by William Boyd
What brought on this change? One day, one week, one month something was different, that is all I can say. She was more guarded, that is the best I can express it. Our easy discourse continued but now I seemed to sense a watchfulness behind it that had not been present before. Why? It was my growing older, I am sure. She missed nothing, and perhaps she sensed one moment the first adult glance I bestowed upon her, felt in my love for her the undertow of carnality. At thirteen I was counting every pubic hair as it appeared, scrutinizing my chin and armpits. I was a rapt participant in the usual trade of smut and sniggers at school. I once barged into Thompson’s room one morning to find his bed a small thrumming tent, Thompson’s eyes firmly shut, an urgent pout of pleasure on his lips. I knew what he was doing. I had been trying it avidly, vainly, myself. So was it the shadow of the adult that fell between Oonagh and myself? In any event, things were never entirely, unreflectingly the same between us again.
“Oonagh?”
“Aye?”
“Do you know Mr. Verulam?”
“Aye.”
“What do you think of him?”
“Well … I don’t think much of him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s English, isn’t he? Do I need another reason? Daft laddie.”
“Did, ah, did my mother like him?”
“I haven’t a notion. Now, get out of here, ’fore I dot you.”
I did not believe her for a moment, and her evasiveness confirmed my now burgeoning suspicions. She disliked him because she knew something had gone on. I was aware too that I would get nothing further from her. I needed another source of information and I had a good idea where I could get it—Mrs. Faye Hobhouse, my mother’s younger sister.
Faye was two years younger than my mother but had married earlier. Her husband was an Englishman, Vincent Hobhouse, a solicitor and magistrate, who lived and practiced in Charlbury, a small town near Oxford in the Windrush Valley. Faye had a look of my mother, but was taller, with a slightly ungainly pear-shaped figure. She had a pretty, even-featured face, which was given a further louche attractiveness by her heavily shadowed eyes. She always looked as if she had not slept for three days, no matter how bright and alert her demeanor. It seemed to indicate another, covert side to her personality: a latent promise of depravity beneath the veneer of dutiful wife and mother. In due time I came to find almost everything about her—her heavy hips, her small breasts, her dun curly hair—almost overpoweringly attractive.
We did not see much of her and Vincent Hobhouse, or her three children, my cousins—Peter, Alceste and Gilda. I remember only two visits before this summer of 1912. They came in early August. Vincent Hobhouse had taken a lodge near Fort William for a shooting party. Vincent had one of the fettest faces I have ever seen, a prodigious jowl making his head quite round. From the front you could not see his collar, not even the knot of his tie. I often found myself wondering how he tied it in the morning, imagining him having to lie on his back across a bed, his head lolling over the edge like a corpse’s to allow his fingers unimpeded access to his throat. He was a quiet, charming man, prone to melancholy. He had always been stout but apparently after his wedding he had blown up like an abbot. I could never understand why he ate and drank as much as he did; it seemed quite contrary to his nature. He and Faye were an oddly matched couple but they seemed ideally content.
Faye took a genuine affectionate interest in my welfare, rather spoiling me in fact, and, unlike the other members of my family, never giving rise to any suspicion that she blamed me for my mother’s death. Indeed, I heard later that she had offered to adopt me, but my father had declined, averring that he and Oonagh could be trusted with my upbringing.
One evening, while they were staying with us, I showed Faye my camera and some of my photographs.
“They’re splendid, John. Look at them, Vincent, they’re extraordinary!”
“Good Lord,” Vincent Hobhouse said, quite astonished. He looked at me with new respect. “Why don’t you take up something like that?” he said to his son, Peter (two years older than me, a perfect snob, I thought). They occupied themselves with the prints. I turned back to Faye, watching closely.
“I was taught by Donald Verulam,” I said quietly.
A perceptible flinch.
“Oh … Donald Verulam?”
“You’ve met him, Faye, I’m sure,” my father said. Faye glanced over at her husband. “Colleague of mine. Known him for years.”
“Yes, I think I must have,” she said quickly. “I … I think with Emmeline once.”
My mother’s name occasioned the usual subliminal tremor. It was more than I could have hoped for.
The next day we saw them off on the train for Fort William. Vincent supervised the porters loading their luggage, guns and hampers. I stood by Faye.
“Why don’t you write to me, John?” she said. “I’d love to hear how you’re getting on.”
“I’m afraid my spelling’s useless.”
“So’s mine. Doesn’t matter a jot.”
“Well … all right.” I paused. “Aunt Faye … about Donald Verulam. You met him with my mother.”
“Yes.…” Odd expression. “They were good friends, now that I remember. She often mentioned him.”
“When?”
“In her letters mostly. She wrote to me every week, you know, Emmeline and I—for years.” She looked round. “I think we’re off.” She bent down and looked me in the eye.
“Why don’t you come and see us, Johnny? I’d love to get to know you better.” She cupped my cheeks with her hands. “Have you ever been to England?”
“Not yet.”
I looked into that kind face, those bruised, hinting eyes. She kissed my cheek. Her own cheek brushed mine, a powdery softness, a scent of some wildflower—musky, dry, promiscuous.
Donald Verulam and I sit in a tearoom on the High Street in Newhaven. We have spent the afternoon taking photographs of the fishermen and the fishwives around the little harbor. We drink tea, eat large slabs of bread and butter, potato scones and jam, waiting for the charabanc to take us back to Edinburgh.
Donald fills his cup from a heavy brown teapot. He has a slight frown—he seems to be thinking about something. He runs his hand over his head, smoothing down the few strands of hair on his pate. His face looks thinner, more ascetic than usual. He takes out his pipe, fills it with shag and lights it. Plumy smoke snorts from his nostrils.
On the chair beside us sit our cameras in their boxes (I have a new Sanderson), the leather already much dulled and scarred from constant use, the corners bumped and softened. I spread raspberry jam on my bread and butter. The ligaments in my jaw crack audibly as I take a huge bite. Donald eases back in his chair, his pipe going well, crosses one corduroyed leg over the other and loosens his tie at his throat. One booted foot taps slightly to a hidden personal rhythm.
The lady who runs the tea shop approaches. She has a thin aristocratic face, her hair folded up on her head in an old-fashioned style. An agate brooch at her throat winks light as she passes through a wand of afternoon sun. Outside a dogcart clops by, a slow rumble of iron wheels on the cobbles. From the back garden comes the contented gurgling of hens.
“Will you be having any more tea, sir?” A nice voice—educated, soft.
“Thank you, no,” Donald says.
She glances at me.
“No, thanks.”
We all smile at each other. Donald goes, “Hmmmm …” I look out of the window. Opposite a sign reads: W. & J. ANDERSON’S SMITHY, IRONMONGERY. Someone walks by wheeling two empty milk churns in a barrow. A kind of buzzing tranquillity seems to fill my ears. I realize, consciously, for the first time ever, that I am happy. This moment is a watershed in anyone’s life. It is the beginning of responsibility.
“Mr. Verulam,” I say, “did you ever meet my mother’s sister, my aunt, Faye Hobhouse?”
“Faye Hobhouse?… Oh yes, Faye Dale. In fact I met her before I met your mother. Vincent was in my
college at Oxford.”
The buzzing in my ears seems to have developed into a roar.
“When I got my job up here, Faye introduced me to your mother and father.”
I needed no more evidence. Here was a web of falsehood and duplicity. They were old friends. Why had Faye pretended not to know who he was? To spare my father’s blushes? There seemed, moreover, to be some complicity between the two sisters. I was confused. At the time, I was being led by instinct, only half-recognizing adult evasions. Had I been more worldly I might have asked if Donald Verulam had met my mother at Oxford. Maybe the two sisters had made trips there together to visit Faye’s beau? Or, conceivably, if Donald and Vincent were so thick, perhaps Donald had met my mother at Faye’s wedding? But all I knew for sure then was that certain charges seemed to flow through the air whenever the conjunction of my mother’s name and Donald’s occurred. My adolescent antennae picked them up and they reinforced the romantic fantasy I entertained about myself. A stranger in his own home, out of step with his family, the profound reluctance—I had to admit to this now—of acknowledging Innes Todd to be my natural parent.
I felt strengthened by what I had discovered. Things had been unknowingly divulged that allowed me to face my future with more composure and self-esteem. I began to see myself as trameled up in a great doomed love affair. Perhaps the only two people who knew or guessed at the real truth were my mother and myself. The knowledge I possessed electrified me. For decorum’s sake the masquerade continued, and would continue for a while yet, but as we drove back to Edinburgh that hot windless August evening I felt convinced for the first time of my own uniqueness. I could live the lie of being John James Todd a little longer.
Does that seem unduly precocious? Of course it is, expressed in that way, but the sensations I experienced that evening were those exactly, if unarticulated.
I felt different from those around me. I felt I thought differently too. Different things affected me from those that affected others. My chancing upon the traces of Donald Verulam’s love affair with my mother merely explained the source of those feelings. It brought a certain calm, allowed me to face my troubled future with some equanimity.
My father and Thompson faced me across the dining table. Thompson was going up to the University and in anticipation had grown a moustache, a sorry, soft thing that he kept touching and stroking as if it were a pet. Paradoxically, it made him look younger.
We had eaten soup—mulligatawny—and Oonagh had just cleared away the fish—breaded mackerel—and was now bringing in the neck of veal when my father said, “We’ll have that in fifteen minutes, please, Oonagh.”
Oonagh glanced at me and backed out of the dining room. She could read the signs as well as I. I had thought something was wrong from the moment we sat down. My father gave nothing away, but Thompson kept looking expectantly at him and his remarks to me were untypically solicitous.
“How are we today, John James? Fighting fit?”
“We’re fine, thank you, Thompson. How’s our moustache?”
My bravado would normally have stung him. He just smiled complacently and began to eat his soup.
I knew what father was going to address me about. My entrance examination for the Royal High School, taken a week previously. I said nothing. We ate our first two courses in almost total silence. Then Oonagh was banished with the neck of veal. My father took a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket.
“Scripture—two out of twenty. Geography—four out of twenty. Spelling—zero out of twenty. Latin—five out of twenty. French—four out of twenty. Arithmetic … twenty out of twenty.… ‘Dear Professor Todd, we regret that with results like these, notwithstanding your son’s remarkable achievement in arithmetic, the examining board is unable to consider him a candidate for admission … etc., etc.… perhaps next year … further tuition … high caliber of other candidates,’ and so on.” He looked at me. His expression was more puzzled than angry.
“What’s wrong with you, boy? You don’t have to excel. Mediocrity would be sufficient. Aspire to that mundane level.”
“I don’t want to be mediocre.”
“He’d rather be totally inept.” Shrill, pleased laugh.
“Thank you, Thompson.” To me: “Don’t you try?”
“I do,” I lied.
“Why, how, do you get one hundred percent in mathematics? Explain that!” He was shouting.
“It’s easy. I can see what I’m meant to be doing.”
“My God.… Right! I’ll tell you what I’m doing with you. The straw we must clutch at is your unaccountable talent for arithmetic. I spoke to a colleague in the maths department. There is a man, a Mr. Archibald Minto, who runs a school for such wayward talents as your own. You will start there this September.”
This was not such bad news. “What’s the school called?” I asked.
“Minto Academy.”
“Can I get there by train?”
The one blessing would be an end to my constant commuting. My father smiled.
“Alas, no. You will be boarding. It is some thirty miles away. Near Galashiels.” He looked seriously at me. “You have brought this upon yourself, John. I didn’t want to have to send you away, but I refuse to allow you to indulge yourself any further.” He turned. “Oonagh! We’ll have that veal now.”
The next day I took the train out to Barnton. I had to talk to Donald. I have no idea what I thought this might achieve but I felt a strong need to see him, and I knew he would want to be aware of this decisive change about to affect my life.
I turned down the green avenue to his house. The blinds were half-lowered in the upstairs windows. In the front room I could see a housemaid dusting. I rang the doorbell.
“Is Mr. Verulam in, please? I’ve come to see him?”
“Sorry, sonny, Mr. Verulam’s away on his holidays. He’s gone to England.”
The rest of the summer passed with distressing speed. Minto Academy, I learned, had no uniform apart from the kilt, a garment I had never worn. Oonagh took me to Jenner’s in Princes Street, where I was measured for three kilts and chose the tartans. Two kilts were of a coarse heavy cloth for daily wear. The third was finer, a dress kilt for formal occasions. I had two sporrans bought for me, two short tweed coats with tweed waistcoats and a black velvet jacket with silver buttons. We also purchased oiled wool knee socks, stout ankle boots and delicate pointed lace-up dress shoes. For the first time I came face to face with the paraphernalia of my national costume.
“You look grand,” Oonagh said, when I tried the dress outfit on. I was not convinced. I was a city child; I felt I was being suborned by some primitive tribe.
Three days remained before I had to catch the train to Thornielee, near Galashiels. From there the school trap would deliver me to the Academy, a few miles up the Tweed near a village called Laidlaw. As seems to be the norm with disaster, the baleful day was heralded by a spell of brilliant weather.
I sat in my bedroom looking at my already packed traveling trunk, fingering my camera and wondering if I should risk taking it and my album to school. More darkly, I swore obscure revenge on my father and felt strangely betrayed by Donald Verulam’s untimely absence. I thought of leaving the apartment and Oonagh and my sense of self-pity overwhelmed me. I felt full of tears, like a sodden sponge—one slight squeeze and water would flow.
I think Oonagh sensed this separation as keenly. For all her irony and judicious affection, I had been her charge for thirteen years. I wandered in and out of the kitchen smiling weakly, morose, pondering my future.
“Here,” she said, “let’s go bathing tomorrow. We’ll take the bairn to Canty Bay. Just like we used to.”
Oonagh, Gregor and I caught an early train from Waverley. On arrival at North Berwick we walked through the village and along the stony cliff path towards the bay. The sky was a pale ice-blue. A few plump tough clouds hung up above, their shadows obligingly distant over the Forth. Coming over a rise I could see the uneven dome of the Bass Ro
ck clear in the hazeless air. A very faint breeze rose up from the firth and below us stretched the bay. A few bathers and children congregated at the town and around the striped canvas bathing machines and a duckboard jetty where a long thin steam launch advertised CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE BASS ROCK—SIXPENCE. A small gnarled Gypsy tended three dusty donkeys for those who fancied a trot up and down the strand.
We trudged up the beach to the far end away from the crowd. We were surprised by a hale old man—elbows and knees a lurid pink—who emerged from the sea quite naked and who, with a blithe “Fine day,” strode fitly across our path towards his clothes. We found our picnic spot hidden in a gully between two high dunes. Paths wound in and out of the sand hills fringed with coarse grass, and disappeared into the gorse and whin bushes beyond. We spread a traveling rug, unpacked the picnic and found a cool spot for the ginger beer bottles. Gregor was stripped, hauled into a bathing costume and dispatched with bucket and spade to the water’s edge. I went behind a dune and undressed slowly. The radiant day could not lift my spirits. The excursion was so evidently an attempted antidote that I could not see beyond its ulterior motives. I tramped back to the picnic site enjoying the way the sharp dune grass cut at my bare legs.
Oonagh was halfway through changing. Her skirt and petticoat lay on the rug. Her swimming costume—a coarse woolen thing—was pulled up to her waist and she was now trying to work its bodice up beneath her blouse and camisole. I sat down with a histrionic sigh and picked moodily at a scab on my knee.
“Cheer up,” Oonagh said, impatiently removing her blouse. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“That’s all right for you to say.”
She dropped her blouse on the rug and came and knelt in front of me.
“Come on, Johnny,” she said quietly. “If you don’t like it tell your faither, an’ he’ll fetch you home.”
“That’s what you think.”
She made an exasperated face. “Well, I’m not going to waste my good time feeling sorry for you if you’re so set on doing it all yourself.”