by William Boyd
‘We’re with the Rutherford Davison party,’ Lysander said to the maître d’.
‘Upstairs, first floor,’ the man said. ‘The smaller of the two private rooms.’
They walked up the stairs. On the landing they could hear the excited talk and laughter coming from the rest of the company through the open door of the private room, left ajar as if in welcome, expecting them. There was a pop of a champagne bottle opening and the sound of people clapping. Gilda tugged on his elbow and held him back, pausing them both in the gloom of the corridor. She looked around and took his hand and drew him to her. Their faces were close.
‘What’s going on?’ Lysander said.
She kissed him hard on his lips and pressed herself against him. He felt her tongue pushing, flickering, and he opened his mouth. Then she stepped back, checked the copious frilling of her blouse and readjusted her chiffon stole. Lysander took out his handkerchief and dabbed at his lips in case there were any traces of her lip-rouge. She looked at him squarely – a look that came from the real Gilda Butterfield.
‘We’d better go in,’ she said, ‘or they’ll wonder what’s become of us.’
She linked arms with him again and they walked into the room together. The company rose to their feet and applauded.
Lysander allowed a waiter to pour him more champagne as he tried to listen to what Rutherford Davison was saying. He was very aware of Gilda across the room and the many glances she was throwing his way. He felt in something of a quandary. He decided to see simply where the evening would lead. A night for instincts, not rationality, he decided.
‘No,’ Rutherford was saying, ‘I think we’ll do two full weeks of Measure and then very quickly announce Miss Julie. I have a horrible feeling they’ll close us down as soon as the reviews start appearing so we want to have as many performances as possible.’
‘But it was done in Birmingham this year, you said. So there’s a precedent.’
‘A precedent for a very boring, prudish, safe-as-houses production. Wait till you see how we do it – what I’ve got planned.’
‘It’s your company.’
Lysander had grown to like Rutherford – perhaps ‘like’ was the wrong word – he had grown to trust his intuition and his intelligence. He was not naturally a warm or open person but he seemed to know what he was doing and didn’t waver from his purpose. He had said that Measure for Measure and Miss Julie were a perfect double-bill as both plays were fundamentally about sex, even though they were written three centuries apart. Certainly the emphases and undercurrents that had been revealed this evening had set audible mutterings running through the audience a few times. He wondered what the reviews would be like – not that he’d be reading them. Rutherford said he only read reviews for adjectives and adverbs – he was hoping for ‘shocking’ and ‘daring’ – even ‘disgraceful’ would suit. We’re here to stir things up, he had said to the company. Let’s show them a Shakespeare as troubled and worldly as the sonnets. This Swan of Avon has paddled through a sewer.
Lysander moved off and wandered round the room. He ate a couple of canapés and chatted to some of the other actors and their friends, aware of Gilda circling the room in the other direction – anti- to his clockwise. It was after midnight. He went back to the bar and ordered a brandy and soda.
‘Would you light my cigarette, please, kind sir?’ Cockney accent. Lysander turned.
Gilda stood there, a cigarette in a jet holder, poised. A little tipsy, he thought. He took out his lighter and clicked the flame into life and offered it to the end of her cigarette. She inhaled, checked the fit of the cigarette in the holder and blew smoke from the side of her mouth. She lowered her voice to an intimate near whisper, moving her mouth close to his ear. He felt her warm breath on his neck. Goosebumps.
‘Don’t you think, Lysander dear, purely in the interests of dramatic authenticity, we should practise our “Miss Julie” fornication? Perhaps?’
‘As long as it’s purely in the interests of the drama. What could be wrong with that?’
‘Nothing. Even Rutherford would approve.’
‘Then I think it’s an excellent idea. My place isn’t far. I’m alone tonight. We can practise there undisturbed.’ Greville was in Manchester, touring in Nance Oldfield with Virginia Farringford.
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? he thought to himself, feeling very tempted. He looked her in the eye – she didn’t flinch
‘Why don’t you go down,’ Gilda said, smiling, ‘find a cab and I’ll be there in five minutes?’
She blew him a kiss, making a moue with her lips, and glided away from him. Lysander felt that breathless pressure in his chest and blood-heat around the neck and ears that signalled his excitement. It was probably a very, very bad idea and no doubt he would curse himself for the rest of the run but for the first time since Vienna and Hettie he felt like being with a woman – felt like being with Gilda Butterfield, to be precise.
He said his goodbyes and went downstairs. The maître d’ sent a boy out to hail him a cab and he stood there waiting, humming a song to himself – ‘My Melancholy Baby’ – full of eager anticipation and pushing the thought to the back of his mind that this evening would also be the acid test of his Bensimon cure. There had never been a problem with Hettie but then there had never been anyone since Hettie . . . He saw a man he vaguely knew collecting his hat and coat from the cloakroom. Their eyes met and recognition was immediate. Alwyn Munro sauntered over towards him.
‘Lysander Rief, the great escapologist, as I live and breathe.’
They shook hands. For some reason, Lysander noted, he was pleased to see Munro.
‘Celebrating?’ Munro said, indicating his dinner jacket and buttonhole.
‘First night. Measure for Measure.’
‘Congratulations. Funnily enough we were just talking about you today,’ Munro said, looking at him shrewdly. ‘Where’re you living now? I’ve something to send you.’
Lysander gave him his address in Chandos Place.
‘Still in Vienna?’ Lysander asked.
‘No, no. We’ve almost all got out now. Now the war seems inevitable.’
‘War? I thought it was just general sabre-rattling. Austria and Serbia, you know.’
‘And the Russians and the Germans and the French rattling their sabres too. It’ll be us in a few days. You wait and see.’
Lysander felt something of a fool. ‘I’ve been very caught up in rehearsals,’ he said, feebly.
‘Everything is moving incredibly fast,’ Munro said. ‘Even I can’t keep up.’
‘Cab’s here, sir,’ the boy said and Lysander searched his pocket for some pennies to tip him. He was aware, out of the corner of his eye, that Gilda was coming slowly down the stairs. He’d better jump into the cab quickly – it wouldn’t do for them to be seen leaving together.
‘Must dash,’ he said to Munro, touching him apologetically on the elbow. ‘Good luck with your war.’
Gilda’s body was quite extraordinary, Lysander thought. Like nothing he’d seen or experienced before – not that he was any kind of expert on women’s naked bodies, having only studied half a dozen or so, in his time. But Gilda seemed to him almost as if she were another species of woman, so incredibly pale was she with a rash of freckles over her chest and between her small, uptilted breasts, the nipples the palest rose, almost invisible. Freckles dusted her back and shoulders and here and there – on her ribs, on her upper arms, on her thighs – were small flat moles, pinheads, constellations of them, like flicked brown paint. Just the body’s pigmentation gone a bit awry, he supposed, the freckles like tiny faded tattoos. He had wondered, when she began to undress, how he would react to her translucent pallor but he found her whiteness and her stippling of pale brown very alluring.
He had insisted on wearing a preservative so she had insisted on rolling it on. This set the tone of genial amusement for the rest of the night – ‘Fits you like a one-fingered glove, sir,’ she said in her Co
ckney accent – and they continued to talk banteringly throughout.
‘I love your markings,’ Lysander said as she eased her legs wide to receive him. ‘You’re like a banana that’s been too long in the fruitbowl, you know – sort of sea-creature.’
‘Thanks a lot. I don’t.’
‘I feel I should be able to read you like tea-leaves.’
‘Ha-ha. I’m thinking of getting them removed.’
‘Don’t you dare. You’re unique. Like a quail’s egg.’
‘What lovely compliments. Sea-creature, quail’s egg. Quite the charmer, Mr Rief, oh yes . . .’
His orgasm duly came – to his intense pleasure – but they didn’t try for a second time. It was late and they were both tired, they admitted, what with the first night and the party. Maybe in the morning.
And now she was sleeping in his bed as he dressed, one long white haunch revealed, the rumpled sheet just failing to cover the clean edge of her golden triangle of hair. Miss Julie . . . Well, well, well. He knotted a cravat at his throat and pulled on a jacket. He had no milk or tea, no coffee, sugar or bread and butter in the flat – just a pot of marmalade. He thought he would run out for some provisions. They could have breakfast in bed and see what led on from there. Rutherford didn’t want them back at the theatre until the afternoon.
He stepped over the tangled pile of her clothes – skirt, blouse, shift, corset, camisole, knickers, hosiery, shoes – and let himself quietly out of the room. He trotted down the stairs in a fine mood. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a disaster, after all, to start a brief affair with Gilda, he thought. Might make Blanche jealous if people gossiped and whispered about it.
He stepped out on to Chandos Place. He’d run up to Covent Garden, that would be quickest – buy her a bunch of flowers.
Jack Fyfe-Miller, in naval uniform, was crossing the street towards him.
‘Rief! Good morning! I was just going to slip this through your letter-box. Munro wanted you to have it as soon as possible.’ He handed him a stiff brown envelope.
‘What’s this?’
‘A surprise . . . You’re looking very well. Your play had an extremely bad review in the Mail this morning. “Shocking,” it said. A grotesque insult to the Bard.’
‘We were rather hoping for that.’
Fyfe-Miller seemed to be looking at him intently.
‘Is everything all right?’ Lysander asked.
‘I was just thinking – I last saw you on the quayside at Trieste. Somehow I knew we’d meet again.’
‘And now we have. You and Munro, both, in under twelve hours. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘You taking up a life on the ocean wave again?’
‘No, no. All British fleets have been ordered back to war bases. I’m off down to Portsmouth.’
‘War bases? Really? Does that mean –’
‘Yes. It’s looking rather serious.’ He smiled and gave him a salute. ‘See you again soon, no doubt,’ he said, and headed back towards Trafalgar Square.
Lysander put the envelope in his pocket and hurried up to Covent Garden to do his shopping. He didn’t want Gilda to wake before he came back.
6. Autobiographical Investigations
I couldn’t believe what was in the envelope that Fyfe-Miller handed to me. I opened it after Gilda had gone (around ten o’clock – second time, very satisfactory) to find a formal invoice from the War Office detailing the amount I owed to His Majesty’s Government. The 10,000 crowns of forfeited bail came to £475. Herr Feuerstein’s legal fees and expenses were totalled at an exorbitant £350 and food, drink and laundry were estimated at an equally preposterous £35. No rent charged for the summerhouse, I noted, gratefully. Grand total: £860. I laughed. ‘Full remittance would be appreciated at your earliest convenience.’ I am earning £8 10 shillings a week in the International Players’ Company. My savings are virtually exhausted because of my lengthy stay in Vienna. I owe my mother over £100. The expenses of my daily life (rent, clothing, food, etcetera) are considerable. Roughly calculating, I reckon that if I could stay working fifty-two weeks of the year (and name me an actor who can or does) I might be able to pay off this debt in five years – in 1919. Compound interest, moreover, is being added at 5 per cent per annum. I tore the invoice up.
I’m deeply grateful to Munro and Fyfe-Miller – they were crucially instrumental in my escape from Vienna but, from one jaundiced angle – mine, I admit – the whole ploy looks like a clever money-making scheme for the Foreign Office. I could spend most of my life paying this off.
Rehearsal for Miss Julie this morning. I must say I’m having no problems learning the lines, unlike Gilda. I find the two idioms – Shakespeare and Strindberg – ideally distinct, the lines learned seeming to occupy different cubbyholes of my brain. Not so Gilda, who is still reading from the script, much to Rutherford’s annoyance. His exasperation this morning almost made her cry. I consoled her and we stole a kiss – as much as we’ve managed to achieve since that first night (and morning) of the First Night party. If anything she seems to have cooled somewhat, as if regretting giving herself to me. She’s perfectly friendly but she always seems busy after the show. Sick mother, friends in town – there’s always a good excuse.
Rutherford wants us both to re-enter after the ballet with our clothes in disarray and with wisps of straw in our hair. He actually suggested I come on stage buttoning my flies. Gilda is advocating more decorum but I can see how adamant Rutherford is – there will be battles ahead. He is determined to have us banned within twenty-four hours.
Strange dream about Hettie. I was drawing her – she was naked – in the barn. There was a banging at the door and we both cowered down, expecting it to be Hoff. But instead my father walked in.
I overheard this conversation at Leicester Square Tube station as I waited for a train. It was between two women (working class, poor), one in her twenties, one younger, sixteen or so.
WOMAN: I saw her up Haymarket, then in Burlington Arcade.
GIRL: She told me she had a job hat-binding in Mayfair.
WOMAN: She’s not hat-binding, all painted like that.
GIRL: She said she was sad. That’s why she was drinking.
WOMAN: I’m sad. We’re all sad – but we don’t carry on like that.
GIRL: She could’ve been a lady’s maid, she said. Five pound a year and all her grub. Now she makes five pound a week, she says.
WOMAN: She’ll end up in a rookery. I bet my life. Selling herself for thruppence to a shoe-black.
GIRL: She’s a good soul, Lizzie.
WOMAN: She’s half mad and three parts drunk.
A subject for Mr Strindberg, perhaps, were he still with us. The river of sex flows as strongly in London as it does in Vienna.
August the fifth. War was declared on Germany last night at 11.00 p.m., Greville said when he came in. I went out this morning to find a paper but they had all been sold. This evening we had barely twenty people in the auditorium but we performed the play with as much zest as if it had been a full house. Rutherford very cast down – says we’re bound to close at the end of the week. So, the world will be denied Lysander Rief and Gilda Butterfield in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Gilda was upset. I said German troops had advanced into Belgium and attacked Liège, a fact that made our little theatrical problems and regrets seem insignificant. ‘Not to me,’ she said fiercely. For a second I thought she was going to slap my face.
7th August. I see in the paper that HMS Amphion has been sunk by a mine off Yarmouth. For some odd reason I wondered if the Amphion had been Fyfe-Miller’s ship – and that thought suddenly brought the war alive to me in a way that days of shouting headlines hadn’t. It was personalized in the shape of an imagined Fyfe-Miller drowned at sea off Yarmouth. It made me cold and fearful.
I was being measured for a new suit at my tailor’s yesterday and I said to Jobling that I rather fancied a ‘waist-seam’ coat. ‘Very American, sir,’ he said,
as if that was an end to the matter. I said I thought the waist-seam was flattering. ‘You’ll be wanting slanting pockets next,’ Jobling said, with a chuckle. Not a bad idea, I retorted. ‘Your father would turn in his grave, sir,’ he said and went on to talk about Grosvenor cuffs and double collars. And that was that. My father’s ghost is still determining what I can wear.
A letter from Hettie arrived in this afternoon’s post. The stamp was Swiss.
My dear Lysander,
Isn’t this the most terrible business? I cry all day at the awful folly of it all. Why would Britain declare war on us? What has Vienna done to London or Paris? Udo says this is a purely Balkan affair but other countries are just using it as an excuse. Is this true?
I’m very, very frightened and I wanted to send this letter to you with all urgency to tell you what I have decided to do in these awful circumstances. My position is difficult, as you will be well aware. I am a British subject living in a country with which Britain is in a state of war. Udo has offered to adopt Lothar, the better to protect him and to make his nationality secure. I may be interned but Lothar would be safe – so of course I agreed. Once the papers are drawn up he will take Udo’s name and become ‘Lothar Hoff’. It’s for the best, my dear one – I can and must only think of Lothar, I mustn’t think of myself nor of your feelings, though I can easily imagine them.
Lothar is very well, a happy healthy boy. I wish us all happier and more secure times.
With love from us both, Hettie.
Hamo tried to console me – he was very affectionate and warm. Think of the little chap, he said, it’s for the best. I came down last night (Sunday) to stay in Winchelsea with Hamo and Femi. Hamo is thinking of adopting Femi himself, he said, as there has already been fighting in West Africa between the British and the German colonies. Togoland has been invaded by British and Empire forces.