William Boyd - Sweet Caress

Then she said she felt incredibly tired, kissed me goodnight, put on her pyjamas and left. Hanna, returning the next day, asked me, as soon as we found ourselves alone, if Constanze and I had slept together. I said yes, sort of.

‘She’s very aggressive in that way, Constanze,’ Hanna said, thoughtfully, unperturbed. ‘Because we — you and me — have known each other in Berlin she wanted you — for herself.’

‘Well, she didn’t get me.’

Hanna then began to outline her plans. Mexico City was no longer on our route, it transpired — we were going to head down to Costa Rica instead and find somewhere to stay in San José. I let her chat on, half listening. Then Constanze joined us, kissing me affectionately, almost possessively, on the forehead — as an aunt would kiss a favourite niece — something she’d never done before. And I knew — at once — that I had to leave these two to their complex, unfathomable relationship and go back to London. There was nothing for me here any more — I was an adjunct, a toy, a spur for emotional skirmishes I had no desire to participate in. New York was over and the Hanna/Constanze voyage through Latin America was destined to end in some fraught crisis — I felt absolutely certain. It was time to discreetly make an exit; time to reposition my life on its old trajectory again.

I WOKE VERY EARLY those summer mornings in London — the dawn light seemed to arrive around 5 a.m. and, once more, for the hundredth time, sleep despatched, I resolved to replace my filmy flower-print curtains with something more opaque and tenebrous. I used to toss about under the sheet, punch the pillows, and try to go back to sleep but never with any success. So — it was tumble out of bed, haul on dressing gown, plod into kitchen, set kettle on stove, light gas ring beneath it and let the day begin.

I was living in Chelsea now, on the King’s Road, in a small flat on the top floor of a building halfway between the town hall and Paultons Square. Beneath me was a maisonette rented by the writer Wellbeck Faraday and his American wife, May, a sculptress, and beneath them was a shop, an ironmonger’s. The Faradays went to bed very late, always well after midnight, and loudly so. When I woke early I was careful to pad about in slippers or bare feet — not to wake them — because I liked the Faradays. They liked me too, I think, as they were always inviting me to dinner to meet their friends but I kept my distance to a certain extent, pleading pressure of work. They led a complicated life (who doesn’t?). May Faraday had a studio in Fulham and while she was out all day Wellbeck would receive visitors — mainly female. May used to ask me, when we were alone, if anyone came while she was out but I always pleaded ignorance. They had sublet the top-floor flat to me so were effectively my landlords and I wanted them to cherish me as the ideal tenant.

I sat quietly in my small kitchen and made myself a pot of tea and watched the sun begin to irradiate the tops of the plane trees on Dovehouse Green. I ate a slightly stale Bath bun that I found in the bread bin and returned to my bedroom to choose my outfit for the day. The Global-Photo-Watch office was in Shoe Lane off Fleet Street where the staff consisted solely of me and my secretary, Faith Postings, but, as I was deemed and titled the ‘manager’, I felt — for some perverse reason — that I should dress for the role and always tried to look smart. As my mother would say — you never know whom you might meet; always best to step off on the front foot — and many other homilies. This morning I selected a two-piece beige jumper suit in a ripple knit with a plain chocolate-coloured blouse with a bow at the neck. Cleve had insisted I had expenses for my clothing and so I’d taken him at his word. My cupboard was bulging but I felt a bit of a fraud: this wasn’t truly me, this ‘manager’.

I was still thinking that as I walked the ten minutes down the King’s Road towards Sloane Square Underground and took the train to Blackfriars. It was another ten-minute walk from there to the office. I was in before Faith and brewed up. She arrived promptly at 8.30, feigning shock to see me already at my desk, cup of tea on the go.

Faith Postings was a large ungainly girl from Bermondsey in her early twenties and a tireless and diligent worker. I think she rather worshipped me — nothing I could do would pre-empt her occasional outbursts of compliments. I’m sure it was my former life in New York that impressed her — given that I wasn’t much older than her, anyway — and that I had a career as a photographer. Or it may even have been the new stylish clothes I wore. In any event, she was steadily eroding her South London accent to make it conform more with mine but I liked her for her dedication to me, and by extension to GPW. I was only six years older than her, yet I felt I occupied not so much a sisterly as a near-maternal role in her life, much to my vague disquiet. She would do anything Aunt Amory asked of her, I knew.

Faith made herself a cup of tea and sat down at her desk, by the door across the room from mine, and flicked through her jotting pad.

‘Oh yes. After you left last night, Mr Mosley’s office called: they’ll accept an interview on Thursday week.’

This was most intriguing news. ‘Where do they suggest? Black House? It’s not far from me.’ Oswald Mosley’s headquarters were in Chelsea, in a former teacher training college.

‘To be confirmed. They said a hotel would be more suitable, perhaps.’

‘Send a teleprint to New York.’

The pride and joy of the GPW office — our Delphic Oracle, as I called it — was the Creed Teleprinter Mark II that stood on its own table in a corner. From time to time it would click into life and spew out a thin tape of paper with, miraculously, alphanumeric lettering on it. I had no idea who actually sent the instructions written on the tape — surely not Cleve himself — as they were never signed, but the Creed Teleprinter’s messages organised the business of our daily round. ‘Photo reqd of Dk and Dchess of Yrk’; ‘Arrange intrvw with Irene Ravenal’; ‘Supply team selections of FA Cup finalists’. And so on.

Yesterday the injunction had come: ‘Intrvw with Oswald Mosley soonest.’ Faith duly made the telephone call to the British Union of Fascists. While our petition was being considered — we were an American magazine, it always impressed — another quirkier message arrived: ‘BUF to march through East End. Investigate. Need photogs rgnt.’

What march? I made a few telephone calls to some of the journalists we employed but none of them had heard of any proposed fascist march. No marches or rallies were planned at all, as far as I could discover. I wasn’t surprised as Mosley’s BUF had suffered humiliating public defeats over the disruption of their rallies at Leicester, Hull and Newcastle in the previous year. Membership was dropping; they hadn’t stood in last year’s general election, so somebody in New York seemed to know more than we did in London. Therefore, clearly we needed better intelligence. I looked across the room at Faith Postings, Bermondsey girl, as she lit a cigarette.

‘What is it, Miss Clay?’

‘Grab your hat and coat. You’re going to join the British Union of Fascists.’

At lunchtime, feeling hungry, Faith having been gone a couple of hours, I walked down Shoe Lane to Fleet Street looking for a pie shop or a chop house. In the end I went to a Sandy’s Sandwich Bar and bought a chicken and ham croquette and a glass of milk and sat at a counter in the window watching the bustle of Fleet Street and wondering what news Faith would bring back with her.