Paul Theroux - Sir Vidia's Shadow - A Friendship Across Five Continents

“An agonizing profession,” Vidia said. “But there are rewards.”

All windfalls are relative. I did not become rich with that book, but at last I was making a living. I paid my debts. I had enough to support me in my next book. I was out from under. I never again worried about money — that freedom from worry was wealth to me. No more drudging. I was free. I was thirty-two.

And at last I understood what Vidia meant when he had written, “I have never had to work for hire; I made a vow at an early age never to work, never to become involved with people in that way. That has given me a freedom from people, from entanglements, from rivalries, from competition. I have no enemies, no rivals, no masters; I fear no one.”

“I CAN SEE it all now,” my wife said in a fantasizing voice, though she was not looking at anything except a loose sock on the floor. She snatched at it. “The boys talking about their books. The girls talking about cooking.”

It was Saturday. She was busy with the week’s laundry, moving through the house while I followed her. It was one of those maddening married people’s conversations, one spouse chasing the other with questions, the dialogue shifting from room to room. We had moved to a much bigger house; we had many rooms now. Why didn’t she want to go to Vidia’s lunch party with me?

“Sunday is my only free day. Besides, he’s really your friend.”

Such a discussion was supposed to end when one of the parties stopped pursuing, or the other, pretending to be too busy, hid.

“Hey, I often socialize with your friends.”

Dodging me, dodging the question, seeking more laundry, she said, “I specifically asked whether we could bring the boys. Pat said that Hugh and Antonia Fraser will be there and are not bringing their kids. I took the hint.”

“We can go alone. It’s a lunch party. It might be fun.”

“I don’t think he likes me one bit.” She was shaking out clothes to be washed. “But I don’t take it personally. I doubt that he likes any women.”

“That’s unfair.”

“Look at the women in his books. They disgust him. They’re awful. He’s the man who wrote ‘wife is a terrible word.’”

I laughed at her and said, “There’s a nice woman in The Mimic Men . Lady Stella. Remember sex and fairy tales? ‘Goosey-goosey Gander’?”

“You might know that the only decent woman would be posh… Oh, do go,” she said, looking hardworking and virtuous, burdened with an armload of laundry. “Enjoy yourself. But please don’t ask me to go with you. He won’t miss me. I’ll bet he won’t even ask about me.”

The children, hearing us, crept to the upstairs landing to listen.

“You can take the train,” she said. She called up to the boys. “Dad likes trains, doesn’t he?”

“Dad likes trains!”

Trines , they said, a consequence of our living in London.

The empty ones on Sunday morning going west out of London were the trains I liked best. The Salisbury train from Waterloo racketed through Clapham Junction without stopping, past the very houses and back gardens I had looked at with horror when I first came to London, asking myself, Who could possibly live among these black bricks and broken chimneys and dim lights and gleaming slate roofs and grim gates and the sootiness that crept into the nostrils? The answer was me. I lived in one of those houses. All of them looked dismal except my own.

To the triphammer sound of the train wheels as they tapped the joints of the rails, I read the Sunday papers, looking up from time to time to rest my eyes on the green meadows and the trees, some bare and others with yellowing leaves. The leaves flew up singly like startled birds when the wind strengthened. Autumn made me thoughtful. Four years ago, in just this season, I had arrived and seen the trees like this, the fields sodden and green, mist on ponds, and dead leaves stuck flat to wet roads.

“I’ll send a car for you,” Vidia had said, and he had given me the name of the driver. It was Walters. He was outside Salisbury station, waiting beside his car.

“You must be Mr, Furrow,” he said.

“That’s me.”

We drove to Wilsford in silence down roads with dense drifts and piles of leaves while I reflected on Vidia’s thoughtfulness in sending a car. At The Bungalow, Walters opened the door for me, chauffeur fashion, and said, “That will be four pounds.”

The gravel driveway announced every car with a rolling crunch like a chain being drawn on a pulley. Vidia came out and greeted me. Behind him was a small elfin-faced man wearing tight velvet trousers and a red and gold waistcoat.

“Do you know Julian Jebb?” Vidia asked.

“I’ve heard of you,” I said, shaking the man’s hand.

“People say dreadful things about me. But take no notice,” Jebb said. “I’m mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” He looked aside and in an American accent said, “Hey, that’s enough of that crap!”

He was the sort of Englishman who could express his humorous side only by speaking in an exaggerated American accent. It was not unusual. Many American academics I had known could only theorize in a precise way by using a fake English accent. Parody so often resulted from simple self-consciousness.

“Yes, yes,” Vidia said, looking impatient at Jebb’s foolery. “Come inside. Have something to drink.”

“I was telling Vidia how much I hate his gramophone,” Jebb said, stepping through the door. “Look, isn’t it hideous? It belongs in the V and A. It’s just a silly contraption for distorting sounds.” He put his hands to his cheeks. “I hate it!”

Just then we heard the serious and sudden crunch of the driveway, a thoroughly satisfying sound that reminded me now of molars and nuts. This continuous grinding was caused by the broad tires of a brown Jaguar. Closer, it even sounded like a big-pawed animal hungrily padding through gravel.

“Hugh and Antonia,” Vidia said. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

Jebb went to greet them. His voice was teasing and friendly but growly from his chain-smoking. He smoked French cigarettes from a blue pack.

The Frasers were introduced to me. I said, “I met you almost ten years ago, around Christmas.”

“I distinctly remember you,” Lady Antonia said.

I loved her lisp on the word “distinctly.” She had beautiful eyes and pale skin, and when she spoke, her tongue and teeth, slightly out of alignment, made her awkward, and sexier, and drew attention to her pretty mouth.

“Your book has done so well,” she said. “I’ve given copies of it away as presents.”

Hugh Fraser, hearing this, turned to me. He was very tall and slow in his movements, with a large, thoughtful face that looked both apprehensive and domineering. His shoulders were lopsided, one higher than the other, which gave him a weary posture. It was a letter from Hugh Fraser that Vidia the graphologist had once shown me, saying of his handwriting, “Look, even upside down it’s still tormented.”

“The Welsh are the only people who bring out my racial prejudice,” Jebb was saying to Lady Antonia.

Hugh Eraser’s bigness and aura of helpless authority filled The Bungalow. He was a Conservative member of Parliament, and he made me wonder why anyone so judicious and reflective had wanted to go into politics. I could not imagine him giving speeches or stumping for votes. He represented Stafford and Stone, in the Midlands. I knew those places from the train window, the stops before Crewe and Stoke, on the way to Liverpool. His was a safe Tory seat and the towns looked dreary, but that could have been misleading: riding trains in England was an experience of the back yards and open windows you rarely saw. And if you said to an English person that a certain place was dreary, he’d respond, with an indulgent chuckle, “Oh, the Potteries,” as if its dreariness were irrelevant.