William Boyd - Sweet Caress

One evening three months after I’d arrived he was waiting in the marbled lobby as I left a meeting. He had promised me a dinner when I came to New York, hadn’t he? Was I free tonight, by any chance?

*

Cleve stood naked at the window looking out at the yard through a thin gap in the muslin curtains.

‘What kind of tree is that?’ he asked without looking round. ‘I see them everywhere in the Village.’

‘It’s an ailanthus. Commonly called “tree of heaven”.’ I liked this rear view of Cleve: the V of his torso, the deep cleft in his small buttocks, his long thighs. ‘If you stand there much longer, however, Mrs Cisneros will have a heart attack.’ Mrs Cisneros lived across the yard, a widow. I sat up in bed, letting the sheet fall from my breasts and reached for my pack of Pall Malls on the bedside table.

Cleve turned and I saw that his penis was thickening, springy. His penis was smaller than Lockwood’s, though thicker and more heavy-headed; the glans seemed distinctly bigger (no foreskin, of course) — clearly shaped. It was like a medieval soldier’s helmet, called a sallet — I once told him, to his surprise — worn most commonly by archers. He was always puzzled by my pieces of arcane knowledge, my need to know the exact names of things. It seemed vaguely to annoy him, in the same way as it had my mother. He leant back against the window frame, and crossed his arms.

‘How do you know about that? About the goddam tree?’

‘I told you, I like to know the names of things. I don’t just want it to be some anonymous “tree” in my backyard. I want to know what it’s called. Someone took the trouble to differentiate, name and classify that tree. A “tree” doesn’t do it justice.’ I lit my cigarette. Cleve was enjoying standing there, looking at me, listening to me, candidly displaying his potency. I crossed my legs under the sheet and rested my elbows on my knees, inclining my back so that my breasts hung forward, free. Lockwood liked me to do that — it always stirred him. Cleve’s eyes moved here and there.

‘The ailanthus is from China, originally,’ I said, goading him with more arcana. ‘It thrives in poor soil with little care. Like me.’

‘Ah. Hard-done-by girl.’ He came over to the bed. I gripped him.

‘Hungry?’ he asked.

‘I told you; I thrive in poor soil.’

Cleve left at six, saying he had to be sure he was back in Connecticut for dinner, home with his family, I knew, his wife, Frances, and his two young sons, Harry and Link. After he’d gone I made another gin cocktail and picked up my book. However, I felt my new-year melancholia returning. Stop it, I told myself, buck up: I was having a passionate affair with a fascinating man and I was earning my living, making more money than I’d done in my life, as a professional photographer in New York City — what was so depressing about that? But I was Cleveland Finzi’s mistress, the other, sour voice in my head told me; I was only with him when it was safe and secret. And it was true — when he was with me everything was grand; when he wasn’t, life returned to the duller, demeaning business of waiting until the coast was clear and no one would suspect.

I had related as much to him — the plaint of every secret lover since adultery began — and he said he understood, but, for various reasons, he had to be very careful, very careful indeed. What could I say? I had entered the ‘deal’ knowingly. But sometimes two weeks or more would go by before he could snatch a night or an afternoon with me. I had been in New York for well over a year now; Cleve and I had been lovers for slightly less. I was happier than I had ever been and at the same time more discontented. My world was awry — maybe you just weren’t cut out to be a mistress, my sour voice whispered at me.

‘Happy 1934,’ Phil Adler hailed me as I came into his office. He was a lean young man in his early thirties with rimless spectacles and short wiry hair. We argued a lot, good-naturedly, principally about photography.

‘You’re from Europe,’ he said, waving me into a chair opposite him.

‘So I’m told,’ I said, sitting down.

‘Ever heard of a French writer called. .’ He looked at his notes in front of him. ‘Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau?’

‘No.’

‘Well you’re going to take his photograph this afternoon.’

Charbonneau was a mid-ranking diplomat at the French consulate — Phil told me, reading from his notes — who also wrote novels. His third novel, Le trac , had just been published in the US as Stage Fright (Steiner & Lamm) and had been very well received with excellent reviews in The Times , the Post , the New Masses, Esquire , the Atlantic Monthly — its little splash had attracted GPW’ s attention.

‘Et cetera, et cetera. Culture can be news too,’ Phil said feigning a yawn. ‘You know: foreign literary star, strong light and shade, cigarette poised near face, backlit smoke, Gallic charm.’

‘I think I can manage it.’

This Charbonneau lived in a serviced apartment off Columbus Circle. He was a solid chunky mess of a man with rumpled clothes — there were food stains on his tie — and a tousled mass of curly dark hair. He had a very heavy beard, his jaws and chin dark with incipient stubble, and a big nose and full lips. There was really nothing attractive about him at all but, mystifyingly, he gave off an aura of facetious charm as if everything he saw around him — including the people he encountered — amused him in some secret way. He spoke good English with a strong French accent.

He looked at me in surprise when he opened the door. ‘Who are you?’ he said.

I held up my camera. ‘The photographer.’

He smiled. ‘I was expecting a man. A mister photographer.’

‘Well, I am not Mister Photographer.’

‘But you are meant to come tomorrow.’

‘But I am here today.’

He let me in and hurried off to put on a clean tie, at my suggestion. His sitting room had no bookshelves but was full of books stacked in random piles like bulky stalagmites growing towards the ceiling. I pulled down the blind, rigged my spotlight at his work table and took the standard portrait shot in strong chiaroscuro but with no smoking cigarette — rookie or not, even I had my standards — but with chin propped in palm, index finger extended to cheekbone. It was all over in half an hour. We chatted about Berlin, where he had recently been posted.

‘What do you think about the new chancellor?’ I asked.

‘Crazy, no? Un fou. ’

I said I hadn’t paid much attention but had seen enough Nazis in the few weeks I was in Berlin to last me a lifetime.

As we nattered on, Charbonneau offered me one of his yellow French cigarettes. I declined and he lit my Pall Mall. We stood and smoked for a moment or two, then he said, ‘Now I suppose you expect me to ask you for dinner.’

I showed him my engagement ring. It was Cleve’s idea for me to wear it — bought in a dime-store. The story was that I was engaged to a young man in England; it pre-empted many problems at work with my unmarried male colleagues and explained my absences at parties and after-work get-togethers. It worked — Charbonneau held up his hands in mock apology.

‘I never saw it. I yield to my rival.’

‘On second thoughts — thank you very much. I accept.’

‘Second thoughts — don’t you find they’re often the best ones?’

What made me accept Charbonneau’s invitation? I think it was a product of my lurking discontent. Why should I go home to Washington Square South for another lonely night with my gin, my radio and my book? I found Charbonneau amusing and suspected he’d be good company — I owed it to myself.