by William Boyd
Mungo came round one day with a load of peat for the fire. He saw the ream of fresh paper.
“Finished?” he asked. I said yes.
“I remember that film of yours, that Julie. I was in Perth; I’d gone there tae buy a dog. Grand film. Lovely girl that, eh? Gorgeous.”
I thought suddenly of Doon. Mungo nattered on, extolling her beauty. I felt light-headed with my loss. I breathed deeply.
“Can’t wait to see the new one.”
To distance myself I explained something of my difficulties, of how Leo Druce and Courtney Young had betrayed me (Mungo had never asked why I had come to Drumlarish). He listened patiently, sometimes frowning as he concentrated.
“It seems to me,” he said, after I had elaborated on the role a producer played in film making, “that you’d be a lot better off setting things up on your own. Why don’t you go to a bank and borrow the money?”
A patronizing smile was half-formed on my lips when Mungo added, “Why don’t you go and ask that brother of yours, that Thompson?”
I was sorry to leave Drumlarish. I had achieved some measure of peace there and had grown attached to my icy cottage and the wild battered landscape, the mossy grass, the tough crouched trees, the meandering gray lines of the dry-stone walls climbing the big crude hills. Mungo drove me all the way to Glenfinnan in Sir Hector’s ancient black Humber. He sat leaning forward, as if he had to peer out, his legs spread on either side of the wheel, his hairy scarred knees protruding from his kilt as unyielding as the granite boulders set into the hillside. Mungo honked the horn aggressively at the dirty shaggy sheep that cropped the road verges. I had a violent headache by the time we reached the station.
I cannot explain why, but my attitude to Edinburgh had changed since my last visit. It was the usual filthy Scottish spring, that annual extension of winter. The city appeared unduly dark, almost black beneath low harassed clouds. It rained constantly, not hard, not a drizzle, just steadily without stopping. The wind scoured the streets. Perhaps it was because I needed something from the place, that I was coming as a supplicant, not a native son, but for the first time I shivered before the city’s hefty formality and felt uneasy in the face of its unsmiling reserve.
I told no one I was coming. I took a room in the Scotia Hotel and resumed my old life with my anonymous fellow lodgers. Mrs. Darling was not pleased to see me back.
I created and registered a private company. Aleph-null Films, Ltd. Aleph-null, the name of the sign for infinity—it was an oblique homage to Hamish. There were ten 1-pound shares. I owned nine and gave one to Mungo out of gratitude. I had a letterhead designed and some stationary printed up: ALEPH-NULL. I liked it. Copies of the script were printed and bound. I drew up a preliminary budget and had it professionally typed at a typing agency. Only then did I go to Thompson with my proposal.
I should have said that since his wedding in 1927, Thompson Todd had borne issue. Innes arrived in 1933, Emmeline in 1935. Our father’s and mother’s names, of course (no matter that one of my daughters was already called Emmeline …). Thompson and Heather had moved some years previously to a large new house made of dull-puce sandstone in Cramond, with a fine view of the Forth and Cramond Island. When I was ready I telephoned, then caught a motor bus out at Waverley Bridge. Thompson met me at Cramond Station and drove me to his house. My nephew and niece greeted me with polite enthusiasm. Heather was still fresh-faced and girlish looking but a little fuller of figure, which suited her. Again, I wondered what such a nice pretty girl could have seen in Thompson, fat and sleek, his hair now prematurely gray. He had always been in a hurry to age, had Thompson, and his body was obliging him. He felt more like my uncle than my elder brother. Heather, I could see, was excited by my arrival. She said she hoped I didn’t mind but she had invited some neighbors around for drinks that evening to meet me. She pressed me to stay as long as I wished. I realized that to her, if not Thompson, I was something of a celebrity. I was grateful to her. My self-esteem, as if it were an organ within me made of erectile tissue, swelled and grew. Heather’s wild adoration acted as a catalyst. Yes, I told myself, yes—you are John James Todd. You were the toast of Berlin. You are the creator of one of the greatest silent movies ever made. So your career has taken something of a slide, but never forget what you have achieved and what lies ahead of you.
I accepted Heather’s invitation and had my luggage sent on from the Scotia Hotel. That afternoon I put my proposition to Thompson and asked him to suggest to his board at the bank that they invest in Aleph-null Films, Ltd.
“I don’t need all the budget,” I said. “Twenty-five thousand pounds will be enough. With that I can go to Astra-King, Gainsborough, Gaumont, anybody for the rest.”
Thompson asked a few questions. He seemed quite impressed by my presentation.
“I’ll put it to the board, John,” he said. “It’s the least I can do. But I have to warn you, don’t get your hopes up.”
“Not at all,” I said. “Fair and square. I just want them to look at it as an investment, pure and simple. Just like any other.”
Heather looked round Thompson’s study door. Her thick short hair was freshly brushed; she had a touch of pink lipstick on and a blush of rouge. She really did look extraordinarily pretty from certain angles, I thought.
“Everyone’s here, Thompson,” she said. “They’re all dying to meet John.”
I stood up and buttoned my jacket.
“Coming, coming,” I said. I did her proud.
During the following week I lunched with key directors of Thompson’s bank. We ate bad food in hushed clubs and in empty, overheated, hotel dining rooms. I explained my film to solemn gray men who for some reason all reminded me of my father. Thompson remained strictly neutral, intervening only to clarify a point from time to time. Eventually I was told that a meeting was due two weeks hence when a decision would be made.
In spite of all the pragmatic cautious advice I gave myself during the subsequent days, I could not prevent a sense of mounting excitement from growing in me. I felt too a harder satisfaction, a cynical relish. I was glad Courtney Young had turned me down. Now I would have the pleasure of rubbing his nose in his own appalling judgment. I could not stop myself from indulging in longer-term fantasies either. I saw Aleph-null establishing itself as a successful film company, negotiating deals with larger studios—nothing too ambitious, mind you, just three or four films a year. Perhaps I would invite Eddie Simmonette in as a partner. For the first time in years I began to contemplate what I would do after The Confessions. After? After The Confessions. It sounded unreal. My whole adult life, it seemed, had been mortgaged to the idea of this film; everything else had been peripheral, accidental. What would I do after The Confessions? I had no idea.
I suppose it was this newfound self-confidence that made me behave in the way I did. As you know, I am a helpless victim of my own desires. I cannot resist temptation, especially when I generate it myself.
I liked Heather enormously. We became good friends in only a few days. She was an avid and intelligent filmgoer. She had seen Julie and The Divorce several times, and I am sure she found me a refreshing diversion from the stolid Thompson. While I waited for the bank’s decision we spent a lot of time in each other’s company. We talked endlessly. We went for walks with little Innes and Emmeline. I recounted anecdotes of my filming experiences, of the great directors and film stars I had known—A. E. Groth and Fritz Lang, Nazimova, Gast, Emil Jannings and Pola Negri and many others. She was entranced. I told her about myself, my dreams, about The Confessions, my marriage to Sonia, my long affair with Doon. Heather learned a lot about me very quickly. On many afternoons we would motor into Edinburgh and go to matinees of any films we could find and discuss them avidly in tearooms filled with well-dressed old ladies in hats. Heather not only liked me but she was, I think, a little in awe of me. It is a dangerous impression to give any man, let alone a chronic impulsive like me with only minimal control over his emotions.
; One morning, a Wednesday or Thursday towards the end of April, I was standing in Thompson’s living room. There was a fire burning in the grate, the room was warm and I was alone in the house with Heather. Thompson was at work. The children were playing with friends nearby. There was an hour until lunch. A faint but delicious smell of roasting meat came from the kitchen, where Heather was busy supervising the cook. I poured myself a schooner of dry sherry and drank two large mouthfuls from it. That first drink of the day … I looked at myself in the mirror. I was wearing an old tweed suit, sand-brown, a cream shirt with a soft collar and a bottle-green knitted silk tie. I thought, in that alcohol rush, that I looked astonishingly handsome. Dreamily, I pushed my dark hair around. With a finger I nudged a lock over my forehead. I tell you, I had a pleasant narcissistic erection two full minutes before Heather came into the room.
“Sherry?” she said, hurrying in from the kitchen. “Have another.”
“Thanks.” Sometimes you can get drunk on one mouthful. Normally I can hold my liquor, but that morning I was already delightfully bleary.
Heather refilled my glass. She wore a pale-blue dress with a pseudo-sailor’s collar. Its V neck stopped, I imagined, an inch above the crease between her breasts.
“Gosh, I’m dying for this,” she said. “That cook, really—it’s just mutton.”
She clinked her glass against mine.
“Here’s how,” she said.
“Cheerio.”
We toasted. We drank. I was already moving in for the kiss as she lowered her glass from her lips. I tasted sherry. Her lips were cool. Her breasts flattened against my chest. Timidly, our tongues touched. For a second I experienced that moment of unforgettable elation—a stillness, a deep calm at the center of everything.
Then she was pushing me away. Fiercely. She stepped back. She looked frightened, as if I was threatening her with something awful.
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said in a sad resentful voice. “It wasn’t kind of you.”
“Heather …” I put my hand on her shoulder. She knocked it away.
“You’ve spoiled everything now.” She seemed calm, there were no tears. “Why didn’t you think, John? Why didn’t you think?”
I almost wished she were weeping. I was profoundly unsettled by her solemn gloom.
“Because I never do,” I said honestly.
“You should have chosen not to,” she said. “I had. Couldn’t you see I’d made that choice? Sometimes to choose not to do something is as important as …” She faltered, but I had the gist of her reasoning. The left turning or the right? Down which avenue of possibilities will you travel? We want to do the best, but there is always a course of action that gives you the worst of all possible worlds. I seemed to have a knack for picking it out.
We never kissed or touched again. And we lost what we had before I embarked ourselves on those impulsive seconds. My kissing Heather opened no door for us, it merely canceled the alternatives and left us both impoverished. What I envy most in people is their ability to use restraint and denial in a positive way. To live and be happy with the negative, the route not chosen. In the scale of my life’s enormous disappointments, my three-second kiss with Heather has to be regarded as insignificant, but it proved to be a small and lasting regret, like a grumbling appendix, nagging, nagging.
My next blunder was not of the same order. It cost me dearly, its ramifications were massive, but I forgave myself immediately. Any man in my position would have done the same.
I went to the dentist, Thompson’s dentist, a nice man in Barnton, to have a tooth filled. This was two days after my—what?—my brush with Heather and three or four days before the crucial meeting at the bank. I sat down in the waiting room and picked up a copy of the Daily Herald that was lying there. The paper, along with every other publication in Britain, was full of news about the impending coronation. I flicked through it. I stopped abruptly on one page because I thought I saw a photograph of Sonia, but it turned out to be of Mrs. Wallis Simpson. Then, down below, my eye was caught by a headline: TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES. Now, here was a face I recognized. I read on.
As part of our series commemorating this great battle we invite old soldiers to share their memories. This week the distinguished film director Mr. Leo Druce, currently at work on Court Films’ Great Alfred, recounts his part in the battle.
The piece was headed “Bombing the Ridge at Frezenburg.” I read on.
We went over the top at dawn. Our objective was the first German trench line on the notorious and deadly Frezenburg Ridge. I was leader of the bombing section in D Company, 13th (Public School) Service Battalion of the South Oxfordshire Light Infantry. The Hun machine guns did not open up until we were halfway across the perilous quagmire that was no-man’s-land. All hell broke loose. Bullets buzzed through the air like maddened bees, only these insects carried a fatal sting. I saw our platoon commander go down, shot through the heart, as he stopped to aid a wounded comrade. Before he died he waved us on and shouted, “On you go, lads!” We struggled on through the merciless hail of bullets. Then, on my right, there was an enormous explosion as my close friend the Hon. Maitland Bookbinder literally disintegrated as his sack of bombs exploded. The fields of Flanders had become a charnel house flowing with English blood. We pressed on gallantly, men falling like flies all around. Fortunately the tremendous barrage from our guns had cleared enormous gaps in the Hun wire.…
Leo Druce duly threw all his bombs. Modestly, he “did not pause to see what dread effect those mighty detonations had.” Then on his way back—to rearm himself, naturally—he was flattened by an explosion and came round with a “searing pain” in his left leg. Somehow he managed to crawl back to the lines, where he fell unconscious from pain and loss of blood. When he woke up in a casualty-clearing station he knew “the battle was over for me. But I Was proud to have played my part in one of the bitterest, bravest conflicts that the modern world has seen.”
There were further banalities about “our men who fought like lions” and not allowing the gallant fallen to go unremembered. At that point I was summoned into the surgery. I never felt a thing. I was in the grip of a frying, sputtering rage. As the dentist pumped away on his drill I was composing my letter to the editor of the Daily Herald. I wrote it that evening and posted it the next day. Unfortunately I have lost the original clipping but have preserved a draft among my papers.
Sir,
Mr. Leo Druce writes with vivid authority about his dramatic experiences during the attack on Frezenburg Ridge by the 13th (PS) Service Battalion of the SOLI. This is most curious. I was a member of that same bombing section led by Lance Corporal Druce and saw nothing of him during the entire action. The only member of our section who successfully bombed the German lines was Mr. Julian Teague, for which gallantry he was later decorated, I believe.
When I next saw Mr. Druce he explained his absence from the battlefield in this way. He told me he had been shot through the calf seconds after leaving our trench. He asked me to relate the events of that day (in which our section took appalling casualties) as—and I believe I quote him accurately—“I never saw a thing.”
It is bad enough when self-appointed heroes like Mr. Druce turn up at battalion reunions wearing medals to which they are not entitled, but it really is a disagreeable if not intolerable slur on the memory of those men who perished in this most futile of battles when a newspaper such as your own allows charlatans fraudently to boost their own nonexistent reputations as “gallant soldiers.”
I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
John James Todd, ex-private
13th (PS) Service Battalion, SOLI
I think I toned down the frothing outrage in the last sentence and changed the odd word (I think I called Druce a “toiling cliché-monger”), but this is essentially the same letter that was published three days later. I have no regrets. It was a sublime opportunity for revenge—I imagined it being read in horrible embarrassed
silence at Young’s mansion near High Wycombe. But I wrote also out of principle. No one in that benighted squad had the right to the airs of fortitude and derring-do that Druce bestowed upon himself, apart possibly from Teague—and look how he ended up. It was a matter of pure principle first and foremost, but I have to admit I enjoyed picturing Druce’s hideous shame when the letter was read by his friends and colleagues. I waited for his retraction with glee. What denial would he, could he possibly offer up? I pondered getting in touch with Teague and Noel Kite but I was distracted from this, and indeed forgot all about it, when the day of the bank’s decision arrived.
I walked into that bank (a vast Greek temple of a building on George Street) as if I were coming before a heavenly tribunal. The marble chill of its many halls and corridors, the busts and dark oil portraits, the uniformed doormen and porters, the studied absence of any light or human touch (not even a flower display, for God’s sake!) seemed to portend that the denizens of this lair took their business very seriously. I sat in an airless anteroom whistling stupidly through my teeth. Aleph-null lived or died today and suddenly I saw through all the silly optimism of my plans.
Then Thompson came out. His smile gave nothing away; the professional mask was admirable. But as I walked past him into the boardroom he whispered in my ear, “Relax. Good news.”
In the room was a long table behind which sat three of the bank’s directors whom I had lunched with. I delayed events slightly and irritated everyone by accepting the chairman’s purely formal offer of tea or coffee. While Thompson went in search of someone who could provide me with one or other of these libations (I had not made a choice; either would do, I had said, nervously, whichever was easiest), we made awkward small talk until a little woman in a green apron brought me a juddering cup of coffee, well-skinned, and a cracked rich tea biscuit on a china plate. I did not touch either of them.
