William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘Jeff was a friend of Tayborn’s. Was a friend. We went to Willow Ranch together and then, after about a week, Jeff just went away. Disappeared. Didn’t leave a note. He took the car and whatever money I had in my bag and vanished.’

‘Enter Tayborn.’

‘He saved me, Ma.’

‘I’m sure he did.’

‘Don’t be cynical.’

‘Sorry.’ I drew on my cigarette. ‘Why on earth did you have to marry him, though?’

‘Tayborn believes in marriage. As an institution.’

Feeling weak, suddenly, I poured out the rest of the bottle, just a few drops.

‘How long have you been married?’

‘About five weeks.’

‘Where is he? Does he know you’re here? Seeing me?’

‘Of course. He brought me here. He’s parked out front at the reception.’

‘Come home, Blythe, come home with me.’

‘No, Ma. Willow Ranch is my home. Tayborn’s my husband. I’ve never been happier.’

We talked a little more and I didn’t ask her to come home with me again. I had made the plea and it had been rejected. I walked back with her to the reception area, my arm around her thin shoulders. Across the street I could see Gaines’s jeep parked in the shadow of the motel sign. We kissed goodbye and she promised she would write to me, let me know what she was doing, all the time reassuring me how happy and at peace she was, seriously, Ma, really and truly.

I let her hand go and watched her cross the moon-shadowed tarmac towards her new husband. She didn’t look back as she gave me a quick wave.

Cole Hardaway, his face impassive, sat across from me in one of the curved red leatherette booths in the bar just down the street from his office. We were both drinking what Cole called ‘highballs’ but that I knew as Scotch and soda. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach forward and sweep his stupid fringe aside, off his forehead, but that was probably just a symptom of my frustration. I had come to like Cole Hardaway.

‘You’re sure,’ I said, not hiding my disappointment — it had been my last desperate hope. ‘A real marriage.’

‘I’m afraid so. Married by the clerk of Inyo County about a month and a half ago.’

I felt that emptiness well up inside me, instinctively — then it subsided as I sipped my drink. Why was Blythe being so crazily stupid? Why Tayborn Gaines of all people? But I thought I knew the answer to that. And then I remembered how at her age I had slipped into the bed of my homosexual uncle and asked him to make love to me. We are not logical beings, especially when it comes to affairs of the heart.

‘However,’ Cole said, his expression unchanging, ‘Tayborn Gaines never served in the US military. There are no records. Certainly not in the Eighty-Second Airborne.’

Now, I felt a little bloom of elation. Now I had my way in, my fifth column to destabilise this union. So Gaines was no soldier, as I had suspected. What fantasies of warfare and warriorhood had he spun for Blythe?

Back at the Heyworth Travel Inn, in my room, the air conditioner at full blast, I took my time over the letter I wrote.

Darling Blythe,

It was both lovely and, I have to be honest, a bit disturbing to see you in your new life. Believe me, I understand better than anyone your desire to be happy and I understand that you are convinced that you have found that happiness with Tayborn. I love you and all I wish for you is to be happy — it’s as simple as that. But I also wish you hadn’t done everything so swiftly. It takes time to truly come to know a person and, I wonder, what do you truly know about this man you are so deeply in love with?

I ask because I’ve discovered that one thing he claims to be isn’t in fact true. Tayborn Gaines was never a soldier. He was never in the 82nd Airborne. He never served in Vietnam. Now, I ask you — if a man can lie so convincingly about something he claims is of fundamental importance and significance to his being what then does that imply for—

I stopped. I felt that sickness in me again. It was a conscious realisation that I was wasting my time and the absolute knowledge of this fact made me want to vomit. I stood up and walked around the room taking deep breaths. Then I sat down at the table again. It was Blythe’s life and she had every right to live it as she wished. Slowly I tore up my letter to her about the lies of Tayborn Gaines. As I arranged the shreds into a small neat square pile I found I was weeping inconsolably. I knew I had finally lost my daughter.

My mother died in 1969. Greville died in 1972. The Clay family, diminishing.

Is it true that your life is just a long preparation for your death — the one thing we can all be sure of, all the billions of us? The deaths you witness, hear about, that are close to you — that you may cause or bring about, however inadvertently (I think of my dog, Flim) — are preparing you, covertly, incrementally, for your own eventual departure. I think of all the deaths in my life — the ones that left me riven, the strangers’ deaths I happened to see — and understand how they have steered me to this position, this intellectual conviction, that I hold now. You don’t realise this when you’re young but as you age this steady accumulation of knowledge teaches you, becomes relentlessly pertinent to your own case.

But then I wonder — turn this notion on its head. Are all the deaths you encounter and experience in fact an enhancement of the life you lead? Your personal history of death teaches you what’s important, what makes it actually worth being alive — sentient and breathing. It’s a key lesson because when you know that, you also know its opposite — you know when life’s no longer worth living — and then you can die, happy.

*

I met Blythe at a coffee shop down in Westchester, on West 82nd Street off Sepulveda Boulevard, near Los Angeles International Airport. I was on my way home so it was convenient even though I could see the neighbourhood was run-down and shabby. Our order was taking its time to arrive and Blythe left our booth and went to speak to the waitress. To me she sounded like an American, now, her English accent all but gone. She was wearing a black and white striped shirt and jeans; her hair was cut carelessly short — there was a long untrimmed strand at the back — and she was wearing no make-up. She returned to our booth and sat down, managing a genuine smile, it seemed to me.

‘Something’s gone wrong in the kitchen. It’ll be two minutes.’

‘Doesn’t matter, darling, seeing you again before I go is the main thing.’ I reached for her hand and squeezed it and then let it go and turned the gesture into an airy wave, indicating the streetscape out of the window.

‘So this is where you work.’

‘Just round the corner. You have to go to the needy — they won’t come to you.’

‘Of course, makes sense.’

‘There’s nothing to see — just a room with a coffee machine and a few small offices.’

‘Well, at least I have a picture of the neighbourhood.’

This was the third visit I had made to the US to see Blythe in the eight years since she crossed the road in front of the San Carlos Motel and went to rejoin her husband, Tayborn Gaines, who was waiting patiently for her in his jeep.

I suppose it was some private consolation to me that the marriage didn’t even make its first anniversary. Some months after I’d left, the Willow Ranch Community was raided by the police and significant quantities of LSD and marijuana were discovered. Gaines was prosecuted but acquitted for lack of convincing evidence. He and Blythe moved to Los Angeles and then some weeks later he left. I don’t know what happened — I had all this information from Annie who was more closely in touch with Blythe than I was — but I suspect that Blythe’s Farr legacy had finally run out. Time for Tayborn to move on.