William Boyd - The New Confessions

He looked.

“You’re older,” he said at last.

“Well, it has been two and a half years. Of course I’m older.” I was exasperated. “You’re older, Oonagh’s older. Everyone’s older.’

“There’s no need for sarcasm, John. It’s a most unpleasant modem tone of voice.” He turned away. “As young people, we deplored sarcasm.”

I ignored the lie.

“Minto made me pay the fee for the whole term, you know.”

“What?”

“When you ran away. I had to pay the fee for the whole term. You might have timed it better.”

Later, when I thought about his reaction, I charitably decided that it was an attempt to cover up the real emotions he was feeling. Thompson, for his part, was entirely candid: he made no effort to disguise his edginess and unease. He had changed more than anyone. He was quite fat now, almost possessing a middle-aged portliness. His features had softened, his cheeks swelling over his jawbone into his chin. He was doing well at the bank and was snug in the pinstriped uniform of his trade.

No one was especially curious about what had befallen me. Thompson had no desire to hear of my adventures — my presence alone was a sufficient rebuke to his sleek prosperity. My father was still too busy, and Oonagh, although a willing listener, was maddeningly unimpressed.

I spent a lot of time with her in the kitchen, as I had as a little boy. Then she had been amused by my stories; now she nodded a lot and made remarks like “Goodness me,” and “Well, I never.” Prison camp made the only impact.

“Terrible things for a family to have had a son in prison. Awful shame.”

Hamish was the only one who showed genuine curiosity. We met shortly into the New Year when he returned to the University, where he was doing postgraduate work in mathematics. He had completed his honors degree two years prematurely.

At his suggestion we arranged to meet in a pub in the Grassmarket. I arrived there a little late. It was dark outside and not much lighter within. There was a feeble, smoky coal fire in the grate and the bar was crowded with men in greatcoats and still wearing their hats. It took me some minutes to spot Hamish. He wore a gray homburg hat and stood at the farthest end of the bar looking up at the ceiling. He had a cigarette in his mouth and a pint of beer in his hand. I checked to see what he was staring at, but the corner of the ceiling that attracted his gaze seemed unexceptionable.

“Malahide,” I said.

He removed his cigarette from his mouth, careful not to let the ash drop. Most of his spots had gone; a few lingered around his ears and at his collar edge. His face, cleared, was terribly scarred by the acne, as he had predicted, stippled with pocks and color changes, the spectrum of pinks.

“Todd! Excellent … excellent!”

We shook hands warmly. He had grown taller; he had a couple of inches on me now. And thin. He smiled, showing his soft uneven teeth. At last, someone really pleased to see me. We found two seats not far from the fire and sat down. I told Hamish most of what had happened to me. He sat quietly and listened. He smoked constantly, keeping the cigarette in his mouth. He was scrupulous about ash falling and would ferry the cigarette to the ashtray — as if it were some fragile crystal phial — with a precautionary palm held beneath it, where it was gently and precisely tapped.

“I kept all your letters,” he said. “Did you keep mine?”

“Yes. They were in my kit. Sent back when I—”

“Good.”

I smiled. “How’s it going? The maths?”

“Incredible,” he said simply. “I can hardly go to sleep at night. The things that are happening.”

He started to explain what he was engaged on. Theories of relativity, I think he said. I could make nothing of it, but I was strangely affected by his passion. I was, for a brief moment, intensely jealous. I envied the strange world he was at home in. I said so, innocuously.

“It’s not so difficult,” he said. “You would understand the concepts. You were good at school.”

“I was good.”

“You started it all for me, you know.” He took the cigarette from his mouth and set it delicately down on the tin ashtray.

“I did?”

“Remember? Who invented prime numbers? I could do maths. But I never thought about it, what it all meant.” There was a clear subterranean glow in his sludge-green eyes. I wondered briefly if he was slightly mad — or a kind of genius.

Then he said, shyly, “Astonishing things are happening, John. The most amazing revelations. Everything is changing. Science is changing. We look at the world differently now. We thought we understood how it worked, but we were wrong. So wrong.”

“I see.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

“Grand.” I did not know what to say. “Another pint?”

“Yes, please.”

Hamish and I met once or twice a week, the only moments of interest in an otherwise dull and featureless four months. I mooched around Edinburgh, sat in cheerless pubs, played the odd game of golf. Thompson, to his credit, introduced me to his set of friends — eager young Scots, crammed with ambition, full of getting and spending. I was poor company; after a month or two the invitations died away. For one week I developed a foolish passion for a girl who worked in the millinery department in Jenner’s and I took to following her discreetly in her lunch hour and on her journeys home to Davidson’s Mains.

In the summer we spent our usual two months at Drumlarish. Old Sir Hector was now over eighty, distracted and drooling with impending senility. I spent long afternoons pushing him in his bath chair through the blown gardens, my head probably emptier than his, to and fro, up and down, the wooden wheels of his bath chair crunching the gravel on the garden paths.

During the last fortnight Donald and Faye Verulam arrived with Peter Hobhouse. Peter had been badly gassed at Arras and could barely get half a dozen words out between appalling glutinous wheezes. The noise from his lungs sounded like gum boots in a marsh. I tried to forget the details of Captain Tuck’s gas lecture, but I found the combination of Peter’s brave smiles and cadaverous staring eyes too much to bear, and I spent a lot of time away from the house with my camera on ostensible photographic excursions.

With Faye there was intense embarrassment, but only on my side. It did not last long. She kissed and hugged me when we met, with what seemed like real affection. She and Donald were patently happy; they had been married just after the end of the war. And it was Donald, as ever, who came to my rescue. We were talking one day in the rose garden as I pushed Sir Hector around on his afternoon ramble. Donald asked me what I planned to do. I said I had not the faintest idea.

“Have you ever thought about the cinema?” he asked. “After all, you are a film cameraman.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I’ve got a lot of contacts,” he said, “since WOCC. I’ll see what I can do.”

It took him some time. Summer passed. I sat on aimlessly in Edinburgh for the rest of 1919. My father and I began to fall out with irritating regularity. One day he offered me money to eat and drink nothing but pine nuts and goat’s milk for a week. I refused.

“What on earth use are you, then?” he shouted.

“I’m not a bloody monkey!” I shouted back.

“Well stop sitting round on your backside with your mouth open and I might believe it!”

I strode out of the room at this point, properly outraged, reminding him of what I had suffered on his and the country’s behalf. Peace was made, truculent apologies were exchanged, but it was ruptured a day or two later. Donald’s news came — fortuitously — just over a year since my return home. There was an opening for a junior cameraman. I should present myself for interview at the Superb-Imperial Film Company studios in Islington, London, Monday next. The salary was five pounds a week.