William Boyd - The New Confessions

I will only say this about that terrible day in the Salient: it changed me forever. Not dramatically; in fact, at the time I thought it had left me mentally, as well as physically, unscathed. But it hadn’t. It had changed me forever. You can’t encounter such chaos and cruel absurdity on that scale and not have it affect your view of life. You never see anything else in quite the same way again.

This morning I moved my most comfortable chair from the poolside to the cliff edge. There’s a small pine tree there that casts good shade until about 11 A.M. I used to sit facing the pool, never out to sea, but now I don’t derive the same enjoyment, looking at it empty. Now, on my new perch, two hundred feet high, I have a superb view of the bay, and when it blows I can catch the breeze off the sea.

Below me the wide bay stretches out its arms, one long, one short. To the west, the long arm is a hilly promontory that in silhouette looks like a giant crocodile’s head half-submerged in the sea. You can quite clearly make out the twin bulges of its eyes, the long ramp of its jaw, the hump of its nostrils. I can see along its shoreline the new villas being constructed and the small public beach with its bright umbrellas, paddleboats and restaurant shack.

To the east is the other, short arm. A smaller promontory this, ended by an almost perfectly conical hill. Nestled into the corner this hill makes with the isthmus of land that joins it to the shore, is my beach. There’s not much sand. The beach is composed largely of mounds of dry seaweed, regularly washed up here by some persistent current. Beneath your bare feet it feels soft, like shreds of old newspaper, a yard thick. I haven’t been there for ages. There was no real need, while I had the pool. But now a sea bathe seems almost unbearably enticing. However, it can be reached only by an awkward twenty-minute walk down a winding path through steep pinewoods and along the cliff edge. And it takes me four times as long to return. These days I find such hikes a real effort.

What else can I tell you about my property — Eddie’s property? There is a small field to one side of the house, filled with fine blond grass and dry clumps of chamomile bushes. Along the cliff edge rosemary grows in profusion, like gorse. In the field too there are some bright-green carob trees, two or three dying olives and the huge pestilential fig, its lazy boughs propped up by wooden crutches. The pines planted round the house exude an opaque spunky sap. It builds up like candle wax on the trunks. The air is full of heady herby smells.

This morning as I sat on my new perch above the bay (I already refer to it mentally as the “lookout”), I watched a small motorboat putter out from the moorings by the public beach in my direction. It stopped almost below me. I went and fetched my binoculars.

It was Ulrike Günther. The boat was a small vivid-yellow four-seater with a powerful outboard motor, which Günther and his sons normally use for water-skiing. Ulrike was alone. She anchored the boat five or six yards from the cliff base and removed her T-shirt. She was wearing a dark heliotrope one-piece swimsuit. She fitted goggles, snorkle and a waistbag and dived in. She swam to the rocks and, as far as I could make out, started chipping away at them with a knife. She spent twenty minutes collecting specimens, then returned to the boat.

As she climbed onto it and stood upright, her body and costume glossy with water, wringing out her hair, I felt in my viscera a lightening, an invigorating airiness that I recognized, quite unmistakably, as lust.

Two weeks after that hellish day in the Salient, Donald and I were driven in his staff car into the muddy courtyard of a small farm near the Fifth Army HQ at Elverdinghe. An old woman looked impassively at us from the door of the farmhouse and did not acknowledge Donald’s cheery wave. Another motorcar, a clean Humber, was parked by a barn. A large pigsty, unused, and a storehouse made up the other two sides of the square.

“Home,” Donald said and showed me inside the barn.

The big room had been divided into two. One half contained a table and chairs, a dresser and a stove. On a window ledge stood a gleaming walnut wind-up Gramophone. In the other room were three iron beds, a vast wardrobe and numerous trunks and suitcases.

“I’m not far away,” Donald said. He was attached to the HQ staff and lived in a disused laundry at Château la Louvie. “The other two’ll be here before dark, I should say.” He smiled and handed me a key on a key ring.

“What’s this?”

“It’s for your motor. That’s it outside. All your equipment’s in the back. I’ll pop back tomorrow to see how you’re getting on.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You look quite your old self, Johnny.”

In late 1915 Donald Verulam had been transferred from his duties in the War Office to “Wellington House,” the secret propaganda department of the Foreign Office, to aid in the establishment of a systematic filming program of the war. Strange to relate, there had been no official filming or photography of the war at all during the first two years of its duration. Some independent film companies had sent cameramen out to the front, but they worked with French or Belgian forces as there was a complete ban on photography in the British sectors, such was the suspicions of the army staff. In 1915, the film trade, in the shape of the British Topical Committee for War Films, finally received permission to film from the War Office under the guidance of Wellington House. This somewhat ad hoc arrangement was reorganized in December 1916 when the War Office Cinema Committee was created. It appointed official cameramen and it became Donald’s job to supervise their activities in the field. He had also to ensure that the completed film survived its laborious journey from France to the developing and editing labs in London, from there to the Department of Information, thence back to France and the chief censor at general headquarters. Only then could the approved film be shown as a newsreel at home and abroad.

Donald had been in France and at work on this job since June 1917. He was in close contact with his immediate superior, John Buchan, at the Department of Information in London. Still highly cautious, GHQ had decreed that there were never to be more than three film cameramen at the front at any one time. It was my good fortune that one McMurdo had come down with pneumonia and had been returned home to convalesce three days before Donald and I met in that lane behind the Ypres-Comines canal.

I spent only one more day with the bantams before my new posting as official WOCC cameraman came through. I rested for a week in Bailleul before the necessary documentation was approved and authorized. I was deloused and consigned my old uniform to the incinerator. I drew new clothes from divisional stores: a shirt and tie, a well-cut jacket, creamy khaki jodhpurs, glossy lace-up riding boots, a short, waisted overcoat, a peaked cap, an ashplant stick. I became an “honorary” officer.

And so now I strolled around my new billet, enjoying the strict click of my boots on the cool flagged floor. The stove was lit; it was warm inside. Two colored calendars hung on the wall. The old woman came in with an armful of firewood and brewed up some coffee. Without asking, she fried me four eggs and served them up with bread and margarine. I ate them, drank the coffee and smoked a cigarette. My God, this was the life! A light rain had begun to fall, so I postponed the inspection of my motor. I looked at it through the windows and wondered if I would be able to drive it properly. Donald had elucidated the principles of motoring and it seemed simple enough. As well as pretending to be able to drive, it had been necessary — for Donald’s plan to work — that I also claim to be intimate with the operations of a moving film camera. He had shown me some of the films the WOCC had produced and we had spent a couple of afternoons practicing with the standard Aeroscope camera. It was more functional and robust than the alternative, a Moy-Bastie.