by William Boyd
But I realize that this state of affairs has been going on now for over a year and I think it’s wrong of me simply to let it drift in this way. Something will change suddenly – something will break or alter course – and before it does I should really make my own move.
Friday, 11 October
Lunch with Fleming at the Savoy Grill. I should have said that I’d golfed with him again at Huntercombe – he called out of the blue to ask me to make up a four. He had an ulterior motive, I think. He’s unhappy being a stockbroker and is curious about my writing life. He asked me if I was interested in pornography and I said not particularly. He has quite a collection, he said proudly. Then for some reason, as if it would explain my essential indifference to erotica, I told him about Freya, the flat and our secret weekday life. I now feel rather disgusted with myself for confessing this to him, and I don’t really know why I did. I think it’s because he’s one of those men – a man’s man, clubbable, arrogant, seemingly impregnably sure of himself – that make you want to impress them somehow. And he was quite impressed, which made it worse. My God, he said, you’ve a wife in the country and a mistress in town. I said I didn’t see it quite in that light and to change the subject I suggested he read Peter’s new book (which is not bad, actually – I read it in a two-hour sitting). Then he asked me if I’d like to come to his flat to play bridge that evening; I reminded him that I had to return to Thorpe to my wife and child. ‘So your girl’s at a loose end tonight,’ he laughed, to show he was joking. ‘Perhaps she’d like to come round instead.’ I smiled: Freya would loathe Fleming. I can’t put my finger on his essential nature. He’s quite a handsome man – dark, lean – but it’s the sort of handsomeness that vanishes on a closer look and you see the flaws: the weak mouth, the doleful eyes. He’s affable, generous, appears interested in you – but there’s nothing in him to like. Too spoiled, too well connected, too cosseted: everything in life has come too easily.
[November]
Freya – suddenly – asked me to meet her father. Why? I said. So he can get to know you, she said. Why would he want to get to know me? Because you’re going to be his son-in-law one day. I laughed, but Freya kept on looking at me in that unflinching way of hers. I have to do something.
1936
Tuesday, 21 January
The King died last night and Kipling25 died last week. It seems old England’s gone all of a sudden and I feel vaguely fearful, for some strange reason. I suppose you grow accustomed to these old men being around, always aware of their presence in the background of your life. Then they’re gone and there’s a bit less noise in the room, you look around to see who’s missing.
Strange to think of the Prince as our King – that slight figure on the golf course at Biarritz.
Thursday, 27 February
Le trentième an de mon âge. Thirty years old, my God. I should be in London with Freya but Lottie has arranged a surprise for me – a dance at Edgefield. She’s managed it all with great covert skill: Ben has travelled over with Sandrine and their child; Dick Hodge has come south; Angus and Sally of course, my mother, Aelthred and Enid and a host of locals. Peter and Tess couldn’t make it, which is just as well, because it’s awkward enough being aware that Ben and Sandrine know about Freya and I feel uncomfortable and guilty. Well, so what? It’s your fault, isn’t it? You can’t introduce Freya to your friends and then complain that it’s embarrassing when you’re all in the same room with your wife. It was your choice – live with it – stop moaning.
So, thirty years old and the inevitable sense of disappointment, of being unfulfilled creeps through me like a virus. Two books published, a third imminent, a journalistic reputation of sorts. I am healthy, I have enough money to live comfortably (a house in the country, a flat in town), I am married and I have a son. And I love a beautiful woman who loves me in return. But two things nag at me, repeatedly. First, no real, good work done these last years. I feel the boundless energy of my twenties hasn’t been capitalized on. The Girl Factory was a fluke and The Cosmopolitans practically had to be dragged out of me word by word. And second, all my true happiness depends on Freya, but that happiness is compromised, corrupted, by the world of lies and evasions, duplicity and betrayal, that surrounds it. It’s like hanging a beautiful picture in a dark room. What a waste, you think – what’s the point?
[March]
The Cosmopolitans was published last week to a deafening silence, so far. I sense the literary world taking stock, not knowing what to make of this book – they can’t fit the author of The Girl Factory to this affectionate, unscholarly examination of half a dozen obscure French poets. Is it a hoax? Who are Larbaud and Levet, Dieudonné and Fargue? And I wonder if it’s all been a waste of time, all the effort it took to produce this little jeu d’esprit… No, it hasn’t. I’ve always urged myself to do what I want to do, not what I think I ought to do. Which is a lie. Wallace sold the unwritten Summer at Saint-Jean in advance to Sprymont & Drew for £1,000 – £500 on signature, £500 on delivery. An enormous sum, worryingly large, and suddenly I feel alarmed, wondering if I can produce the thing. Of course I immediately feel wealthy again – well, wealthier. Lottie knows nothing about the deal. I said to Freya: what shall we do with all this money? And she said, why don’t we buy a lovely little house?
I bumped into Peter at Quaglino’s yesterday. He was with a young woman whom he introduced as Ann Wise. When she left us for a moment to powder her nose, I asked him if this was the affair he had told me about. Oh no, he said, that one was over, this was somebody new. Beware of the Dog has sold almost 10,000 copies. He’s nearly finished another called Night Train to Paris and if that does as well he’s going to give up journalism. He said he’d much enjoyed The Cosmopolitans and had no idea I was so sophisticated everyone’s terrified by its recherché learning, he told me, ashamed to admit this gap in their cultural knowledge. It was nice of him to be so praiseful and I would have liked to have stayed in his company but I was meeting Udo – and Peter’s girlfriend was about to reappear. Peter, the lucky bastard. I think I would have told him about Freya if we’d lunched alone. Two worldly authors together, two old friends – how revolting.
[In July of 1936 Spanish generals mutinied against Spain’s legitimate but left-wing government and a bloody civil war ensued that, on the surface, seemed to be a classic conflict between the forces of the left – the Republicans – against the right – the Royalists. The left – the Popular Front – was always more divided than its opponents, being made up of many factions (Communists, Anarchists and Trade Unionists to name but three), not all of whom saw eye to eye. As the war advanced and Spain became geographically divided the fragile coalition of the left began to show signs of weakness and strain. The Fascist right, as it was perceived, enjoyed military support from the dictatorships of Italy and Nazi Germany. France and Britain maintained a position of non-alignment. Only the Soviet Union sent aid to the beleaguered Republicans.
Many young committed Europeans enlisted in an International Brigade to fight against Fascism and there was almost universal support amongst writers, artists and intellectuals for the Popular Front’s cause.
Not long after the beginning of the war Wallace Douglas contracted LMS to an American press agency, the Dusenberry Press Service, which commissioned him to travel to Spain and explain the conflict to American readers. The terms they offered were handsome, and LMS was only too happy to accept. In the event he made two journeys to Spain to cover the war, one in November 1936 and one in March 1937.]
Monday, 2 November
Barcelona. Maddening confusion at the Bureau for Foreigners. They offered me a trip around a hospital: I said I had been to the hospital on Friday, what I wanted was a trip to the front. Come back tomorrow they said – the fourth day running they’ve made the same suggestion. So I sit in this café on the Ramblas, drinking vermouth and seltzer, watching the girls.
It’s strange to see this city I know at war. Each window in every building is criss-crossed
with sticky tape to prevent them shattering in air raids. The red and black flags fly from balconies. One in two street corners boasts its huge poster of Marx or Lenin or Trotsky, and everywhere the grafitti of initials – CNT, UGT, FAI, POUM, PSUC. But here in Barcelona, at any rate, CNT and FAI – the Anarchists – dominate.
And the mood on the streets is one of febrile enthusiasm. The people seem almost sick with excitement at this new society they’ve created – you’d think there was a revolution going on rather than a civil war. The problem with Barcelona is that it’s distant from the war, so everyone has far too much time to talk and analyse, plot and intrigue. And all the words take audible form in the endless hectoring announcements issuing from the loudspeakers on the buildings and in the trees. I look about me at the young men swaggering by in their leather jerkins, their revolvers on their belts like gunslingers. And the girls, equally confident, hatless, with their red lips and brazen looks. Barcelona en fête: more like a street party, a fiesta, than anything more serious – or deadly.
Back at the hotel. I’m staying, aptly enough, at the Majestic de Inglaterra on the Paseo de Gracia. It appears to be full of journalists, mainly French and Russian. I avoid the British if I can. What is it about British Communists? Ganz ordinär, I would say. They seem to possess a smugness and arrogance out here that would never succeed in London. Very, ‘See? I told you so.’
I write my piece for the Dusenberry Press Service – 1,000 words on the atmosphere in the city – and take a tram to the post office to send it off. I must reach the front before I leave.
Wednesday, 4 November
I’ve been appointed my own special liaison officer (that’s what happens when you write for American newspapers). He’s a man in his forties called Faustino Angel Peredes. When I met him at the Ministry of Information he was wearing the standard Anarchist uniform of denim overall and short leather jacket, but I have to say he looked a little ill-at-ease in them. His greying hair is oiled back from his brow in neat furrowed waves and he has a handsome pitted face as if he’s suffered from smallpox early in his life. I spoke to him in Spanish and he answered me in fairly good English – an intellectual, then, not a worker. I told him I wanted to go to either the Madrid front or the Aragón front, whichever was practicable. He politely said he would do the maximum to see that my wishes were fulfilled.
Met Geoffrey Brereton, New Statesman correspondent. He said Cyril Connolly was due out any day now.
Thursday, 5 November
Faustino, as he insists I call him (we are all brothers now), said he’d obtained clearance for us to go by train to Albacete. To celebrate I treated him to lunch. He’s a droll but reserved man. I asked him what he had done before the war and he said he had been an administrator at La Lonja, the School of Fine Art. An administrator, he reminded me, not a teacher. We talked about contemporary painting and I told him I had met La Lonja’s most famous alumnus. ‘Ah Pablito,’ he said, with little warmth. ‘How is he? Still safe in Paris I suppose.’ He explained to me something of the complexities of the Popular Front who are fighting Franco and the Fascists. Forget about the different trade unions, he said, that will just confuse you further. Basically the Republican side was made up of Anarchists, Communists and Trotskyists. ‘Here in Catalonia,’ he said, somewhat ruefully, ‘we are very Anarchist. And unfortunately we are all very suspicious of each other. Factions inside factions inside factions. In Valencia, the Communists call us Fascists here in Barcelona. And we call the Communists in Valencia Fascists also.’ He shrugged. But you’re all united against the Fascists, I said. ‘Of course. And it is a most useful term of abuse.’ What do you think of the Communists? I asked him (I was taking notes). ‘Buenos y bobos,’ he said with a smile. Some good ones, some stupid ones.
I typed all this up and mailed it to the Dusenberry office in New York. There seems no point in cabling – I’d need some sort of a scoop to justify the expense. So far in a week I’ve made $300 from Dusenberry – the most lucrative journalism ever. At this rate I’m making $100 every two days, and I’m on expenses.
Friday, 6 November
To the railway station at first light to be told by the militia that our documentation is not in order. I suggested to Faustino that we go to Valencia and see if we have better luck with the Communist authorities there. It is the Republican seat of government after all, I reasoned, and it might be easier to reach Madrid from Valencia than Albacete from Barcelona. You may well be right, he said with his polite smile. ‘En el fondo no soy imbécil, Faustino,’ I said [In the end I’m not a fool]. He actually laughed at that and patted me on the shoulder. I think I’ve broken through.
Saturday, 7 November
We reached Valencia last night after a train journey of about ten hours. Faustino had changed out of his Anarchist overalls and wore the shabby black suit of a functionary. Valencia was thronged with people but it lacked the slightly crazed zeal of Barcelona. You see more soldiers than militia and armed civilians, and there is a regular traffic of army lorries up and down the streets. Many buildings are sandbagged: the front is only sixty miles away, after all. We are staying at the Hotel España and last night ate a huge meal of steak and fried potatoes at a restaurant called, bizarrely, the Ideal Room. The place was packed with well-dressed men and women. No shortages in this city, clearly. We went to the government offices and I was told I could go to Madrid with a party of other foreign journalists in ten or fifteen days. Which is no good to me. At luncheon we stuffed ourselves again – mussels and shrimps washed down with a pitcher of beer. Faustino caught an afternoon train back to Barcelona. He said he felt uncomfortable in Valencia and the realization seemed to disturb him: ‘And this is my own side,’ he said. We said goodbye with some affection and I told him I would be back in a month or so. I’m going to take a steamer from here to Marseilles and fly from there to Paris. I’ll file my Valencia story for Dusenberry and try to organize things better from London. I could be waiting here fruitlessly for weeks otherwise.
Went to the Museo Provincial in the afternoon. Closed. I wanted to see the Velázquez self-portrait. Sums up my trip, rather.
Friday, 27 November
On the train heading for Norwich and Thorpe for the weekend. Heart like a stone. Very depressed to be back in London after the sheer passion and fervour of Barcelona. Those young men and women held sincere beliefs, had clear values and a cause and wanted to change the world they lived in for the better. To walk the streets of London after that and see our pinched, grey-faced, downtrodden populace makes me despair.
It was exacerbated by meeting Angus for a drink in White’s.26 He asked me if I wanted to join (he would put my name down, he said). I said no, instantly, then – to undermine his surprise – said I couldn’t afford it. Evelyn [Waugh] was in the bar with some people and, in conversation, I let him know I’d just been in Spain and told him how impressed I’d been with the Republican spirit. He looked at me pityingly, his pale blue eyes wide and bright. ‘Spain has nothing to do with you or me, Logan,’ he said. And then immediately contradicted himself by asking if I’d seen any burnt-out churches. I’d seen locked ones, I said, but no signs of anti-clericalism. Then he changed the subject and started asking me questions about Aelthred and the Edgefields. Sometimes I think I’m only of interest to Evelyn because I married an earl’s daughter.27
All the conversation in the bar was about the King and his American girlfriend, and there was a lot of ribald and actually quite disgusting speculation about the King’s ‘sexual difficulty’ and Mrs Simpson’s skill in being able to resolve it. Why do I feel ashamed on his behalf? I feel some sort of absurd bond with him because of our brief meeting and my giving him my matches and his asking my name. I’d be no good as an Anarchist in Barcelona, evidently.
Monday, 30 November
I was cast down and depressed all weekend, and Lottie, unusually for her, asked me what was wrong. I told her I was out of sorts, hated England and wanted to live abroad, as far away from Britain as possible.
I ran through the possibilities: Australia, Canada, Malaya, South Africa, Hong Kong… But we’re everywhere – there’s no escape.
Tuesday, 8 December
Nothing but the Royal Crisis in the newspapers. It makes me sick. Let him abdicate for her, I say – good for him. They would understand him in Spain: he’s decided to be ruled by his heart, not his head, and our little bourgeois world is appalled.
Very nice review of The Cosmopolitans (anonymous, of course) in The Times Literary Supplement, which has cheered me up. The reviewer seems to understand why Les Cosmopolites provoke such a strong feeling in me. They are all about romance, about life’s excitement and adventure and its essential sadness and transience. They savour everything both fine and bittersweet that life has to offer us – stoical in their hedonism. An admirable code to live by, it seems to me. Sales stand at 375 copies. Talk about falling ‘stillborn from the press’. Roderick sidesteps around the book when we meet, as if it were a turd on the pavement, and talks only of Summer at Saint Jean – of which I have written only a few hurried pages. I feel I can forget it for the moment, financially buoyed as I am by all my dollars earned in Spain. I’m planning another trip in March. Life has commissioned a long piece on the International Brigade ($350). Sold one of my Barcelona articles to Nash’s Magazine for £30.
Monday, 14 December
I thought the King’s broadcast28 was very moving, very sober and pitched exactly at the right level of personal regret, mingled with a sense of duty and conscious sacrifice. You could hear the strain in his voice. The ex-King, I mean, now that we have George VI. What a year, 1936: at the very least it can go down in British history as a year when three kings reigned, however briefly. Freya’s opinion about the abdication is, without any prompting on my part, exactly the same as mine – Lottie’s is absolutely opposed. So what should he have done? I asked her on Sunday (we were lunching at Edgefield – the whole table turned on me). It was impossible that he should even think of marrying her, Lottie said. You can’t have a Queen of England who’s been divorced twice – what kind of example is that? No, no, Aelthred said: he should have shipped her back to America for a year, pretended it was all over, then everyone would have forgotten about her and then he could have quietly set her up in a discreet place in London – have her back in his life with no fuss at all. ‘Isn’t that a bit cynical?’ I said. ‘A bit ignoble, perhaps?’ Aelthred was genuinely puzzled. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ he said. ‘He’s the King. He can do what he damn well pleases.’ They make me sick – the lot of them.