Any Human Heart

by William Boyd

  Friday, 9 April

  Valencia. On my last night in Madrid I was packing up my bits and pieces when I came across the scrap of paper Faustino had given me in San Vicente. It was an address, nothing more, in the Salamanca district. I decided to do the favour he’d asked of me and went down to the lobby to ask the concierge if he knew where this place was. Hemingway arrived with Ivens as I was peering at a city map and wandered over to see what I was up to. I explained and I could sense he was immediately intrigued.

  ‘There’s no name? No contact?’

  ‘Just an address. I’d be expected, he said.’

  ‘Let’s go, Logan,’ he said, and steered me out of the hotel to where his car and driver were waiting.31

  We drove down the Calle Alcala to the Retiro Park and then motored north into the Salamanca district where, after a few false turns, we found our street and pulled up outside a large nineteenth-century apartment block.

  ‘You wait here,’ I said to Hemingway.

  ‘Out of the question.’

  The concierge showed us up the stairs to Apartment 3 and I rang the bell. An old servant opened the door. Beyond him the apartment seemed huge, barely lit, a few pieces of furniture covered in dust-sheets.

  ‘We thought you wouldn’t come,’ the servant said. ‘Who is Señor Mountstuart?’

  I showed him my passport.

  ‘Who’s he?’ the servant asked.

  ‘Never mind. I’m a friend of his,’ Hemingway said.

  The servant went away for a moment and returned with what looked like a small Persian rug rolled up and tightly secured with string. We took it from him and left.

  Back in my room in the hotel I untied the bundle and unrolled the rug. Hemingway was as excited as a child. Inside the rug were seven unstretched oil paintings that I spread out on the bed.

  ‘Joan Miró,’32 I said.

  ‘Miró,’ Hemingway said. ‘Fuck me.’

  ‘Aren’t they appalling?’

  ‘Hey, he happens to be a friend of mine,’ Hemingway said, some of his geniality deserting him. ‘I own a big early one of his – not like these, though.’

  ‘They’re just not to my taste,’ I said. The canvases were all on the small side, about three feet by two, typical Mirós of his post-realist, surreal phase. I rolled them up again.

  ‘Who owns seven Mirós?’ Hemingway said.

  ‘And why am I chosen to be courier?’

  ‘So many questions,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the Chicote and try and figure them out.’

  Monday, 12 April

  Back in Barcelona again, having heard nothing from Faustino. Telephone calls and telegrams to the Press Bureau and the FAI headquarters brought no response, so I thought it would be better if I tried myself.

  Accordingly this morning I go to the Bureau of Foreigners, the people who first attached him to me as press liaison and they tell me he no longer works there. Faces are heavy with suspicion and few words are wasted. Nobody seems to know where he is. I leave the building and a young man with prematurely grey streaks in his hair follows me out and leads me to a café. He won’t tell me his name but says that Faustino was arrested about ten days ago. ‘Arrested by whom?’ I ask. ‘By the police.’ ‘On what charge?’ He shrugs. ‘It’s usually treason: it’s the easiest.’ I ask if Faustino has a wife or family. Just a mother in Seville, I’m told – which is no good to me, as Seville is behind Fascist lines. His family came from Seville originally, the grey-haired young man tells me, and maybe that was bad luck for him. Then he leaves: I don’t know what he means by that – all I know is that Seville fell early to the Generals in this war.

  Later. There was an unsigned printed note waiting for me at the hotel when I returned this afternoon. It reads: ‘F. Peredes was shot by the police while resisting arrest. He had been accused of being a Fascist spy. Don’t stay long in Barcelona.’ After the initial shock I begin to wonder if this is true. Perhaps it’s some kind of hoax? Or maybe Faustino is really the victim of some kind of Communist-Anarchist feud. Or was he a spy? The mistrust, the doubt, the elusiveness of the real facts seem typical of this war. Somehow I can’t believe he has gone. I think of Faustino and our brief acquaintance and the wry scepticism he brought to his Anarchist calling: ‘Lover of life, lover of humanity. Hater of injustice, hater of privilege.’ Not the worst epitaph a man could have. But now I am the possessor of seven paintings by Joan Miró – and which almost certainly didn’t belong to Faustino. What am I meant to do with them?

  [LMS returned the next day to Valencia and five days later he was in London once again, the seven paintings with him, wrapped in their Persian rug. He went up to Thorpe as usual on the next weekend. Later in the year he wrote up the events that followed his return as a form of aide-mémoire.]

  [September]

  After these endless months of lawyers and meetings and emotional upheavals it seems wise to try to write a coherent account of events, and not rely on scrappy notes I kept at the time.

  When I came back from Spain in April I spent some wonderful but increasingly apprehensive days with Freya. Lottie had no idea that I’d returned and I wanted to go back to Thorpe in a manner, at least initially, that implied everything was as it had always been. Freya said no one had tried to make contact with her, though for two or three days she had had the feeling that the flat was being watched: she’d seen the same man on the street two days running when she returned from work.

  I telegraphed Lottie that I was back and boarded the train for Norwich with a feeling of nausea and dread. It was the recriminations ahead that made me feel pre-emptively weary and sick, not what I was about to do. Freya and I had spoken at length and we had decided the only course of action was to tell Lottie everything and then ask for a divorce. But when I reached home the house was empty and dark. No sign of Lottie and Lionel – I knew that my telegram had driven them to seek refuge at Edgefield.

  So I rang Edgefield and was very surprised when Angus answered. His voice was cold and flat and he said he would be round to see me in the morning.

  ‘I’d like to speak to Lottie, please,’ I said.

  ‘She’s too ill to speak. She never wants to speak to you again. That’s why I’m here: anything you want to say, say to me.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ I began. ‘This is no way to –’

  Then he practically screamed at me: You disgusting piece of filth! You set yourself up with your whore – I hung up, cut him off.

  The next day was exceptionally uncomfortable. In the morning Angus arrived with the family solicitor, one Waterlow, and this man informed me that I was to be out of Thorpe by nightfall, that our joint bank accounts were frozen (by court order), that I was to be sued for the upkeep of Lottie and our child and that if I wished to see Lionel I would be granted one day a month but would have to give ten days’ written notice of my intention. Angus sat glowering at me silently while this went on. I ordered them both out of the house.

  At the front door Angus took a swing at me but I ducked and managed to punch him hard in the chest, so hard that he fell down. Waterlow had to hold me back from giving him a good kicking. Angus looked as if he was about to cry as he was helped into the motor, screaming threats and insults at me all the time. He really is a grade-one CAUC.33

  And so we entered the war of the solicitors. I found a good man called Noel Lange – recommended by Peter Scabius – and Lange and Waterlow set to. I agreed to offer no defence to the petition of divorce, but I refused to concede to their other demands. And as usual it all came down to money. I thought I owned half of Thorpe Hall, that it had been a wedding gift from Aelthred and Enid to Lottie and me, but in fact it turned out it was held in a trust under Lottie’s name. So much for the Earl’s faith in the durability of his daughter’s marriage. I used this information to free some of the money I’d earned from The Girl Factory, which was tied up in investments and joint savings accounts. We ding-donged to and fro. Lange did a fine job but he didn’t come cheap. I found myself doing
more journalism than ever.

  And then at the end, just when we seemed to have everything sorted out, they insisted that I had to go through the motions of being caught in flagrante. I believe absolutely that this was Angus Cassell’s doing. I became very depressed at the tawdriness all this would involve: the hiring of a prostitute, the booking of a hotel room, the complicity of a member of the hotel staff who would ‘discover’ us and sign an affidavit. I told Freya what they were demanding and she said, ‘Wonderful, let’s have a dirty weekend together.’

  So we went to Eastbourne and the hotel maid delivered us breakfast in bed with both of us actually in the bed, much to her consternation. Freya called out: ‘Morning. By the way, I’m not married to him!’ and the poor girl left the room to our delighted laughter.

  The decree nisi came through last week and the announcement appeared in The Times under the headline: EARL’S DAUGHTER GRANTED DECREE NISI AGAINST BESTSELLING NOVELIST. It read: ‘There was no defence to the petition of Lady Laeticia Mountstuart, of Thorpe Hall, Thorpe Geldingham, for the dissolution of her marriage with Mr Logan Gonzago Mountstuart on the grounds of his adultery with Miss Freya Deverell at the Westminster Hotel, Eastbourne. Costs were granted against Mr Mountstuart.’

  I feel exhausted, poor, but exultingly happy, now that it’s all over. Another of those moments in my life – a sloughing away of the past, the old, mottled dull skin gone; gleaming, glossy new scales on display. Now my life with Freya can truly begin. But there remains one problem: the guilty ache in my heart – Lionel. What do I do about Lionel? I love him; he’s my son. I can’t argue against the truth inherent in these words, but, to be truthful again, they have no real meaning for me. But what exactly is Lionel to me beyond my flesh and blood? Be honest, Logan – you only see him as a sickly, irritating child. Ten minutes of his company is demanding: your mind wanders, you want him to be taken away. Yes, I admit it, maybe I’m not good with infants, but for all that I cannot, will not, let him go. I have to save him from the Edgefields. He’s only a baby: he might change as he grows older and I have to be there in his life, however awkward, however unpleasant for me, as a key and lasting influence. I will not abandon Lionel Mountstuart to that hellish crowd.

  1938

  Friday, 7 January

  Freya and I were married yesterday at the Chelsea Town Hall. Present: the bride and groom. Mother, Encarnación, Freya’s father, George, her brother, Robin. Afterwards we went up the road to the Eight Bells and had a few drinks. It was a low-key affair, but our happiness was complete. Mother, however, was subdued; she says she likes Freya very much but added that ‘you cannot forget a person like Lottie in just one day’. I reminded her that Lottie and I had been separated for eight months by now. ‘It seem like one day to me,’ she insisted.

  Then they all went their separate ways and Freya and I went home to Draycott Avenue. We had lunch, we went for a chilly walk in Battersea Park, came back and read and listened to music on the gramophone, then ate our supper.

  ‘I’m so happy,’ I said to her as we held each other in bed, ‘that I think I might explode.’

  ‘Boom!’ she said. ‘Young marrieds disintegrate simultaneously in Chelsea flat.’

  Thursday, 17 March

  I pick up this journal again to note that (a) I have finished Chapter 3 of Summer at Saint-Jean and that (b) Freya announced this morning that she was pregnant. We had talked about trying for a child but I never expected it to be so suddenly successful. And of course the news made me think of Lionel, whom I’ve seen only once this year. He was brought to a hotel in Norwich (where I’d rented a room for the day) in the company of a nanny and I spent a few hours with him, trying to play with him, trying to entertain him. He was suspicious of me and kept going to his nurse. It was an embarrassing exercise. Poor Lionel – is he going to be the biggest casualty of our loveless marriage? Somehow I feel the child Freya and I will have will fare better. One thing is clear; we have to find a new place to live.

  [April]

  Can there have been a filthier spring than the one we have had this year? Cold and rain – rain and cold. Wallace has managed to contract me to the Sunday Referee: ten articles, £500. Since Spain my stock and my rate have gone up, gratifyingly.

  Freya is well, no morning sickness to speak of. Another day this last week in Norwich with Lionel. This is now establishing itself as the pattern. I rent a room for a day – on neutral ground – and Lionel is brought down from Thorpe in a taxi with the nanny. He stays until it’s obvious that he’s tired or bored – or both.

  Enjoyable supper with Turville Stevens last night. Turville said he knew war was inevitable as far back as 1936 – before Spain. And the news is bad from Catalonia – Franco’s troops advancing fast, every day. My God, Spain. It seems like some crazy dream. And what am I to do with Faustino Peredes’s Mirós? I shut my mind to Turville’s warnings of the coming war with Germany. I think we’ve found a house in Battersea that we can just afford.

  [July-August]

  32, Melville Road, Battersea. We moved in July and have spent the summer putting the place together. I was sorry to say farewell to Draycott Avenue but we both love Melville Road. ‘Do you think it’s named after Herman Melville?’ Freya said. I’m sure it was,’ I said, ‘and what better place for a fellow scrivener to reside.’ Melville Road is a curved row of three-storey, red-brick, Victorian terraced houses. Each one has a small patch of lawn or gravel at the front and, behind, there’s a long thin garden that backs on to the fence demarcating of the gardens of Bridgewater Street, which runs parallel. We have a sitting room, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor; two bedrooms and a bathroom on the floor above and, under the eaves, an attic room with a dormer window. This I’ve transformed into a book-lined cell to act as my study. Through the window I can see the chimneys of Lots Road Power Station on the other side of the Thames.

  Yesterday we went for a walk in the park and watched machines digging lines of trenches. War is in the air and will come from the air, it seems, even to tranquil Battersea. Freya is fat and uncomfortable now: the baby is due in October.

  Wednesday, 31 August

  Hitler has a million men under arms, it says in the News Chronicle. Meanwhile, I write a review of a mediocre book on Keats for The Times Literary Supplement. A dry hot summer, one almost entirely of hard work and pleasurable domesticity. Freya’s nipples are the colour of Bournville chocolate. We papered the second bedroom in canary yellow for ‘Baby’ as we call it – it, not he or she. We are superstitiously vague: we say we don’t care, but after Lionel I long for a little girl. I think Freya wants a boy.

  And I had another odd trying day with Lionel. He was fractious and whingeing, ‘alive with prickly heat’ the nurse said. So I took his clothes off and let him play in the room naked, much to the nurse’s shock. ‘I shall have to tell Lady Laeticia, Mr Mountstuart.’ ‘Please do,’ I said. I haven’t seen Lottie since the divorce – it’s curious how your old life, or a life you abandon, can just fall away so quickly. Lionel is our only connection, now. From time to time I would soak a flannel in cold water, wring it out and lay it over the worst of his rashes on his thighs and under his arms and for a minute or two he would calm and seemed to look at me with gratitude. Thank you, Daddy,’ he said. That feels nice.’ My guilt grows as our baby approaches. I wept on the train back to London a rare event for me – but nothing brings tears to my eyes like Lionel. How can I do any more for him? And what will it be like when ‘Baby’ arrives? Hitler has a million men under arms, according to the News Chronicle – 1 see I’ve already written that.

  [Saturday, 1 October]

  If I’m honest with myself I completely understand the relief people feel over Munich.34 Our child is due any day now and, although – politically, intellectually – I condemn our cowardly concessions, and I feel a desperate sorrow for the Czechs, I say to myself that surely it’s better that we have peace than go to war over an insignificant disputed part of a distant small country? Remember I
have seen war at first hand in Spain, all its absurdity and malevolent chaos, and I know that war has to be the absolute, final, last resort. The brutal truth is that the Sudetenland issue would never be sufficient reason to set the countries of Europe at each other’s throats. So, are you an appeaser, then? No: I see the threats these madmen pose, but I know also that all I want to do is live my life in peace like the rest of the world. Hitler doesn’t want war – what he wants are the spoils of war, which is why he’s so clever and which is why he keeps on seeming to succeed. The spoils of war without war. Perhaps this is what Chamberlain understands and is why he has given this final concession but cleverly extracted peace as its price. As I wander about Battersea I sense a real palpable lightening of mood – laughter from a pub, women chatting on corners, a postman whistling as he does his round. These clichés tell us something: we came to the brink and we pulled back. The trenches can be filled in, the gasmasks returned to the government warehouses. I’m sure my German equivalent – the writer in his thirties, with a wife and a child on the way – can’t feel any different from me, can’t want to see his cities bombed, his continent ravaged by war. Surely it’s a matter of common sense? But then I say to myself: how much common sense was on display in Spain?

  Turville rings, almost in tears, talking about the shame and betrayal, of how Chamberlain and Daladier [the French prime minister] gave away too much and Hitler will be back for more. Is he right? I sit here in my little house, a sudden summer rainstorm beating down outside, and pray that he is wrong.

  Oliver Lee on the wireless this evening, predicting death and destruction unless we stop Hitler now. But we have stopped him, haven’t we? Hearing Lee, I find myself thinking of Land and, in the way one automatically does, imagining the alternative life I might have led if she had agreed to marry me. Futile, pointless speculation. I’d have never met Freya. Perhaps Land did me the greatest favour she ever could.