Any Human Heart (17 page)

Review of 1929. Love affair with Paris. The bliss of my rooms in the Hotel Rembrandt. Anna-mania and the Anna/Colonel enigma. Concentration of feelings for Land. ‘Concentration of feelings’. Pshaw! Growing
love
for Land. Acceptance of
TMI.
Beginning of
TGF
. The frustrations of delay. Serious, fairly lucrative journalism.

Friends made: Alice Farino, Joseph Darker, Lottie Edgefield (?)

Friends in limbo: Peter, Tess, Hugh Fothergill.

Friends lost: none.

Conclusion: a year of promise — achievement still frustratingly out of reach. The real start of my career as a writer. Money earned. 1929 proves I can live by the pen.

Mother announces dramatically at dinner that we have lost the apartment in New York.

ME: What apartment, pray?

MOTHER: My apartment on 62nd Street. Mr Prendergast say it is lost.

ME: You’ve mislaid your apartment?

MOTHER: We cannot pay the loan. The bank has taken it.

ME: Shame. How I would have liked to have seen it one day. Why don’t you get Mr P. to sell some of your shares?

MOTHER: This I don’t understand. We have all these shares but he say they are worth nothing. Nothing at all.

ME: Shall I mix you a cocktail?

85A, Glebe Place, Chelsea. My new address. I’ve rented a furnished garden flat just off the King’s Road. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, dining room and a spare bedroom that will be my study. I shipped my books and paintings round and now all I need is a few rugs and throws to make the place my own. A Mrs Fuller comes in three times a week to ‘do’ for me and she says her husband will look after the garden — and all this for £6 a month. I draw the curtains, light the fire and open a bottle of wine. Apparently Cyril Connolly and his wife are near neighbours.
⁸
Good progress on
The Girl Factory.

The Mind’s Imaginings
is published today. As a symbolic gesture I went into town and bought a copy at Hatchard’s. A handsome little book with faded purple covers and a small idealized portrait of Shelley by Vernon Fothergill as a frontispiece. Luncheon at L’Étoile with Roderick and Tony Powell — who is working at Duckworth’s. On the tube home I kept taking the book out and looking at it, feeling its weight in my hand, opening it at random and reading a sentence or two. I kept going back to the author’s notice: ‘Mr Mountstuart is a graduate of Oxford University and is currently writing a novel.’ Why, though, do publishers have to advertise other books on the back cover? I think it sullies the integrity of my own. I don’t want to know that Cuthbert Wolfe has written an ‘arresting and important’ new biography of Disraeli. What are you doing on my lovely new book, Cuthbert Wolfe?

This is typical of my current mood: both flat — not a single review so far — and elated — I have the book in my hand; I bought it in a bookshop. But suddenly I want to be with Land, or Anna — or even Lucy. Instead I go round to Mother, who, although she said she would be inconsolable if I left, is already planning to transform my rooms into her studio.

‘Studio? To do what?’

‘I don’t know, my darling. To paint, to sculpture, to dance.’

Nice review in last week’s
Times Literary Supplement —
‘Engaging and spirited.’ ‘Shelley as we can believe he truly was’ — the
Herald.
‘Knocks Maurois into a cocked hat. At last we have an English Shelley’ — the
Mail.
I ring Roderick to discover that sales are disappointing — so far only 323 copies sold. ‘But these reviews,’ I say. ‘Can’t you take some advertisements?’ He mutters something incomprehensible about seasonal budgets and a spring deficit. Letters of congratulation from H-D and, amazingly, Le Mayne. The only problem is that I seem to have lost interest in my novel. I’ve written around 200 pages. I think I might just kill off the Anna-figure with tuberculosis or some other lugubrious disease.

First dinner party at Glebe Place. The Connollys, Land, H-D and Cynthia, Roderick and a young poet he’s infatuated with called Donald Coonan. Quite a success, I think: soup, leg of lamb, a trifle, cheese. Plenty to drink. And a deal of flattering talk about TMI, as the reviews continue to be good. Connolly says he’ll try and review it for the
New Statesman.
He’s prickly at first, but mellows soon enough. We were amused to discover we had both left Oxford with a third-class History degree. ‘Fail early,’ I said, ‘then the only way is up.’

Land was the last to leave and we kissed at the front door. A gentle kiss — a potential lover’s kiss? I walked her up to the King’s Road and we hailed a taxi. She said she would be in Paris for the month of August, trying to improve her French. What a coincidence, I said, so will I.

Collected
The Girl Factory
from the typists and took it to Roderick at S & D. He seemed surprised to see it completed. ‘I do like the title,’ he said, then, his craven caution returning, ‘but it’s not too racy, is it? We can’t afford to risk having a book banned.’ I said it was exceptionally racy but deliberately placed within the bounds of propriety. He suggested I do a life of Keats next — ‘Shelley’s going very nicely,’ he said.

I should have said that Wallace was actually irritated that I’d personally delivered the typescript. ‘It’s like taking away my sword and replacing it with a dagger.’ I said I didn’t understand. ‘I can still draw blood but it’s not as easy.’ Anyway, Sprymont & Drew offered £100 but Wallace managed to bump them up to £150 by saying both Duckworth and Chapman & Hall were desperate to read it. On the strength of this we lunched at Quaglino’s. Wallace has found me more work with the
Weekend Review
and the
Graphic.
We jotted down a list of subjects that I felt qualified to write about: the English Romantic poets, golf, South America, Paris, Spain, Oxford, sex, British History from the Norman Conquest to Cromwell’s Protectorate, modern art and corned beef. ‘What a multifaceted fellow you are,’ Wallace said, with more than a hint of his usual dryness. The more I know him the more I come to like him. He treats his job, it seems to me, as a kind of amusing challenge, a source of entertainment. His tone is very deadpan, very Buster Keaton. Sales of
Imaginings
beginning to climb — over a thousand now. I have the impression it’s being talked about. Cyril [Connolly] introduced me the other evening and said, ‘You must know Logan’s Shelley book.’

Very large party at Lady Cunard’s.
⁹
I felt a little overwhelmed: my first true social outing. Waugh was there, Harold Nicolson, Dulcie Vaughan-Targett, Oswald Mosley, Imogen Grenfell… Waugh congratulated me on the Shelley. I congratulated him on
Vile Bodies.
He pointed out William Gerhardi to me and said he was the most brilliant writer alive. He told me at some length that he was taking instruction with a view to becoming a Roman Catholic and started banging on about infallibility and Purgatory. I had to cut him short, said I knew all about it. He seemed startled to discover I was RC. I assured him I was well and truly lapsed and he scurried off looking sheepish. Why on earth should a man like that want to change his faith at his age?
¹⁰

Paris. Back in the good old, familiar old Hotel Rembrandt. Unseasonal rain darkens the pavements and a nagging wind makes the shutters bang. Land arrives next week.
Tu ne me chercherais pas si tu ne m’avais trouvé
[You would not be looking for me if you did not possess me. Pascal] I went out at 6, had a drink at Lipp and then strolled down to Montparnasse to meet Ben at the Closerie des Lilas. I was early and hadn’t thought of going in to Chez Chantal — thoughts of Land were uppermost in my mind — but, seeing as I was in the neighbourhood, I ducked in none the less. Madame Chantal greeted me warmly and offered me a choice of the three girls lounging around in their satin lingerie. ‘You know I only like Anna,’ I said. ‘But Anna has gone,’ she replied, explaining that Anna had said she was leaving and didn’t need to ‘work’ any more. She had no idea where she was.

I felt shocked and then saddened. Life does this to you sometimes — leads you up a path and then drops you in the shit, to mix a metaphor. I thought of my days of Anna-mania, of how her story had inspired
The Girl Factory.
I realized I had thought — selfishly that Anna would always be there, that she couldn’t just disappear, as if part of a conjuring trick. I was a little subdued at dinner but Ben was on good form, the gallery beginning to show signs of life, and much talk of Sandrine. Apparently her little boy is charming. I hear the distant chime of wedding bells.

To Les Halles. I ask the concierge of Anna’s apartment block if she still lives here but am told that she and her ‘uncle’ have moved on, destination unknown. I sit in the little
bistro du coin
where I met the Colonel, feeling both bereft and baffled — and also, after some reflection, a little annoyed with myself. Did I expect Anna to forward her new address to her regular clients? To have escaped from that life must be an unmitigated blessing. Anna will be fine, she has her own life to lead. I should concentrate on Land.

Most uncomfortable. I wonder if what I ate last night is the cause
(blanquette de veau)?
Whatever it was, when I went to the lavatory this morning it was like shitting sulphuric acid. A burning, itching arse-crack all day that hadn’t eased off all that much by the time I turned up at Land’s for dinner. She’s staying for a month at the home of a businessman and art collector called Émile Berlanger (a great patron of Vernon Fothergill), ostensibly to improve her French. The Berlangers live in a large apartment on the avenue Foch, full of mediocre landscapes amongst which Vernon’s did at least stand out. Land’s hair is different from the last time: she has dyed it ink black, which, curiously, makes her look a ravishing sixteen. The Berlangers were charming, their excruciating good manners a form of inhibiting social armour — one felt one could hardly move, that a scratch or a sniff would be the ultimate
faux pas.
Consequently, I was achingly conscious of my fiery bum. There was also a man there called Cyprien Dieudonné,
¹¹
who said he was a writer. ‘But my day has long gone,’ he said, in excellent English. ‘If this was, oh, 1910 you might have been just a little curious to meet me.’ He was plump and genial with an almost perfectly round face. Wispy fair hair thinning fast. He gave me his card.

Took Land to meet Ben at the gallery. It seemed to go well: Ben said to her, ‘We must compare notes, get my Logan-file up to date.’ As Land wandered around looking at the paintings, she said, ‘Geddes would love this. He must come.’

‘Geddes?’

‘Geddes Brown, silly. He’s in Paris too.’

Now this is bad news. Ben is going to Bandol for two weeks and has asked me to join him — and I’m very tempted. But I can’t leave Land in Paris with Geddes Brown.

Lunch at the Brasserie Lutetia with Land and Geddes Brown. They seemed very at ease with each other and there was a joke they shared — something to do with Hugh and one of the dogs — that had them weeping with recollected laughter. When I asked them about it, they said it was too complicated to explain.

Later, Land told Brown about Ben’s gallery and then added the suggestion that Ben might be the ideal dealer for him — and in Paris, no less.

‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful, Logan?’

‘What? Ah… Yes, wonderful.’

‘Let’s go and see him. Now, this afternoon.’

All this zeal for Geddes Brown, who sat there chewing placidly on his steak. I told her Ben had gone south, to the Mediterranean. In fact he’s due to go in a couple of days, but I was damned if I was going to do Geddes Brown any favors. Instead, we went to his studio, a dingy little place down by the Bastille. All he seemed to be painting were small dark portrait heads of his neighbours: strong angular faces, stylized with lots of black in them. I have to admit they weren’t bad.

This is getting ridiculous. Here I am sweltering in Paris in August trying to snatch the odd moment with Land, just wasting my time. The Berlangers have a house in Trouville where they spend August, M. Berlanger returning to Paris for a day or two when business calls, so Land is rarely here. But at least if she’s absent I console myself that she’s also absent from the loathsome Brown. I think it’s his physical combination of svelte muscular presence and cherubic, spilling blond curls that I find so repugnant.

I should say I dined with Dieudonné — a wholly relaxed, sophisticated yet diffident man. He confesses to being
follement anglophile,
but one knows that any liking he has for us is qualified by the shrewdest eye. He talked of Les Cosmopolites and the literary scene in France before the war, of their obsession with foreign travel, their dandyism, their celebration of le
style anglais,
their appreciation of the comforts that a little money could bring, the almost sexual thrill of being out of your own country: an outsider,
déraciné,
worldly, nomadic. I was entranced and envious. He said he would introduce me to Larbaud, who had translated
Ulysses
and was very close to Joyce (‘a difficult man to know’). Dieudonné is obviously independently wealthy himself, you can tell that from one glance at his clothes: everything, right down to his co-respondent boots, is bespoke. He writes about ‘two or three little articles a year’, he says, and has abandoned poetry, ‘a young man’s vocation’. His life is steeped in culture, self-indulgence and the exotic. He spent half of last year in Japan and said it was a completely fascinating place. I quizzed him more about Les Cosmopolites. Oh, that world has gone, he said, the war changed everything. When I think of my youth, he went on, what we took for granted, what we assumed was for ever certain, for ever permanent. I was captivated: this was the literary life I should have lived; I should have been born two decades earlier. Imagine what I would have done with my £500 a year! I could have had a manservant follow me around. I felt the glimmering of an idea for my next book.