Back then, she’d found this part of London vaguely sinister. The trees, probably, so gnarled and immense and reminiscent of a disturbing illustration in one of her picture books. Now of course she knew it was an impossibly posh area, late-model hybrids and Lotuses and Volvos parked in the drives, Irish and Polish nannies pushing Silver Cross prams, women slender as herons walking terriers that could fit in the palm of Nina’s hand. Hampstead had been posh when she was a girl, too, but then the burnished brick houses and wrought-iron fences had possessed a louche air, as though the Kray twins might be up to something in the carriage house.
Nina was fourteen when she realized that rakish edge emanated not from Hampstead but from Uncle Lou himself, with his long hair, bespoke suits from Dougie Millings, and gold-tasseled Moroccan slippers that curled up at the toes like a genie’s. He was her favorite uncle—her only uncle, and her only relation except for a centenarian great-great-aunt supposedly entrenched in a retirement community on the Costa del Sol. Nina was an only child, with no first cousins and grandparents long dead. Her divorced parents were dead too, years ago when Nina was still at university.
Since then, she had been in the habit of visiting Uncle Lou once a month or so, when his travels brought him home. He would disappear for months at a time and, when he returned, always answered her questions as to his whereabouts by placing a finger to his lips.
His peripatetic lifestyle had slowed in the last decade, so she now saw him more often. He was a travel writer, creator of the popular World by Night series. Budapest by Night had been his first, unexpected bestseller, quickly spawning Paris by Night, London by Night, Marseilles by Night, Vienna by Night and so on ad infinitum. This was in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the world was much larger and far more exotic. Bohemian tourism was just gaining a toehold in the travel industry, fueled by rumors of Bryon Gysin’s pilgrimage to Jakarta with Brian Jones to observe whirling dervishes, and the legions of hippies decamping to Katmandu to eat yak butter whilst negotiating a drug deal.
Yet no matter how obscure or remote a place, Uncle Lou had been there before you, and already returned to his flat in Pallis Mews to bash out an account of where to find the best all-night noodle shop in Bangkok; or a black-market mushroom stall beneath the catacombs in Rome; or a Stockholm voyeurs’ club masquerading as a film society devoted to works that featured the forgotten silent movie star Sigrid Blau.
“Doesn’t he ever feel guilty?” Nina’s mother had once asked her. Lou was her husband’s much-older brother; he had been in the War, and afterward spent several years in Eastern Europe, where his activities were unknown but remained the object of much speculation by Nina’s parents. He had returned to London sporting a beard and a newly-fashionable mane of long hair. The beard was not a permanent affectation—Uncle Lou had been clean-shaven before the War, yet afterward was remarkably hirsute, shaving at least once and sometimes twice a day. But he kept the flowing black hair, which became a trademark of his author photos.
Nina’s mother had always found him “showy,” her code word for homosexual, though Uncle Lou in fact was a notorious ladies man.
Nina had frowned at her mother’s question. “Guilty about what?”
“About promoting criminal activities?”
“He’s not promoting anything,” said Nina. “The things he writes about help the local economy.”
“I suppose that’s what you call it,” her mother sniffed, and returned to her delphiniums.
This afternoon, early October sunlight washed across the cobblestone walk leading to Pallis Mews. Uncle Lou’s vintage Aston Martin DB4 was parked out front beneath a green tarpaulin, with an impasto of bird droppings that suggested it had not been driven in some time. Pale yellow leaves had banked up against the front door to the flat, and Nina plucked a torn plastic bag from the ivy and clematis vines that covered the brick wall.
She had never visited Uncle Lou without an invitation by telephone or, these days, email. The summons was always precise, for late afternoon or early evening; this one had read Drop by 5:15 Thursday 19th. In his kitchen, Uncle Lou had a large wall calendar, a sort of scroll, with the phases of the moon marked on it and myriad jottings in his fine, minuscule penmanship, indicating the exact hour and minute in which various meetings had been scheduled. At home he never met with more than one visitor at a time; the nature of his work was solitary as well as nocturnal.
When she was still in her teens, Nina had once arrived ten minutes early. She could hear Uncle Lou inside, washing dishes as he listened to Radio 2, and even glimpsed him strolling past the front window to turn the music down. But the door did not open until the appointed time.
Today it opened even before she could knock.
“Nina, dear.” Her uncle smiled and beckoned her inside. “You look lovely. Watch that pile there, I haven’t got them out to the bin yet.”
Nina sidestepped a heap of newspapers as he closed the door. Uncle Lou had always been meticulous, even fussy. He’d employed a cleaning woman who came once a week to keep the white Floti rugs spotless and arrange the kilim pillows neatly on the white leather sofa and matching chairs; to straighten the Hockney painting and make sure the Dansk dishes were in their cupboards.
But several years ago, the cleaning woman had moved to Brighton to be closer to her grandchildren. Uncle Lou hadn’t bothered to find someone new, and the flat had developed the defiantly unkempt air of a clubgoer who knows she is too old to wear transparent vinyl blouses, even with a camisole beneath, but continues to do so anyway.
“I know, it’s a bit of a mess.” Uncle Lou sighed and bent to pick up a stray newspaper that was attempting escape, and set it back atop the stack with a hand that trembled slightly. His Moroccan slippers flapped around his bony feet, gold tassels gone and curled toes sadly flattened. “But it’s so expensive now to find anyone. Come on in, dear, do you want a drink?”
“No thanks. Or yes, well, if you’re going to have something.”
Uncle Lou leaned over to graze her cheek with a kiss. He hadn’t shaved, and she noted an alarming turquoise blister—actually, a blob of toothpaste—on his neck.
“That’s my girl,” he said, and shuffled into the kitchen.
While he got drinks, Nina wandered into his office, a brick-walled space covered with bookshelves that held copies of the By Night books in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of various translations. There were more untidy stacks here, of unopened mail that had not yet made its way onto Uncle Lou’s desk.
She glanced at one of the envelopes. Its postal date was a month previous. She looked over her shoulder, and hastily flipped through more envelopes, finding some dated back to the spring. At the sound of Uncle Lou’s footsteps in the hall she turned quickly and went to meet him.
“Thanks.” She took the martini glass he offered her—it was clean, at least—and raised it to ting against his.
“Chin chin,” said Uncle Lou.
She walked with him to the dining room, which overlooked a good-sized courtyard. Years ago Uncle Lou had let the outside space revert to a tangle of mulberry bushes, etiolated plane trees, and ground ivy. It would have made a nice dog run, but Uncle Lou had never kept a dog. There were signs of some kind of animals rooting around—foxes, probably, which were common in Hampstead, though Nina had never caught a whiff of their distinctive musky scent.
They settled at the dining table. Uncle Lou set out a plate of olives and some slightly stale biscuits. They drank and chatted about a travel piece in last week’s Guardian, a noisy dog in Nina’s neighborhood, people they knew in common.