William Boyd - Sweet Caress

I went out for a walk, ostensibly to think, and headed unerringly for the bar at the Glenlarig Hotel. I ordered a whisky and water and asked if Mr Torrance was in and was informed that he was upstairs in his flat. I thought he might be exactly the man to ponder my dilemma with and headed off to find him. As I made my way towards his private rear stairway I passed the residents’ lounge where the door was open wide and a mute television set was silently broadcasting the evening news to a ring of empty armchairs. A flowering fire and dust-filled explosion filled the screen — oddly beautiful in its expanding terrible energy, like a giant grey chrysanthemum or monochrome dahlia — that caught my attention and I stepped inside for a second.

An unsteady hand-held camera was focussed on a bespectacled woman in a dirty, sweaty uniform crouched in a ditch talking into a microphone. She was wearing a tin helmet with the word ‘PRESS’ written on the front in white letters. In the background two ragged columns of smoke rose over jungle hills. Despite her grimy face and the unfamiliar spectacles I realised I knew who this woman was and stooped forward to turn up the volume just as she was signing off.

‘This is Lily Perette, Dang Tra province, with the US Marine Corps.’

What was it that made me decide I had to go to Vietnam? Initially, it was seeing Lily Perette on the television screen and remembering the last war we’d been involved in together. Suddenly I had this feeling that I wanted urgently to be there with her, to ask her questions: what was it like, was it dangerous, how had she come to be in Vietnam of all places? And then I realised — more analysis kicking in — that the emotion I was actually experiencing was envy. I envied Lily Perette at that moment and I felt that unbidden surge of excitement run through me. Perhaps I could go to this war, just like her. I had the same experience, the same qualifications, the same talent. . I didn’t go up to see Hugo but returned to the bar for another pensive drink.

I sat and considered my options. Could I rejoin GPW? No. That road was closed. Was there another way? I couldn’t just buy a plane ticket and fly out to the country like a tourist. Or could I. .? And then the sensible portion of my mind recalled that I had a secure and steady job, albeit moderately paid, and I should just head on up north to Inverness and the bagpipe competitions and forget all this impulsiveness, this foolishness.

Yet the more the realistic, sensible, solutions lined up and presented themselves the more the idea of somehow trying to go to Vietnam began to consume me. I wanted my old job back — I wanted to be a proper photographer again. The thought of Vietnam and its distant war seemed like the perfect antidote to more Scottish weddings and eightsome reels.

I think now — now that time has passed — that what I really wanted, fundamentally, was to confront warfare again. Not so much to test myself — I had been tested — but to see how the ‘me’ that existed then would function in a war zone, would experience war differently. War had shaped, directed and distorted my life in so many ways — through my father, Xan, Sholto — that I think that the zeal I was feeling was an unconscious response to this deeper need. After Sholto and my life with him, I wanted to experience something of what he had gone through but with my new knowledge — about him, about me — informing everything. I couldn’t rewind time and be wise after the event but I could go forward and seek some answers out for myself. The newer, older, wiser Amory Clay could live through what the former, younger, more innocent Amory hadn’t been able to evaluate fully. My education as a person, so I reasoned, would never be complete if I didn’t do this, if I didn’t see for myself — and then see myself, plain. I needed to learn how I would react and respond, what it would tell me about my life and my being.

Or so I internally argued as the evening wore on in the bar of the hotel. But I was a mother, also, I made the point, with two much-loved, precious daughters. Were my arguments specious or genuine? Was I being true to myself or selfish? Well, I would never know until I actually travelled out there and confronted my demons face to face.

It was as I wandered homeward in the dark that the answer came to me: I realised I knew exactly whom I could call — not Cleveland Finzi, but another former lover who might well be in a position to help me out. More to the point, he owed me a big favour, did Lockwood Mower, from way back.

I travelled down to London and arranged to meet Lockwood — much to his delighted surprise — in his offices at the Daily Sketch where he was now the senior picture editor. Lockwood was stouter, greyer and his moustache was wider though startlingly dark, like his eyebrows. The effect was strange, as if he were wearing a rather bad and conspicuous disguise. Once the pleasantries were over, I told him why I needed his help in what I wanted to do. He was aghast.

‘Vietnam? Are you out of your mind? You can’t go out there, Amory, you’re too—’ he didn’t finish as he could see my expression change.

‘You owe me this favour, Lockwood. Look at you — picture editor, big office, national newspaper.’ I leant forward. ‘Just add me quietly to your team.’

‘We don’t have a team. You can’t go out there on our ticket. Mr French would have a fit.’

‘Who’s Mr French?’

‘The editor.’

‘Then where do you get your Vietnam stuff from? You do know there’s a war on out there.’

‘Very funny, Amory. We buy it in from agencies.’

‘What agencies?’

He thought for a second.

‘We get most pictures from the Yanks, of course. A lot from this company, Sentinel Press Services. Very reasonable.’

‘American. Even better. I worked for an American magazine for years. Tell this Sentinel I worked for Global-Photo-Watch , ran their London and Paris offices in the war.’

He rubbed his chin.

‘No harm in trying, I suppose.’

‘I really want this to happen, Lockwood. Think about it — if I’m out there I can make sure you get all the good stuff.’

He agreed, it made sense. I lit a cigarette, sensing him looking at me in his old intense way, almost as if we were working together back in Greville’s studio.

‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you, Amory? It’s not some kind of whim, some mad idea?’

‘Deadly serious.’

‘All right. I’ll put a call in to the Sentinel people. See what I can do.’

I stayed on in London while I waited for news from Lockwood. I took Blythe and Annie out for dinner to a Vietnamese restaurant on the Cromwell Road called the Nam Quoc Palace as a rather too obvious pretext for letting them know my plans. When I told them that I wanted to pick up my old career again and go out to Vietnam to be a photojournalist, Annie appeared as excited by the prospect as I was — but Blythe seemed almost shocked.

‘It’s bloody dangerous, Ma,’ she said, frowning darkly at me. ‘What’re you thinking of?’

‘I’ve done it before,’ I said. ‘It was my job. I know what I’m doing — and I won’t be taking any risks, I can assure you.’

But Blythe kept on at me.

‘If you’ve done it once I don’t see why you need to do it again.’

‘I have to prove something to myself.’

‘What? Prove that you’re stupid?’

I let that go because I didn’t want to sour the mood of the evening any further. When Annie left to catch her train to Brighton Blythe stayed on and we ordered another coffee and some kind of sweet rice dumpling. Her mood seemed to calm and she took my hand and twiddled my wedding ring.

‘It’s because of Papa, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘That’s why you feel you need to go.’