William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘Got him!’ he shouted.

‘What are you doing, you madman!’ I yelled at him. Mrs Dalmire had now appeared at the door.

‘A fucking fly,’ Sholto said. ‘Buzzing around, driving me insane.’

He broke the gun and took out the spent cartridges and stood up, one hand on the desk top for support. He was falling-over drunk.

‘No need to make so much fuss, ladies,’ he said and sank to his knees and vomited all over the parquet.

I remember Annie and Blythe coming to me one evening as I was watching television in the back parlour where we kept the set.

‘What’s wrong with Papa?’ Annie said, looking alarmed.

‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘If there’s nothing wrong why is he lying on the front lawn in his underpants?’ Blythe said, dispassionately.

I remember going to Glasgow to see Jock Edie and asking his advice.

‘It’s very simple,’ Jock said. ‘And I’ve told him to his face. If he doesn’t stop drinking and smoking he’s going to die. Very soon, I’m sorry to say.’

‘But why’s he doing this — to himself, to us?’

Jock gently touched his fingertips together several times as he thought further.

‘I think it was something that happened in the war. At the end, in ’45.’

‘He never talks about it. He refuses.’

‘It was something Frank Dunn said, in passing. I just picked up on it. “Sholto’s massacre”, is what he said. A throwaway remark. You should ask Frank about it.’

I remember in fact I asked Sholto, myself. It was quite late at night and we were in the television room. He’d had a couple of large whiskies and was like his old sharp observant self commenting on something we’d seen on the news — the Bay of Pigs invasion: war was in the air so it seemed a good moment, the perfect cue. There was a fire going and it was warm, the curtains drawn. I lit a cigarette and gathered myself.

‘What happened in the war, darling? To you, I mean?’

The question took him aback. He blinked as he thought how to reply and opted for insouciance.

‘Quite a lot. I had rather a busy time of it, from 1942 onwards.’

‘Was it something that happened in Wesel? When we met up.’

The name Wesel seemed to jolt him, physically.

‘Oh, Wesel. Jesus. Yes, that was. .’ He searched for the words. ‘A fucking nightmare.’

I remembered coming across him and his men, sitting silently around the shattered bandstand; remembered their faces, filthy, drawn and gaunt.

‘Did something happen, then?’ I pressed gently. ‘In Wesel. March 1945.’

‘Oh, God, what happened?. . Oh, yes. That’s right. I killed dozens of people. Lots.’

‘People?’

‘Soldiers. Well, hardly soldiers.’ His face began to crumple and his lips trembled. ‘Kids.’

Then he wouldn’t say any more.

I remember, in the next school holidays, Annie coming downstairs to find me, saying, Mummy come quickly, something’s gone wrong with Papa. I sent her away and went upstairs, walking quietly into our bedroom. Sholto was sitting on his bed in his pyjamas, looking out through the big bay window at the view down Glen Crossan, weeping.

‘What’s wrong, my love?’ I said softly, sitting down beside him and putting an arm round his shoulders.

‘I want to die,’ he whispered. ‘Why’s it taking so long?’

Sholto had his wish when his second, fatal, heart attack took place in September 1961. Mrs Dalmire found him unconscious on the floor of the gunroom. An ambulance was called and sped him to the hospital in Oban and then, when he couldn’t be revived, he was rushed to the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow where, just before midnight, he was pronounced dead. He was fifty-five years old.

THE MASTER OF FARR, Andrew Farr (unmarried), became the 13th Baron Farr of Glencrossan. And Benedicta, Lady Farr, became his Cardinal Richelieu, Jezebel and the Duchess of Malfi combined. Another mistake — Sholto had died without changing his will. The will that existed was the will he had made when Andrew was born. He’d never added any codicil that referred to me, or Annie and Blythe. And thus my troubles began, anew.

There was immediate consternation about the disarray in the Farr estate finances. Two weeks after Sholto’s funeral I was summoned to a meeting at Benedicta’s house in Crossan Bridge. Andrew was there and Mr Archibald Strathray, the family solicitor, and Mr Fairbairn Dodd from Carntyne Petre & Co. Tea was offered; I asked for a whisky and soda.

Benedicta wasted no time in apportioning blame. What exactly had occurred in the fifteen years I’d been married to Sholto? How could a once-thriving estate now be so penurious? I suggested that Fairbairn Dodd confirm to Benedicta what he had once told me, namely that Sholto had gambled away tens of thousands of pounds without my knowledge and that he had progressively sold off the estate’s assets in an attempt to conceal his addiction.

‘Addiction?’ Benedicta scoffed. ‘That’s absurd.’

‘Mr Dodd, please.’

‘Yes, I was aware of the problem, Lady Farr,’ he said to Benedicta. He was uncomfortable but there was nothing he could do. Then Benedicta and Andrew — Andrew meekly nodding and muttering consent as his mother spoke — laid out their plans. I was to vacate the House of Farr: the will was explicit, Andrew was to inherit everything. I sat there and listened resolutely as my new future was blocked out, feeling the ache of the loss of Sholto and also a growing anger at his oversight. Everything could have been so much simpler — another bloody mistake, I thought, as we began to bicker over the scraps that remained. Benedicta was particularly incensed by the sale of the Raeburns — ‘Our heritage, gone forever!’ — and the South Kensington mews house (her holidays in the capital ruined). At every rebuke I turned to Mr Dodd and he edgily backed me up. ‘Lady Farr had no alternative,’ he told Lady Farr.

‘In point of fact, Mr Dodd,’ I said, ‘it was on your advice that I sold the Raeburns.’

‘I believe it was.’

We broke up with nothing resolved. Archibald Strathray, as we collected our coats in the hall, turned to me and, in a low voice, recommended that I find myself a lawyer, fast. I had allies among the functionaries.

So I asked Jock Edie if he knew someone ferocious and uncompromising and not too expensive and he recommended a patient of his, a young Glasgow solicitor called Joe Dunraven. We duly met. Joe Dunraven was a small, fair, handsome man with a distinct Glasgow accent and a quickly revealed social anger at anyone he regarded as lazy and over-privileged. I think I only escaped his censure because he could see I was broke and being persecuted by the family. After five minutes’ conversation I asked him to represent me and, to my surprise, he agreed instantly. He wasn’t cheap, in fact, but Dido had offered to pay his fee. I looked forward to his coming encounter with Benedicta, Lady Farr. I told him what I required, as a matter of basic survival — first, a place to live, now I was being turfed out of the House of Farr, my home of fifteen years. It was clear I was unwelcome anywhere on the Glencrossan estate; that my daughters’ school fees be paid, and that I receive a basic income until their education was over.

‘I think we can do better than that, Amory,’ he said with a confident grin. I had invited him to call me Amory after he insisted that I call him Joe. It established our egalitarian standards.

I didn’t attend the next meeting at Crossan Bridge, leaving it to my fired-up proxy to make my case. After it was over he came to the house, not quite managing to keep the smile from his lips, and we each drank a large whisky together and smoked a cigarette in celebration as he told me what he had won from the Farrs.