VI.
Matters came to a head, and then were duly averted, when my parents came to Dulwich on my housemaster’s summons. We convened rather incongruously in the cricket pavilion where Dr Eschenbacher had been busily coaching the First Eleven after lessons had finished for the day. He was still in his whites, and his cheeks were flushed almost comically from over exertion. He was a tidily moustachioed, middle-aged man of average height and portly build – the sort whose enthusiasm regularly outpaces his athleticism. His high, domed forehead still glistened with sweat.
The boys were by then inside, and the pitch was deserted. The Barry buildings lay in view, squat and obstinate. Having partly recovered, Dr Eschenbacher took a deep breath and came straight to point.
“Your son appears hell-bent on turning his back on a deeply impressive record, and in the same way turning his back on a bright future.” He had an exaggerated drawl, probably affected. He went on: “A number of his tutors have voiced to me their deep concern.”
He paused and my father twisted to his neck to glare at me. I noticed dark smudges of oil on the folds of his collar. I knew perfectly well what he wanted to say, but could not for fear of sounding coarse in front of my teacher: “your schooling nearly beggared this family – throw it away and I’ll box your ears!” We were seated in a line on a bench, with Dr Eschenbacher and me enclosing my parents on either end. My father was very sharply focused on Dr Eschenbacher, as though he might at any moment try to dart away across the cricket pitch, but by contrast my mother seemed to find the view of the school far more engaging than the matter at hand. She had not been free to visit Dulwich when I came to interview, and this was her first time in its picturesque setting.
“In my view it is not a matter of discipline,” said Dr Eschenbacher. “By no means is your son unruly, and I am told he is not disruptive either – perfectly polite, in fact.” My mother, who was only half-listening up to this point, turned to me, beaming. It was upon catching my father’s eye that she realised she had taken the master’s faint praise entirely out of context, and the smile became an absurd grimace – a parody of disappointment and concern.
As the discussion went on a number of theories were proffered as to the root of my decay. Girls were not mentioned and nor was drink, and eventually we settled on my suffering from “ennui”, which, claimed Dr Eschenbacher, was a common enough complaint, particularly amongst the smarter boys as they approached the conclusion of their school days.
“They do not appreciate how close they are to completion. They have only to shoulder the burden a few miles further, after which point they are done with school,” he said, and then, after glancing at his watch, added, “I’m afraid we must wrap this little talk up. I have a staff meeting which I must attend.”
For my part I played the contrite sinner, eager to confess all and be absolved. I promised to adhere to an intensive study regime, with this and that master able to provide out-of-hours tutelage. I was the deserting private, discovered by my platoon ensconced in a provincial brothel – offered the chance to re-join and expunge my disgrace. But it is remarkable how ungrateful children can be about the sacrifices made for their education! In my case they were losses made in vain, and without even gratitude by way of solace.
But for a time I was off the hook. One advantage – short-lived and superficial – to having relatively unschooled parents is that they cannot properly supervise one’s homework. French, Latin, chemistry and the rest blended into a single incomprehensible gibberish. They noted the hours I spent in my bedroom each evening and assumed that I was hard at work, translating Flaubert and Hugo into meaningful English, or defining covalence and reduction. In fact I was penning notes to Megan, coaxing her to spell out the various indecencies she had hinted lay in store for us at her upcoming graduation party. Occasionally my father poked his head in the door, ostensibly to offer tea and biscuits, and what he found was a diligent young man at his table, scribbling away, pausing only to replenish the ink in his pen. And thus veiled my decline went on, uninterrupted.
In the end, the much feted graduation party did not materialise. Esther was in Europe with her parents, as were a number of Megan’s other friends, and the girl with whom she shared her studio had flunked the course. It was rumoured she had suffered a breakdown; in any case Megan had not seen her in months. But her absence, and Esther’s, put a dampener on the whole idea of a celebration. Megan went to Wales instead, the Rhondda valley, to stay with her family. In one sense I was relieved. I found the only way I could tolerate my girlfriend was with large quantities of alcohol. This is not unusual – I gather that many longstanding marriages endure upon the same principle. But for an adolescent to be drinking so much and so regularly, was patently unhealthy, and the brunt of our relationship was felt not in my heart but my liver. Megan’s absence would do me good.
Sometime later a few of us – Elmo and Mathilde, and someone else I had not met before – gathered in a tea house in Bloomsbury one wet Saturday morning. The sun was bright, but hidden. Gloom and boredom pervaded like a mist.
“Well we must do something,” insisted Mathilde. “If we don’t do something, we shall stagnate.”
“What does the word mean, ‘stagnate’?” asked a sleepy young man whose name I didn’t know. He sounded Italian.
“It means – “ said Elmo, mindlessly stirring his drink, “—it means that we will putrefy.”
The Italian didn’t know that word either, and was offered “rot” and “decompose” in its place.
“Oh yes!” he cried, suddenly quite cheery and animated. “You mean like a corpse.”
“Like a corpse,” echoed Mathilde, whose sullenness was a hangover from the previous evening. She had stayed up with the Italian in her father’s flat, teaching him to play whist. Double brandies were introduced as a forfeit, and apparently she had borne the brunt. He too had a bedraggled look, only it suited him better. He had many wrinkles for a young man, and grey hairs, and the darkness beneath his eyes hinted at corruption and fast-living. I did not introduce myself. Formalities were deliberately avoided in this set, but in any case Mathilde’s liaisons were famously short-lived. It was simply not worth the extension of one’s arm.
“It’s this city,” said Mathilde. “I feel we’ve been here forever.”
“We could take a walk?” I suggested.
“We’ve walked everywhere,” she said petulantly.
“Mitchell has a boat,” said Elmo. “It’s moored in Beaulieu. We will go to Saint-Malo for ice creams.” He gulped the remainder of his tea in one, and stood up. “Come on, we must hurry for the train.”
Mathilde squealed with delight, and the Italian laughed incredulously.
“Saint-Malo for ice creams?” He clicked his fingers. “Just like that?”
I telephoned my parents from an outdoor kiosk and told them I was staying with Hubert that weekend, in order to study jointly. Elmo then telephoned Mitchell, the politician’s son, who was in Beaulieu at that moment, to tell him of our coming. I gathered from the tone of the conversation that Mitchell was unreceptive, but after a time he came around to the idea. Megan had once told me – again, with bitterness – that Mitchell did not approve of Elmo’s “arty” friends, and that the last time they had visited Beaulieu there had been a scene.
We arrived in Southampton by train at half past six o’clock that evening, and found a bistro-style café in which to eat. The journey had taken the wind from our sails, and we needed coffee and a square meal. The quest for ice cream, as readily as it was taken up, was postponed.
The café overlooked the River Test, and was cheerfully decorated with nautical miscellany, including a ship’s wheel and a selection of ferocious-looking mediaeval harpoons. French doors stood open and a clement breeze wafted through the room, which but for us was empty. Perhaps it is always like this in Southampton, but I was struck with the calmness of the place. Elmo, who for once was dressed impeccably, left the table in search of a telephone. He wanted to call Mitchell again, to tell him we were close by. Their meetings had become covert ever since Mr van Solling, nine months earlier, had discovered a candid love letter beneath his son’s pillow. Mercifully, Mitchell had not signed his name, or at any rate not fully, and his anonymity was assured. The letter was burnt at once, but no amount of fire could erase the state of things, and his son – with whom Mr van Solling had already a most fractious relationship – was cast out in disgrace. His father threatened to call the police on Elmo and the contents of his bedroom, I am told, were literally thrown out into the street. It was now necessary to take precautions when Elmo and Mitchell came together, in case a parent or an interfering neighbour should happen by unannounced and blow the lid off their tryst.
I noticed when Elmo returned to our table, some ten minutes later, that his hands trembling ever so slightly. He sat, took his glass in hand and drank a large mouthful of wine. He was the only one of us drinking and he had chosen a claret, dark and syrupy. He caught my eye but said nothing. The look of sorrow – or was it anxiety? – had returned and was painted thickly on his otherwise impassive features. I had a sense of impending and palpable excitement. I was a hanger-on in this trip, I knew that, but even just to witness Elmo in relative privacy was a thrill. I thought of his many simpering admirers, and what they would not have given to trade places just then.
“So this…friend of yours – “ said the Italian, in fact named Felice, to Elmo when we had finished our soup and bread, “ – he will accommodate us tonight, and we sail for France in the morning?”
“It would be prudent,” replied Elmo, “to sail out this evening with the last light. We can moor to a buoy in the estuary, about a mile down from the house. We can sleep on deck, or go ashore and bivouac.”
It sounded like great fun to me, but it was obvious that Felice had not bargained on our camping in the woods, and he was certainly not dressed for the occasion. I suspect that when he heard “yacht” he envisaged some ostentatious cruiser, a sort of miniature gin palace with cabins and amenities throughout, if not staff too. He shot a warning glass at Mathilde, who was reinvigorated with black coffee, and who pointedly ignored him.
Mitchell arrived half an hour later in a battered four-wheeled drive, and he parked over the road from the café, scattering a small flock of wood pigeons. Once unravelled from the driver’s seat I saw that he was very tall, only an inch or two shorter than Elmo, lightly built, bespectacled and with thick, dark hair parted to the side. His skin was pale, his eyes bright and his nose slightly askew, perhaps from a sporting injury. He wore tennis whites and a pullover, and had his sleeves buttoned to the wrist, in spite of the warm weather. His lips were pursed, and I detected something in his manner – not haughtiness exactly, but rather a studied play of self-assurance. I had seen the same look in his father in press photographs. He strode over to us, across the deserted and dusty road, and my heart fluttered a little as at the appearance of a celebrity, which he almost was. We were stood in a line outside the café like privates on parade, awaiting inspection from our commanding officer.
He shook my hand. “Mitchell Lewis, how do you do?” But as I began to introduce myself he had already turned to Felice to shake his hand in turn. Mathilde he knew already and they kissed on both cheeks. At last he came to Elmo, who stood at the end of our rank, and I watched them carefully. They drew to full height, like pugilists sizing up. Neither smiled, and seeing them in profile I was struck by what a handsome pair they made. Both were very tall, but quite different in terms of build and carriage. Elmo had a weightiness, an unmistakeable kind of solidity to his frame. One could insert him in the place of a steel girder, or the column beneath a great pediment – he would not buckle. Mitchell, though broad at the shoulder and reasonably muscled, was somehow effeminate-looking, though perhaps only in relation to Elmo. He had a wasp-like waist, much like mine used to be, from which his torso tapered only slightly. His hips were slim and his legs were thin and long.
“Good evening,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. He put his hand on Elmo’s shoulder, close to his neck, and it lingered there a very short while. Elmo blushed – I had never seen him blush before – and he squeezed Mitchell’s elbow in response. And that was it: no kiss, no embrace. Just the squeezing of an elbow, over in the space of a heartbeat. We then climbed into his car and drove off in the direction of Beaulieu.
The radio played something louche and jarring by Gershwin. A short time later we turned off the main road onto a mud track about a mile long, and headed through a series of opened farm gates. The further we drove, the more overgrown the track became. Rigid conifers lined the path, and up ahead they thinned out as we approached a clearing. Mitchell’s father’s country pile was a grand affair, at least in terms of the plot.
The house itself loomed some way from the main drive, hidden by a copse of ash trees, and it appeared quite square and brutal-looking, built in red sandstone and with castellated ramparts. The surrounding garden was meticulous and vast, the dimensions of a small London park. The lawn was mowed to the height of a bristle, and punctuated here and there by clumps of tended brambles, vegetable beds and flowering shrubs. A bench beneath a plum tree was the only sign that humans were, in theory, welcome in this sprawling, strangely bare allotment. Thick woods bordered the property on all sides, but through a chink in the palisade one could see dusk playing on the river, which was at that hour receding to its low tide.
“Welcome to the homestead,” said Mitchell, peering at me in the rear view mirror. Felice was also a first-time visitor, but by his sullenness – in contrast to Mathilde’s gaiety – he had made himself unpopular rather quickly.
“Drop us by the jetty, Mitch,” said Elmo. “We can ready the boat whilst you fetch victuals.”
Mathilde was seated in the rear between Felice and me, and she leaned forward to be heard above the radio. “Now which of you two is the captain? We’ll be very confused if you go ordering one another about.”
“Mitchell is the captain,” said Elmo. “I’ll be in charge of flags.”
“Oh no. I must be in charge of flags,” Mathilde protested. “It’s all I know how to do.” She proceeded to relate the story of her last voyage. The captain of the Dover-Calais ferry, apparently quite enamoured of Mathilde, had taught her how to semaphore.
“Don’t give Mathilde the flags,” snapped Felice. “She will only sink us… Christ, I need a cigarette.”
The two of them began bickering, and in the end we settled on Mathilde as the figurehead, Mitchell as the captain and Elmo as his deputy, or “Hardy to Mitchell’s Nelson” as Felice eloquently put it.
The yacht, which hardly looked seaworthy, was moored at the end of a short pier, jutting from a dell in the woods. Coiled ferns poked up between the planks, and the struts were cloaked in ribbons of dripping kelp. It was difficult to say which looked older: the pier or the yacht. Such was the uniformity of disrepair one might well have been made for the other. The boat’s sole concession to modernity was an outboard engine, expertly jimmied to the stern, and this alone was untouched by marine florae.
“The good ship Salacia,” said Elmo, by way of introduction. “Thirty-six sturdy feet of wood and canvas.”
Felice tutted disapprovingly, but he was happier now for Mitchell had given him a cigarette.
After a further hour we were launched, and we motored at low speed downriver, cutting through the haunting, heavy stillness, which lay about us like an immoveable fog. It was a little after eight o’clock and the sun was perched on the horizon out west, ready to fall beneath the treeline with its champagne veil in tow, but already we were cast in shadow. A few other masts peeked up from hidden bends and dark lagoons ahead of us, but the vessels on which they stood were moored and deserted, and the pleasant chugging of our engine was met by silence. Mathilde, Felice and Elmo were sat in a circle on the bow, playing card games. I sat in the cockpit with Mitchell, who was helming. He wore sailing gloves, which seemed a little pointless given how dry it was. We passed a bottle of beer between us, and I felt giddy and serene. Mitchell, visibly more relaxed, had become talkative.
“It’s God’s Country,” he said, indicating the marshes and the forest which surrounded us. “Everyone says that about his own backyard, but here it’s true. Have you been to Exbury, or Emery Down?” I shook my head. “Well you must. And when you do, tell me God doesn’t walk those cobbles, and run His hands through the hedges of lavender. You see over there,” he pointed to a thatched cottage roof nestled in a spinney, some two hundred yards to starboard, beyond the marshes, “that’s all which is left of Old Milton hamlet. That’s the house my mother grew up in.”
“Who lives there now?” I could make out silvery wisps drifting up from the chimneystack.
“It went to mummy’s cousin about twenty years ago,” said Mitchell. “I haven’t been in a long while. I wonder what they’ve done with the old place.” He then asked me what I did and I said I was still at school, soon to be sitting my final exams. He chuckled, but without condescension.
“So you’re, what, seventeen?”
“Sixteen,” I replied.
“And this lot have adopted you?” he said, nodding to the others.
“Seems so.”
“And who’s the wop? Don’t think I’ve seen him before either.”
“His name is Felice. Mathilde brought him.”
Mitchell smirked. “Rummy bird, her.” There was a lull in conversation, and then he asked me how I knew Elmo. I related the story of the budgerigars, and the party on Curzon Street. I may have been too descriptive, for a shadow crossed his face and I knew at once what he was thinking. When the silence became intolerable I chose to grasp the nettle.
“You don’t approve of his friends.” I said.
He shook his head. “It’s not that. I don’t care who his friends are.” He didn’t seem especially annoyed but then added, inexplicably: “You wouldn’t understand.”
The words were framed – unwittingly I think – as an accusation and we fell quiet once again, busily digesting his tone, startled by the acidity. The beer bottle stopped moving between us, and from some reed-bed in the near distance came the sharp, reproachful cry of an egret.
He and I spoke again shortly before bedtime. As it was so mild an evening we had decided to sleep on board, above deck, and a vast picnic rug was laid out. The boat was forty feet from tip to tail, so there was plenty of room. Furs and duvets were conjured from various stows and life jackets were set out as pillows. Nightcaps of Irish cream were made up and shared around.
With the view to setting off promptly at dawn I took a seat in the cockpit to read the tide tables by candle-light, when Mitchell appeared over me.
“About before,” he said, keeping his voice down. “Please understand, I didn’t mean anything offensive by it.”
“I didn’t take offense,” I replied, though of course I had. He then took a seat beside me.
“But even so,” he said, “it must have sounded patronising. It was nothing about your age… I daresay you’re a brighter sixteen year-old than I ever was…heck, it took me twenty years to get the hang of those tables! And here you are, new to the game, whizzing through them like you wrote the damned things.”
I listened in silence, waiting for him to arrive at the point.
“See, I only meant that there’s a backstory…context, you know? Though you’ve probably heard it already… Have a smoke?”
I took a cigarette, and he held out a lit match for me. I did not smoke as a rule, but felt compelled to on this occasion. The cigarette was a bargaining chip, and if I wouldn’t take it he had nothing else to offer. Between exhalations I shook my head.
“I don’t partake in gossip,” I said, and was pleased at how equable, how adult, it sounded. Mitchell eyed me for a short time, wavering between trust and suspicion.
“You don’t say.”
“Well, what more can I say Mitchell?” My expression was pained, but I was quite enjoying his attention. “If you won’t tell me what you’re getting at…”
After a long pause he spoke up and his voice was quieter than before, and rather hoarse.
“I love him, you see. That’s the sum of it.”
For the matter-of-fact tone, he might have been declaring the cricket score, or that day’s share price movements. I nodded dumbly. Such a turn in conversation was not expected, or for that matter especially welcome.
“Do you think he loves me?” asked Mitchell.
“Elmo? I honestly couldn’t say. Shouldn’t you talk to him about it?”
He shook his head. “Can’t bring myself to. I want the answer, but at the same time I don’t. You know what I mean? One of those situations where truth is almost worse than uncertainty.”
“Uncertainty?”
“I know there have been others…men and women.”
I thought at once of Esther, the poor dope. Which others had Elmo seduced? Mathilde would know – I would make a point of asking. Mitchell took my silence as admission, and he turned away.
“It would be simpler just to forget him,” he said. “Except that he won’t play along. The whole thing reeks of scandal – what if the press caught wind of it? My father would disown me, like his did. Thank Heavens I didn’t sign that letter!”
“Indeed. But don’t dwell on it.” I might as well have said nothing – he was peering into the darkness, orating to an unseen audience.
“I should have been thinking about my career, but instead I was wasting time at his silly parties, with his silly friends. Have you heard the kind of absurdness which went on? Virtually scandalous. If it was just him and me, that would be different. But he’s always got an entourage – a blasted circus troupe with him the whole time. I leave London to shake him off and he follows me here. Where else can I go?”
It was difficult to tell given the low light, but I am sure he had tears in his eyes. His voice had diminished to a quaver.
“I mean – have you ever been alone with him?”
I shook my head.
“Oh Jesus,” he cried suddenly. “Give me strength. Why am I lumbering a schoolboy with all this?” He rubbed his tendons, as if soothing a migraine. I was desperate for us to be interrupted, but the others were away on deck, bickering loudly over some trivial wager. Not really knowing why, I apologised.
“No,” he replied. “No, I’m sorry. I only wondered if perhaps you knew…if you had some insight… but you’re so young. Would you even know if you saw?”
I sensed that he was pleading with me to divulge secrets that I didn’t in fact possess; to grant him hope, or to shoot him dead and put an end to his misery. It occurred to me to be entirely blunt, to withhold nothing whatsoever. So I told him I knew Elmo only as an outsider; I knew him as the epicentre of a vast, formless clique, whose members came and went and loved freely; who sought pleasure and disdained constancy as unnatural and archaic, and who lived, as far as I could tell, only for want of a better pastime. I told him I did not know whom Elmo truly loved. He was spoilt for choice, but did not revel in the circumstances. I said I saw him only now and then, and felt unduly privileged on the rare occasions he spoke to me, such as today. I was in awe of the devotion he commanded, of the sombreness with which he acknowledged it, and of his apparent inability to reciprocate.
When I had finished, some minutes later, Mitchell nodded. The glimmer in his eyes was gone, and he was smiling.
“I think we’ve tumbled down the same rabbit hole, you and I.”
I won’t detail anymore of the boat-trip for now, for it strikes me as somewhat gratuitous. Suffice to say we did not reach Saint-Malo – being almost two full days’ sailing from Beaulieu as I later learnt – and were diverted by a squall to anchor in the bay near to Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight. We went ashore in an inflatable life-raft, which was stored in one of Salacia’s cabins. The sun reappeared at midday and we made a tour of the gardens, and Felice insisted on scaling the cliffs to photograph the view with his Kodak camera. In amongst the rest he took a shot of Mitchell and Elmo with their hands around the other’s shoulders, each one beaming insensibly into the camera, and he was kind enough to make me a copy. He sent it to me a year later by post, long after he and Mathilde had gone their separate ways. I still have the photo, and whenever I see it I am reminded of Mitchell’s desperate appeal: “Do you think he loves me?” Young Mr Lewis – poor, tortured soul. The answer was so blindingly obvious.
More important than the remainder of the trip is what occurred on my return to London that evening. My nervousness at being found out – having played truant on a weekend’s revision – was, in the end, unnecessary. I walked through the front door and was greeted by a cheerful mother and an ambivalent father. My sisters were at the kitchen table playing dominos.
“Hello dear,” said mother. “How was Hubert – did you two get a lot done?”
“A great deal. I’m exhausted now.”
“I’m not surprised. Why don’t you get an early night?”
I was up the stairs and into my bedroom when she called to me.
“Oh, and a letter came for you. I’ve left it on your pillow.”
I saw she had. The letter was from Florence, and I tore through the envelope with a sense of impending victory. In amongst all the excitement I had nearly forgotten that little scheme of mine! What desperate pleading lay within it? Of course, my triumphalism underscored what little distance I had made from Florence; how far I had not come along. But all I could think at the time, as I slipped my fingers inside the tear and withdrew the letter, was the profound justness of what I supposed to be Florence’s misery. And with what bitterness I reflect, even today, on the shameless joy I felt in those moments, before the artifice imploded.
I sat at my table and unfolded the letter. My eyes were drawn instinctively to the middle section of the first and only page, beyond the opening pleasantries, and to the stark phrase: “mummy died shortly after midnight”. An utterance caught in my throat, and for a minute I sat in perfect silence, reading and re-reading the letter. Mrs Barclay, wrote Florence in strangely clinical phrases, had taken a sudden turn for the worse following a drawn-out but stable decline, and the illness was that which she had referenced in her previous letter: a cancer of the bones. She had died at home in the company of her husband, her daughter and her physician in the early hours of Friday morning, and “was in relatively good spirits, up to the point of her slipping into unconsciousness”. Florence had considered telephoning me, she wrote, in order that I might travel to her mother’s bedside, but surmised – correctly, as it turned out – that I would arrive too late. The funeral was to take place imminently. Attached to the letter by paper clip was a signed cheque, drawn on Mr Barclay’s current account. A post script explained it was to cover the train fare. I wept bitterly.