Her Name Was Lola Read online

  ‘Audibly,’ says Lola. Blushing.

  ‘What do I do now?’ says Max.

  ‘Pay for the recording,’ she says. Safely behind the counter she takes Max’s American Express card. Seeing his name she says, ‘Are you the Max Lesser who wrote Any That You Can Not Put Downe?’

  ‘That’s me,’ says Max. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve read it?’

  ‘It kept me up half the night,’ says Lola. ‘I love spooky stories.’ She bags the Monteverdi, smiles, says, ‘See you,’ turns to the next in the queue, says, ‘Yes, please?’

  ‘Love!’ says Max to his mind as they go out into the cold again. ‘I kept her up half the night and she said “love”.’

  ‘Spooky stories,’ says his mind.

  ‘Love,’ says Max. ‘She said she’d see me.’ He picks up the fallen rocket stick, hugs it to his bosom.

  4

  Through the Night

  That was December 1996. This is November 2001. Grace and Max sit on the floor for a long time without a word. Finally Grace says, ‘I hope that put something into you, because it sure as hell took something out of me.’

  ‘How could I have forgotten Lola?’ says Max.

  ‘Evidently that’s the kind of thing Apasmara does,’ says Grace.

  ‘And then, out of nowhere, her face,’ says Max. ‘I’m trying to get my head around what happened.’

  ‘First we saw the form of Apasmara,’ says Grace. ‘Then we saw the emptiness of him.’

  ‘And then we saw Lola because she’s the one who filled up his emptiness and sent him on to me,’ says Max. ‘From where? Where is she? I haven’t been able to locate her for the last four years.’

  ‘I can’t help you with where she is,’ says Grace.

  ‘And why would she send a dwarf demon to make me forget her? Why now?’

  ‘Can you reach the vodka?’ says Grace.

  On his hands and knees Max fetches both bottles. ‘Here’s looking at you,’ he says as they kill the first bottle. ‘You done good, Grace, and me a stranger.’

  ‘We’re all strangers,’ says Grace through a cloud of Golden Virginia smoke, ‘and you don’t know what anyone is to you until they’re gone. She was very beautiful.’

  ‘She was a lot more than that,’ says Max. ‘She still is.’

  With a half-shake of her head Grace makes a sympathetic sound, ‘Tsst.’

  Max looks at his watch. ‘Jesus,’ he says, ‘it’s twenty past three. I think it was only about half-past nine when I got here.’

  ‘Form and emptiness take a while,’ says Grace.

  ‘I wonder if I’ll sleep tonight,’ says Max. ‘There’s no telling when Apasmara’s going to turn up again, and this time he’ll be madder than hell. But I can hardly keep my eyes open.’

  ‘You’d better sleep here,’ says Grace, ‘Apasmara won’t bother you while you’re with me.’

  ‘Thanks, I could crash right here on the floor.’

  ‘You’ll feel better waking up in a bed,’ says Grace, and leads the way to the bedroom. There’s a big bed but that’s all there is to sleep on.

  ‘You want us to sleep together?’ says Max.

  ‘Just sleep,’ says Grace. ‘Just to make it through the night.’

  ‘Do you have bad nights?’ says Max.

  ‘I have all kinds of things,’ says Grace. She goes into the bathroom, comes out in a long T-shirt with an I Ching hexagram on it.

  ‘Which one is that?’ says Max.

  ‘Difficulty at the Beginning.’

  ‘What about the middle?’

  ‘I haven’t got that far yet.’ She slides into bed.

  Max goes to the bathroom, pees, washes his face, rinses his mouth. He comes back to the bedroom, undresses down to his underwear, hangs his clothes over a chair, and slides in beside Grace but not too close.

  Grace is lying on her side with her back to him. He lies down facing the same way. She moves closer until her back is against his front and she takes his arm and brings it over her waist. ‘I’m not making a pass,’ she says. ‘It’s a comfort thing.’

  ‘I know how it is,’ says Max. He feels her ribs through the T-shirt as she snuggles against him and sighs like a sleepy child. ‘Good night, Grace.’

  ‘Night, Max.’

  ‘So frail,’ says Max’s mind, ‘but Apasmara’s afraid of her.’

  ‘She knows form and she knows emptiness,’ says Max.

  ‘Maybe you can learn that.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s something you can learn,’ says Max.

  He hears birds singing. Maybe he’s already asleep and dreaming. In the dream he’s with Lola in Dorset four years ago. It’s the afternoon of 21 March and they’re on Maiden Castle with a picnic hamper and three bottles of champagne that she’s brought. The day is bright and sunny but on the cool side and there’s a fresh breeze blowing on top of the ancient hill fort. ‘Absent friends,’ says Lola as she pours a little Cristal on the ground. She takes the ribbon from her hair, ties it to a long stem of grass where it flutters like a tiny banner. ‘They’re all around us,’ she says.

  ‘All around us,’ says Max. He notices Noah’s Ark stranded on the hill fort not far from where he and Lola are sitting. A window near the roof opens and a raven flies out, loops the loop and is gone as Max wakes up and forgets the dream. Grace is warm against him, snoring gently. Birds are singing in Berwick Street, it’s light outside.

  Grace opens her eyes. ‘I had a really good night,’ she says. ‘Thank you, Max.’

  ‘It’s for me to thank you,’ says Max. A brief hug, then they get dressed and Grace shows Max where things are in the kitchen.

  ‘You make the coffee,’ says Grace. ‘I’ll get us some bagels.’

  ‘Let me go for the bagels,’ says Max.

  ‘No,’ says Grace. ‘I like going out and knowing that I’m not coming back to an empty flat.’

  Max has the coffee ready when she returns and they have a quiet breakfast. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I can’t hide out here indefinitely. It’s time for me to go out into the world again. I owe you, Grace.’

  ‘Any time. Don’t be a stranger.’

  They part with a big hug and a small kiss and Max is on his own again.

  5

  From Where, From What

  November 2001. Max is afraid that Apasmara will destroy him. And of course it’s Max’s fear that gives Apasmara that power. What did Max do that made Apasmara come to him with Lola’s music? Before we get into that we need to know something about where Max is coming from.

  Now in 2001 Max is forty-four. So when he met Lola he was thirty-nine. Unmarried. What, had he never up till then found the right woman? Who can say what makes a woman the right one? Who can say what makes a person move forward or step back?

  People are composed of memories, losses, longings and regrets. Max’s father, now dead, lost a favourite toy as a child: a Noah’s Ark. ‘Noah and Mrs Noah and all the animals were printed on glossy paper that was glued to their plywood shapes,’ he told Max. ‘The Ark itself was yellow with a red roof. Did I play with it down in the cellar? I’m not sure. In the winter it was always warm and cosy there from the coal furnace. I liked the smell of it. There was a big black boiler by the opposite wall, it was a lying-down thing with big rivets. I used to think the Noah’s Ark had fallen behind it somehow – there was just enough space between it and the wall. There were cables and pipes and cobwebs and I could never make anything out with a flashlight or find it with a stick. I didn’t like to reach in with my hand because I was pretty sure there were spiders. By now the glossy paper would be all black with mildew but even now, in this house, I still want to look behind the boiler now and then.’ Max remembers how his father sounded when he told that story.

  Max has been in love many times with women who loved him back but he always fell out of love after a while. Constancy has not been his strong suit. In all fairness he ought to have been wearing a sign that said, IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO when he appeared in the Coliseum Shop
in 1996 and said that Lola was his destiny woman. None the less he was being perfectly honest: he believed it was necessarily so. He had truly fallen in love (in his way) and when he presented himself as an idea whose time had come, he was doing it in good faith.

  Lola was too sensible to take Max’s outburst any more seriously than the sort of shout she might hear when passing a building site. But at the same time something in her responded to his craziness. Mummy and Daddy and Basil were boringly sane while this man definitely had a screw loose which was not without its appeal. And his non-crazy remarks about Monteverdi and Lorenzetti showed him to have the kind of mind she was very comfortable with. For the rest of that evening she found herself replaying his declaration in her head. She was certain he’d show up again and she wondered what she’d do. She tried to imagine presenting Max to her parents. Lesser was almost certainly a Jewish name, and although one or two of Daddy’s Jewish colleagues had dined at the house, there were none that he played golf with. Her mother had sometimes entertained Jewish singers and musicians but that was nothing that created problems. As Max was an artist, it wouldn’t be like bringing a pawnbroker home but questions would be asked, with amiable interest, about Max’s origins and education. At that point in her imaginings Lola gave herself a mental shake and resolved not to think too much about Max. She did, however, look for him in Who’s Who. He wasn’t there.

  6

  First Date

  December 1996. Three days after his first appearance at the Coliseum Shop Max turns up again. This time he doesn’t embarrass Lola and his visit is very brief. There’ll be a performance of a new arrangement of Die Winterreise at Queen Elizabeth Hall in January. Would she like to go with him? She would. While pretending to help him look for a recording she gives him her last name and they exchange phone numbers. His mind spins like a prayer wheel, saying ‘Lola Bessington’ all the way home.

  Over Christmas and New Year Max drinks more than his usual quota. He watches war films on TV in which the Germans speak heavily accented English and the Allied soldiers speak German like natives while infiltrating the enemy. He also draws heavily on the resources of Blockbuster. He works every day, trying for a new story in his children’s series about a hedgehog called Charlotte Prickles.

  January 1997. On the appointed evening Max meets Lola at the shop at half-past six and they walk to the Embankment and over the Hungerford Bridge to the South Bank. On the bridge they both give money to the homeless and feel guilty because they feel so good. Halfway across, Lola turns to look up at Ursa Major low in the sky over Charing Cross Station. She knows the names of the seven stars of that constellation but on the first date she’s not ready to say them for Max who is also looking up. To him Ursa Major is the Big Dipper and the dipper is upright. ‘Nothing has spilt out yet,’ he says.

  Lola smiles and says nothing. She feels good about Max. She likes being with him, and his choice of Die Winterreise was a good one. Comfortably sheltered in Belgravia and cherished by Daddy, Mummy, and Basil, she feels herself to be all alone, a solitary wayfarer on a journey to nowhere, past barking dogs and windows warm in the cold night.

  ‘What made you decide on Schubert for tonight?’ she asks Max.

  ‘The man in Die Winterreise says that he came as a stranger and he goes as a stranger,’ says Max. ‘That’s how I’ve always felt.’

  ‘Me too,’ says Lola. ‘Do you know anything about this performance?’

  ‘It’s the first time in London and it’s billed as some kind of synthesis with orchestra and tenor. The composer is Hans Zender, the tenor is Christoph Pregardien, and the orchestra is the Klangforum Wien under Sylvain Gambreling. I haven’t heard of any of them before.’

  They give money again at the South Bank end of the bridge and have time for coffee in the Queen Elizabeth Hall cafeteria. Max and Lola both look around at the other people, smug in the knowledge that they’re on the inside of something that everybody else is on the outside of. The other coffee-drinkers look as if they mostly read the Guardian and the Independent and quite a few of them seem to know each other.

  Once inside, Max and Lola settle comfortably into their seats and wait for the Schubert to happen. Accustomed to this song cycle performed by two men and one piano, both of them are slightly startled by the sight of instrumentalists. ‘It’ll be Die Winterreise, but not as we know it,’ says Max.

  ‘I tend to be a traditionalist,’ says Lola, ‘but I’m always interested in new approaches.’

  Sylvain Gambreling appears, waves his musicians to their feet. He and they bow together and are applauded. Christoph Pregardien takes the stage, bows, is applauded, the orchestra tunes up, and they’re off. Some of the musicians are active with their instruments but whatever they’re doing is almost inaudible. Pregardien isn’t opening his mouth. Very, very gradually one hears something like the beating of a heart coming closer, closer. Is that the melody of the first song, ‘Gute Nacht,’ sneaking in behind that heartbeat, like the voice of the singer trying to find him?

  Louder now, with strings, percussion, brass, woodwinds, the heartbeat, footsteps perhaps, now near, now far. Loud, loud suddenly, a summons from the horns. Max’s and Lola’s hands find each other. Is there, they wonder, a madness that we inhabit and call reality? Is this music letting it in? Was this always in Schubert, waiting to be called up? When will the singer be heard? Now at last, gently with strings the melody of ‘Gute Nacht’, and now the voice of Christoph Pregardien: ‘Fremd bin ich eingezogen, Fremd zieh ich wieder aus’; ‘A stranger I came, a stranger I go again’. That voice! Pure, ingenuous, going straight to the heart more than Fischer-Dieskau, more than any other tenor that Max and Lola have ever heard. Tears are running down Lola’s face, Max’s also. He squeezes her hand, she squeezes back.

  7

  So Far, So Soon

  January 1997. Zender’s Die Winterreise goes on with all kinds of surprises, loud and soft, shouted, brassed, stringed, clanged and thumped. Pregardien’s singing is a revelation. But the main event of the evening is the crying. Ending up in bed with Max this night would not shock Lola. But to cry together? She hasn’t been prepared for that degree of intimacy on the first date. On the way back over the Hungerford Bridge both she and Max look up at Ursa Major. This time she too thinks of it as the Big Dipper. Now it’s standing on its handle, so that whatever was in it has poured out. Is Max already someone to be seriously reckoned with? Despite youthful romances Lola has never given her heart completely and for ever. If she finds herself at the edge of This-Is-It she won’t be afraid to leap. Is that edge getting closer?

  8

  Razor Blades

  Now we’re back in November 2001. Max is on his way home from Grace Kowalski’s as the memory of that first date bursts into his head ten times more vivid than it was before Apasmara took it away. And it hurts. It hurts like a head full of double-edged razor blades. ‘Shit!’ says Max as he realises that Apasmara’s thing isn’t only forgetfulness – it’s whatever hurts the most.

  ‘Oi!’ comes a loathsome whisper behind him. ‘Have I got to writhe all the way back to Fulham or are you going to take me aboard?’ There he is in his run-over-dog mode.

  ‘Get lost, Napasmara,’ says Max. ‘You’re nothing but a whole lot of emptiness.’

  ‘That makes two of us then,’ says the dwarf, ‘because I’m whatever you are and that denial shit only works when you’re with Kowalski. Come on, pick me up. I ain’t heavy, I’m your brother.’

  So Max picks him up. Apasmara’s weight and smell are just as bad as before but somehow Max feels more … what? More complete with the dwarf demon on his back as they near Oxford Circus. ‘I suppose,’ says his mind, ‘it’s better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.’

  ‘Except that he’s inside pissing in,’ says Max.

  ‘Anyhow, I’m getting used to it,’ says his mind. ‘What an evening that first date was. What a memory. It hurts like hell but it’s a beauty. Those stars over Charing Cross Stati
on! The feel of Lola’s hand squeezing yours!’

  ‘Don’t distract me,’ says Max. ‘I’m reviewing the situation. Lola put Apasmara on to me with this CD. Could she have been the one who put it through the letterbox?’

  ‘You think she’s still in London?’ says his mind.

  ‘Hang on,’ says Max as WHAM, another memory lights up his brain: Trafalgar Square the Monday evening a couple of days after Die Winterreise. The Coliseum Shop closes at six on Mondays and it’s only about half-past now. The National Gallery also closes at six so people from there have joined those already in the Square. Gentle rain coming down. Max and Lola in macs and broad-brimmed canvas hats, one of which Max bought for Lola this afternoon. ‘Do you buy a lot of hats,’ she says, ‘for women?’

  ‘First time,’ says Max. ‘I thought you might like to walk in the rain without an umbrella.’

  ‘I do, and you got the size right too. Well done.’ She’s on his arm and the two of them are the little village of each other in the winter night. Under the lights and the rain the lions are gleaming, the fountains are sending up their white spray, the passing sightseeing buses are juicily red, and Nelson, as in all weathers, keeps watch from his column.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Die Winterreise,’ says Lola.

  ‘Me too,’ says Max. ‘Some of those songs seem to describe exactly where I am in my own Reise.’

  ‘Same here,’ says Lola. ‘In that very first song, “Gute Nacht”, the second verse keeps singing itself in my head. I did my own translation with the help of the Fischer-Dieskau CD text: “I can to my journey not choose me the time. I must myself the way find in this darkness. It goes a moon-shadow as my companion. And in the white fields seek I the wild animals’ tracks.” That got to me: “I can to my journey not choose me the time.”’

  ‘Nobody can,’ says Max.