William Boyd - The New Confessions

You can imagine what effect her complicity had on me. I felt she was behaving more like a game and spirited older sister rather than my aunt. I was sure it was significant. We were co-conspirators; it drew us closer.

That first evening, the two of us at dinner, adjacent, the corner of the table between us. The limping gardener doubling as a butler (the real one had been killed at Loos). Sherry, oxtail soup, whitebait in cream sauce, claret, lamb cutlets, Bercy potatoes, apple charlotte, Welsh rarebit, port. I in my new suit (I had shaved with Vincent’s blunt cutthroat), my back warm against the dining room fire, my face hot, two red highlights on my cheeks like coins. I seemed to be breathing deeper, as if my lung capacity had doubled and the circumference of my nostrils had mysteriously expanded. Faye, in three-quarter profile. Smudged eyes, winking cameo on a velvet choker, a dusting of powder on the downy hair in front of her ears, the finest lines on her face and top lip. A dress of aquamarine. Silk? It shone and shifted in the candle glow. I was bold with wine. I felt ten years older and talked to her as an equal, another adult. The game and spirited older sister had quietly stolen away. I put my fork down and smiled. This could be my house, my wife even. I felt brimful of a strange, cocksure composure.

“You know, you look so like Emmeline when you smile.”

Blood ties crept between us like chaperones. I felt both sad and irritated for a moment. But it was a useful prompt.

“I was going to ask you … that is, if you don’t mind. I was wondering — you said you had a lot of letters from her, from my mother. Could I — if it’s all right — see them?”

“Of course.” Touch on my arm. I thought the flannel would smolder. “I’ll look them out for you. Are you terribly hot, John?”

“Me? No, no. Fine, perfect.”

That night I left my own room and walked across the upstairs landing and along the corridor towards her bedroom. I stood outside the door, a faint luminescence from a nearby window highlighting the graining of the oak door and the metalwork of the latch. I sent my restless presence into her room and waited for it to be noticed. Was she lying awake, stirring beneath the sheet and blankets, thinking about me, wishing I had the courage to creep quietly into her bed? I stared at the mute and neutral door as if expecting it to become miraculously transparent.… It is at instants like these that believers in the existence of telepathic communication either win or lose disciples. If it worked at all, then it would work tonight. I stood outside and concentrated. All she had to do was call my name. I felt a pounding in my frontal lobes. My brain power could have driven an electric motor. But I heard nothing, just the creaks and settlings of an old house.

That was my moment. I should have taken it. A year or two later, I believe, I would have gone in, perhaps with some useful fabrication to hand (a moment’s grief, a night terror) to allow a plausible embrace. I cannot blame myself; it asks a lot of a person to possess that conviction and worldliness at seventeen. And yet I had run away from school; my life was already set on that frenzied precipitous course from which it never subsequently deviated. But for some reason I was stalled by inertia. After God knows how many breathless minutes I realized I was shivering vigorously, and slunk back to my room and my cold solitary bed.

The atmosphere was different the next day. Not significantly so, but definitely altered. Faye, it seemed to me, had realized that the license of the previous night was too heady and distracting. The prosaic older sister returned. I came down to breakfast and found her on the point of leaving—“visiting.” On her way out she showed me two box files full of my mother’s letters.

I took them into the drawing room and began to read them through. I ate my lunch alone and read on into the afternoon. I felt exhausted, having run gauntlets of harrowing emotions.

It is bizarre, to say the least, to read about a familiar world as yet unaltered by, and indeed indifferent to, your presence. Here was our apartment, Kelpie’s Court, Edinburgh, the High Street, my father, Thompson, Oonagh … Thompson proved the biggest strain. Here was the little plump boy, doted on, drenched in his mother’s love. I have rarely envied Thompson. Sometimes I envied his money, but only fleetingly. But that day in Charlbury I felt the writhing vicious force of envy squirm into every corner of my body. I could have killed him, then, it was so all-powerful. Killed him with glee, so consumed was I by acid resentment of his good fortune. He had known Emmeline Todd, and been loved by her.

Calmness returned gradually.

They were loving candid letters between sisters who were close friends. My mother — sweet, good-natured, generous — fully aware of all life’s pleasures … The letters were fascinating; I heard a voice, encountered a person of whom I was only dimly aware — and then only in some gaudy, sentimental idealization — but they provided me with no hard facts. They were chatty and inconsequential.

And then, quite unheralded, in September 1897:

… Donald has arrived. He seems well, all things considered. We had him to dinner last Tuesday. He is temporarily staying in rooms in Hanover Street but plans shortly to move.…

The unremarked arrival suggested mutual knowledge. Both sisters knew him. From then on Donald’s name made regular appearances: what he was doing, where he was thinking of buying a house, his disdainful reflections on the academic caliber of his colleagues …

Then: March 14, 1898.

… My dear Faye, I wish I could confide in you all that Donald says to me. I will say but this, whenever we are alone he speaks only in tones of tender moving respect. What am I to say to him? It is indeed a ghastly dilemma and I am powerless to respond in any way that will satisfy him, even though my feelings, as you will understand, are as equally engaged upon the matter.…

I noted the date. This seemed to be the moment when ordinary friendship developed into something more passionate.

April 7, 1898:

… Donald and I talk and talk of what might have been if things had only been otherwise. Oh Faye, I try to stop him but he seems so full of emotion that if I do not let him the Lord alone knows what effect continued restraint might have. Sometimes I fear for his health.…

June 13, 1898:

… Donald came with us to the Trossachs. He seemed in good spirits. I had made him promise not to unburden himself. Innes knows nothing, suspects nothing. Professor and Mrs. McNair were our companions and it was essential that Donald should remain composed.

But yesterday I stayed behind while the others went walking. Then Donald returned early and of course, the two of us being quite alone, he could not hold himself back. I cannot tell you what an afternoon it was, Faye. Let me say only that in the end he wept. It was terribly sad and yet strangely uplifting to see what power true passion has over a spirit at once so strong, civilized and intelligent as Donald. I wept too, of course, you know what I am like, and we comforted each other.…

I stopped there, my mouth dry and rank, hands visibly shaking. “… we comforted each other.…” How easy it was to penetrate the opaque euphemism. I read on. That afternoon during the walking tour of the Trossachs seemed to have been cathartic. Donald appeared to shake off his feverish melancholy. There was no more talk of weeping. The letters became full of “a splendid, heartwarming day with Donald …”; “Donald was in fine form …”; “at dinner Donald’s old warmth and humor seemed to return as he told us of …”

Sometimes there were further hints: “Donald now seems to understand the impossibility of changing anything, knows that all must continue as it is. He is resigned and says he can find a form of contentment.…” And: “We talk often of that wild, mad day last month and see it now as a final railing against frustration and heartbreak.…”