William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘That would be a start,’ I said. ‘Sorry, not funny.’

We were lying in my bed drinking Scotch and soda. We had made love. It was lunchtime.

‘She can never know you’re in the city,’ he said. ‘You can’t imagine the consequences.’

‘All right,’ I said, reaching for a cigarette. ‘Got the message.’ I didn’t want to talk about Frances Moss Finzi.

Cleve found a lighter and lit my cigarette and then lit his own.

‘We just have to be very careful, Amory. Very.’

‘Of course. I don’t want to jeopardise your happy marriage.’

He seemed to relax when I said this, as if I were being serious.

‘But you’re here and you’re well and we’re together, that’s the main thing.’

He held me and kissed me and I felt the familiar lung-inflation, the headspin. He had that effect on me, Cleve. He still moved and disturbed me, whatever guilt he was experiencing, or trying to assuage, or fooling himself, or however irritated or dissatisfied I was at his self-regarding complacency. I could see him for what he was but couldn’t resist him. Or at least I couldn’t be bothered resisting him, to be more precise. I didn’t care: I was in that one-day-at-a-time mode. I owed it to myself, I thought, as recompense for all I’d suffered since that awful day at the Maroon Street Riot. If I wasn’t entirely happy, I was at least not entirely unhappy, and that state of affairs wasn’t to be disparaged.

The Pearl Harbor cataclysm had altered everything, instantly, like a vast weather system sweeping across the country. Pressure changed, social barometers went crazily awry. In New York I felt it was as if we were suddenly instructed to become serious and responsible; the long endless vacation was over, duty was calling, the conflicted world had come knocking at our door. It was as if the nation collectively grew up and assumed adulthood overnight.

I had exultant letters from my mother and Dido. At last, at last! What took you so long? From my point of view — however happy I was at the change in the military balance of power — the major effect of Japan’s surprise attack on the American fleet in Hawaii was that it brought Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau back into my life.

I was in my apartment, one Saturday afternoon in January 1942, when the telephone rang.

‘Amory Clay?’

‘Yes, speaking.’

‘I don’t believe it! Putain! ’

‘Who is this?’

‘Who do you think? Charbonneau!’

In honour of our first dinner together we agreed to meet again at the Savoy-Plaza the following evening. I was deliberately early and sat in the lobby waiting for him, in a good mood, anticipating. Perhaps Charbonneau was what I really needed, now — a true friend.

A tall thin man with a moustache and an unusual military uniform came in through the revolving doors and looked around. Was it? Yes! Charbonneau, a soldier — impossible. He saw me and strode over, arms wide. We embraced then he took my hand and ducked his head over it, not kissing it, in that formal, symbolic French manner. Then he embraced me again and I felt him press himself against me in an overfamiliar way.

I pushed him off.

‘Steady on!’

‘You look beautiful.’

‘You look bizarre.’

‘I’m a captain in the Free French forces. You should salute me.’ He stepped back and assessed me, up and down, like a farmer inspecting livestock.

‘Yes. Your hair is shorter,’ he said. ‘And you’ve lost weight.’

‘So have you.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve been ill — for quite a long time. But now I’m better.’

‘And I’ve been running away from Nazis.’

We walked into the dining room. Charbonneau didn’t like the table we had been given so we tried another two until he was finally happy. He then ordered a bottle of champagne and a bottle of Château Duhart-Milon 1934 to be decanted, ready for the main course.

He raised his goblet of champagne to me and smiled.

‘I feel I’m alive again, Amory. As if nothing has happened since the last time we were sitting here.’

We both savoured the irony. The century was galloping away without us.

Then he told me about the fall of France, the flight from Paris to Bordeaux where the interim government had established its temporary capital for a couple of weeks. After the Armistice, he had thought about staying on in France but had decided it was better to trust his luck abroad, so he headed for Spain and then Portugal.

‘It’s an interesting city, Lisbon,’ he said, musingly. ‘I’ll take you there one day.’

In early 1941 he had made his way to London — by seaplane — to join de Gaulle’s government in exile, the Forces Françaises Libres.

‘Yes, and when I was in London I came looking for you,’ he said. ‘I went to your little flat. All closed. No Amory.’

‘I was already over here, in New York.’

He leant back. ‘And here we both are in New York. Now. Isn’t life very strange?’

‘Your uniform doesn’t fit you very well.’

‘We are a very poor army, the Free French. But they think that if I wear a uniform I will be taken more seriously. I borrowed this uniform. Even these medals are borrowed.’ He pointed at the row of medal ribbons over his left breast-pocket. Then he looked rueful and downed his champagne in one gulp. ‘They don’t like us Frenchies in Washington. Roosevelt hates de Gaulle. Churchill hates de Gaulle. My compatriots don’t understand it. Aren’t we allies? But no.’ He poured more champagne. ‘This American civil servant in the State Department said to me: de Gaulle is just a brigadier in the French army, why should we give him all this money, all this support?’ He frowned. ‘It’s a real problem, I tell you, Amory, ma puce. ’

Our meal arrived, another repeat: rare steaks with a tomato salad. Charbonneau poured the Duhart-Milon.

‘American meat, French wine, beautiful English girl. The world is at war but life is good.’

We clinked glasses and drank a mouthful. Then he took my hand. I knew what was coming next.

‘I feel it is our fate, our destiny,’ he said, lowering his voice and looking me in the eyes, ‘to meet like this. I want to spend the rest of the night with you. I don’t want to tell you stupid romantic things, talking for hours in this kind of rubbish talk. I respect you too much, I tell you straight, Amory, en toute franchise. ’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’ He seemed genuinely annoyed. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

‘Nothing. But I’m in love with somebody else.’

He muttered to himself in French, then sighed and looked at me.

‘I will get you one day, Amory. You wait and see.’

I had to laugh.

‘Eat your steak, mon capitaine ,’ I said. ‘It’s getting cold.’

I remember exactly when I heard the news about Pearl Harbor. I was in a small deli on 6th Avenue having a late lunch, eating a meat-loaf sandwich with a Dr Pepper to wash it down. I was acquiring American tastes. It was Sunday morning in Hawaii and the first baffled news reports were coming in over the radio to the East Coast. The whole delicatessen fell silent and we looked at the radio on the counter as if it were some demonic instrument of propaganda.

‘John Jack Anthony!’ somebody shouted at the back of the room — an oath I’d never heard uttered before or since. ‘What the heck’s gonna happen now?’

I remember Dido coming to New York towards the end of 1941 to play in a recital at Carnegie Hall — part of a big pro-British, join-our-war push. There was a programme of English music: Elgar, Delius, Moxon, Vaughan Williams.

Dido and I went to the 21 Club after her recital. The room stood and applauded as she entered — twenty-seven years old, my little sister, plucky, pale, beautiful, radiating self-assurance as she blew kisses and bowed gently as the acclaim washed over her. A new Britannia. I took a few steps back from the limelight.