by William Boyd
Perfect, Talbot thought, admiringly. I’ll let him play his silly music. If only Lorraine had looked as remotely en forme…He went back to his seat, set his camera down and picked up his book. He saw he’d turned down a page, a third of the way in, and opened the book there. He read a few lines:
“Well,” said he, “I cannot help it if they do disapprove of me. There are certain irremovable barriers between myself and them, and I must accept them.”
“We all have our limitations, I suppose,” said wise Lucy.
“Sometimes they are forced on us, though,” said Cecil, who saw from her remark that she did not quite understand his position.
“How?”
“It makes a difference, doesn’t it, whether we fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?”
She thought a moment, and agreed that it did make a difference.
He yawned, and closed the book—he wasn’t that interested, he realised, noticing that some of the hydrangeas in the border were beginning to wilt. He stood and walked over to a small paved area where he kept his few gardening tools in a wooden storage cupboard at the corner of the house where the garden wall formed a right angle with the darkroom. There was a water butt here, also, and he lifted the lid of the storage cupboard, found his watering can, filled it from the butt and gave the wilting hydrangeas their blessed draught of water. Might as well do the others, he supposed, and went back to the butt.
Later, he thought it was strange how time seemed to slow during an accident. Not slow motion, exactly, but as if segmented, like a series of jump cuts. He was aware of something small and dark falling fast at the periphery of his vision. Then there was a smack as it glanced off the top of the dividing wall between the gardens and then several panes of his darkroom window exploded and shards of glass fell around him, tinkling, clattering.
He reeled back, glass crunching under his feet, and saw lying on the ground one of the silver bolt and clamp devices that scaffolders use to fix their steel poles to each other. He stooped to pick it up, imagining for some reason that it might be hot to the touch, like some kind of meteorite.
“Are you OK?” came a shout from above.
He looked up to see the young scaffolder leaning out, peering down. Bizarrely, Talbot felt super-aware of the maddening song about the park and the icing and the cake in the rain—it was still interminably playing on the radio—and the absence of a recipe for the cake. He wondered suddenly if he was in shock.
“Were you hit?” the man called, switching the radio off.
“No,” Talbot shouted up to him, gathering himself. “Just missed me.”
“Don’t move. I’ll be right there, sir.”
“There’s a door off the mews,” Talbot called to him. He held his hands out: they were trembling slightly. What would have happened if that clamp had hit his head? Incapacity? Instant death?…
He walked slowly to the garden door and opened it. He held up the clamp as the scaffolder appeared.
“It almost hit me,” Talbot said. “You’ve got to be more careful.”
The young man was breathing deeply, still shirtless, wearing dirty jeans and heavy boots. Talbot handed over the clamp. The man looked at it intently.
“How could that have fallen? I don’t get it.” He held it out as if in evidence. “Some arsehole must have left it on the walkway. I must have kicked it off.”
“Don’t ask me,” Talbot said. “All I know is it fell off your scaffolding, somehow. Missed me, broke my window.”
The man ran a hand through his hair. His nipples were small brown discs, erect, Talbot noticed. He was very lean with no subcutaneous fat on him at all, the muscles clearly defined—you could count his ribs. A little fuse of dark hair ran down from his navel and then under the belt that held his jeans. He had no hair on his torso. Talbot felt his chest tighten, his breathing suddenly shallower. Was it shock? Or was it an example of what he had come to call one of his Tod in Venedig moments?
“Can I have a look?”
They walked over to the shattered window.
“Accidents do happen, I suppose,” Talbot conceded. “Lucky it didn’t fall on my head. Anyway, you have your clamp-thing now.”
“We call them couplers, actually.”
“You have your coupler.”
The scaffolder looked at him.
“You’ve cut your head.”
Talbot touched his forehead and saw the blood gleam on the palp of his finger. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and the scaffolder took it from him.
“Here, let me.” He dabbed at Talbot’s forehead. “Just a little cut. Sincere apologies.” He had a marked London accent but was clearly educated to a degree, Talbot thought. The scaffolder handed back the handkerchief. Talbot, pocketing it, now realised that a mild shock had indeed set in. His legs felt weak and he could feel tremors running through his body.
“I think I’d better sit down.”
The scaffolder took his elbow and guided him back to the seat under the apple tree. Sitting down was better.
“If you get a glazier in to fix that, sir, we’ll pay for it, obviously. I’ll report it to my boss.”
“What? Right. It’s a bit inconvenient as I’m not always here. We’ve got a caretaker, though.”
“Have you got a phone number, sir? We can arrange everything.”
Talbot tore a blank leaf from the endpapers of A Room With a View, took his pen out of his pocket and unthinkingly wrote down the phone number of the Grand at Brighton and his name. Then he scribbled over his name and the number so they were illegible and wrote down the number of the caretaker.
“I’m in Brighton during the week,” he said. “Working there. I’m staying in a hotel. That’s the caretaker’s number—you can leave a message with his wife.”
“Can I borrow the pen?”
The scaffolder tore a strip off the bottom of the leaf of paper and wrote down his details, handing them over. Talbot saw: Gary Hicksmith. Axelrod Scaffolding Ltd. And a phone number.
“If your caretaker calls the office, we’ll sort everything out when it suits.”
“Right. Thanks.”
“I didn’t catch your name, sir.”
“Eastman.”
“Mr. Eastman.”
Gary wrote it down. Talbot stood up—he felt less shaky.
“Anything else I can do for you, Mr. Eastman?”
“No, thanks for asking. I’m fine now.”
“I’ll report this in and we’ll wait for the call about the glazier. We’ll pay for everything, of course.” He shook his head, as if suddenly baffled by this turn of events. “This has never happened to me before. Never.”
“Right, thank you.” Talbot picked up his book. “I think I need a cup of tea.”
The scaffolder picked up his camera and handed it to him.
“Nice camera.”
“I’m a professional photographer.”
“Oh. Great. Super.” He paused. “Could have been worse.” He grinned. “Thank heaven for small mercies, eh?”
“Just a broken window.”
They both chuckled, their mutual relief expressing itself in shared laughter.
“I’ll be in touch, Mr. Eastman. You’re a scholar and a gentleman. You mind how you go.”
Gary Hicksmith left and Talbot shut and locked the garden door behind him. He felt calmer now, the whole event and the subsequent encounter playing itself out in his head like a loop of film. The stupid song, the smash and splinter of glass. He could hardly recall Gary’s face, he realised, only the details of his naked torso seemed to have registered. Darkish blond hair, blue eyes?…Even-featured, a trace of stubble, a chip off a front tooth…
He went back inside and poured himself a large whisky and took a gulp, feeling the burn in his throat an
d chest. Funny how these events can shake up your life, send it heading in unexpected directions. Glaziers, scaffolders…And now he knew what a “coupler” was. He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief and saw the still-bright stain of his blood. He remembered Gary’s gesture: how he had taken the handkerchief from him and dabbed away the trickle from the cut. Strange, that. To take it upon himself to do that…“You’re a scholar and a gentleman,” he had said. How did that phrase arrive in a scaffolder’s lexicon? He would arrange for the caretaker to call Axelrod Scaffolding Ltd. and make an appointment for the glazier to come round. Something told him that he should try to find a way to see Gary Hicksmith again. A strange compensation for the disappointments of Lorraine. Gary Hicksmith had stirred something in him.
He sipped at his whisky, thinking, agitated. He had hours to kill before he had to be at the concert that night. Somehow he felt that he needed to be active and distracted. He needed to drive, needed to be behind the wheel of the Alvis. He knew they were filming on the front at Brighton today. He would drive back to Brighton, he thought, yes, check on everything, then return to London. Motion, distraction, duty done—that’s what he needed. He put his whisky down and picked up his car keys.
23
Maitland Bole was a full twenty-five minutes late, much to Elfrida’s irritation. She was always over-punctual herself and found it difficult to tolerate sloppy timekeeping in others. She wandered up and down the steps of the Tate Gallery, whistling monotonally, a soft audible symbol of her displeasure, glancing at her watch, and, eventually frustrated, sat down on a bench and began to read To the Lighthouse simply to pass the time but recognising, a few pages in, that she’d forgotten how much she actually disliked the novel, with its footling detail and its breathy, neurasthenic apprehension of the world, all tingling awareness and high-cheekboned sensitivity. How in the name of all that was reasonable could anyone assume that she and Virginia Woolf had anything in common as novelists? A simple read of a page or two of one of her own novels would reveal—
“Mrs. Tipton?”
She looked up to see a small man in a crumpled grey suit with a bulging briefcase in his hand. He had a wispy, yellowy-white Abraham Lincoln beard, his upper lip shaved clean. What was the point of such a preposterous beard? Elfrida wondered, still annoyed by his tardiness. But she smiled politely, stood, greeted him, shook his hand and led him down to the Tate’s basement restaurant.
Established in a corner, their backs to Rex Whistler’s evocative and mysterious Arcadian mural, more pleasantries were exchanged—weather conditions, travel, health—and they consulted the menu. Or, rather, Bole consulted the menu while Elfrida consulted the wine list.
“Burgundy or Bordeaux?” she asked.
“I don’t drink,” Bole said. “Doctor’s orders.”
“That’s a shame. Not even a glass?”
“Daren’t risk it. I might have a seizure—the medication I’m on.”
“Poor you. Sorry to hear that. Well, I’ll order a bottle just in case you change your mind.”
She waffled on about the rare wine-drinking opportunities the Tate’s restaurant provided but she could tell that Bole wasn’t listening as he scrutinised his dining choices. Not off to the best of starts, Elfrida thought, and ordered a bottle of 1962 Gruaud-Larose. Then she chose pea soup and liver and bacon while Bole plumped for prawn cocktail and steak and kidney pie. He was more than happy with a glass of Thames water, he said, as Elfrida’s bottle arrived. She tasted it and deemed it satisfactory. There were some advantages to dining with a teetotaller, she thought, encouraging the sommelier to pour her a generous glass.
“I’ve got your pamphlets in my briefcase,” Bole said.
“Let me write you a cheque immediately,” she said, thinking that a free lunch and a highly profitable monetary exchange rather put Maitland Bole in her debt—he could hardly refuse to answer her questions.
She took out her chequebook, wrote the cheque (£22 5s) and handed it over. No discount offered, she noticed, even though she was buying in bulk. Still, she had her own objectives this lunchtime and that’s what she should concentrate on, she told herself. Bole took a plastic bag out of his briefcase that was packed with the pamphlets and handed them over. She tucked the bag under the table by her feet.
“You see,” she said, “I’m particularly interested in the details of Virginia Woolf’s very last day. I’ve seen the house, I’ve walked across the water meadows to the Ouse and stood on the bank looking at the water, and I’ve even had a conversation with Leonard Woolf.” She took a sip of her wine. “I’m trying to imagine what she was thinking in those last hours of life—from the moment she woke up. The whole process would be simpler, and better, if I knew the details of her daily life, her domestic routine.”
“Why?”
“Sorry?”
“Why are you interested in the last day of Virginia Woolf?”
“Because I’m going to write a novel about that last day.” She spoke without thinking and wondered if she’d made a terrible error in announcing the fact. But, curiously, it seemed to make Bole relax.
“Well, if it’s a novel,” he said, emphasising the word, as if it were some kind of unpleasant disease, “then you can just make the whole thing up. You don’t need me.”
“True in a sense,” she said, carefully, “and I will speculate to a degree, obviously. But the more I know, the more details, facts, the better the fiction will be. Or so I happen to believe.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. In my experience.”
“Are you a novelist?”
“No! Not at all. No, no. Goodness, no. I mean, as a reader. In my experience as a reader.” She took a gulp of her wine—it really was delicious. And she was now exceptionally pleased she didn’t have to share it with Bole.
“I’m starting out,” she said, a little lamely. “Thinking of having a go at a novel.”
Bole pushed his finished prawn cocktail to one side. He had a sizeable blob of Marie Rose settled amongst the wiry hairs of his chin-beard. She wondered if she should alert him to this—she didn’t think she could eat on if it wasn’t removed—and then, luckily, as if he could read her mind, he swiped it away with his napkin.
“That would be your fourth novel, Elfrida Wing, am I right?” Bole smiled as if he’d just won a prize.
You fool, Elfrida admonished herself. You stupid fool. Bole was in her world, a “man of letters” of some sort. Of course, there had been a chance he might recognise her, now she thought about it. Her dreams of total anonymity were never going to be realised as long as her novels were on a shelf somewhere, with a picture of her young self on the back flap.
“Yes,” she said. “I apologise. A silly subterfuge.”
“I’m an admirer,” Bole said. “Particularly of Excesses. My favourite. So cunning, so wonderfully dark.”
“Thank you.”
“And now a novel about the last day of Virginia Woolf. I can’t wait.”
“There may be a bit of a wait, in fact. I’m just researching the idea.”
“It’s really none of my business,” Bole said, “and I hope you don’t mind my pointing this out. But do you think anyone’s really that interested in Virginia Woolf, any more? My Bloomsbury in East Sussex is my worst-selling pamphlet by far. I think Woolf’s a bit old hat, these days. There must be other writers you could tackle: Oliver Onions, Alfred Duggan, Edith Nesbit.”
“I have a particular, personal interest in Virginia Woolf.”
Bole shrugged.
“It’s your decision, of course. But what about Henry James in Rye? Kipling? Ford Madox Ford?”
“It has to be Woolf. Sorry.”
Bole leant forward, confidentially.
“Well, the first thing you should know is that they had separate bedrooms—Virginia and Leonard, that is—so she would have woken up
alone.”
“Really? Do tell. Do you mind if I take notes?” She found her notebook and pen and began to scribble away as Bole spoke. And he certainly did—she hardly needed to interpose a question—it was as if his prawn cocktail had made him garrulous. And as she made her notes she became aware that he seemed to have very precise information. He told her that in the morning Leonard Woolf always brought Virginia a cup of tea in bed, then she would have a bath and get dressed and the two of them would breakfast after Leonard had had his bath. He mentioned that Virginia Woolf worked in a wooden, purpose-built gazebo-shed in the garden and that, every day, around about nine o’clock, she would cross the garden to begin her morning’s work. She had just finished her last novel in 1941, Bole added, Between the Acts.
On her last day of life, 28 March, she had returned to the house around eleven o’clock, unnoticed, because Leonard was working upstairs in his study, and left two letters on a table—or the chimney piece, he wasn’t absolutely sure—one for Leonard and one for her sister, Vanessa. Then she had put on her wellington boots, and a fur coat, and picked up her stick as if she were going for a walk. She left the garden by the gate by the church and walked to the Ouse. It was high tide so the water would be very close to the edge of the embankment. She was spotted by a labourer as she headed to the river. That was about 11:30, or 11:40. This labourer was the last person to see her alive.
“Then she jumped in—or waded in, or slithered in—the banks are steep,” Bole said. “Of course, as you’re writing a novel you can choose. Maybe a leap would be more dramatic.”
“Apparently she put a big stone in one pocket,” Elfrida said.
“Really? How do you know that?”
“Enid…” She paused. “A friend of the family told me.”