'The Boy I Love' was composed by George Ware in 1885 and made popular by Marie Lloyd.

An interesting historical side note is that it was also apparently sung by Belle Elmore who was one of Dr. Crippen's murdered wives

“With a handle. Please.”

The man behind the bar grunted, switched the straight glass for a mug, tilted it under the pump and the amber stream of Well's Bombardier foamed and swirled round and down. Two practised pulls. A quick additional squirt to chase away the excess foam and the pint sat there waiting. Inviting.

“I was looking”, the customer said, “for the Old Alhambra”.

It was dark in the pub. Behind him three tall windows, frosted and engraved with curlicues containing the names of long vanished whiskies, reluctantly let in slanting beams of late morning sunlight which tried, but largely failed, to illuminate the interior. The old brass on the pumps, on the foot rail, on the ancient gas light fittings, dully drew the light but seemed to absorb rather than reflect it.

The barman nodded an acceptance of the customer's desire to impart this information but seemed unaware that a question might lurk therein.

The customer cradled the beer mug. Three fingers slipped under the handle as if he feared it might try to evade his grip. The dimpled glass was cool to his palm. He sipped slowly, appreciatively.

“I was wondering”, he said, “whether you could help? Whether you knew where it was? Well is I suppose.”

The directness of the question seemed to disconcert the barman. As if in self defence he seized a cloth and began to polish a glass, paused, held it up to the light, resumed polishing. Then ....

“I might. Which one is we talkin' of?”

It was the customer's turn to look disconcerted.

“I didn't know there were two. Well of course I knew that there was an Alhambra in Leicester Square years ago, but I mean the 'Old Alhambra'. They said it was here. In Havelock Road, but I'll be damned if I can find it.”

“No doubt. You wouldn't be the first neither.” The barman replaced the glass on the rack above his head, selected another and began polishing again. “But if it's the theatre you're looking for, or what left of it, it's about 30 yards down on your left. Nearly opposite in fact.”

“I didn't see it. Been up and down this street like a bloody yo-yo but no sign of a theatre. Just a few decrepit shops, mostly empty, a brick wall and some corrugated iron hoardings. It's hardly the West End.”

The barman shrugged. “If it were,” he said, “that bloody pint would 'ave cost you twice as much.”

The man sipped his beer. Waited.

Then “Never the same since the bleedin' war. Gone down 'ill it has. Whole bloody street. The Old Alhambra's behind the brick wall. They built that to stop people getting in and to .... to stop people getting in.”

A pause. The barman's hands stilled on the half polished glass. Resumed, moving in a mechanical, distracted way.

“About four, five, years ago. After the accident. The accidents.”

“Accidents?”

“Two kids killed a few years back .... Just before I got 'ere. Trespassin' they were. An accident. And then, before that .... before that were before my time 'ere. A lot of the old people 'ave gone anyway. Those remaining don't remember now, or don't want to. Not that they ever wanted to talk of it much. And the new ones never knew. Just things 'appened.”

The bitter was cool on his palate. The pub may have been somewhat run down, the barman scorning the finer points of customer relations, but they knew how to keep their beer in prime condition. The sunlight gave it an extra golden sparkle and he was tempted to prolong the session but he had work to do. And there would be other opportunities. Best savour this pint. Make it last.

The barman had moved away to the other end of his bar. Was busy straightening the beer mats on the counter. Busy avoiding further questions.

“He knows sod all anyway.”

A dry thin voice. A voice that carefully enunciated as if trying out the words in the mouth. Finding out how they felt, how they sounded. As if the very words were strangers.

“Not about the Old Alhambra he don't.”

The speaker was seated at a small table for two in an alcove just behind him. He had not noticed her when he had entered, not surprising as the alcove was dark and she small and dressed in black. That he had not subsequently been aware of her presence was surprising, as she was only a few feet from him, must have overheard him, and the place was grave-quiet apart from the perfunctory glass cleaning activities of the barman. So surely ...?

“Not many do now. The Blitz did for many, and the years have mostly tidied up the rest.”

Her accent was difficult to fathom. Lower middle perhaps, with a touch of affectation, but no distinctive regional influences. It was the voice itself that caught and held the attention. A husky sandpaperish voice, that would have been at odds with the frailty of her figure, if it were not for the careful, almost tentative, whispering, articulation.

“Nothing much left of the old Havelock Road, apart from here and the Old Alhambra, when the Jerries had had their fun.”

The customer moved across and took the chair opposite her.

“I heard,” he said, “that it was a V2 that did the damage.”

“There wasn't much left to damage. Most of the street had gone in forty-one. It was just the final nail in the Old Alhambra's coffin. It had already closed .... after the bombs and incendiaries, after the fires .... and then been repaired, botched together, and re-opened. 'Keep the bleeding home fires burning and all that'. But it was never the same afterwards. To much had happened. Too many memories. People .... those that were left .... didn't want to know.”

The voice dropped so that he had to lean forward to hear. The musty smell of an old fashioned floral perfume surrounded her. Two faded eyes that must once have been of a deep violet hue, must once have been a compelling feature of rare beauty, stared back at him. Her face was a mask of carefully applied make-up. Eyebrows, above the once startling, still beautiful though now pastel, eyes, carefully arched and the lids shadowed to emphasise. Lips perhaps too red. Everything perhaps too .... An old woman's face, ravaged now, whose lines no art could conceal. An old woman's face but one that still had the bone structure wherein what was once beauty could still be seen. Remembrances of the girl that once had been. Not ever pretty pretty perhaps, but handsome, striking indeed, certainly.

“Buggered the front of it, the façade they called it, that V2 did. But it didn't matter. It didn't cause the decay. It was deeper, older, than that. Spread throughout every stone, every beam like dry rot. You couldn't see it, but after the death it was everywhere. You could sense it, smell it, taste it even. And it weren't the bombs or anything that Jerry dropped.”

The voice died, the whisper stilled, and then briefly revived. “ If you asks me, that V2 did us a favour. It gave us a reason, an excuse. Whenever afterwards .... anything happened .... anything failed .... whatever happened, people could always say 'If it weren't for that bloody Jerry bomb ....'. Not 'If it weren't for the death'.”

“The death? What death? What difference does one death make? Surely death was commonplace then?”

A long silence.

The old lady's eyes seemed to lose their focus. She herself seemed no longer aware of the man's presence. Lost to the present; looking back into the past.

“The death?” He repeated.

The voice came back. The scratchy words faint in her throat.

“There have been many deaths, then and afterwards. And you are right, death is fundamentally always the same. Always ultimately commonplace. An ending. A finding of peace. Only this one ....”

“This one ....?”

“This one .... was different. Not the death itself, although .... but in the finding of .... peace .... or rather ....”

She shook her head as if to rid herself of the thoughts therein.

“Why do you want to know anyway? What's the Old Alhambra to you? It's been undisturbed for these twenty years. Best not to meddle. Safer not to awaken .... old memories.”

The voice was stronger now. Fierce even. The man found himself on the defensive before its new-found vehemence.

“It's just a job. I have to do a survey for the developers. Structure, fabric, area, foundations, that sort of thing. It's been empty for years. Nobody's touched it. Now there's an interest. In the site. Not the theatre.”

“It doesn't matter what you call it. The past don't care what you call it.”

The hand that seized his wrist was surprisingly strong. Blue veins raised like cords on the seemingly translucent hand by the urgency of its grasp. Long fingers that tapered to long nails taloned with ovals of blood. Nothing faded about the eyes now. Twin sparks burnt with violet intensity.

The customer felt a sudden chill descend. The alcove seemed suddenly isolated, shuttered away from the rest of the sun streaked bar.

“Don't meddle. Not you, especially not you. Leave the Old Alhambra be. Leave it and its dead to those who would profit by it. Let them meddle if they must. Not you.”

“It's just a job,” he said. “ My job. It's what I do.”

“Do it elsewhere. But leave the Old Alhambra to its past. Leave it and its dead alone.”

The eyes dulled again. The fingers released their grip. The hand withdrew.

“Not you.” The words so faint that afterwards he thought that they perhaps had only ever existed inside his own head. That they were just imaginings.

The darkness in the alcove seemed to gather closer around the figure opposite him as the silence between them deepened.

He felt somehow embarrassed. Somehow felt that he had failed her, disappointed her. He looked down at his nearly empty glass. Concentrated on it, trying to find the words to explain, to get her to understand that it was only a job. Something that he did everyday. Another old building to be demolished to make room for a new one.

He was conscious of movement, of a sigh. There was a scrape of chair legs on the bare wooden floor. A hand, ice cold through his jacket, on his shoulder as if in a valediction, and when he looked up she was no longer there. Her departure as unobtrusive, as silent, as her arrival.

For a long moment he sat there. What did it matter anyway? Some loony old bat long past her sell by date. Never clapped eyes on her before, probably never would again. Just some loony old bat. He shook his shoulders chase away the chill that had settled on him. To chase away the final echoes of 'Not You.' A broken line of sunlight had unnoticed crept across and lay on the table now, reflecting sparkle back from his glass. The alcove seemed lighter, once again an integral part of the room. All shadows gone. Warmer even.

He took his empty mug back to the bar. Tapped its base a couple of times on the counter to draw the barman's attention. Lifted an eyebrow in his direction to confirm that he had not finished. The barman rather pointedly finished rearranging an already perfectly symmetrical pattern of beer mats and wandered back to him.

“D'you want another of those”, he nodded towards the customer's mug, “or are you just intent on wasting my bleedin' time?”

“Sorry to distract you from your duties,” the man smiled away the discourtesy. “You keep a good pint and I'll be back later to enjoy more but for the moment I just wanted to ask about the other one.”

“Thought you didn't want another one?”

“No. Not that. Not now. But when I first enquired about the Old Alhambra you asked which one. So there must be another. So where is it?”

“You've been drinkin' in it. It's here. It were called the 'Relief of Lucknow' originally. Then when the theatre were in its 'eyday it became known as the Old Alhambra by a process of association. Theatre goers just got into the habit of calling it that at first because it were 'andy for a drink and a snack before or after performances and I s'ppose the then landlord just saw the opportunity and adopted the name. After all Lucknow was by then long ago and far away.”

'But your sign says 'The Quiet Woman'?”

“And the locals say the ''Eadless 'Ore'.” For the first time on the barman's face there appeared a flicker of the lips that might have been mistaken for a smile. “As a name the 'Old Alhambra' in time lost its attraction. As all things do. No more theatre goers with fat wallets. And .... and too many things had happened there. A bit of a liability all round, that name. The 'Quiet Woman' was safer.”

“A liability? Safer?” Again that word. First the woman .... 'safer not to meddle' .... and now ....

The barman shrugged. If the flicker of his lips had been a harbinger of humour, it had been a false dawn. Moroseness reigned again. “As I said it were afore my time. Any ways it's all water under the bridge now. What does it matter? People lived 'ere for centuries before the Old Alhambra was dreamt of, nor Lucknow 'eard of. Buildings lined this street 'undreds o' years afore Havelock's time. The place is riddled with their remains. You should see our cellars. You could probably get to the theatre through them if you had a mind. It's a labyrinth down there. What's on top bears no relationship to what's below.”

The customer looked at his watch. “I have an appointment there in a couple of minutes. I'll be back later for the other half. Do I have to climb the wall or can you lend me a sledge?”

“There's a ginnel at the far end. Only a couple of feet wide. Easy to miss if you don't know it's there. A door on the left at the end of that. It's always kept locked but you can try it. If you really must.”

The barman turned away in dismissal. Looked back over his shoulder. “And we close at three. And don't open till six. So your appointment had better be either very short or very long if you want another pint.”

Outside the sun was high overhead now, casting the silhouette of the pub's sign at his feet. Looking up he saw the painting of a woman in Tudor costume with her head nestling under her right arm. So they hadn't quite escaped the influence of the Music Hall.

As he crossed the road towards the dark slit that marked the entrance to the ginnel, the refrain of the old Marie Lloyd song echoed through his head.

“Wiv 'er 'ead tucked underneath 'er arm, she wa-a-lks the Bloody Tower,
Wiv 'er 'ead tucked underneath 'er arm, at the midnight hou-ou-r.”