2002 - Any human heart

by William Boyd

  I walked out on to the platform remembering my ends of term at Abbey and how this station symbolized only disappointment and defeat to me. But today as I stood there waiting for the London train, empty handed, unburdened—apart from my raincoat and my hat—I felt as free and excited as I had ever been before. Norwich Station: gateway to the world. It was a wonderfully pure form of selfishness; I was thinking of no one but myself—not Lottie, not Lionel, not my mother. All I wanted to do was discard the life I had and start another one afresh.

  Wallace talked me out of it. I went to his offices on the Strand and told him what I’d done and asked him to find me a newspaper or a magazine prepared to send me abroad, anywhere, now. He calmed me down and asked me what had happened. I told him.

  ‘What about your motor?’ he said.

  ‘It’s parked outside the station.’

  ‘And the keys are in your pocket?’

  ‘Ah…Yes.’ I produced thenj: evidence of my thoughtlessness.

  ‘Passport?’

  ‘At home.’

  Good, solid, sensible, pragmatic Wallace. So, we worked out plan B. I telephoned Lottie and told her I was in London, spinning some tale about how I’d rung Wallace and he’d summoned me down forthwith on urgent business. I told her I’d be back tomorrow. Wallace invited me to spend the night at his home in Wandsworth and there, for the first time, I met his wife (Heather) and their three sons and two daughters, aged between fifteen and nine years old. Somehow I had never even bothered to be curious about Wallace’s domestic life and I looked on in some amazement to see him in the middle of this large, genial family.

  After dinner we sat in the drawing room. The room was lined with bookshelves filled with the various editions of his clients’ work. He asked me where I wanted to go. Africa, Japan, Russia, I said. But where would you really like to go, he insisted gently? Spain. Right, he said, that shouldn’t be too hard to arrange.

  March

  Hotel Rembrandt. Paris. Wallace has managed to contract me for three articles for the Graphic: £5 for 500 words on Granada, Seville and Valencia. No expenses. Slightly under my usual rate but I wasn’t in a position to haggle. I also managed to whip up a couple of commissions for Art Review so 1 should emerge from the excursion with a little profit. I said goodbye to Lottie and Lionel, managing to keep the silly smile of exultation off my face. Why did I wait so long? I must never let this damaging frustration build up again. I have to recognize that-I’m simply not equipped, temperamentally, to stay at home and live a circumscribed, rural, English life. I absolutely need variety and surprise; I have to have the city in my life—I’m essentially urban by nature—and also the prospect and reality of travel. Otherwise I’ll desiccate and die.

  Yesterday Ben took me to meet Picasso at his studio. Ben doesn’t know him that well and Picasso seemed a bit grumpy and uncommunicative until Ben happened to mention I was en route for Spain, at which point he warmed up and gave me the addresses of two excellent restaurants in Barcelona. I asked him what he was working on and he said, wait and see. He spoke French with a thick Spanish accent. He was wearing a shirt and tie—it seemed odd to put on a tie to paint. He seemed a small, aggressive man and I sensed in him a wariness of Ben and me. What were these two young Englishmen doing in his studio? There must be an ulterior motive. I suppose he was right, in a way. Not that I cared: I was just glad to be out of England.

  I dined with Pierre Lamartine, my publisher at Cahier Noir. He’s a slim, pensive man with a lock of hair draped across his forehead like Herr Hitler. He’s given to long pauses in his conversation. I told him about The Cosmopolitans and he managed to seem politely interested, though clearly, like all my other publishers, he would like another novel. ‘Les Cosmopolites sont…’ Long pause. ‘Un peu vieux jeu,’ he said with an apologetic shrug.

  Tomorrow I catch the train south from the Gare d’Orsay. I should be in Bordeaux in time for dinner at the Chapon Fin. Then I plan to go Bordeaux—Toulouse—Perpignan, cross the border at Port Bou and from there on down the coast to Barcelona—Valencia—Granada—Seville. I think I may even head on to Lisbon after Seville and perhaps catch a steamer home to Southhampton.

  §

  La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beaute Luxe, calme et volupte

  [Baudelaire]

  Wednesday, 4 April

  Metropole Hotel, Lisbon. Yesterday I took the train to Cintra. It was a misty, cool day but the views were all the more enchanting for the general blurriness around the edges. But somehow during the day my coat was stolen, which contained in its pockets both my wallet and my passport. It happened at the Castelo da Pena. I laid the coat on the wall of the exterior gallery and walked out on to a kind of protruding balcony to take a photo of the view south towards the hills of Arrabida. I took my snapshot and when I returned the coat had gone. I wandered around the castle scrutinizing every other visitor, and those in the park outside, but saw nothing or no one suspicious. A mystery, and a damned inconvenient one too. So I went this morning to the consulate—and explained my predicament. A temporary passport will be issued this afternoon. I’ve telegraphed my bank to send me more money.

  §

  Later. This is what happened.

  I went to the consulate (rua do Ferregail de Baixo) and was asked to wait in an anteroom—a few wooden chairs, a table covered in out-of-date periodicals and copies of last week’s Times. The door opened and I looked up expecting to see the official but instead it was a young woman. It’s amazing how sudden the effect is—it must be the result of a deep atavistic mating urge buried inside us. A glance and you think: ‘Yes, this is the one, this one is right for me.’ Every instinct in your body seems to sing in unison. What are the factors that combine to make you feel that way? The arch of an eyebrow? The jut of a lip? The turri of an ankle? The slimness of a wrist?…We smiled politely at each other—two foreigners embroiled in officialdom—and I flapped out my newspaper, taking a good look at her over its top edge.

  At first glance she had a longish, thin, strong face. The eyebrows were very arched, plucked and pencilled, and she wore lipstick. Her hair was thick and unruly, mid-brown with natural blonder highlights at the temples and the brow. I could imagine her dragging and tugging a brush through it in the morning and then abandoning all further efforts for the day. She wore a linen suit, pale green, quite smart. She took a cigarette case from her handbag and had a cigarette lit before I could spring forward with my lighter. Right, I thought, here’s my chance: I could ask her for a light—and was just opening my own case when the consul’s secretary came in and said, ‘Mr Mountstuart, the consul will see you now.’ I went into the consul’s office and signed for my temporary passport in a daze. I ducked into the anteroom on my way out but she had gone.

  I felt an unaccountable, preposterous panic and worry. I raced back to the secretary and asked where the young woman had gone. Seeing another official, came the answer. Apparently she had been travelling by motor car with her father, there had been an accident, her father was injured (a broken leg), and there were complicated insurance problems that needed solving. I went back to the anteroom and waited, the door ajar so I could see the corridor outside.

  I spotted her coming out of an office and stepped out as casually as I could manage. I smiled: I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say. She frowned at me, the perfect pencilled arches of her eyebrows budding.

  ‘Are you Logan Mountstuart, by any chance?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ I couldn’t believe my luck—a reader.

  ‘I thought so.’ Then she gave what could only be described as a sneer and strode on past me. I followed her down the stairs to the street.

  §

  ‘Hold on a second,’ I said. ‘How do you know? Have we met?’

  ‘Certainly not. But I happen to know you don’t come up to London for under ten guineas.’

  §

  I managed to persuade her to stop in a café with me. I had a glass of vinho tinto, she had mineral water and I found out the
background to the story. She was a secretary at the BBC in the Talks Department with the responsibility for booking guests; they had tried to have me in for a talk on ‘New Currents in European Painting’ and were informed about my fee. The entire department thought it absurd, she said.

  ‘I mean who do you think you are?’ she said. ‘Stravinsky? Galsworthy?’↓

  ≡ John Galsworthy had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

  ‘Ah, but that would be my agent’s fault,’ I said. ‘He’s always upping my fee without permission. Outrageous.’

  ‘He’s doing you no favours, I can tell you, ‘she said aggressively. ‘You went straight on to the black list. Ten guineas? Bloody ridiculous. I’d sack him.’

  I said I’d been thinking of sacking Wallace for ages. Then I asked her name.

  ‘Freya Deverell,’ she said.

  Freya Deverell. Freya Deverell. I have that feeling of heartrace, that bloodheat and breathgasp, just writing her name. And there is something aggressive about her beauty. Her lips are slightly pushed forward, not so much pouting or making a moue, but as if she’s on the verge of blurting something out. She’s tall and slim and I would say was in her very early twenties, and very sure of herself for one so young. Her father, she told me, has broken his leg quite badly and they think it will be another week before he’s out of hospital and fit to travel.

  ‘I’m getting the steamer to Southampton tomorrow,’ I said, ‘but can I take you to dinner tonight?—see if I can persuade you to remove me from the Talks Department blacklist.’

  I sit here writing these words, waiting to go to her hotel to meet her. It terrifies me, the fragility of these moments in our lives. If I hadn’t lost my passport. If her father hadn’t crashed the car and broken his leg. If she hadn’t gone to the consulate at that precise hour…The view ahead is empty and void: only the view backward shows you how utterly random and chance-driven these vital connections are.

  [April]

  SGTM Garudja. French ship, Portuguese crew. Half the cabins are empty. I’ve done my three articles for the Graphic and, as an extra, written an account of my visit to Picasso’s studio, which I’m sure Wallace will be able to place somewhere. I spent the morning on deck—a sunny fresh day—pacing about, trying to organize and collect my thoughts, attempting to give some sort of shape and coherence to my immediate future.

  The dinner with Freya passed off well and I learned more about her. Her father is a widower who lives with her brother in Cheshire. Once a year Freya and her father take a holiday together. Their favourite destination is Germany or Austria but she refuses to go there now because of the political situation↓—hence the ill-fated trip to Portugal.

  ≡ Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

  Freya is much further to the left than I am and I realized how disengaged from politics I’ve become and feel vaguely ashamed of my indifference and apathy. She’s twenty-one and has worked at the BBC for two years. She wants to become a producer of programmes in her own right—‘Not easy in that place, I can tell you.’ She disagreed violently with me on certain subjects we talked about. Picasso—‘a charlatan’; Virginia Woolf- ‘our greatest living writer’; Mosley—‘a disaster for the country’. I walked her back to her hotel and she shook my hand vigorously when we said goodnight. I asked her if I could see her in London and she gave me her address—she lives in a kind of lodging house with eight other young single women in Chiswick. She knows I’m married and have a child. I said I would be in touch as soon as she returned. I gave her my card and she read the address out: ‘Thorpe Geldingham…That sounds very far away.’ I told her I was looking for a flat in London.

  ‘Have you read either of my books?’ I asked her at one stage in the evening.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you want me for your programme?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somebody had read an article you’d written. I think I was intrigued by your name.’

  Not the most promising basis for a relationship, but I am completely and utterly captivated by this woman. Freya. Freya. Freya.

  Tuesday, 15 May

  Back to Chelsea. I’ve just put three months’ rent down on a small semi-furnished flat in Draycott Avenue. A fair-sized sitting room, which can double as my study, a tiny bedroom, a lavatory (no bath) and a narrow galley-kitchen with a fold-down table. I had to buy some furniture—a bed (single—a double wouldn’t fit), a sofa and some pots and pans. A middle-aged Polish seamstress lives above me and below are two civil servants whom I suspect are probably on the ‘musical’ side. The street is darkly anonymous, everyone keeps themselves to themselves. I think it’s going to prove ideal for my new life.

  Freya loves ballet, so we went to see Giselle last Friday. I am a self-confessed ignoramus when it comes to dance (why is that, I wonder? Every other art form fascinates me), but I enjoyed myself—I suppose grace and elegance and lovely music are hard to resist. Freya quizzed me in the restaurant afterwards and was appalled at my ignorance. ‘What if I said I wasn’t curious about art or literature?’ she said. ‘What would you think of me then?’ I was happy to admit defeat. Happy to be sitting opposite her admitting defeat.

  I’ve also opened a new bank account into which Wallace will transfer all my literary earnings. Aelthred pays us—Lottie—an allowance of £300 a year, which should be sufficient to keep our Norfolk life going. I told Lottie that I was going to be spending ‘Much more, considerably more’ time in London, but she didn’t seem to mind that much—as long as I’m home at weekends, was her only condition. I’ve used this complacency to quietly shift most of my books and paintings’down to Draycott Avenue—I don’t think she’s noticed. Wallace sold my ‘Meeting with Picasso’ piece to Life magazine for $200.

  [May]

  I am paying cautious and unhurried court to Freya. I book our time together solicitously, giving plenty of notice, taking nothing for granted. She enjoys eating in restaurants and drinks as much as me. I’ve avoided my usual haunts for the time being—so no Ivy, Cafe Royal, Previtali’s—I don’t want tongues wagging. We go to the cinema, to art galleries, to the theatre and ballet. Last week before the theatre we had drinks at Draycott Avenue and she admired the flat. There is a ‘young man’ at the BBC who is interested in her but I don’t think he’s any competition.

  Friday, 8 June

  Yesterday, one of Ffeya’s bosses in the Talks Department had a cocktail party and she asked me along. She changed at Draycott (she looked suddenly very sophisticated in a navy blue crepe dress and high heels) and we took a cab to his house in Highgate. His name is Turville Stevens—in his forties, but with a shock of snowy white hair. It was a warm evening and the party spilled out into the garden. For some reason the drink had gone to my head (I drank neat gin before Freya arrived to calm my nerves) and I wandered off on my own, trying to sober up. Then, as I stood in that English garden on that soft early summer night, I felt a surge of pure well-being engulf my whole body. I felt a shivering current of happiness and benevolence flow through me. I looked round and, across the lawn, saw that Freya was looking at me. This is love. This is what love can do to you. We looked at each other and the message passed between us, through our eyes. Then Turville called her name and she had to look away.

  I wandered over, like an automaton, to another group of people, I thought I saw Tommy Beatty there. To my vague shock Land was amongst them. We spoke quite amiably: she told me she was going to stand for Parliament at the next election. She asked about Lottie and Lionel, what I was writing and so on, and I in turn asked her about the other Fothergills. It was strange after such intimacy to sense this coolness between us. I suppose if you ask someone to marry you and they turn you down, things can never be quite the same again—too much damage done: humankind can tolerate only so much rejection. Then, as we were talking, Freya came up and I introduced them to each other. There is no disguising these situations: I don’t know what tiny signals are given off—perhaps it’s something women sense more than men—
but I was instantly aware that (a) Land knew how I felt about Freya and (b) that Freya knew that Land was a former lover of mine. The three-sided conversation was very awkward and stiff and we broke off as soon as was polite.

  The other aspect of the party that pleased me was to observe how even my small literary splash still sent out ripples. Elizabeth Bowen said, a little cattily, I thought, ‘Are you enormously rich, these days?’ and I must have been asked half a dozen times when my next book was due. Turville Stevens was very complimentary about Imaginings and said he was sure we could do something on the wireless when The Cosmopolitans was published.

  Freya and I left about nine and hailed a cab in the High Street. I asked her where she’d like to go to eat. ‘Draycott Avenue,’ she said.

  §

  Freya naked. Even more beautiful. Freckled on her chest and shoulders. Her hip bones jut. I don’t know why—we’re both in our twenties, after all—but I feel so much older than she. We cling to each other in my single bed. ‘We must never get a double, Logan,’ she said. ‘Never. We must always sleep in a single bed.’

  She stayed the night and left for work this morning at eight. I sit in the kitchen in my dressing gown writing this on the fold-down table, the uneaten crusts of her breakfast toast on a plate before me, and my heart exults. I think of Lottie, of our life, our child, and I realize what a hideous error I made in marrying her. But the past cannot be undone. I only want to be with Freya: time away from her is time irretrievably lost.