William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

“What time is lunch being served?” he asked, fixing her with his eyes. She was strikingly pretty. What was she doing serving Bonham Johnson’s guests?

“About one-thirty, sir. Still a few more guests to arrive.”

“This may seem a strange question. But have you ever thought of —”

“Lysander?”

He turned round and for a brief second didn’t recognize her. The hair was darker, cut short with a severe straight fringe across the eyebrows. She was wearing a jersey dress with great lozenges of colour blocks — orange, buttercup-yellow, cinnamon. He felt himself shiver, visibly. The shock-effect was palpable, unignorable.

“Hettie…”

“I’m so glad you could come. I told Bonham that your uncle would be the best way to lure you here.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek and he smelled her scent again, for the first time in a year and a half. Now he had tears in his eyes. He closed them.

“So it was all your doing…”

“Yes. I had to find a way of seeing you. You’re not going to be beastly to me, are you?” she said.

“No. No, I’m not.”

“Are you all right? You’ve gone quite pale.”

“Is Lothar here?”

“Of course not. He’s in Austria.”

This was impossible. He felt he was in some kind of emotion-race, feelings and sensations succeeding each other in a frantic, spinning helter-skelter.

“Can we get out of here?” he managed to say.

“No. Jago would be horribly suspicious. In fact he won’t even like me talking to you for very long.”

“Who’s Jago?”

“My husband — Jago Lasry.”

Lysander sensed he was meant to react to the name but he had never heard of the man.

Hettie looked at him sardonically.

“Come on, don’t play those games with me. Jago Lasry, author of Crépuscules . Mmm? Ring a bell? The Quick Blue Fox and other stories . Yes?”

“I’ve been in the army since the war started — very out of touch.”

She moved closer and he was reminded of how small-made and tiny she was — the top of her head reaching his chest. She lowered her voice.

“I’m sitting beside you at lunch but we must pretend to be strangers — almost-strangers, anyway. And I’m not called Hettie any more. I’m Venora.”

“Venora?”

“A Celtic name. I always hated being called Hettie. It seemed fine in Vienna but it’s all wrong here. Imagine being Hettie Lasry! See you at lunch.”

She walked away and Lysander, still in awful turmoil, mistily watched her ease her way through the crowd of guests to greet one of the tieless young men. A small wiry fellow, in his late twenties, Lysander supposed, with a dark patchy beard, wearing a maroon corduroy suit. Jago Lasry, author of Crépuscules . He saw the man’s head turn to seek him out. So Hettie/Venora had been behind this invitation…he wondered what she wanted of him. He drained his sherry glass and went back for a refill.

♦

He heard the rest of Hettie’s story at lunch — in fits and starts, out of sequence, with many a doubling-back and re-explanation, at his insistence. To his shock he discovered she had been living in England since the beginning of the year. She had left Vienna in November 1914 and had crossed into Switzerland, making her roundabout way back home via Italy and Spain.

“Why didn’t you bring Lothar with you?”

“He’s much happier in Austria. He’s living in Salzburg with one of Udo’s aunts. Happy as anything.”

“Have you got a photograph of him?”

“I have, but…not here. Jago doesn’t know about Lothar, as it happens. Let’s keep it between ourselves, if you don’t mind.”

She had met Jago Lasry shortly after her return and they had married in May (“Love at first glimpse,” she said), so it transpired, and they were currently living in Cornwall in a cottage owned by Bonham Johnson. Lasry was a protégé of Johnson, who had been very generous with introductions to publishers and editors and the provider of small loans, when required, so Hettie told him. Lysander glanced across the table at Lasry — a skinny, intense man who appeared to eat his food with the same concentration and urgency as he spoke. He suspected Bonham Johnson was more than a little in love with his protégé.

“I told Jago that you and I had met briefly in Vienna,” Hettie said. “That we were both seeing the same doctor there. Just in case he was suspicious.”

“Bensimon’s back in London, you know. I heard from him.”

Hettie looked at him in that strange way she had. A bizarre mixture of sudden interest and what seemed like potential threat.

“Just like the old days, eh?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She looked away and asked the person next to her to pass the salt. Lysander felt her hand on his thigh under the table and her fingers quickly searching for and finding the bulge of his penis. She gripped him hard through the cloth of his trousers, then ran her fingertips up and down. He reached for his wine glass, as if it would give him support — he thought he might swoon or cry out. She took her hand away.

“I have to see you,” he said, quietly, a little hoarsely, talking into his plate, trying not to look at her, slicing his lamb into small pieces to keep his mind occupied. “I’m staying in London. A small hotel in Pimlico called The White Palace. They’ve a telephone.”

“I don’t know if I can get up to London. Difficult — but I can try.”

“Send me a postcard — The White Palace Hotel, Pimlico, London, South West.”

Now she had turned to look at him again and he stared into those slightly-too-wide, pale hazel eyes. He realized that seeing her again here was a watershed. He felt he knew himself once more, understood the kind of person he was, what he needed, what he asked of life.

“I promise I’ll do my best,” she said. “Listen. You couldn’t lend me some money, by any chance, could you?”

♦

“Surprisingly nice fellow, that Bonham Johnson,” Hamo said. “Put me completely at my ease. What a fuss I made for nothing — I could tell he was musical at once.”

“Musical?”

“One of us.”

“Ah. Right.”

“What did you need ten pounds for?” Hamo asked, stooping to crank the starting handle of the Turner. “Lucky I had some cash on me.”

“I had to lend it to that woman I introduced you to. Vanora Lasry.”

“Very generous of you,” Hamo said, clambering on board the now gently shuddering vehicle. “To lend all that money to a perfect stranger.”

“That was her, Hamo,” Lysander confessed with relief. “That was Hettie Bull — the mother of my son.”

“Good god!”

They pulled away out of the stable block and headed back across flat expanses of the marsh towards the main road to Rye. Lysander leaned close and shouted a brief explanation of what had taken place into Hamo’s ear. As he listened, Hamo’s head shook more regularly in bemusement and sympathy.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you, dear boy. Not a word of reproach. I know exactly what you’re feeling. La coeur a ses raisons . Oh, yes!”

They motored along at a steady speed, the light fading, and when they caught glimpses of the Channel as the road took them closer to the coast they saw the setting sun burnishing the sea, like hammered silver. Lysander felt both exhilarated and confused. Meeting Hettie again made him achingly conscious once more of the irrefutable nature of his obsession with her. Obsession — or love? Or was it something more unhealthy — a kind of craving, an addiction?

♦

He and Hamo sat up late, talking, drinking whisky — Lysander taking the opportunity to relate Hettie’s story in more detail.

“Are you going to see her again?” Hamo asked.