The Dream Lover: Short Stories

by William Boyd

  When I got home I called Lamar and told him about our meeting. He came right over. When he saw the car and the money he broke down for the first time. I took him home, told him to get some sleep and said I’d be round the next day. He behaved like the victim of some appalling accident, a focal point for massive stresses.

  14 October 1973

  Much of my spare time over the last few days has been spent with Lamar. Our conversation on all other topics except Cherylle is desultory and half-hearted. There has been no further word from her.

  Lamar is driven on remorselessly by his obsession. Now that her presence has been removed from him he hoards items of her clothing like religious treasures, the banal relics of a consumer saint. He carries around with him a cheap Zippo lighter engraved with her name and a disposable powder compact which he is forever touching and examining like some demented votary.

  We drive around at night to the bars they visited in the vague hope of spotting her. Every distant blonde is excitedly approached until the lack of resemblance becomes clear. His moods on these occasions oscillate wildly, a leaping seismograph of elation and despair.

  One day we drove back to the beach we had visited. Lamar sat in what he felt was the exact spot raking the sand with his fingers like an insane archaeologist, finding only the cellophane wrapper of a cigarette pack and the plastic top of a tube of sun-oil. Then two nights ago he asked me to come with him to Lake Folsom where he and Cherylle had spent a weekend. We wandered aimlessly through the resort complex and then went down to the marina. There Lamar stopped to talk to an old boatman who had rented them a cruiser for the day. He said he remembered Cherylle and asked for her. When Lamar told him what had happened he spat bitterly into the lake. He scrutinized the ripples he had caused for a few seconds and then said, ‘Yeah. I seen ‘em all.’ Then he paused. ‘I seen ‘em all here,’ he went on, ‘fame, fornication and tears. That’s all there is.’

  Lamar seemed profoundly affected by this piece of folk-wisdom and repeated the remark approvingly to himself several times on the journey home.

  17 October 1973

  A surprise invitation to Lamar’s for dinner. There were just the two of us. He tells me that after considerable thought he has eventually filed for divorce. He seems calmer but the brimming self-assurance that was there has not returned. The old solidity too seems a thing of the past; there is a slight lack of ease – a convalescent’s awkwardness – in his movements. After dinner he brought out all the shiny photos he had taken of Cherylle. He flicked through them once and then burnt them. He pointed to a slowly curling kodachrome. ‘Cherylle, that day at the beach . . . remember the swimsuit?’ Then he smiled, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know it’s absurdly melodramatic, but at least I feel it’s over now.’

  We went out later to buy some cigarettes. On our way back we saw a girl in a yellow window crying over a typewriter. ‘Think Cherylle’s crying for me?’ he asked harshly. I said that she might be. ‘No she’s not,’ he said firmly. ‘Not Cherylle.’

  23 October 1973

  I was woken early this morning by the police. They said Lamar wanted me. Outside he sat in the back seat of a police car. ‘They’ve found her,’ he said. ‘They want me to identify. Will you come with me?’

  Cherylle’s decomposing body had been found in a shack at an abandoned dude ranch out in the desert near a place called Hi Vista. There was no sign of the hippie-actor friend. Apparently it had all the indications of a half-fulfilled suicide pact. There was a note with both their signatures but the police suspected that after Cherylle had pulled the trigger her lover had panicked, had second thoughts about joining her and had fled.

  The deep irony was not lost on Lamar. He stood unmovingly as the policeman pulled back the blanket and there was only a slight huskiness in his voice as he identified her body.

  2 November 1973

  Lamar has just moved back to his flat. He has been staying with me since the inquest. The hippie has still not been tracked down. Lamar has been a moody and taciturn companion, not surprisingly, but he is not the broken man I expected him to be. There is a kind of fatalistic resignation about him, he talks less obsessively about Cherylle and I’m glad to say seems to have abandoned his mementoes. However, it has to be said that he is nothing like the person he was a few short months ago and he told me yesterday he planned to resign from the company. He keeps saying that Cherylle couldn’t have been happy so it was just as well that she ended it all. ‘She couldn’t have been happy,’ he will say. ‘Not Cherylle. If she couldn’t be happy with me how could she possibly be happy with anybody else?’ To Lamar’s numbed brain the logic of that statement appears incontrovertible.

  8 November 1973

  A dull smog-shrouded day of rain. By mistake the police forwarded on Cherylle’s personal possessions to my house assuming Lamar was still staying here. A patrol car dropped them off early in the evening and I said I would make sure Lamar got them. There was a nylon suitcase full of crumpled clothes and a plastic bag of loose items. I laid them on the kitchen table and thought sadly of Cherylle. Cherylle, in her satin pants . . . her orange lips, her white blonde hair. And now? A few grubby clothes, a wooden hairbrush, sunglasses, a Mexican purse, a charm, a powder compact and a Zippo lighter with her name engraved on it . . .

  I finally caught up with Lamar at a burger dinette down on the sea front not far from his apartment. It was still raining heavily. He sat at a table in the window surrounded by wax-paper wrappers and empty bottles of beer gazing out at the passing trucks on the coast highway. A red tail light glow lit his eyes.

  I placed the Zippo and the compact in front of him on the table. ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked. He hardly looked surprised. He gave a momentary start before resuming his scrutiny of the passing traffic.

  ‘They were hers,’ he said dully. ‘I didn’t want them any more so I just put them back in her bag.’

  ‘But why, Lamar? Why?’ His woodenness infuriated me. ‘Why Cherylle?’

  He looked at me as though I’d asked a stupid question. ‘She wasn’t ever coming back, you know? But I found out where she was. I begged her on my knees to come home. But that hippie wouldn’t let her go. I tried to buy him off, but he wasn’t interested. And I couldn’t let her leave me for someone like that – for anyone. I had to do it, so I set it up that way.’

  ‘What about him? The hippie?’

  ‘Oh, he’s out there in the desert. No one’s going to find him in a long time.’

  Lamar smiled a bitter smile and traced a pattern in the wet Formica round his beer bottle. A young Hispanic waitress approached for my order, carrying her boredom like a rucksack. I waved her away. I wanted to get out of this melancholy bar with its flickering neon and clouded chrome.

  I had reached the door when I felt his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘You can tell them if you like. I don’t care.’ He looked at me tiredly.

  I felt my voice thick in my throat. ‘Just tell me one thing,’ I said. ‘I want to know how you feel now. Feel tough, Lamar? Feel noble? Come on, what’s it like, Lamar?’

  He shrugged. ‘Remember that play we read once? “I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love”? That’s how it is, you know? It’s like the song says – love hurts. It gets to hurt you so much you’ve got to do something about it.’

  It was all the explanation I would ever get. He stood in the doorway and watched me walk to my car. Tyres swishing on the wet Tarmac, the road shiny like PVC, the rain slicking down his short hair. As I drove off I could see him in the rear mirror still standing there, a lurid burger sign smoking above his head. I never saw him again.

  Extracts from the Journal of Flying Officer J.

  Duke Senior: Stay, Jaques, stay.

  Jaques: To see no pastime I: what you would have I’ll stay to

  know at your abandoned cave.

  As You Like It, v.4

  Ascension

  ’The hills round here are like a young girl’s breasts.’ Thus S
quadron Leader ‘Duke’ Verschoyle. Verbatim. 4.30 p.m., on the lawn, loudly.

  Rogation Sunday

  Last night ladies were invited into the mess. I went alone. ‘Duke’ Verschoyle took a Miss Bald, a friend of Neves’s. At supper Verschoyle, who was sufficiently intoxicated, flipped a piece of bread at Miss Bald. She replied with a fid of ham which caught Verschoyle smack in his grinning face. A leg of chicken was then aimed at the lady by our Squadron Leader, but it hit me, leaving a large grease stain on my dress jacket. I promptly asked if the mess fund covered the cost of cleaning. I was sconced for talking shop.

  Verschoyle liverish in morning.

  4 June

  Sortie at dawn. I took the monoplane. Flew south to the Chilterns. At 7,000 feet I felt I could see every trembling blade of grass. Monoplane solid as a hill. Low-level all the way home. No sign of activity anywhere.

  Talked to Stone. Says he knew Phoebe at Melton in 1923. Swears she was a brunette then.

  Friday, lunch-time

  Verschoyle saunters up, wearing a raffish polka-dot cravat, a pipe clamped between his large teeth. Speaks without removing it. I transcribe exactly: ‘Msay Jks, cd yizzim psibly siyerway tklah thnewmn, nyah?’ What? He removes his loathsome teat, a loop of saliva stretching and gleaming momentarily between stem and lip. There’s a new man, it appears. Randall something or something Randall. Verschoyle wants me to run a routine security clearance.

  ’Very well, sir,’ I say.

  ’Call me Duke,’ he suggests. Fatal influence of the cinema on the service. Must convey my thoughts on the matter to Reggie.

  Stone is driving me mad. His shambling, loutish walk. His constant whistling of ‘My Little Grey Home in the West’. The way he breathes through his mouth. As far as I can see he might as well not have a nose – he never uses it.

  Sunday a.m.

  French cricket by runway B. I slope off early down to The Sow & Farrow. The pub is dark and cool. Baking-hot day outside. Slice of joint on a pewter plate. Household bread and butter. A pint of turbid beer. All served up by the new barmaid, Rose. Lanky, athletic girl, strong-looking. Blonde. We chatted amiably until the rest of the squadron – in their shouting blazers and tennis shoes – romped noisily in. I left a 4d. tip. Strangely attractive girl.

  Memo. Randall’s Interrogation

  1. Where is the offside line in a rugby scrum?

  2. Is Kettner’s in Church Street or Poland Street?

  3. What is ‘squegging’? And who shouldn’t do it?

  4. How would you describe Zéphire de Sole Paganini?

  5. Sing ‘Hey, Johnny Cope’.

  6. Which is the odd one out: BNC, SEH, CCC, LMH, SHC?

  7. Complete this saying: ‘Hope springs eternal in the –.’

  Dominion Day (Canada)

  Randall arrives. Like shaking hands with a marsh. Cheerful, round, young face. Prematurely bald. Tufts of hair deliberately left unshaved on cheekbones. Overwhelming urge to strike him. Why do I sense the man is not to be trusted?

  Verschoyle greets him like a long-lost brother. It seems they went to the same prep school. Later, Verschoyle tells me to forget about the interrogation. I point out that it’s mandatory under the terms of the draft constitution. ‘Duke’ reluctantly has to back down.

  N.B. Verschoyle’s breath smelling strongly of peppermint.

  Wednesday night

  Sagging, moist evening. Sat out on the lawn till late, writing to Reggie, telling him of Verschoyle’s appalling influence on the squadron – the constant rags, high jinks, general refusal to take our task seriously. Started to write about the days with Phoebe at Melton, but kept thinking of Rose. Curious.

  July –?

  Sent to Coventry by no. 3 flight for putting their drunken Welsh mechanic on a charge. Today, Verschoyle declared the monoplane his own. I’m left with a lumbering old Ganymede II. It’s like flying a turd. I’ll have my work cut out in a dogfight.

  p.m. Map-reading class: Randall, Stone, Guy and Bede. Stone hopeless; he’d get lost in a corridor. Randall surprisingly efficient. He seems to know the neighbourhood suspiciously well. Also annoyingly familiar. Asked me if I wanted to go down to The Sow & Farrow for a drink. I set his interrogation for Thursday, 15.00 hours.

  Bank Holiday Monday

  Drove down to the coast with Rose. Unpleasant day, scouring wind off the ice caps, grey-flannel sky. The pier was deserted, but Rose insisted on swimming. I stamped on the shingle beach while she changed in the dunes. Her dark-blue woollen bathing suit flashing by as she sprinted strongly into the breakers. A glimpse of white pounding thighs, then shrieks and flailing arms. Jovial shouts of encouragement from me. She emerged, shivering, her nose endearingly red, to be enfolded in the rough towel that I held. Her front teeth slightly askew. Made my heart cartwheel with love. She said it was frightfully cold but exhilarating. Her long nipples erect for a good five minutes.

  21 July

  Boring day. Verschoyle damaged the monoplane when he flew through a mob of starlings, so he’s temporarily grounded himself. He and Randall as thick as thieves. I caught them leering across the bar at Rose. Cleverly, she disguised her feelings on seeing me, knowing how I value discretion.

  Randall’s Interrogation

  Randall unable to complete final verse of ‘Hey, Johnny Cope’. I report my findings to Verschoyle and recommend Randall’s transfer to Movement Control. Verschoyle says he’s never even heard of ‘Hey, Johnny Cope’. He’s a deplorable example to the men.

  Note to Reggie: in 1914 we were fighting for our golf and our weekends.

  Went to the zoological gardens and looked at the llama. Reminded me of Verschoyle. In the reptile house I saw a chameleon: repulsive bulging eyes – Randall. Peafowl – Guy. Civet cat – Miss Bald. Anteater – Stone. Gazelle – Rose. Bateleur eagle – me.

  475th Day of the Struggle

  Three battalions attacked today, north of Cheltenham. E. went down in one of the Griffins. Ground fire. A perfect arc. Crashed horribly not two miles from Melton.

  Dawn patrol along the River Lugg. The Ganymede’s crude engine is so loud I fly in a perpetual swooning migraine. Struts thrumming and quivering like palsied limbs. Told a disgruntled Fielding to decaulk cylinder heads before tomorrow’s mission.

  Randall returned late from a simple reconnaissance flight. He had some of us worried. Claimed a map-reading error. It was because of his skill with maps that he was put on reconnaissance in the first place. Verschoyle untypically subdued at the news from Cheltenham. Talk of moving to a new base in the Mendips.

  Randall: Did you know that Rose was a promising young actress?

  Stone: Oh, yes? What’s she promised you, then?

  As a result of this flash of wit, Stone was elected entertainments secretary for the mess. He plans a party before the autumn frosts set in.

  63rd Wednesday

  On the nature of love. There are two sorts of people you love. There are people you love steadily, unreflectingly: people who you know will never hurt you. Then there are people you love fiercely: people who you know can and will hurt you.

  1 August. Monday

  Tredgold tells me that Randall was known as a trophy maniac at college. Makes some kind of perverse sense.

  7 August

  Luncheon with Rose at The Compleat Angler, Marlow. Menu: Oeufs Magenta; Mock Turtle Soup; Turbot; Curried Mutton au riz; Orange Jelly. Not bad for these straitened times we live in. Wines: a half bottle of Gonzalez Coronation Sherry.

  Sunday

  Tea with the Padre. Bored rigid. He talked constantly of the bout of croupous pneumonia his sister had just endured.

  Suddenly realized what it was that finally put me off Phoebe. It was the way she used to pronounce the word ‘piano’ with an Italian accent. ‘Would you care for a tune on the piano?’

  15 Aug., 17.05

  Stone crash-landed on the links at Beddlesea. He was on the way back from a recce of the new base in the Mendips. Unharmed, luckily. But the old Gadfly is seriously
damaged. He trudged all the way back to the clubhouse from the 14th fairway, but they wouldn’t let him use the phone because he wasn’t a member.

  Rose asked me today if it was true that Randall was the best pilot in the squadron. I said, don’t be ridiculous.

  Read Reggie’s article, ‘Air power and the modern guerrilla’.

  500th Day of the Struggle

  It’s clear that Verschoyle is growing a beard. Broadmead and Collis-Sandes deserted. They stole Stone’s Humber. It’s worth noting, I think, that Collis-Sandes played wing three-quarter for Blackheath.

  Wed. p.m.

  Verschoyle’s beard filmy and soft, with gaps. He looks like a bargee. The Padre seems to have taken something of a shine to yours truly. He invited me to his rooms for a drink yesterday evening. (One Madeira in a tiny clouded glass as big as my thumb and two petit beurres.) Croupous pneumonia again . . .

  On the way home, stopped in my tracks by a vision of Rose. Pure and naked. Harmonious as a tree. Rose! Mendip base unusable.

  71st Monday

  Verschoyle shaves off beard. Announcement today of an historic meeting between commands at Long Hanborough.

  6th Sunday before Advent

  Working late in the hangar with young Fielding (the boy is ruined with acne). Skirting through the laurels on a short cut back to the mess, I notice a torch flash three times from Randall’s room.

  Later, camped out on the fire escape and well bundled up, I see him scurry across the moonlit lawn in dressing-gown and pyjamas with what looks like a blanket (a radio? semaphore kit? maps?), heading for the summer-house.

  The next morning I lay my accusations before Verschoyle and insist on action. He places me under arrest and confines me to quarters. I get the boy Fielding to smuggle a note to Rose.

  Visit from Stone. Tells me the autogiro has broken down again. News of realignments and negotiations in the cities. Drafting of the new constitution halted. Prospects of Peace. No word from Rose.