William Boyd - On the Yankee Station - Stories

Frank. Frank was the sort of older brother nobody needs. Tall, socially at ease, rich, good job (journalist on an up-market Sunday). Very attractive too. He had a polished superficial charm which, to my surprise, managed to take in one hell of a lot of people. But he was a smug, self-satisfied bastard and we never really liked each other. He always needed to feel superior to me.

“Pleased to meet you,” Frank said to Louella, holding on to her hand far longer than William thought necessary.

“Hi,” said Louella. “William’s told me so much about you.”

Frank laughed. “Listen,” he said. “You don’t want to believe anything he says.”

He didn’t say that, in fact. But it’s typical of the sort of thing I can imagine him saying. Anyway, I only did that just to show you how easy it is — and how different. I can make Frank bald, add four inches to Louella’s bust, supply William with a flat in Belgravia. But it’s not going to solve anything. Because — to cut a long story short (quite a good title, yes?) — I really did love Louella (we’ll still call her that, if you don’t mind — saves possible embarrassment). I wanted to marry her. And that bastard Frank steadily and deliberately took her away from me.

At the time we were staying with my parents. We hadn’t fixed a date for the wedding, as we were waiting until we had a house first. However, plans were being made; Louella’s mother was going to fly over; a guest list was being drawn up. Frank was very subtle. He contented himself with being incredibly nice . He was around a lot and spent a great deal of time with Louella — just chatting. I was away in London (my parents live near Witney, Oxfordshire) trying to get a job. I can still remember — quite vividly — sitting on the London train, rigid with a kind of frustrated rage. I knew exactly what was happening. I could sense Louella’s increasing fascination with Frank but there was nothing I could do about it, no accusation I could level, without being accused in turn of chronic paranoia. Nothing physical had happened between Louella and Frank, yet in a way she was more intimate with him than she’d ever been with me.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. The house seemed to brim with their complicity. I felt pinioned by their innuendoes, webbed in by their covert glances. It was impossible. Yet the whole relationship was occurring at such a subliminal, cerebral level that any apportioning of blame on my part would look like an act of near insanity. So I went away. I said I had to be in London for an entire week job-hunting and having interviews. I entrusted Louella to my parents’ care, but I knew Frank wouldn’t be far away.

I took up an uncomfortable post in the wood behind my parents’ house, armed with a pair of powerful binoculars, and watched the comings and goings. I saw Frank arrive the next day, homing in unerringly. Saw them walk in the garden, go out for drives. Saw Frank take my place at the family dinner table, pouring wine, recounting anecdotes that I should have been telling.

In fact, William hated Frank with all the energy he could summon. Hated his lean, permanently tanned face, his fake self-deprecating smile. Despised his short fingernails, his modishly scruffy clothes. Loathed his intimate knowledge of current affairs, his casual travelogues. And he ached when Louella touched his arm in admiring disbelief as Official Secrets were dropped, off-the-record confidences disclosed. Suffered when she showed her pale pulsing throat as she laughed at his smart in-jokes.

Sorry. Sorry. It’s a lapse, I know. I promised. But fiction is so safe, so easy to hide behind. It won’t happen again.

It was a Sunday afternoon when I became really alarmed. My vigil in the wood had lasted three days (sleeping in my car: extremely uncomfortable) and I was beginning to wonder if I’d overdramatised things rather. Mother and Father had gone out on some interminable Sunday ramble in the car. (I sense that I haven’t really done my parents justice — not that they’re all that interesting really — but they play no significant part in the following events.) Then Frank came round in his car — a Triumph Stag: pure Frank, that. There was some activity in the house. Frank appeared briefly in the sitting room with two suitcases. I scampered through the garden and peered round the corner of the house. Frank was rearranging luggage in the boot. I saw him take out a fishing rod and repack it. Then Louella appeared. She seemed quite calm. She said, “Have you left a note for them?”

Frank: “Yes, on the hall table.”

Louella: “What about William?”

Frank: “Oh, don’t worry about him. Ma and Pa will break the news.”

Reader, imagine how I felt.

They drove off. I knew where they were going. I went inside and read the note Frank had written to my parents. It went something like this.

Louella and I have gone away for a few days. We have fallen very much in love and want to think things over. Please break this to William as gently as possible. Back sometime next week.

Love, Frank.

The family have a small cottage on the west coast of Scotland. We have spent many summers there. I knew that was where Frank was heading. The fishing rod gave it away. Fly fishing is his great “passion.” He thinks it somehow both intellectual — respectable literature on the sport — and gentlemanly: Alec Douglas Home and the Queen Mother do it. I filled my car up with petrol and went to London. There I dropped in on a few friends and made some calls. Then, that night, I followed them north.

The family cottage — more of a house to be honest — lies off the main road near the village of A——. (Funny how this is meant to make it more realistic. It seems so obvious. Why not give the name. It’s Achranich, not far from Oban. I’m not interested in misleading you.) Behind the house is one of those typical Scottish hills, khaki-green, shaded with brown and purple, covered in a thick, moss-sprung grass. An energetic hike over this and you find one of the best stretches of Highland salmon-river in Scotland. That was why Frank brought his fishing rod. He can never resist it.

Picture the scene. Me, huddling chilled in a damp clump of bracken, exhausted after an overnight drive. Waiting for Frank to appear. And, sure enough, he does, after a late breakfast. (Porridge, kippers, toast and marmalade. That’s just a guess. How could I know what he’d had for breakfast?) He looks disgustingly pleased with himself as he strides up the hill with his rod and his bags and his tackle, passing — oh — within thirty yards of my hiding place. I keep still. After all, I know where he’s going.

Thirty minutes later I catch up with him. He’s at the big pool. The river hurtles and elbows its way down the hillside. It’s the colour of unmilked tea and is shallow, with a bed of rounded pebbles and stones. Except at one point. Here there is a cascade that froths into a large, deep, chill pool. A great angled slab of rock juts out into the pool, setting up eddies and deflecting currents. Beneath this the fish lurk. Stand on the lip of the cascade (thigh waders obligatory) leaning back against the nudge and pressure of the water, cast down into the pool below the rock and you can’t go wrong. Frank was positioned exactly so. Two small creaming waves where his green rubber waders broke the solid parabola of the falling water.

I enter the stream twenty yards above the slosh down. Frank can’t hear me because of the noise of the falling water. I stand behind him. I tap his shoulder. He looks round. His eyes widen in wordless surprise. He instinctively jerks back as though expecting a blow. It is enough. He loses his balance and, with a despairing, grabbing whirl of arms, is flipped over the edge into the pool. I don’t even wait to see what happens. Waders filled with water, heavy clothes sodden, freezing water. He’d go down like … like a stone.