2002 - Any human heart

by William Boyd

‘We were here with Cyril Connolly, a moment ago,’ Freya said.

  ‘Was his black baboon with him?’ VW asked.

  Freya didn’t know what she was talking about.

  ‘His little gollywog wife.’

  I turned to Freya. ‘Now you understand Mrs Woolf’s reputation for charm.’ Back to VW. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

  We strode out and when we reached home had our first serious row. Freya was a little shocked at VW’s spite. I said you would never imagine the person who wrote all that lyrical breathy prose was steeped in such venom. ‘At least she writes,’ Freya said, without thinking. But it cut and so we looked around for something to argue about and duly found it. Now I’m writing this, about to go to sleep on the sofa, and I can hear Freya sobbing next door in the bedroom.

  Wednesday, 20 March

  To a dull exhibition of collages and photographs at the Mayor Gallery. Enlived only by being cut dead by Mrs Woolf- positively spun on her heel to avoid me. Clearly I am not forgiven.

  Went on to artrevue offices and drank wine with Udo. He listened patiently while I raged at the mediocrity of English art. He told me they have signs up in every German town now saying Die juden sind hier unwünscht [No Jews wanted here]. You can hardly believe it possible. But Udo said it put things in perspective: we could tolerate a moribund art scene without too much pain, he said: there were other consolations for living in London.

  [March-April]

  Movements: Norfolk- London—Norfolk. Paris—Rome (for Easter. Three days with Freya). We plan our summer: Greece. What do I say to L. this year?

  [April]

  Heroic efforts see Cosmopolitans finally completed. I took it into Roderick, who commented, a little acidly, on its brevity: it will come out at under 150 pages. (I explained I had planned, then abandoned, the idea of an anthology of translated poems appended, which would have bulked it up.) Well, at least you’ve got it out of your system, he said. Now what about this rather sexy novel Wallace has been tempting me with? I let him believe it was a possibility.

  Freya follows the development of the P. of Wales⁄Mrs Simpson affair with fascinated interest—she can read about it in the American newspapers they have at the BBC. She thinks it utterly disgraceful that the population at large remains in near total ignorance. ‘I tell everyone about it,’ she said, ‘everyone I meet.’ I must admit to a curious interest in it myself since my encounter with the Prince on the golf course. Angus is a reliable source—he must know somebody in the inner circle—he says the Prince is utterly besotted with Mrs S.—follows her around like a dog.

  §

  In the end I lied. Said I was going to France to work Freya and I met in Paris and flew to Marseilles. Then from Marseilles by boat to Athens. Hired a car and motored: Delphi—Nauplia—Mycenae—Athens. Intense heat: we longed for rain and cool weather. We resolved never to spend our holiday like this again, constantly on the move. Last year in Biarritz was an idyll. And I just can’t take a constant diet of ancient culture—guided tour after guided tour of individual ruins, however beautiful, however freighted with history. In my mind Greece is reduced to one vast pile of shattered marble, shimmering in a heat haze. Dust mantled olive groves, sweltering hotel bedrooms, flies. We vowed to come back one spring. Mind you, it was incredibly cheap. Flew Athens—Rome. Then train to Paris, London. Exhausted, irritable, not the success we had imagined. And now I have to spend a month with my family. I think Freya will relish her solitude.

  [August]

  Dick [Hodge] comes to the rescue. A quiet month at Kildonnan with Lottie and Lionel. Angus and Sally for a fortnight also. I golfed at Gullane and Muirhead with a friend of Angus from the City, Ian Fleming.↓

  ≡ The writer (1908-64). Creator of James Bond.

  He was off to Kitzbühel. I told him about the scorching heat of Greece and he recommended the Alps in the summer—loves the Austrian Tyrol. I wrote to Freya and told her to pick her favourite mountain for next year.

  Thursday, 26 September

  At lunch today Peter [Scabius] presented me with a copy of his thriller—or his ‘Tectie’, as he referred to it with disparaging modesty. It’s called Beware of the Dog, published by Brown & Almay next week. Just a bit of fun, really, he said, not in your league. We drank rather a lot to celebrate and Peter confessed he was having an affair with the wife of another journalist who Works on The Times. He said he had fallen out of love with Tess but would never leave her because of the children. ‘She’s a dear thing and a good mother, but I was far too young to marry her.’ He asked me how things were with Lottie and I said wonderful. Lucky man, he said: it’s not always ‘marry in haste repent at leisure’. I was on the point of telling him about Freya and then resisted: the idea of telling Peter, here and now, would cheapen my relationship with her. My We with Freya is no ‘affair’, no fling. And I felt obscurely hurt for Tess; felt her betrayal and resented Peter for including me in his duplicity. And all this has, of course, made me reflect on my own situation. I feel nothing for Lottie. And I feel nothing negative about her either. Sexually our life is at a virtual standstill—though I notice that lately she has started talking about a little brother or sister for Lionel. Since Lionel’s arrival I always make sure I wear a condom on our rare fucks. The last time (in Scotland) she said: ‘Must you, darling? Not tonight.’ I said we couldn’t afford another child. She started to cry and the need for prophylaxis was over.

  §

  In parallel, Freya and I lead this curious, loving, cocooned life at Draycott Avenue. When I’m not with her she picks up her old bachelor-girl ways with her friends—none of whom I’ve met. When I’m with her we lead the selfish, self-absorbed existence of a newly married couple. She goes off to work in the mornings and I set about my London business: have meetings, visit the offices of the magazines I work for, do research in the London Library, lunch with friends. I’m always home by the time she returns from the BBC. At some stage in the day I ring up Lottie and we chat for a few minutes. Lottie seems quite content and unsuspecting—she doesn’t really like London anyway.

  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. Top 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 Kipling↓ died last week.

  ≡ King George V and Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). The Prince of Wales now became King Edward VIII.

  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 trentieme an de man age. 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, Dieudonne and Fargue? And I wonder if it’s all been a waste of time, all the effort it took to produce this little jot 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 Summerat 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. Bewareof 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 recherche 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 oh 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 Jete: 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 Gratia. 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 ordindr, 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 stan
dard 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 Aragon 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.