William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘Hello, hello,’ I said, breezily. ‘What a lovely surprise. How did you track me down?’

I remember the four days we spent together as vividly as if they had taken place last week. Sholto handed me his bouquet, we shook hands and he asked me to dinner. I said I’d be delighted. He was staying at a small hotel in the rue de l’Université, the Hotel Printemps, aptly enough — I said I would meet him there at seven o’clock.

I went back home, to Charbonneau’s flat, bathed and selected my clothes with some care. I wore a black dull-surfaced silk dress with a stamped motif of acorns and cherries and a sequinned collar — stylish but unflashy. Not too much make-up. I felt like a sixteen-year-old going to her first dance. Despite the many signs of Charbonneau all around me in the apartment I managed to banish all thoughts of him from my mind — tonight I was a single woman, I told myself.

Sholto took me to Voisin in the rue Saint-Honoré. It was expensive, even for post-war Paris, and he insisted we eat as well as we could. We had foie gras, boeuf en daube , cheese, and a soufflé Monte Cristo. Sholto smoked three cigarettes to my one. He was one of those smokers for whom the act of smoking is as natural as breathing — he lit and smoked cigarettes with the same unconcern as he would scratch his chin or run his hand through his hair.

We told each other something of ourselves. His important news was that he was recently divorced. He had married too young, he said (he was two years older than me), and he had one child, a son, Andrew, aged sixteen, at a boarding school in Scotland. I asked him what his job was, now his soldiering was over, and he said he was a farmer. He had a large farm on the west coast of Scotland, between Oban and Mallaig, if I was familiar with those towns and that part of Scotland. I said I wasn’t. I told him about my family — he knew who Dido was, had heard of her — and about Xan and his death in Normandy. I didn’t ask him much about his war, about what he and his commandos had got up to before I came across them in the park in Wesel. I don’t think he wanted to tell me, in any event: he steered clear of military matters.

This was what we talked about as we dined. Under the surface — and I know he felt the same — was a surging boiling current of mutual attraction. Let’s call it lust. But we chatted away and smiled, smoked countless cigarettes and ached for each other.

Sholto had fine hair, almost blue-black, parted at the side, which he tried to hold in place with some potent oil but which, under the lights of the restaurant, lost its grip halfway through the meal, and fell, his forelock hanging over his brow. He would sweep it back — a particular gesture I came to associate with him — and seconds later it would fall again.

Sholto Farr. Alexandria, 1943.

He was something of a dandy, I noticed — like Cleve, unlike Charbonneau. His shirt was tailored — you can always tell by the set of the collar — as bespoke as his suit. His maroon silk tie had a neat hard knot the size of a hazelnut, as if pulled tight by pliers. He had a tiny ruby jewel of a razor nick on his jaw by his left ear. His eyes were a very pale blue-grey (I think I’ve told you that already). For a Scotsman he had no trace of a Scottish accent.

I remember, when he dropped me back at Charbonneau’s, I almost gave in and I nearly said, do you want to come up for a drink? I resisted, somehow. I wanted him but I didn’t want him in Charbonneau’s bed. He said goodnight, kissed my cheek — just a brush of his lips — said how much he’d enjoyed the evening and was I free for lunch tomorrow. I said that, as it happened, my lunch appointment had been cancelled, luckily, and that I was able to meet him, that would be lovely. Weber at one? Perfect.

I remember we ate ice cream at Weber — it was famous for its ice cream. By now we had pretty much run out of conversation and the subtext to our second Parisian encounter was almost grotesquely obvious. We weren’t exactly panting at each other with our tongues hanging out but we might as well have been.

We ordered coffee and brandy. We ordered more coffee and brandy. I couldn’t think of anything to say and, clearly, neither could he. So we sat there, smoking our cigarettes, drinking coffee and brandy, smiling stupidly at each other.

‘What really brought you to Paris?’ I said finally, something I hadn’t in fact asked him. ‘“On business” isn’t working, I’m afraid.’

‘I came to Paris to find you,’ he said simply, as if it was self-evident.

‘Oh. Right. . Was it difficult?’

‘No. Surprisingly easy. I remembered everything you said to me at that station in Holland. Your name, that you were a photographer, that you worked for Global-Photo-Watch , that you had an office in Paris. The receptionist at my hotel looked you up in the phonebook and there you were: Agence GPW , 12 bis rue Monsieur, Septième.’

‘Well. Good thing I told you what my job was.’

‘Very fortunate.’

‘Of course I could have moved. Changed jobs.’

‘I would have found you, one way or another.’

I felt tears in my eyes at this — possibly the most romantic words that had ever been said to me.

‘Good.’

He took my hand and looked at my fingers for a moment. ‘My hotel is very small,’ he said. ‘So, I went to the trouble of booking a room at the Crillon.’ Now he glanced up. ‘I think a big hotel — lots of coming and going — is better. More discreet. Don’t you?’

‘What a good idea,’ I said. ‘Shall we go there now?’

I remember travelling up in the lift to the third floor where our room was. We had no luggage, of course (it was being ‘sent on’ from the airport at Le Bourget, Sholto improvised, when we checked in). The lift operator was a small, thin, frail old man who kept his head down, looking at his shiny shoes. He had no doubt seen many a luggage-less couple to their room in the Crillon of an afternoon.

I whispered in Sholto’s ear. ‘There’s something you should know,’ I said. ‘Before.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t have children.’

‘Lucky you.’

*

THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977

I had a postcard from Greer McLennan this morning, from Paris — a view of the Jardin des Tuileries. ‘I demand to know the full Paris story on return!’ she had written.

*

Sholto and I spent four days together that March in Paris, most of the time in our big room at the Crillon that looked out on to the place de la Concorde, wandering out to eat from time to time, then running back to the hotel, unable to restrain ourselves, sexually. But then Sholto had to return to London and, anyway, Charbonneau was due back from Algiers.

‘What’re we going to do?’ Sholto said. ‘I know it’s more complicated for you.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. It may take a little time but I’ll work something out.’

‘Let me know if you need me and I’ll just come over.’

It’s funny how, sometimes, one can be so convinced, so utterly certain, about something as entirely fickle as strong emotion. There was an instant, unspoken mutual trust between us, as if we’d known each other for forty years, not four days.

I may have been certain about Sholto but I was in a state of nerves, worried about how I’d feel and act once Charbonneau was back. Obligingly, the day after Sholto left, my body gave me a severe cold so that when Charbonneau returned, I was in bed, coughing and sniffling, my bones aching, my nose rubbed raw, red and running — most unsightly.