2002 - Any human heart

by William Boyd

  He makes a rueful, sympathetic face. Then, as if this small confession has reassured him in some way, he scribbles an address on a scrap of paper. ‘If you could visit this person when you reach Madrid—he’ll give you a parcel for me. And then when you return to Valencia I’ll come and collect it. I’d be most grateful.’ He can see from my expression that I’m somewhat reluctant to become involved in anything clandestine. ‘Don’t worry, Logan,’ he says. ‘This has nothing to do with the war.’

  Monday, 5 April

  Hotel Florida, Madrid. Air raid sirens tonight but it must have been a false alarm—I heard no bombs falling. Then I dined with Hemingway and Martha.↓

  ≡ Martha Gcllhorn (1908-98). Journalist. Later became the third Mrs Hemingway. In Madrid she was working for Collier’s Weekly magazine.

  Tiresome Russian journalist joined us halfway through. Sore head this morning, so Martha took me to the Bar Chicote and had the barman make up Hemingway’s favourite hair-of-the-dog concoction—rum, lime juice and grapefruit juice—and I felt marginally better.

  Then we caught a tram out to the University Quarter to ‘have a look at the war’, as Martha put it. It was strange to leave your hotel and journey through a city that, although on a war footing and somewhat knocked about, gave the signs of being a normal Monday—shops open, people going about their business. And then suddenly you find yourself on the front line.

  Here in the University Quarter there is much more rubble on the streets, buildings have been destroyed and there’s not a pane of glass left unshattered. We showed our press passes and were led into an apartment block where we climbed to the top floor and found a room that had been turned into a machine-gun emplacement. Through the sandbagged windows there was a good view of the ugly concrete blocks that were the new university buildings. The mood was one of lethargy: soldiers sat around smoking and playing cards. It has been stalemate here for months.- since the big Fascist attacks were repulsed last November.

  A young captain in the militia (with a patchy, soft, boy’s beard) lent us his binoculars and we peered over the sandbags piled in the window embrasure. We could clearly see the lines of trenches and strongposts, barricaded streets and barbed wire. There were piles of earth thrown up by the shelling, and the concrete facades of the buildings were pocked and scarred by bullets and shrapnel. Off to the west I could see the shallow valley that marked the course of the Manzanares River and the San Fernando bridge. It was a slightly hazy sunny day: springtime in a civil war.

  Martha had some questions for the captain who had come from Guadalajara and she wanted to know some details about the Popular Front’s victory there last month. I translated for her. Martha is a tall leggy blonde, not spectacularly pretty, but good fun and brac-ingly sure of herself, in that particularly American way. She and Hemingway must be lovers by now, though they are very discreet in public. I know-there’s a Mrs Hemingway and children back in the USA somewhere. Martha’s wiry blonde hair reminds me of Freya’s. Hemingway is busy with his film↓ and I’ve not seen much of him.

  ≡ The Spanish Earth, a documentary, directed by Joris Ivens.

  Strange to think of us both in similar state of amatory duplicity.

  Once she had her information Martha left me, but I stayed on, wondering if I could write this up for Dusenberry, somehow. They had cabled asking me to stop sending them so much material—I sense interest in the war is dying down. Then, as I was scanning the landscape beyond the university, I saw what looked to be some kind of armoured staff car coming along the road from Moncloa. It was painted grey and its windows and windscreen had been replaced by metal plates with slits and firing holes in them. I pointed it out to the captain and he said, ‘Let’s give them a fright.’ I had the impression that the urge to relieve boredom was the motive here, rather than anything more bellicose. So they ratcheted up the machine gun to its highest elevation—the car must have been a mile away—and the captain gestured to me, as if offering me a seat at a table, and said, ‘Why don’t you have a go?’

  I sat down on the little bucket seat fixed to the gun’s tripod and peered through the sights. There was a pistol grip on the gun, and beside me a soldier stood feeding the belt of bullets into the breech. Through the sights I drew a bead on the car that was pottering down an embanked lane towards one of the university buildings. I squeezed the trigger and fired off a long burst—a split-second later the bank on the side of the road erupted in a cloud of dust. I fired again, traversing slightly, and watched the bullets chew up the tarmacadam in front of the car—which had stopped abruptly, and was now reversing. My God, this is fun, I thought. I fired again, ‘walking’ the bullet strikes up the road until I could see I was hitting the car. A cheer went up. The car backed around a corner and was gone.

  I sat back. The captain patted me on the shoulder. The man on the ammunition belt grinned, showing me his silver teeth. I felt all trembly and tense at the same time. ‘That’ll teach them,’ the captain said. ‘What do they think this is? Some kind of—’

  He never finished because suddenly the room was full of flying metal, falling plaster chunks and brick dust. The wall opposite the windows had fist-sized holes punched in it, stripping the plaster in seconds down to the lathes. Everyone flattened themselves to the floorboards and crawled into the lee of the outer wall. I threw myself to one side as the sandbags in front of me seemed to explode. The man holding the belt screamed as a bullet hit it and ripped the belt out of his grasp. Blood flicked from his hand on to my jacket.

  There must have been two or three machine guns that had zeroed on to our position and had let fly simultaneously. They kept up an almost consistent fire for what seemed like an hour but was probably only five minutes or so. I lay on the floor, my arms wrapped around my head, repeating to myself over and over again ‘Fish in a pond, fish in a pond’ (my mother’s advice for calming any panic attack). A sizeable lump of plaster dropped on my leg, giving me a terrible shock for a second or two. To my right the man who had been feeding the bullets into the machine gun whimpered in pain. It looked like the little finger of his right hand had been almost ripped off. It bled copiously, forming a little dust-mantled pool on the floorboards until the captain managed to bandage it up.

  When the firing became more desultory the captain and I crawled to the door, wrenched it open and wriggled out on to the landing. I stood up and dusted myself down: my throat was parched and I was shaking all over. ‘You’d better go,’ the captain said, in a brusque unfriendly way, as if it had all been my fault.

  §

  I sit here in my room writing this and realize I have filed my last dispatch from the war zone. I have to go home now. This is as close to death as I’ve ever come in my life and it terrifies me. My clothes smell of plaster dust, my head is still full of the clanging ripping thudding noise of the thousands of bullets that poured in to that room. Fish in a pond, fish in a pond. While I lay there the only other thought in my head was of Freya and of Freya receiving the telegram announcing my death. What are you doing here, you fool? You’ve been pretending you’re needed but you’re secretly delaying your return. What’s the Dusenberry Press Service to you? Go home, you fool, you idiot. Go home and sort out your life.

  Friday, 9 April

  Valencia. On my last night in Madrid I was packing up my bits and pieces when I came across the scrap of paper Faustino had given me in San Vicente. It was an address, nothing more, in the Salamanca district. I decided to do the favour he’d asked of me and went down to the lobby to ask the concierge if he knew where this place was. Hemingway arrived with Ivens as I was peering at a city map and wandered over to see what I was up to. I explained and I could sense he was immediately intrigued.

  ‘There’s no name? No contact?’

  ‘Just an address. I’d be expected, he said.’

  ‘Let’s go, Logan,’ he said, and steered me out of the hotel to where his car and driver were waiting.↓

  ≡ Provided exclusively for Hemingway by the Republican go
vernment.

  We drove down the Calle Alcala to the Retiro Park and then motored north into the Salamanca district where, after a few false turns, we found our street and pulled up outside a large nineteenth-century apartment block.

  ‘You wait here,’ I said to Hemingway.

  ‘Out of the question.’

  The concierge showed us up the stairs to Apartment 3 and I rang the bell. An old servant opened the door. Beyond him the apartment seemed huge, barely lit, a few pieces of furniture covered in dust-sheets.

  ‘We thought you wouldn’t come,’ the servant said. ‘Who is Señor Mountstuart?’

  I showed him my passport.

  ‘Who’s he?’ the servant asked.

  ‘Never mind. I’m a friend of his,’ Hemingway said.

  The servant went away for a moment and returned with what looked like a small Persian rug rolled up and tightly secured with string. We took it from him and left.

  Back in my room in the hotel I untied the bundle and unrolled the rug. Hemingway was as excited as a child. Inside the rug were seven unstretched oil paintings that I spread out on the bed.

  ‘Joan Miro,’↓ I said.

  ≡ Joan Miro (1893-1983), Catalan artist. Hemingway owned ‘The Farm’, purchased in 1925 for $250.

  ‘Miro,’ Hemingway said. ‘Fuck me.’

  ‘Aren’t they appalling?’

  ‘Hey, he happens to be a friend of mine,’ Hemingway said, some of his geniality deserting him. ‘I own a big early one of his—not like these, though.’

  ‘They’re just not to my taste,’ I said. The canvases were all on the small side, about three feet by two, typical Miros of his post-realist, surreal phase. I rolled them up again.

  ‘Who owns seven Miros?’ Hemingway said.

  ‘And why am I chosen to be courier?’

  ‘So many questions,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the Chicote and try and figure them out.’

  Monday, 12 April

  Back in Barcelona again, having heard nothing from Faustino. Telephone calls and telegrams to the Press Bureau and the FAI headquarters brought no response, so I thought it would be better if I tried myself.

  Accordingly this morning I go to the Bureau of Foreigners, the people who first attached him to me as press liaison and they tell me he no longer works there. Faces are heavy with suspicion and few words are wasted. Nobody seems to know where he is. I leave the building and a young man with prematurely grey streaks in his hair follows me out and leads me to a café. He won’t tell me his name but says that Faustino was arrested about ten days ago. ‘Arrested by whom?’ I ask. ‘By the police.’

  ‘On what charge?’ He shrugs. ‘It’s usually treason: it’s the easiest.’ I ask if Faustino has a wife or family. Just a mother in Seville, I’m told—which is no good to me, as Seville is behind Fascist lines. His family came from Seville originally, the grey-haired young man tells me, and maybe that was bad luck for him. Then he leaves: I don’t know what he means by that—all I know is that Seville fell early to the Generals in this war.

  §

  Later. There was an unsigned printed note waiting for me at the hotel when I returned this afternoon. It reads: ‘F. Peredes was shot by the police while resisting arrest. He had been accused of being a Fascist spy. Don’t stay long in Barcelona.’ After the initial shock I begin to wonder if this is true. Perhaps it’s some kind of hoax? Or maybe Faustino is really the victim of some kind of Communist-Anarchist feud. Or was he a spy? The mistrust, the doubt, the elusiveness of the real facts seem typical of this war. Somehow I can’t believe he has gone. I think of Faustino and our brief acquaintance and the wry scepticism he brought to his Anarchist calling: ‘Lover of life, lover of humanity. Hater of injustice, hater of privilege.’ Not the worst epitaph a man could have. But now I am the possessor of seven paintings by Joan Miro—and which almost certainly didn’t belong to Faustino. What am I meant to do with them?

  §

  [LMS returned the next day to Valencia and five days later he was in London once again, the seven paintings with him, wrapped in their Persian rug. He went up to Thorpe as usual on the next weekend. Later in the year he wrote up the events that followed his return as a form of aide-memoire.]

  [September]

  After these endless months of lawyers and meetings and emotional upheavals it seems wise to try to write a coherent account of events, and not rely on scrappy notes I kept at the time.

  When I came back from Spain in April I spent some wonderful but increasingly apprehensive days with Freya. Lottie had no idea that I’d returned and I wanted to go back to Thorpe in a manner, at least initially, that implied everything was as it had always been. Freya said no one had tried to make contact with her, though for two or three days she had had the feeling that the flat was being watched: she’d seen the same man on the street two days running when she returned from work.

  I telegraphed Lottie that I was back and boarded the train for Norwich with a feeling of nausea and dread. It was the recriminations ahead that made me feel pre-emptively weary and sick, not what I was about to do. Freya and I had spoken at length and we had decided the only course of action was to tell Lottie everything and then ask for a divorce. But when I reached home the house was empty and dark. No sign of Lottie and Lionel—1 knew that my telegram had driven them to seek refuge at Edgefield.

  So I rang Edgefield and was very surprised when Angus answered. His voice was cold and flat and he said he would be round to see me in the morning.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Lottie, please,’ I said.

  ‘She’s too ill to speak. She never wants to speak to you again. That’s why I’m here: anything you want to say, say to me.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ I began. ‘This is no way to—’

  Then he practically screamed at me: You disgusting piece of filth! You set yourself up with your whore—1 hung up, cut him off.

  The next day was exceptionally uncomfortable. In the morning Angus arrived with the family solicitor, one Waterlow, and this man informed me that I was to be out of Thorpe by nightfall, that our joint bank accounts were frozen (by court order), that I was to be sued for the upkeep of Lottie and our child and that if I wished to see Lionel I would be granted one day a month but would have to give ten days’ written notice of my intention. Angus sat glowering at me silently while this went on. I ordered them both out of the house.

  At the front door Angus took a swing at me but I ducked and managed to punch him hard in the chest, so hard that he fell down. Waterlow had to hold me back from giving him a good kicking. Angus looked as if he was about to cry as he was helped into the motor, screaming threats and insults at me all the time. He really is a grade-one CAUC.↓

  ≡ The initials stand for ‘Complete And Utter Cunt’—LMS’s ultimate term of abuse.

  And so we entered the war of the solicitors. I found a good man called Noel Lange—recommended by Peter Scabius—and Lange and Waterlow set to. I agreed to offer no defence to the petition of divorce, but I refused to concede to their other demands. And as usual it all came down to money. I thought I owned half of Thorpe Hall, that it had been a wedding gift from Aelthred and Enid to Lottie and me, but in fact it turned out it was held in a trust under Lottie’s name. So much for the Earl’s faith in the durability of his daughter’s marriage. I used this information to free some of the money I’d earned from The Girl Factory, which was tied up in investments and joint savings accounts. We ding-donged to and fro. Lange did a fine job but he didn’t come cheap. I found myself doing more journalism than ever.

  And then at the end, just when we seemed to have everything sorted out, they insisted that I had to go through the motions ofbeing caught in flagrante. I believe absolutely that this was Angus Cassell’s doing. I became very depressed at the tawdriness all this would involve: the hiring of a prostitute, the booking of a hotel room, the complicity of a member of the hotel staff who would ‘discover’ us and sign an affidavit. I told Freya what they were demanding and she
said, ‘Wonderful, let’s have a dirty weekend together.’

  So we went to Eastbourne and the hotel maid delivered us breakfast in bed with both of us actually in the bed, much to her consternation. Freya called out: ‘Morning. By the way, I’m not married to him!’ and the poor girl left the room to our delighted laughter.

  §

  The decree nisi came through last week and the announcement appeared in The Times under the headline:

  EARL’S DAUGHTER GRANTED DECREE NISI AGAINST BESTSELLING NOVELIST.

  It read:

  ‘There was no defence to the petition of Lady Laeticia Mountstuart, of Thorpe Hall, Thorpe Geldingham, for the dissolution of her marriage with Mr Logan Gonzago Mountstuart on the grounds of his adultery with Miss Freya Deverell at the Westminster Hotel, Eastbourne. Costs were granted against Mr Mountstuart.’

  I feel exhausted, poor, but exultingly happy, now that it’s all over. Another of those moments in my life—a sloughing away of the past, the old, mottled dull skin gone; gleaming, glossy new scales on display. Now my life with Freya can truly begin. But there remains one problem: the guilty ache in my heart—Lionel. What do I do about Lionel? I love him; he’s my son. I can’t argue against the truth inherent in these words, but, to be truthful again, they have no real meaning for me. But what exactly is Lionel to me beyond my flesh and blood? Be honest, Logan—you only see him as a sickly, irritating child. Ten minutes of his company is demanding: your mind wanders, you want him to be taken away. Yes, I admit it, maybe I’m not good with infants, but for all that I cannot, will not, let him go. I have to save him from the Edgefields. He’s only a baby: he might change as he grows older and I have to be there in his life, however awkward, however unpleasant for me, as a key and lasting influence. I will not abandon Lionel Mountstuart to that hellish crowd.