Any Human Heart

by William Boyd

  Letter from Mother bringing pleasing news: Lucy is to join us on our Austrian jaunt. Mother suggests we can amuse ourselves ‘hiking up mountains’. What can she be talking about?

  7th March [1924]

  At last. I am selected as Second XV hooker for tomorrow’s match against Walcott Hall (fforde has fflu). Ben has been sounding out Vanderpoel and has discovered that he is not rich (his father is a barrister’s clerk, it turns out) but for all that thinks only the most munificent of bribes will tempt him. How munificent, I ask? Five guineas, Ben reckons. Disaster: even between us we can’t muster a third of that. I will write to Father and ask if I can borrow the money – if I can think of some convincing and worthy cause. On second thoughts I will write to Mother.

  8th March [1924]

  Somehow we beat Walcott Hall 64-0, some sort of school record. It appears their ranks were depleted by a chicken-pox epidemic and they had to fill places with the unfit and infirm. It was a joyous rout, actually, and I nearly scored myself, hauled down by three or four men just short of the line. The Second XV preen and strut about the school. fforde claims he will be fit and well by next Saturday but only a fool would change this winning team.

  Lucy writes to say that she will come to Austria on the condition that our ‘romance fantasy’ is understood to have terminated. I will write back reluctantly, with pleasing melancholy, to agree. Once I have her there all will be different. Scabius’s maddening success with the farmer’s daughter has emboldened and encouraged me. Lucy shall be mine.

  To my vague surprise I find my thoughts turn more and more to next Saturday and I realize I am looking forward to the match – Harrow at home. I mustn’t lose any more of my Bolshevik spirit.

  11th March [1924]

  Ben and I cashed Mother’s postal order for five guineas (bless her: I said I wanted to buy Lucy a really special birthday present) and we treated ourselves to tea and anchovy toast at Ma Hingley’s. Ben said that Vanderpoel was willing to drop out for one match only but that he wanted to meet the person who was prepared to pay such a high price. ‘He suspects it’s you, of course. Or he might just think it’s that ass fforde, I suppose – you’ll have to do it.’ He’s right, I have to admit. By the way, we drew 9-9 with Harrow; while our first team were thrashed 3-27 – I sense my star is in the ascendant.

  Ben told me he was going straight to Paris after school – it seems he’s been offered a job in an art gallery, and he wants to be a dealer. I felt a throb of jealousy: maybe Ben is right? Maybe we are fools to postpone our adult, proper lives by three years at varsity? Three years that, as far as I can see, might be just as frustrating as life at school…

  The really pleasing news is that Clough has become suspicious of Peter and Tess’s closeness and has contrived to keep them apart. On his last three visits to the farm Peter has been occupied shredding mangel-wurzels – or some such menial task (his hands are fearfully blistered) – with no sight of the delicious Tess to distract him or compensate. Ben and I privately rejoice – though I admit such an attitude reflects badly on us both.

  Later. Went over to Foster’s after second prep to seek out Vanderpoel. He’s a pale-faced fellow with an unpleasant bulbous nose. We haggled a bit over the price and I was able to knock him down to £5.

  ‘One game, mind you, that’s all,’ he kept repeating, pocketing his fiver. Then he looked suspiciously at me: ‘Why’s it so important for you?’

  ‘My father’s dying,’ I said spontaneously. ‘He played rugby for… Scotland. It was his dearest wish to see me in the First XV. Following in his footsteps and all that. Before he went.’

  Vanderpoel was so touched that he insisted I have my £5 back – which I naturally accepted (I will not tell Ben this, however). Vanderpoel assured me that he would ‘twist’ his ankle or something during the Friday training session before the game. The match is against Oundle, he said – very rough bunch. ‘I’ll even suggest you replace me – not that peasant fforde. Don’t worry, Mountstuart, your old man will be proud of you.’

  Why am I lying so much? To Mother, to Lucy, to Vanderpoel, to Ben… Is this normal, I wonder? Does everybody do it as much as me? Are our lives just the aggregate of the lies we’ve told? (‘Lives’ – the ‘v’ is silent.) Is it possible to live reasonably without lying? Do lies form the natural foundation of all human relationships, the thread that stitches our individual selves together? I shall go and smoke a cigarette behind the squash courts and think more great thoughts.

  13th March [1924]

  Snow – a good six inches – and all sports are cancelled. Yet the newspapers say London is clear – it seems only to have snowed in wretched East Anglia. Why do I feel so frustrated by the thought of the Oundle match being postponed? Longing to get on the field – I must be turning into a true hearty. Vanderpoel sidled up to me in the cloisters and asked me how my father was. I was about to tell him to mind his own business when I remembered.

  ‘Will he make it?’ Vanderpoel asked.

  ‘Make what?’

  ‘Make it through to next weekend – or whenever the Oundle match is played?’

  ‘I hope so. My mother says he’s clinging on.’

  I did feel some real guilt about this – especially given that Father is actually ill. I worried that by placing him on death’s door like this I was imposing some sort of malign curse upon him. But then I say to myself: they’re only words I’ve uttered. Mere words are not going to accelerate or retard the course of an illness. Yet at house prayers this evening I prayed for him, the hypocrite that I am. How H-D would mock me: having my cake and eating it – like all lazy believers – routinely going through the motions of piety when it suits. Perhaps I should insist Vanderpoel take back the £5.

  Friday [22 March 1924]

  Worked like the proverbial charm. There we are training when Younger and, to my surprise, Barrowsmith trot over from the First XV pitch. ‘Mountstuart! comes the cry. I jog over innocently. Vanderpoel’s lame, twisted his knee – are you up for the match tomorrow? I’ll do my best,’ I say modestly. ‘Good man!’ says Barrowsmith, clapping me on the shoulder. Vague alarm at earning the Barrowboy’s approval. I had forgotten he was in the First XV – no Fenian bastard now.

  Ben and Peter seem genuinely delighted for me – and not a little admiring, I think, at my dogged perseverance – and Ben vows he will break the habit of a lifetime and voluntarily watch a game of competitive sport. Peter told me he had had a clandestine meeting with Tess: her father has banned all contact between them (he, Peter, was close to tears as he told me this). He thinks Clough saw them holding hands. He talked wildly of staying in a boarding house in Norwich during the Easter vac in the hope they can surreptitiously meet. We urged him not to be such a fool.

  Ben, on his part, said that Mrs Catesby had written to him offering to give him private instruction in place of Doig. ‘I think she plans to seduce me,’ Ben said. ‘What an odd lot you RCs are.’ What’s she like, your Mrs Catesby? I asked. ‘Sort of plump and powdery and pink,’ he said, shuddering. ‘I’d rather sodomize little Montague.’ Do you know, I think he would. We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.

  Easter Sunday [20 April 1924]

  BAD RIEGERBACH

  I told Mother my arm was hurting and so have been excused Easter service. She, Father and Lucy have taken the funicular down to the old town, where the church awaits their pieties. Immediately after they left I ordered a bottle of hock from Frau Dielendorfer and am already feeling better – nothing nicer than being pleasantly tight on a Sunday morning at 10.30 – so I thought I would take up the journal again.

  The portents for the match against Oundle could not have been better: a clear, sunny, sharp-shadowed day, a thin frost, which had melted by lunch time. In the changing room I could hardly hear the captain’s pep-talk: I felt light-headed, as if there were too much oxygen fizzing around my blood vessels. I rubbed horse liniment on to my knees and thighs, stamped my boots upon the tiled floor and grinned at my team-mates like an
idiot. And when we ran out – and it seemed as if the entire school was on the touchline cheering – 1 thought (and I must be honest, here of all places) that my heart would burst it was beating so strongly.

  The referee tossed a coin for the captains: we lost and prepared to face the kick-off. I jogged across the pitch to join my fellow forwards. From the touchline I heard Ben and Peter screaming my name and I gave them a quick, confident wave.

  The whistle blew, the ball was kicked and lofted high in the air before falling directly towards me. I sensed, rather than saw, the charge of the opposing forwards and I caught the ball a second before the first three or four hit me. I had just enough time to tuck the ball under my right armpit and stick out my left arm to ward off the big second-row man who was now, suddenly, on top of me. He fell and then I ducked my head before the whole wave of Oundle forwards crashed against me.

  I never felt a thing. The referee’s whistle blew and I found myself buried under a pile of bodies. Slowly they peeled off me, regaining their feet one by one. ‘Scrum down, knock on,’ the referee said, and I realized I no longer had the ball. I felt winded, a little dazed by the series of collisions. Soon I was left lying on the ground alone and looked up, aware of Barrowsmith and some others looking down at me with concern. Then Younger (I think) said, ‘I say, Mountstuart, is your arm all right?’ I looked: it definitely was not – my left forearm had a distinct hump in it, as if there was a golf ball under the skin, and it already looked oddly discoloured. I was helped to my feet, my right hand cupping my left elbow as if my arm were made of the most fragile and translucent porcelain. Then the pain began to surge and pulse and I felt myself stagger as yellow and green lights started to flash before my eyes. Shouts for a stretcher. All my sentient being seemed to contract and focus on that fracture in my shattered and agonized radius. I knew, even through my pain, that my rugby days were gone for ever.

  Wednesday, 23 April

  Lucy and I went to Innsbruck yesterday, largely at Mother’s behest, to which end she provided us with generous funds. It rained. We sat in a damp and dripping park, umbrellas open above our heads and listened to a military band play Strauss without much enthusiasm. I long to go to Vienna but Mother says it’s too far for a day trip. I long to hear Wagner at the opera house, see the Votive Church and stroll up the Korso. Innsbruck seemed very quiet with hardly any motors, just the clip-clop of horse carriages and the patter of the rain. Lucy was in taciturn and uncommunicative mood so I asked her what was wrong. She said there was no fun to be had wandering around a new and strange town with a companion who had his arm in a sling. I protested: it was hardly my fault, I said, it was not as if I was trying to start a new fashion trend, for silk waistcoats or multi-coloured berets, or such like. ‘People will think I’m your nurse,’ she said. Preposterous. What a wayward and difficult girl she can be.

  Eventually we decided to go to a café for shelter and found one with a glass veranda where we drank interminable cups of coffee. Lucy wrote postcards while I struggled with my Rilke. I would like to speak German but it seems so fearfully complicated: if only there were a way of arriving at moderate fluency (it’s all I ask) with minimum effort. Perhaps I’m not a linguist… I developed a sudden longing for English food: veal and ham pie, shoulder of mutton with onions, jam pudding. We ate a cake and decided to go back early.

  At the pension there was no sign of Mother. So Lucy and I walked over to the sanatorium to greet Father after his day of baths and scrubs and saltwater showers. When he emerges from these sessions he gives off the illusion of good health for a short while, almost glowing, red spots on his cheeks, his eyes bright. But I have to say he has become noticeably thinner since last vac and in the morning he looks gaunt and tired. He finds it almost impossible to sleep, he says, from the strange pressures in his lungs. He still has a healthy appetite, though, tucking into Frau Dielendorfer’s slabs of cheese, ham, and rye bread with what seems desperate hunger.

  Then we saw a curious sight. As we approached the main portico of the sanatorium (it looks like the entrance to a provincial art gallery) we saw that Mother was there, waiting, but on the steps beside her stood a tall man, in a macintosh and a Homburg, and they were talking to each other with some urgency. He left as we drew near. Mother was obviously very surprised to see us back so early from Innsbruck. She cannot feign unconcern, Mother – anger, yes, indifference, no.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’ she said, cross, despite her best efforts. ‘You go to Innsbruck for two hours? What a wasting.’

  ‘Who was that man?’ I asked, somewhat audaciously, I admit. ‘A doctor?’

  ‘No. Yes. Of a sort, yes. A, ah, physician. Yes. I was asking him some advice. Very helpful.’

  Her lying was so inept it was all we could do not to laugh. Later, comparing suspicions and intuitions, Lucy and I both agreed he was an admirer. Lucy’s mood, I’m glad to report, improved at the discovery of this subterfuge. We played dominoes in the lounge and she let me kiss her (cheek only) when she said goodnight.

  Friday, 25 April

  Spent the morning effortfully pushing father in his bath chair through the streets of Bad Riegerbach. A bath chair can be an unconscionably difficult thing to steer if you only have one hand to provide the power. Father worked the wheels as best he could but I asked him to stop, as all his energies being expended in this way rather defeated the purpose of having him in the chair in the first place. So I parked him in the small square by the post office and I read him articles out of last Wednesday’s Times. He was well wrapped up and the day was not cold, but every time I glanced up at him he looked pinched and uncomfortable.

  I asked him from time to time how he was feeling and his replies never varied: ‘Absolutely tip-top’, ‘Right as rain’. My mood kept surging from ineffable sadness to huge irritation. Sad that his son was obliged to push him about in a fauteuil roulant, irritated that I should be spending my precious time thus engaged. And yet I can’t remain angry with him for long. I was furious with him when we arrived for presenting Frau Dielendorfer with a gift package of Foley’s potted meats, corned beef, hams in aspic and such like. I said to him, Father, we are not travelling salesmen, there is no need to disperse Foley’s products around Europe. Don’t be so pretentious, Logan, was all he replied and I felt very ashamed. I apologized to him later – he has this effect on me.

  Mother had told me to take Father out for a ‘good three hours’, but when we returned to the pension, Mother was away. ‘She’s been out all morning,’ Lucy said, ‘left immediately after you did.’ Father was served some soup and then hauled himself up the stairs for a nap. For the first time an awful foreboding strikes me that he may never be fully well again and I feel angry at myself for my chronic inability to think more often of others and how they may be feeling.

  I am writing this in the pension’s drawing room, alone, listening to Brahms’s first piano concerto on the gramophone. The adagio is reliably calming and contemplating its serene beauty I find myself wondering why Lucy has turned not cold, exactly but lukewarm towards me. I tried to take her hand in the train back from Innsbruck but she snatched it away. And yet five minutes later she was chatting away (about her father’s new hobby: lepidoptery) as if we were the best and oldest of friends. But I don’t want to be her ‘friend’: I want to be her lover.

  Saturday, 26 April

  Father back to the sanatorium routine for baths of boiling mud and gallons of sulphurous water and God knows what else. Lucy came to my room after breakfast and said to my surprise that she had formulated a plan – which we duly carried out. We told Mother we were going to take the train to Lans, where there was a local festival (a festival of what, we did not specify: it could have been a festival of lederhosen for all Mother cared) – Mother thought it an excellent idea. So we had Franz, the head waiter and general factotum, drive us down to the station in the pony and trap, whereupon, as soon as he had left us, we took the funicular back up to the old town.

  We waited in a so
uvenir shop with a view of the pension, pretending to choose postcards for a good half-hour before Mother emerged, splendidly got up in her sable coat (‘See!’ hissed Lucy) and wearing a hat with a veil. She hurried past the sanatorium and went into the Goldener Hirsch Hotel. Lucy and I gave her five minutes before we wandered casually into the lobby. We spotted her almost immediately in the residents’ lounge, at the far end, half obscured by a potted palm. She was leaning forward in her armchair talking to the tall, lanky man we’d seen outside the sanatorium.

  Lucy called a bellboy over and discreetly indicated the man. ‘Would you tell Mr Johnson that I’m here to see him,’ she said. The bellboy immediately corrected her: that’s not Mr Johnson, he said. That’s Mr Prendergast. From America. Lucy apologized for her error and we left.

  I have to say I feel strangely neutral about Mother’s behaviour – I was more impressed by the guileful way Lucy discovered Prendergast’s name. But I have to accept the fact – Lucy refuses to admit any other interpretation – that in the midst of my father’s illness his wife seems to have taken up with an admirer.

  Tuesday, 29 April

  Sitting at lunch today I watched my father slowly masticating a chunk of Frau Dielendorfer’s roast veal. He caught me looking at him and automatically gave his faint apologetic smile, as if he’d been doing something wrong. I felt a spasm of hurt on his behalf and also felt tears warm my eyes. Mother was in rampant, unstoppable form, in loud debate with Lucy. They were arguing about polka-dots for some reason, Mother claiming that no one over the age of ten should be allowed to wear them. ‘Otherwise for servants or dancers,’ she said. This was harsh, as Lucy was actually wearing a yellow polka-dotted blouse (in which she looked very fetching, I thought). Mother declaimed on, allowing that polka-dots were suitable for circus clowns as well. Father looked over at me again and winked. Suddenly, I knew he was going to die soon.