William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘What if Frances hears about it?’

‘It doesn’t matter any more.’

‘What’s changed?’

‘Come and see me. I’ll explain.’

We met the following day at GPW’s offices in Midtown. I passed Phil Adler in the corridor on the way to Cleve’s office. He had a wax paper cup of water in his hand and he stopped so abruptly on seeing me that it slopped over the rim and splattered on to the floor.

‘Amory! You’re back. My God! Call me, we have to get together.’ He kissed me on the cheek. ‘This is great.’

‘Back after a fashion,’ I said. ‘But I’ll call you.’

Cleve sat me down across from his desk and we both lit cigarettes. I was still in Charbonneau mood and found that I could look at Cleve objectively with no miasma of emotion blurring the view. He was wearing mauve braces — suspenders — over his pale blue shirt and his cerise tie was loosened at the neck. He looked every square inch the handsome magazine editor in his corner office but I wasn’t quite so beguiled by it in the way I used to be. It struck me that this was what pleased and satisfied Cleve about his life and it explained why he would never leave Frances. It would be too inconvenient, too hard and awkward to maintain the image, otherwise. And of course I was part of that perfect big glossy picture, also. Thank you, Jean-Baptiste. I was seeing Cleveland Finzi plain.

‘What’s going on, Cleve?’

‘We’re reopening the London office.’

‘Really?’

‘And of course I want you to run it again.’

‘Why?’

‘There are hundreds of thousands of American servicemen in England. Pouring in. Soldiers, sailors, airmen. We’re missing out — Collier’s, Life, Saturday Evening Post — everyone is running over there. I put it to the board — they agreed we should reopen. You’ve done the job before; you have all the contacts. We can steal a march.’

I sat there in silence for a few seconds then tapped the ash off my cigarette. I knew at once I was going to say yes but I wanted him to earn it.

‘I like it here,’ I said. ‘And I’ll miss you.’

‘I’ll be coming over all the time. And when I’m over it’ll be different — better. No ducking and diving, none of this secret-agent stuff.’

‘But my apartment, American Mode— ’

‘I’ll take care of everything. Seventy-five pounds a month, plus expenses.’

I thought to myself: Diana Vreeland is on $500 a month and she’s the fashion editor of Bazaar.

‘Can I think about it?’

‘No. Absolutely no. It has to be you. I can’t send anybody else.’

‘When would I have to leave?’

‘Yesterday.’

Charbonneau poured himself another glass of wine, and then emptied the bottle at my invitation.

‘Let’s have another,’ he said. ‘I leave chiant DC and I come here to New York to see you — and life has some meaning, at last. It makes me want to get drunk. Like a fish.’

‘As drunk as a fish — I like that. But don’t get too drunk. We want to enjoy our last night together.’

He actually spluttered, then dabbed at his chin with his napkin and set his glass down carefully.

‘What are you saying to me, Amory?’

‘I’m going back to London. I’ve got a new job. Sorry to bring you the bad news on our lovely evening.’

‘Well, not so bad.’ He smiled, his big, tigerish, pleased-with-himself smile. ‘One reason I’m drinking so much is that I didn’t know how to tell you my own news.’

‘Which is?’

‘I’m going back to London, also.’

‘FLIGHT LIEUTENANT CLAY, PLEASE,’ I said.

‘Ah, yes. . Yes, Miss, we’re expecting you. And the name of the organisation again? If you don’t mind?’

‘ Global-Photo-Watch. It’s an American magazine.’

I was in the adjutant’s office of RAF Cawston in Norfolk. A flight sergeant was checking the appointment diary and collating the entry with my identity papers and letters of introduction. All seemed well.

‘I’ll drive you out there, Miss,’ he said. ‘Can I give you a hand with the cameras?’

‘No, no. I’m fine thanks.’

We stepped outside and he showed me into an olive-green staff car and we sped off through the base, past low hangars, with grass growing on their roofs, and anti-aircraft gun emplacements dotted here and there, towards distant aeroplanes parked by a long thin runway.

‘Thought you’d be more interested in the Yanks next door,’ the flight sergeant said.

‘I’m going there tomorrow.’

‘You’ll eat well, that’s for sure. Oh, yes sirree.’ He went on in the same envious culinary vein comparing what was available in the sergeants’ mess in RAF Cawston with the gourmet feast of ‘amazing grub’ served up at USAF Gressenhall. ‘It’s a different world, Miss, I tell you.’

I let him chat on, not telling him of my familiarity with American ‘grub’, preoccupied with the prospect of seeing Xan after all this time. I felt I’d missed a whole chapter of his life. Two chapters. The diffident schoolboy and guinea-pig breeder I knew best had gone to Oxford, published a book of poetry and was now a fighter pilot. How did these drastic changes happen in life? Then a moment’s thought told me that it happens all the time. Time is a racehorse, eating up the furlongs as it gallops towards the finish line. Look away for a moment, be preoccupied for a moment, and then imagine what has passed you by.

We pulled up at a parked Typhoon fighter plane, surrounded by a thick six-foot semicircular glacis of sandbags. The Typhoon was big and bulky for a single-seater aircraft, canted steeply back on its solid-looking undercarriage, and it had a gaping intake — like a mouth — under the three-bladed propeller. Xan stood beside it, one hand in a pocket, watching us arrive, smoking a cigarette. He was wearing his sheepskin jacket and his flying suit, as requested. He seemed taller and thinner since the last time we’d seen each other at Beckburrow. We embraced. I stepped back and looked him up and down.

‘Well, well, Marjorie — who would’ve thought.’

He laughed and just for a second I saw the little boy in him again.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, wagging his finger at me. ‘When I saw the request, “Miss A. Clay of Global-Photo-something-or-other” wanting to take my photograph, I did smell a rat.’

‘I just wanted to see you,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to take pictures of all these American airmen and their bombers tomorrow so I thought I’d sneak in a visit to my little brother.’

I made him stand by his Typhoon, leaning on the wing by his open cockpit, as if he were about to climb into it and take off on a mission, and pretended to take photos of him — there was no film in my camera — for the benefit of the flight sergeant from the adjutant’s office who was standing looking on, approvingly.

I wandered round the aeroplane. A big solid machine — like a tank with wings, it had remarkable heft, not like the other fighters, the Spitfires or the Hurricanes. This was a beast.

‘What kind of plane is this?’ I asked.

‘A Typhoon.’

‘I know that, silly. What kind of Typhoon?’

‘A Hawker Typhoon Mark Ib. It can fire rockets.’

‘Why is it painted with these black and white stripes?’

‘I’m not allowed to tell.’

‘Something to do with the invasion?’

‘Shall we go to the mess? I’ve got a present for you.’

We were driven to the officers’ mess, an old rectory outside the base perimeter. The drawing room looked on to a wild garden with an unmown tennis court. Outside I could hear a cuckoo calling in the woods beyond the pink-brick boundary wall.