William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

You can always write to me care of the Café Sorgenfrei, Sterngasse, Wien. But I assume that your heart is only full of hate for me now, after what I did to you. Love our little boy, Lothar, instead of me. I will send you a photograph of him soon.

With our love,

Hettie and Lothar.

He closed his eyes and felt the warm tears well and run down his cheeks. Hettie and Lothar. He blubbed like a baby for a few minutes — like baby Lothar — head in his hands, leaning forward on the writing desk. Then he stood, went to the drinks’ cabinet and poured himself an inch of brandy, toasted Lothar Rief, wishing him a long life and good health, and drank it down. He heard Greville’s key in the lock and wiped his eyes but it was no use. Greville came in, said, “Good god, man, what’s happened?” and Lysander started weeping again.

He took a taxi from Lewes station to Claverleigh Hall. As he went through the gates into the park, past the Elizabethan gatehouse with its twisted brick chimneys, he felt he was coming home, although, after registering the emotion initially he then questioned it, as he always did. For half his life it had been his home, true — if you defined ‘home’ as the place your surviving parent lived. He still kept his old room above the L-shaped kitchen wing that had been built on to the back when the house was extensively remodelled in the ‘Italian’ style towards the end of the last century — the façade was stuccoed, a four-columned Tuscan porch was added — but after that first recognition the sensation that he was somehow just visiting re-established itself. It would always be the domain of the Faulkners — even a long-standing stepson called Rief was something of an interloper.

Claverleigh Hall was a moderately-sized mansion house of two storeys with added dormers in the roof. Its most striking architectural feature was its main staircase — ‘important’ — curving up towards a small Soaneian dome from the entrance hall. And on the first floor was a galleried drawing room that ran the length of the building and its nine tall windows. This gallery had two fireplaces and the ceiling was regarded as over-decorated, all swags, scrolls and festoons of plaster, crests, flowers, fruit and putti crammed into the corners. It was a comfortable home, all the same, and Faulkners had been living in it for over a century since the second Baron bought it with a fortune made from a wise investment in sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

The front door was opened by Lord Faulkner’s butler, Marlowe, who took his suitcase and led him to his old room.

“How’s everything, Marlowe?”

“Very well, sir. Except the Major has cancelled for this evening.”

“That’s a shame. What’s happened?”

The Major was his uncle — Major Hamo Rief, VC, the not particularly famous explorer.

“He’s indisposed,” Marlowe confided, “but nothing serious, we’re informed.”

“So who do we have for dinner, then?”

Marlowe said it was just the family — Lord and Lady Faulkner, the Honourable Hugh Faulkner (Crickmay’s son) and his wife, May, and the ‘two little girls’. The local dignitaries who had been hoping to greet Major Rief had been postponed until the Major felt better again. Lysander relaxed. He liked his stepbrother, Hugh. A tall, genial, balding man in his forties who seemed to blink twice as much as anyone else he’d ever met. He was known as the grandest dentist in Harley Street. Lysander supposed dentistry was an odd job for someone who would be the sixth Baron Faulkner one day, but he made an excellent living and, because of his rank, was much sought after on dental matters by London high society. His wife, May, was jolly and energetic, and their two girls, Emily (12) and Charlotte (10), were funny and unspoilt.

So, a family dinner, Lysander thought — good. Perhaps he might walk over to Winchelsea the next day and pay a visit on the Major. It was a good twenty miles from Claverleigh to Winchelsea by country lanes — a day’s walk — but nothing could be better for him in his current mood, Lysander thought. He would send a telegram and alert the Major that he’d be coming.

He took two dozen well-wrapped plovers’ eggs out of his suitcase and handed then to Marlowe.

“Where can I find my mother?” he asked.

“Lady Faulkner is in the small walled garden, sir.”

♦

Lysander pushed through the door in the high brick wall that led to the smaller walled garden and found his mother vigorously dead-heading dahlias. She was wearing a billowy, chartreuse, light-canvas dust-coat over her frock and a wide straw hat held down on her head by a silk scarf. He kissed her cheek and smelled her perfume, violets and lavender, a little ghostly trace of his father that still clung to her.

She took his hand and led him to a wooden bench set in the right angle at the corner of the garden wall and sat him down, staring at him intently. It had been some weeks since they had seen each other and Lysander thought she was looking very well, suiting the casual informality of her gardening clothes, with wisps of her greying hair hanging down unrestrained, stirred by the breeze. Tonight at dinner she would appear entirely different, he knew, with heavy powder and rouged lips, tall and handsome, her hair wound up in an onion-shaped bun, her tightly waisted dress with its broad sash emphasizing her still youthful hour-glass figure. In the evenings she wore her décolletage cut low, the generous swell of her breasts only half hidden by some diaphanous material. She used to be on the stage, Lysander reminded himself on these occasions, and this glamorous night-time persona that she transformed herself into was her only chance to perform, these days, to be covertly stared at and desired.

“You’re looking weary, my darling,” she said, touching his cheek with her knuckles. “Working too hard, I bet. What’s the play?”

“Two plays, that’s the problem. Measure for Measure and a Swedish one called Miss Julie .”

“Isn’t it terribly immoral? How wonderful.”

“I haven’t read it yet. I’ve got it with me.”

“I remember when your father did Ibsen. Hedda Gabler . Everyone was very disturbed. What is it about these Scandinavians?”

“We’re trying to provoke a reaction, I think. Anyway, it should be interesting.” He paused. “Mother…I’ve got some rather momentous news.”

He had told his mother nothing about why and how he had had to leave Vienna — she thought it was simply the planned end of his stay. He had hinted at an entanglement — a flirtation — and she also knew that his engagement to Blanche was over. She was sorry — she liked Blanche a lot.

“You know that I told you I became involved with a young woman while I was in Vienna.”

“This English girl, Miss Bull. How could I forget a name like that? The one that made Blanche so cross — and I’m on Blanche’s side, by the way.”

“Yes. Well, I’ve had a letter from Miss Bull. She’s had a child.”

His mother looked at him. Her eyes widened, then narrowed.

“She’s not saying it’s yours.”

“It is mine. Indisputably. It’s a boy, called Lothar. Your first grandchild.”

His mother stood up, took a handkerchief from her sleeve and walked away, rather dramatically dabbing at tears, he thought.

“I knew a boy at school called Lothar,” she said, throwing the words over her shoulder. “Lothar Hinz.” She composed herself and came back over to the bench, sat down and took both his hands. “Let’s speak straightforwardly, darling, with honesty. Remember, I’m an actor’s wife so nobody could be more broad-minded. What are the problems looming over this wonderfully happy occasion?”