William Boyd - Sweet Caress

Curiously, Blythe kept Tayborn’s name — she was Blythe Gaines from now on, not Farr. I think I understand. The name was all that remained of the dream-life she thought she had acquired and then lost so suddenly and cruelly. Or, now I come to think about it, maybe it was a harsh aide-memoire — don’t get fooled again, girl. In any event she stayed on in Los Angeles and picked up the career in music she had abandoned; writing songs, playing in bands in and around the Los Angeles area.

On my first visit to see her she was living in a ramshackle house on Coldwater Canyon Drive with half a dozen other people — young men and women, all musicians, I think. She had dyed her hair auburn and parted it in the middle — I thought it didn’t suit her. She smoked as much as I did. In the few days I spent with her we must have consumed a dozen packets of ‘smokes’, as she called them. The significant fact I remember about that trip was that she asked if I would mind if she called me ‘Amory’ rather than ‘Ma’. I said it was fine with me.

She was better, more like the Blythe I knew than the Blythe of the Willow Ranch experiment, but she was more distant, cooler with me — hence my name change, I surmise — consciously treating me as an equal rather than her mother. I knew why: she was feeling a residual shame about the whole Tayborn Gaines period, for being so hopelessly duped by him. I tried to raise the subject in the hope of expiating it. I said she should forget all about that period of time, not feel ashamed. She was still very young; I started to list all the mistakes I had made at her age but she cut me off abruptly and said she never wanted to talk about it again. So I let it go. People are opaque, even those closest to you. What do we know about the interior lives of our children? Only as much as they choose to reveal.

Blythe came over to England a couple of years later to appear on a music show on television. She was one of three backing singers in a band called Franklin Canyon Park — part of that Californian soft-rock movement of the early 1970s — that had a couple of hit records in Europe. I remember watching the show when the band appeared on TV and feeling an absurd overweening pride when I caught two or three glimpses of Blythe in the background as the camera panned to and fro between the leading members of the group.

She came up to Barrandale to stay for a few days and collect her ‘stuff’, clearing out her bedroom, removing almost every trace of Blythe Farr from 6 Druim Rigg Road. Again I understood what was going on but in fact we were fine together during the time she was there. We went for long walks; she became very fond of Flam, the dog, and even opened up a little more to me, telling me of a man she had met (there was never any sign of Gaines — it was as if he’d disappeared off the face of the earth), a sound engineer, called Griffin, in a studio where she recorded. ‘Don’t worry, Amory, I won’t be marrying him. I’m never going to marry anyone ever again.’

She never really achieved anything significant with her music. Annie told me that a song she’d co-written for Franklin Canyon Park had reached number thirty-six in the Billboard charts but that was the apex. Her life with Griffin the sound engineer ended also when his drug problem became too much to bear, Annie informed me.

On my second trip over I discovered that she was working as a volunteer at the Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. She was living alone in a small apartment in Anaheim but she did seem more contented. She played in bars at weekends, singing her own songs and rock standards to make something of a living. Luckily she had a small but steady royalty stream from the songs she’d written with Franklin Canyon Park (now long disbanded) but she was very happy to accept some money from me when I offered it. ‘It’s a loan, Amory. I’ll pay you back.’ I think Annie sent her money also and I arranged with Moss Fallmaster to divert any cash that came from the slowly diminishing sales of the ‘Never Too Young To. .’ T-shirts into her bank account. She also insisted that these occasional payments were a loan — I would be repaid in full, one day. She seemed to survive fairly well, in fact: it was a modest life that she led but a busy one. She’d put on a bit of weight. There was another man in her life, Annie said, but Blythe told me nothing.

I knew in my heart she wouldn’t come back to Britain. She changed job and stayed on in Los Angeles, working with former inmates from the Californian Institute of Women (a prison) at a drug-rehabilitation centre called Clean ’n’ Sober in the Westchester district of Los Angeles. To be honest, I don’t think we’ll ever recover that old, unfettered, instinctive relationship we once had. Annie has seen more of her than I have and she says Blythe will come round, eventually, Blythe will see the reality of the situation, just ‘give it time’. Well, time is exactly what I’m short of.

Our coffee finally arrived and we chatted about this and that — she told me more about her work with drug addicts and alcoholics and the appalling problems the poor and downtrodden of Los Angeles experienced. I told her more about Annie — about her teaching at CIDBS (the Conservatory for International Development and Business Studies), a private university near Brussels; that she had a boyfriend — whom I hadn’t met — a Swedish colleague called Nils. Blythe didn’t ask about me, or Dido, or the family — except to request a photo of Flam, whenever I had a moment. This was a good sign, I thought. I held on to it.

The coffee was strong — it had been stewing on a burner for ages — and I decided I needed it sweeter. As I reached for the sugar-shaker and picked it up my hand wouldn’t grip and the shaker clattered on to the Formica tabletop. I righted it with my other hand but Blythe had noticed my expression.

‘Maybe I won’t have any sugar, in fact,’ I said, resignedly. ‘Curb that sweet tooth.’

‘Are you all right, Amory? Is there anything wrong?’

‘Just a bit clumsy in my old age,’ I said, smiling brightly.

She looked at me searchingly, shrewdly.

‘You’d tell me if anything was wrong, wouldn’t you? I wouldn’t forgive you if you kept something from me.’

‘Of course, darling. But there’s nothing wrong. I’m just happy to be sitting here with you.’

Eventually I said I’d better go and catch my plane and she walked with me out to where my car was parked.

‘It was lovely to see you,’ Blythe said. ‘I did enjoy our dinner the other night. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy. I wish we could have spent more time together. It seems like you’ve flown all this way just to have a cup of coffee with me.’

‘Oh, I have to come to California, anyway,’ I lied. ‘I have this sort of business partner out here. My T-shirt is still selling, amazingly.’ That was true: I had dropped in on Moss Fallmaster and he had told me there was almost $400 owed to me. I asked him to send it on to Blythe’s account. ‘It’s always a good excuse to see you, darling,’ I said. ‘We miss you, Blythe. But we understand.’

She frowned hard at this — I suspect to keep tears at bay.

‘I feel I’m doing some good,’ she said. ‘It helps me — helping other people.’

We walked on towards the car — a cream Chevrolet Caprice. A plump young man in baggy green shorts, a Mothers of Invention T-shirt and a greasy baseball cap was standing there, smoking, as if he were waiting for us to appear. He had a droopy moustache.

‘This your fucking car?’ he asked me, aggressively.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m renting it.’

‘You’re in my spot, lady.’

‘It’s a parking meter,’ I said. ‘You can’t reserve a parking meter.’

‘I always park here, lady,’ he said turning his small, pink eyes on me. ‘It’s reserved for me.’