by William Boyd
Every producer, mogul, impresario and studio wanted the film rights—but they weren’t available. They were owned by some small English—English!—film company in London. This totemic American play had been snapped up by the Limeys. Yorgos gleefully fielded and rejected the bids as hundreds of thousands of dollars were offered to buy the rights off YSK. At one stage when Warner Bros. raised their price to $1 million Talbot wondered if they should cash in and take their huge profit.
“No, no, no, Talbot,” Yorgos said. “This happens only once in your life. The gift horse has galloped into our china shop and we will not look him in the mouth. We will do this, Talbot, you and me, and nobody else.”
Talbot parked the Alvis by his wife’s Austin 1100 on the wide gravelled forecourt of their house in Chiswick. It was brick-built, with a tile-hung upper storey and a small tower, making the roof nicely asymmetrical. The walls were embellished with various climbing plants (Virginia creeper, roses, carefully trimmed ivy) and it reeked of artistic class and solidity. Or, Talbot thought as he opened the front door, class, solidity and a bit of artistry visible in the blue-brick diapering and the timber-framed dormers.
Naomi, his wife, was on the phone in the kitchen. They blew kisses at each other as Talbot opened the fridge door looking for some tonics. He picked up a couple and moved through to the drawing room and found the gin amongst the grouped bottles on the sideboard. The wide doors to the garden were open but the sun was still blazing down and he didn’t want heat. He made two gin and tonics—there was ice in the ice bucket—but he’d forgotten the lemon. He turned as Naomi came in holding a quartered lemon on a plate.
“Mind reader,” Talbot said, kissing her cheek.
“You need one too, do you?” she said, picking up her drink.
“Slightly perturbing day,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it if it gets any more perturbing.”
They hadn’t seen each other for nearly two weeks, he realised, such had been the demands of the film, and Talbot was struck again, as if for the first time, by how large Naomi was becoming. A massive ledge of bosom, well-padded hips, an obvious double chin. She had never really been slender but she was clearly packing on the weight.
“How’s school?” he said, sitting down and searching for a cigarette.
“Bloody. Everyone’s longing for the summer holidays.” She smiled. “Mustn’t grumble. C’est normal, and all that. What about you? How’s the ‘fillum’ going?”
“Actually, all going relatively well, considering. Which of course makes me worried. I think I hear distant thunder.”
Their exchange made him realise, as it always did when they had been apart from each other for a while, how formal and semi-guarded their conversation could be. It was as if they had found themselves, strangers, sitting beside each other at a dinner party and were making small talk. Not man and wife married for twenty-six years.
“Something’s fucking going on with Yorgos,” he said, deliberately coarsening his vocabulary, all in an attempt to make their conversation seem more natural.
“Isn’t there always something fucking going on with Yorgos?” Naomi said, with a thin smile, as if rising to the challenge. She didn’t like Yorgos.
“Yes. But this seems unusually subversive. I haven’t got to the bottom of it, yet. All to do with the play. I can’t see what his plan is at the moment.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll sort it out. You always do.” She opened a glossy burr-walnut box sitting on the coffee table and took out a cigarette herself, screwing it into a short ebony holder. Talbot leant forward and clicked on his lighter for her.
“Humphrey’s coming in an hour or so,” she said, pluming smoke at the ceiling. “Let’s all go out for supper.”
Humphrey was their son.
“I’ve got to get back to Brighton, dammit. Night shoot. I’m expected.”
“Well, he’s here for a week. He has a concert at the Festival Hall next Saturday.”
“Mustn’t miss that,” Talbot said. “Put it in the diary. I’ll make sure I have to come up to town.”
That pleased Naomi. She stood and went to the mantlepiece to fetch a postcard, handing it to him. Talbot saw a long thin waterfall in a verdant, lush forest. He turned it over and read its brief platitudes. It was from his daughter.
“What is Zoë doing in New Zealand?” he asked. “I thought she was in Singapore.”
“She’s teaching children to ski.”
“Do they ski in New Zealand?”
“Apparently.”
Talbot thought of Zoë when she was a little girl. Spry, adventurous, funny—always making him laugh. Now she was as far away from her family as was geographically possible, always travelling, always out of reach. At least Humphrey was still in the country—diffident, tortured Humphrey.
“Is Humphrey staying here?” he asked.
“Silly question. Of course he is—it’s free.”
He asked how Humphrey was getting on in Manchester. He played timpani for the Hallé Orchestra.
“He loves it, he says.” Naomi ground out her cigarette in an ashtray. “Prefers it to London, he says.”
Talbot poured himself another small gin. Careful. Driving.
“You’re not overdoing it, are you, darling?” he asked. “You look a bit tired.”
“Of course I’m overdoing it. The special headmistress tax—a millstone fitted to the neck, free of charge. I’m just like you: a kind of producer with a team of people who seem determined to let me down, one way or another, time and again.”
Talbot laughed—genuinely. And Naomi laughed with him and for a moment the formality—the manufactured intimacy—disappeared and, as she laughed, he caught a shadowy glimpse of his wife as she was when he first met her in the early years of the war. My God, Talbot thought: how your life gallops by.
“I’d better be going,” he said.
He kissed her goodbye at the front door, saying he’d telephone in a day or two, climbed into the Alvis and pulled away onto the main road—but did not turn towards Brighton, instead he headed for Primrose Hill.
He parked the Alvis some distance away around the corner and walked back to his flat, letting himself in through the garden door—his usual point of entry. That way he never confronted his neighbours, who were virtually unknown to him, anyway, and vice versa. He probably entered the building’s front door once or twice a year.
He owned the downstairs maisonette of a large end-of-terrace early Victorian stucco house in a quiet street off King Henry’s Road. It had a small garden with a door that gave on to a mews lane behind. He crossed the garden—a square of weedy lawn, with a border of hortensias and an ancient apple tree with a mossy wooden bench around the trunk—and let himself in through the back door. His bedroom, bathroom and darkroom were at this lower-ground-floor level. Upstairs, the ground floor, was roomier and grander. A kitchen-diner, a drawing room with two eight-paned windows that looked on to the street and the garden and another room that had been the master bedroom, he supposed. It was now designated as his “gallery.”
The flat was sparsely but tastefully furnished. No curtains—the interior folding wooden shutters were in good condition—dark-stained floorboards with Persian rugs, a Knole sofa and a couple of loose-covered armchairs. There were a few black and white photographs on the walls—a contorted Bill Brandt nude on a beach, a Cartier-Bresson, an Ingrid Soames picture of two roses—but nothing really that would reveal the personality of the man who owned the property.
The name by the bell push for flat A said “Eastman.” His neighbours (there were four flats carved out of the two floors above his) called him “Mr. Eastman” on their rare encounters, usually to do with communal repairs to guttering or roof. He was almost as anonymous as it was possible to be in this day and age, he supposed, and he took pains to ensure that this remained the status quo. No one knew when h
e came or went, thanks to the garden door. He had a telephone that rarely rang. He paid all utility bills by cash—he had even bought the flat for cash, £12,500, asking John Saxonwood to provide it, no questions asked. For all he knew the electoral register had him down as “Mr. Eastman.” He never received any mail that he hadn’t initiated. The key purpose of being Mr. Eastman of Primrose Hill was not so much that the set-up allowed him to be by himself but to discover what self he was, in fact. And, he wondered, what exactly was that “self” that he hid away so diligently, that private self? It was an ongoing experiment, and one he relished.
He switched on the lights—the shutters in the drawing room were almost permanently closed—and had a swift check around to see that all was in order. Then he unbuttoned his fly and took out his cock. He walked around the room and poured himself a whisky and drained it in one gulp. Then he took off all his clothes and folded them on an armchair. Naked, he poured himself another large Scotch, sat down on the other armchair and smoked a cigarette, thinking, imagining. When he felt the mood was right he found the keys in their secret hiding place and unlocked first, the padlock, and then the two mortice locks to the gallery and went inside. He locked the door behind him.
11
Anny Viklund waited at the bus stop, blinking in the harsh Brighton sunshine. That’s why they call it Brighton, Troy had said, because of the brightness. It’s very bright here because we’re so close to the sea. Bright Town. She had laughed—but now he was gone, back to his trailer as her big scene with him was over, in the can.
She had had to slap his face, then jump out of their yellow Mini, give a wild flinging look around her and then run away, heedlessly. Now, alone in this strange town, Emily Bracegirdle had to board a bus and she had no money.
Anny looked around her—at this street in Brighton. She saw a cinema called the Curzon and an uneven row of buildings with shops at street level: a Wimpy Bar, a bank, a chemist and a piano shop. Small English cars whizzed by.
“Action!” the first assistant director shouted and the cream-and-red-liveried bus shuddered into life and headed towards the bus stop.
A curious crowd of local spectators held back by portable metal barriers looked on at this motion picture being shot in their town. Out of the corner of her eye Anny could see Rodrigo Tipton crouching behind the big camera set on its track.
The bus stopped and two extras boarded.
“Go, Anny!” Rodrigo shouted and Anny climbed onto the platform at the rear. The bus pulled away.
“Great! Cut! Let’s do it once more.”
As Anny stepped back off the bus she wondered if Troy would come to her room again tonight. He hadn’t said anything after their face-slapping scene had ended—she hoped she hadn’t hit him too hard—but she was looking forward to seeing him again. It was funny, but being with Troy at night, secretly, with no one having the least idea, was making this film—a film that she had never particularly wanted to do—the most enjoyable film-making experience of her career thus far.
The bus effortfully backed up to its starting position. Anny took her place beside the extras in the shelter of the bus stop. While they waited for everything to be reset she looked incuriously at the Brighton folk who had gathered to stare at these film stars and actors at work, men, women and children, silent, watching fixedly.
Then she saw Cornell Weekes.
12
Elfrida hadn’t even had her first drink of the day when the idea came to her, just like that, naturally, spontaneously. She was on the point of reaching for the carton of orange juice when it arrived—a revelation, an answer, an antidote. Nothing to do with alcohol, just her brain working independently. How marvellous. She made herself an extra-strong Sarson’s and orange, toasted herself, drank a couple of mouthfuls just to start the engine, as it were, and went in search of her notebook.
VIRGINIA WOOLF’S LAST DAY, she wrote in capitals. Then: THE LAST DAY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. Maybe that was better, had more of an admonitory, classic ring to it. No need to make her mind up just yet, it was the concept that was key.
Not wasting any time, she called a taxi from the local Rottingdean firm that she used and told the driver to take her to the “best” bookshop in Brighton. In the event, the bookshop he chose turned out to be in Hove, Brighton’s grander, statelier, sister town, off Portland Road, near the shabby, tired green space that was Davis Park. The Book Nook, as it was named, was a small shop and seemed too small for her purposes, she worried. Still, it was a start, she was actually taking steps.
Elfrida disliked bookshops since her writer’s block had begun. They seemed to her to be threatening, mocking spaces, almost as if the profusion of books on display was a personal rebuke, a pointed slur and reminder of her endless inactivity. As she stepped inside she saw that the place strove to live up to its name. Not only were the high shelves crammed but every available surface, every nook and cranny, was piled with books, apparently randomly, though a quick glance told her that the shelves at least possessed some notional order as she saw labels advertising photography, art, travel.
The Book Nook was a long narrow bright shop lit by two big skylights. Shelves ran down each side and there was a thin refectory table in the middle where the books were piled, as well as on window ledges and various stools. At the far end was a high desk and behind it a young man sat reading. He wore a beret and had a pointed beard, waxed at the tip, Elfrida saw as she approached, and the tip had a jade, or at least a jade-coloured, bead threaded on to it.
Elfrida pretended to browse—she was the only customer and the young man took no notice of her, not even a “good morning,” she observed with faint disapproval. She found the fiction section where there was a fair sampling of Mrs. Woolf’s novels and, she spotted with some alarm, the distinctive magenta spine of The Big Show. She left it untouched and interrupted the young man to ask where she might find “biography” and was directed up an iron spiral staircase to a small mezzanine floor above the desk, equally crammed, where biography shared shelves with “local interest” and “cookery.” Heading for W she found several volumes of Leonard Woolf’s autobiography but saw, disappointingly, that volume four ended in 1939—two years too early. Damn.
She carefully clambered back down to the ground floor and told the young man that she was looking for a biography of Virginia Woolf.
“I don’t think there is one, actually,” he said. “Nobody’s much interested in that Bloomsbury lot.”
“Oh. How odd.”
“There is Holroyd’s biography of Lytton Strachey, volume one. Volume two’s imminent. He knew Woolf. Strachey, I mean.”
“Yes, but Strachey died in 1932,” Elfrida said.
“Did he? Poor chap.”
“And, do you see, I’m particularly interested in the…ah, the last year of Virginia Woolf’s life. 1941.”
The young man fiddled with the jade bead attached to his beard, frowning, thinking.
“There is A Writer’s Diary. Her journals—edited by her husband.”
“That might be exactly what I need. Have you got it?”
“It’s out of print, published in the ’50s. I could try and find it and order it.”
“Marvellous. If you would. Very kind.” Elfrida saw this as a good sign. She began to warm slightly to the taciturn young man.
“Maybe you’d best check out the obituaries,” he said.
“Excellent idea.”
“Why are you so interested in the end of Woolf’s life, may I ask?”
“Well. Because I’m a teacher,” Elfrida improvised. “A lecturer in English literature, actually, at…” She chose a distant institution, “the University of Aberdeen.”
The young man sat up straight.
“In fact, come to think of it, I might have something.”
He scampered clangingly up the spiral staircase and descended a minute later with a small pa
mphlet. He handed it to her.
“It’s by a local author,” he said. “Privately printed.”
Elfrida looked at the title. Virginia Woolf’s East Sussex by Maitland Bole. She flicked through it—sixty pages or so, blurry photographs, rather a good map.
“A local author?”
“He lives in Eastbourne.”
“I’ll take it. Do you know him?”
“He pops in from time to time with his stock. He churns out these pamphlets. You know, Henry James’s Rye, Literary Life in Romney Marsh, Kipling and Burwash, et cetera.”
“Fascinating.” Elfrida handed over some change—the pamphlet cost four shillings and sixpence, a bit steep, she thought—still, it was a start, a symbol of her intent.
“I’ll need a name and a phone number,” the young man said, now staring at her fixedly.
“Why?”
“You’re ordering a book,” he said patiently. “I’ll need to let you know when it arrives.”
“Of course. Silly me.”
He pushed a notepad and a pen at her across his desk and she wrote down her name—Jennifer Tipton, not Elfrida Wing—and the phone number of the Rottingdean house.