2002 - Any human heart

by William Boyd

  I budget like a miser, endlessly comparing prices in the cheapest supermarkets, my life a checklist of tiny compromises and adjustments. If I washed my hair with soap, I reason, I wouldn’t need to buy shampoo; if I shaved with soap I could save on shaving cream; if I bought the cheapest soap in bulk I might have a little extra for food, and so on. I rarely stray beyond a aoo-yard radius of my flat—all my requirements are within this small circle. I’ve given up smoking but refuse to abandon alcohol—and thus my life is pared down to an absolute minimum of needs.

  The other day I was studying the contents of what I thought were various tins of stew, looking for one with as many vegetables in it as possible (and thus cut down my vegetable bill), when I was gastrically taken with the rubric on one tin: ‘plump chunklets of rabbit nestling in a rich dark gravy’. I turned the tin around to see that it was branded ‘Bowser’. A tin of dog-food on die wrong shelf. But then I thought that if I bought six tins of Bowser, chopped up a carrot and onion and heated the whole thing in a saucepan, I might have a hearty rabbit stew that would last me a week. I would eat it with my staple diet of rice (Mrs Singh buys my rice in lo-kilo sacks from some distant cash and carry), my nutritional and culinary requirements would be thoroughly satisfied and I would save considerably. So I did just that, and very tasty Bowser rabbit stew turned out to be, especially with the liberal addition of some tomato ketchup and a good jolt of Worcestershire sauce (these last components, I would say, are essential for all dog-foods, in my experience: there is something fundamentally gamey about dog-food, and the risk of a day-long lingering aftertaste—pepper is the best antidote). Now I browse the pet-food shelves, comparing prices and special offers, changing ingredients when one type of meat begins to pall: I tend to avoid beef—liver, chicken and rabbit are my favourites. My economies are substantial.

  Monday, 28 February

  Yesterday was my seventy-first birthday and I decided to change my life, I realized I was turning into a little old man with his ingrained habits, his walking stick, his plastic zip-up purse with 68 pence of change inside, with his favourite seat in the pub and a roll-call of moans and complaints interspersed with moments of a pure, terrifying misanthropy. I was pottering my way to death.

  On my way to the Cornwallis to have a celebratory half-pint I passed an old man—a wino, a derelict—who seemed stranded on the pavement’s edge, as if the road in front of him were some daunting gulf, an unnavigable ocean. I was about to cross over to help him when I realized he was calmly urinating into the gutter, muttering to himself, unconcerned by the shocked or amused glances of the passers-by (lads guffawing, mothers dragging children away). I stayed where I was, unmanned by a horrible vision of the future. That could be you, Mountstuart, I thought, that death-in-life is not as far away as you think. I had to do something.

  I remembered I had seen a poster on the window of a derelict shop: ‘SPK (Socialist Patients’ Kollective). You can help. Make extra money. Join now!’ and, beneath the message, a telephone number to call. If I had a little more money, I reasoned, I might have a little more dignity.

  §

  I telephoned from a call-box. The conversation went like this:

  §

  MAN: Yeah?

  MB: I’d like to join the SPK.

  MAN: Do you know anything about us?

  ME: I saw your poster, that’s all. But I do know about being a patient. I’ve spent months in hospitals. I hated it. I want to do something—

  MAN: We have nothing to do with hospitals. ME: Oh. (Pause) I don’t care. I just want to make some extra money.

  That’s what it says on your poster. MAN: What’s your name? Your last name. I don’t want to know your Christian name. ME: Mountstuart. MAN: Is that double-barrelled? ME: Absolutely not. MAN: Are you old? ME: Well, I’m not young.

  §

  There was another pause and then he gave me an address in Stockwell and told me to be there at 5.00 p.m.

  The address was Napier Street. Another Napier in my life: the last one had done me some good—so it seemed an acceptable omen. The house was large and semi-detached, in bad repair with crumbling stucco. Sheets and newspapers hanging in the windows acted as curtains. At the last moment before ringing the bell I removed my tie. I was wearing a suit (as I always did—I only had suits to wear). The door was opened by a young woman with a sharp face and a weak chin, with round wire-rimmed spectacles and with her hair in loose, lumpy braids. ‘Yeah?’ she said suspiciously. ‘I’m Mountstuart—I was told to come here at 5.00.’ She almost closed the door. ‘John?’ she shouted into the house, ‘there’s an old bloke here says his name’s Mountstuart.’

  ‘How old?’ a man’s voice answered. ‘Really pretty old,’ she said. ‘Send him in.’

  She led me through to a large room on the ground floor. Decorators’ trestle tables with Anglepoise lamps on them lined two walls. A quilt was hung at the bow window to block the view to the street and three mattresses were set in a ring around the fireplace. Here and there were rucksacks and carrier bags, piles of magazines and newspapers, opened tins of food, plastic cola bottles. It reminded me somewhat of Lionel’s apartment in the Village. On the tables were layout pages for a newspaper and all the attendant paraphernalia—spray-glue, Letraset, Tippex bottles and a couple of electric, golfball typewriters. Apart from the girl who had welcomed me at the door there were three other people present. I was introduced to them. The sharp-faced girl was Brownwell; a pretty girl with dark hair and fringe that fell to her eyelashes was named Roth. There was a man with a poor beard (it looked as if tufts had been pulled out, leaving random bare patches) said his name was Halliday; and, finally, a tall, lean handsome fellow (who looked older than the others, in his thirties, I would say) with long hair to his shoulders parted in the middle said, ‘And I’m John.’

  They found a chair and placed it in the middle of the room and asked me to sit down. And then began a form of gentle interrogation. John asked me why I had elected to join the SPK. Thinking this might be what he wanted to hear, I told him that I had been shocked, not to say traumatized, by my lengthy stay in St Botolph’s and that I had wanted to do something about patients’ rights. I had imagined that something calling itself the Socialist Patients’ Kollective might be exactly the sort of left-of-centre pressure group I was looking for. I wanted to help, I wanted to do anything I could—if they only knew the conditions in today’s hospitals, the geriatric wards, the almost totalitarian—

  John held up his hand to stop me; I noticed they were all grinning, a little patronizingly. I told you, John said, this is not a movement designed to reform the National Health Service. I said I didn’t care, I simply wanted to do something—1 wasn’t just going to sit around and complain any more, I wanted to do something active. And, I confessed, a little extra money would help. After a lifetime of hard work and modest success I now found myself scratching a living way below the poverty line. I owed the very roof over my head to the selflessness and generosity of an Icelander, otherwise I’d be homeless. Then I asked the next question: if you’re nothing to do with hospitals and patients’ rights what are you?

  §

  ROTH: We’re anti-fascist.

  ME: So am I, as it happens.

  JOHN: Do the names Debord and Vaneigam mean anything to you?

  ME: No.

  JOHN: Have you ever heard of the Situationists?

  ME: No.

  JOHN: Ulrike Meinhof? Nanterre 1968?

  ME: I was in Nigeria in 1968, I’m afraid.

  JOHN: Anything to do with Biafra?

  ME: I went there, right at the end of the war. Trying to get someone out.

  HALLIDAY: Good for you, mate. BROWNWELL:Right on.

  §

  There were more questions: had I heard of the Red Army Faction? I said I had. Brownwell asked me what I thought of ‘High pigs, judges, centralism and property’. I said I didn’t know about all that, I just wanted to help in some way, just to feel I was not simply taking it all lying down. My l
ife was drifting by and I didn’t want to be a pathetic, passive old man. After my St Botolph’s experiences I realized I felt aggrieved and angry at the way people were simply dominated by institutions and authority figures—I wanted to help people stand up for themselves more. I don’t know what it was but these four attentive young people made me more articulate and passionate—it was the first chance I’d had to air my feelings and I welcomed it.

  Then John explained that the four of them here were part of the SPK’s ‘Working Circle—Communications’. What’s a ‘working circle’, I asked? A group, a cell, a cadre, I was told. Here in Napier Street they produced a weekly tabloid newspaper of 6-8 pages called The Situation. Sales of this newspaper provided one of the SPK’s main sources of income. They needed people to go out on the streets and sell it. 10 per cent of all moneys received belonged to the vendor—was I interested? What do you do with the rest of the money? I asked.

  ‘That’s really none of your business,’ John said. He was a genuinely handsome man, with dark heavy eyebrows over olive-green eyes. ‘Let’s put it this way,’ he said, ‘what we’re interested in is ‘intervention’. When we- see a state of affairs we disapprove of, we intervene in some way—supporting a strike, exposing fascist lies, donating money and aid to good causes. Intervention can take many forms. We demonstrate, we protest, we give support to the downtrodden and the put upon. And all this costs money, the money we earn selling our newspaper.’ He had a soft, educated voice and as he spoke these words to me he gestured for a cigarette and Roth immediately rummaged in her pockets looking for one. John put it in his mouth unlit and I wondered if it were Brownwell’s or Halliday’s job to step forward with a match, but he lit it himself after a minute or so.

  I said I was interested and they asked me to wait outside.

  I stood in the hall and heard footsteps and voices from the upstairs rooms and soon two men came down and passed me at the front door without a glance on their way out. One of them was an Arab. After ten minutes or so I was called back in. Brownwell looked sulky and unfriendly and I suspected she had voted against me.

  ‘Welcome to the SPK,’ John said and handed me a bundle of a hundred newspapers.

  Wednesday, 2 March

  This morning’s first post has brought the truly shocking news of Ben’s death. Sandrine wrote that it had been blessedly sudden, in the end. There is to be a small ceremony at a synagogue in Paris and she very much hopes that I can come. I’ll write back pleading ill-health.

  Seeing the word ‘synagogue’ gave me pause, reminding me after all these years of indifference that Ben had been a Jew. An English Jew who had contrived to live almost all his adult life out of England. Was Ben the wisest of the three of us?

  What can I say? Ben was three months younger than me—my oldest, truest friend, I suppose—though as time went by we saw less and less of each other. After the falling-out with Marius there grew up an awkwardness between us. And Sandrine, naturally, listened to her son’s version of events. Ben didn’t want to alienate his wife—so the easy solution was to keep Mountstuart at a distance. But Ben came to my rescue after Freya’s death and it was Ben who established me in New York. Impossible to imagine my life without that crucial help—but he persistently refused my gratitude. Always remember those paintings you brought back from Spain, he said. They were the key to both our futures. Who knows? The view back is always blessed with 20⁄20 vision and from that perspective it seems that—bizarrely, absurdly—it was thanks to a Spanish anarchist in Barcelona in 1937 that both Ben Leeping and Logan Mountstuart were able to make their way in the world. Is this the way it works? Is this the truth about the life-game?

  Saturday, 26 March

  I say it with some pride but in a remarkably short period of time I have established myself as the SPK’s prize newspaper-seller. Last week I sold 323 copies—£64.60.10 per cent of this goes to me, in theory, but John was less than candid: the rate is 10 per cent up to a ceiling of £5. So there is no incentive for me to sell more. Perhaps if the entrepreneurial spirit burned brighter in him he’d let me sell as many as I could and take my profit. Not the SPK ethos, however.

  At the end of each week the vendors foregather at Napier Street and hand over their takings. Some of us are invited to stay on for a drink at a truly horrible pub in Stockwell called the Prizefighter. There is a far nicer one across the street called the Duke of Cambridge, but John refuses to patronize pubs with royal or aristocratic appellations as a matter of principle. ‘It’s an act of deference on the part of the brewers,’ he argues, ‘and why should I be part of that? No drinkers ever choose the name of the pub they frequent and where they spend their money.’ He has a point, I suppose.

  Yesterday was the second Friday that I was invited to the Prizefighter with the SPK Working Circle (Communications). The usual quartet was present: John, Roth, Brownwell and Halliday—but this time we were joined by a German who was introduced as Reinhard. Roth—whose Christian name is Anna—is open and friendly; Brownwell (Tina) is terser and more guarded; Halliday (lan) keeps his counsel—he has an adulatory reverence for John. As a matter of interest ‘John’ is not a surname, it’s John’s Christian name. His full name is John Vivian and obviously he doesn’t want his co-workers to refer to him as Vivian. I am always Mountstuart—though yesterday Anna asked me my first name. It’s all very public-schooly, this use of surnames. I shall work on breaking them down.

  §

  [NOTE IN RETROSPECT. The name SPK was taken as direct hommage to a radical left-wing group in Germany founded in 1970 at Heidelberg University by Dr Wolfgang Huber. Huber had aligned the SPK to the Baader-Meinhof terrrorist group in 1971. John Vivian had known Huber and had established the English chapter of the SPK as an act of solidarity when Huber was arrested and imprisoned (the concept of ‘working circles’ was pure Huber). Vivian maintained close links with German radicals—there were often Germans staying at Napier Street—but I was never able to identify them properly.

  Vivian had read philosophy at Cambridge in the late sixties and had been arrested by the police at the notorious Garden House Hotel protest in Cambridge in 1968, spending two days in police cells before being released with a caution. The trauma of this episode had driven him to the far revolutionary left (he always claimed close links with the Angry Brigade, Britain’s short-lived urban terrorist cell of the early seventies). Vivian had left Cambridge without completing his degree and had travelled first to Paris and thence to Heidelberg, where he came under Huber’s messianic sway. He was thirty-one years old when I met him.]

  Friday, 8 April

  Delivered my takings to Napier Street. The mood was frosty, tense—even by Napier Street standards. Brownwell and John very cold—and I’d sold almost 300 copies. I handed over the money and received not a word of thanks as a five-pound note was thrust at me. I needed to go to the toilet and asked if there was one I could use. Ian Halliday showed me up to the first floor and pointed to a doorway. I entered what was obviously some sort of communal bedroom, one where the walls of the adjacent bathroom had been ripped down to expose the sink, bath and WC.—Anna Roth was sitting on the toilet when I went in. ‘Sorry!’ I called and turned about to leave. ‘Don’t worry, Logan,’ she said. ‘Just having a crap. Nearly finished.’ I turned again to see her stand up and wipe her bottom and wheeled round to the window to stare at the waste-land garden below. I heard the lavatory flush. She was keen to talk and wouldn’t leave the room so I had to pee with her standing behind me chatting as she rolled a cigarette. I am irreduribly bourgeois, I’m afraid. She said John was in a filthy mood: something that had happened in Karlsruhe, in Germany,↓ she said.

  ≡ This can only have been the fatal machine-gun attack on the federal prosecutor, Siegfried Buback, by the Red Army Faction. As well as Buback two others also died.

  He kept making cryptic phone calls.

  §

  For some reason I thought up a title for my autobiography, if I ever write it. It was something I remember
ed remarking on in New York. I went to the theatre (what did I see?) and I noticed on the ground floor a door with an exit sign above it and, written just below the sign, the words: THIS is NOT AN EXIT. It all depends on the book cover, I suppose (always a bad sign to be planning the cover before you’ve written the book), but you could have a photograph of an exit sign and then underneath: ‘This is not an Exit—an autobiography by Logan Mountstuart’. I’m pleased with this idea.

  Monday, 9 May

  I picked up my new batch of one hundred newspapers this morning. Anna (we’re on first-name terms now) made me a cup of coffee. She whispered to me that John Vivian hadn’t left his room for a week. ‘Very depressed,’ she said. By what? ‘By the Stammheim↓ verdict.’

  ≡ On 28 April Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe—all founder members of the Baader- Meinhof terrorist gang—had been found guilty at a special court in Stammheim. Each received a long prison sentence.

  Reinhard, the German, wandered into the kitchen. He seems an innocuous fellow, fair-haired, bearded, not much to say for himself.

  §

  [NOTE IN RETROSPECT. I now wonder if ‘Reinhard’ might actually have been Dr Wolfgang Huber himself. He was released from prison in 1977 and ‘went underground’. Perhaps he’d come to England to check on his SPK foundling. Just a hunch.]

  §

  While he was making himself some sort of herbal tea, Anna—without a trace of embarrassment—asked me what I had done in the war. Well, I said, since you ask, I was in the Naval Intelligence Division, I said. Does that mean you were a spy? I suppose so, I admitted. She was very impressed and even Reinhard seemed interested. He asked if I’d known Kim Philby.↓