Brazzaville Beach

by William Boyd

  She sat at the kitchen table and thought about him and their marriage and her new ambivalence, the slight but steady distancing from him that she felt more and more as the weeks passed. Might the fault lie with her, she wondered. Perhaps she shouldn’t have married him? Or anyone, come to that. She had always assumed she would be married. She had always been quite confident that one day she would encounter someone with exactly the sort of strange allure she demanded. She knew herself, or so she thought, and she knew that she required someone different, someone odd and very intriguing, even to the point of being difficult…just like John, in fact.

  Perhaps she had rushed things, been too sure of herself? She thought back to that first meeting, that moment when she had said, yes, that’s the one. She had known, as if by pure instinct, that he would be right, was worthy of her…she looked at her half-eaten sandwich. My God, she thought, maybe I’m a victim of my own arrogance? That to marry John was the ultimate act of selfishness in a fairly selfish life?

  But then, she thought, why did she have to make it seem as if her meeting and falling in love with John had been some deliberate act of will on her part? She often did this, she realized: she reshaped the haphazard inexplicable twists and turns of her life into an order that she approved of, where the controlling hand of her authorship could be read clearly, like a signature. What nonsense! she thought, confronting now with some alarm the reality of her current existence. She was behaving like a Soviet historian, cooly airbrushing assassinated generals or purged ministers out of official photographs, reshaping, tidying events to suit her own way of thinking. The random, the capricious, the whim of happenstance had as powerful a role to play in her life as in anyone else’s—so why was she so afraid to admit it?

  She stood up and went to put on her boots and coat, telling herself to stop interrogating herself so incessantly. It had been a good weekend. Don’t sink it under a huge cargo of analysis.

  She looked at her watch. Little Green Wood awaited her.

  All week Hope worked in the woods and coppices of the Knap estate. She found this job even more amenable than the hedgerow dating. The weather was fair but cool and the leaves on the trees were just on the turn. She loved the woods at this time of year, the pale, lemon-juice rays of the sunshine spread through the thinning canopy of leaves dappling the ground, and the air was always cold enough to make her breath condense. In the beech woods and the hazel coppices, with the sky screened and the horizon invisible, she felt even more cut off from the world and its hurry. Only occasionally was there the sound of a car or a tractor in a nearby lane, or the pop-popping of someone out with a gun. Otherwise she was alone with the shifting shadows and sunbeams of the ancient woodlands, hearing nothing but the endless hushing of the coastal breezes in the branches above her head.

  John liked the cottage, he said, but he had only stayed there once before, shortly after Hope’s arrival at Knap, and before she had been truly settled in. Now she was, emphatically and comfortably, and over the weeks she had come to think of it as very much her home. But when John came to stay again he moved around it, naturally enough, with total ease and unconcern, just as he did in their London flat. For some reason, this familiarity, this lack of any by-your-leave, vexed her. She was watchful of him as he moved about the rooms, as if he were a clumsy guest. She found the way he took cushions from the armchairs to make himself more comfortable on the sofa, the way he raided the fridge and larder for his huge “snacks,” finishing off her biscuits, drinking almost all of her orange juice, leaving half-empty, skinning mugs of coffee on the mantelpiece, stupidly irksome. She was not a fanatically tidy person herself, but the smallness of the rooms in the cottage forced her to be neat. Now, with another large adult in the place, who didn’t possess her sense of propriety, it began to feel cluttered and messy.

  “Do you think you could hang your jacket up?” she asked him, after they had returned from a walk and he had slung it over a chair back.

  “Don’t be so obsessive. Why?”

  “Makes the place look untidy.”

  “No it doesn’t.”

  “It does. I hang mine up.”

  “It’s just a jacket on a chair. I haven’t been sick on the carpet.”

  “It’s just something I happen not to like.”

  “You hang it up then. Christ, you’d think we were about to be inspected.”

  They bickered and niggled at each other through the weekend. Then John announced he felt like staying on for a couple of days. Hope said that would be fine; they could go on to her parents’ house together on Wednesday.

  “What on earth for?” John said.

  “I’ve been telling you for weeks. Ralph’s seventieth birthday.”

  “Oh. Is there a party?”

  “Yes,” she said with exaggerated patience. “A big party.”

  “Count me out, then. God, you know I can’t stand that sort of do.”

  “Fine,” Hope said, vaguely surprised that she wasn’t more annoyed. “Suit yourself.”

  Sometimes John came out with her into the woods as she worked. He was no trouble; he said he was quite happy watching her move around, measuring and collecting. Occasionally, he would wander off on his own and explore the estate. There was one place he found that he was particularly fond of, not far from the remains of the old Jacobean manor house.

  Here, a small valley had been turned into an ornamental lake, now rather reedy and silted up. The original panorama had been spoiled by a Forestry Commission conifer plantation on one side of the valley, but the approach to the lake, which was made by a long clear ride, or chase, still had a strange enchantment.

  Now, you walked through a beech wood along the overgrown path of the ride. On your left-hand side was the small stream that fed the lake. It had been dammed and built up so that the water fell in a series of ornamental ponds and falls. Just before the lake was reached, and while it was still screened from view by the beech trees, the path kinked right so that you had to go round a dense stand of green-black yews.

  And then, suddenly, the vista was revealed. The silver sheet of water, full of sky, and, beyond, grassy meadows set with old oaks and limes. At the far end of the lake was a carefully planted avenue of elms that was intended to carry the eye to a distant monument, a column of pink granite on the summit of a hill a mile or so off, but that had never been built.

  Hope knew about the lake, of course, but had never approached it from the direction John had found. He took her to see it.

  “Now isn’t that clever?” he said pointing to the stand of yews, as he walked her round it. “Just when you think you’re there, you have to stop, turn, go round, and then: bingo! Expectation, frustration and then double the effect because you’ve momentarily forgotten what you came to see.”

  Hope’s parents still lived in the house where Hope had spent the greater part of her childhood. It was in Oxfordshire, not far from Banbury, a straight long house in a small village not too disfigured by drab council houses or bijou retirement homes. Hope caught a bus there from Banbury, for nostalgia’s sake, and allowed the old images of her past to unreel in her mind as they drove south toward Oxford, ducking off to the side here and there, as they visited east and west of the trunk road.

  She left the bus at the green and walked past the church, the graveyard and the row of yellow almshouses, turning left up a shaded lane, beech nuts crunching beneath her feet, toward her family home.

  The capacious front lawn was occupied by a large blue-and-white striped marquee. A lorry had been backed down the drive and men were unloading gold-painted bentwood chairs and round chipboard tabletops. From inside the tent she could hear her mother’s and her sister’s voices clamorously instructing the workmen where to place their loads.

  She slipped by the lorry and let herself into the house. She placed her case down at the foot of the stairs and walked through the sitting room and dining room into the kitchen. There were flowers everywhere and the air was filled with the smells of bloss
om and beeswax polish. Through the kitchen window she could see her father at the end of the leaf-strewn rear garden burning something in the incinerator at the edge of the orchard. She went to join him.

  Hope’s father was tall and lean. His hair, which had been dense and glossy all his life, had started to thin rapidly in the last two years, a fact that he pretended to make light of but which in reality upset him considerably. He had always been unduly proud of his hair, and in the many photographs of him as a young man, which were placed about the house, it was the feature of his one noticed first. He had known a brief but lucrative period of fame as a West End matinée idol before the Second World War, but even in those days he would never have been described as conventionally handsome. Nonetheless, people thought of him as handsome; he had a reputation for his looks, because he had exactly the kind of hair—swept back in a smooth shiny parabola from a clear forehead, with a not too pronounced widow’s peak—that handsome men were expected to have. No one really noticed his rather small eyes, or the somewhat too thin lips, or whether he had a mustache or not (that came and went like the seasons) because everyone’s gaze settled at once on that proud, almost indecently lush head of hair.

  Even gray it had looked good, but now it was falling out and all that glory was gone. In defiance he had grown a beard, an affectation he had hitherto loudly despised—only good for hiding a weak chin, he thought—but it was a patchy, curly thing, as if his body had expended all its energy making superb, pedigree hair for sixty-eight years and wanted a rest from the job.

  Hope walked up quietly behind him. He was wearing an ancient jacket, the tweed so worn it hung like a shawl from his square shoulders, jeans—improbably—and a pair of horrid tawny suede shoes.

  “Hello, Ralphie,” she said. Some of his friends still pronounced it Rafe but, since retiring from the stage in the fifties, plain Ralph Dunbar it had been to most people, including his family.

  He turned with no surprise (she was the only person who called him that) and came toward her, solemn-faced, arms wide.

  “Hopeless, darling Hopeless,” he said.

  She kissed his bearded cheek and he squeezed her to him strongly.

  “Happy birthday,” she said. “I haven’t got a present, I’m afraid.”

  “To hell with that. How do I look?”

  “Great. But I can’t stand that beard.”

  “Give it a chance, girl, give it a chance.”

  They wandered back to the house, arm in arm. Her father smelled of woodsmoke and a faint musky perfume. He was always experimenting with different colognes and aftershaves.

  “So glad you’ve come, Hopeless. Now I’ve got you all here.” He sniffed. “Christ, waterworks. Here we go.”

  Hope had never known anyone, man or woman, who would cry so easily. It was as much a part of his repertoire of emotional responses to the world as a frown or a chuckle.

  He wiped his eyes and hugged her passionately again. “It’s a funny old world, but a great old life,” he said. It was one of his familiar expressions. “Wonderful. Grand old life.” They had reached the kitchen door. He turned toward her.

  “Where’s John, by the way?”

  Hope always looked intently at her sister, Faith, whenever she had the opportunity, searching for lineaments of her own looks in that of her sibling’s. Was there something familiar, possibly, in the slightly belligerent jut of her lower lip? A correspondence in the bold arc of the eyebrows? Would anybody think, seeing them side by side, that they were related?…As far as Hope was concerned there was no resemblance at all, apart from their laughs, which were identical. As soon as it had been pointed out to her, Hope had endeavored never to laugh in that way again. It was their deep laugh, the uncontrolled explosion of merriment. There were times when Hope could not restrain it, and she laughed like her sister. Two factors prevented people from commenting on it, however: Hope and Faith saw very little of each other and they had entirely different senses of humor.

  She didn’t dislike Faith, it was just that the gulf that had begun to grow between them in their late teens was now so wide as to be insurmountable. Ten years ago, shortly before she married her husband, Bobby Gow, she announced to the family that she did not want to be known as Faith any longer: henceforward her new name was to be Faye.

  “Such a shame John couldn’t come,” Faith/Faye said to her now. “The whole point was to get the entire family together.”

  They were sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea. Ralph was back in the garden. Her mother was supervising the flower arrangements in the marquee. For an instant Hope thought about making an excuse for John—pressure of work, a conference—but decided to tell Faye the truth.

  “Actually, he hates these sort of occasions. Runs a mile from them.”

  “Charming.” Faye gave a baffled smile. This was clearly aberrant behavior of the highest degree.

  “I mean to say,” Faye said, “it is his father-in-law’s seventieth birthday. Daddy’s very upset, you know. He’s not showing it but I think he’s jolly hurt.”

  “Ralph couldn’t care less. Anyway, I don’t think he likes John particularly.”

  “Nonsense! Hope!” In Faye’s world, members of the same family loved each other unreservedly, for all time.

  “I don’t think any of you like him.”

  “That is not fair,” Faye said, a little flustered, playing for time, unused to all this candor. “John is…of course we like him. We just haven’t seen much of him, that’s all.”

  Hope let her go on protesting. Faye had a pretty face—even-featured—with a small perfect nose that Hope coveted. Hope had her father’s nose, long and very slightly hooked. But Faye treated her prettiness almost as an embarrassment. She cut her straight, dark hair short, severely and unadventurously, parted neatly on one side. She wore minimal makeup. Her clothes were the uniform of her class and status—the box-pleated skirt, a blouse or silk shirt, little waisted jackets, plain, low-heeled shoes. Hope had once suggested she let her hair grow and Faye had retorted that, to her, long hair always looked dirty. Hope accepted the implied insult without reproach.

  Faye had three children—Timmy, Carol and Diana—and was married to a solicitor, Bobby Gow, with a practice in Banbury. Every time Hope contemplated the life Faye led she was always appalled by its waste, its lack of even faint excitement, its rigid cultivation of the norm. They had been good friends in their teens—Faye was three years older—but approaching adulthood had soon separated them in almost every regard.

  Hope suspected that her sister’s life—superficially serene, blessed and prosperous—was in reality a long catalog of large and small dissatisfactions. And she could see her restlessness with this lot, and the endless compromises she had to make to live with it, hardening her year by year. For Faye, the passing of time only signaled the mounting, overwhelming unlikelihood of her life ever being different; the steady retreat of alternatives to her current existence—however whimsical, however minor—ever being explored.

  Hope felt sorry for Faye, sinking in the quicksand of prudence, moderation and propriety, but she knew that was the one emotion, the one act of sympathy, she could never express. Faye would rather die than have Hope feel sorry for her. That was not the way the world was meant to be organized: the whole purpose of putting up with this dullness, this inevitability, this pretense, was to allow Faye to feel sorry for Hope. Not the other way round, most definitely. So Hope said nothing, and Faye felt safer for a little longer.

  Hope tinkled her teaspoon in her cup as she stirred in more sugar. A silence had fallen.

  “Where’s Timmy?” Hope said. She liked Timmy, Faye’s eight-year-old son. He was a solemn, sweet boy with odd, obsessive interests.

  “Well, he’s not here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Away at school. Since last year. Hope, really, I don’t think you listen to a word I say.”

  The family assembled at seven before the guests arrived. They toasted Ralph with champagne. Ralph rai
sed his tumbler of whisky in response and delivered a tearful, polished, and extravagant hymn of praise to his “own special darlings.” Hope noticed how avidly he swilled down his drink and presented the glass for more. At this rate he wouldn’t see dessert. Hope watched her mother stiffen slightly, but only for a moment. Her mother, Eleanor, was dressed smartly in pink and cream; even her blond hair had a faint strawberry rinse through it. She was an attractive woman who, in her fifties, had recognized that the addition of a little weight would be more advantageous to her appearance than the effort of constant dieting. So she had let herself grow a little plumper. Her skin was fresh and she carried the extra pounds with aplomb. Hope could see that even now she was desirable. She had large breasts and the general impression she gave was of a cosseted, elegant softness. She spent a lot on her clothes and jewelry. She was bright and shrewd. Hope saw her discreetly remove Ralph’s glass as he fussed over Faye’s little girls.

  “Super you could come,” she heard Bobby Gow’s voice at her side. She turned. “Shame about John.”

  “Well…us lot. All the locals. I’d run a mile if I was him.”

  Bobby Gow gave an edgy smile and looked uncertain. Was she joking or was she serious? If he disagreed, would she think him stuffy? If he agreed with her, would it seem disloyal?…Hope could sense him going through the options.

  “All work and no play,” he said finally, inanely, and gave a little laugh.

  “So. How’s life, Bob?” Hope said.

  He frowned and smiled weakly. “Fine, fine…well, you know, can’t complain. Soliciting away.” Hope was sure he had said this to her on every occasion they had met.

  “How’s Timmy getting on?” She was beginning to feel exhausted already.

  Gow waggled his hands, signaled indecisiveness. “I’m afraid he’s taking a bit of a while settling in. But it’s a good school.” He swallowed and looked at his champagne. “Fundamentally. Anyway,” he went on, “do him good to get away from Mother.”