William Boyd - The New Confessions

It was two weeks after my arrival in London before I got round to going to see Sonia and my family in the house I was renting for them. On Saturday, as a taxicab drove me up the King’s Road, all the memories of the early years of my marriage passed through my mind. I allowed a wistful smile to accompany them. I thought of my younger self with affection. What an impulsive, sentimental idiot I had been then.

I was shocked when Sonia came to the door. It was a considerable time since I had seen her and since then she must have lost at least forty pounds. Her clothes were as neat as ever, her central parting still ruthlessly defined, but her once round, plump face was gaunt and hard. She wore spectacles with pale caramel-colored lenses and held a cigarette in her hand. She had never smoked in all the years I had known her.

“Hello, John,” she said. “Nice of you to come by.”

I followed her in. Her round haunches had disappeared completely.

“Are you well?” I asked, concerned.

“Fighting fit.”

“What’s happened to your voice?”

The London accent had gone. The mild glottal stop that would have produced “figh’ing” was now replaced by a positive t .

“What are you talking about?” Sonia, I realized, had gone radically genteel. She sounded like an actress.

“Nothing, nothing.”

We went into the sitting room, where my children were waiting for me. Vincent, a bland brown-haired eleven-year-old, was a Shorrold to the dull roots of his hair. The girls — Emmeline and Annabelle — were absurdly dressed, as if for a pantomime, with satin bows in their hair and white silky dresses. They were plump like their mother used to be, and shy. I kissed them all, strangers. In the corner a familiar figure hovered. Lily Maidbow. Loyal Lily.

“Hello, Mr. Todd,” she said.

I looked uneasily at my family and retainer. Was I really something to do with all these people? I tried to ignore the pain of Hereford’s absence.

“How nice to see you all,” I said like a headmaster, hands clasped behind my back.

“The girls have to go,” Sonia said.

“What a shame.”

“They’ve a dress rehearsal of their school play.”

“Ah. Good. Excellent.”

They went. Lily took Vincent out of the room. “Good-bye, Daddy,” they said awkwardly as if it were a foreign word. Sonia and I sat down. Cigarettes were offered to me and declined.

“When did you start smoking?”

“Guess. Sherry?”

“Mmm. Please.” I felt soft vague guilts press upon me, like giant cushions. I was seized suddenly with a manic desire to flee this lugubrious house. “The children look well,” I said with a thin flat smile.

“I need more money, John. Another thousand a year. Vincent goes to prep school—”

“Prep school!”

“And I’m going to board the girls too; place near Ascot.”

“Good God.” I did some quick calculations. I had approximately twenty thousand dollars and the apartment in Berlin to my name. I could not rely on a quick sale of the apartment and at six dollars to the pound that made something over three thousand pounds. One to Sonia left me two to live on.

“I could manage a couple of hundred, I should think.”

I will not reproduce the profanity of the language Sonia employed after I explained how I had bought the negative of The Confessions from Eddie Simmonette. Impressively, the new accent never slipped. Abuse gave way to quiet, serious threats. The name of her lawyer — a Mr. Devize — was frequently enjoined. Eventually I promised her the thousand; this and the proceeds from the apartment calmed her down somewhat.

“You’ll just have to get another job,” she said. “You can earn a lot as a director. I’m sorry, John, but I’m going to have to tell Mr. Devize about you buying that film. That money wasn’t yours to spend. It belonged to all of us.”

She left the room, calling for Lily to show me out. I counted the cigarette butts in the ashtray — five. Lily edged in, head bowed.

In the hall, putting on my hat and coat, I asked a question.

“What does Mrs. Todd do these days, Lily?”

“Well … plays cards, mostly. These three lady friends come round. They play cards for hours. Days. And smoke. Smoke something terrible. Cards, cigarettes, cups of coffee. Play right through the night sometimes. I get up in the morning and there they are, still at it.”

“Lord.…” I felt very depressed.

“Oh, and she goes and visits that Mr. Devize.”

I left after that. And, as events turned out, that was the last I ever saw of my family.

I looked, rather halfheartedly, for a job. I met some people and talked about The Confessions: Part II , but it prompted little enthusiasm. Mr. Devize summoned me to his office several times. He was a sleek burly man with thinning oiled hair who affected half-moon pince-nez spectacles. He was aggressive and unpleasant. I had him labeled arriviste at once, despite his banded institutional tie and the mellow professional fruitiness of his voice. I laid my documents and accounts before him, including my notarized bill of sale from Eddie. He had this verified and reported to Sonia that I was indeed as impecunious as I claimed.

I was not bothered by this fiscal slump. Material prosperity has never meant much to me. I have always seen wealth and fame for the alluring shams they are.

In early June, for want of anything better to do, I went up to Edinburgh. The truth was that I was lonely in London, and, in that mood, sentimental notions about family and roots easily take hold. I sublet the flat for the summer and headed north.

I managed to last two days with my father before his unrelenting ironic inquiries drove me out. He had finally moved from his old apartment to an elegant Georgian house in India Street in the New Town. From there I booked in to the Scotia Private Hotel, a modest clean establishment in Bruntsfield. I took breakfast in my room, lunched in a public house and dined at 7:00 P.M. sharp with my fellow residents. They were all upstanding professional men, mainly engineers and surveyors working away from home, where they returned at weekends. During many weekends I was quite alone at the Scotia and was regarded by Mrs. Darling, the widowed proprietrix, as a faintly louche and eccentric character, whom she blantantly patronized, introducing me to new guests as “Mr. Todd, our cinema producer.”

Now that I look back on it, I think I must have been suffering a mild but protracted nervous breakdown all that first half of 1934. I was listless and morose. I felt betrayed and let down by Doon. I saw myself as a hapless victim of technology. I idled my way through the long summer weeks, going for long walks in the city or out in the country or the Pentland Hills. Steadily, I found myself revisiting the haunts of my childhood: Anstruther, North Berwick, Cramond. I even revisited Minto Academy, to find it had been converted to a youth hostel. It is an indicator of my mood and melancholy that my most frequent reverie was taken up with trying to imagine myself as an old man. I am sure this is an infallible sign of the end of youth. I had several popular versions. There was the sprightly old lecher with a gray goatee, a pink gin in one hand and a chorus girl’s bottom in the other; or the dear bumbling eccentric whom everybody adored; or the spruce ascetic octogenarian steeped in calm sagacity. I never saw myself remotely like my father. I was thirty-five years old and I could not rid myself of the conviction that my life was over. My great work was as complete as it ever would be; my great love had abandoned me. I was halfway towards my threescore years and ten and the remaining portion stretched ahead featureless as a salt flat.

My God, I should have been so lucky.…