Her Name Was Lola

3 When Max Met Lola

December 1996. Lola Bessington was beautiful but she was not a showgirl. When Max met her it was cold and crisp, the air sharp with Christmas. Pavements bulging with burdened shoppers. Fretful eyes, rosy cheeks, clouds of breath. Doorways fully staffed with homeless. Max comes through Cecil Court, crosses St Martin’s Lane, passes the Coliseum entrance, goes into the Coliseum Shop. It’s bright and warm and festive, buzzing with customers doing their bit for the economy. Lola’s reaching up to get something off the shelves for a customer. Short skirts! Max’s heart leaps like a salmon jumping a waterfall. The music on the speakers is Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. A good omen, he thinks. That’s the opera he’s come here to buy.

He follows Lola and her customer back to the counter. She has elegant legs and Max knows instinctively that her mind is equally elegant. While he waits his turn he hears L’Orfeo as if for the first time. His thoughts about Lola have naturally been carnal, he’s hard-wired for that, but now the music is getting to him. As Lola completes the sale he notes that her eyes are blue, direct and unfathomable. Her voice is a clear stream in a dappled wood, her accent is patrician. ‘If I can have her,’ he thinks, ‘my love will never die.’

‘Hi,’ says Lola. ‘Can I help you?’ The salary she earns in the shop just about pays for taxis and lunches but it gives her a feeling of independence. Her father is the Rt. Hon. Lord Bessington, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. Lady Bessington is on the Board of Trustees of the Royal Opera. Lola lives with them in a big house in Belgravia and the Bessingtons also own a villa in Tuscany. Lola’s been to Roedean and Cambridge where she got a first in Anthropology. Max’s situation, some might say, is not unlike that of a minor-league baseball player hoping to get to the big show.

Lola, twenty-five, has had a few inconsequential romances in her first years at Cambridge and in her last year she met Basil Meissen-Potts. He was like a specimen out of a Mr Right catalogue. At thirty-five, he was a QC and very silky. Tall, handsome, charming, good sense of humour, a judo black belt, an accomplished cricketer and keen yachtsman. Lola’s parents look on the couple as practically engaged. Lola doesn’t quite. Two things are against him: one, Mummy and Daddy approve of him; two, he’s never really lit Lola’s fire.

‘Hi,’ says Max. ‘Whose recording of L’Orfeo am I hearing?’

‘John Eliot Gardiner, conducting the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists, His Majesties Sagbutts and Cornetts,’ says Lola. ‘What do you think?’

‘I’ll have it,’ says Max. He already owns that recording but he follows Lola to the shelf where Monteverdi lives. She hands him the Archiv boxed set of two CDs.

‘I have a thing for sagbutts and cornetts,’ she says.

‘Me too,’ says Max. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Lola.’ (When Max doesn’t sing the Barry Manilow song he scores a couple of points.) ‘I love Monteverdi,’ she says. ‘He breaks your heart in a very unsentimental way.’

‘I have a lot of time for Monteverdi,’ says Max. He hasn’t listened to Monteverdi for about a year and a half. He’s in the shop now because he wants a new copy of L’Orfeo for the novel he’s trying to start. It’s a superstition thing.

‘He’s not too realistic, if you know what I mean,’ says Lola. ‘He’s like Giotto or …’

‘Lorenzetti?’ says Max.

‘When’s Lorenzetti?’

‘Fourteenth century,’ says Max. ‘He did some allegorical frescoes in a palazzo in Siena. Very formal, somewhat stilted but in a lively way. Real but not too real.’

‘That’s it,’ says Lola. Now she’s really seeing Max with those blue eyes. He’s nothing special to look at but he knows what she means when she talks about not too realistic. ‘Have you got L’incoronazione di Poppea?’ Max loves the way the title rolls off her tongue.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s quite an old recording, the one with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus Wien. I bought it after a Glyndebourne production at Sadler’s Wells. I wanted to hear Ottavia sing “A Dio, Roma” again.’

‘You won’t believe this,’ says Lola. ‘I have the same recording and I bought it after going to that same production. Maybe we were there on the same night.’ Does she know that she’s lighting Max’s touchpaper?

Whoosh! High in the sky goes Rocket Max. Showers of stars explode over the Coliseum, it’s like a movie. The stick falls back to earth in St Martin’s Lane. ‘This is it,’ he says to his mind. ‘This is the real thing. This is my destiny woman.’ All through the shop heads turn. ‘Did I say that out loud?’ he says.

‘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.