Catherine and Alexandru
When the Carpathian Alps fell to the Red Army soviet agents searched the castle in the mountains looking for the young aristocrat who had partied with the Nazis. They found only one elderly servant who under torture revealed his master had fled west weeks earlier. The agents shot the old man and made their reports thinking the matter closed.
I met Alexandru in the Coach and Horses in Soho in ninety-eight on a winter night. I was with some friends - Catherine who at the time I had a massive crush on, David her boyfriend and the rest of our nightclubbing raving gang. That night we were drinking in Soho, taking a night off from pills and skunk. I always liked those old pubs with their history and cosy feel, particularly on a dark and bitterly cold night like that one.
I don't know how Alexandru ended up at our table but he must have been speaking to one of the others at the bar. He was perhaps in his early twenties, the same age as us and handsome with long dark hair and blue eyes that glinted with mischievous delight. He appeared something of an eccentric dressed like a rakish older man his black tie around his neck and dinner jacket open - quite the contrast with our jeans and hoodies. Alexandru told us he'd been to the theatre and loved going on his own - always something Shakespeare, always something bloody he joked.
Alexandru bought all the drinks (though I never saw him touch the glass of wine in front of him) and was generous with his self-deprecating wit. As last orders were called he said he knew of a place nearby we could keep drinking and have a smoke if we wanted. We readily consented to this continuation of the fun and made our way through the maze of dark streets to join a small queue of revellers at the end of a cul-de-sac.
Our new friend told us that this place had once been a cinema back in the sleazy days of Soho but had been taken over by some enterprising young men who had turned it into a private members drinking club. He explained that at the door we had to say we wanted to become members but a fake name and a little cash (which he of course would provide) was all that was needed to gain entry.
Passing through the small and gloomy entrance we signed our new names and were presented yellow members cards that two spinning records printed upon them and the legend “The Social Club.” Alexandru spoke in French to three big security guards with gold teeth and scars. I can't understand much French but I think he was making a joke at our expense and he made them laugh like a pack of hungry hyenas.
Inside there was a bar the walls papered ironically with the torn-up pages of pornographic magazines, the fashionable and the drunk lounging about on battered sofas. Beyond there was the cinema itself, the chairs gone and replaced with cushions and lava lamps. The original screen remained but showing a sixties psychedelic movie for those who preferred a different kind of thrill. The room was filled with pungent smoke that hovered in the light of the projector and Alexandru told us we could buy cannabis here which they'd cut from a block with a cheese wire.
I couldn't place Alexandru's accent and so at the bar, I asked him clumsily where he was from. He told me to guess and I tried for Russia. He was immediately offended and told me that he was proudly Romanian and that the Russians had done terrible things in his country - that the old families like his had been murdered or forced to flee.
“In the mountains we, I mean my people were voivode - great lords shown much respect, now we are nothing, hunted like wolves.”
“You seem to have done alright Alex”
“Perhaps…I like London it is an old city..it sustains me.”
I was passed a big blunt and wandered about the place drunk talking to strangers and watching the film. Later I saw Catherine and Alexandru speaking intimately together on a sofa, with her boyfriend slumped unconscious in one corner and decided to call it a night. I left heading for the night bus and the hope of some sleep.
It wasn't long after that I got a new job and left London. I made new friends and lived a different life - I was trying to build a career as a computer programmer and a new city and a clear head suited me. There was the odd joke email from London friends but this was before social media and it was very easy to lose touch with people.
There was only one worrying reminder of my hedonistic past life. A few months later Catherine's mother phoned me (she'd got the number from my parents) and told me her daughter had gone missing.
“I haven't seen her for some time, she doesn't really speak to me - maybe her boyfriend, what's his name, knows something?”
“Her old boyfriend or a new one? David isn't very well, he's in a mental hospital now - she was seeing someone else some rich foreign man, but she is very secretive about him.”
“Alexandru?”
“Is that his name - what do you know about him?”
“Just his first name and that he's Romanian - I've only met him once.” I gave her a description but realised how little I knew about the man.
I worried a lot about Catherine at that time and I was still secretly in love with her. But time passes and changes many things.
And that was it, I heard nothing of Catherine or Alexandru for two whole decades and almost entirely forgot them until one night in twenty eighteen. By then I was back in London, the work and the parties had moved east and I was employed as a senior web developer for a startup. With male pattern baldness, glasses, comedy t-shirts and a real ale belly I looked the part - the average white man in tech.
The company was throwing a Halloween night in a club in Hackney and that was where I spotted him again. He was seated at a table with the CEO who was already coked up and gabbling at Alexandru in that way she did when she wanted to impress. He looked bored and was glancing across the room looking for a chance to escape when he caught my eye. The hair was now in a top knot and the beard was new but he looked just as young as he had twenty years before. Still not quite believing it was him I headed over.
The CEO spoke first “Alexandru this is one of our devs Jonathan, Jonathan this is Alexandru an angel investor.”
“We've met,” I said.
“Really? I'm not sure I recall.”
“The Coach and Horses, end of the nineties.”
“Oh yes, that night in Soho it feels like yesterday.”
“I didn't know you were interested in tech Alex?”
“Modern inventions, they are fascinating no?”
“Yeah something like that” I replied; the CEO scowled at me.
“Have some champagne Jonathan I'll get them to send over another bottle”
“How have you been keeping Alex? You look good.”
“Oh, I wouldn't say that this new century is very fatiguing.”
Suddenly I blurted out accusingly “Have you seen Catherine lately?”
“Lately?” He smiled “I should say so - I saw her a few hours ago she was getting ready for a swim.”
“Then…then…then you two are still together?”
“Yes she is still with me…my devoted bride you might say.” he chuckled. “Why don't you come back and see her.”
“Tonight? I..I don't think-”
“-why not we can get an Uber back to South Ken. Yes let us do it now, I'm certain she would love to see you again, it will be like old times” He turned to my boss “What you are saying is fascinating please furnish my assistant with the details.”
In the cab, I tried to ask Alexandru some questions about the intervening years but his replies were always vague and he preferred to talk about his home country becoming almost poetic in his praise of the moonlit mountains and forests. I enquired how he had come to live in Kensington and he told me that he had it been a very hip and trendy place in the early seventies.
“Ah, there was Biba, the cavern club in Chelsea and the market - such pretty girls you would not believe it.”
“How old are you Alex? Surely you can't remember the seventies.”
“No, no of course not…I have been told such things.”
The car pulled up beside a terrace of large white townhouses with Corinthian columns and sash windows.
“Oh wow, you can afford this?”
“It has been in my family for some time.”
I thanked the driver before getting out and as I did so I glanced in his rearview mirror and strangely thought I could see only one of us on the backseat.
Alex led me into the house, it was darker and more claustrophobic than I expected with heavy brocaded curtains covering the windows and dust sheets over the shapes of ugly antique furnishings.
“Mostly we live downstairs” Alex explained “I am one of those terrible Eastern European oligarchs you read about in the Evening Standard who has excavated deep under his Victorian house to build a swimming pool and a panic room.”
“You have a panic room?”
“I am ashamed to say it is true” he laughed at himself “But come Catherine and the girls will be waiting.”
A metal spiral staircase led down into a surprisingly modern space with white walls, a red chaise lounge and huge metal lamps. Two young women reclined on chairs watching an old black and white movie on a giant flatscreen TV.
One of the girls glanced up at me “We've been waiting for hours and you bring us this?”
“He's not for you Lucy, he's an old friend of Catherine's where is she?”
“Lurking in the pool as usual.”
The other girl didn't look up but just continued to stare at the screen, she looked thin and hungry.
“Come Jonathan don't waste your time with these two. The swimming pool is through that door, down the passageway, she will be so pleased to see you.”
I stepped through the door past bedrooms and a changing room into a huge dimly lit chamber filled with a deep blue tiled swimming pool. The reflections of the water's surface covered the walls and ceiling in constant motion. In the corner of the pool in the shadows was a figure of a girl - somehow I knew it was her.
“Is it you Jonathan? He texted me….it's been so long. Why don't you get in, the water is lovely”
“I don't have any trunks I'm afraid”
“Oh don't worry about that, don't be shy”
“No, it's ok…I'm…”
“I'll get out then” In a few short smooth motions she swam across the pool and pulled herself out.
She was just as beautiful as I remembered her, completely unchanged.
“Come to me Jonathan I've missed you.”
Feeling ugly and self-conscious I moved towards her as she put her arms around me her eyes locked to mine. As she leaned in to kiss me I imagined I could smell the faint scent of putrefaction. And then we were falling backwards still in an embrace into the pool. The water was shockingly cold and woke me as if from a dream. Floundering I could now see the water was filthy and the room nothing but a flooded cellar. Rotting things floated past in the murky pond as she dragged me down her teeth biting into me.
Back in the lounge, Lucy asked Alexandru:
“She's not going to keep him is she? He's pathetic.”
“No of course not, there is nothing so sad as unrequited love. But he recognised me and we cannot have that now can we.”