repulsion (roman polanski, 1965)
"Just the sound of his voice makes my flesh creep. Money, money, money, that's all he thinks about."
My Grandmother, Concha, lived in a mansion flat on Draycott Place back then. In the basement. Maybe this is memory talking, but it seemed like a huge, sprawling creature with hidden rooms and secrets to tell, if you only listened carefully enough. I was too young to pay attention to absolutely everything, but here’s what I do remember:
There was a rabbit, which you never saw clearly. You’d hear it scuffle about and get the briefest of glimpses of it from time to time as it hid out of view. And we ate rabbit, a lot of it. There was a lot of talk of myxomatosis back then, but that didn’t seem to interfere with our own rabbit consumption. I remember having no qualms about the rabbit as a pet and the rabbit as food. It seemed pretty clear that some things you ate and some things you didn’t.
The French. Both my Grandmother and Mother would prattle on for hours in French. Me not having a clue what was going on. I’d often fill these hours by playing with some kind of object or other, I had two favourites: a series of babushka dolls, and a wooden sculpture of Mary that had doors you could open and close. When the doors closed it was real neat, no gaps or overlap at all. And it formed a wooden tube. And then you opened the doors revealing the tiniest, most delicate little sculpture inside. There were also a number of charms for a charm bracelet, including a minute pair of scissors which you could cut paper with if you were careful enough.
Pouring a drink. My Grandmother drank Martini, and one time asked me to pour it for her. I’d never done this before, but I’d watched it a lot, so I tilted the glass and poured. My Grandmother became very excited. She had a deep voice, with a thick accent, and cried out for my Mother saying ‘Look! Look! The boy knows how to pour a drink.’
The intercom in the hallway. These are a regular feature now, but this was the first one I had ever seen. While my Grandmother and Mother would talk French I’d often wander off, and sometimes I’d play with the Intercom. This meant taking the receiver off the cradle and listening in rapt silence to the sounds of the outside world. It was usually just traffic, but sometimes you’d hear people walking by, and if you were very lucky you’d hear snatches of dialogue. Hearing the outside world while being indoors was a serious trip.
The barbed wire and broken glass in concrete on the top of the walls and fences that circled the communal gardens. My brother and I would climb up and see how hard we could push against the broken glass. Quite hard, as it turned out. It was dull and blunt from weather erosion, but still looked terrifying.
Occasionally I’d go shopping with my Grandmother. She wore a huge cloak, and carried all her money in a clasp purse, a tiny little thing that seemed too small for the job of carrying money. She bought a lot of smoked cheese and sausage. Or maybe not, but that’s how I remember it. She had been an actress (appearing in, amongst other things, Robert Siodmak’s 1952 film The Crimson Pirate) and on these shopping trips she told me far more than I needed to know about equity cards, William Henry Pratt, and so on and so forth. During those years we too lived in a flat (apartment, for Americans) that had its own secrets:
There were holes in the wall behind pictures, bricks removed and draughty cavernous abysses below, secret compartments in boxes, floorboards that could be lifted: I pretended that I didn’t know about any of these things, but of course I knew them all.
Before we lived there we lived in a mews flat, with my Aunt, Margaret, upstairs. A very dramatic lady who was probably something of a nightmare for some people, but was okay by me. Her gig with me was to sing Marlene Dietrich covers. She was very into the Hollywood starlets of old and had an extensive collection of cigarette cards with pictures of ladies I’d never heard of, with great names, and even greater hair. My Aunt, like many of the ladies on the cards, died way too young.
You don’t get cigarette cards anymore.
The stairs to her flat above seemed excessively spiralled, but this is probably just my memory talking.
One time I sat with an adult and helped them guide mercury through the cracks in the floorboards. The mercury was a planned attempt to poison someone, but the whole plan was being abandoned. I never asked why and no longer remember who the adult was.
The people who would visit. The cornucopia of deranged souls, and the dysphemistic nicknames we’d give them: Mark the tramp, Smelly Geoff, Fat Kathy, Apocalypse Brian, Mad Mark, Tinker Dave… the list was endless.
Paula’s husband was having an affair with a family friend who lived with us for years. Paula made silent phone calls throughout those years. Yelling expletives at Paula down the phone became a family chore, like doing the dishes. I never heard Paula speak in all that time.
Recently I found a scent called Rien by Etat libre d’orange. It’s a reformulation of a scent called Knize Ten. Knize Ten was created, unsurprisingly, by Knize in 1925, following the 1921 appointment of Ernst Dryden as Designer. Dryden had studied with Gustav Klimt and gave Knize a previously missing touch of glamour. Following Dryden taking the role at Knize the company attaracted a host of Hollywood stars as clients, including Marlene Dietrich. I can’t say for certain that my Grandmother wore Knize Ten, but I can say with absolute certainty that the scent of Rien takes me straight back to that sprawling basement flat in Draycott Place.
I was tidying up the other day and was clearing everything out from underneath the bed. I’d spilled or sprayed Rien around that area, and the carpet under the bed was thick with the scent. I remembered how much time I would spend in small spaces as a child, including under beds, and how exciting and comforting it felt then. It’s certainly not like that now. Now it’s cramped, and claustrophobic. I’m trying to reach as far as I can without entirely crawling under the bed, but it’s no good, I have to go all the way. I crawl under and I can already feel dread creeping in. I can’t breathe properly. The space between the floor and the underside of the bed is too small. I keep my breath as shallow as I can and inch myself towards the objects I need to remove. I grab them and an insect darts past: could be a spider, but looks like something else. I can’t afford to let this surprise me. I have to keep still. Physically I have to be in the here and now to get this done, no matter how unpleasant it feels, but inside I can be anywhere. I can be in the house of my Great Grandparents whose names I no longer know, watching my Mother as little more than a speck in the swell of the ocean outside their kitchen window. I can be on the beach in France, very young. So young that the image is extremely hazy. Talking and playing with a young girl who speaks no English. I wonder where she is now, what she’s doing. I wonder if she too ever walks down these corridors, opening doors to echoing, dusty chambers. Revisiting objects and people who are no longer here, but will always be with us.