William Boyd - The New Confessions

He set down his coffee cup and looked solemn.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, John.” He held up his hand, palm outwards. “No, I mean it. I tell you, that business with Lola almost finished me.”

“Don’t give it a thought,” I said. “What are friends for?”

Leo moved in with me for a week or so until he could find a place of his own. I introduced him to Young, who quickly agreed to his producing The Confessions . In the meantime Young set him to work overseeing a musical version of Major Barbara while I got down to some serious revisions on my script. I was quite happy with the reemphasis Young had proposed. I now saw Part II as, in essence, a film about exile. It opened with Rousseau on a Channel pacquet boat approaching Dover Harbor on a wet squally day. He is alone (Thérèse le Vasseur is following later, escorted by Boswell *). His thoughts turn to the past, the fame and disgrace he had known, the celebration and vilification. He meets Hume and is soon settled in England. Then, reunited with the faithless Thérèse, he begins to write his Confessions . His mind goes back to his youth, Geneva, Maman , Paris and early fame.… In a series of fragmented memories we relive his past life (here I could employ some of the footage from Part I) . Gradually, however, his loneliness gets the better of him. He does not warm to England or the cold English. He begins to suspect Hume of intercepting his mail.… I worked on steadily and with growing satisfaction. For the first time since I had left Berlin I felt a modicum of contentment again. I even grew to enjoy my solitary bachelor’s life — working in the morning, lunch in a local pub, a stroll round Islington’s streets, perhaps some shopping, then another long session of work until seven or eight in the evening. Then I might go out to the theater or the cinema and have a late supper. Often I’d meet up with Leo. He was dallying now with a chorus girl from Major Barbara (I rebuked him for this cliché) called Belinda, and I would join them and assorted friends in restaurants or parties or wherever the “fun” was to be had that night. I met a fair number of bright ambitious girls on these assignations, but they must have found me disappointing company. My mind was full of Jean Jacques again and I barely listened to the humorous chitchat that flowed insatiably between the others. In the summer I went down to the Courtney Youngs’ for house parties every second or third weekend. It was there one Saturday that I read in The Times of my divorce from Sonia on the grounds of adultery committed at the Harry Lauder Temperance Hotel, Joppa, Midlothian, with one Agnes Outram. (“Very Johnny Todd, somehow,” Young commented when he read it. This annoyed me.) I felt no grief or disappointment and smiled blandly through the sophisticated commiserations of my fellow guests. Instead I thought rather poignantly of that bizarre couple of days and the strange charade we had played out — myself and Senga and the efficient Orr brothers.…

A few days later Sonia wrote to inform me that she was marrying her lawyer, Devize, and that he proposed to adopt my three children as his own. I gave them my blessing in the enterprise. There was nothing for me there anymore.

Then I received another letter that filled me with real joy.

Hello, Johnny!

My God, you should be seeing Berlin now. We are in heavy trouble. I am a great success in a bad play. Famous again, like Julie . Good news about Jean Jacques. I make a little more money, then I come to England. Poor Georg is dead, you know. I tell you when I see you. Tell to your Mr. Young that I want one thousand pounds a week for your film. Hello to Leo.

Good-bye. A strong English handshake from your German friend,

Karl-Heinz

It was a warm drizzly Wednesday in late July when I was telephoned by Courtney Young and asked to come and see him. I knew it was Wednesday because I had gone out after lunch to buy some bananas and found the shops all shut. I had forgotten it was half-day closing. I had returned home and was just beginning to write the scene where Rousseau accuses Hume of plotting to defame him when the phone rang. Young wanted to see me straightaway.

During that summer of 1936, curious though it is to relate now, a novel called Great Alfred by one Land Fothergill (an unlikely name for a woman) had enjoyed a huge success both in Britain and the U.S.A. That afternoon in his office in Portland Square, Young told me he had just bought the film rights for fifty thousand pounds, a vast sum, in competition with MGM and 20th Century-Fox. The novel was about Alfred the Great, preposterously romanticized (I had reached page 7 before I had hurled it away), but Young said it would make the English epic to rival anything the Americans would produce. The cast would include Hartley Dale, Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Cecily Dart, Charles Laughton and Felicia Feast. He envisaged a budget of around a million pounds. There was only one man who could direct it — John James Todd.

“Don’t say anything,” Young interrupted quickly. “Think about it. My commitment to The Confessions is absolute, rock solid. But this is an opportunity we have to take.”

“But what about The Confessions? ” I asked. “Karl-Heinz is coming over.”

“Superb, wonderful. There must be a role for him in Alfred . We’ll do The Confessions after.” He went to the window and spoke to the plane trees in the square. “Think, John, think. After Alfred … The whole world’s talking about that book. Think what we’ll be able to do with The Confessions. ” He turned, his pale face was almost flushed. “And you’re the only man who can do it. You’re the only English — sorry, British — director who’s worked on this kind of huge scale. I saw what you did with The Confessions . You’ll have a million quid for Alfred.… ”

He went on sousing me in statistics, predictions and the grossest flattery. I went home and thought about it for hours. I telephoned Leo and said I needed his advice. We met that evening in a quiet restaurant in Bloomsbury.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Leo said.

“What?”

“You have to stick with The Confessions. ” He spoke with tense sincerity.

“I know.”

“Young’s trying to sidetrack you. He’s got this hot property. If he can persuade you to postpone The Confessions once, he’ll try again. You’ll lose his commitment once he sees yours can be diverted.”

“You’re right.” He was. “I know.” I smiled at him. “I think I just needed to hear it from someone else. Thanks, Leo.”

“Christ, we’ve waited long enough,” he said. “Let’s keep forging on, for God’s sake. What about another bottle of rosé?”

This was how events went. I telephoned Young the next morning. I said I was deeply honored to have been asked, but I had devoted years of my life to The Confessions and that to set it aside now just as it was reaching fruition would be, in my opinion, disastrous. Alas, I had to say no to Great Alfred . It had been one of the hardest decisions of my life.

“Thank you, John,” he said. “I’m sad, I wish you’d change your mind, but I think I can understand your position.”

We said good-bye. I said I was looking forward to seeing him and Meredith that weekend.

The next day in the Manchester Guardian I read that Land Fothergill’s Great Alfred was to be filmed by Courtney Young’s Court Films. The director was to be “the internationally celebrated film director Mr. Leo Druce.”

That afternoon I received a telegram. REGRET CONFESSIONS NO LONGER OF INTEREST TO COURT FILMS. They wished me luck.