Apartment 16 (5 page)

‘He’s back, I tell you! I heard him. I heard him laughing.’

Ordinarily, a man in his position would be prone to an embarrassed laugh or a nervous smile when confronted by a raving ninety-two-year-old woman in her nightgown, but there was something about her determined face and wild rheumy eyes that made Seth uneasy. Particularly considering what he too had heard on the other side of that door.

Seth made a bold move. He stood close to Mrs Roth, nodding in sympathy. ‘I know. I’ve heard noises in there for a while now. But what is it?’

‘What? Speak up. Don’t be ridiculous. What are you saying?’

He nodded his head towards the door. ‘In there. At night. I made reports. About the noises. The bumping. In the hallway. Furniture being knocked over. Things. Like that.’

Mrs Roth’s pointed face blanched a sickly shade of pale. The tremble in her frail, monkey limbs became a shake. He thought she might fall over, and moved forward to take her elbow. She clutched at him for support and dropped her head.

‘No,’ she whispered. And then, ‘No,’ again, but to herself. She looked up at him like a child after a fright. ‘Take me home. I want Imee. Get Imee. Where’s Imee? I want Imee.’

Tense and uncomfortable in the face of her indignity, he walked her slowly towards the lift door and then summoned it from the ground floor by punching the button in the polished brass plate. As he waited he realized his shirt was drenched with sweat again.

The groaning cables seemed to take an age to haul the heavy but elegant carriage up from the ground. And all the while, in his discomfort, Seth tried to reassure Mrs Roth with comments about Imee and bed, until she told him to, ‘Shut up, just shut up,’ and waved a hand at his face.

When he opened the outer doors and guided her inside the lift carriage, she screwed her eyes closed and seemed more decrepit and bent-over than ever, as if being forced to remember something especially painful. Something that broke her. Broke what little spirit remained in that old frail body.

Up on the ninth floor, the door to her apartment was still open, and Seth rang the bell to raise Imee, who came swiftly from her little room at the end of the long hall. Clutching her blue dressing gown across her front, as if to protect her modesty from the eyes of the porter, she snatched Mrs Roth off him, and cast him a sullen, angry look, before closing the front door on his whispered explanations. Mrs Roth had begun sniffing and crying the moment she saw Imee.

‘Bitch,’ Seth muttered at the closed door, and took the lift down to the staffroom in the basement. Where he pondered, with some discomfort, who Mrs Roth had been referring to outside the front door of apartment sixteen.

FIVE

‘Mama, she never threw anything out. Nothing. I’m not kidding. You should see the clothes in her room. There’s like a hundred dresses and suits and coats and stuff. Going back to, like, the forties. It’s all still here. Like a fashion museum or something. We inherited a goddamn museum. The Lillian collection. And some of the dresses are so beautiful.’ Apryl walked back and forth in her great-aunt’s bedroom, her cell phone pressed to her ear.

But she knew her mother could never comprehend what she’d uncovered in her great-aunt’s rooms. Not unless she saw it herself. Which she never would, due to her pathological terror of flying. And Apryl felt unable to describe her discoveries adequately, or to impress upon her mother the atmosphere of the apartment: the faded grandeur, the ever-present sense of loss, the chaotic defence an old woman had built against the world outside, the disturbed inner life still evident in unoccupied rooms with shrines and rituals and habits long maintained but now just plain mystifying.

Two of the rooms, the smaller bedrooms at the end of the cluttered hallway on the right side, were choked with debris. In each room she’d found a single bed with an ancient eiderdown coated in a fur of dust. About the beds, cardboard boxes and old suitcases filled with bric-a-brac were stacked. What she was to do with any of it remained a mystery. An inventory would take weeks, even months to complete.

At least Lillian’s bedroom remained uncluttered around the two giant wardrobes and clothes drawers. There was also a huge bed and a beautiful bureau with three locked drawers, the keys for which she couldn’t find, but she guessed Lillian’s personal papers must be stored inside. And she’d never seen so many perfume bottles arranged in a herd on top of the chest of drawers. Cosmetic companies never made glass like that any more, nor the porcelain jars for cream and makeup, most of their contents hard and cracked like the baked soil of distant planets.

‘Mama, I’d like to bring the clothes back. I think they all fit me. Isn’t that crazy? I tried on two fur coats and three hats and it was like they were made for me.’

‘Honey, where are you gonna put it? In your tiny place? I’ve no room here, you know that. And think of the cost, sweetheart. We just don’t have the money for that kind of thing and now you’re talking of giving up your job too. I’m worried.’

‘Don’t be. Mama, we’re not going to be short of green soon.’

‘We will be if you carry on like this. You have to be realistic, honey. The apartment could take a long time to sell.’

‘I can cover the shipping from my savings. But Lillian’s stuff I want to keep will have to come to you first and go in the basement.’

‘Honey, it’ll cost a fortune. You can’t bring it back here – you’ll have to sell it in England.’

‘No. I’ll be careful. I can stay here until the apartment is sold and just work my way through all this stuff. The furniture will have to go. I don’t know anything about antiques, so we’ll have to get an expert to value them. But the really personal stuff I want us to keep. Mama, it’s so beautiful. It’s just the clothes and the photos and a few other things.’

‘Oh honey, I don’t know about this. You were only going there for two weeks to empty the place and sell it, and now you’re talking like a crazy thing.’

‘Mama, Mama, this is our history. We can’t just throw it out. I mean, the photos of Lillian and Reginald, they’re just heartbreaking. They were so glamorous. Like movie stars. You just won’t believe it when you see them. That’s someone in our family up there on those walls. A woman with so much taste and class and style. She’s like my icon already. You know how much I love that look.’

But her mother sounded tired; she should never have agitated her like this. Added to the strain of her only daughter being overseas, the intrusion of anything new or foreign into her immaculate New Jersey bungalow would be the cause of severe anxiety. She should have broken all this to her mother slowly, but Apryl couldn’t contain her excitement.

The forties and fifties had long been the inspiration for her own retro stylings back home in New York, where she sold alternative and vintage clothing in St Mark’s Place. And had done for starvation wages for the last five years, which had slipped by and left her without much of a CV, or apartment, or standard of living. But this cache could raise thousands on eBay. Not that she was intending to sell it all; she intended to wear the majority of these outfits to the retro clubs downtown and in the Village when she got home. This was her inheritance; her aunt wore these clothes
back in the day.

The dresses were so exquisitely made; she’d found six immaculate silk and taffeta ball gowns, two dozen suits in cashmere and wool, and twice as many figure-hugging black and cream dresses, folded into cases, that her great-aunt must have worn into the sixties with, perhaps, a single strand of pearls. And the sight of the costume jewellery had made her shriek out loud: three boxes stuffed full of colourful brooches, necklaces and earrings all tangled together.

The vintage underwear they stopped making in the early seventies, and some of her great-aunt’s girdles and corsets were made at least as far back as the forties. She’d long fantasized of such finds in used clothing stores and garage sales, and had never stopped scouring factory closures and charity stores for vintage accessories for her own wardrobe, or to sell in the store. There were enough clothes in her great-aunt’s room to start a business from scratch or fill an auction room. There were at least thirty packets of real nylons unopened in the top drawer of the dresser, with names like
Mink
and
Cocktail Kitty.
Some of the older stockings were still sealed inside tissue-paper sheets within flat cardboard boxes, the manufacturer’s details embossed regally on the lids.

Lillian could not have discarded any of her clothes. As decades and styles changed, she seemed to have preserved and stored everything until she stopped buying new clothes some time in the early sixties. She had no contemporary clothes at all. So she must have worn old classic styles right up until she died. If she had done, the family resemblance was uncanny; Apryl rarely wore anything that didn’t look as if it had been made in the fifties.

Only the shoe collection disappointed. Apart from a pair of velvet pumps with Cuban heels and two pairs of silver sandals, Lillian had worn out all of her shoes. Heels were sheared down to wood and leather uppers were split or scarred with deep creases, all unsalvageable. It was as if her great-aunt had done a lot of walking, but very little in the way of replacing her footwear.

‘Mama, look, don’t worry, it’ll be OK. Everything will be fine. I’m just real tired. I’ve been up since five thirty. All this is so exciting and sad and I don’t know what. I still can’t get my head around the fact that Great-aunt Lillian lived here. Knightsbridge is like Park Avenue. With the money she had in the bank and the sale of this flat, we’re going to be rich, Mama. You hear me? Rich.’

‘Well we don’t know that, honey. You said it needed renovating.’

‘Mama, this is prime real estate. These places get snapped up right away. Even in this condition. It’s a penthouse, Mama.’ She heard the front-door bell trill like a little hammer going crazy inside an iron bell. ‘Mama, someone at the door. I gotta fly, and anyway my cell is nearly out of juice.’

‘Your cell? What are you calling me on your cell for? It’ll cost the earth.’

‘Love you, Mama. Gotta fly. Call you soon when I know more.’ Apryl air-kissed the phone then ran from the kitchen to the front door to let the head porter in.

‘I guess I really want to know what she was like. Especially at the end. I mean, she’s left all of this. In here
. . .’ To unravel,
she wanted to say. Lillian had not made it possible for her to just throw things out and sell up. It was as if the dead woman was enforcing an involvement in her crazy existence. Apryl sighed as she sat in the kitchen with the head porter. ‘I promise not to keep you long – I’m just beat myself. I’m so wrecked I’m starting to hallucinate. So maybe this isn’t the best time for me to start asking questions, but . . . some of this is kind of freaking me out.’ She couldn’t keep the emotion out of her voice. She coughed and took a slurp of her black tea; she usually drank coffee, but Lillian was all out.

Stephen was no longer on duty and had taken his tie off, but even though it was after ten, he still wore the white cotton shirt and grey trousers of his uniform, which suggested he didn’t have much life besides his service to the building. While Apryl sat at the table in the kitchen – the only room serviceable enough to entertain a guest – he leant against the counter and held the mug of tea she’d made for him.

He nodded. ‘It must be a lot to take in. I was thinking it might have been easier for you to deal with as you never knew Lillian. But of course, having not known her is probably just as taxing in a different way. You want to know her before you let this place go.’

‘That’s about the size of it. And already I’m seeing things here that remind me of me. If that makes any sense.’

Stephen smiled, as if in prelude to a confession. ‘It does. I noted a resemblance right away. In your eyes. But it’s ironic. Often the residents are closer to us porters at the end than they are to their own families.’

‘And I guess no one ever thinks of you guys.’

‘Oh, we don’t mind. We’re paid to do a job. But when you work in people’s homes for a long time, you can’t help becoming a part of their lives. Like family.’

‘You liked Lillian, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. The day porters did too. But I don’t think the night staff ever saw her. Not once.’

‘Why was that?’

He shrugged. ‘She always made sure she was home and indoors in plenty of time before it got dark.’ He could see Apryl was confused, and tried to elaborate. ‘It’s what happens when you spend a twelve-hour shift here. We never pry, but you just can’t help noticing things. And we’re paid to be observant.’ He was preparing her for something. She could see he was a man with impeccable manners and very professional, who didn’t want to speak out of turn, or be garrulous. Maybe it was against staff policy. But she was tired now and just wanted him to be straight with her. If Lillian never had visitors or friends, the staff at Barrington House were the people to talk to. It looked like the porters were all Lillian had at the end. And the very thought of a life recollected only by them made her morose again.

She gave Stephen a tired smile. ‘Please, Stephen. You can be candid. I just need something to go on before I hit the hay. My curiosity is killing me.’

He nodded. Looked at his feet. Ran his tongue over his gums. ‘Like I said before, she was very eccentric.’

‘But in what way, specifically? I mean, did she talk to herself out loud and—’

‘Yes. Yes she did. Half the time she lived in her own world. In her head. And she never seemed particularly happy when she was there.’

Apryl felt her mouth sag.

‘But there were often moments too when she was completely lucid. She was unfailingly gracious. She had beautiful manners, your aunt. Real quality. Though we never really passed more than the time of day with her, on her way out. Once every day. At eleven, like clockwork. But . . .’

‘Go on.’

Stephen’s smile was awkward. ‘It’s not often you see a woman wearing a hat these days. With a veil. But Lillian never went out without one. Or without her gloves. And only ever dressed in black. Like she was in mourning. She was quite the local celebrity. Everyone around here knew her. And took care of her. Local residents and shopkeepers and the cabbies would all bring her back when they found her wandering about confused.’

‘What do you mean, confused?’

Stephen shrugged. ‘She’d go out as right as rain, your aunt. But then get all upset and have to be brought home. Most of the time she’d perk up when she came within sight of the building. And eventually, if I could spare them, I had one of the porters follow her whenever she left the building. Or I’d go myself. She never went far, but never seemed to take the same route twice. She’d always turn up in a different place.’

‘It sounds terrible.’

Stephen shrugged, his expression helpless. ‘But what could we do? We’re not nurses.’

‘I wonder what was going on in her head.’

‘Before she set off she’d always say, “Well, it’s cheerio, Stephen. If I don’t see you again, take care my dear.” And she took the same bag with her. A small case and her black umbrella, as if she were going on a trip. But every day, she’d be back within a couple of hours. More than anything else we worried about her getting lost. Some of the cabbies would stop when they saw her and say, “Hop in, Lil, I’ll drop you home.” And if she was ready, she’d climb in and say, “I shan’t get any farther today. Not today. But I’ll try again tomorrow.” Same thing every time, without fail. They all said so. And they’d bring her back. In a way, I always thought it refreshing to know there’s still a sense of community, at least among the local workforce. They all knew your aunt Lillian.’

‘What about the flowers? There must be a thousand in that room.’

Stephen shrugged. ‘She never told me what they were for, or why she collected them. But she came home with them, for as long as I can remember. Roses every time. She was caught twice taking them from the front gardens of Chesterfield House in Mayfair. Fortunately, I know the head porter, so there wasn’t any trouble. But it could be awkward. She’d even get them out of bins, and walk out of florists and forget to pay.’

‘And how did she die? It says heart failure on the death certificate.’

Stephen wiped at his mouth. He was having difficulty meeting her eye. He tried twice and failed.

‘Please, Stephen. Tell me.’

‘She died in the back of a cab, Apryl. She’d had quite a fright out there. On one of her walks. A cabby saw her first. Really distressed. She had made it as far as Marble Arch too. The furthest I’d ever known her go, and that’s quite a distance for a woman of her age. But that day, she was different. You see, usually, when someone found her, she’d be talking to herself and striking at the air with her umbrella or cane. Nothing odd about that. We’d all seen her do it. Very involved in an argument with someone who wasn’t there. And usually this would happen, this agitation, just before she turned and headed for home. Or, as I said before, when she was picked up and escorted back here. But the morning she died, the driver said she looked ill. Really worn out. She was leaning against the railings of the park. Very pale and almost ready to keel over. She’d used up all her strength getting so upset about something. So he stopped and helped her into the cab. But she never broke out of the trance like she usually did. She seemed . . . to be in shock. Just wasn’t aware any longer of where she was, or where she was going. The driver put his foot down and phoned the main desk to tell us to call an ambulance. But she died on the way here. It looked to me like a massive stroke. That’s what I thought. And the oddest thing . . . well, she came out of her trance just before she died. As the cab entered the square. The driver saw her in the mirror. Upset. Really upset at the end. Well, afraid, you could say. Of something. Almost as if someone was sitting beside her.’