by Nina Allan
Lola normally retired to bed at around eleven and I thought the chances of us disturbing her were slim. Like I say, I was drunk.
Wil’s reaction as we went up in the lift was suitably gratifying. The lift was prewar and rattled like a lorryload of loose ironmongery, but that was all part of what you might call the period charm.
“I can’t believe you never told me you lived in this building,” Wil said. “You do know it’s famous? Tobias Angell lived here. And Marek Adorno used the facade in The Wolf of Warsaw. This is incredible.”
“My aunt’s lived here for years,” I said, breezily. “Since before I was born, I think. I suppose I take it for granted.”
I hadn’t heard of Tobias Angell or The Wolf of Warsaw. Wil was always dropping the names of films and books – he was the kind of person who feels more alive in invented worlds than in the real one. I flicked on the hall lights, four low-wattage bulbs in wrought-iron sconces. The light they cast was very dim, a kind of ocher glow that was supposed to look like candlelight. The hallway ran the whole length of the flat and the poor lighting made it look even more cavernous. Our shadows hunched and leaped like dwarfs in a funhouse mirror maze.
“Here we are,” I said. “Home, sweet home.”
“I can’t get over this. It’s spectacular.”
I felt a surge of self-satisfaction at my achievement – finally we were talking about me and not him. Wil moved slowly along the hallway, examining the pictures. There were three of them, all murky oils of the kind Aunt Lola seemed to go in for. Two were landscapes, forested ravines with ruined castles that looked like something out of Dracula. The third was a portrait, an adolescent girl sitting on a bed in what appeared to be a dingy hotel or more likely a lodging house. She looked terrified to me. The painting gave me the creeps.
“What a superb painting,” Wil said. “Do you know who it’s by?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. I’d grown so used to the clutter in Lola’s apartment I’d stopped noticing it ages ago. I wished now that I’d paid more attention. “My aunt will know. I’ll ask her.”
Wil nodded. He was still gazing at the painting and seemed almost to have forgotten I was there. After a moment he moved away from the picture and into the living room. One of the table lamps had been left on, but there was no sign of Lola and that at least was something.
“I’m going to change my shirt,” I said. I’d spilled wine on it earlier, in the bar. I was beginning to sober up and the soiled shirt was just one more way in which the situation was beginning to feel out of control. “I won’t be a moment. Then I’ll fix us both a drink and we can relax.”
Wil made a noise of assent. “Hurry back,” he said, though it was clear he was more interested in what other unexpected treasures might be available for his delectation on the mantel and sideboard. I returned to find him standing in front of Lola’s huge carved bookcase, hands thrust deep in his pockets. There were books all over the flat, not just on shelves but lined up along the skirting boards, perched precariously on top of cupboards, everywhere. The ones in the bookcase were all hardbacks, all first editions, all crime novels of some description and many of them Aunt Lola’s own works. Lola had been with the same publisher throughout her career, and all her books had a similar cover design: the title in black against a gray background, and always with a hornet somewhere about, the stripes on its abdomen highlighted in gold foil. Clever.
Wil ran his finger along the smooth gray spines before taking down one of the books, Belladonna, which was about a woman who has her own sister committed to a mental asylum so she can steal her child.
“I thought this was terrific,” Wil said. “Very well written. I read it when it first came out.”
“It’s my aunt’s,” I said automatically, then instantly regretted it. Whatever the initial rush it had given me, I could see now that bringing Wil here had been a mistake. Never mix business with pleasure, or aunts with lovers.
“You mean your aunt collects first editions?”
“No,” I said. My heart sank. What if he demanded to meet her? “I mean my aunt is the author. She’s a crime writer.”
“Your aunt is Lola Danilow?”
I nodded. Wil turned eagerly to the back flap, searching for a photograph, presumably. I could have told him he wouldn’t find one. He seemed genuinely awestruck, more so even than when he’d been looking at the paintings in the hallway, but I took no pleasure in it.
“I’ll go and get those glasses,” I said. I turned to leave the room, and almost ran slap bang into Aunt Lola, who was standing in the doorway, dressed in her gray silk kimono and matching slippers. It seemed almost uncanny, the way she had crept up on us so silently. Her face was half in shadow and for a moment it appeared normal, the hollow where her right eye should have been merely the shaded concavity of an ordinary eye socket. Then she tilted her head slightly and the light from the standard lamp fell fully upon her. I found myself recoiling, just a little. I tend to forget how shocking her appearance must be to strangers.
“I thought I heard voices,” she said, smiling. “Would anyone like coffee?”
Her voice, so refined, so melodious, and always with that chuckle bubbling away beneath the surface. She didn’t turn her head or try to hide herself from Wil, even though she’d never met him before. She was getting on for fifty by then, but she didn’t look it. Her body was still trim and graceful but that wasn’t the whole source of her appeal, or even the half of it. There was something elfin about her, something entrancingly childlike. It was as if the world and everything in it were perpetually new to her. I wondered if in some strange way this quality of freshness, of transparency, was something that had arisen directly out of her disfigurement. Lola had never lived a normal life, and so had never grown bored or tired the way ordinary people often do.
I glanced quickly at Wil, trying to gauge his reaction. Would I see in his eyes what I had seen in the eyes of so many others: that fleeting expression of horror, swiftly concealed behind a mask of smiling acceptance? Once the mask was safely in place, people would take their time observing her, hiding behind pleasantries and chatter, noting and cataloguing every detail of what they perceived as her tragedy.
I saw none of this with Wil.
“You’re Lola Danilow,” he said. He stepped forward to greet her, steadily meeting her gaze. He was still holding her book, Belladonna. He held it out towards her like a tribute. “I admire this novel tremendously,” he said. “I’ve always thought it would make a marvelous screenplay.”
“It was actually under option for a while,” Lola said. “Nothing came of it, though. The film business is so fickle.”
She smiled at him, that sweet, soft smile, half beautiful, half monstrous. “If you’ll excuse me for just a moment, I’ll go and fetch that coffee.” She turned and left the room. She hadn’t asked Wil his name and I thought how strange that was, almost as if she knew him already. They were both writers, after all, both relatively well known within their own small circles. It was possible, at the very least, that they had friends in common.
Wil replaced Belladonna on the shelf and took down the book next to it, The White Castle. When I looked at it the following day I saw that the plot concerned a murder at an international chess tournament. I couldn’t imagine anything less enticing.
Wil replaced this second book also, then began wandering around the room with his hands behind his back, examining the sepia-tinted photographs of film stars, the two bronzes Lola kept on the table beside her phone. The bronzes were weird: intricately detailed, slightly larger-than-life sculptures of a scarab beetle and a common toad. They were by an American sculptor who had been a friend of Aunt Lola’s for years. The photographs were a mystery. I found it hard to imagine Lola choosing them herself – it would seem almost perverse, for her to surround herself with images of such beautiful people and I assumed they must have come with the flat. They certain
ly looked old enough.
There was silence between Wil and I, the awkward, stagy kind that exists between two people who know that every word they speak will be overheard by a third. Eventually, Aunt Lola returned, bearing a mahogany tray laden with three espresso cups, her silver coffee pot and the ornate, claw-footed sugar bowl that went with it. Wil hurried forward to help her but she waved him aside.
“You two make yourselves comfortable,” she said. She began pouring the coffee. Wil sat down in one of the twin leather armchairs opposite the sofa. I settled myself on the floor at his feet, resting the back of my head against his knees, the kind of gesture a screenwriter might have used to indicate that the younger woman wished to assert her dominance over the older one: hands off, bitch, he’s mine. Which I guess sounds dodgy now, given everything that followed, but I’m pretty sure the only thing I was thinking at the time was that I was bored.
I drank my coffee slowly and kept my mouth shut. Wil toyed with my hair, jabbering away with Aunt Lola about goodness knows what. The more they went on, the more it became clear that they did have friends in common, acquaintances at least, and that Aunt Lola was familiar with both of Wil’s films. I wished they’d stop. In spite of the coffee, the alcohol was catching up with me and it was a struggle to keep my eyes open.
I came awake with a jerk. Wil’s hand was on my shoulder.
“Away with the fairies, you were. Your aunt’s gone to bed. I had no idea how late it was.”
In fact it was after one thirty. The bed in my room was a queen-size, another of Lola’s heavy brown antiques. The heating had gone off and the air was chilly. We undressed quickly and got under the covers. Wil’s lovemaking was urgent, almost brutal. I got off on it, but it freaked me out a little, at the same time. Normally, he was slow, cautious even, and I couldn’t help wondering if the thought of Aunt Lola, just a few doors away, was acting as some kind of weird turn-on for him. He fell asleep soon afterwards but I found myself fully awake suddenly. The apartment creaked and groaned around me as it did most nights, only that night I felt certain that Lola was wide awake also, lying flat on her back and staring up at the ceiling through her single golden eye.
I covered my right eye with the palm of my hand. The view didn’t change much, though the darkness of the room seemed more intense, somehow.
* * *
—
Around two months later, the studio started work on a brand new project, a World War II drama this time. We were all doing a lot of overtime and I was exhausted. Throughout the final fortnight, before the wrap, I barely saw Wil at all and when I did see him I felt on edge. Some of the thrill seemed to have gone out of our relationship, but I put that down to stress.
I was so preoccupied with work it never occurred to me that Wil might be cheating on me, though in hindsight it was obvious. In all the weeks since our peculiar evening in Lola’s apartment, Wil hadn’t asked me a single question about her, or the famous building, which anyone would think was odd, given how taken he’d been with both. Not that I was going to broach the subject myself. I’d made sure Wil was out of the flat before Lola was up, and I had no intention of bringing him back there anytime soon. I knew Lola wouldn’t say anything – she never asked me questions about my private life. I allowed myself to believe that was the end of it.
Except that it wasn’t. I found out on a Wednesday. I’d stayed over at Wil’s the night before and forgot to set the alarm. I was fighting the day in an uphill battle from the moment I got up, which was probably why I managed to spill a whole cup of coffee over myself, scalding my arm and soaking my T-shirt into the bargain. I normally ate lunch in the hospital canteen, which did an all-you-can-eat buffet and was just across the road from the studio, but I decided to nip back to Lola’s instead, so I could have a quick shower and change my clothes. I stank of coffee and my bra felt sticky. I’ve always had an aversion to feeling unclean.
I thought the flat was empty when I arrived. If I wondered about that at all, I suppose I presumed Lola must be out on an errand – the mini-mart probably, or else the library. I remember feeling relieved – I’d be able to get in and out without having to explain why I was home or hang around chatting. My room was the second on the right along the hall, next to the big cupboard where we hung up our coats and stored the vacuum cleaner. The door was open a crack but I thought nothing of it. With it being just me and Lola, I never made a point of keeping it closed.
She was lying on her back, her head towards the foot of the bed and facing the wall, her hair spiraling across the covers like an inverted crown. She was completely naked. As I entered the room she turned to look at me. Her single eye flashed gold. Her cheeks and neck and collarbone gleamed with fresh sweat. You would have thought she would react with horror, me seeing her like that, but I swear to you she was smiling.
Of course Wil never saw that. He was lying between her legs, embedded in her up to the hilt like a knife in butter.
“Oh Christ,” he said, when he finally realized what was happening. He flung out an arm, tugging at the bedclothes in an attempt to cover himself. They wouldn’t come loose, though – Aunt Lola was lying on top of them, pinning them down.
“Sonia,” he said. Just that.
“If I’d known you were into freaks I wouldn’t have bothered,” I said. The room stank of their sex, I realized, and once I’d started smelling it, it was all I could smell. My words seemed to spread slowly through the tainted air, vibrating outwards like oily ripples on a stagnant pond. I ran from the room, remembering only belatedly that it was my own room I was running from. All my clothes were in there, including the dark gray jersey top I’d been intending to change into.
I went back to work. There seemed no other choice. I got through the day somehow and then later at the Maraschino I asked my friend Dina from wardrobe if I could stay at her place for a couple of days.
“My aunt’s thrown me out,” I added. As explanations went it sounded suitably dramatic, and might even have been called truthful, if only partially. Dina always relished scandal, so she was happy to help, even going so far as to pay a visit to Aunt Lola’s the following day to collect some of my belongings.
I’d counted on Lola not saying a word to her beyond the necessary and I counted right.
* * *
—
I should have left things there. I’d more or less decided I had to move out of Aunt Lola’s anyway, and if I were honest with myself I knew already that Wil and I weren’t going to last. We were just too different, and wanted different things. If he’d had an affair with someone else – someone I didn’t know, or even someone I did know who wasn’t my aunt – I think I could have moved on. After a bit, anyway.
As it was, rather than fading away, the horror of it – both what I had seen and what I had said – dug its claws deep into my mind and would not let go.
Most of all, Lola’s smile. A smile that said: You know nothing, silly girl, now run along.
I tried to tell myself I had imagined it, that the expression I had caught on her face had been one of shock, her lips stretched wide in distress and heartbreak, but I knew that wasn’t so.
I faced a terrible choice: either believe my own, falsified version of what I had seen, or accept that everything I thought I knew about Aunt Lola – her grace under fire, her affection for me, her fundamental goodness – had all been a lie.
I think it was this, in the end, that helped me decide. Once the pain of personal betrayal had begun to wear off, I found the business of Wil was just a distraction from the question of Lola.
Who was she really and what was her game? If she could behave that way to me, her beloved niece, what might she have done to others, down the years?
I know how melodramatic that sounds, believe me. You’ll ask me why I couldn’t settle for the simpler explanation: that Lola and Wil really had fallen for each other, and didn’t know how to tell me. They had more
in common than Wil and I did, that’s for sure, and they’d both have felt awful about deceiving me.
And still I couldn’t forget her smile. That gloating, knowing smile that told me none of this had happened by accident, that she had planned it. I’d better get out of her way now, while I still could, or…
Or what? I didn’t know, and I would have felt ridiculous, trying to explain my fears to any of my friends. In the end I phoned Dad. I was still in regular contact with my parents and since I’d landed the job at the studio even my mother seemed resigned about my career choice. I think a part of her was even pleased, though she would never have said so, and it was no good talking to her about Aunt Lola, either. My mother had always held fast to the idea that Lola was a tragic, helpless woman who wrote about murder because she couldn’t get a man. If she ever found out about what happened with Wil – information I was determined would never see the light of day – she would come over all smug and I-told-you-so. She’d be convinced that Lola’s actions arose out of simple jealousy, and I’d be no further forward.
I called after supper. I knew Mum would be out, hosting one of her parties, and I wanted to speak to Dad without her knowing. Once we’d got through the pleasantries, I told him I’d moved out of Aunt Lola’s and into my own place, a box-sized studio apartment that was four flights up over the central market but that had the notable advantages of closeness to work and being seriously trendy into the bargain.
