William Boyd - The New Confessions

Hamish visited us twice. Once at Drumlarish, once at Edinburgh, where my father sent him, vainly as it turned out, to eminent dermatologists. To Hamish’s intense pleasure, one specialist had him photographed for a medical textbook. Donald too visited us on the west coast during the summer of 1913. We went walking together many times, visiting remote crofts where we took pictures of vanishing aspects of Highland life. It was like the old days of the Barnton village school and our intimacy soon reestablished itself. He said I could call him Uncle Donald if I wished (he had asked my father’s permission) and I said I would. But I preferred not to, and consequently called him nothing. “Mr. Verulam” would have been too formal after such an invitation, so I simply stopped using his name. He seemed not to notice. Several times that summer I considered asking him directly about my mother but I was restrained — by my youth and shyness. I sensed that I would know instinctively when the right moment occurred.

Sometime during that summer I passed through puberty. I do not remember my voice breaking; it seemed to deepen gradually. The fine hairs on my groin curled and thickened and, one warm afternoon, masturbating alfresco, lying on a bed of springy heather, my imagination making breasts out of the clouds above, I was rewarded with a meager spurt of semen.

That September, when we returned to Edinburgh prior to the start of the school term, Thompson said to me across the breakfast table one day, “Get that disgusting bum-fluff off your face, will you? Makes me sick.”

Oonagh came with me when I went to buy shaving soap, brush, safety razor and a supply of double-edged blades.

“Quite the young man,” she said, trying not to laugh. But she could not help herself when I emerged from the bathroom oozing blood from a dozen nicks and grazes. I looked as if I had shaved with a nutmeg grater. Thus began a lifetime’s torment. I have always hated shaving, and yet because of the density of my beard I am obliged to shave twice a day if I am to look presentable in the evening. From time to time I have grown a beard but I have never managed to get it to stop itching. I am condemned to be clean-shaven.

My father had brown hair. So too had Thompson. My mother was fair. I, on the other hand, am exceptionally dark in coloring. My skin is not olive but it has a curious dun-whiteness to it. It’s not the translucent pallor of the classic blue-eyed, dark-haired Celt. There is a hint of sludge about it. Also, as a boy, I was aware of the fine down of black hair that covered my body. Even my spine was furred in this way and when I was wet you could see a sharp line of matted hair running from the nape of my neck to my coccyx. Once I was past puberty these hairs began to grow: on my chest, stomach, legs — but also on my shoulders, shoulder blades and buttocks. I looked at my father and Thompson and noticed the difference. (I deliberately barged in on Thompson in his bath once and saw his plump girl’s breasts and shiny folds of hairless belly, and his surprisingly long, surprisingly thin penis. I got my ears boxed, two dead legs and a Chinese burn for my indecorum.) Then I looked at Donald Verulam, at what hair he had on his head, and noted its darkness. He never bathed, or at least I never saw him, not even on the hottest days at Drumlarish, but when he removed his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves in the darkroom I saw the dense black hair on his forearms, glossy and springy.

We were on holiday at Drumlarish when war began in August 1914. Donald and I were returning from a photographic expedition to Loch Morar. My father had walked out along the Glenfinnan road to meet us.

From a distance I saw him waving the telegram at us and suddenly became convinced that he bore bad news, destined for me in particular. I felt sure that Hamish had been killed and never stopped to ask myself why his parents would have taken the trouble to telegram me. We rode up to him and dismounted.

“It’s the European war,” my father said. “We’ve declared war. Telegram from Thompson.”

“My God!” Donald said.

“Thank goodness,” I said, vastly relieved.

“What do you mean by that?” my father asked.

“I thought it was Hamish.”

“What’s it got to do with Hamish? Stupid boy!”

He was genuinely irritated and I could not convince him I was not being flippant. There was a discussion about whether we should abandon the holiday and return home, but after due consideration it was decided that nothing would be gained by this course of action. So we stayed on at Drumlarish until the end of August as planned. I do not recall feeling apprehensive or troubled, but it took some time for my father and Donald to relax. They both went into Fort William to make unnecessary telephone calls and speculated endlessly about what was to come.

At school, matters were somewhat different. Minto, a staunch Germanophile who had studied in Germany for many years, addressed us with uncharacteristic emotion. This was a great tragedy, he said, the worst to afflict Europe since the French Revolution. The whole thing was a conspiracy between the Russians and the French. The Russians wanted war to distract the population from thoughts of insurrection and they were being encouraged in this by the French because, if there was revolution in Russia, she would renege on her massive debts to France. Germany and Britain, Minto said, were the most natural allies in all Europe. To find two such countries at war was a travesty.

It was rather over our heads, and indeed not what we wanted to hear, as we boys were virulently anti-German and highly bellicose. Minto’s futile propaganda diminished as the year progressed. He entered a profound depression from which he never recovered. He cut his throat in 1919.

War all too easily becomes remote to those not engaged in or suffering from it, and in 1914 and ’15 the Tweed Valley was particularly conducive to that point of view. Thompson tried to enlist, was refused and returned to his studies. Donald Verulam left the University for some undisclosed job in the War Office. At school the most obvious effect was the decline in our numbers. By the summer of 1915 most of the rugby team had joined the army or had been recalled to their now-essential jobs in the mills and on the farms. The student body dwindled to just over thirty and economies began to be introduced. The Siddeley-Deasey was sold. The hot-water heating was more often off than on. We got joints of mutton every other day, and then only at weekends. Our diet was supplemented by black pudding, an increase in root vegetables and a regular mincemeat stew of dubious provenance, with a coarse texture and a gamy smell.

As far as Hamish and myself were concerned, the worst consequence of the war was that we were drafted into the rugby team. We were not keen sportsmen, though neither of us was weak or frail, but preference or inclination had no influence on Minto. I was instructed to play center three-quarter, where I was relatively content. I kept out of the scrum, could run quite fast and got rid of the ball as soon as I received it. Hamish was on the wing at first, but then after one match Minto switched him to hooker. He had no aptitude for the position at all, but his shocking acne proved to be a potent disinclination to the opposing front row. Nobody wanted to rub cheeks with Hamish and as a result the binding in the rival scrum was dangerously loose. We got a lot of possession from set play, and with the various talents of the black buns we actually won a few matches.

Hamish and I did not enjoy this extra rugby (regular coaching, a match every Saturday and extra coaching on Sunday if we lost), as it cut heavily into our free time. Normally on a Saturday we would sneak away from the compulsory spectating of the school game and climb Paulton Law, the hill behind the house. There we would sit in the shelter of a dry-stone wall, smoke cigarettes and talk. We talked about everything but, inevitably, Hamish would bring up the subject of mathematics. He did most of the talking. He was already at home in conceptual words I would never penetrate. In fact, I sensed the end of my tether once we started doing quadratic equations. The maths gift was dying on me fast. The terrain ahead seemed shrouded in an opaque mist. By this time Hamish was aged seventeen. I could no longer understand him but I was beguiled by the way his mind worked. Mathematics was for him an entrancing playground. On one of our last Saturday afternoons, I remember, he had become obsessed with the idea that numbers were infinite. He was always fascinated by immensely large numbers. It was a sign of the gulf between us. My brain seemed to seize up at anything over a million.