William Boyd - The New Confessions

That evening Leo Druce stood in the middle of my living room trying to lie his way out of a tight corner. He was agitated; he kept running his hands through his thick hair.

“You must believe me, John. I didn’t know. I swear . I had no idea when we spoke. I never dreamed he would ask me.”

“You fucking liar.” I had said this about twenty times so far.

“He rang me out of the blue. We met. He said The Confessions was off. Finished. Did I want to direct Great Alfred? You’d turned it down flat, he said.”

“You should have told him where to stuff Great Alfred. ”

“What good would that do? Look, I’m broke. I’ve got no job. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“You stinking filthy scum.”

“I swear—” His voice cracked. “I never knew. The Confessions is over, Johnny. Put yourself in my place.”

“No, thanks.”

“Go back to him. Say you’ve changed your mind. I don’t care. You do it.”

“You’re vermin, Druce. I wouldn’t piss on Young’s grave, now. He’s filth. You’re a perfect match. I hope you’ll be very happy.”

“John, I beg you.”

I felt my face harden, as if it were being slowly frozen.

“I made you, Druce. I’ve given you every break. When I think—”

“John, please—”

“When I think what I’ve done for you. How many times I’ve helped you. This is what you do to me.”

“I’ll tell him I don’t want it. Say you’ve changed your mind.”

“You disgust me. Get out.”

“John—”

“ GET OUT !”

I actually screamed. The dam broke. I called him every vile name I could think of. He stood there and took it for a minute or so, then left. After he had gone I sat down and plotted murder. I was going to kill Young and his wife and their children. I was going to torture Druce in unspeakable ways until he died. Then I was going to seek out their families and relatives and spring on them from the darkness. I was going to conduct my own private pogrom, cleanse the world of this worthless contemptible human bacteria.…

Well, this is the sort of thing you do — these are the words you say to yourself in such moments. It was the lowest point my life had reached. The darkest depths. The nadir. Only thoughts of vicious revenge kept me going. Eventually I began to calm down. The first thing I realized was that I had to get away. I had to leave London. So where did I go? I went back to Scotland.

I rented a small freezing cottage on old Sir Hector Dale’s estate at Drumlarish. Somehow the old chap was still just in the land of the living. He was bedridden and quite gaga 90 percent of the time. A grandson, my cousin Mungo Dale, ran the increasingly decrepit estate. Mungo was a big, fair, utterly stupid man in his early forties whose company I found oddly consoling. I never saw him wear anything but a kilt. From time to time he would come by the cottage and ask me if I wanted to participate in the life of the farm — repairing dry-stone dikes, feeding sheep and cattle, and so on — but I always politely declined. I have never sought solace in physical labor. My energies are purely mental.

Mungo was far too shy ever to marry, and in fact was quite happy looking after the estate and his ancient grandfather. None of the other Dales enjoyed living at Drumlarish and were all firmly established in Glasgow and Edinburgh in various easy jobs. Mungo would inherit the house and land when old Sir Hector finally passed away. Mungo lived with him in the big house (colder than my cottage) and said with some pride that he had slept in the same bedroom for over forty years. An old couple saw to their food and tried to keep dust and all types of encroaching decay in hand. Somehow, with the occasional help of the sale of a few shares, a good picture or a piece of furniture, the leasing of pasture and moorland, the place just managed to keep going.

I went into a kind of mental hibernation during the winter of 1936–37. I grew a beard. I did some token work on my script and tried to keep warm. My social life consisted of visits to Mungo and Sir Hector and the occasional trip to Glenfinnan to stock up on provisions and draw money from the bank. My finances were about as healthy as Sir Hector. I spent Christmas at my father’s with Thompson and Heather but returned to Drumlarish before New Year’s Eve. I avoided buying newspapers and listening to the radio. My only source of news was Mungo.

“There’s a war going on in Spain,” he said to me in January, as we drove into Glenfinnan to buy paraffin.

“Oh yes? What’s happening?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, John, I’m no very sure. But it’s pretty bad, I believe.”

“I see.”

“Ever been tae Spain, John?”

“No, can’t say I have.”

“I hear tell it’s an awfy beautiful country.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Thus we conversed. We could talk for hours like this, usually at night in the kitchen of the big house, a whiskey bottle and two glasses in front of us. Slowly I healed. I shaved off my beard. In February I finished my script of The Confessions: Part II and then neatly retyped it.

Mungo came round one day with a load of peat for the fire. He saw the ream of fresh paper.

“Finished?” he asked. I said yes.

“I remember that film of yours, that Julie . I was in Perth; I’d gone there tae buy a dog. Grand film. Lovely girl that, eh? Gorgeous.”

I thought suddenly of Doon. Mungo nattered on, extolling her beauty. I felt light-headed with my loss. I breathed deeply.

“Can’t wait to see the new one.”

To distance myself I explained something of my difficulties, of how Leo Druce and Courtney Young had betrayed me (Mungo had never asked why I had come to Drumlarish). He listened patiently, sometimes frowning as he concentrated.

“It seems to me,” he said, after I had elaborated on the role a producer played in film making, “that you’d be a lot better off setting things up on your own. Why don’t you go to a bank and borrow the money?”

A patronizing smile was half-formed on my lips when Mungo added, “Why don’t you go and ask that brother of yours, that Thompson?”

I was sorry to leave Drumlarish. I had achieved some measure of peace there and had grown attached to my icy cottage and the wild battered landscape, the mossy grass, the tough crouched trees, the meandering gray lines of the dry-stone walls climbing the big crude hills. Mungo drove me all the way to Glenfinnan in Sir Hector’s ancient black Humber. He sat leaning forward, as if he had to peer out, his legs spread on either side of the wheel, his hairy scarred knees protruding from his kilt as unyielding as the granite boulders set into the hillside. Mungo honked the horn aggressively at the dirty shaggy sheep that cropped the road verges. I had a violent headache by the time we reached the station.

I cannot explain why, but my attitude to Edinburgh had changed since my last visit. It was the usual filthy Scottish spring, that annual extension of winter. The city appeared unduly dark, almost black beneath low harassed clouds. It rained constantly, not hard, not a drizzle, just steadily without stopping. The wind scoured the streets. Perhaps it was because I needed something from the place, that I was coming as a supplicant, not a native son, but for the first time I shivered before the city’s hefty formality and felt uneasy in the face of its unsmiling reserve.

I told no one I was coming. I took a room in the Scotia Hotel and resumed my old life with my anonymous fellow lodgers. Mrs. Darling was not pleased to see me back.

I created and registered a private company. Aleph-null Films, Ltd. Aleph-null, the name of the sign for infinity — it was an oblique homage to Hamish. There were ten 1-pound shares. I owned nine and gave one to Mungo out of gratitude. I had a letterhead designed and some stationary printed up: ALEPH-NULL. I liked it. Copies of the script were printed and bound. I drew up a preliminary budget and had it professionally typed at a typing agency. Only then did I go to Thompson with my proposal.