more interesting than this dive.

They meandered around town, having fun, drinking, kissing uninhibitedly on the street, and finally ending up at Amy’s house. The sorceress stayed on for several days, being waited on by Amy’s maid and cook, and beguiled by her hostess, who gazed at her wide-eyed with lust and delight. Then the redhead disappeared again for many long weeks. Although Amy knew she had no right to expect Fred to be anything other than what she was, she still felt cheated. She wandered around, asking the creatures of the night whether they had seen her lover, slipping barmen some coins to try to glean information about Fred’s whereabouts, but in vain.

Fred was nowhere to be found. She could only ever be tracked down when she wanted to be: that was a lesson Amy learned in the course of those weeks. And when she turned up again and rang her doorbell as if nothing had happened, Amy made a scene of which she was subsequently ashamed. But there was nothing for it; she had to admit to herself that she had never craved any other person on this planet as she did this small, almost plain woman, a woman one noticed (if at all) only for the colour of her hair, who had absolutely no manners, let alone good taste, or anything approaching consideration.

Of course, like every woman before and after her, Amy wanted to be the first great exception in Fred Lieblich’s love life. With patience and great forbearance, with many enticing suggestions, with her unconditional acceptance, her soft, compliant character, her cheerful disposition (because her Austrian friend was distinctly inclined to melancholy), and with her impressive audacity in lovemaking, she would tame the sorceress, teach her reliability. Besides, Amy had something the sorceress did not; something on which she, like every other person, was dependent — money.

Although Amy’s affluence didn’t mean as much to her as one might have thought, she did know exactly the sort of power one could wield as a patron.

Over the next few weeks, she rented an old storeroom in Soho and had it converted into a studio for her lover. She called some of Magnus’ art-loving friends, commissioned paintings from Fred Lieblich under false names, and equipped her with everything she had so painfully lacked in the past. But Amy didn’t know her lover well enough yet. She couldn’t know that, ever since she was a child, Fred had suffered nothing but deprivation; that, for her, lack and self-denial were normal.

What she didn’t have, she took: cruising Soho and the East End, sneaking out of the cheap bed-and-breakfasts, rented flats, and basement lodgings the next morning, each time leaving a naked, sleeping woman behind her. Then, for a short while, she felt as if she had everything, as if she owned the whole world, until longing drove her back out onto the streets. If she ran out of paint, she drew on a napkin with a pencil. If she had no winter coat, she just took a blanket and wrapped herself in it. If she had no money to pay for her drinks in the bar, she fixed her cat’s eyes on one of the female customers and stared at her until she asked if she was all right. After that, getting her to pay the bill was child’s play.

Amy had no option but to accept Fred as she was — in between fits of rage, heartrending declarations of love, and curses. But this acceptance was only possible because she still hoped that one day she would be allowed to call Fred Lieblich her own. She had India in her blood, after all; she too was familiar with self-denial and deprivation; she always got what she wanted; and she wanted Fred, of that she was quite certain. Even if Magnus, John, and their friends were constantly trying to convince her otherwise, she would learn to make herself indispensable to her lover. One day Fred would need something — more than anything else, more than these wanton, escapist affairs, more than life itself — and Amy would be able to give it to her. Whatever it might be.

*

Perhaps weary, heartsick Amy would not have leaped so precipitously into the Kitty adventure had two events not preceded their meeting: Fred’s renewed disappearance, and John’s return to India. With his departure, Amy felt as if the connection to her childhood had been severed, and she was scared of loneliness. Magnus was either travelling or in Wales. He was living his life. But some days Amy didn’t seem to know where she belonged any more. Who or what would remind her of her origins, which she seemed to need so badly, in order to reassure herself that her life remained true to these origins, to this childhood? Should she travel abroad? Follow her brother? And so Kitty’s appearance in her life was the straw to which Amy clung. Someone needed her.

A refugee from the Soviet Union; a talented one, a brilliant singer. A minor sensation. Escaped from the dark clutches of communism, catapulted into the capitalist utopia. And before her new trophy realised that this country and this city were no place for utopias, no place where newcomers’ dreams came true, Amy had to act: she had to imbue this melancholy and mistrustful creature with her very own personal utopia. She had to corral her with a fence woven from dreams, so that she would stay, so that she wouldn’t waste her talent, so that she didn’t long to return to her homeland, so that she went on singing. Just as she had once created a garden with her brothers, a garden of mud and happiness, of sand and wood and promises each made to each other.

*

At their very first meeting, Amy suggested that Kitty Jashi move in with her, to a flat on the top floor of her house. Her husband, she said, was never there, and she was usually alone. She had enough money. She was happy to help. She emphasised this again and again, and when she realised that Kitty was too proud to accept charity, she suggested a different form of payment in lieu of rent: her music. ‘I’d like to introduce you to some friends of mine; they’re all in the music business. One of them owns a jazz club. I can take you there. I just want them to listen to you, and perhaps you’ll get some work out of it. Then, and only then, you can pay me rent.’

It took some time and all Amy’s powers of persuasion for Kitty to agree to the plan, but when she arrived at the house in King’s Cross, carrying her one suitcase and her guitar, and saw the little attic flat, she was deeply touched.

The new bed standing there, the empty bookshelves smelling of fresh paint, the new crockery in the little kitchenette, the unused handtowels — all this made her feel welcome. Amy had gone to great pains in decorating the flat. Kitty sat down on the edge of the bed. She stayed there for more than an hour without moving, feeling something between grateful amazement at such generosity and a certain unease that came over her at the thought of moving in with this woman she didn’t know.

Amy’s house began to fill up. Friends came to marvel at the Soviet wunderkind. They all wanted to know how she had managed to flee, why she had come to London, and what she had done in her previous life. Atlases were brought out to look for the Black Sea and Georgia. Even Magnus made a special trip to London from Wales to inspect his wife’s new discovery. Everyone admired Amy for wresting Kitty away from the refugee shelter and introducing her to London’s free spirits. As all the visitors, and especially Amy, kept repeating, she was a rare talent who should be encouraged and admired. Kitty, who was still working in the East End and waiting for calls from her faceless friend, accepted Amy’s praise and her friends’ interest in her music with indifference, as a matter of course. Her acting talent stood her in good stead: she invented stories about her escape, mixing fact with invention, and gave the visitors, who marvelled at her as if she were an exhibit in a museum, what they wanted to see and hear.

And at precisely the moment when Kitty had acquired a degree of renown in Amy’s circles, Fred reappeared.