by William Boyd
He went into the sitting room and cut the letter open with a paper knife. He knew what news it contained and he sat there at the writing desk for a minute, somehow not daring to reach in and draw the slip of paper out.
‘Come on!’ he urged himself out loud. ‘Don’t be pathetic.’
One sheet of paper. Hettie’s unformed, childish handwriting.
Dearest Lysander,
It is with great happiness that I write to you with the news that our son is born. I told you he would be a boy, didn’t I? He came into this world at 10.30 p.m. on the twelfth of June. He’s a big baby, almost nine pounds, and has a powerful pair of lungs. I wanted to call him Lysander – but that was obviously out of the question – so I have decided on Lothar, instead. If you say Lysander–Lothar quickly a few times they almost blend together – or so I like to believe.
I miss you very much and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did. Your escape was a great scandal here in Vienna and was written about in some newspapers. The police were roundly condemned for their uselessness and inefficiency. You can imagine my feelings when I heard you had gone and that there would be no trial.
You can always write to me care of the Café Sorgenfrei, Sterngasse, Wien. But I assume that your heart is only full of hate for me now, after what I did to you. Love our little boy, Lothar, instead of me. I will send you a photograph of him soon.
With our love,
Hettie and Lothar.
He closed his eyes and felt the warm tears well and run down his cheeks. Hettie and Lothar. He blubbed like a baby for a few minutes – like baby Lothar – head in his hands, leaning forward on the writing desk. Then he stood, went to the drinks’ cabinet and poured himself an inch of brandy, toasted Lothar Rief, wishing him a long life and good health, and drank it down. He heard Greville’s key in the lock and wiped his eyes but it was no use. Greville came in, said, ‘Good god, man, what’s happened?’ and Lysander started weeping again.
2. Summer Evening
He took a taxi from Lewes station to Claverleigh Hall. As he went through the gates into the park, past the Elizabethan gatehouse with its twisted brick chimneys, he felt he was coming home, although, after registering the emotion initially he then questioned it, as he always did. For half his life it had been his home, true – if you defined ‘home’ as the place your surviving parent lived. He still kept his old room above the L-shaped kitchen wing that had been built on to the back when the house was extensively remodelled in the ‘Italian’ style towards the end of the last century – the façade was stuccoed, a four-columned Tuscan porch was added – but after that first recognition the sensation that he was somehow just visiting re-established itself. It would always be the domain of the Faulkners – even a long-standing stepson called Rief was something of an interloper.
Claverleigh Hall was a moderately-sized mansion house of two storeys with added dormers in the roof. Its most striking architectural feature was its main staircase – ‘important’ – curving up towards a small Soaneian dome from the entrance hall. And on the first floor was a galleried drawing room that ran the length of the building and its nine tall windows. This gallery had two fireplaces and the ceiling was regarded as over-decorated, all swags, scrolls and festoons of plaster, crests, flowers, fruit and putti crammed into the corners. It was a comfortable home, all the same, and Faulkners had been living in it for over a century since the second Baron bought it with a fortune made from a wise investment in sugar plantations in the Caribbean.
The front door was opened by Lord Faulkner’s butler, Marlowe, who took his suitcase and led him to his old room.
‘How’s everything, Marlowe?’
‘Very well, sir. Except the Major has cancelled for this evening.’
‘That’s a shame. What’s happened?’
The Major was his uncle – Major Hamo Rief, VC, the not particularly famous explorer.
‘He’s indisposed,’ Marlowe confided, ‘but nothing serious, we’re informed.’
‘So who do we have for dinner, then?’
Marlowe said it was just the family – Lord and Lady Faulkner, the Honourable Hugh Faulkner (Crickmay’s son) and his wife, May, and the ‘two little girls’. The local dignitaries who had been hoping to greet Major Rief had been postponed until the Major felt better again. Lysander relaxed. He liked his stepbrother, Hugh. A tall, genial, balding man in his forties who seemed to blink twice as much as anyone else he’d ever met. He was known as the grandest dentist in Harley Street. Lysander supposed dentistry was an odd job for someone who would be the sixth Baron Faulkner one day, but he made an excellent living and, because of his rank, was much sought after on dental matters by London high society. His wife, May, was jolly and energetic, and their two girls, Emily (12) and Charlotte (10), were funny and unspoilt.
So, a family dinner, Lysander thought – good. Perhaps he might walk over to Winchelsea the next day and pay a visit on the Major. It was a good twenty miles from Claverleigh to Winchelsea by country lanes – a day’s walk – but nothing could be better for him in his current mood, Lysander thought. He would send a telegram and alert the Major that he’d be coming.
He took two dozen well-wrapped plovers’ eggs out of his suitcase and handed then to Marlowe.
‘Where can I find my mother?’ he asked.
‘Lady Faulkner is in the small walled garden, sir.’
Lysander pushed through the door in the high brick wall that led to the smaller walled garden and found his mother vigorously dead-heading dahlias. She was wearing a billowy, chartreuse, light-canvas dust-coat over her frock and a wide straw hat held down on her head by a silk scarf. He kissed her cheek and smelled her perfume, violets and lavender, a little ghostly trace of his father that still clung to her.
She took his hand and led him to a wooden bench set in the right angle at the corner of the garden wall and sat him down, staring at him intently. It had been some weeks since they had seen each other and Lysander thought she was looking very well, suiting the casual informality of her gardening clothes, with wisps of her greying hair hanging down unrestrained, stirred by the breeze. Tonight at dinner she would appear entirely different, he knew, with heavy powder and rouged lips, tall and handsome, her hair wound up in an onion-shaped bun, her tightly waisted dress with its broad sash emphasizing her still youthful hour-glass figure. In the evenings she wore her décolletage cut low, the generous swell of her breasts only half hidden by some diaphanous material. She used to be on the stage, Lysander reminded himself on these occasions, and this glamorous night-time persona that she transformed herself into was her only chance to perform, these days, to be covertly stared at and desired.
‘You’re looking weary, my darling,’ she said, touching his cheek with her knuckles. ‘Working too hard, I bet. What’s the play?’
‘Two plays, that’s the problem. Measure for Measure and a Swedish one called Miss Julie.’
‘Isn’t it terribly immoral? How wonderful.’
‘I haven’t read it yet. I’ve got it with me.’
‘I remember when your father did Ibsen. Hedda Gabler. Everyone was very disturbed. What is it about these Scandinavians?’
‘We’re trying to provoke a reaction, I think. Anyway, it should be interesting.’ He paused. ‘Mother . . . I’ve got some rather momentous news.’
He had told his mother nothing about why and how he had had to leave Vienna – she thought it was simply the planned end of his stay. He had hinted at an entanglement – a flirtation – and she also knew that his engagement to Blanche was over. She was sorry – she liked Blanche a lot.
‘You know that I told you I became involved with a young woman while I was in Vienna.’
‘This English girl, Miss Bull. How could I forget a name like that? The one that made Blanche so cross – and I’m on Blanche’s side, by the way.’
‘Yes. Well, I’ve had a letter from Miss Bull. She’s had a child.’
His mother looked at him. Her eyes widened
, then narrowed.
‘She’s not saying it’s yours.’
‘It is mine. Indisputably. It’s a boy, called Lothar. Your first grandchild.’
His mother stood up, took a handkerchief from her sleeve and walked away, rather dramatically dabbing at tears, he thought.
‘I knew a boy at school called Lothar,’ she said, throwing the words over her shoulder. ‘Lothar Hinz.’ She composed herself and came back over to the bench, sat down and took both his hands. ‘Let’s speak straightforwardly, darling, with honesty. Remember, I’m an actor’s wife so nobody could be more broad-minded. What are the problems looming over this wonderfully happy occasion?’
‘The boy is mine but I don’t know when and how I’m ever going to be able to see him.’
‘Another man in the picture?’
‘Yes. Miss Bull’s common-law husband – as the expression goes. An unpleasant fellow, a painter called Udo Hoff.’
‘Painters are always difficult. But you’re in touch with Miss Bull, at least. What’s her Christian name?’
‘Esther.’
‘Sounds religious to me. Is she religious?’
‘Not in the least. She’s known as Hettie.’
‘Hettie Bull. We have a chambermaid here called Hettie.’
‘Hettie Bull is an . . . extraordinary person. I was completely . . .’ Lysander paused. ‘She was helpful to me and I rather lost my head. She overwhelmed me. We overwhelmed each other.’
‘So it was very passionate.’
‘Very.’
‘And little Lothar is the outcome.’
They sat there in silence for a while.
‘Have you a photograph of this Hettie Bull?’
‘Do you know, I haven’t. I left in such a hurry. All I have is this.’
Lysander took the libretto of Andromeda und Perseus out of his pocket and handed it to her.
‘That’s her. She posed for Andromeda.’
‘Very daring. She’s completely naked. She looks pretty anyway. Is she tall?’
‘She’s tiny. A little slip of a thing – gamine. Electric.’
Lysander suddenly thought this was a good sign, a further indication of the success of his Vienna cure, in that he was practically talking with his mother about sex. She reached out and removed some thistle down from his lapel.
‘I thought you liked tall girls, like Blanche.’
‘I did. Until I met Hettie.’
She looked at the cover of the libretto again.
‘Can I borrow this? It seems interesting. Did you hear the music? I don’t know the composer.’
‘It was very modern, apparently. But, no, I didn’t. Do take it.’
‘Lysander! Why did no one tell us you were here?’
They looked up to see, coming through the door from the large walled garden, the lanky figure of the Hon. Hugh Faulkner. He turned and shouted back through the open door.
‘Girls! Uncle Lysander’s here!’
Squeals of delight followed this announcement and, seconds later, Emily and Charlotte came racing across the lawn towards them.
‘I think we’ll keep this news from the rest of the family for a while,’ his mother said, quietly. ‘Careful, girls, don’t fall and spoil your lovely dresses!’
Crickmay Faulkner offered Lysander a cigar.
‘Your mother tells me you’re acting in an indecent play.’
‘I’ll take a cigarette, thank you. Yes, it’s Swedish, called Miss Julie.’
‘I like the sound of that already. I want tickets for the first night, front row.’ Crickmay smiled. ‘I want to be corrupted before I die.’
‘Me too,’ Hugh added, lighting his cigar. ‘I want to be corrupted too – but you’ve got a good few years left in you, Papa.’ He passed the port decanter to Lysander. ‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s about a rich, well-born woman who has an affair with a valet.’
‘Marvellous. But they’ll never let you put it on.’
They laughed. Crickmay lit his cigar, coughed and slapped his chest.
‘Don’t tell your mother, she’ll get cross with me.’
He was looking decidedly older these days, Lysander thought, his face slowly collapsing, big bags under his rheumy eyes and sagging cheeks. His thick white moustache needed clipping.
The three men were sitting in the dining room in their dinner jackets, smoking and drinking port, the women having retired to the drawing room. Lysander topped up his glass, feeling a little drunk. Telling his mother about Hettie and Lothar had encouraged him to drink more than he meant. Brandy and soda before dinner, too much claret with the roast lamb and now port. Better stop if he was going to walk to Winchelsea tomorrow.
‘Shall we join the ladies?’ Crickmay said, heaving himself to his feet with difficulty and limping out of the room.
‘Bring the port, Lysander,’ Hugh said. ‘Are you thinking about going to church tomorrow? If you won’t, I won’t.’
Lysander picked up the port decanter.
‘No. I’m walking to Winchelsea tomorrow, check up on the Major.’
‘Amazing fellow. Where’s he been to now?’
They walked down the wide corridor towards the Green Drawing Room.
‘Somewhere in West Africa, I think. Exploring the upper reaches of the Benue River, the last I heard. He’s been away for two years.’
They turned into the drawing room, where May was playing the piano and his mother was searching through sheet music looking for a song. It was her party piece, a nod to her past that everyone indulged and enjoyed. Lysander went and stood by the fireplace, looking at her with admiration as she stood in the ogival curve of the piano, one hand resting on the music stand, and raised her chin firmly, ready to sing. It was still light outside – the deepening blue of the short summer night just beginning to overcome the last of the sun’s iridescence in the sky. Lysander felt a pressure at the base of his spine and a feeling of peace flow through him. He had a son – it was as if the news had only just registered. He had a son called Lothar. He wondered if one day he would ever bring him to Claverleigh Hall to meet his grandmother. It seemed an impossible dream. His mother began to sing and her warm vibrant voice filled the air.
‘Arm und Nacken, weiss und lieblich,
Schimmern in dem Mondenscheine. . . ’
Brahms, he recognized, one of his favourites. ‘Summer Evening’. ‘White and lovely, her arms and neck glimmer in the moonshine.’ He felt the emotion well and brim in him – such a simple poem. Hettie, he thought at once – it wasn’t over, clearly. He stood and crossed to the window as his mother continued singing. He looked out through his reflection in the panes to the darkening park beyond, the sun below the horizon now, though its light still charged and brightened the blue-grey air. The ancient limes, oaks and elms in the fenced enclosure seemed to solidify, losing their individual character as trees, and became great opaque shaggy monoliths that, as the remaining sunglow removed itself from them, somehow better revealed the true artful geography of the landscape gardener who, a century before, had placed the feathery saplings here and there – on the sides of hillocks, on the edge of the small lake, and grouped them in gentle valleys – to make a near-perfect man-made landscape that he would never see.
3. The Walk to Winchelsea
Lysander was up at six o’clock and went down to the kitchen, where he gulped a quick cup of tea and had two rounds of cheese-and-pickle sandwiches made up for him. He had found a pair of corduroy trousers and some mountain boots in his wardrobe and with a linen jacket and a Panama hat he was ready for the day. He reckoned it was a twenty-three-mile walk to Winchelsea, more or less straight across country, following lanes and tracks via the villages of Herstmonceux and Battle before he briefly joined the main trunk road that would lead him down to the coast at Winchelsea.
The day was warm but there was a threat of showers, according to Marlowe, so he stuffed a rubberized cycling cape in his rucksack, along with his sandwiches and his playscript
of Miss Julie, and set off across the park looking for the first of the cart-tracks that would lead him east to Herstmonceux.
He made good going in the early morning freshness over the downland, catching glimpses of the silvered sea to his right whenever he hit higher ground and the unfolding valleys opened up to afford him a view southwards. He felt good in himself, as he always did when he was walking with purpose, his mind emptying of everything except what he could see and hear around him, as he skirted the oak and beech copses, following sunken lanes hedged with hornbeam and blackthorn, hearing a late cuckoo piping its two-note song, looking down on small farms from ridge-paths, crossing trunk roads as quickly as he could, eager to remove himself from traffic and the noisy reminders of the twentieth century.
They were beginning to cut hay in the fields as he passed, the haymakers scything down the meadows and filling the air with the sweet, pungent scent of cut grass. Around the middle of the morning he realized he had slightly lost his bearings. He hadn’t seen the sea for an hour and, although he knew he was heading broadly east – the position of the sun told him that – he hadn’t come across a fingerpost or a sign for a village for a mile or two. He met a four-horse wagon jingling up a lane and asked the carter’s boy who was leading the team where he could find the road to Herstmonceux. The boy told him he’d passed Herstmonceux and he should turn back. If he went on aways he’d come to a country church. There was a signpost there that would tell him the directions.
He paused at the church, ancient and solid, faced with grey-blue flint, with a battlemented tower and a graveyard half overgrown with nettles, long grass and cow parsley. Gnarled, bent apple trees flanked the cemetery wall. He ate the first of his sandwiches here and the cheese and pickle gave him a thirst so he strode on to Battle, finding an old milestone on the verge that told him Battle was two and a half miles away. Battle with its pubs. He was making good time – a pint of ale, a cigarette and he’d be ready to move on again.
