Devil in Disguise (2 page)

‘Follow
me, please,’ Lilia said, leading Molly down the hall. She had an elegant walk,
Molly observed, but with a hint of an arthritic limp. As Molly parked her
suitcase, the old lady steadied herself on a chair as she passed it and winced
in pain.

Poor
old thing, Molly thought, filled with sympathy. Despite the glamour of her
appearance, her joints were obviously weary.

‘I
expect you are tired after your journey. Sit down, please. I will bring tea,’
said Lilia. Her voice was low-pitched, attractive and lived-in; its owner
sounded as though she’d seen a few things in her time.

‘Thank
you,’ said Molly. ‘That would be lovely, but I don’t want to put you out, love.
Would you like me to help you?’

‘No,
not at all, my dear. It is good for me to move about. I have been sitting here
all afternoon lost in an old movie on the television. I am a little stiff,
that’s all. I need to come back to reality.’ She gave Molly a warm, sad smile,
then left the room slowly and with some effort. Soon there were the sounds of a
kettle being filled and crockery being arranged.

Molly
looked about. Despite the bright sunshine outside, the lounge was gloomy and
cluttered. It was a small room and the battered, dark-red-chenille three-piece
suite was too large for such a modest space. An old-fashioned vanilla-coloured
enamel fireplace squatted modestly against the chimney-breast. Above it, an
incongruously grand full-length portrait of a beautiful red-haired woman,
wearing a sapphire-blue dress, a cigarette holder between her fingers, gazed
down at the clutter, framed by ox-blood-red flock wallpaper. A large television
sat in the window bay, which was surrounded by dark-pink velvet curtains
complete with a scalloped and fringed pelmet. At either side of the
chimney-breast there were deep alcoves. The shelves in the one nearest to Molly
heaved with a collection of lace fans, ostrich feathers in a crystal vase,
photographs of Lilia in her prime and several more recent pictures of the
present-day Lilia, hugging a large black-and-tan dog. There were no shelves in
the furthest alcove, but instead a wooden upright chair. Molly gave a little
cry of surprise when she realised a man was sitting there in the shadows.

‘Oh,
I—Sorry, love, I didn’t see you there,’ she said, with a nervous laugh. He
didn’t respond, didn’t even look at her. She raised her voice and stepped
sideways a little so that she was in his field of vision. ‘Hello. I’m Molly.’

There
was still no response. He was a thin, elderly man, completely motionless and,
she got the impression, unaware of her presence. It felt too strange to stand
there staring at him and saying nothing so after a moment she tried again. ‘I’m
going to be staying here for the next week,’ she said, as though she was
talking to someone with a hazy grasp of English or a hearing impediment.

Still
he gazed silently into the distance.

She
pressed on: ‘I’m an actress and singer. I’m in a tour of
The Mikado
—
you know, the Gilbert and Sullivan opera. I’m YumYum.’

He
remained oblivious to her. What on earth is wrong with him? she wondered.
Without thinking, she opened her mouth and began to sing softly:

‘Ah, pray make no mistake,

We are not shy,

We’re very wide awake,

The moon and I.’

She
stopped, and although the man didn’t say a word, he turned his head slowly in
her direction. His sad, watery eyes looked beyond her into eternity.

‘Poor
love,’ said Molly quietly. She sat down on one of the armchairs and the two of
them waited in companionable silence.

A
moment later Lilia carried a tea tray gingerly into the room. As well as a pot,
cups, milk and sugar, there was also a huge fruit cake and the old lady
tottered slightly under the weight of it all.

Molly
leapt to her feet. ‘Here, Lilia, let me help you.’

‘Thank
you, my dear. So kind.’ Lilia handed her the tray with a smile and lowered
herself into a chair with a heavy sigh. ‘That’s better.’

Molly
placed the tray on the table and hovered uncomfortably. ‘Shall I pour?’ she
asked.

‘Please
do,’ Lilia said quietly. ‘I’ll have mine white with no sugar.’

Molly
poured the first cup, noting that there were only two cups and saucers, and two
plates and forks. ‘Nothing for  ?‘ She indicated the silent figure in the
alcove.

‘Oh,
goodness, no!’ said Lilia, with a chuckle. ‘My husband, Joey, by the way. I
tried putting tea and cake in the food-processor for him once, but he wasn’t
interested. He only seems to like those little tins of baby food and purées of
steak and kidney pudding or the Bombay Palace Special.’

No
further explanation of Joey and his catatonic state was forthcoming, so Molly
finished pouring the tea and slicing the cake, then handed Lilia her cup and
plate before sitting down herself.

‘So,’
said Lilia, briskly, as if only now could she get down to the business side of
things, ‘I would like to welcome you to Kit-Kat Cottage. I hope you will enjoy
your stay here. Your front-door key is there, on the table. Breakfast is
included in your tariff and you are welcome to share my meals for a small extra
charge, or provide your own food and use the kitchen. Just let me know what
you’d like to do. I used to charge for the phone as well but you youngsters all
have mobiles now so there’s no point. You can come and go as you please, and
there’s a television and radio in your room. I do not go to bed early so don’t
worry about disturbing me when you come in late at night. I will make you some
cocoa, if you like, or perhaps a small brandy would be good for your throat. I
used to sing myself— not opera, like you — but I found a drink afterwards,
brandy or schnapps, very acceptable.’

‘Thank
you, that’s really kind of you,’ said Molly, pleased. She’d been in places with
far meaner attitudes and more restrictive rules than this. A cosy brandy at the
end of a long show sounded just right. ‘And while I think of it…‘ she reached
into her pocket for a crumpled envelope ‘… here’s my rent. Eighty pounds for
the week, as we discussed on the phone.’

‘Gratefully
received!’ said Lilia, accepting the envelope and slipping it into her kimono.
‘There is plenty of hot water, have all the baths you want. I bathe my husband
in the evenings, after
Coronation Street.
It is a rather tortuous
process involving winches and so on, and can take up to an hour. Such a bother!
But it has to be done at least once every two days or he starts to smell of
Parmesan cheese. I don’t know why old men should smell so much but they do.’
She shrugged. ‘Another of life’s mysteries. Old ladies, as everyone knows,
smell pleasantly of lavender and biscuits.’

‘It
must be very hard for you,’ Molly said, grateful that she would be out at the
theatre at that particular time. ‘And is your husband … ?‘ she ventured, not
sure how to ask what Joey’s complaint was.

‘He had
a stroke, the doctors say, two years ago. He’s been like this ever since.
That’s why I call him Joey. It’s a bit like having a budgerigar in the room.
His real name is Michael.’

‘Oh. I
see.’ Molly couldn’t decide if naming your husband after a budgie was an act of
cruelty or simple desperation. Was Lilia unkind or just trying to make light of
a sad situation?

‘Of
course, you do not wish for life to turn out this way but marriage is, as they
say, for better or worse. I just get on with it. It is not easy at my age, but
there it is.’ Lilia gave another world-weary smile.

Molly
felt a wave of sympathy for her. ‘You’re doing a fine job. It must be
difficult.’

‘I
married Michael in the seventies. There is our wedding picture, up on the
shelf. You can see for yourself we were a gorgeous, glamorous couple. I was a
star then, and he was my partner, my manager, my lover and my friend. But he’s
Joey now,’ said Lilia, her voice quivering. ‘I had to separate the two. Michael
was a fascinating man: erudite, smart, inspiring. And Joey? Silent, staring…
incontinent. Locked in his own head. Michael would have hated such a fate.’

Lilia
gazed fondly at her husband, who continued to stare, motionless, into space.
Molly shifted awkwardly, wondering how to fill the silence. She placed her
empty cup and saucer on top of the plate, put them back on the tray, and said
brightly, ‘That was lovely, Lilia, thank you.’ By way of concluding things, she
wiped the corners of her mouth with her middle finger and smiled.

‘I will
show you your room now,’ said Lilia, tipping her teacup to slurp out the last
drops.

‘Okay,
then,’ Molly said, relieved. She was keen to get settled in and have some time
to herself. She needed to phone Daniel and let him know she’d arrived safely,
and Simon would be waiting to hear from her too. It was her custom to ring him
on the first night in new lodgings and tell him what they were like. He loved
hearing about her landladies, the more eccentric the better. Lilia would be
right up his street. ‘Now, I’d better—’

‘There
is one more thing,’ interrupted Lilia, raising her hand to silence her new
lodger. ‘There is someone else I want you to meet. The real man of the house.’

‘Who’s
that?’ asked Molly.

‘My
boy. My best boy. Heathcliff.’ Her eyes sparkled. She raised her voice and
called towards the door. ‘Where are you, Heathcliff? Come to Lilia!’

The
door opened and a large, muscular Rottweiler, the size of a lion, pushed his
way hurriedly into the room and headed straight for Lilia, panting with
excitement. With his rear legs still on the ground, he raised himself in the
air like a stallion, his front paws as big as table-tennis bats, one on each of
Lilia’s shoulders. His impressive tongue licked her ravenously from chin to
forehead as she cooed and giggled girlishly. ‘There, there! My love puppy, my
baby, my gorgeous, handsome man!’

‘He’s…
beautiful,’ Molly said, trying not to recoil at the sight of the enormous
tongue lapping the old lady’s face, taking the powder and paint with it.

‘Yes,
he is! And gentle as a baby, so don’t be frightened. Down, Heathcliff, down.
Now. Come along, Molly, we will go and find your room.’

Heathcliff
sat down on the hearthrug, two syrupy spindles of saliva escaping from either
side of his mouth.

‘Good
boy,’ said Molly, tentatively, but Heathcliff never took his eyes from Lilia.

Somewhere in his mind
Simon realised it was risky to pour himself a third glass of
vino rosso di
Sicilia.
It was only five o’clock in the afternoon, after all. The first
mid-afternoon ‘snifter’ had seemed harmless enough. He told himself he deserved
it. It was a pick-me-up, no less, after a traumatic sleepless night. Pick him
up it had. It had given him such a spring in his step, he’d decided without
much ruminating that a second was in order. This had also gone down the hatch
so smoothly and quickly that he had wandered into the kitchen, empty glass in
hand, and was contemplating the third. The shot in the arm that the first drink
had given him had faded. The second had allowed a brief reprise, but had been
annoyingly fleeting. He needed that third, yearned for it and desired it so
strongly that his feet were almost tapping with impatience.

A dark
recklessness coursed through his veins, and he snatched the bottle from the
counter as if some invisible figure might take it away from him. ‘Fuck it!’ he
said, pulling out the cork he had stuffed back into the neck in the feeble
pretence that he wasn’t going to drink any more. He knew the outcome of this
game because he had played it before. Many times. Why did he pretend he could
enjoy just one drink when one was never enough? And why did he wake each
morning promising to have a wine-free day only to relent mid-afternoon without
so much as a struggle? He would finish this bottle and very probably go to the
off-licence for a second. He could always find a reason to indulge himself, and
once the bottle was open it was game over. He didn’t even bother toying with
the notion of restraint, these days.

It’s
not my fault, he told himself, as he glugged the ruby liquid into his wine
glass. I need some comfort. I blame Molly. After all, it’s been two and half
months now, and how on earth am I supposed to cope for all that time without
her? It’s no wonder I need the odd drink. I’ve been discarded, and it’s the
only comfort I can lay my hands on.