The Spaces in Between

by Collin Van Reenan

  I mumbled something about having enjoyed the evening, which she ignored. Leaning closer, she took both my wrists in her gloved hands and looked me full in the face. Again, I was struck by the dark, almost violet colour of her irises and her unblinking stare.

  ‘Now, listen to me, Nicholas, listen to my voice…’

  Another attempt to hypnotise me, as before, but I was ready for it this time and looked away, risking her anger. To my surprise she laughed and tutted.

  ‘I didn’t mean to intimidate you, Nico. Why are you so shy with me? We are friends, are we not?’

  I forced myself to look at her again and nodded.

  ‘I’m pleased about that. I thought, just for a moment, that you were upset with me. You know, Nico, I wouldn’t want that to happen, because I’ve always considered that we have a “special” relationship.’

  She leaned even closer, her face almost touching mine, and again gave me that long, slow smile, her white teeth parted, lips open and the pink tip of her tongue just visible between them.

  ‘I wanted to ask you…’ her voice dropped to a husky whisper ‘…to tell me about the girl…’

  She was so close now that our noses almost touched, and all the time she held my wrists tightly – painfully tightly. In spite of my earlier resolve not to be intimidated by her, I felt my resistance ebbing away. My mind was becoming confused and I felt light-headed, almost dizzy.

  ‘I…I really don’t know that much about her. I…’

  I didn’t want to say that I was sick and tired of the same interrogation by all and sundry.

  Suddenly, she turned her face to one side and put her mouth on mine, a long, hard kiss that killed my words and shocked me to the core. This lady, who so intimidated me and who seemed always so aloof and reserved, was kissing me with an intensity that I had never before experienced. Unwilling and unable to move, scarcely able to breathe, I sat rigid and unresponsive. She broke away.

  ‘Madame Lili –’

  Again, she cut my words off with her mouth. I felt her hands leave my wrists at last, only to feel them around my neck, pulling my head against hers so that there was no escape.

  But I no longer wanted to escape. The dam inside me broke, and all my pent-up feelings of desire for her overwhelmed me. I returned her kiss with a ferociousness that amazed me. For a moment, I felt her tense and hesitate, and then she too seemed to give way and become soft and compliant in my arms.

  Quite what happened then, I will probably never know. I’ve no idea how, but we found ourselves on the floor, Madame Lili’s long legs wrapped around me, her hands ripping my shirt open.

  When it happened, there was nothing gentle and graceful about it; nor was it ‘romantic’ or caring and considerate. It was sheer animal passion on both sides. I just remember climaxing in long, shuddering gasps, followed by concentric circles of a pleasure greater than any before; and hearing Madame Lili call my name again and again, her eyes closed and beads of perspiration on her lovely face.

  Eventually we ceased to move together, yet the waves of pleasure continued to engulf me. Slowly, very slowly, they ebbed away, and I somehow managed to use my arms to lift my weight off her soft, limp body. Rolling on to my back, I just lay there, gasping for breath, while Madame Lili caressed my face with her gloved hand.

  Instead of gradually clearing, my mind became more confused and for what seemed like an age I just stared at the blurred image of the room, trying to make sense of the situation.

  I don’t remember us getting up from the carpet or anything we did or said until I became aware that I was sprawled in the armchair once again and Madame Lili was no longer there. Still I made no attempt to get up, although I remember struggling to do up my clothes.

  Only vaguely do I remember seeing her emerge from a small dressing room near the entrance to her room. She was fully dressed and her hair was now piled up on her head, revealing her slender white shoulders. She looked calm and collected and every inch the aristocrat. The merest smile emphasised the delicacy of her face and high cheekbones.

  ‘I brought you something, Nicholas,’ she said in a low husky voice, handing me a tall frosted champagne flute. ‘Drink it now, all of it. It will refresh you.’

  It was almost an order but I didn’t need much persuasion. Cold and beautifully dry, the champagne was just what I needed. Or so I thought. It went down with indecent speed, only to be replaced by another from a small tray she was holding.

  She sat down and patted my knee and I felt that it was a sort of thank you for the pleasure of our lovemaking, though she did not mention that at all. In fact, she behaved almost as if it hadn’t happened, and we were back to business as usual. Except that I was not feeling ‘as usual’: my light-headedness was increasing and I began to have that old feeling of being detached from my surroundings. Grasping the arms of the chair, I took deep breaths to try to ward off the giddiness that was creeping over me. It was as if my mind had slipped into neutral and I could not focus my thoughts on anything and was waiting for Madame Lili to tell me what to do next.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘Now, Nicholas, tell me all about “Tatiana” – everything this time. Do not leave anything out. Do you understand me?’

  Her peremptory tone startled me. I supposed I’d had the carrot and now it was time for the big stick. At the same time, I felt oddly anxious to please her. I struggled to know where to start and she prompted me impatiently.

  ‘Come along, Nicholas – you don’t want to upset me, do you?’

  I opened my mouth and then closed it again, deciding not to risk her anger, but still not knowing quite what to say.

  Madame Lili leaned closer and, to my utter astonishment, delivered a stinging slap across my face, making me blink. ‘I’m waiting, Nicolai Feodorovitch,’ she hissed, her dark eyes flashing and her face suddenly thrust so close to mine that I jerked back involuntarily.

  ‘I don’t know what more I can tell you, Madame Lili… I saw her in the garden a couple of times, as I said. I don’t know where she lives or how she gets here. I certainly wasn’t expecting her at the séance. I’ve never seen her actually inside the House before. Really, I’m telling you the truth…’ I added, pathetically anxious to please – and to avoid another slap.

  She eyed me, frowning, as if deciding whether to believe what I had just said. Naturally, I left out the fact that Tatiana had been in my bed later that same night.

  ‘Well then, Nico…’ She warmed slightly. ‘If you don’t know any more about her, give me an opinion.’

  ‘Opinion?’

  ‘Yes. What is she like when you talk to her? How does she act: sane, mad, deluded, sensible?’

  ‘Hmm…sane, I suppose, although there is that stuff about being the Tsar’s daughter. She seems confident that it’s true…’

  ‘Am I to believe, young man, that you have conversations with Her Imperial Highness Tatiana Nicolaevna Romanova who was murdered in Russia in 1918, fifty years ago? Come on, Nicholas, you will make me angry if you take me for such a fool!’

  I was confused. Before, Madame Lili had been acting as if she herself truly believed that this was fifty years ago and that she needed to meet with Russian soldiers to discuss the Civil War… Before I could reply, she changed completely and, reaching out, rested her hand gently on my cheek. ‘Come on, Nico, I thought we were friends. We have been…er…close, haven’t we? You see now that I can be a good friend to you. Now, just tell me what you think,’ she coaxed. ‘I mean, we can’t have trespassers tramping all over the House, can we?’

  ‘No, of course not, Madame Lili.’

  It crossed my mind to say just ‘Lili’ but I didn’t dare, friends or not. Instead, I tried hard to think of something to say to please her and maintain her change of mood, but to my dismay my mind was steadily going out of focus, and I became terrified that she would learn somehow what I had done with our famous trespasser.

  ‘Very well, Nicholas, perhaps you would be so kind as to keep a sp
ecial watch for her in future and tell me the minute you have some news?’

  It was an order. I was being dismissed. Even her body language was telling me it was time to go.

  I’m not sure how I managed to stand up, I was feeling so strange. It was as though I was very drunk but I knew that wasn’t the case. I thought of the champagne and the fact that Madame Lili had not drunk any of it herself.

  She had to help me to the door. There seemed no question of a goodnight kiss. How I made it to my bedroom is a mystery – one of many in that House.

  I fell on to the bed fully clothed but soon sat up in an effort to stop the room spinning. It was inconceivable that I could be so drunk on just two glasses of champagne and, not for the first time, I suspected that I had been drugged. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more certain it seemed. Something was being added to my drinks – my coffee, and particularly the tea that was constantly urged on me from the ever-boiling samovar.

  Until I arrived at the House, I had always enjoyed fairly robust health, and at nearly twenty-three years old and on three square meals each day I should have been at my peak…

  The spinning must have ceased, because I lay back and eventually fell into a deep sleep.

  I awoke in a panic. Sinking back on to the pillow, I retraced as far as I was able the events of the evening before. Had it really happened as I remembered? Did Madame Lili and I make love on the carpet in front of the fire in her salon? Was any of it real? Once before, she had transported me to the vast, snow-covered steppes and I had felt the gleaming sabre smash my skull and it had all seemed so real that I nearly died of fright; an illusion – a brilliant one – but an illusion just the same. Now, to get information from me about Tatiana, it was the iron fist in the velvet glove. Somehow I felt disappointed at those thoughts yet, at the same time, it went easier on my conscience. Perhaps I hadn’t cheated on Natalie at all – at least not with Madame Lili. And, if I had been drugged and deluded last night, perhaps the same was true of the night before with Tatiana. Had she really even been in my bed? Was it just another part of some huge illusion that was being practised on me?

  But, even as I asked myself these questions, I knew I was just desperately seeking to salve my conscience to avoid the painful truth that I had slept with three women in the same house in as many days, and betrayed the one that I professed to be deeply in love with. If Natalie ever found out, or even suspected, it would have a devastating effect on her health and fragile sanity.

  And supposing, just supposing, that I had made love to Madame Lili – that it was only partly an illusion – it meant that I had handed her the means to blackmail me, and control me totally.

  Disgusted with myself and panicking about the consequences, I dressed and went down to breakfast, hoping to stop these frightening ideas filling my head and with a half-formed thought about handing in my notice and leaving the House before everything came to light.

  Amélie looked up as I entered the kitchen, eyeing me closely, her eyebrows forming an unspoken question. I smiled at her and tried to look more relaxed than I felt. She continued to stare at me and finally I felt I had to say something.

  ‘Look, I’m wearing your cross, Amélie. I’m sure it helps keep me from anything untoward.’

  ‘Untoward!’ she scoffed. ‘Evil, you mean!’

  This sudden display of feeling from one usually so quiet and reserved quite surprised me. I poured some coffee and, when I looked up, she was standing so close that it made me jump. Leaning even closer, her face red from the fire, she whispered fiercely, ‘Monsieur Nicholas, you must leave this House! You are in danger here! Don’t you feel it?’ Her baleful eyes bore into mine. ‘You must leave now, while you still can.’

  There was a noise by the door and she looked up, the fear showing in her face. Then, furtively and even more quietly than before, she whispered, ‘This is an ungodly place. These people…’

  ‘Amélie!’

  It was Anya, peering round the door.

  ‘Amélie! What are you saying?’

  When she saw me, she forced a smile as Amélie moved quickly away back to the stove, her face flushing even redder at being caught out. I could see that Anya was angry and when she smiled at me again it was almost a grimace. She was struggling to control her feelings, but, by the time she had crossed the kitchen to take my arm, her features were composed into her habitual serenity.

  ‘Nicholas, join me for breakfast in the library. It’s ages since we had a tête-à-tête.’

  She turned her face up at me with that look of amusement in her eyes so that I couldn’t refuse, and yielded to her gentle tug on my arm.

  The library table was set for two, with the dreaded samovar in full swing and blinis with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. But I wasn’t interested in eating, and nor was Anya, it seemed, because, while serving the inevitable black tea, she interrogated me about my meeting with Madame Lili.

  ‘So, what did she do to you, Nico?’

  ‘Do to me? Don’t you mean say to me?’

  ‘You know what I mean. What happened?’

  I wondered how much to tell her – whether to confide in her – and decided against the full, unexpurgated version.

  ‘Well…we talked about the séance and, of course, about the girl who appeared there…you know, Tatiana.’

  ‘Yes indeed: and the question is, who the hell is she? She’s got us…everybody…running around in circles. This is a very private house. It used to be so secure.’

  ‘Anya, look at me. Hand on heart, I know no more about her than you do…I mean, in terms of hard facts. I saw her in the garden a couple of times, that’s all.’

  ‘I bet Madame Lili didn’t go for that answer,’ she said archly. ‘She would have wanted more than that from you. What did she do to you, Nico? Tell me, please.’

  I could see there was no getting out of it. This whole scene, the intimate breakfast for two, the ‘you can trust me’ approach, was carefully contrived to satisfy Anya’s curiosity. At least it told me one thing: there seemed to be no complicity between Madame Lili and Anya, otherwise why would she have to ask?

  I knew I would have to tell her something – anything that she would believe and let me alone.

  ‘Well you know Madame Lili, Anya. I think she tried to hypnotise me. She certainly got me drunk. But, sorry to disappoint you, that was it really.’

  She gave me a hard, old-fashioned look as though she didn’t believe a word of it and then, leaning close, whispered, ‘Did she try to seduce you, Nico?’

  ‘Certainly not! What do you take me for, Anya?’

  I feigned offence. She sat back and shrieked with laughter. ‘Why, a fool, of course, Nico. You’re a man. You’ve had the hots for Madame Lili ever since you first met her. The pupils in your eyes go heart-shaped at the mention of her name.’

  I felt genuinely offended at that. It didn’t seem to me that she was joking. Then she reached out and touched my cheek. ‘Don’t be sulky with me, Nicolai Feodorovitch. We will always be friends, won’t we? And friends may tease each other.’

  I was beginning to think that all these ‘friends’ were rather bad for me and began to search round for an excuse to finish breakfast and leave. Anya must have sensed this, because she stood up, rubbed the back of my head and announced that she had things to do.

  ‘See you at dinner, Nico.’

  She smiled a long, slow, complicit smile at me before disappearing round the door.

  I finished my tea and, for the first time since coming to the House, began to consider what I would do when I left.

  Upstairs in my sitting room, I began to plot my future. The ‘mystique’ of this House was getting a little too much for me. I felt that, somehow, I was digging a hole that I would, some day soon, fall into. My instincts were telling me, loud and clear, that the walls of this place were closing in around me. The sense of cosiness and security that had earlier so impressed me had changed to a claustrophobic atmosphere where I was no longer able
to apply any logic or common sense to what was inexorably being played out around me.

  As soon as I could solve the problem of ensuring a future with Natalie, I…we…were going to leave.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Invisible Shotgun

  ‘Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.’

  ARISTOTLE

  Dr Voikin’s surgery was not the sort of place you would want to spend much time in. A poky, dreary cubbyhole of a room on the rear first floor landing of the right wing of the House, it had one small window facing on to the rear gardens. The furniture was sparse: an examination couch, a desk and three plain wooden chairs; glass-panelled cabinets lined two walls, their contents either dark bottles of unspecified liquid or stainless steel instruments, dishes and syringes, seemingly designed for horrendously painful purposes. A vague smell of carbolic pervaded the place, mixed with the smell from the desk oil lamp that had to be lit during the day, the place was so gloomy.

  Three weeks had passed since the séance and what had followed. To my relief, things had been fairly routine, compared to what had gone before; Natalie had occasionally attended lessons, but more often either been unwell herself or attending the Grand Duchess who was indisposed, a pattern that had become familiar to me. She was warm and affectionate, but did not come again to my bed, and such was my guilt about my betrayal of her that I didn’t press the matter, although I loved her more and more.

  Then I had been summoned, completely unexpectedly, by Anya, who admitted that she had no knowledge of the purpose of the meeting except that Maître Chermakov would also be present.

  Dr Voikin was alone when I arrived. He looked uncomfortable in his high butterfly collar and, as he stood up to greet me, an odour of mothballs and cigarettes wafted off his clothes. Again, I was struck by how much he resembled photographs that I had seen of Dr Crippen at the time of his arrest.