2002 - Any human heart

by William Boyd

  §

  [LMS married Alannah Rule on 14 February 1953 at a quiet civil ceremony attended by a few friends and the children. Titus Fitch had influenza and could not travel, so he claimed.

  The New York Journal falls silent now for over two years until it resumes in early 1955. LMS had left his Cornelia Street apartment for Alannah’s on Riverside Drive. The house in Mystic (Mystic House, as he referred to it) proved a much loved contrast to New York He carried on running the Leeping Fils gallery but the uneasy truce between him and Marius Leeping was showing signs of strain.]

  1955

  Sunday, 10 April

  Mystic House. Warm sunny day. Could be a day in summer. Dogwood in full bloom. I pretend to be reading in the garden but in reality all I’m thinking of is my first drink. Just before 11 a.m., I go into the kitchen and open a beer. No one around so I take a couple of big gulps and top the can up again with bourbon. Back outside into the garden and suddenly the newspaper seems more interesting. ‘Drinking already?’ Alannah says in her best caustic, disapproving voice. ‘It’s just a beer, for Christ’s sake,’ I protest. This keeps me going until noon, when I can legitimately mix a pitcher of Martinis. Alannah has one, I have three. I open a bottle of wine for lunch. In the afternoon I snooze, then go down to the shore and wander around the rocks with the kids. By the time we return home it’s time for a pre-prandial Scotch and soda or two. More wine with the evening meal, a brandy afterwards, and pretty soon it’s time for bed. This is how I survive a Sunday in the country.

  Why am I drinking so much? Well, one reason is because on Sunday I know I have to go back to New York on Monday morning. Spirit of place is something I profoundly believe in—which is why I love Mystic House—and the spirit of place of the Upper West Side is just not for me. I hate our apartment; I hate its location and it’s beginning to sour the entire island of Manhattan for me. What combination of factors provokes this? The narrowness of the north-south avenues on the West Side. The unremarkable buildings that line them. The height of said buildings. And there are always too many people on the Upper West Side. We’re too crammed in, the sidewalks always too busy with pedestrians. And then there’s the cold wide expanse of the Hudson. It’s just not for me—my soul shrivels. I’ve suggested moving many times to Alannah but she loves this apartment. Maybe I’m not used to living with two young girls. Maybe I’m not happy.

  §

  Drove out to Windrose on Long Island—Nat Tate’s stepfather’s house, a big neoclassical pile. Peter Barkasian (the stepfather) buys 75 per cent of his stepson’s output, acting in a way as an unofficial dealer. Which has good and bad consequences for Nat—a charming (there must be a better word—can’t think of one) but essentially guileless young man. Good, in that it provides him with a guaranteed income; bad, in that as an artist of talent you don’t want your stepfather controlling your professional life.

  I bought two of the ‘White Buildings’ series—big grey-white canvases with blurry charcoal markings emerging through the gesso (as if through a freezing fog) that, after a little scrutiny, reveal themselves as houses. Barkasian is inordinately proud of Nat, who diffidently bats away all compliments as if they are buzzing flies. I like him—Barkasian—he has all the unthinking self-confidence of a rich man without the attendant, shrill egomania. You sense he looks on the art world as a schoolboy does a well-stocked sweetshop—here is a world to revel in, full of potential fun and self-indulgence. He went drinking with Nat at the Cedar and was raving about the women: ‘I mean, the boy practically had to fight them off!’ I suspect Nat’s taste doesn’t lie in that direction.

  [July]

  Mystic. God, what a great place this is. I’ve managed to cut down on the booze and out here all tensions between me and Alannah subside. I look at her on the beach: tanned, her big, lissom frame, the girls laughing and shrieking at the ocean’s edge, and I say to myself: Mountstuart, why are you making life so hard to enjoy? I taste the salt on Alannah’s breasts when we make love. I lie in bed tieside her, listening, when the sea is high, to the wash of surf and the occasional zip of a car on Highway 95, and I suppose I feel at peace.

  Out here, just a few miles away, the River Thames runs from Norwich to New London. Close at hand are the townships of Essex and Old Lyme. Fitch couldn’t have chosen a worse place to let his hatred of old England stew.

  [August]

  The girls are with their father. Alannah and I have spent a week on Long Island with Ann Ginsberg. Herman Keller is here and the ubiquitous O’Hara. Thank Christ our summer house is in Connecticut—the New York art world seems to have decamped here to a man and woman. Keller took us to dinner at Pollock’s but Lee [Krasner, his wife] wouldn’t let us through the door. She said Jackson ‘wasn’t well’. We could hear jazz music coming from the back of the house at tremendous, ear-shattering volume. So we drove on to Quogue and ate hamburgers. Keller and O’Hara kept referring to Pollock as a ‘genius’ and I had to interrupt. I’m sorry, but you can’t just bandy that word around, I said. It applies only to a handful of the very greatest artists in history: Shakespeare, Dante, da Vinci, Mozart, Beethoven, Velazquez, Chekhov—and a few more. You can’t put Jackson Pollock in that company and call him a genius—it’s an obscene misuse of language, not to say totally absurd. They both disagreed violently and we had an entertaining row.

  [September]

  Today I discovered that Marius has embezzled close to $30,000 from Leeping Fils. I don’t know quite what to do. Somehow he has been siphoning off small amounts, always under the $500 that he is entitled to spend without referral, for paintings he has bought. I went down into the picture store to do an inventory and found almost thirty canvases with his name on them: I’d be surprised if he’d paid more than ten or twenty dollars for them, yet the invoices read $250, $325, and so on. An elementary fraud—but hard to prove. And a situation that has to be handled with extreme delicacy.

  I met Alannah after work and we had an early dinner and went to see a movie—Long Time Gone. I hardly watched what was on the screen. But later, in bed, we made love as if we were on our first date. Was it because half my mind was elsewhere? She seemed to spread her thighs wider so that when I pushed down into her it seemed as if I went deeper than ever before. I felt hugely swollen and potent and seemed to be able to go on and on without coming. Then when she came, she gripped me in such a way that I spurted immediately and with such a feeling of release, of purgation, that I thought at once of Balzac—‘there goes another novel’. The idea made me laugh and, hearing my laughter, Alannah joined in, both of us experiencing a form of delightful, mutual, sexual mirth. When I withdrew, my erection had only half subsided and I felt I was in some kind of animal rutting fever, ready to go again. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Alannah said, ‘what’s gotten into you tonight?’ We took a shower together and touched each other and kissed gently. We dried off and went back to bed. I opened some wine and we caressed and played with each other, but lazily, as if we had both tacitly decided not to make love again. Something had happened that last time and we both wanted to hold on to that memory.

  I woke at 4.00 and am writing this down now, a dull ache in my balls. But my mind is still full of Marius and his fraud.

  Thursday, 29 September

  Paris. Hotel Rembrandt. I decided to come to Paris partly to talk over the Marius issue with Ben, face to face, and partly because Mother says she is unwell, on death’s door according to her. And also because I need to renew my passport.

  Before I left I tracked down one of the artists Marius had bought from. On the invoice he claimed he had paid $200 for an infantile daub of a yacht at sea (described as ‘in faux-naif style’). Paul Clampitt was the artist’s name and I discovered him at a dubious private college in Newark called the Institution of American Artists, where hi was doing some sort of course in graphic design. I asked if he had any paintings for sale, a friend of mine had bought one, which I’d liked. Sure, he said, and spread out a dozen on the table—$25 dollars each. I bought one
and asked for a receipt.

  Ben was distressed and angered when I presented him with this evidence. ‘He has to go,’ he said, with real bitterness. He asked if I thought I could run the gallery on my own and I said, of course. Ben said he would deal with everything: Marius would be gone by the time I returned. He shook me warmly by the hand and said he was very grateful. ‘It’s rare in this stinking business to find someone you can trust,’ he added, with some vehemence. I’m a little concerned, myself, about the eventual outcome of all this.

  Dined with Cyprien Dieudonne, the picture of the handsome, distinguished man of letters. White hair just slightly on the long side, curling over his collar. A cane with a silver handle—the little gesture towards dandyisme. He has just been awarded the Legion d’honneur and is candidly proud, claiming that I had had something to do with this recognition (Les Cosmopolites, amazingly, is still in print, selling a few dozen copies a year). I said it told you more about France and its innate respect for writers. This septugenarian, a minor poet who hadn’t published a line of verse in decades, whose heyday had been before the Great War, was still regarded as a cultural asset by the state. We raised a glass to each other, toilers in the same vineyard. I doubt there are a dozen people in England—outside my family or circle of friends—who know who I am and what I have written.

  Monday, 3 October

  Mother is bedridden, coughing, pale, weak Encarnacion administers to her as best as possible, but she’s an old lady too. The house is grim and condemnable. Two teenagers and their baby son live in the basement, the last of the paying guests. I call a doctor and he prescribes antibiotics. Bronchitis, he says, lot of it about. It’s not so much that Mother is ill, it seems to me, but that she’s weary from the effort of straggling on. I go to her bank and discover that the loans taken out with the house as collateral effectively mean that the place is owned by the bank. I pay off her £23 overdraft and deposit a further £100. I’m not a rich man myself- when I subtract Alanah’s salary—and I can’t really afford these altruistic gestures.

  Reading Ian [Fleming’s] novel, Live and Let Die. An impossible task, knowing Ian as I once did—1 can only see him in it: suspension of disbelief quite impossible. Can he have any idea how much of himself he is exposing? Still, it whiled away an hour or three.

  To the passport office to collect my new passport, valid for another ten years. In 1965 I’ll be fifty-nine and the thought makes me feel faint. What’s happened to my life? These ten-year chunks that are doled out to you in passports are a cruel form of memento mori. How many more hew passports will I have? One (1965)? Two (1975)? Such a long way off, 1975, yet your passport life seems all too brief. How long did he live? He managed to renew six passports.

  Thursday, 6 October

  Turpentine Lane. I telephone Peter. Gloria answers. Peter is away in Algeria researching his next novel. Algeria? You know, the uprising: he thought it might be a good background to his book. Why don’t you come round for a drink, Gloria says? So I go. Peter now lives in Belgravia in a large flat in Eaton Terrace. Gloria very soignee—a lot of plump cleavage on show for 6.30 in the evening. We flirt uncontrollably. When I leave we kiss and I am allowed to squeeze those breasts of hers. ‘Shall we start our affair here,’ she says, ‘or at your place?’ I suggest Turpentine Lane—more discreet. ‘Tomorrow night,’ she says, ‘8 o’clock.’

  Friday, 7 October

  Gloria has just left. It’s 11.15. ‘What a curious little den you have, Logan Mountstuart. Like a monk’s cell. A randy monk I hope.’ She had a bottle of gin with her: she was not to know the old Tess-assotiations that I would make. Her small curvy body is surprisingly firm—you expect her to be all soft and plump but she’s actually tense and rubbery, like a gymnast. I notice that between us we’ve drunk the best part of a botde. It was good, energetic, no-nonsense, mutually satisfying sex. However, I’m quite pleased to be going back to New York tomorrow.

  §

  [When LMS returned he discovered that Marius had already left the gallery. Ben’s stern ultimatum had been softened somewhat and Marius had been given the opportunity and the money to start up his own gallery and see if he could redeem himself in the eyes of his stepfather. With little delay he had opened the ML gallery on E. 57th Street. LMS took over the running of Leeping Fils. He had no further contact with Marius, each taking care to keep out of the other’s way.

  In August of 1956 Mercedes Mountstuart died as the result of complications following pneumonia. She was seventy-six years old. LMS flew back to London to attend the funeral. He took advantage of being in Europe and went on a brief clandestine holiday with Gloria Scabius. They met in Paris and motored south in easy stages towards Provence and the Mediterranean.]

  1956

  Sunday, 5 August

  Movements. Paris—Poitiers. Dire hotel. Poitiers—Bordeaux. Hotel Bristol—fine. Then two days in Quercy with Cyprien at his chartreuse. Cyprien seemed untypically daunted by Gloria (‘Elle est un peu feroce, non?’). Back to Bordeaux for a night. Row in the Chapon Fin. Back in the hotel Gloria threw a shoe at me and it broke a mirror. She refused to speak to me all day until we reached Toulouse. ‘Where do you want to eat?’ I asked. ‘Anywhere you aren’t, you bastard-cunt,’ was her reply. We ate at the Cafe de la Paix—excellent. Both drank a bottle of wine each, then several Armagnacs. Friends again. In the morning Gloria telephoned Peter—he thinks she’s travelling with an American girlfriend, called Sally. It seems very risky but for some reason I don’t care. I feel—and this may be self-delusion—that this is Gloria’s affair and not mine. I could be any old gigolo. Toulouse—Avignon. Gloria, quite drunk at lunch, dug the tines of her fork into my thigh and drew blood. I said one more act of violence and I’d be on the next plane back to London. She’s behaved quite well since.

  Monday, 6 August

  Cannes. Lunch with Picasso at his new house, La Californie. Vulgar, but with vast rooms and a spectacular view of the bay. A young woman called Jacqueline Roque in situ as resident muse. Picasso very taken with Gloria. She sat between him and Yves Montand while I lusted after Simone Signoret at the other end (‘Looks like a barmaid,’ bitchy Gloria said. I agreed: ‘Yes, a fabulously beautiful French barmaid.’). Gloria very amorous tonight, said she’s never had a more enjoyable holiday in her life. Picasso said to me that he thought she was typiquement anglaise—au contraire, I said. He did a quick sketch of us both while we stood on the terrace after lunch—took him about thirty seconds—but he signed and dated it and unfortunately presented it to Gloria. No getting it back now.

  Wednesday, 15 August

  I fly back tomorrow so I went to Brompton Cemetery to look at Mother’s grave. Encarnacion has gone to live with a niece in Burgos and Sumner Place has been claimed by the bank. Mother died with an accumulation of small debts, some of which I will pay. Everything has been left to me in her will, but there’s not a penny to pass on. All of Father’s small fortune that he left us both utterly gone—and I find I’m still upset by the fact. Not so much because some of that money was meant for me, more because I know how appalled he would be at such fiscal irresponsibility.

  Gloria has ‘loaned’ me the Picasso drawing (‘I can hardly hang it in Eaton Terrace, darling, really. Even Peter might smell a rat.’) I had it framed and it now hangs above the gas fire in the sitting room, the only picture on the wall. Peter’s Algerian novel, The Red, the Blue and the Red, is selling furiously and Gloria seems happy help him spend his royalties. She kissed me goodbye at Le tmrget and said, ‘Thank you, Logan, darling, for a super holiday, but I don’t think we should see each other again until 1958.’ She leaves me with a dear conscience: she told me Peter has an endless succession of girlfriends, whom he refers to as his research assistants. Clear conscience vis-a-vis Peter—but what about Alannah?

  To my tailors for a final fitting: one pinstripe, charcoal; one lightweight grey flannel for the summer; and my standard midnight-blue double-breasted. Apparently I’ve put on five inches around the waist since 19
44. ‘It’ll be all those hamburger sandwiches, sir,’ Byrne said.

  Thursday, 23 August

  Jackson Pollock has killed himself and a girl in a car crash on Long Island. Sadness, but no real surprise in the art world: everyone agrees he would have killed himself one way or another very soon. Ben telephoned me from Paris and told me to buy any Pollock I could lay my hands on. But they’re rubbish, I said. The man was a hopeless artist and he knew it—that’s why he had a death wish. Who cares? Ben said, just buy them. And he was right: prices are already climbing. I picked up two of the appalling later stuff for $3,000 and $2,500. Herman Keller says he knows someone who has a drip painting from 1950 but he wants $5,000. All right, I said, with huge reluctance. Ben is delighted.

  Friday, 19 October

  I bumped into Marius Leeping on Madison Avenue today. He was coming out of a hotel and looked flushed and unsteady on his feet—too many cocktails. It was 4.00 in the afternoon. I smiled politely, nodded hello and tried to pass by but he grabbed my arm. He called me a ‘petit connard’ and a ‘goddam creep’ who was trying to come between him and his father. I said that if anything was going to come between a son and his father, then the son stealing $30,000 from his father might explain it. He took a swing at me and missed.