The New Confessions

by William Boyd

  I could hardly believe that she had gone off with Mavrocordato. I could feel only hate and revulsion for what she had done to me. To try to forget, I spent a couple of days getting drunk (we drank much more then, I think). Finally, sober, crapulous, fed up, I wondered what to do next. To go back to Berlin was out of the question. Eddie was going to America, so why not follow him there? For a while I was tempted. I even went to a shipping agency and inquired about booking a passage. But I was too hurt and sorrowful to take such a step straightaway. And so I turned for home with my films, my scripts and my bits and pieces, to set about the task of putting my life back together in a mood not far off apathetic.

  It was two weeks after my arrival in London before I got round to going to see Sonia and my family in the house I was renting for them. On Saturday, as a taxicab drove me up the King’s Road, all the memories of the early years of my marriage passed through my mind. I allowed a wistful smile to accompany them. I thought of my younger self with affection. What an impulsive, sentimental idiot I had been then.

  I was shocked when Sonia came to the door. It was a considerable time since I had seen her and since then she must have lost at least forty pounds. Her clothes were as neat as ever, her central parting still ruthlessly defined, but her once round, plump face was gaunt and hard. She wore spectacles with pale caramel-colored lenses and held a cigarette in her hand. She had never smoked in all the years I had known her.

  “Hello, John,” she said. “Nice of you to come by.”

  I followed her in. Her round haunches had disappeared completely.

  “Are you well?” I asked, concerned.

  “Fighting fit.”

  “What’s happened to your voice?”

  The London accent had gone. The mild glottal stop that would have produced “figh’ing” was now replaced by a positive t.

  “What are you talking about?” Sonia, I realized, had gone radically genteel. She sounded like an actress.

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  We went into the sitting room, where my children were waiting for me. Vincent, a bland brown-haired eleven-year-old, was a Shorrold to the dull roots of his hair. The girls—Emmeline and Annabelle—were absurdly dressed, as if for a pantomime, with satin bows in their hair and white silky dresses. They were plump like their mother used to be, and shy. I kissed them all, strangers. In the corner a familiar figure hovered. Lily Maidbow. Loyal Lily.

  “Hello, Mr. Todd,” she said.

  I looked uneasily at my family and retainer. Was I really something to do with all these people? I tried to ignore the pain of Hereford’s absence.

  “How nice to see you all,” I said like a headmaster, hands clasped behind my back.

  “The girls have to go,” Sonia said.

  “What a shame.”

  “They’ve a dress rehearsal of their school play.”

  “Ah. Good. Excellent.”

  They went. Lily took Vincent out of the room. “Good-bye, Daddy,” they said awkwardly as if it were a foreign word. Sonia and I sat down. Cigarettes were offered to me and declined.

  “When did you start smoking?”

  “Guess. Sherry?”

  “Mmm. Please.” I felt soft vague guilts press upon me, like giant cushions. I was seized suddenly with a manic desire to flee this lugubrious house. “The children look well,” I said with a thin flat smile.

  “I need more money, John. Another thousand a year. Vincent goes to prep school—”

  “Prep school!”

  “And I’m going to board the girls too; place near Ascot.”

  “Good God.” I did some quick calculations. I had approximately twenty thousand dollars and the apartment in Berlin to my name. I could not rely on a quick sale of the apartment and at six dollars to the pound that made something over three thousand pounds. One to Sonia left me two to live on.

  “I could manage a couple of hundred, I should think.”

  I will not reproduce the profanity of the language Sonia employed after I explained how I had bought the negative of The Confessions from Eddie Simmonette. Impressively, the new accent never slipped. Abuse gave way to quiet, serious threats. The name of her lawyer—a Mr. Devize—was frequently enjoined. Eventually I promised her the thousand; this and the proceeds from the apartment calmed her down somewhat.

  “You’ll just have to get another job,” she said. “You can earn a lot as a director. I’m sorry, John, but I’m going to have to tell Mr. Devize about you buying that film. That money wasn’t yours to spend. It belonged to all of us.”

  She left the room, calling for Lily to show me out. I counted the cigarette butts in the ashtray—five. Lily edged in, head bowed.

  In the hall, putting on my hat and coat, I asked a question.

  “What does Mrs. Todd do these days, Lily?”

  “Well … plays cards, mostly. These three lady friends come round. They play cards for hours. Days. And smoke. Smoke something terrible. Cards, cigarettes, cups of coffee. Play right through the night sometimes. I get up in the morning and there they are, still at it.”

  “Lord.…” I felt very depressed.

  “Oh, and she goes and visits that Mr. Devize.”

  I left after that. And, as events turned out, that was the last I ever saw of my family.

  I looked, rather halfheartedly, for a job. I met some people and talked about The Confessions: Part II, but it prompted little enthusiasm. Mr. Devize summoned me to his office several times. He was a sleek burly man with thinning oiled hair who affected half-moon pince-nez spectacles. He was aggressive and unpleasant. I had him labeled arriviste at once, despite his banded institutional tie and the mellow professional fruitiness of his voice. I laid my documents and accounts before him, including my notarized bill of sale from Eddie. He had this verified and reported to Sonia that I was indeed as impecunious as I claimed.

  I was not bothered by this fiscal slump. Material prosperity has never meant much to me. I have always seen wealth and fame for the alluring shams they are.

  In early June, for want of anything better to do, I went up to Edinburgh. The truth was that I was lonely in London, and, in that mood, sentimental notions about family and roots easily take hold. I sublet the flat for the summer and headed north.

  I managed to last two days with my father before his unrelenting ironic inquiries drove me out. He had finally moved from his old apartment to an elegant Georgian house in India Street in the New Town. From there I booked in to the Scotia Private Hotel, a modest clean establishment in Bruntsfield. I took breakfast in my room, lunched in a public house and dined at 7:00 P.M. sharp with my fellow residents. They were all upstanding professional men, mainly engineers and surveyors working away from home, where they returned at weekends. During many weekends I was quite alone at the Scotia and was regarded by Mrs. Darling, the widowed proprietrix, as a faintly louche and eccentric character, whom she blantantly patronized, introducing me to new guests as “Mr. Todd, our cinema producer.”

  Now that I look back on it, I think I must have been suffering a mild but protracted nervous breakdown all that first half of 1934. I was listless and morose. I felt betrayed and let down by Doon. I saw myself as a hapless victim of technology. I idled my way through the long summer weeks, going for long walks in the city or out in the country or the Pentland Hills. Steadily, I found myself revisiting the haunts of my childhood: Anstruther, North Berwick, Cramond. I even revisited Minto Academy, to find it had been converted to a youth hostel. It is an indicator of my mood and melancholy that my most frequent reverie was taken up with trying to imagine myself as an old man. I am sure this is an infallible sign of the end of youth. I had several popular versions. There was the sprightly old lecher with a gray goatee, a pink gin in one hand and a chorus girl’s bottom in the other; or the dear bumbling eccentric whom everybody adored; or the spruce ascetic octogenarian steeped in calm sagacity. I never saw myself remotely like my father. I was thirty-five years old and I could not rid myself of the conviction that my l
ife was over. My great work was as complete as it ever would be; my great love had abandoned me. I was halfway towards my threescore years and ten and the remaining portion stretched ahead featureless as a salt flat.

  My God, I should have been so lucky.…

  I was routed from my torpid self-pity and introspection in August. Sonia wrote, announcing that she intended to divorce me. Mr. Devize had everything under control. Sometime in the near future I would be contacted by a man named Orr. He would explain exactly what I had to do.

  Orr arrived a week after Sonia’s letter. Mrs. Darling brought me my breakfast on a tray and said in tones of sorrowful disdain, “There’s a … man. By the name of Orr? To see you, Mr. Todd. We’ve put him in the smoking room. Out of harm’s way.”

  Orr was a small block of a man in a thick cheap suit. He sat to attention, smoking a cigarette as if he were testing it, examining the burning end after each draw. I noticed that the nail and first two joints of his forefinger were as brown as unmilked tea. He had shaved badly that morning; his jawbone was nicked and raw looking. There was a small bright jewel of a scab on the volute of a nostril. He smelled powerfully of brilliantine.

  “Ian Orr,” he said, standing up. He was about five foot two. I felt sure he had been a bantam. He put his cigarette in his mouth to free his right hand. We shook hands. He had a strong grip. He then checked each pocket to his suit before discovering a used business card. “Ian Orr,” it said, “Orr’s Private Detection Agency, Divorce and Debt Collection Our Specialties.” After Eugen, Orr. I had a sudden doleful premonition that my life was going to be bedeviled by these sorts of men.

  “Shall we get down to business?” I saw no reason to be civil. However, Orr explained what we had to do with an enthusiasm that was almost infectious. We might have been organizing a whist drive or scavenger hunt, rather than orchestrating my culpability in a divorce case. Put simply, Sonia’s divorce from me would be most swiftly and easily effected if I were caught in flagrante delicto committing adultery. Smart Londoners spent an afternoon with a Mayfair tart in the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. Orr had booked two nights for me (for authenticity’s sake, he explained) in the Harry Lauder Temperance Hotel in Joppa, the western extension of Portobello, scene of my first excursions to the seaside. At a preordained point during the stay, Orr would then “surprise” me and the woman I was with and testify to that effect in court as chief witness for the plaintiff.

  “Fine,” I said. “All right. But do I really need to spend two nights?”

  “I always find it’s far more convincing, sir. You know, for real solid adultery. Not just a one-night fling.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Orr had a strong stop-start Scottish accent, very nasal. He pronounced “adultery,” addle-tree.

  He smiled at me. He had small dark-cream teeth.

  “We can get a whoor in town or at Joppa.”

  “Let’s get one here.”

  That night Orr and I went down to Leith docks to a pub called the Linlithgow. The bar was full of mirrors, extravagantly etched and carved with prototypical Scottish scenes. The public room was well lit, to such a degree that I felt like shading my eyes. It was busy with men and sailors who seemed to be pointedly ignoring the “girls”—only three of them—who sat behind a long table with their backs to the wall.

  Orr paid for two pints of special (I was paying, in fact; his fee was two guineas a day plus “sundries”). We stood at the bar, drinking, pondering who was going to be my companion.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t propose to do anything with her.”

  “Might as well have some fun, Mr. Todd. You’re paying for it.”

  He went over and spoke to the women and came back with one whom he introduced as Senga. She was young, rather heavy-set, with a slight squint. She wore a threadbare velvet coat over a grubby print dress. We made the arrangements swiftly. I would meet her under the clock at Portobello Station the next day at four-thirty in the afternoon. She would be paid five pounds when the “discovery” was complete.

  Senga was waiting for me at the appointed time, wearing the same clothes and with no luggage. I asked her where she got her curious name.

  “It’s Agnes backwards,” she said.

  The Harry Lauder Temperance Hotel was not far from the station. It was a solid simple building of white-painted stone with brown mullions across the main road from the sea front. I had been told to use an assumed name, so I signed us in as Mr. and Mrs. Backwards. The proprietor, a small fat man with a dense sandy moustache, showed us to our room. There was something familiar about him. Once we were inside, he introduced himself.

  “Alexander Orr,” he said with a broad smile. “Call me Eck. Ian’s made all the arrangements. Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. Todd. I get all his clients.” He ignored Senga completely, as if she did not exist.

  “Can I offer you a wee drink? I can send up a bottle. Rum or whiskey?”

  “What would you like, Senga?”

  “I’ll take a rum.”

  “Rum it shall be, Mr. Todd.”

  “I thought this was a temperance hotel,” I said.

  “Oh, aye, it is. That way we get nae trouble fae the polis.”

  After the bottle of rum had been delivered, I unpacked my few clothes. Senga had a drink, a large rum diluted with water. I had not tasted the stuff since the war and its faint sickly aroma took me back to that day in the Salient when we had gone over the top for the first time. I touched the scar caused by Somerville-Start’s tooth.

  “Haven’t you got any things with you?” I asked Senga.

  “No.”

  “Not even a toothbrush? A nightdress?”

  “No.”

  We went out to do some shopping. We caught a tram to Portobello and I bought Senga a toothbrush, a tin of toothpowder, a comb, a bar of soap, a flannel and a spongebag. Then we went for a walk on the long beach. Taciturn Senga made an ideal companion. We walked along the beach towards the pier and Restalrig. There was a cold stiff breeze coming off the firth and I had to pull my hat down firmly on my head. My mind was full of thoughts: picnics with Oonagh and Thompson, Donald Verulam taking photographs, Ralph the dog, the drowned men at Nieuport, Dagmar … I fantasized briefly about Dagmar. Perhaps I would go to Norway, seek her out.…

  “Hey, mister!”

  I looked round. Senga had fallen behind a good way. I retraced my steps.

  “I cannae walk inna sond, wi’ these shuze.”

  “Take them off, then.”

  “Whut? Oh, uh-huh. Silly me.”

  She took her shoes off and we set off once more. We must have walked a couple of miles. I think Senga enjoyed herself. As we strolled along, an idea for a film took shape in my head. On the way back to the hotel I bought a notebook to write it down.

  Eck Orr had our meal sent up to the room—boiled mackerel and mashed potatoes. Senga sewed up the hem of her coat, which was coming down, and tightened a loose button on my jacket. When I commented how deftly she did this, she explained that she had briefly been a housemaid in one of the earl of Wemyss’s homes. After our meal I wrote out my story idea. It was exactly my own situation: a man obliged to fabricate an adultery to obtain a divorce, the difference being that the man in my story falls passionately in love with the tart he hires, thereby complicating matters disastrously. I thought it might make a nice ironic melodrama. I wrote out a dozen pages while Senga sat silently, drinking rum and water. That evening as we waited to be discovered I felt a strange serenity come over me, and for the first time since my return to Britain sensed a stirring of my old energies. I glanced at Senga. There was in fact something oddly attractive about her astigmatism: it seemed to indicate a latent mischievousness, quite at odds with her true nature.

  By eleven o’clock there had been no sign of Ian Orr. We undressed and prepared for bed with decorum. I changed into my pajamas and dressing gown in the WC at the end of the corridor. Then, while I washed my face with the jug and ewer, Senga slipped out
of her dress and in between the sheets. I asked her if she wanted to use her toothbrush but she said no.

  She fell asleep almost instantly. I lay in the dark listening to her small snores, wondering if Ian Orr would burst in at any moment. I could hear the noise of male conversation from a room below, which I took to be the temperance bar. Outside the summer night faded into darkness; I heard the rickety-tick of a train on the LNER railway line and a few motorcars passing on the coast road to Musselburgh.

  The next morning was a Saturday and it was raining. Senga’s bed was empty when I woke, but her dress and coat were still in the wardrobe. I went to the window and looked out at the wet roofs of Joppa. Beyond the coast road the pewtery firth was calm and beyond that lay the rest of Scotland.… Rain seemed to be falling on the entire country from the solid low sky.

  Senga came in, from the lavatory I assumed, wearing my dressing gown.

  “Oh, yer up. Borrowed yer dressin’ goon.”

  She took it off and handed it to me. She had slept in her underwear and cotton slip, which was badly creased. I could see she had small sharp breasts and there was something provocative about the sight of her bare legs and battered high-heeled shoes. I saw a stubble of dark hair on her shins.

  “Senga, I—”

  The door was flung open and Ian Orr came in.

  “Morning, Mr. Todd, morning to youse all.”

  I had to pay Eck Orr for the full two nights. I settled all my bills in the hotel’s office, including Senga’s. We drank to the successful conclusion of my divorce. Eck raised his glass.

  “Here’s tae us, wha’s like us?”

  “Damn few—and they’re a’ deed,” Ian Orr said.

  Later, Eck slyly asked Senga to stay on, but I was glad when she refused. We said good-bye to the Orr brothers and walked to the station.