Any Human Heart (16 page)

He goes to the lavatory to be sick and I prowl around inspecting the stacked canvasses. This room is even smaller than the one at rue Grenelle — a bed, a desk and chair and a filing cabinet. As I mooch about I spot on the desktop an envelope with familiar handwriting.

‘You had a letter from Peter?’ I ask when Ben comes back in.

Ben looks vaguely shifty beneath his pallor. ‘Yes, I was going to tell you — but what with one thing and another… He’s married Tess.’

He hands me the letter. It’s true: they are married and living in Reading, where Peter is working as a sub-editor on the
Reading Evening News.
Tess is unreconciled with her parents and Peter has been cut off by his father. He says he has never been happier in his life.

I feel a green stain of envy seep through me, followed by a twinge of worry. Why did Peter write to Ben and not me? Has Tess confessed all?

‘There’s probably a letter waiting for you in London,’ Ben says, bless him.

‘Probably,’ I say.

I am coming out of my bank (with the money for the Modigliani) when I bump into Hemingway. ‘Paris is a village,’ he says, then apologizes for his behaviour, explaining how the presence of a particular friend
⁴
always makes him ‘roaring and meanly drunk’. We wander along the boulevard Saint-Germain, enjoying the spring sunshine, and he asks me how I know the Farinos. I explain. ‘Tim is the laziest man in Europe,’ Hemingway says. ‘But she’s real cute.’ We exchange addresses (he’s married, it turns out) and agree to meet again. We both have books appearing in the autumn
⁵
— he seems quite amiable after all.

Summer has arrived in Paris. I went to Anna’s but her room was stifling hot so we made sure our business was over with quickly. I ordered a bottle of Chablis and an ice bucket and we lounged on the bed, chatting and drinking. I told her I was returning to London in the next few days and she said, almost automatically, that she would miss me and she hoped I would be back in Paris soon.

‘We are friends, aren’t we, Anna?’ I said.

‘Of course. Special friends. You come here,
on fait l’amour.
We’re like real lovers, except you pay.’

‘No, I mean, it’s more than that, different. You know all about my life. I know about you and the Colonel.’

‘Of course, Logan. And you’re very generous.’

I wondered if it was some kind of house rule that Madame Chantal imposed: that every declaration of affection, sincere or insincere, had to be counterbalanced by a gentle reminder of the true — fiscal — nature of the relationship. I was a little hurt.

And, for some reason, after I left — it was early evening — I decided to wait. I hid in a doorway until the Colonel arrived. At about 8 o’clock Anna emerged from Chez Chantal and the two of them set off, wordless, arm in arm. I followed them down to the Métro station and entered the carriage behind theirs at the last second. I saw them get off at Les Halles and, taking care not to be seen, watched them from a distance all the way to their apartment building. I noted the number and the street name. Now, I wonder why I did this. What do I expect to gain?

Describe your state of mind. Insecure. Uncertain. Feverish.

Outline your emotions. Sexual obsession. Guilt. Intense physical pleasure at being alone in Paris. Hatred of time: wanting to be this age on this day in this week, this month, this year, for ever. Can only imagine the long slow slide awaiting me. Anna-fever vies with Land-fever. But I can satisfy Anna-fever five times a week if necessary. Which seems to provoke Land-fever.

Why are you so obsessed with Paris? In Paris I feel free.

I go back to London tomorrow. This morning, just before lunch, I went back to Les Halles and waited outside Anna’s building for about an hour, hoping she’d come out. I wanted to meet her just once, far from the ambience and implications of Chez Chantal; I wanted us to encounter each other casually in the street and I would raise my hat and we’d say good day to each other and exchange a few banalities about the weather and go our separate ways. I needed to add a different dimension to our relationship, something everyday that had nothing to do with a brothel or paid-for sex. But of course she never appeared, my feet began to ache, and I felt a fool.

I was passing a little
bistro du coin,
looking for a bus stop, when I glanced inside and saw the Colonel sitting there, reading a newspaper, a glass of pastis in front of him. Spontaneously, I went in and ordered a beer and sat down casually at the table beside him. Close to, he looked considerably older than Anna — in his fifties I would guess. His clothes were shabby but clean and he wore a yellow bow tie with a matching handkerchief overflowing from his breast pocket. Something of a dandy, then. His little moustache, upswept at the ends, was more grey than black, as was his hair, sleekly oiled back without a part. As he rose to return his newspaper to the rack, I went to claim it. The headlines were all about Poincaré’s
⁶
ill-health.

‘Sad to be ill on such a beautiful day,’ I said in French.

He looked at me and smiled — there was no recognition of course. I felt awkward, realizing I had made love to — had fucked — his wife several dozen times: I wanted to blurt it out — how we both cared for Anna in our own way, how we shared her, about all the tips I gave her that were as much to help him — as if it would make us better acquaintances, somehow.

He made some remark about Poincaré being decrepit, anyway, but I couldn’t understand because his French was so rapid-fire and colloquial — impeccable, in fact.

We went back to our seats and struck up a desultory conversation. He could tell I was English, he said, from my accent — adding, in the polite way all French people do, that I spoke their language remarkably well. I fished a bit, said I thought I could detect a slight accent inflecting his own speech. I surprised him: he was a Parisian born and bred, he declared. I steered the conversation round to a report in the paper of Communist riots in Germany and said they should call the army out, asking him, by the way, about his own military experience. He said he had enlisted in 1914 but had been rejected because of his bad lungs. I bought him another drink and learned a little more: he had been a travelling salesman but his firm had gone bankrupt, and since then… He looked at his watch, said he had to go, shook my hand and left. Clearly no colonel in the White Russian Army, then.

SUMNER PLACE

In my absence mother has redecorated my rooms (what strange compulsion is this?) and in the process seems to have mislaid half my books. ‘Oh, I never touch your books, my darling,’ she says. ‘Maybe the painter, he steal them.’ I find them in a box room — and she has hung my Marie Laurencin in the downstairs lavatory. I retrieve it. We have a new motor also, a Ford.

In the morning I go to Sprymont & Drew and, over lunch in a chophouse, Roderick breaks the news to me that they are obliged to delay publication of
The Mind’s Imaginings
until the spring of 1930. Publishing programmes too crowded, too many authors taken on — lame excuses of that order. This is vexing: I feel in a kind of limbo — an author but not truly an author, true authorship being conferred by having a book physically published — a thing you can hold in your hand, purchase in a bookshop. Roderick says he has enjoyed my pieces from Paris — perhaps if I wrote a few more they could be collected between hard covers.

‘What about a novel?’ I say impetuously.

‘Well, we’d, ah, of course love a novel…’ His caution was eloquent. Though I have to say I never really had you down as a novelist.’

‘What do you have me down as, Roderick?’

‘An extremely talented writer who could turn his hand to novel-writing in an instant.’ His suavity was back to full strength.

I think it is his scepticism that really inspires me. I will write my novel while I wait for
TMI
to be published. It will be about a young English writer living in Paris, his relationship with a beautiful but older Russian prostitute and the mysterious ‘Colonel’ she claims is her husband. But what title?

I come out of the underground at South Kensington and who should be on the beat but Joseph Darker. We are both pleased to see each other, shake hands warmly and reminisce about the great days of the General Strike. He tells me he now has two children and invites me for tea — still at the same address in Battersea.

Darker is relaxed in my company, but his wife, Tilda, is very ill at ease, or so it seems to me. It was the same the first time we met. She keeps apologizing: for the quality of the tea, the noise the children make, the state of the back garden. The little boy is called Edward — ‘After the Prince of Wales’ — and the little girl is called Ethel. We sit in the garden on deckchairs in our shirtsleeves and watch the toddlers potter about. The sun is warm, my stomach is full of fruit cake, and I feel a kind of suburban peace descend on me. Maybe this is how life should be lived? A modest home, a secure job, a wife and family. All these pointless strivings and ambitions—

‘Sorry about the cake, Mr Mountstuart, it’s a bit dry.’

‘It’s delicious. And please call me Logan.’

‘Would you rather have some sandwiches. Only fish paste, I’m afraid.’

When she takes the children inside Darker in his turn apologizes for her, which makes matters worse. ‘She’s a good mother,’ he says. ‘Works hard, keeps the house clean.’ Then he turns to me. ‘And I love her dearly, Logan. Meeting Tilda was the making of me.’ I can’t think how to respond to this declaration. ‘You’re a lucky man, Joseph,’ I say, in the end. ‘I hope I have half your luck.’ He puts his hand on my shoulder, gives it a squeeze. ‘I hope so,’ he says, visibly pleased.

He’s a sincere man, Joseph Darker, but I question my own attitudes, not through any doubt about them, but to put them to the test. I’m not patronizing him, not trying to prove what a good egalitarian fellow I am, here, having tea with a humble policeman. I wouldn’t brag about this visit — as I know someone like Hugh Fothergill would, wearing such a friendship like a badge. So, why are you here? He invited me and I accepted. I assume I did so because we both derive something from each other’s company.

Summer travels. July — Berlin with Ben, gallery haunting. On his advice I bought a small jewel-like watercolour by an artist new to me called Klee. Furious street battle between political gangs one night. On by train to, finally, Vienna — travels in the Tyrol — Kufstein, Hall, Kitzbühel. Then Salzburg — Bad Ischl — Gmunden — Graz. August — Scotland, as usual, to Kildonnan by Galashiels. Dick’s shooting party larger than ever. I abandoned all pretence and declared myself non-combatant and passed the time walking and fishing or taking bus journeys up the Tweed Valley to the little solid mill towns set in their gentle hills. Much drinking and merriment in the evening. Angus [Cassell] and Lottie were there. Lottie clearly smitten with me. One evening we were left alone in the drawing room and I — a little drunk — kissed her. I apologized discreetly the next morning but she would hear none of it.

Memory: a day of intense but fresh heat. I walk up the bank of a shallow, rushing, tea-brown river, a tributary of the Tweed, a rod in my hand looking for a pool. Seen from the glare of the sunshine, the shade beneath the riverine trees looks as ink-dark as a cave mouth. I find my pool and
stow my beer bottle in an eddy at the water’s edge and fish for an hour, catching three little trout, which I throw back. Eat bread and cheese, drink my icy beer and walk home across the fields to Kildonnan with the sun on my back. A day of total solitude, of tranquil and perfect beauty by the river. A form of happiness I must try to recapture more often.

Goodish progress on the novel: it won’t be long but it should be very intense and moving. Still no idea how it will end, no notion of a title. Proofs of
TMI
arrive. Soon I’ll be there — soon.

I go to Hampstead for dinner at the Fothergills’. Land looks tired, says she is working too hard; — Lee is very busy in the new government.
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She introduces me to a man called Geddes Brown — thirtyish — a painter. Alarm bells ring: he’s lithe and muscled like a prizefighter with blond curly hair. Something about his demeanour proclaims huge self-confidence.

I feel very relaxed with the Fothergills — my ideal alter-family. How different would I have been if I had been brought up in this environment? I talk to Vernon about my trip to Berlin and tell him of my purchase of a Paul Klee (Paul who? he asks — the blessed insularity of England’s culture). Geddes Brown knows who Paul Klee is, all right, and we get an impromptu ten-minute lecture. He congratulates me on my taste: suddenly I’m all right in his eyes. Then Hugh talks politics at me and I nod and agree that Mussolini is a monster, reaching across the table to light Ursula’s umpteenth cigarette. But where are Land and Geddes Brown? Out on the terrace looking at the stars. Ah-ha.

Mother seemed a little alarmed by a telegram from Mr Prendergast in New York. She read it out: ‘Financial chaos on stock market. Urgent need for cash.’ ‘Cash?’ she said. ‘I have no cash.’ Borrow some from a bank, I said, then went upstairs to work on my novel. And suddenly the title came to me:
The Girl Factory.

With a mild hangover I greet the new decade and the new year. (Last night: cocktails at the Fothergills’, dinner with Roderick at the Savoy, midnight at the 500 Club. Bed by 3.00 a.m.).