Armadillo

by William Boyd

  A wooden box bumped up against one of the supports of Albert Bridge and then the current rushed it speedily downstream. Lorimer’s eye seized hungrily on it and freighted it with sententious symbolism: that’s us, he thought, flotsam and jetsam on the tide, hurried along to our ultimate destination, held up here, whooshed along there, stalled in an eddy for a while then flipped over a weir, unable to control our progress until we wind up in the calm estuary heading for the open sea, which is boundless and endless…

  The wooden box banged against a pier and was caught and scraped along the wall beneath him. He read the letters branded on to the box’s side, ‘Château Cheval Blanc 1982’. Only in Chelsea, he thought; there was clearly flotsam and flotsam.

  280. Lysergic acid diethylamide. I once asked Alan if my light-sleeping problem, my REM sleep overload and imbalance, could be a sign of neurosis, of some deep, unacknowledged mental crisis, of impending mental breakdown, say.

  ‘Not in your case, I think,’ Alan said, frowning hard. ‘No, I think we have to look elsewhere. It is true that depressed people sleep less but then they experience little REM sleep – which is often taken as an indication that REM sleep is absolutely vital for our well-being in some mysterious way, as if we need to dream, in a fundamental physiological sense. ‘He paused. ‘There’s only one drug that’s been discovered that seems to promote REM sleep and that’s lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD as it is more commonly known. Have you ever taken LSD?’

  ‘Only once.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘It changed my life.’

  The Book of Transfiguration

  According to Flavia Malinverno the film she was working on – Malign Fiesta – was a ‘very loose adaptation’ of a novel by Percy Wyndham Lewis, a writer with whom Lorimer was not familiar. As he found a parking spot not far from the empty hospital in Chiswick where much of the shooting was taking place, and duly parked the rapidly rusting Toyota, Lorimer considered he might appropriate the title for his own autobiography, should he ever write one – it seemed to capture the spirit of recent weeks. He wandered towards the hospital past the straggling row of trucks, clapped-out buses, campervans and groups of people in anoraks and windcheaters chatting to each other and drinking from plastic cups – all the signs that announced that a motion picture was being filmed in your neighbourhood. Their lack of purpose, the lethargy, the air of resigned inertia reminded him of a disbanded circus awaiting news of its next destination, or a column of reasonably well-to-do refugees halted at a roadblock for days as officials and militia haggled over whether the motley crew should be allowed across the frontier.

  A shivering young guy, ill-dressed against the weather, in just a sweater and a baseball cap, with dripping nose and walkie-talkie, asked if he could help Lorimer in any way. Lorimer had once done an adjust on a film company and had mooched around several film sets in the course of it and so knew what the magic password was, the one that opened every door.

  ‘Equity,’ he said.

  ‘The actors are in the main building,’ said the young guy, sniffing robustly and swallowing. ‘You’ll see the signs.’

  He followed meandering black cables as thick as his arm into the semi-circular drive, under the grandly columned entrance and in through the main doors. The hall was brilliant with huge arc lights all pointing at an impressive central staircase that swept up and divided against the rear wall, decked with flowers as if for a ball or wedding. Many dozens of people stood around looking at a woman who was fiddling with the flowers and a man with a hand-held vacuum cleaner who was hoovering up every trace of dust and lint from the carpet. From somewhere came a busy sound of energetic hammering. He was the only person in a suit and stood out markedly amongst so much leather and suede, foul-weather gear and leisure wear.

  A brisk young woman wearing a headset and carrying a styrofoam cup approached.

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Equity,’ he said.

  ‘Actors that way,’ she said, pointing through an ornate doorway.

  Lorimer obediently headed off, passing thirty feet of trestle table with many urns and plates, trays and baskets of high-calorie food. People stood in front of it, sampling, munching, sipping, slurping, waiting. He heard a man shout, ‘Kill that blonde, Jim!’ but no one paid any attention.

  Flavia had told him that the film was a romantic comedy and the next room, he guessed, contained the set that would concern her and where she would utter her immortal line about Tyimotheh’s subterfuge. There was a glossy dining table with sixteen chairs and laid for a substantial meal, if the ranked silverware was anything to go by More people were polishing crystal glasses and touching up and adjusting the floral table centres. Beyond this set was a long, high-ceilinged room that must have been an old hospital ward, divided down the middle by a row of bulb-ringed dressing tables and racks of clothes. Here he encountered his first actors – men and women in evening clothes of the 1920s, having their hair combed, lipstick retouched, jewellery fastened and checked against the evidence contained in many polaroid photographs.

  A woman with wild, backcombed blue-black hair and holding a small sponge asked if she could help. Now that he was amongst actors he fell back on the truth. ‘I’m with the insurance company,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. You’ll want, um, Fred Gladden. If you don’t mind waiting I’ll get someone to find him for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Lorimer knew from experience that this could take a minute, an hour or might never actually come about, so he moved away and leant against a wall, safe for a while. The minute came and went as he stood there discreetly, arms folded, watching the comings and goings, as meaningful to him as the busy scurryings of an ant colony. Then he suddenly remembered, unprompted, that his father had died a few hours previously and realized that already time had passed when he had not been thinking about him, indeed had completely forgotten about him and his death and this made him unbearably sad. Sad to think how easy it was not to think about Bogdan Blocj, how easy it was to find yourself in a state where you were not regretting that you would never hold his hand again.

  His vision shimmered and all the bright lights acquired blurry coronas. He exhaled and inhaled, filling his lungs with air and asked himself what he was doing here, standing around on this film set under false pretences, engaged on this foolish forlorn quest. His father had been dead for a matter of hours, shouldn’t he be doing something respectful, sober, suitably mournful? Such as what? His father wouldn’t care, in fact the old Bogdan Blocj might have approved of something so sexily inopportune, trying to win back his girl… He made another dutiful filial effort, trying to conjure up some idea of the man beyond the idea of ‘Dad’, a man he remembered most readily standing in his brown overall, clipboard in hand, spectacles on the end of his nose, amongst his shelves of well-wrapped cardboard boxes… But nothing else came. The man he knew best had been the smiling, mute invalid, a dapper, silent figure in his blazer and flannels and neat white beard whose twinkling eyes seemed to see everything and nothing at all…Jesus Christ, he roused himself, get a grip: he had his own life to live and it was a life that was going downhill fast. Some sort of brakes had to be applied before the whole thing came apart –

  Flavia Malinverno entered the room at the far end, carrying a book, and sat down on a wooden form.

  He edged closer, circling round and approaching from the side, unchallenged and unquestioned, realizing that in his classically cut suit people might take him for an extra. Flavia was wearing a black wig, bobbed, with a low fringe that seemed to be resting on her improbably long, false eyelashes. She was reading Malign Fiesta by Wyndham Lewis – good for you, girl, he thought, professional, diligent actor – and his heart bulged and sagged with pathetic, humiliating longing for her. But what has anyone in the history of humankind ever been able to do about that sort of thing, he thought as he slid on to the bench beside her – without her looking up – and inched along stealthily, who has ever been able to control that category of pure feel
ing?

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Well, it’s got bugger all to do with this film, I can tell-’

  She looked up at this point and saw him, her mouth tightening at once, her jaw set. Her face was opaque with white panstick make-up, her lipstick was the cherriest of reds and she had a beauty spot in the middle of her left cheek. She wore a dress of taupe crêpe de chine and great loops of pearls dangled to her lap.

  ‘Flavia –’

  ‘Lorimer, I told you to stay away from me.’

  ‘No. You have to hear me out.’

  ‘Look, I’m going to call security, I mean it –’

  ‘My father died this morning.’

  She sat down slowly. The mention of his father’s death had made tears fill his eyes and he could see that for once, perhaps for the first time ever, she believed him.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry…But that has nothing to do –’

  ‘You’re the one responsible. If you hadn’t told Gilbert nothing would have advanced this far, this fast. You provoked everything.’

  She reached into a beaded bag and brought out her cigarettes, lit one and blew a jet of smoke straight out in front of her.

  ‘OK, I shouldn’t have, and I regret it, and I’m sorry if it seemed I was using you. Now you must go away.’

  ‘No. I want to see you again.’

  Her jaw dropped in a mock gasp of incredulity. She shook her head as if to dispel a buzzing fly

  ‘For Christ’s sake, I’m a married woman.’

  ‘But you’re not happy, I know you’re not.’

  ‘Don’t you lecture me on the state of my marriage, chum.’

  ‘Hi. Are you with the Bond Company?’ Lorimer looked up to see a young man with thinning blond hair in a leather jacket and jeans standing there with his hand extended. ‘I’m Fred Gladden,’ he said, ‘Co-producer.’

  ‘I think he went that way,’ Lorimer said, pointing. ‘I’m with Equity.’ He indicated Flavia. ‘Some mix-up with her union dues.’

  ‘Oh, right, sorry,’ Fred Gladden apologized, needlessly. ‘They just told me a man in a suit. That way?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lorimer said. ‘He’s carrying a briefcase.’

  Fred Gladden strolled off to look for a suited man with a briefcase.

  ‘Look at you,’ Flavia said, trying not to smile. ‘Look how you lie. It’s unbelievable, like a reflex, so fluent.’

  ‘I’m a desperate man,’ Lorimer said. ‘And I think when it comes to duplicity you could teach me a few lessons.’

  The brisk young woman in the head set shouted, ‘Scene 44. Dinner party. Rehearsal.’

  Flavia rose to her feet and said. ‘That’s me. Look, I can’t see you any more, it’s too difficult. There are things I haven’t told…Goodbye.’

  ‘What things you haven’t told?’

  Lorimer followed her through to the set. Her dress had a low waist which was fringed and the fringe swayed to and fro with the swing of her hips. He felt a surge of desire for her so palpable that saliva squirted into his mouth.

  ‘Flavia, we must –’

  ‘Go away, Lorimer.’

  ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘No. It’s finished. It’s too difficult, too dangerous.’

  They had reached the set where an elderly, red-faced man was simultaneously talking into a mobile phone and pointing the actors to their allotted seats around the dining table.

  ‘Flavia Malinverno,’ he said, ‘you’re over there, darling. Just tell the lazy bastard to get his arse down here, he’s got a film to direct.’

  Flavia glanced round at Lorimer, still behind her.

  ‘Charlie,’ she said to the red-faced man, ‘I think this bloke’s stalking me.’

  Red-faced Charlie stepped in front of Lorimer and clicked his phone shut. Lorimer’s eyes followed Flavia, watching her take her place at the dinner party.

  ‘What’s going on, pal?’ The suspicion in Charlie’s voice was menacing, clearly a man used to having his orders obeyed.

  ‘What? I’m with the Bond Company, looking for Fred Gladden.’

  Lorimer was duly told where he might find Fred Gladden and was obliged to move away. He glanced back only to see Flavia in laughing conversation with the actor sitting beside her and felt a satisfying pang of jealousy. He had achieved a little but it was not enough, a paltry thing, compared with what he dreamed of.

  He stepped out of the electric warmth and unreal luminescence of the hospital into the dull and pearly gloom of a Chiswick morning, the low-packed clouds filtering the light shadow-free and he sensed his depression settle weightily on him again as if his pockets were filled with stones. He felt an unreasoning anger build in him against Hogg, realizing, with some degree of shock, that in the end it was only the news of his father’s death that had made Flavia talk to him at all. A final service rendered his son by Bogdan Blocj, from beyond the grave too. It was both sobering and shaming: he had blurted out the news unthinkingly, but it was something that should have been stated to the woman he loved, surely? He felt confident that the shade of Bogdan Blocj, wherever it might lurk, would not condemn him.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ he said, looking up, out loud, attracting a few curious glances, ‘I owe you one.’ And he wandered back to his chargrilled Toyota with something of a spring in his step, thinking, wondering what she meant by ‘too difficult, too dangerous’. Difficulties could be overcome and, as for danger, why, danger was a constant in his life.

  132. Brown Shoes. I remember the day I thought I had caught Ivan out. He was wearing a hairy, snot-green tweed suit with black brogues. I pointed at them and said, ‘Ivan, the ultimate sin – black shoes with tweed.’

  ‘Oh, you’re completely wrong, Lorimer, this is very acceptable. I’m glad you noticed it, however. It’s a sign of a deeper malaise, something that’s been worrying me for years.’

  ‘What’s that.’

  ‘It’s been difficult, but I’ve decided that the brown shoe must be condemned. Suede yes, a brown boot – just. But I think the brown shoe is fundamentally below the salt. Something irretrievably petit bourgeois about a brown shoe, quintessentially suburban and infradig. I threw all mine out last week, fourteen pairs, some I’ve had for decades. Threw them in the dustbin. I can’t tell you how relieved I am, the weight off my mind.’

  ‘All brown shoes?’

  ‘Yes. No gentleman should wear a brown shoe, ever. The brown shoe is finished. The brown shoe, Lorimer, has got to go.’

  The Book of Transfiguration

  Lorimer wrote out a cheque for £3,000 and handed it apologetically to Ivan Algomir.

  ‘Charge me interest on the balance, Ivan, please. I’ll pay you the rest as soon as I can – some sort of administrative snarl-up in the office.’

  Ivan folded the cheque and put it in his pocket, ruefully. ‘I’d appreciate it, old chap. This will help, though. They’re like starving wolves following a stagecoach, the Revenue, if you throw them a scrap from time to time you might just escape.’

  Another ghastly embarrassment down to Hogg, Lorimer thought. First he destroys my love life, now he’s jeopardizing my friendships.

  ‘I feel terrible about this, Ivan. What if I returned the helmet?’

  ‘Good God, it’s only money, Lorimer. I’ll elude them. I must say you look smart.’

  Lorimer told him where he was going: Lady Sher-riffmuir’s ‘At Home’.

  ‘In Kensington,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ve had the cuffs altered.’

  Lorimer held up the sleeves of his suit coat to show single-button cuffs that actually unbuttoned. Ivan had told him how he abominated the two-, three – or four-button cuff as pretentious and arriviste. A cuff was a cuff: it was there to allow you to fold up your sleeve, not as decoration.

  ‘The shirt is first rate,’ Ivan said. Lorimer had had them made to Ivan’s design also, the collar deliberately miscut so that the point on one side rode over the revere a little awkwardly and untidily but, as Ivan pointed out, it was a defect that only arose with han
d-made shirts, and what was the purpose of having hand-made shirts if they could not be recognized as such. ‘Only people who have hand-made shirts themselves will recognize the problem,’ Ivan assured him, ‘but they’re the only people you want to notice.’

  Lorimer lifted his trouser leg to show off his midnight blue socks.

  ‘Shoes are only just passable,’ Ivan said. ‘Thank God you’ve got no tassles but I don’t know if I like these American loafers. Very nouveau. Still.’

  ‘I think they’re right for this City crowd.’

  ‘Just. Good God, what’s that tie?’

  ‘My school. Balcairn.’ Actually it was a tie he had had his tailor make up for him. Navy blue with thin bands of mauve and an unidentifiable crest.

  ‘Take it off at once. I’ll lend you another. School ties are for schoolboys and schoolmasters. No grown man should be seen dead in a school tie. Same goes for regimental and club ties. Appalling bad taste.’

  Ivan came back with a tie in lime green silk covered in a motif of tiny blue spiders. ‘Bit of fun. It is an “At Home”, after all.’ Ivan looked him up and down in a kindly, almost proprietorial way, the old knight sending out his squire to joust in the lists of High Society.

  ‘Very good, Lorimer. Even I can’t find much fault.’