Read Online Little White Lies by Lesley Lokko - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lesley Lokko
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found that she had no substitute to take their place.
She pushed open her bedroom door and quickly closed it, leaning against it as if for support. Up there on the third floor, overlooking the gardens and the shimmering pool, the silence was of a different order. She looked over at the large double bed with its pretty counterpane and matching pillows, the thin, delicate mosquito net that hung draped above the bed and which Sophia untangled every night before she went to sleep.
This
was her life.
This
was what she’d been brought up to believe in, to cherish, and to want. So why didn’t she want it?
10
SIX MONTHS LATER
LIONEL
London, England/Caracas, Venezuela
He went through the formalities with a weary acceptance that surprised even him. He’d lost count of the number of flights he’d taken between London and New York in the past year alone. He was a veteran, now. How quickly we become accustomed to the unaccustomed, he thought to himself wryly as he followed the now stooped figure of Uncle Paul through the various checkpoints before they reached the lounge where businessmen like themselves met before a flight was called. Tickets, passports, boarding cards . . . he produced them mechanically, one after the other until they were finally on board.
Dirk Schofeld, their business associate from Holland, was uneasy. It was his first flight. ‘I’m a virgin, would you believe it?’ he’d quipped nervously, much to Lionel’s amusement. It was obvious. Once inside the lounge, he quickly downed one brandy after another. Uncle Paul looked on in faint but marked disapproval. He was not a drinker. Neither was Lionel, to be honest. His mother (
Baruch HaShem
,
may she rest in peace
) had developed an appreciation for brandy that had lasted right up until her death and Lionel still missed those evenings by the fire when he would come home, hang up his coat and hat and find her in the study, reading, a glass of brandy waiting for him, and a plate of those small English digestive biscuits that she so liked. He felt the habitual pull of sadness. Yes, it was two years since her death but there were days he felt the loss as though it were yesterday.
‘Perhaps
now
you’ll marry,’ Uncle Paul had said to him, a few months after the elaborate funeral to which every single bank employee had been invited. He’d always maintained it was Sara that had kept him from the
chuppah
. Lionel shook his head. No, nothing like that. He’d just never met a woman he wanted to marry. At forty-seven he was a confirmed bachelor. He lived in the same, very comfortable set of apartments in St James’s Park that he and Sara (
Baruch HaShem
) had shared for over twenty years. Her bedroom was exactly as she’d left it. In the living room was his vast collection of books, their beloved artworks that had been retrieved from the Altona house in Hamburg after the war, and three dogs.
His sister Lotte had married shortly after their arrival in England and now lived with her husband and two children in the countryside, a few miles from Cheltenham. She rarely came up to London and when she did, she was full of complaint. Bettina – fiery, hot-headed Bettina – had run off with a group of young, idealistic Zionists at the unbelievably tender age of seventeen to join a
kibbutz
. He’d come home one day to find her gone; it was a new world – there was nothing he could do. She refused all offers of financial help; she was a
kibbutznik
, not an heiress. He and Sara, once they’d got over the shock of it, shared many an evening alternately wringing their hands and laughing in admiring disbelief. It was in her blood; the girl couldn’t help it.
Of the remaining siblings in Germany, three had eventually found their way to the United States and Barbara was safely in Australia. Otto was dead. He, along with other lesser members of the family who’d stubbornly refused to leave, was caught trying to make for the Dutch border in 1942, a year too late. He
She pushed open her bedroom door and quickly closed it, leaning against it as if for support. Up there on the third floor, overlooking the gardens and the shimmering pool, the silence was of a different order. She looked over at the large double bed with its pretty counterpane and matching pillows, the thin, delicate mosquito net that hung draped above the bed and which Sophia untangled every night before she went to sleep.
This
was her life.
This
was what she’d been brought up to believe in, to cherish, and to want. So why didn’t she want it?
10
SIX MONTHS LATER
LIONEL
London, England/Caracas, Venezuela
He went through the formalities with a weary acceptance that surprised even him. He’d lost count of the number of flights he’d taken between London and New York in the past year alone. He was a veteran, now. How quickly we become accustomed to the unaccustomed, he thought to himself wryly as he followed the now stooped figure of Uncle Paul through the various checkpoints before they reached the lounge where businessmen like themselves met before a flight was called. Tickets, passports, boarding cards . . . he produced them mechanically, one after the other until they were finally on board.
Dirk Schofeld, their business associate from Holland, was uneasy. It was his first flight. ‘I’m a virgin, would you believe it?’ he’d quipped nervously, much to Lionel’s amusement. It was obvious. Once inside the lounge, he quickly downed one brandy after another. Uncle Paul looked on in faint but marked disapproval. He was not a drinker. Neither was Lionel, to be honest. His mother (
Baruch HaShem
,
may she rest in peace
) had developed an appreciation for brandy that had lasted right up until her death and Lionel still missed those evenings by the fire when he would come home, hang up his coat and hat and find her in the study, reading, a glass of brandy waiting for him, and a plate of those small English digestive biscuits that she so liked. He felt the habitual pull of sadness. Yes, it was two years since her death but there were days he felt the loss as though it were yesterday.
‘Perhaps
now
you’ll marry,’ Uncle Paul had said to him, a few months after the elaborate funeral to which every single bank employee had been invited. He’d always maintained it was Sara that had kept him from the
chuppah
. Lionel shook his head. No, nothing like that. He’d just never met a woman he wanted to marry. At forty-seven he was a confirmed bachelor. He lived in the same, very comfortable set of apartments in St James’s Park that he and Sara (
Baruch HaShem
) had shared for over twenty years. Her bedroom was exactly as she’d left it. In the living room was his vast collection of books, their beloved artworks that had been retrieved from the Altona house in Hamburg after the war, and three dogs.
His sister Lotte had married shortly after their arrival in England and now lived with her husband and two children in the countryside, a few miles from Cheltenham. She rarely came up to London and when she did, she was full of complaint. Bettina – fiery, hot-headed Bettina – had run off with a group of young, idealistic Zionists at the unbelievably tender age of seventeen to join a
kibbutz
. He’d come home one day to find her gone; it was a new world – there was nothing he could do. She refused all offers of financial help; she was a
kibbutznik
, not an heiress. He and Sara, once they’d got over the shock of it, shared many an evening alternately wringing their hands and laughing in admiring disbelief. It was in her blood; the girl couldn’t help it.
Of the remaining siblings in Germany, three had eventually found their way to the United States and Barbara was safely in Australia. Otto was dead. He, along with other lesser members of the family who’d stubbornly refused to leave, was caught trying to make for the Dutch border in 1942, a year too late. He
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