William Boyd - The New Confessions

I was routed from my torpid self-pity and introspection in August. Sonia wrote, announcing that she intended to divorce me. Mr. Devize had everything under control. Sometime in the near future I would be contacted by a man named Orr. He would explain exactly what I had to do.

Orr arrived a week after Sonia’s letter. Mrs. Darling brought me my breakfast on a tray and said in tones of sorrowful disdain, “There’s a … man. By the name of Orr? To see you, Mr. Todd. We’ve put him in the smoking room. Out of harm’s way.”

Orr was a small block of a man in a thick cheap suit. He sat to attention, smoking a cigarette as if he were testing it, examining the burning end after each draw. I noticed that the nail and first two joints of his forefinger were as brown as unmilked tea. He had shaved badly that morning; his jawbone was nicked and raw looking. There was a small bright jewel of a scab on the volute of a nostril. He smelled powerfully of brilliantine.

“Ian Orr,” he said, standing up. He was about five foot two. I felt sure he had been a bantam. He put his cigarette in his mouth to free his right hand. We shook hands. He had a strong grip. He then checked each pocket to his suit before discovering a used business card. “Ian Orr,” it said, “Orr’s Private Detection Agency, Divorce and Debt Collection Our Specialties.” After Eugen, Orr. I had a sudden doleful premonition that my life was going to be bedeviled by these sorts of men.

“Shall we get down to business?” I saw no reason to be civil. However, Orr explained what we had to do with an enthusiasm that was almost infectious. We might have been organizing a whist drive or scavenger hunt, rather than orchestrating my culpability in a divorce case. Put simply, Sonia’s divorce from me would be most swiftly and easily effected if I were caught in flagrante delicto committing adultery. Smart Londoners spent an afternoon with a Mayfair tart in the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. Orr had booked two nights for me (for authenticity’s sake, he explained) in the Harry Lauder Temperance Hotel in Joppa, the western extension of Portobello, scene of my first excursions to the seaside. At a preordained point during the stay, Orr would then “surprise” me and the woman I was with and testify to that effect in court as chief witness for the plaintiff.

“Fine,” I said. “All right. But do I really need to spend two nights?”

“I always find it’s far more convincing, sir. You know, for real solid adultery. Not just a one-night fling.”

“Whatever you say.”

Orr had a strong stop-start Scottish accent, very nasal. He pronounced “adultery,” addle-tree .

He smiled at me. He had small dark-cream teeth.

“We can get a whoor in town or at Joppa.”

“Let’s get one here.”

That night Orr and I went down to Leith docks to a pub called the Linlithgow. The bar was full of mirrors, extravagantly etched and carved with prototypical Scottish scenes. The public room was well lit, to such a degree that I felt like shading my eyes. It was busy with men and sailors who seemed to be pointedly ignoring the “girls”—only three of them — who sat behind a long table with their backs to the wall.

Orr paid for two pints of special (I was paying, in fact; his fee was two guineas a day plus “sundries”). We stood at the bar, drinking, pondering who was going to be my companion.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t propose to do anything with her.”

“Might as well have some fun, Mr. Todd. You’re paying for it.”

He went over and spoke to the women and came back with one whom he introduced as Senga. She was young, rather heavy-set, with a slight squint. She wore a threadbare velvet coat over a grubby print dress. We made the arrangements swiftly. I would meet her under the clock at Portobello Station the next day at four-thirty in the afternoon. She would be paid five pounds when the “discovery” was complete.

Senga was waiting for me at the appointed time, wearing the same clothes and with no luggage. I asked her where she got her curious name.

“It’s Agnes backwards,” she said.

The Harry Lauder Temperance Hotel was not far from the station. It was a solid simple building of white-painted stone with brown mullions across the main road from the sea front. I had been told to use an assumed name, so I signed us in as Mr. and Mrs. Backwards. The proprietor, a small fat man with a dense sandy moustache, showed us to our room. There was something familiar about him. Once we were inside, he introduced himself.

“Alexander Orr,” he said with a broad smile. “Call me Eck. Ian’s made all the arrangements. Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. Todd. I get all his clients.” He ignored Senga completely, as if she did not exist.

“Can I offer you a wee drink? I can send up a bottle. Rum or whiskey?”

“What would you like, Senga?”

“I’ll take a rum.”

“Rum it shall be, Mr. Todd.”

“I thought this was a temperance hotel,” I said.

“Oh, aye, it is. That way we get nae trouble fae the polis.”

After the bottle of rum had been delivered, I unpacked my few clothes. Senga had a drink, a large rum diluted with water. I had not tasted the stuff since the war and its faint sickly aroma took me back to that day in the Salient when we had gone over the top for the first time. I touched the scar caused by Somerville-Start’s tooth.

“Haven’t you got any things with you?” I asked Senga.

“No.”

“Not even a toothbrush? A nightdress?”

“No.”

We went out to do some shopping. We caught a tram to Portobello and I bought Senga a toothbrush, a tin of toothpowder, a comb, a bar of soap, a flannel and a spongebag. Then we went for a walk on the long beach. Taciturn Senga made an ideal companion. We walked along the beach towards the pier and Restalrig. There was a cold stiff breeze coming off the firth and I had to pull my hat down firmly on my head. My mind was full of thoughts: picnics with Oonagh and Thompson, Donald Verulam taking photographs, Ralph the dog, the drowned men at Nieuport, Dagmar … I fantasized briefly about Dagmar. Perhaps I would go to Norway, seek her out.…

“Hey, mister!”

I looked round. Senga had fallen behind a good way. I retraced my steps.

“I cannae walk inna sond, wi’ these shuze.”

“Take them off, then.”

“Whut? Oh, uh-huh. Silly me.”

She took her shoes off and we set off once more. We must have walked a couple of miles. I think Senga enjoyed herself. As we strolled along, an idea for a film took shape in my head. On the way back to the hotel I bought a notebook to write it down.

Eck Orr had our meal sent up to the room — boiled mackerel and mashed potatoes. Senga sewed up the hem of her coat, which was coming down, and tightened a loose button on my jacket. When I commented how deftly she did this, she explained that she had briefly been a housemaid in one of the earl of Wemyss’s homes. After our meal I wrote out my story idea. It was exactly my own situation: a man obliged to fabricate an adultery to obtain a divorce, the difference being that the man in my story falls passionately in love with the tart he hires, thereby complicating matters disastrously. I thought it might make a nice ironic melodrama. I wrote out a dozen pages while Senga sat silently, drinking rum and water. That evening as we waited to be discovered I felt a strange serenity come over me, and for the first time since my return to Britain sensed a stirring of my old energies. I glanced at Senga. There was in fact something oddly attractive about her astigmatism: it seemed to indicate a latent mischievousness, quite at odds with her true nature.

By eleven o’clock there had been no sign of Ian Orr. We undressed and prepared for bed with decorum. I changed into my pajamas and dressing gown in the WC at the end of the corridor. Then, while I washed my face with the jug and ewer, Senga slipped out of her dress and in between the sheets. I asked her if she wanted to use her toothbrush but she said no.