by William Boyd
“Ladies,” Bole said, raising his voice. “This is an extraordinary coming-together. As we retrace the route from Charleston to Monk’s House, Virginia Woolf’s last home, who should we encounter on the way but the new Virginia Woolf—Elfrida Wing, the novelist.”
One of the women gave a little squeal of recognition and the others applauded, as if this were some tour-guiding masterstroke of Bole’s. Elfrida wanted to crack him on the head with her walking stick, the ridiculous little man! But she managed a smile and raised her hand to confirm the identification.
“We will leave Miss Wing to her literary musings and look forward to the eventual tome.”
Bole turned back to her, smiling.
“Do get in touch if you need any more information. Come on, ladies!”
He led his group away—they all said a polite goodbye to her, the Japanese girl bowed—across the water meadow towards St. Peter’s Church.
Elfrida tugged the stone out of her pocket and threw it in the river. Bole had ruined everything, everything. Stupid man, why had he identified her like that? He and his ladies were now witnesses. How could she drown herself now? How could she just slip away into the Ouse, like Virginia, lucky Virginia who had been able to die unwitnessed? The death of Elfrida Wing would become notorious. Police would interview Bole and his ramblers about her demise, all of whom had seen her preparing for it. Oh, yes, she was wearing a fur coat, funny that. We thought it was one of Mr. Bole’s clever ideas. No, she seemed very friendly—we had no idea what she was about to do. What a shame, poor lady. It was absurd, now, everything was wrong, she felt. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She took out her bottle and had another few shuddering gulps of vodka, feeling a sense of bitter disappointment invade her. What could she do now? She felt forlorn, inconsolable, desperate…
She lowered the bottle from her lips. Desperate. Dr. Ingham…What had Dr. Ingham said to her? “If you feel any desperation remember I am here. There are other options.” What other options? she wondered, trudging back towards Rodmell, through the knee-high grass of the meadow. She flung her walking stick away, angrily. What was she meant to do with her useless life now?
2
Talbot signed his name on the bottom of Kincade’s cheque. Now, a couple of days later, it seemed far too generous a sum, given that the mission to Paris had failed entirely. However, Kincade’s accounting and the receipts he had amassed had been meticulous. After all, Talbot had agreed to the doubling of his fee and Kincade had warned him whenever extra expense was required—the American-publisher disguise, the hired car—so he couldn’t really complain. But still the rancour persisted, though perhaps it was nothing to do with the money, he reflected, more as a consequence of the man in black sitting opposite him—provocative, sarky, unsettling. Kincade had got under his skin, he admitted.
He waved the ink dry and handed Kincade his cheque—who then gave it a thorough examination as if it might not be genuine. There, my point exactly, Talbot thought, always stirring in his sly way.
“Happy? Is that the right amount?”
“Perfect. We did our best, Mr. Kydd. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there when that bastard Soldat hit you. How’s the lip?”
Talbot reflexively touched the prominent scab on his lower lip. It had been well and truly split by Soldat’s fist and was now an unsightly, crusty black stripe, just off centre.
“It’s fine, thank you.”
“No, thank you, Mr. Kydd. It was an education—honestly. In fact, I’ve taken a bit of a shine to Paris. I’ll be going back, that’s for sure.” He stood up. “We made a good team, I thought. You were the brains, I was the muscle, as it were. You evolved strategy; I was agency.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may.”
“Kydd and Kincade.” He chuckled. “Sounds like the title of one of your films.”
“Most amusing.”
“If you ever need my help again you know where to find me.”
“I won’t hesitate.”
Kincade moved to the door. He paused, and stared intently at Talbot.
“Seriously, Mr. Kydd, if I could give you a piece of advice. I think you should—”
“I don’t need any advice from you.”
“I think you do. The trouble with you is you won’t accept the fact that—”
“Nice doing business with you, Mr. Kincade.”
“Yeah…Yeah, OK. See you in the Icebox, one of these days.”
He smiled and left, closing the door quietly behind him. Ken Kincade…Talbot found he couldn’t summon the animus he wanted any more. Kincade had actually been invaluable, both of the times he’d been employed. The fact that Talbot found his presence and attitude somewhat irritating and perturbing wasn’t Kincade’s fault. Kincade’s breezy self-assurance was in strong contrast to his own diffident, secretive nature, he knew. What was that French expression? Kincade was bien dans sa peau—he was at ease in his skin in a way that Talbot felt he could never be. And now he began to wonder about what “piece of advice” Kincade had been going to offer him. It might have been interesting. Too late now.
He glanced at his watch. Reggie wanted him out at some country location. He had sounded very excited on the phone.
The unit car drove him a short way out of Brighton towards, according to the driver, a small village called Tanyard Malling. They turned off the road to Lewes and bumped along a single-track lane that seemed more of a cart track than a minor road. The lane descended into a narrow valley thick with beech trees and through the trees Talbot could make out a squat ancient church with a few houses set close to it. Tanyard Malling was more of a hamlet than a village, Talbot thought. They turned off the lane into a harvested field where the usual caravanserai of vehicles awaited them. The driver parked and opened the door for Talbot.
“They’re all down by the church, guv’nor,” he said.
Talbot crunched through the stubble and headed down the lane, passing as he did so the yellow Mini that Ben and Emily drove around in. Its windscreen was smashed open, he saw as he walked by, as if a body had flown through it.
The church—small, flint, with lancet windows—seemed to be the centre of activity. Talbot spotted Troy sitting in the wooden porch reading his script. By the stubby bell tower a trestle table had been set up and, to his astonishment, Talbot saw Janet Headstone sitting at it, typing. In all his years as a film producer he had never seen a writer on set—let alone on set, actually writing. He was about to go over and greet her when Reggie intercepted him. He seemed in a very good mood. Something must be going well, at last.
“Talbot, glad you came. You have to see this for yourself for it to make sense.” He pointed at Janet. “That woman is a fucking genius. We’ve solved our problem. We don’t need that flaky bitch, Anny Viklund. Janet’s come up with a marvellous idea.”
“Calm down, Reggie. Talk me through it slowly.”
They turned and wandered back up the lane to the damaged Mini, Talbot listening hard to Reggie’s rush of words as he explained.
“The last scene we have with Anny and Troy together is under the pier, right? They’re reunited after she’s run away, got lost, et cetera. In a long shot we drop in a voiceover line from Troy: ‘Meet me at St. Saviour’s Church. I’ve got something to give you.’
“Yes. I’m with you.”
He went on. “Then, we cut to Troy—to ‘Ben’—waiting by the church.” He pointed back to Tanyard Malling’s church tower. “That’s St. Saviour. He opens a velvet box that contains a golden wedding ring. He’s going to propose.”
“Yes, I follow. But wouldn’t it be an engagement ring? A diamond?”
“We need a gold ring. The symbol of the simple circle.”
“Fine. Whatever you say.”
“Janet had remembered we’d shot all that footage of the yellow Mini driving through the country lanes. She said, why don’t we use that?”
>
“What’s that got to do with Troy proposing?”
Reggie explained. “We’ll assume,” he continued, “that Emily is in the Mini, driving to meet Ben at St. Saviour’s.”
He waved his hands about.
“We have a shot, a great shot of the Mini, at some speed, moving fast along a sunken lane. Then it turns the corner. Out of sight. SMASH! Are you still with me?”
“Yes, Reggie.”
“Back at the church, Ben hears the noise. A crash! Oh no! He runs up the lane and finds the Mini, up against a tree, the windscreen smashed, and lying there in the middle of the road is Emily. Dead.”
“Dead?”
“Isn’t it brilliant?”
“You said we didn’t need Anny.”
“We use her double. Face down.”
“Ah. Right. Go on.”
“Ben is poleaxed with shock, devastated,” Reggie continued. “He can’t believe cruel fate has killed his fiancée-to-be as she was on the way to receive his proposal of marriage. Insane with grief, he drags Emily’s body into the car and tries the engine. It starts.”
“Then what?”
“This is Janet’s next stroke of genius.”
“Enlighten me.”
“He drives to Beachy Head.”
“Ah-ha.” Talbot’s huge scepticism began to diminish. He began to see the logic.
“Then,” Reggie said, “we cut inside the car at Beachy Head. Ben at the wheel, Emily’s body slumped over beside him, heading for the cliff edge—faster, faster.” He paused. “We have to shoot that new stuff this Monday, by the way, after the weekend.”
“And Emily’s face won’t be visible, of course.”
“No. She’s sort of hunched over. Ben is weeping, hysterical. The car hurtles towards the edge of the cliff. And this is Janet’s third stroke of genius.” Reggie’s face was screwed up in a grimace of mad jubilation, his fists clenched. “Ben—Troy—turns to Emily’s body and says: ‘We’ll be OK, Emily. We’ll always be together. We’ve got our ladder to the moon.’ The yellow Mini goes over the cliff edge. Disappears. The end. Cue music. Not a dry eye in the house.”
Talbot thought. It could work, it might just work.
“And,” Reggie went on, “from your producer’s point of view the film is effectively over. We might have a few pick-ups, but, to be honest, we’ve shot miles of stuff while we were waiting for bloody Anny to come back from her Paris jaunt. We have our film, Talbot. And the title actually makes sense.”
He started babbling on about possible interpretations. Was it fantasy? Was there indeed “A Ladder to the Moon”? Was there a kind of hypothetical lunar heaven for young lovers? Or was it a simple act of grief-stricken suicide provoked by this confrontation with intolerable loss? Gloss or grit. Bingo. He started mentioning names like Adorno and Freud and the Frankfurt School but Talbot stopped listening, thinking about the logistics. One thing was for sure: the massive, apparently insurmountable problem of Anny Viklund’s disappearance had suddenly gone away.
Talbot and Reggie walked slowly back into Tanyard Malling talking about the practicalities of shooting the car going over Beachy Head cliff.
“What happened to your lip, by the way?”
“I was punched in the face by a French philosopher.”
“No, come on, what really happened?”
“I walked into a door.”
“You want to be more careful, Talbot.”
Reggie told him he wanted to physically launch the Mini over the cliff and allow it to crash into the sea below. It would be pricey but worth it, he argued. Talbot agreed immediately. This new ending was saving them a great deal of money, anyway. One wrecked Mini was of no consequence. He was about to go and congratulate Janet when he saw Troy signalling to him from the porch. He went over.
“Did you find her, Talbot?”
“Yes…But she wouldn’t come back.”
Troy clenched his jaw and managed to hold his face together, Talbot saw, as he took in the bad news.
“She’s too frightened of being arrested,” he said. “She’s safe in France, you see. She feels safe there. It’s almost impossible to be extradited from France, apparently.”
Now he saw tears in Troy’s eyes and his chin dimpled. The boy was profoundly upset and Talbot remembered Soldat’s accusation about Anny and Troy…Maybe there was some truth in it, after all.
“Jesus,” Troy said, huskily. “What a fucking mess.” He held up the new pages of his script. “That explains this, then. You can finish the film without her.”
“Yes. Necessity is the mother of invention.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we had no choice. I begged her to come back, told her we’d sort everything out with our lawyers. But she wouldn’t.”
“It’s that fucking French geezer, isn’t it? Soldier, or whatever his name is. He’s got a hold on her.”
“He does seem to be organising everything,” Talbot said, deciding not to mention the press conference.
Troy exhaled noisily and eased his shoulders, throwing his head back, looking up at the sky. He glanced again at Talbot.
“What happened to your lip?”
“I slipped getting out of the bath.”
3
“Somerset?” Elfrida said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Somerset. Ever in my life. How odd.”
“It’s not as far away as you think,” Dr. Ingham said. “Bath’s in Somerset.”
“I’ve been to Bath.”
“Well, there you are. This place is near Taunton. Three hours or so on the train, but it seems like another world. I think it would do you a power of good. I think it would be the saving of you.”
“You think I need saving, do you?”
“I would say so.”
“Well, anything has to be better than my status quo.”
“But you’ll have to stop drinking,” Dr. Ingham said, reasonably. “How much have you drunk today?”
“Goodness. I had a glass of white wine with my lunch.”
“Well, even that’s too much.” She wagged an admonitory finger at her.
It was curious, Elfrida thought, how rapidly her opinion of Dr. Ingham had changed. From fizzing resentment and hostility to a kind of passive warmth and easy obedience. She wanted to entrust her future—her life—to this strong Irish woman: so practical, so sensible. So…There was only one word for it—so nice.
“I can set everything up for you in a matter of days—say the middle of next week. Will that allow you to get your affairs in order?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Elfrida said instantly, not thinking, just wanting to move as fast as possible away from the abandoned “Ouse Solution,” as she termed it, towards this new one. There was a plan and a purpose and that meant everything. “How can you arrange things so quickly?”
“Because I’ve resorted to this process once or twice before, so I know what’s what. And my sister is in charge of…Of the visitors. That’s what they call you. ‘Visitors.’ It’s not a life sentence.”
“Ah. Connections.”
“Family connections. Even better.”
Dr. Ingham walked her to the door.
“It’s not free, you know,” she said. “I assume you have sufficient funds.”
“Oh, yes. I have—or will have—plenty of money,” Elfrida said, confidently, another plan forming.
Dr. Ingham squeezed her arm and, to her own astonishment, Elfrida spontaneously kissed her cheek.
“Thank you,” she said. “I think you may have saved my life.”
“We’re just at the beginning of a process. No need for high drama.”
“Of course.” Elfrida paused. “Those pills you gave me,” she said. “They will kill those creatures in my arm?”
“Oh, ye
s. In twenty-four hours. I’ll call you with any further details about your stay. Just pack an overnight bag. You won’t need much once you’re there.”
4
Anny stood at the door, apprehensively. She knew the FBI men and the CIA men were now aware that she was in the flat, so Jacques had told her. They were watching the apartment block. But Jacques had also told her that they couldn’t arrest her because they had no jurisdiction. They just wanted to interrogate her—but that was her decision, only she could comply.
“Who is it?” she said.
“It’s me, Troy.”
She opened the door. Troy stood there, wearing his suede jacket and blue jeans. She quickly checked the corridor behind him—there was no one. He stepped in and she double-locked the door behind him.
They kissed. She hugged herself to him, liking the way he clenched his arms around her back.
“I can’t believe this,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m here, that it’s you.”
“It’s me. Did you see anyone outside? Watching the place?”
“No. I waited twenty minutes like you said. I couldn’t see anyone.”
“OK. Maybe no one saw you.”
“Shall we talk first or go to bed?” he asked.
“Do you have the money?”
“Everything I could lay my hands on.”
“OK. Thank you. Let’s go to bed.”
Afterwards, Anny insisted that they dress, just in case Alphonse returned for some reason.
“I can explain why you’re here,” she told him, “but I couldn’t explain why we would be in my bed, naked.”
Troy didn’t protest. She thought he seemed a little subdued, even though his lovemaking had been as strenuous and enjoyable as ever. She tried not to think of Jacques.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I miss you,” he said. “So I’m not really all right. No.”