William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked, and removed the ruler with a wince. ‘Ouch.’

She shut the door and we both lit a cigarette and, clearing away piles of scores, sat down on the sofa at the end of the room.

‘Does Mother know you smoke?’

‘God, no. Xan steals her cigarettes for me. Madame Duplessis smokes so we’re safe in here.’ She looked shrewdly at me. ‘Everything all right, Ames?’

‘No.’ I told her about the Beau Monde fiasco.

‘Stay here for a few days. Do. Have a holiday.’

‘I’ve got to earn some money.’

‘Mother says we’re poor, now. Papa’s hospital is costing a fortune. We may have to sell Beckburrow, she says.’

I tried to take in these two pieces of news. Poor. Selling.

‘My God, how awful. . How is Papa?’

‘He seems fine, pretty much. When he’s awake, that is.’

‘What about my legacy from Aunt Audrey? Can’t we use it for Papa?’

‘It was only for your education, Mother says.’

‘I should have gone to Oxford. I knew it.’

Peggy pursed her lips, looking thoughtful. ‘Once I start doing concerts and recitals we’ll be fine. I can begin playing professionally next year, Peregrine says.’

‘Who’s Peregrine?’

‘Peregrine Moxon, the composer.’

‘Oh, yes.’ I’d heard of Moxon. ‘Does he really let you call him Peregrine?’

‘He insists on it.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘He’s a visiting professor at the Royal Academy. I’ve rather become his protégée. .’ She stood, went to the stove, lifted the lid and dropped in her cigarette butt. Fourteen going on twenty-four, I decided.

‘Staying for tea?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Then I’d better get back to London. Try and resuscitate the corpse that is my career.’

We walked across the lawn to the house, arm in arm. I felt a kind of panic sluice through me, knowing that Beckburrow might have to be sold, feeling — illogically — that it was somehow my fault, that I was in some way enmeshed and inculpated in my father’s illness and the price we would all have to pay.

‘We’ll be all right, won’t we, Pegs?’

‘Oh, yes. We just have to get through this year. Before I start earning.’

Ridiculous, I thought as we entered the house, to put your trust in your fourteen-year-old sister, musical prodigy or not. I had to do something.

Greville took me out to dinner at Antonio’s, an Italian restaurant on the Brompton Road that we both liked. We ordered vitello al limone and a bottle of Valpolicella.

‘I threw my weight around,’ Greville reported. ‘The Illustrated and the Modern Messenger will give you work, but it has to be strictly anonymous.’

‘That’s hardly going to help my reputation.’

‘At least it’s money. Bruno’s going back to Paris for a week. You could work for me while he’s away.’

‘Dribs and drabs,’ I said. ‘My rent’s going up. And we may have to sell Beckburrow.’

‘You can always move in with me, my dear, as long as you don’t try to seduce me again.’

‘Ha-ha. Well, thank you. I may have to. But I’m going backwards, don’t you see? How am I meant to make my way like this? How can I even make the most modest living? It’s impossible.’

Greville topped up our glasses to the brim, nodding to himself, as he thought.

‘What you need to do is change the way the world sees you.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course,’ I said with perhaps too heavy sarcasm. ‘Easy.’

He was still thinking and hadn’t noticed. ‘You need to become. . notorious. Disgraceful — even better.’

‘Take more photos like Veronica Presser.’

‘No, no. Something far more outrageous. You need a scandal.’

‘A scandal? How do I create a scandal?’

He smiled. He was pleased with his idea, I could tell.

‘If I were you, darling, I’d go to Berlin.’

*

THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977

I stood and looked at the boxes that I’d lugged down from the attic. Five cardboard cartons filled with other boxes and old manila envelopes, dozens and dozens of them. Prints, negatives, Kodachrome slides — the photographic record of my life, all that I’d managed to hold on to. Some of the boxes were damp and mildewed, others wore layers of ancient dust. Was it worth it, I asked myself? Was it worth trying to sort this lot out in the time I had left, however long that might be? I picked a few boxes up at random and saw one that had a scribbled address on the front: 32b Jäger-Strasse, Berlin 2. I lifted the lid. It was empty.

‘IT SEEMS EXTREMELY RESPECTABLE,’ I remarked to Rainer. ‘Very sophisticated.’

Rainer looked at his watch.

‘We have to wait until midnight.’ He smiled, showing his small, perfectly white teeth. ‘Then the fun is starting.’

We were sitting in a booth at the rear of the Iguana-Club somewhere in North Berlin. We had crossed Oranienburger-Strasse and I had seen a sign for the Stettiner station but otherwise I had yet to get my proper bearings in this city, the third largest in the world, so Berliners kept reminding me. I sipped at my drink and waited for midnight to arrive. In the meantime there was a small jazz band on a semicircular stage playing ‘It Happened in Monterey’. South of the border, I thought, that’s where I want to be, somewhere louche and very, very indiscreet. A few couples danced but without real enthusiasm, it seemed to me, as if the clientele were waiting for some signal to be given so they could really begin to enjoy themselves. Almost all the men were in evening dress with white ties.

Rainer offered me a cigarette and lit it for me. Rainer Nagel was his full name and he was an old friend of Greville. I wondered how they had come to know each other — and how well — but Rainer gave nothing away. He was a small stocky man, with a square face — handsome in a fit, muscular way — but he had an agitated fussy manner as if he were constantly trying to keep his energy levels under control, always patting his pockets, tapping ash off his cigarette, checking the knot of his tie. I had asked him what he did and he said, ‘Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. A bit of buying, a bit of selling.’ He spoke excellent English and was almost over-polite.

Now he snapped his fingers to attract a waiter’s attention and, when the man came over, he whispered in his ear, for a good minute, it seemed. I was wearing a black crêpe dress with a velvet collar and a fur stole, also black. I had pinned up my hair under a felt cloche hat with a small ultramarine feather, the aim being to look both smart and unobtrusive. When Rainer had collected me at my hotel — the Silesia Hospiz, on Prenzel-Strasse, near Alexanderplatz — he had said, ‘You look very à la mode, Amory,’ with a kind of charming insincerity that almost made me laugh. I wondered if Rainer was a ‘queen’ like Greville, one of the many Schwulen that you could see all over the city, if you looked hard. I didn’t think so, somehow, but I could hardly trust my intuition given how badly it had failed me with Greville.

At midnight, the band took a short break and I noticed a crowd of men and women heading for the lavatories that were reached by a corridor leading off the main club-room by the bar, indicated by an electric sign saying ‘ Klosett ’. Rainer glanced around the room as it slowly emptied — this was odd, I thought, as I knew that clubs in Berlin stayed open until three in the morning. Then the band returned and began playing again, though it was apparent that no one was much interested in dancing any more. Waiters began to clear the unoccupied tables.

‘Are they closing?’ I asked.