by William Boyd
“And here I am,” she whispered, “in bed with the famous Troy Blaze.”
“Sometimes you get lucky,” Troy said and kissed her.
“You’d better go,” she said. “We’ve got our big day tomorrow.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“I’ve done it before. I did it in Hotel Nights. Rodrigo says they’ll only see my ass, not my boobs. Big deal.”
“I’ll get naked as well, if you like.”
“I like.” Now she kissed him.
“But I might get carried away,” he said.
“I doubt it—you’ve got twenty guys standing by the bed.”
“Yeah. Suppose so.” He thought for a while. “What exactly do you have to do?”
“Get out of bed—nude—and walk to the window and look out. Cut.”
“I could come and stand with you at the window.”
“That would be neat. Ask Rodrigo. I’m sure if the audience see your ass as well as mine we can’t fail.”
“I will. Yeah. You wait and see.” Troy sat up and ruffled his hair with both hands. “Fuck it.” He slipped out of bed and began to pull on his clothes, nodding to himself as if mulling something over, something important. He sat down again and took her hand.
“Listen,” he said, “on our next day off would you like to come and meet my mum and dad?”
“Sure,” she said, without thinking. Then she thought: why does Troy want me to meet his parents? She looked at him—he was smiling. She thought again: because that’s the sort of thing Troy Blaze would do. There was no guile, no hidden plan. “Do they live near here?” she asked.
“A town called Swindon. We can get there and back in a day.”
“That would be great,” she said. “Really great,” she added sincerely. “I’d like that, thank you. See Swindon and die.”
16
Colonel Ivo Stuart-Hay MC, DSO and bar, lived in a rectory about two miles from Rye off the aptly named Military Road on the way to Appledore. It was a classic rectory of sand-coloured brick set in a landscaped park of six acres. The house was described in The Buildings of England as “severe and elegant” and had two storeys, five eight-paned bays and an off-centre Tuscan–Doric porch. Severe and elegant would also describe the colonel, Talbot thought, who was without doubt—in and out of uniform—the best-dressed man he had ever known.
Talbot pulled in to one side of the porch and, stepping out of the Alvis, looked out over the park, with its carefully grouped and positioned beeches, oaks and chestnuts, towards the stump of an ivy-choked deer tower that the colonel described as his “folly.” It was very quiet, no sound of traffic from Military Road, the day was warm and a slow convoy of small high clouds dawdled east towards continental Europe. Maybe this was what he needed, Talbot wondered to himself, some sort of civilised retreat. The busy world wasn’t far away—it had taken him just over two hours from Brighton—and you could venture forth to find it whenever the mood took you.
“Major Kydd, welcome.”
Talbot turned to see the colonel’s former army servant, George Trelawny, step out of the front door. Trelawny was a small, powerfully built man—in his fifties now, Talbot supposed—and was wearing a red-striped t-shirt and faded jeans.
They shook hands, familiarly. Talbot had met him several times since Trelawny had left the regiment but it was always something of a shock to see him out of uniform.
“The colonel’s round at the back with the dogs. Shall we be goin’?” Trelawny had never lost his West Country burr.
They walked around the side of the rectory to find a big tarred and weatherboarded barn with a red-tiled roof. Half a dozen chicken-wire cages were built onto one side. In the cages, small black dogs scampered around in the sunshine.
“How’s it all going, George?” Talbot asked.
“Can’t breed enough of them,” George said. “Got a two-year waiting list.”
Talbot approached the nearest cage. Four French bulldogs rushed forward jumping up to put their paws on the wire, tongues lolling. Ugly little things, Talbot thought. He had once asked the colonel why, of all the dogs available to him in the world, he had decided to breed French bulldogs. They hardly ever bark, the colonel had said, simple as that. Talbot looked at the cages, calculating that there must be close to forty dogs running about. Low doors had been cut in the weatherboarding so they could retreat inside to the barn or be corralled there. They were indeed quiet dogs, he realised, only an enthusiastic panting, snuffling sound emanating from them. Made sense. Then Colonel Stuart-Hay emerged from the main barn door, Talbot managing to prevent himself from giving a reflexive salute. He’d served through the war with Stuart-Hay, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the East Sussex Light Infantry, until the colonel was wounded south of Rome. Talbot had been his intelligence officer and they, perforce, had spent many, many months in each other’s company.
They shook hands. Stuart-Hay was wearing a navy blazer with cavalry twills and highly polished ankle-length riding boots. He had a red silk cravat at his throat, his wiry grey hair was parted on the left and combed flat with some kind of oil or Macassar. His black eyepatch only added to his lean and craggy allure. He must be almost seventy now, Talbot realised: central casting, he thought, a perfect member of the intellectual English warrior class—except in one crucial regard.
“How’re you doing, Talbot?” Stuart-Hay asked with a grin. “Not ground you down yet?”
“Oh, they’re trying.”
As they walked back to the house Talbot told them about the visit of Special Branch and the FBI to the set.
“Not your everyday occurrence, I can see,” Stuart-Hay said.
“Poor girl,” Talbot said, “she’s putting a brave face on it but I think she’s very shaken up. Lot of extra stress for her.”
Inside, the rectory reflected the severe and elegant taste that the facade possessed. Fawn parquet flooring with navy rugs, sensible, comfortable armchairs and sofas and a few unremarkable oil landscapes on the walls. The abiding impression, Talbot always thought, was one of almost manic cleanliness. George Trelawny’s army training, he assumed. No dogs were allowed inside.
They sat in the drawing room and George mixed them all powerful martinis. The icy gin was exactly what Talbot required and it seemed to make the colonel unusually chatty. They gossiped about their army colleagues and the colonel demolished a new book that had recently appeared about the 8th Army in Italy—“95% rubbish” was the verdict. George disappeared into the kitchen to prepare lunch and he duly summoned them into the dining room.
They had smoked salmon to start, then roast lamb with peas and boiled potatoes, with a very good claret, Pichon-Longueville ’58. Pudding was raspberries and cream and half a Stilton was brought out to go with the port. They spent ten minutes with pen and paper revisiting and analysing a skirmish that the battalion had been involved in at Wadi Musa in 1942—the colonel was finally writing his memoirs.
“I’ve all my old intelligence notes back in London,” Talbot said. “I’d have brought them with me if I’d known.”
“Actually, they might be very useful. Marvellous. The battalion history is so bloody vague—one wants precise numbers, actual names, what the weather was like.”
“Long time ago, Ivo. We’re all getting old, memory fading.”
“True, but not entirely decrepit.”
George stood up and said he was going to deliver two French bulldog pups to a buyer in Ramsgate. He should be back by six, he said.
“Nice to see you again, sir,” he said to Talbot, then corrected himself. “Talbot.”
He went over to the colonel and kissed him on the lips.
“Drive carefully, darling,” the colonel said. “Remember there’s nothing more dangerous than a country road.”
After George had left the colonel topped up their glasses of port and they w
ent back through to the drawing room. The colonel lit a small cigar, Talbot a cigarette.
“How’s your ‘life,’ Talbot?” the colonel asked, knowingly. “How’s your ‘undeveloped heart,’ as I think you once described it to me?”
Talbot picked up the inference.
“Oh, it’s developing,” he said, and allowed himself a suggestive smile.
“Glad to hear it.”
“Nothing much has changed. I’m still taking my photographs. Some of the young chaps are very sweet.”
“Women?”
“There are some models. One or two professionals. I haven’t quite lost my taste. I’m very particular, though.”
“Always were a dark horse, Talbot.”
“We’re all dark horses, aren’t we? All mysteries.”
The colonel considered this remark, with a slight frown on his face, as if he were giving it the benefit of serious thought.
“I suppose nothing lasts very long, though,” the colonel said.
“No. A day or two at the most. A couple of them have come back but I don’t encourage it. And that’s for the best. How I like it.”
“Well, we can do anything now,” the colonel said. “Since the blessed Act.”
“I know. I just wish it had a different name, you know. ‘The 1967 Sexual Offences Act.’ Why not ‘Sexual Nature Act’? ‘Sexual Orientation Act’? I never assumed I was giving ‘offence.’ ” He paused. “It’s still illegal in the military. Just as well we’re all retired.”
“Exactly,” the colonel said. “Never really thought about it that way.” He looked at Talbot, knowingly. “So—are you taking advantage of our new liberties?”
“I’m quite happy with my set-up. With my ‘life.’ ”
“What about Naomi?”
“I don’t think she has any real idea.”
The colonel tapped ash off his cigar.
“She must have some idea, surely. Women have an instinct,” he said. “She must know you’re queer. My mother knew about me from the age of eight, she claimed. Though she never said a word. Told me on her deathbed.”
“We live and let live, Naomi and I,” Talbot said. “All very civilised.”
The colonel poured himself another port. Talbot declined: he had to return to the film set, he said.
On the gravel outside the front door the colonel stopped him just as he was about to slide into the driver’s seat of the Alvis.
“Last week I went with George to a club in Brighton—George took me—called the Icebox.”
“The Icebox?”
“It was quite a revelation,” the colonel said, thoughtfully. “To be in that place with our people, our ‘folk,’ as it were. No holds barred, no risk, no scandal. All legal. I never thought I’d live to see it.”
“I suppose it is remarkable. The change in the law, I mean.”
“You should go, Talbot. These young people—they’re not like us, our generation. Scales fall from your eyes. Just pop in for ten minutes. It’s very relaxed, not at all threatening or unbalancing, if you know what I mean. I found it…” The colonel searched for a word. “Rather wonderful, inspiring.”
“Not sure if it’s exactly my cup of tea.” Talbot paused, trying to imagine the colonel in a place such as the Icebox, whatever it was like. He realised that he had no idea what constituted such a club; what he was imagining was culled from some film he had seen, pre-1967, of course. Then, emboldened by the direction their discussion had taken, he asked a question he’d never asked before.
“Please don’t answer this if you don’t want to, Ivo. Tell me to mind my own fucking business, but, during the war, were you and George…?” He didn’t finish.
“Of course,” the colonel said, candidly. “We were very discreet, very, very careful, but we both knew at once what our…our feelings were for each other. I fell in love with him almost immediately. Simple as that.”
“I see,” Talbot said. “Personally, I never had, not for one split second, the faintest idea.”
“Which was my—our—absolute intention.” He smiled. “I never had the faintest idea about you, either, I have to tell you. Handsome devil, almost turned my head.”
They laughed.
“Rather a marvellous story. And now you’re both here, living together, working together,” Talbot said.
“We couldn’t be happier. I couldn’t be happier. The world sometimes moves in mysteriously appropriate ways.”
They shook hands.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Talbot. Remember that. We’re not here for long—make the most of it.”
“I’ll bear it in mind.”
“Anyone you know want a Frenchie? Loyal little dogs. You can jump the queue. Good discount.”
Talbot drove away, his head full of the subtext of the colonel’s words. He had hoped this lunch would be a relaxing interlude, a trip down memory and military lane, but it had shaken him up, somewhat. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Suddenly, spontaneously, as he reached Rye, he turned east and drove past Rye harbour to Camber and Camber Sands. As he parked his car at the Sands’ car park he could see that the tide was out and the immense beach stretched away before him, almost to the horizon, it seemed, like a huge segment of desert set down here on the south coast of England. Cloud shadows hurried across it, mottling the caramel sand. He took off his jacket and tie and tossed them in the rear seat. Then he walked down through the dunes and on to the beach, past the holidaying families and sunbathers and headed out across the sand flats towards the distant grey-blue stripe that was the Channel.
His young brother, John-Christopher Kydd, Flight Lt “Kit” Kydd, had been shot down opposite Rye by three Messerschmitt 109s, his Spitfire crashing full tilt into the Channel some three miles off Camber Sands. The plane and Kit’s body had never been recovered, such was the velocity of the impact, the Spitfire’s near-vertical dive thrusting the aircraft deep beneath the surface. It had been 22 July 1940. Almost twenty-eight years to the day, Talbot thought. Kit was twenty-three when he had been shot down.
Talbot walked on, past a solitary, frisky, yapping dog—some kind of terrier, lost—trailing its lead behind it, and then a man teaching his little boy how to fly a kite. He kept walking, feeling the occasional sunburst hot on his bare head. The tide was at its lowest ebb and it must have been nearly a mile, or more, to the sea’s edge, where small waves unfolded with a muted, soothing crash.
Talbot stood there, looking at the waves, thinking of his brother, wondering how his life might have been different had Kit lived. Kit—blond, guileless, with his easy laugh. He was tall, taller than Talbot, and Talbot remembered how he had joked, the last time they were together, about the contortions required to climb into the cockpit of his Spitfire, how he had to be specially folded into position by his ground crew. Kit’s sudden death seemed to draw the life out of their mother, dead herself within the year, allowing his father to embark on his next, disastrous marriage and a sequence of short-lived affairs. What if Kit had lived…
“Kit!” he yelled out to the restless, choppy waves. “Kit, I’m here! It’s me! I’m here, Kit! I think about you! I remember you! I dream about you!”
His words were snatched away by the breezy gusts of wind and, immediately self-conscious, he glanced around to check if anyone had noticed this elderly man shouting at the sea. But he was alone on the edge of the vast beach, it seemed. He turned and trudged back across the sand to his car. He couldn’t explain why, but he felt he had just done something valuable, however pointless it was to imagine a world where Kit still lived. The “what ifs” could stretch the length of Camber Sands itself, all its five miles. Live the life you were given, he told himself, recalling Ivo Stuart-Hay’s words, and be the person you are. Easier said than done.
Back at the Grand he handed the car keys to the doorman and headed
straight for the bar. The Icebox, that was the name of this club. He should find out where it was, just as an experiment, something new, to see whether anything had changed since the law was passed. As the colonel said: we’re not here for long—make the most of it.
17
Was today the right day…? Elfrida wondered to herself, feeling strangely nervous. She topped up her orange juice as a way of calming down. Maybe she should pause awhile—a few days—think things through a bit more. After all, she’d only just had the idea so perhaps she was being unduly precipitate. But, at the same time, she recognised the familiar symptom: procrastination, one of the baleful signs of her block, her long-lingering malaise. No, Elfrida, she urged herself, start, begin, get going. She recalled Guy de Maupassant’s famous injunction. Just put black on white, ink on paper.
Steeling herself, she booked a Rottingdean taxi to take her to Rodmell, wait and return, hang the expense, and she went to gather up her notebook and Maitland Bole’s pamphlet. She decanted a couple of inches of vodka into a small glass bottle in case she needed some extra encouragement and, seeing that the bottle was open, had a swig and then a second. What was that Russian saying? No bottle of vodka should be opened to serve just one drink—or something like that. Two servings a minimum. Who said that? Pushkin? Dostoevsky? No matter, she was paraphrasing, but, in any event, it seemed to her an eminently sensible folk-tradition.
The taxi had pulled up outside the front door and Elfrida had given an acknowledging wave when the telephone rang. She thought about not answering but then wondered if it might be Reggie—whom she had hardly spoken to since their fight—he might as well be filming abroad for all she saw of him, and so she answered.
