by William Boyd
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So I sit in my room and I hear the clatter of boots on my staircase and all the bells of Oxford seem to be tolling this winter evening. I say to myself: Logan Mountstuart, you are no longer a virgin. I feel the ache in my balls—my ‘eggs’, as Dick Hodge calls them—and I try to ignore the nagging, irritating voice in my ear that is saying, she is the girl your oldest friend loves, the girl he says he wants to marry…And I say in return, it won’t happen again, it was one of those insane moments between two people that will remain entirely private and we’ll both go back to our previous selves, unaffected. Perhaps if I repeat it often enough I might end up believing it. 7 February 1926. The date is burned, carved, stamped on the story of my life.
Sunday, 14 February
To Islip. Tess again. Two times. We never mention Peter. When we talk it is about things of no consequence: the woman who runs the post office, the people at the nursery.
Last week Le Mayne described my essay as ‘a return to form’.
Sunday, 21 March
The ‘Tess Sundays’ are over: my sex-Sundays consigned to the memory-store. Peter has gone up there today. He feels enough time has elapsed. I had five Sundays with Tess…Christ, I almost feel like weeping. But I knew it would end: I don’t love Tess and she doesn’t love me. But, bizarrely, I find I resent the fact that Peter is there, in my place. Will he be eating stew and drinking gin? It had become a ritual with us: first fucking, then gin, then lunch. I always left between 2.00 and 3.00 in the afternoon. My God, Tess—with your square impassive face, your thick brown hair, your callused gardener’s hands with the bitten nails, the clumsy way you smoked your cigarettes. You liked to masturbate me, almost as if you were conducting some fascinating new experiment with my cock, always giving a little yell of pleasure when my sperm shot out—‘Here it comes,’ you would say, ‘I know it’s coming, any moment now!’ What am I going to do without you?
Wednesday, 14 April
It felt like the first day of spring today and Dick and I walked out to Wytham for tea. The roads were dry and the verges full of dandelions, the white thorn all spumy billows. On the way I told him about Tess and our Sunday encounters. Then he asked me who she was and, for some reason, I told him the whole story.
‘Does Peter have any idea?’ he asked.
‘God, no—at least I hope not.’
‘Well, all I can say,’ Dick paused to kick at a pebble on the road, ‘is that it’s a pretty repulsive way to carry on.’
‘You don’t understand, she’s not that kind of a girl—’
‘Not her, old chap. You. I think your behaviour is utterly contemptible.’ He looked at me. ‘You go way down in my estimation, way down. You must admit, it’s damned low stuff.’
And I did feel ashamed, for a while, for the first time. And Dick, having expressed his honest opinion, left it at that and we talked about the coming strike and whether the government would really let it happen.
Came back to college and read North by Night by Butler Hughes instead of writing my essay. Flashy but intriguing novel.
Tuesday, 4 May
SUMNBR PLACE
The strike is on—the Daily Mail wasn’t printed today. The Old Brompton Road very quiet with no buses and no building work going on. The big hole in the road at the corner of Bute Street—where they’re repairing the sewers or something—was empty of workmen, only a couple of abandoned pickaxes and a spade lying around symbolically at its foot.
I went down to Chelsea Town Hall and volunteered as a special constable. I was sworn in and given a wrist band, a steel helmet and a truncheon and ordered to report to the police station. There I was assigned to a proper policeman, Constable Darker. Darker is a handsome man in a brutal kind of way, with a broad cleft chin and dense silky eyebrows. For four hours we walked the streets of Knightsbridge but saw no sign of riot or mayhem. The only anxious moment came when Darker went to explore up an alleyway beside a public house, leaving me standing outside it. Four men who were going into the pub—working-class men, I would say—stopped and stared at me. One of them said, ‘Look at that, will you? A special cuntstable.’ And they all laughed. I wandered off a few yards, swinging my truncheon on its thong, trying to look at ease, praying for Darker’s return, but they went into the pub without more ado. Presently, Darker came back, took a look at me and said, ‘You all right, Mr Mountstuart? Look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ I didn’t tell him about my encounter with the men. Strange and somewhat worrying to think how obviously my fear and concern were written on my face. I asked Darker, in the interests of solidarity, to call me Logan. He told me, a little uncomfortably, that his Christian name was Joseph. I think he would prefer me to call him Constable, or Darker.
Telephone call from Dick Hodge: he says he’s learning to drive trains in Edinburgh. Some trams have been wrecked by strikers in Hammersmith, apparently, and there are rumours that a special constable was kicked to death by a mob in Leeds.
Saturday, 8 May
Darker and I spent the morning directing traffic at the junction pf the King’s Road and Sydney Street—which was hardly taxing, as the roads are still very quiet. Anyway, Darker said he was going to pop off for a cup of tea and a smoke and asked if I could handle the junction on my own for ten minutes. Absolutely, I assured him.
All was going well until I waved a small motor through to turn left on the King’s Road. It immediately stopped outside the Palace Theatre and the driver got out—it was Hugh Fothergill. The conversation went something like this:
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ME: Hello, Hugh. How’s Land? Haven’t seen her for—
HUGH: What the hell do you think you’re doing?
ME: I’m a special—
HUGH: You’re a scab. D’you think this strike’s some kind of game?
Me: (alarmed) I just happen to think that when the country’s in crisis you have to pull together—
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At which point he spat in my face, pointed at me and yeljed in his loudest voice—THIS MAN’S A DIRTY, STINKING SCAB! A few passers-by stopped and looked round. A man in a bowler hat shouted: Let him do his duty! There was another shout of Scab! Hugh glared at me, climbed back into his car and drove off and the King’s Road returned to normal. I wiped away Hugh’s spittle and a minute later Constable Darker strolled up. ‘How’s it going, Logan?’ he asked. ‘Nip off and have a fag if you fancy. There’s a coffee stall down by Shawfield Street.’ Every time Darker abandons me something unpleasant seems to happen. Maybe I’ll cry off with flu tomorrow…When I stood at the stall, later, smoking, holding my mug of coffee, both my hands started to shake, quite visibly. Delayed shock, I suppose. Something tells me I’m not cut out for politics.
Wednesday, 12 May
The strike is over. All a bit of an anti-climax, finally. I had just turned up at the police station (there were two armoured cars parked outside, soldiers standing around them with rifles slung) when Darker told me it was all over—‘Government in talks with the TUC,’ had just been announced on the wireless (we really must get one: I think Mother would be mad for it). I handed in my helmet and truncheon but kept my striped wristband as a souvenir.
So the great strike is over and what do I have to say about it—this significant moment in our modern history in which I played a tiny part? I have no informed comment: my feelings during the nine days were ones of tedium interspersed with two moments of fear and shame. Why did I become a special constable? I did it unthinkingly, because everyone else at Oxford was determined to ‘do something’. Am I so frightened of the working classes? Is it the shadow of the Russian Revolution that makes Oxford’s young men volunteer to serve? Ironically, the lasting benefit to have come out of the whole affair will be a friendship of sorts with a working man—Joseph Darker. He’s invited me to tea on Sunday to meet his wife.
A letter from Dick. A train he was driving was derailed near Carlisle and two passengers were killed. Very ‘Dick’, somehow.
Monday, 28 June
JESUS
COLLEGE
Staying on in college to confirm next year’s lodgings. I liked the look of a place in Walton Street, not far from the canal, so I should be able to sort everything out with the bursar by Wednesday. I long to move out but Le Mayne counselled against it: ‘Not conducive to hard work,’ he said, adding ominously that in his experience undergraduates who moved out of college in their final year seldom achieved the degree they deserved. I tried to reassure him, said I was moving out because I wanted to work harder and that I found that the life around me in college was the distraction.
Yesterday, Land and I met up in Headington and cycled out along country lanes heading in the general direction of Stadhampton. She had a note for me from Hugh, apologizing for his behaviour (I suppose it’s not often you spit in the face of your sister’s friend) but still disapproving of my strike-breaking. We sat on the green at Great Milton and ate our sandwiches. It was dear from the way she talked that she’s still very set on Bobbie Jarrett. So I let her know, in a roundabout way, that I’d had a ‘love affair’ myself- but it was now over. ‘A real affair?’ she asked. ‘As real as it gets,’ I said, in my best man-of-the-world manner.
Actually, Tess has saved me from Land (and from Lucy, come to that). Now that I have had a true and mature sexual encounter with another woman I can look at Land with new objectivity—without any danger of rosy mists of schoolboy passion rising to obscure the view. In this spirit I can tell that I am still attracted to her—1 admit it freely—but if she prefers the Hon. Bobbie Jarrett to me then so be it.
We were free-wheeling down the hill by Garsington when there came a shout from a man standing on the verge. We stopped: it was someone Land knew, whose name, as far as I could make out was Siggy (Sigismund?) Clay.↓
≡ Siegfried Clay (1895-1946). Painter. Briefly married to the actress Pamela Lawrence. Died in Tangier after a short illness.
He was carrying a sketchbook and watercolours and was wearing a rough tweed suit that looked about three sizes too big for him and was staying, it transpired, at the Manor. He was prematurely bald but had a wide upswept corsair’s moustache in compensation. He invited us back to tea—he would not take no for an answer (what they call a forceful personality). We wheeled our bicycles back up the hill and parked them at the front door of the house in the lee of one of the biggest yew hedges I had ever seen. He led us round to a rather beautiful stone terrace at the side with an arcade. From here we could see all the way to Didcot and below us were the gardens, sloping away to a reflecting pool, dotted with statuary and shaded by ancient holm oaks. Sigismund rang a bell and ordered tea from a housemaid, who told him tea had been served already and cleared away. ‘I demand tea,’
Sigismund said and it duly appeared with some sandwiches and half a fruit cake. While we consumed it, Sigismund pointed out the other guests to us as they strolled around the ornamental lake: Virginia and Leonard Woolf,↓ Aldous Huxley and someone called Miss Spender-Clay (no relation to Sigismund, he insisted, saying that he wanted to marry her as she was one of the richest women in England).
≡ See The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Volume III: 1925-30.
Then Ottoline Morrell came out on to the terrace and berated Siggy-dear for ordering a second tea. ‘As meagre a second tea as you’ll ever encounter,’ he complained in turn (she seemed to enjoy his brusque remonstrations). I was introduced—she knew Land: whom does Land not know? Lady Ottoline wore a purple dress with a Paisley shawl and had vivid red hair. She was quite charming to me at first, said I must come again to Garsington, and asked me what my college was. When I said Jesus College she went blank for a second, as if I’d said Timbuktu or John O’Groats, then she recovered herself. ‘Jesus?’ she said, ‘I don’t know anyone at Jesus.’
‘Perhaps you know my tutor, Philip Le Mayne.’
‘Oh, him. I should change your tutor if I were you, Mr Stuarton.’ The other guests were straggling up from the lake by now and as they appeared I was introduced (by Siggy, who remembered my name) and so I shook the hands of the Woolfs, Huxley and one of the richest women in England.
‘This young man is tutored by Philip Le Mayne,’ Lady Ottoline said to Virginia Woolf meaningfully.
‘Ah, the sanctimonious spider,’ she said, and everyone chuckled except me. Mrs Woolf looked me up and down. ‘I’ve upset you, I can see. You probably revere him.’
‘Not at all.’ But before I could say any more Lady Ottoline said they must all go up and change. And so Land and I slipped away.
Thursday, 30 September
Movements: July—Deauville (with Mother and Mr Prendergast). Agreeable house, vile weather. Then London for a while—where we sweltered. August: to Dick’s place at Galashiels. Shot at many birds—hit none, I’m glad to say. Set off on my travels, Aug. 20th. Three days in Paris with Ben, then Vichy—Lyons—Grenoble—Geneva. Then to Hyeres to stay with Mr and Mrs Holden-Dawes at a villa they had taken in the new town. Hyeres was very pretty with its castle and its palm trees but there were too many English. There is even an English vice-consul (an old army friend of H-D), an English church and an English physician. James, as I must now learn to call H-D, was his old wry self and imposed a ban on conversations about Abbey. Cynthia is entirely delightful: as a couple they seem very happy and their happiness was contagious—I don’t think I’ve spent a more relaxed ten days anywhere in my entire life. Cynthia practised at the piano in the mornings and I usually took myself off to bathe at Costabelle. They had a very good cook and we dined at home most evenings, talking, drinking, listening to music on the gramophone (very varied: Massenet, Gluck, Vivaldi, Brahms, Bruch). James says he will visit me in Oxford before I leave: I can hardly come to terms with the fact that my final year is about to begin.
Anyway the lodgings here are fine. I have a bedroom and share a sitting room and bathroom with a man called Ash who is reading Life Sciences. Consequently we have little or nothing to talk about and when he’s not in his room he is usually down the road at the Victoria Arms or off in a chemistry laboratory near Keble. Our landlord and his wife live on the ground floor below us—Arthur and Cecily Brewer. Mrs Brewer provides breakfast and the evening meal, luncheon has to be ordered twenty-four hours in advance and costs a 1⁄6 supplement. I shall not be happy here but I will be content.
In August Peter asked me to go to Ireland with him and Tess on a motoring holiday. I haven’t seen Tess since our last Sunday together and the thought of playing gooseberry to ‘Mr & Mrs Scabius’ was insupportable. I made an excuse but I think Peter is becoming a little suspicious. He asked me if Tess and I had fallen out in some way—‘Every time I mention your name she changes the subject.’ I said, absolutely not, thought she was a super girl. I think about her now as I write and her generous, uncomplicated sexual nature. She has set something loose in me and even now it strikes me that the nature of your first, all-consuming sexual experience might determine your needs and appetite for the rest of your life. Will I spend years looking for another Tess? Will bitten-down fingernails always be a sign for me, a form of sexual bookmark?
Friday, 12 November
Dinner at the George with Le Mayne and James Holden-Dawes. Cynthia was giving a recital in Antwerp, of all places, so the company was exclusively masculine. We were a bit guarded at first, I thought, and I felt there was a competitive, proprietorial mood in the air generated by the two others—who knew me best, to which did I owe the most, whence the greatest and most lasting influence?—but we were drinking steadily and after the soup and fish we began to relax. Le Mayne and H-D began to swap stories about mutual friends—this one an MP, that one an under-secretary of state, another gone ‘to the bad’. I said I was very impressed by the network of connections, the spymaster in Oxford with his myriad spies abroad, and H-D said, ‘Oh yes, the web Philip has carefully spun is much larger than most people realize.’ Then I remembered Virginia Woolf’s slight and related the encounter, telling Le Mayne about the hostility his name had provoked at Garsington. He was delighted to hear this—genuine
ly pleased—and he told us how the resentment had come about.
He had been invited up to Garsington on two occasions: the first time had been unexceptionable (‘I had been tested and I had passed,’ he said) but the second time—in 1924—had been very awkward.
‘We were standing around waiting to go into dinner,’ Le Mayne said, ‘when from a group behind me I heard a woman say in a loudish voice: ‘No, I can put a pretty precise date to it: in December 1910 human character changed.’’
Le Mayne then turned to whoever was beside him and said, without thinking, ‘If you want a one-sentence example of fatuous stupidity you’ll not find a better one than that.’ And thought no more about it. Then he added, ‘No. I think, perhaps, I was somewhat more emphatic.’ Anyway, what happened was that these remarks were reported to Ottoline Morrell who, immediately—a true friend—relayed them to the woman with the loudish voice—Virginia Woolf.
