William Boyd - The New Confessions

Sonia wore black. I suppose she was still in mourning for Hereford, but the effect was suitably menacing and doom laden. For some reason she suddenly seemed much older than me, and when I saw her face, pale but immaculately made up, I felt childishly frightened of her. I had done wrong. Even I could not rally any bravado. I had to face my punishment. Sonia confined herself to only one rebuke, but it was enough.

“Hereford dies. And then you do this to me.”

Lies and excuses filled my mouth but I ignored them. “Sonia, I … Where are the children?”

“In a hotel. We’re going back to London tomorrow.”

I rubbed my face, as if I were washing it. I could see the long avenue of resentment and acrimony stretching ahead of me.

“I love Doon,” I said. “I’ve loved her for years. I want to marry her.”

It was a mistake. My impulsive honesty ruined things for me again. I should have done nothing but apologize that day. I saw tears bulge in Sonia’s hitherto conspicuously dry eyes.

“Oh, really, ” she said with venomous cynicism. “Well, you’ll get no divorce from me.”

She took a letter from her handbag and gave it to me, said good-bye and left. I sat down and read the letter, from her lawyer, about the financial arrangements I was to provide for my wife and family; so much a month to be paid into this or that account, a trust fund to be established for the children, arrangements to be subject to an annual review, etc., etc.

I shed a few predictable tears of self-pity, and allowed my mind to travel back to those days just after the war at Superb-Imperial, days of Raymond Maude, the Wee MacGregors , beer and chops at the grill in Islington. Then, Sonia had been everything I desired; it was hardly her fault that I had fallen in love with Doon. I had been a late developer. In 1920 I had been barely half-formed, now that I came to think about it. I had survived the Salient and prison camp but emotionally I was no more advanced than I had been at Minto Academy. I wandered around our house, revisiting chapters of my past. But the ghost of little Hereford seemed to haunt the rooms and passageways: I could hear echoes of his pratfalls and collisions at every step and corner, and soon the shawl of misery and regret that hung heavily over my shoulders drove me out of doors.

I never went back to that house. I had the contents packed up and sold it eventually for a small loss. I sent all the money to Sonia, as it was going to take some time to get the funds I had deposited in Switzerland to London. Our separation proved a tedious, depressing business; Sonia’s lawyer was a particularly aggressive, solemn man and I used to dread the regular summonses I received to his office to iron out this or that hitch or petty grievance.

We were still filming, of course, throughout all this, and at a punishing pace too, in an attempt to make up for lost time. To my dismay, the rough cut of the film was now over seven hours long and we still had to shoot the departure from Les Charmettes and the arrival in Paris.

I asked Doon if I could move in with her, but she said no. It was a perfectly reasonable refusal: she said we should wait a while. I was too disoriented to remonstrate for long, and while I was waiting moved to Eddie’s glum house on Kronenstrasse. Eddie was sympathetic, but he was more concerned about my professional rather than personal life.

“I told you not to get involved with actresses,” he said. “Look at you now: money problems, no house, no family …”

“I’m not ‘involved,’ ” I said earnestly. “I love her, can’t you understand that? I’m free now. I couldn’t be happier. Really. Sonia’ll give me a divorce eventually and then Doon and I will marry.”

“Has she said so? Doon?”

“Actually, she says she doesn’t want to get married.”

“Wonderful.”

“But she will.”

“She’ll never marry you, John. She knows herself. If she says she won’t, she won’t.”

“She’ll change her mind.”

“She’s tough.”

“I’m tougher.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, my friend.”

He was right. I saw Doon a lot, we worked together, we spent most nights together, but once or twice a week I would spend a night or two away. It just seemed to happen. I would be working late, messages would miss one or the other person, meetings and appointments got in the way. When I rebuked her or acted petulantly, she employed a brand of clear-minded logic I could not defeat.

“Will I see you tonight?” I would ask.

“I’ve got a meeting, till late.”

“I’ll stay up.”

“When do you start work tomorrow morning?”

“Six.”

“I’ll be back around three.”

“Ah.”

“Wouldn’t you rather get a good night’s sleep? I’ll come by at lunch time.”

What could I say? It made perfect sense. But there are times in your life when the sensible approach is exactly the one you do not require. I wanted to be irresponsible, as if that could somehow underline my love for her, erode my guilt over Hereford and Sonia. I wanted signs of grand passion. I wanted us both to declare that a moment apart was agony, that three hours’ sleep and a bleary-eyed start in the morning were a real proof of undying devotion. But I never got it.

Emotionally, I was in something of a bad way after Sonia had left me, but at least the work was going well for once. The Tri-Kamera was behaving impeccably on the reshoots and the first run-throughs of the cherry-picking sequence were a revelation.

We showed it to Eddie early in the New Year, with an orchestral accompaniment. He was overwhelmed and embraced me, kissing me on both cheeks, the Lodokian in him breaking the Simmonette veneer for an instant. On his insistence we showed it again to some financiers to the same ecstatic effect; more funding came through. Rumors began to spread through the industry about the film, its revolutionary techniques, of a scale and size matched only by the ambition of its director. I suppose early 1929 saw me at the very apex of my fame. Impressive achievements behind me, limitless potential ahead. I was feted, courted, flattered. Lubitsch wrote to me from Hollywood, inviting me over. I gave interviews to newspapers from France, Italy, Britain, the U.S.A. In Germany, in Berlin, I was for a few months a household name. I was approached in the street by strangers, was offered drinks in bars, signed menus in restaurants. All the heady trappings of temporary renown. A publisher wanted to publish my autobiography. A newspaper article about my war experiences was mooted as a possible movie. The whole world, it seemed, was agog with anticipation. The Confessions , as one newspaper put it, would be the film to end all films.

Was I happy? Yes and no. I find it hard to think of myself as I was then. I was thirty years old and on the brink of achieving everything I had dreamed of and more.… But I was unsettled as well, and as some sort of exculpation I used to draw up rough profit-and-loss columns of my life. True, I was a rich and famous man — but my baby son had died. True, The Confessions was about to astonish the world — but my marriage was over, my wife and children estranged. True, I was in love with a celebrated and beautiful film actress — but she refused to marry me. And so on. Whenever I was alone, this curious schizoid litany would enter my head to forestall any hasty conclusions about my good fortune.

I mention this because it is the only explanation I can find for what I did next. Or else I must have been a little mad.… But I think I unconsciously wanted to make life difficult for myself, simply to bolster the loss column. Does that seem perverse? I think we are inclined to do this more often than we realize.