William Boyd - Sweet Caress

We were walking down from the heights of Cnoc Torran, that we’d climbed that morning, heading back for lunch at the cottage. We had a magnificent view of the various islands around Barrandale. I could see Mull as clearly as I’d ever seen it — I could see a red car driving on the road along the north end of Loch Don.

‘The Big Bang explains all this,’ I said, gesturing freely towards Mull and the ocean beyond. ‘Everything started then.’

‘Everything. It explains everything. You and me. This grass, the clouds above.’ She pointed. ‘That insect — and the universe. It all began then.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ I paused to tie a lace on my walking boot.

‘Well, we have something called the “standard model”. It explains almost everything.’

‘Almost.’

‘Yes.’

‘And the stuff you can’t explain?’

Greer looked at me shrewdly. ‘I know I’m going to regret this.’

‘That’s where your dark matter comes in, doesn’t it,’ I said. ‘Dark matter explains the things that don’t add up, in theory.’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘And dark gravity. And dark energy.’

‘I know it sounds rather spooky and exciting, but it’s complicated. There has to be dark matter to explain the anomalies.’

I snapped my fingers.

‘You need all these “dark” things to explain why the “standard model” doesn’t supply all the answers.’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘You see that’s what I love about cosmology. It’s exactly the same for the rest of us.’

‘You mustn’t do this, Amory. We hate this. Scientists hate this. . this appropriation. You don’t understand.’

‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘Or yes, I do. Just like you cosmologists, we can’t explain everything. Things don’t add up. What about “dark” love? Why did I fall in love with that hopeless person? “Dark” love explains it. Why did I get this annoying illness? “Dark” disease. Stuff I can’t see is affecting me, the way I act.’

‘No, no, no. You’re turning hard science into a metaphor.’

‘Which I’m entitled to. “Dark” illness. “Dark” weather. “Dark” incompetence. “Dark” politics.’

She had to laugh. We walked on, almost bouncing downhill on the springy grass.

‘The “dark” concept explains why you can’t explain things,’ I said. ‘It’s wonderfully liberating. Why won’t my car start this morning? It started yesterday. “Dark” auto-engineering.’

‘Just don’t tell anyone you got it from me.’

‘You see, the “standard model” of the human condition just doesn’t work, either. It’s inadequate. Just as the “standard model” of the universe doesn’t work for you lot.’

‘What’re we having for lunch?’

‘Dark shepherd’s pie.’

I remember we drank a lot at that lunch — we always drank a lot but I think Greer wanted the inhibition-removal that a boozy lunch sometimes provides. She told me about an affair she’d had with a colleague of Calder’s. The affair had ended when he had gone to join a think tank in London — distance working as prophylactic — but he’d written to her, recently, asking her to come and see him.

‘Have you ever had an affair, Amory?’ she asked me.

‘Well, not when I was married,’ I said. ‘But I did have an affair when I was having an affair.’ I paused, thinking back. ‘Twice, in fact.’

‘Only you could make it that complicated,’ she said.

‘I don’t quite know how it happened,’ I said. ‘Dark love?’

‘I’m beginning to see your logic.’ She sipped at her wine. ‘Should I go to London? What do you think?’

‘I think you should do what you want to do. As the poet said: the desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews. .’

She laughed. ‘You’re no help.’

‘Exactly.’

*

For some bizarre reason Dido took a strong liking to Barrandale. She came to stay for a week or so two or three times a year, to ‘rest’ after her concert tours and recitals. ‘I need to recharge every battery, darling,’ she would say. ‘Peace, silence, nothingness, and a large gin and tonic, that’s all I ask.’ In 1966, she was at the height of her fame — Béla Bartók had dedicated a horn trio to her; she was a regular at the BBC Proms; Harold Wilson invited her to lunch at 10 Downing Street; she was awarded the CBE. However, her marriage to Reggie Southover was ending. She was having an affair with a clarinettist from the Orquesta Nacional de España — ‘Poor as a church mouse,’ she said. ‘But rather lovely, all the same. It’s the Latin spirit I crave, I should never have anything to do with Anglo-Saxons.’

Dido Clay CBE, 1966.

I teased her once, asking her if she had an affair with one member of every orchestra she played with.

‘Not every orchestra,’ she said, entirely seriously. ‘No, I’m very picky.’

She once said, ‘Have you noticed, Herbert von Karajan and Lenny Bernstein have exactly the same hair — same floppy front, same distinguished grey, same style — do you think it’s a conductor thing?’

‘Have you slept with either of them? Or both?’ I asked.

‘Well, I had a bit of a moment with one of them, I confess — but I won’t tell you which.’

Even though she obviously loved coming to Barrandale, she always complained about the cottage and its minor privations. She also began to dig away at me.

‘What’re you going to do now the girls have gone? You can’t take photographs of Scottish weddings for the rest of your life.’

*

THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977

It happened again. I tried to pick up a jam jar this morning with my left hand to put it back in the refrigerator but I couldn’t. My hand just wouldn’t grip. I sat down, had a minute’s rest, and tried again. It worked — but just as I was going to put it on the shelf my grip loosened and the jar fell to the floor and smashed.

This is as bad as it’s ever been, my particular, worrying problem. My brain told my hand to grip but it refused. Jock Edie — whom I’d told about this problem, and who told me what he suspected was wrong — said that one day I’d have to go and see a neurologist. Perhaps the time has come.

I had lunch with Hugo Torrance at the hotel — during which my hold on the cutlery seemed secure. We were at our usual corner table tucked in beside the fireplace — where, as it happened, the first fire of the autumn was burning nicely, so Hugo informed me. As if to justify its being lit, it was raining quite heavily outside. We ate rare roast beef and drank red wine. I was feeling ideally mellow but suspicious.

‘All this is heading somewhere,’ I said. ‘I can tell by that look in your eye.’

‘It can head anywhere you like.’

‘Come on, spit it out.’

‘I’ve sold the hotel.’

This was indeed a surprise. ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘Are you pleased?’

‘Yes. And — more news — I’ve bought that ruined cottage round the headland from you. We’re going to be neighbours.’

*

After Dido left to go back to London, Hughie Anstruther called and reminded me that I was covering the Northern Meeting in Inverness. It would be an overnight stay and he wondered if I’d need an assistant.

‘The world and his wife seem to be going this year,’ he said. ‘Get your best frock out, sweetheart.’

I was not enthused. This would be my third Northern Meeting. I could just about handle the ball but the prospect of photographing the bagpipe-competition winners filled me with prescient fatigue. Dido was right — I had to make a change, do something entirely different. But what? All I knew was photography.