by William Boyd
In Battle he found a quiet pub called The Windmill – it was only just noon – not far from the abbey. He bought a pint of cloudy ale for sixpence and sat down on a bench seat by the window and watched three haymakers in dirty smocks play dominoes. He took Miss Julie out of his haversack, thinking he really should try and read it through before the first rehearsal tomorrow afternoon in St John’s Wood. He read a page or two then closed the book, thinking that August Strindberg was not part of this world and it was something of an affront to both Strindberg and The Windmill pub in Battle to introduce them to each other.
Sitting in this small pub with its cool flagged floor, listening to the murmuring voices of the haymakers and the click of dominoes falling, drinking beer here in the middle of summer in England in 1914, he suddenly felt a stillness creep up on him as if he were suffering from a form of mental palsy – as if time had stopped and the world’s turning, also. It was a strange sensation – that he would be for ever stuck in this late June day in 1914 like a fly in amber – the past as irrelevant to him as the future. A perfect stasis; the most alluring inertia.
And then suddenly it was over, the mood passed, as a lorry rumbled by, tooting its horn and the world began to move again. He picked up his rucksack, eased himself into its straps and took his empty pint glass back to the bar.
As he left Battle it began to drizzle but he decided to press on, turning off the busy Hastings road as soon as he could and following a cart track that a group of foresters – cutting lengths of alder – told him would see him clear across country to Guestling Thorn. Once he was there he’d have to brave the verge of the main road to Rye with its motor traffic for a mile or two but it would lead him straight to Winchelsea and the Major.
He liked Winchelsea, he thought, as he entered the village, striding down one of its wide streets to Hamo’s cottage. All village streets should be this wide, he thought: the village was full of light, open to the sun on its high bluff. Hamo’s white weatherboarded cottage was on the western edge with a fine view over Rye Bay to Camber Sands and the expanses of Romney Marsh beyond. He knocked on the door.
4. A Very Sweet Boy
‘Well, I thought you should be aware of the situation,’ the Major said. ‘You know what I always say, Lysander – honesty is everything in life. The bedrock of all relationships. I make no bones about it, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Never have, never will.’
The Major stood with his back to a small fire in the grate of the sitting room. He was wearing an old quilted red velvet smoking jacket with a cravat and a small, white, beaded skullcap on his bald head. He looked lean and weatherbeaten, still heavily tanned, with deep lines scoring either cheek as if he’d spent months gritting his teeth. His eyes, in his dark face, were a disconcertingly pale blue.
‘I totally understand, Hamo,’ Lysander said. ‘You know that. It couldn’t matter less to me.’
A young African boy came into the room with a tray bearing a whisky bottle, two glasses and a soda siphon.
‘Thank you, Femi,’ the Major said.
The boy – who looked seventeen or eighteen – smiled, and set the tray down.
‘Femi – this is my nephew, Lysander Rief.’
‘Pleased to meet, sar,’ Femi said and shook Lysander’s offered hand. He was wearing a khaki-drill suit and a knitted black tie. He was tall with a high forehead. A fine handsome African face, Lysander thought.
‘Of course, it causes a bit of a stir when we go shopping in Rye, as you can imagine,’ the Major said with some glee. ‘However, I just tell everyone he’s a visiting African prince and they calm down quickly enough.’
Femi gave a small bow and went back into the kitchen.
‘Let me just go and see how our supper’s coming along,’ Hamo said, and followed Femi out. Lysander stood and prowled around the room. It was full of artefacts from Hamo’s trips to west and central Africa – sculptures, pottery, calabashes, animal hides on the floor – including an entire zebra skin in front of the fire. On one wall was a glass case full of weapons – ceremonial axes and daggers and long bladed, finely etched spears as well as Hamo’s muzzle-loading elephant gun and his Martini-Henri Mark II rifle from the South African War. ‘The world’s most accurate rifle up to a quarter of a mile,’ Hamo had told him once. ‘Soft lead bullet makes one hell of a mess.’ Next to it was a carved ebony frieze full of fantastic creatures – huge-eared, multi-limbed goblins and what looked like hermaphrodites – it reminded Lysander of Bensimon’s bas-relief. He missed his meetings with Bensimon, he realized.
He turned as he heard Hamo come back into the room.
‘Femi was my guide on the Niger,’ Hamo went on. ‘Saved my life at least three times,’ he added matter-of-factly. He looked fondly towards the kitchen. ‘He’s a very sweet boy. His English is coming along remarkably well.’
He poured Lysander another whisky and topped it up with soda.
‘So you walked all the way from Claverleigh? I’ll have to take you on my next expedition.’
Hamo Rief had won his Victoria Cross in 1901 during the South African War. At the beginning of the raising of the siege of Ladysmith he had seen a troop of Boer horsemen seize two field artillery pieces and he single-handedly drove off the raiding party, recovering the guns, killing four and wounding five, but not before being wounded himself, three times. Honourably discharged from his regiment as a result of his injuries he found that the wanderlust that had taken him into the army in the first place still remained so he decided to become an amateur explorer, joining the Royal Geographical Society, and, in 1907, privately funded an expedition to West Africa, attempting to travel across the continent from the Niger River to the Nile. In fact he only managed to reach Lake Chad – where he fell ill with dengue fever – and spent several months there recuperating, using the time to gather specimens and make anthropological studies of the local tribes. The book he wrote and published on his return, The Lost Lake of Africa, became a surprise bestseller and funded this last and latest expedition, exploring, not the upper reaches of the Benue River as Lysander had thought, but various islands in the Bight of Benin.
Lysander was very glad to be with his uncle again after a gap of two years. Though he had been something of a distant figure to him during his childhood – Hamo had spent many years with his regiment in India – Lysander had grown very fond of his uncle as he’d come to know him better after his father’s death. He was full of admiration for his absolute fearlessness, military and social. Hamo didn’t resemble his older brother – he was bald and naturally skinny with a small head – but, for Lysander, he was the only remaining blood link with his dead father. Hamo talked about him without need of prompting and would regularly repeat the fact that the only person he had ever, truly loved was his brother, Halifax.
‘Halifax understood me completely, you see, from a very early age,’ Hamo had once confided to Lysander. ‘When I told him – I must have been fourteen or so – that I thought I wasn’t interested in girls he said neither was Alexander the Great. Then he read me some of Shakespeare’s sonnets – and I never looked back.’
They ate a supper of cold mutton and boiled potatoes, Femi joining them at the table. Then Hamo brought out half a Stilton cheese and a plate of hard biscuits and decanted another bottle of claret in front of a candle, showing Femi how the light at the neck of the bottle ensured that you didn’t allow the sediment to flow into the decanter.
‘I’m sorry I had to cancel my “Welcome Home” dinner at Claverleigh,’ he said. ‘I’ll write to your mother in a day or two and explain. I just couldn’t face it – d’you know what I mean?’
‘I completely understand.’
‘I simply didn’t want to meet the mayor of Lewes or Sir Humphrey Bumphrey and his lady wife, etcetera, etcetera. And I don’t think young Femi was quite ready for that ordeal by fire, either.’
‘To be honest, I don’t think old Crickmay was bothered – gets easily tired these days. Neither was my mother. I think they thought
you might like it – you know, kill the fatted calf, lay on a bit of opulence after your lean years in Africa.’
Hamo poured more wine.
‘She’s a sensible, lovely woman. I appreciated the gesture. Anyway, I’ve got to give a lecture in London – I’ll invite everyone to that.’ He turned to Femi and put his hand on his arm. ‘Are you all right, my dear boy?’
‘Yes, sar. Very good.’
Hamo swung his gaze back to Lysander.
‘So, what’s going on in the wicked world of the theatre? Did you know Ellen Terry used to have a cottage here in Winchelsea? Lived in sin with Henry Irving. Used to dance on her lawn in bare feet and her nightdress. We’re a very tolerant little village. Broad streets, broad minds.’
Femi went up to bed once the dishes were cleared away and Hamo and Lysander sat on in front of the small fire, smoking and chatting. As Lysander hoped, the conversation began to revolve around Halifax Rief.
‘It’s a source of enormous regret. It keeps happening. I said to Femi without thinking – you must meet my brother, Halifax. And then I remembered he was dead and gone, all these years. I keep saying – I must tell this to Halifax. How he’ll laugh. Hopeless.’
‘You see, I was too young,’ Lysander said. ‘I never really saw enough of him to fix him in my head. He was just “Father”, you know. Always off to the theatre or on tour.’
Hamo pointed the stem of his pipe at Lysander. ‘They have great respect for actors, Femi’s people. In fact throughout Africa – actors, dancers, musicians, showmen. You should see some of these chaps in Femi’s tribe, how they can imitate animals – egrets, leopards, monkeys. Incredible. A few daubs of paint, some feathers and a stick. And then a few gestures, the way they hold themselves – uncanny. You think you’re watching a heron, say, picking its way through marshy water, stabbing at fish with its beak. Halifax would have been amazed.’
‘What was the last thing you saw him in?’ Lysander knew the answer to this question but he wanted to prompt reminiscences.
‘It was his Lear. Yes . . . About a week before he died. I was on leave in London, going back to India and the regiment. Absolutely terrifying performance. He was a big man, your father, you know, but in that play you saw him shrink, with your own eyes, saw him diminish physically. You know that speech, “Blow, winds and crack your cheeks!”’
‘The storm scene.’ Lysander spread his arms and declaimed, ‘“Rage! Blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes spout till you have drenched our steeples, drown’d the cocks!”’
‘Exactly. Except he did it in a quiet voice. Stood very still, hardly moved – no bombast. Sent shivers up your spine. Do you want another whisky, old chap?’
‘I will, actually – I’ve got some rather momentous news. And I want to ask your advice.’
Over two more glasses of whisky Lysander told Hamo the whole story about Hettie, the rape and assault charge, his arrest and flight from Vienna to Trieste. And the birth of Lothar.
‘What’s the name? Say again.’
‘Lothar. Lothar Rief.’
‘But now you can’t go back to Austria, I suppose. Not even disguised?’
‘I don’t think I can risk it.’
‘Then why don’t I go in your place? Find this girl, Hettie, and make contact discreetly. No one’ll suspect an old fellow like me.’
‘Would you?’
‘Like a shot.’ Lysander could see the excitement glitter in his pale blue eyes. ‘I could find the boy. Check out what this artist, Hoff, is like – pretend to buy a painting. See what the set-up is and report back to you.’
‘It might work . . .’ Lysander began to think himself, his own excitement building. ‘And I’ve a friend out there,’ he added. ‘A lieutenant in the hussars. Could be useful.’
‘I don’t speak the language of course.’
‘Wolfram Rozman – he speaks excellent English.’
‘We’ll make a plan, Lysander, we’ll sort it out. Get young Lothar back where he belongs. Maybe I’ll kidnap him . . .’ He shot Lysander one of his rare lopsided smiles and winked.
The next morning Lysander was up and left early to catch the train from Rye back to Claverleigh. Femi was in the kitchen wearing a crudely patterned cotton robe down to his ankles, with bare feet. Suddenly he looked very African in the small cottage kitchen, with the kettle boiling on the range, the stacked dishes on the wooden draining board. He shook Lysander’s hand.
‘The Major, he talk of you, many, many,’ Femi said.
Lysander was touched and left the house with a new sense of purpose and for the first time since he’d heard of Lothar’s birth he felt stirrings of hope. A plan was forming. He picked up a trap waiting outside the inn at Winchelsea and was at Rye station in time for the 7.45 to Brighton, calling at Hastings and Lewes, with the rest of the Monday morning commuters, empty-faced men in their grey suits, stiff collars and bowler hats, reading their newspapers, counting down the hours until they could catch the train home again. Lysander stood amongst them, an incongruous figure with his baggy corduroy trousers and Panama hat, his rucksack slung over one shoulder, thinking of Hamo’s plan, his singing heart making him smile spontaneously.
5. A Grotesque Insult to the Bard
Lysander’s head was still buzzing. He was experiencing that strange combination of huge mental fatigue with sheer, adrenalin-fuelled exhilaration that occurred whenever he came off stage after a first night – particularly if his role had been a sizeable one. It could last for an hour or more, he knew, as he felt his eyelids flicker and grow irresistibly heavy. Gilda was saying something to him but he couldn’t find the energy to listen. He was thinking back over his performance as Angelo, worrying that he’d rather gabbled his big speech in Act II. No doubt Rutherford would tell him in the morning . . .
The cab rattled over some cobblestones and woke him up. Gilda swayed with the motion and grabbed his arm to keep herself upright.
‘Oops, sorry,’ she said. ‘But don’t you think so?’
‘Think what?’
‘You’re not listening to me, you beast.’
‘Do you think I went too fast through, “Is this her fault or mine? The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?” I thought I may have rushed it.’
‘Not to my ear. No, I was saying – are we mad?’
‘In what way?’
‘To be doing Miss Julie as well. The first night’s in two weeks, I can’t believe it.’
‘It’s only ninety minutes and there’s no interval.’
‘I suppose so . . . But it’s very intense – I think we’ll be exhausted. What have we taken on?’
The back of the cab was full of her scent – a clinging, farinaceous odour of lilies and cinnamon –‘Matins de Paris’ she had said it was called when he asked. He had agreed to wait for her after the show but she had taken forty minutes to put on her finery. She was looking in her compact-mirror now, checking her hair, her lip-rouge – the palest pink. It suited her.
‘We’re going to be the last there,’ Lysander said.
‘Then we can make an entrance. It is our night.’
‘Don’t let Rutherford hear you say that.’
She laughed – her real laugh, Lysander noted, rather deep and raucous, not like her fake laugh, a kind of girly trill. He could easily distinguish them, now they had spent so much time together rehearsing Measure for Measure and Miss Julie, just as he could distinguish the real Gilda Butterfield from ‘Miss Gilda Butterfield’, the latter overlaid with many veneers of faux-gentility, pretension, archness and other affectations, the laugh being the least of it. She was talking again.
‘Rutherford asked me one of his questions about Miss Julie that I really didn’t know how to answer.’
‘Oh, yes, one of his “Stanislavsky” questions.’ He was awake now – exhilaration had vanquished fatigue. ‘What was it?’
‘He said: what do you think happens when Julie and Jean go outside – just before the ballet sequence?’
‘And you sai
d?’
‘I said I assumed they kissed.’
‘Come on, Gilda. You’re a woman of the world.’
‘What do they do, then?’
Lysander decided to take the risk. Something about Gilda dared him to say it. She was an actress, for god’s sake. He lowered his voice.
‘They fu – they fornicate, of course.’
‘Lysander! Talk about calling a spade a spade.’ She laughed again, however.
‘Excuse my Anglo-Saxon. But it’s very obvious. It’s very important also, for when they both come back on, that the audience realizes this. When we both come back on.’
‘Now you put it that way I see what you mean, yes . . .’ She busied herself with her mirror again, embarrassed, he supposed, wondering if he’d gone too far.
‘When Jean and Julie come back on after the ballet. Everything’s changed,’ he said. ‘They haven’t just been billing and cooing in the rose garden. They’ve been – you know, passionately, irresistibly . . .’ He paused. ‘It affects the whole play. That’s why you commit suicide.’
‘You sound like Rutherford,’ she said. ‘Or have you been reading too much D. H. Lawrence?’
They were rolling down Regent Street towards the Café Royal. It was a warm clear night, not too muggy for late July. The cab pulled up and Lysander paid the driver and helped Gilda down carefully. She was wearing a very tight hobble-skirt that gave her a footstep of no more than eighteen inches and a sleeveless silk blouse freighted with flounces and ribbonry. She had a pearl choker at her throat and long white gloves almost to her armpits. Her curly blonde hair had been subdued under numerous hair-ornaments. He handed over her chiffon stole and she wound it loosely around her bare shoulders.
‘You look very beautiful, Gilda,’ he said. ‘And you were superb tonight as Isabella,’ he added, sincerely.
‘Stop. You’ll make me cry.’
He offered her his arm and they went into the Café through the revolving doors to be met by a manic babble of talk and laughter and a blurry wall of smoke.