by William Boyd
He sat down beside me and took both my hands in his, just as he’d done when he’d urged me to go and see my father. In another world.
‘Do you really want to stop being a virgin?’
‘That was the plan. Now I’m not so sure. As you say I’ve got a lot to learn. Maybe I’ll become a nun instead.’
Greville scrutinised me.
‘You’re incredibly impetuous, Amory, you know. Very headstrong.’
‘Very stupid.’
‘Yes, that’s a way of putting it. It could get you into trouble in life.’
‘It already has.’ I retightened the belt on the dressing gown, feeling tears salty in my eyes. I wasn’t going to cry. ‘It’s my problem. My curse.’
‘Which means I don’t think you’d be a very good nun, I’m afraid.’
I had to smile. ‘Probably not.’
He looked at me searchingly, but in a kindly way.
‘You know, if I thought I could, I’d help you out. You’re a very pretty girl. But it would be awful – for us both. Too ghastly and embarrassing. Might ruin you for life. I’m just not made that way, darling. The machinery wouldn’t work, if you know what I mean.’
‘I’d better go. I think I’m going to die of shame. I’m so sorry, Greville, I never—’
‘Why don’t you seduce young Lockwood?’
‘What? Lockwood?’
‘He’s obsessed with you. Shines out of his eyes. He adores you. Can’t you tell?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve only been thinking of you.’
‘You’d be much better off losing your virginity with strapping young Lockwood than an inefficient pansy like me.’
We only see what we want to see and that’s how mistakes are made. Greville suddenly came into focus for me, like a lens being turned.
At breakfast the next morning I crept into the kitchen but he was already there, spruce in his morning suit, ready for the wedding we were to photograph at the Brompton Oratory. He looked like an illustration from Tailor & Cutter.
‘You’re not going to jump on me, Amory, are you?’
‘Very funny.’
But of course it was exactly the right thing to say. He made light of it. We could joke about it and therefore it was possible for me to be with him again, to function, at ease, even though everything was different. In a strange way I felt closer to him, now I knew about him. Now we had our secret.
‘Any luck with Lockwood?’ he said to me one day.
‘Greville! Please!’
‘He’s a nice lad. Strong but gentle.’
‘You make him sound like a shire horse.’
‘You know what they say about shire horses don’t you, darling?’
‘No, I don’t. And I don’t want to know.’
But because Greville kept talking about him, kept introducing Lockwood and his charms into our conversation, I became aware of Lockwood in a way I hadn’t before. I realised he was in fact always looking at me, covertly; I began to notice how he would take every opportunity to stand as close to me as propriety demanded. I saw that Greville was right: Lockwood was obsessed with me.
We were closing up the darkroom one evening, a few weeks after my fiasco with Greville. The red light was on and we moved about our business limned by its unreal thick luminosity. I was hanging up strips of developed negatives and I could feel Lockwood’s eyes on me, like an invisible beam through the redness, playing on me. I thought – why not? It has to happen sometime – and the sooner the better. And having allowed the thought to enter my head I felt the concurrent physical consequences: that bowel-stir, that bone-weakness of pleasant anticipation.
Lockwood reached to turn on the main light but I caught his wrist before he could. We stood there looking at each other.
‘What is it, Miss Clay?’ His voice was dry, hushed.
‘Would you like to kiss me, Lockwood?’
BOOK TWO: 1927–1932
1. LIFE IS SWEET
I RAISED MY CAMERA – my little Ensignette – and took a photograph of Lockwood Mower lying on the bed, sleeping, naked. He was hot, he’d thrown the sheet and blankets off and his pale long flaccid penis, lying over his upper thigh, was both pliant and semi-engorged. The pinched bud of his thick foreskin made his penis look tuberous, vegetal, somehow – not like his sex, his member, at all. It was a great photograph – so I say, my ‘Sleeping Male Nude’ – and I kept a print of it for years, secretly, in a seldom-consulted English–Portuguese dictionary, where I could easily look at it and think back, remembering him and those many months of our affair. And then I lost it, annoyingly, when I moved house after the war.
I put my camera away in my bag, slipped on my coat and left quickly without waking him. I had a job that afternoon and had to make my way to West Sussex for a garden fete hosted by Miss Veronica Presser – daughter of Lord Presser the iron-ore millionaire – at the village of North Boxhurst, which the Presser family owned, every brick and hanging tile, part of their vast Boxhurst estate which lay between Chichester and Bognor Regis.
I took the Tube from Kensington High Street to Walham Green, trying to concentrate on the job ahead and stop thinking about the last few hours I’d spent with Lockwood. Greville had passed on the Presser commission to me – it was for Beau Monde – and I knew it could prove to be a significant moment in my erratic career as a professional photographer. ‘Do this Presser job well,’ Greville had said, ‘and all my Beau Monde work will come your way. Guaranteed.’
I now lived in a shabby one-bedroom flat in a converted house on Eel Brook Common. No bathroom, just a small kitchen and a lavatory off the long, thin bed-sitting room. I still used the Falkland Court mews as my darkroom; Greville had given me my own set of keys, an arrangement that suited me as I was able to see Lockwood as often and as discreetly as I wanted. Which was quite often, so it turned out.
I packed up my two cameras in my leather grip (the ‘Excelda’ quarter-plate and the Goerz), stuffed a dozen business cards in my handbag, hoping for further commissions, and headed for Victoria station. Change at Hayward’s Heath for Amberley and then a taxi to North Boxhurst. It was going to be a long day.
*
THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977
I suppose we all – men and women – remember our first lover, like it or not; good, bad or indifferent. However, I’ve a feeling that women remember more, remember better. I can still bring to mind that first night I spent with Lockwood, after we’d kissed in the darkroom, with near-absolute recall. Lockwood had been both kind and controlling. Once the future course of the encounter was clear – that this was to be no simple kiss – and as soon as we were naked in his narrow, pungent bed upstairs, all lights switched off, he asked me if this was my ‘first time around the houses’. Yes, I said. Then he asked me if I used sanitary towels or ‘them tampon things’. Sanitary towels, I said. But why? Then I felt his finger inside me, pressing, and a sudden sharp pain that made me yelp. ‘That’s that sorted,’ he said. He spread my legs and positioned himself. ‘Wait a second,’ he said, and left the bed. I heard him go into the little kitchen at the top of the stairs, then he returned and slid back in beside me. I felt him rubbing something on me. And then he entered me with a small wheeze and grunt of effort but I didn’t feel much. ‘I won’t go mad, Miss Clay,’ he whispered in my ear as he began to push rhythmically at me, ‘seeing as it’s the first time.’ Right, I said, clenching my fists on his back. ‘I can’t rightly believe this is happening, Miss Clay. Happening to me, Lockwood Mower. Like I’m dreaming a dream.’ He was as good as his word. He exhaled noisily and rolled off me after about five seconds and we lay in each other’s arms.
I was expecting to feel more pain – all the speculative talk at Amberfield had been of blood-boltered sheets and agony. Carefully I reached down and touched myself – some sort of clotted waxy substance was there. Lockwood’s emission? ‘What’s this, Lockwood?’ I said, holding up my gleaming coated fingers. ‘Just lubrication,’ he said. ‘It’s an old trick. I remembered
I had some soft lard in the kitchen. That’s why you never felt a thing.’ Have you done this before, I asked? ‘Well, you know, once or twice,’ he said. I could sense his grin widening. He kissed my cheek, gently, and whispered, ‘My chum slid in like a greased piston, Miss Clay. Feel it. Go on.’ He took my hand and placed it on his ‘chum’. Now it was my turn to smile to myself in the darkness, feeling not sensual pleasure – that had never really arisen – but relief, enormous happy relief. It was over; it was done; everything had changed, now. ‘You can call me Amory,’ I said, kissing him back. The bed smelled rank and I felt my back itching. Lockwood had a reek of sweat and his cheap pomade about him. I breathed in, filling my lungs, telling myself to remember everything. I’ve never forgotten – and I’ve never cooked with lard since.
*
Miss Veronica Presser was entirely happy to be guided by me. She was a big enthusiastic girl with a gummy smile. I met her by the lawn tennis courts at Boxhurst Park where there was a one-game, knockout charity tennis tournament going on. I said that something casual and sporty would look so much more interesting than the usual bland portrait shots we’d all seen a thousand times before.
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘Whatever you say.’ For someone already reputedly worth several million pounds she was very easy-going.
‘Make it as natural as possible,’ I said, focussing the Goerz. ‘Be yourself. Pick up another racquet. Yes, that’s it! Perfect.’ Click. I had her.
‘What fun!’ she said and gave a loud neighing laugh.
The next day, in the darkroom of the Falkland Court mews, I printed my portrait of Veronica with her two tennis racquets. I liked it a lot. It was high time, I thought to myself, that we moved away from the standard images of these society girls – the beauties and the fiancées, the debs and the heiresses. Let’s make my first Beau Monde commission a photograph to remember, not just so much forgettable social wallpaper. However, I decided to lie when I sent it in to Beau Monde, such was my enthusiasm: I told them it was Miss Presser’s personal choice, her favourite – and it was duly published, the following week, as a full-page lead to the society gallery.
‘Good Lord,’ Greville said, when he saw the magazine. ‘Are you sure this was her choice? She looks like she’s got wheels. Not really Beau Monde at all.’
Miss Veronica Presser at the North Boxhurst fete, © Beau Monde Publications Ltd, 1928.
‘She did say “What fun!” when I took the picture.’
‘And you chose to interpret “What fun!” as “That’s my favourite.”’
‘It seemed implicit. You know: the message she was trying to convey.’
‘You can be very impetuous, Amory. I warned you.’
‘True. Still—’
‘Still, it’s the best photograph I’ve seen in Beau Monde for a year. Very natural-looking. Better than mine.’
‘Thank you, Greville. I’ve learned everything from you. Everything.’
We were in the drawing room of his flat. The evening sun was blazing obliquely in and a misty amber light seemed to fuzz and blur the windows overlooking the gardens, casting everything in the room in a golden fantastical hue.
‘Still seeing young Lockwood?’ Greville asked.
‘From time to time.’
‘He seems much – I don’t know – neater, cleaner. Altogether more presentable.’
I had made Lockwood bathe – I supervised the first bath, I scrubbed him down – bought him some decent brilliantine (Del Rosa’s ‘English Musk’) and several changes of shirts and, Greville was not to know this, thrown out his grey greasy sheets and provided him with freshly laundered ones that I brought with me when I stayed and took away to re-launder when I left.
‘I never liked that blue flannel shirt of his,’ I said. ‘I think he’d wear it a week at a time.’
Greville laughed – his rare baritone boom that erupted when he found something genuinely funny.
‘Amory Clay, what have I done to you?’
Beau Monde sacked me a week later, the result of a vehement litigious complaint from Lord Presser himself. His daughter was a laughing stock, he claimed, she was mortified, humiliated. The entire print run of the June 1928 issue was recalled and pulped at the cost of several hundred pounds. I was sacrificed instantly, in the hope Lord Presser would be mollified. Furthermore the editor of Beau Monde, one Augustin Brownlee, made it clear that they would spread the word amongst Beau Monde’s competitors. My perfidy would be made plain, my abject unprofessionalism everywhere advertised. I would never work for a society magazine again.
‘I think it’s a good photo, like a real person, not some stuffed doll,’ Lockwood said, loyal to the end. I had sought solace with him for a night above the darkroom. He was sitting on the narrow bed, naked, watching me dress.
‘I’m unemployable,’ I said. ‘All because some stupid fucking heiress lost her sense of humour.’ I was picking up Greville’s bad habits.
‘Surely Mr Reade-Hill can—’
‘He got me the Beau Monde job. I was his special recommendation. They’re not exactly wildly happy with him, either.’
I buttoned on my brassiere and, as I reached for my slip, I felt Lockwood come up behind me, take me in his arms, his hands cupping my breasts, squeezing.
‘I love your bobbies, Amory, so round and—’
‘They’re my breasts, Lockwood! Don’t use these expressions. You know I don’t like them.’ He favoured strange slang words for body parts and types of lovemaking: bobbies, chum, the path, butter-churning, Jack and the beanstalk . . . He was from St Albans and I wondered if it was some arcane Hertfordshire patois that he used.
He returned to the bed, unperturbed. Very little ruffled the even, placid surface of his nature. He loved me with unusual intensity, that I did know.
‘I’m out of a job, Lockwood. I’m jobless.’
‘You’ll get a job. Nothing’s going to stop you, Amory. Nothing.’
My mother looked at me blankly, unpityingly. From the barn I could hear Peggy playing endless scales on her piano. It was beginning to give me a headache.
‘Why don’t you meet a nice young man?’ my mother said. ‘Then you wouldn’t need to be a photographer. Meet a lawyer or a soldier or a – I don’t know – even a journalist. Or . . .’ she thought, ‘or a vicar. An alderman, a brewer—’
‘No thank you, Mother. No more professions.’
I wandered out into the garden, thinking. Greville had said I could always come back to work as his assistant, but, when I had left to set up on my own, he had hired a replacement, a young Frenchman called Bruno Desjardins (whom I think Greville rather lusted after) and there really wouldn’t have been much for me to do. Apart from Beau Monde all my work was for other society magazines – the Young Woman’s Companion, Modern Messenger, the London Gazette, and so on – and all those doors would be closed to me now. There were newspapers – but I could hardly present myself as a photo-journalist. And there was portrait work – but you needed a studio for that and clients didn’t exactly rush to your door if you had no reputation at all.
I saw three guinea pigs scurry under a laurel bush. Yes, I could always take photos of people’s pets. I felt sick: I would never stoop so low. And anyway, there were no good photographs of animals. Photography wasn’t about taking pictures of animals, it was about—
‘Oh. It’s you.’
‘Hello, Xan.’
Xan came round the edge of the shrubbery with a guinea pig in each hand. He was tall for his age, twelve, and had a distinctly watchful air about him as if he didn’t trust you, or was expecting you to make some kind of violent movement towards him. He looked grubby, needing a long soak in a bath.
‘What’re you doing?’ I asked.
‘Freeing some guinea pigs. I’ve got too many.’
‘How many?’
‘Over a hundred. But they don’t seem to want to leave the garden.’ He walked to the boundary hedge and set down his two newly liberated rodents. They sat there, noses
twitching. Then he kicked earth at them and they ran into hiding.
‘Why don’t you sell them to a pet shop?’ I said. ‘Make some money.’
‘That would be immoral.’
‘Oh. Right.’
He looked at me with hostility.
‘Why are you here?’ he said.
‘Aren’t I allowed to come and see my family?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘How very gracious of you, Marjorie.’
‘Don’t call me Marjorie.’
He wandered off back to the garden shed.
I crossed the lawn to the barn. Peggy had stopped playing scales and the door was ajar. When the door was shut no one was allowed to disturb her. I knocked and went in. Peggy was sitting at the piano doing exercises with her hands, making fists and shooting her fingers out.
‘Hello, Peggoty.’
She turned and smiled – at least one member of my family was pleased to see me. We kissed and I noticed how pretty she was becoming – dark-haired and big-eyed with a perfectly straight thin nose. My father’s nose, the Clay nose, not the Reade-Hill nose that I had. She fitted a cut-down ruler between her thumb and little finger of her right hand, stretching them apart, painfully.
‘What’re you doing? That looks like torture.’
‘My hands are too small. I haven’t a full-octave spread. Madame Duplessis says I’ll never make a successful concert pianist if I can’t cover an octave.’
‘You’re only fourteen, darling. Still growing.’
‘I can’t wait for nature to take her course.’ She smiled. ‘Time waits for no woman.’ She was wearing a forest-green jumper, tight against her small pointed breasts, and fawn slacks. She looked more like eighteen than fourteen.
‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked, and removed the ruler with a wince. ‘Ouch.’