The New Confessions

14 Dog Days

I was back in London within a week. I sold the Audi in Paris and bought a large tin cabin trunk to take the contents of the old one and the reels of The Confessions. This I then deposited in the vault of a bank in Piccadilly. I rented a modest dusty flat in Islington not far from the site of the old Superb-Imperial studios and contemplated my future.

It was strange to be back in London after a gap of ten years. It was busier and dustier than Berlin; apart from that, to my indifferent eyes, it seemed more or less unchanged. Sonia and the children now lived in a large house near Parson’s Green. I deliberately chose a place to live as far away from Shorrold territory as possible.

I was depressed and often quite miserable during those initial weeks back in London. I had taken the demise of Realismus Films and the end of my dreams about The Confessions extraordinarily well, or so I thought. I suppose it was because I had never truly felt that the sound version was really feasible. Making it was a despairing effort rather than an enthusiastic one — an act of bravado, not conviction. I needed more time to generate that last emotion.

In fact, ambition had become almost extinct in me since 1929, hard though it may be to believe. I set up Part II and did what filming I could manage powered by an energy that was derived more from dwindling momentum than from any self-generating creative source. Ambition had died, and now I needed a strong deep sentiment to fill the spaces it had vacated. That was why I drove to Paris with such joyous anticipation, and that was why Doon’s betrayal was the most savage shock I had to take.

I could hardly believe that she had gone off with Mavrocordato. I could feel only hate and revulsion for what she had done to me. To try to forget, I spent a couple of days getting drunk (we drank much more then, I think). Finally, sober, crapulous, fed up, I wondered what to do next. To go back to Berlin was out of the question. Eddie was going to America, so why not follow him there? For a while I was tempted. I even went to a shipping agency and inquired about booking a passage. But I was too hurt and sorrowful to take such a step straightaway. And so I turned for home with my films, my scripts and my bits and pieces, to set about the task of putting my life back together in a mood not far off apathetic.

It was two weeks after my arrival in London before I got round to going to see Sonia and my family in the house I was renting for them. On Saturday, as a taxicab drove me up the King’s Road, all the memories of the early years of my marriage passed through my mind. I allowed a wistful smile to accompany them. I thought of my younger self with affection. What an impulsive, sentimental idiot I had been then.

I was shocked when Sonia came to the door. It was a considerable time since I had seen her and since then she must have lost at least forty pounds. Her clothes were as neat as ever, her central parting still ruthlessly defined, but her once round, plump face was gaunt and hard. She wore spectacles with pale caramel-colored lenses and held a cigarette in her hand. She had never smoked in all the years I had known her.

“Hello, John,” she said. “Nice of you to come by.”

I followed her in. Her round haunches had disappeared completely.

“Are you well?” I asked, concerned.

“Fighting fit.”

“What’s happened to your voice?”

The London accent had gone. The mild glottal stop that would have produced “figh’ing” was now replaced by a positive t.

“What are you talking about?” Sonia, I realized, had gone radically genteel. She sounded like an actress.

“Nothing, nothing.”

We went into the sitting room, where my children were waiting for me. Vincent, a bland brown-haired eleven-year-old, was a Shorrold to the dull roots of his hair. The girls — Emmeline and Annabelle — were absurdly dressed, as if for a pantomime, with satin bows in their hair and white silky dresses. They were plump like their mother used to be, and shy. I kissed them all, strangers. In the corner a familiar figure hovered. Lily Maidbow. Loyal Lily.

“Hello, Mr. Todd,” she said.

I looked uneasily at my family and retainer. Was I really something to do with all these people? I tried to ignore the pain of Hereford’s absence.

“How nice to see you all,” I said like a headmaster, hands clasped behind my back.

“The girls have to go,” Sonia said.

“What a shame.”

“They’ve a dress rehearsal of their school play.”

“Ah. Good. Excellent.”

They went. Lily took Vincent out of the room. “Good-bye, Daddy,” they said awkwardly as if it were a foreign word. Sonia and I sat down. Cigarettes were offered to me and declined.

“When did you start smoking?”

“Guess. Sherry?”

“Mmm. Please.” I felt soft vague guilts press upon me, like giant cushions. I was seized suddenly with a manic desire to flee this lugubrious house. “The children look well,” I said with a thin flat smile.

“I need more money, John. Another thousand a year. Vincent goes to prep school—”

“Prep school!”

“And I’m going to board the girls too; place near Ascot.”

“Good God.” I did some quick calculations. I had approximately twenty thousand dollars and the apartment in Berlin to my name. I could not rely on a quick sale of the apartment and at six dollars to the pound that made something over three thousand pounds. One to Sonia left me two to live on.

“I could manage a couple of hundred, I should think.”

I will not reproduce the profanity of the language Sonia employed after I explained how I had bought the negative of The Confessions from Eddie Simmonette. Impressively, the new accent never slipped. Abuse gave way to quiet, serious threats. The name of her lawyer — a Mr. Devize — was frequently enjoined. Eventually I promised her the thousand; this and the proceeds from the apartment calmed her down somewhat.

“You’ll just have to get another job,” she said. “You can earn a lot as a director. I’m sorry, John, but I’m going to have to tell Mr. Devize about you buying that film. That money wasn’t yours to spend. It belonged to all of us.”

She left the room, calling for Lily to show me out. I counted the cigarette butts in the ashtray — five. Lily edged in, head bowed.

In the hall, putting on my hat and coat, I asked a question.

“What does Mrs. Todd do these days, Lily?”

“Well … plays cards, mostly. These three lady friends come round. They play cards for hours. Days. And smoke. Smoke something terrible. Cards, cigarettes, cups of coffee. Play right through the night sometimes. I get up in the morning and there they are, still at it.”

“Lord.…” I felt very depressed.

“Oh, and she goes and visits that Mr. Devize.”

I left after that. And, as events turned out, that was the last I ever saw of my family.

I looked, rather halfheartedly, for a job. I met some people and talked about The Confessions: Part II, but it prompted little enthusiasm. Mr. Devize summoned me to his office several times. He was a sleek burly man with thinning oiled hair who affected half-moon pince-nez spectacles. He was aggressive and unpleasant. I had him labeled arriviste at once, despite his banded institutional tie and the mellow professional fruitiness of his voice. I laid my documents and accounts before him, including my notarized bill of sale from Eddie. He had this verified and reported to Sonia that I was indeed as impecunious as I claimed.

I was not bothered by this fiscal slump. Material prosperity has never meant much to me. I have always seen wealth and fame for the alluring shams they are.

In early June, for want of anything better to do, I went up to Edinburgh. The truth was that I was lonely in London, and, in that mood, sentimental notions about family and roots easily take hold. I sublet the flat for the summer and headed north.

I managed to last two days with my father before his unrelenting ironic inquiries drove me out. He had finally moved from his old apartment to an elegant Georgian house in India Street in the New Town. From there I booked in to the Scotia Private Hotel, a modest clean establishment in Bruntsfield. I took breakfast in my room, lunched in a public house and dined at 7:00 P.M. sharp with my fellow residents. They were all upstanding professional men, mainly engineers and surveyors working away from home, where they returned at weekends. During many weekends I was quite alone at the Scotia and was regarded by Mrs. Darling, the widowed proprietrix, as a faintly louche and eccentric character, whom she blantantly patronized, introducing me to new guests as “Mr. Todd, our cinema producer.”

Now that I look back on it, I think I must have been suffering a mild but protracted nervous breakdown all that first half of 1934. I was listless and morose. I felt betrayed and let down by Doon. I saw myself as a hapless victim of technology. I idled my way through the long summer weeks, going for long walks in the city or out in the country or the Pentland Hills. Steadily, I found myself revisiting the haunts of my childhood: Anstruther, North Berwick, Cramond. I even revisited Minto Academy, to find it had been converted to a youth hostel. It is an indicator of my mood and melancholy that my most frequent reverie was taken up with trying to imagine myself as an old man. I am sure this is an infallible sign of the end of youth. I had several popular versions. There was the sprightly old lecher with a gray goatee, a pink gin in one hand and a chorus girl’s bottom in the other; or the dear bumbling eccentric whom everybody adored; or the spruce ascetic octogenarian steeped in calm sagacity. I never saw myself remotely like my father. I was thirty-five years old and I could not rid myself of the conviction that my life was over. My great work was as complete as it ever would be; my great love had abandoned me. I was halfway towards my threescore years and ten and the remaining portion stretched ahead featureless as a salt flat.

My God, I should have been so lucky.…

I was routed from my torpid self-pity and introspection in August. Sonia wrote, announcing that she intended to divorce me. Mr. Devize had everything under control. Sometime in the near future I would be contacted by a man named Orr. He would explain exactly what I had to do.

Orr arrived a week after Sonia’s letter. Mrs. Darling brought me my breakfast on a tray and said in tones of sorrowful disdain, “There’s a … man. By the name of Orr? To see you, Mr. Todd. We’ve put him in the smoking room. Out of harm’s way.”

Orr was a small block of a man in a thick cheap suit. He sat to attention, smoking a cigarette as if he were testing it, examining the burning end after each draw. I noticed that the nail and first two joints of his forefinger were as brown as unmilked tea. He had shaved badly that morning; his jawbone was nicked and raw looking. There was a small bright jewel of a scab on the volute of a nostril. He smelled powerfully of brilliantine.

“Ian Orr,” he said, standing up. He was about five foot two. I felt sure he had been a bantam. He put his cigarette in his mouth to free his right hand. We shook hands. He had a strong grip. He then checked each pocket to his suit before discovering a used business card. “Ian Orr,” it said, “Orr’s Private Detection Agency, Divorce and Debt Collection Our Specialties.” After Eugen, Orr. I had a sudden doleful premonition that my life was going to be bedeviled by these sorts of men.

“Shall we get down to business?” I saw no reason to be civil. However, Orr explained what we had to do with an enthusiasm that was almost infectious. We might have been organizing a whist drive or scavenger hunt, rather than orchestrating my culpability in a divorce case. Put simply, Sonia’s divorce from me would be most swiftly and easily effected if I were caught in flagrante delicto committing adultery. Smart Londoners spent an afternoon with a Mayfair tart in the Metropole Hotel in Brighton. Orr had booked two nights for me (for authenticity’s sake, he explained) in the Harry Lauder Temperance Hotel in Joppa, the western extension of Portobello, scene of my first excursions to the seaside. At a preordained point during the stay, Orr would then “surprise” me and the woman I was with and testify to that effect in court as chief witness for the plaintiff.

“Fine,” I said. “All right. But do I really need to spend two nights?”

“I always find it’s far more convincing, sir. You know, for real solid adultery. Not just a one-night fling.”

“Whatever you say.”

Orr had a strong stop-start Scottish accent, very nasal. He pronounced “adultery,” addle-tree.

He smiled at me. He had small dark-cream teeth.

“We can get a whoor in town or at Joppa.”

“Let’s get one here.”

That night Orr and I went down to Leith docks to a pub called the Linlithgow. The bar was full of mirrors, extravagantly etched and carved with prototypical Scottish scenes. The public room was well lit, to such a degree that I felt like shading my eyes. It was busy with men and sailors who seemed to be pointedly ignoring the “girls”—only three of them — who sat behind a long table with their backs to the wall.

Orr paid for two pints of special (I was paying, in fact; his fee was two guineas a day plus “sundries”). We stood at the bar, drinking, pondering who was going to be my companion.

“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t propose to do anything with her.”

“Might as well have some fun, Mr. Todd. You’re paying for it.”

He went over and spoke to the women and came back with one whom he introduced as Senga. She was young, rather heavy-set, with a slight squint. She wore a threadbare velvet coat over a grubby print dress. We made the arrangements swiftly. I would meet her under the clock at Portobello Station the next day at four-thirty in the afternoon. She would be paid five pounds when the “discovery” was complete.

Senga was waiting for me at the appointed time, wearing the same clothes and with no luggage. I asked her where she got her curious name.

“It’s Agnes backwards,” she said.

The Harry Lauder Temperance Hotel was not far from the station. It was a solid simple building of white-painted stone with brown mullions across the main road from the sea front. I had been told to use an assumed name, so I signed us in as Mr. and Mrs. Backwards. The proprietor, a small fat man with a dense sandy moustache, showed us to our room. There was something familiar about him. Once we were inside, he introduced himself.

“Alexander Orr,” he said with a broad smile. “Call me Eck. Ian’s made all the arrangements. Don’t worry about a thing, Mr. Todd. I get all his clients.” He ignored Senga completely, as if she did not exist.

“Can I offer you a wee drink? I can send up a bottle. Rum or whiskey?”

“What would you like, Senga?”

“I’ll take a rum.”

“Rum it shall be, Mr. Todd.”

“I thought this was a temperance hotel,” I said.

“Oh, aye, it is. That way we get nae trouble fae the polis.”

After the bottle of rum had been delivered, I unpacked my few clothes. Senga had a drink, a large rum diluted with water. I had not tasted the stuff since the war and its faint sickly aroma took me back to that day in the Salient when we had gone over the top for the first time. I touched the scar caused by Somerville-Start’s tooth.

“Haven’t you got any things with you?” I asked Senga.

“No.”

“Not even a toothbrush? A nightdress?”

“No.”

We went out to do some shopping. We caught a tram to Portobello and I bought Senga a toothbrush, a tin of toothpowder, a comb, a bar of soap, a flannel and a spongebag. Then we went for a walk on the long beach. Taciturn Senga made an ideal companion. We walked along the beach towards the pier and Restalrig. There was a cold stiff breeze coming off the firth and I had to pull my hat down firmly on my head. My mind was full of thoughts: picnics with Oonagh and Thompson, Donald Verulam taking photographs, Ralph the dog, the drowned men at Nieuport, Dagmar … I fantasized briefly about Dagmar. Perhaps I would go to Norway, seek her out.…

“Hey, mister!”

I looked round. Senga had fallen behind a good way. I retraced my steps.

“I cannae walk inna sond, wi’ these shuze.”

“Take them off, then.”

“Whut? Oh, uh-huh. Silly me.”

She took her shoes off and we set off once more. We must have walked a couple of miles. I think Senga enjoyed herself. As we strolled along, an idea for a film took shape in my head. On the way back to the hotel I bought a notebook to write it down.

Eck Orr had our meal sent up to the room — boiled mackerel and mashed potatoes. Senga sewed up the hem of her coat, which was coming down, and tightened a loose button on my jacket. When I commented how deftly she did this, she explained that she had briefly been a housemaid in one of the earl of Wemyss’s homes. After our meal I wrote out my story idea. It was exactly my own situation: a man obliged to fabricate an adultery to obtain a divorce, the difference being that the man in my story falls passionately in love with the tart he hires, thereby complicating matters disastrously. I thought it might make a nice ironic melodrama. I wrote out a dozen pages while Senga sat silently, drinking rum and water. That evening as we waited to be discovered I felt a strange serenity come over me, and for the first time since my return to Britain sensed a stirring of my old energies. I glanced at Senga. There was in fact something oddly attractive about her astigmatism: it seemed to indicate a latent mischievousness, quite at odds with her true nature.

By eleven o’clock there had been no sign of Ian Orr. We undressed and prepared for bed with decorum. I changed into my pajamas and dressing gown in the WC at the end of the corridor. Then, while I washed my face with the jug and ewer, Senga slipped out of her dress and in between the sheets. I asked her if she wanted to use her toothbrush but she said no.

She fell asleep almost instantly. I lay in the dark listening to her small snores, wondering if Ian Orr would burst in at any moment. I could hear the noise of male conversation from a room below, which I took to be the temperance bar. Outside the summer night faded into darkness; I heard the rickety-tick of a train on the LNER railway line and a few motorcars passing on the coast road to Musselburgh.

The next morning was a Saturday and it was raining. Senga’s bed was empty when I woke, but her dress and coat were still in the wardrobe. I went to the window and looked out at the wet roofs of Joppa. Beyond the coast road the pewtery firth was calm and beyond that lay the rest of Scotland.… Rain seemed to be falling on the entire country from the solid low sky.

Senga came in, from the lavatory I assumed, wearing my dressing gown.

“Oh, yer up. Borrowed yer dressin’ goon.”

She took it off and handed it to me. She had slept in her underwear and cotton slip, which was badly creased. I could see she had small sharp breasts and there was something provocative about the sight of her bare legs and battered high-heeled shoes. I saw a stubble of dark hair on her shins.

“Senga, I—”

The door was flung open and Ian Orr came in.

“Morning, Mr. Todd, morning to youse all.”

I had to pay Eck Orr for the full two nights. I settled all my bills in the hotel’s office, including Senga’s. We drank to the successful conclusion of my divorce. Eck raised his glass.

“Here’s tae us, wha’s like us?”

“Damn few — and they’re a’ deed,” Ian Orr said.

Later, Eck slyly asked Senga to stay on, but I was glad when she refused. We said good-bye to the Orr brothers and walked to the station.

“Where are you going?” I asked as we waited for a train. “Waverley?”

“I’ll get the stopper to Bonnington.”

We sat on the station bench side by side. It was still raining. I felt obscurely cheated of my second night with her.

“Do you go to that pub — the Linlithgow — often?” It was the only reference I had made to her profession.

“Aye, sometimes.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“Maybe, aye.”

Her train came in five minutes. She got up.

“Thanks for the spongebag, Mr. Todd. Cheerio, now.”

My film The Divorce had its trade show in August 1935. Close-up described it as “a powerful and at times shocking melodrama, very much in the German style.” Bioscope said, “A skillful and impressive film let down by mediocre performances.” In the film the impossible love affair ends with the hero murdering the uncaring prostitute and then killing himself. I shot it full of shadows, unrelievedly murky in every scene. It was a small inexpensive film compared to the scale I had become accustomed to in The Confessions, but I was pleased with it. It was infused with its own strange passion. On the whole The Divorce received a good press, though it did only average business. This was the result of the inept distribution deal negotiated by the film company I made it for — Astra-King. But I was pleased with the movie for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it was a memento of the bizarre twenty-four hours I had spent in Joppa committing adultery with Senga. There were other advantages that accrued. The good notices had attracted interest from Gaumont, J. Arthur Rank and British Lion. The Confessions: Part II was being discussed once more.

My most ardent fan was the celebrated Courtney Young, variously known as Mr. Film, Father of the British Cinema and any number of other flattering epithets. Young was a hugely wealthy man who had made his fortune in the ancillary trades of the film business. He started out hiring equipment — lamps and cameras — then he expanded into the costumier side. He bought a studio during the postwar slump, demolished it and then sold the land to the electricity board. The money he made from this purchased the second-largest cinema chain in the North of England. And so on. He was one of those men who would have done well, and done it in the same way, no matter what industry he went into — he just happened to choose the cinema. Now he was making films. His company, Court Films, had produced two expensive flops: Vanity Fair and Sir Walter Raleigh, but this had not dissuaded him. He was mad for The Confessions.

Young was a huge fleshy man with a handsome face spoiled by heavy bags under his eyes. He had thin ginger-blond hair, which he brushed straight back from a pale freckleless face. He looked as if he should have been dark and saturnine. The fact that he was not was somewhat unsettling. For a while I used to wonder if his hair was dyed, but I saw him naked once (showering in his golf club) and his pubic hair was as pale as old thistledown.

I did not like Young much, but I needed him. He was married to a still-beautiful actress of the silent era, Meredith Pershing, and I spent quite a few weekends at their country house near High Wycombe. He paid me to rewrite my scripts so that Rousseau’s English years were emphasized (he wanted Hector Seagoe to play David Hume) and I obliged. It took considerable persuasion to get him to accept Karl-Heinz as Rousseau, but I made it a condition of my directing. In the end he had to agree.

It was the spring of 1936, I think, March or April, when Leo Druce finally returned from Berlin. He was something of a wasted man, having been embroiled in a nasty court case after the death of his ex-wife, Lola Templin-Tavel. Her body had been found in a grove of trees near the Wannsee with a bullet hole in her head and a revolver lying nearby. However, in her room was a suicide note that stated that she and Leo were going to stage a double suicide exactly like Kleist and his mistress Henriette Vogel (Lola had made her name in the role of Henriette Vogel in a long-running play). Leo knew nothing of this and protested as much when he was arrested for murder. There was a lot of lurid publicity and it was only as a result of witnesses testifying to Lola’s total craziness that the charges against him were dropped.

Since his window-cleaner film, Leo had made three other low-quality musical comedies and was now, I suppose, regarded as a director rather than a producer.

We met for lunch in an oyster bar off the Strand. Leo looked thinner and needed a haircut. We shook hands with as much warmth as the gesture can generate.

“I came away with virtually nothing,” he said. “I had to get out of the place. You should have seen those baboons that arrested me … and the jail! It’s all the uniforms I can’t take. Suddenly everybody’s allowed to dress up. And flags. Flags everywhere. Never known a country so keen on flags.”

We ordered turtle soup and three dozen oysters. To my surprise I had developed a taste for them. In celebration of our reunion I called for champagne.

“Doing well, Johnny?”

I told him The Confessions was on the go again.

“Wonderful. Great news. Saw The Divorce. Splendid. The end shook me up a bit, I can tell you.” He lifted his chin and slid an oyster down his throat. “You know — what with Lola topping herself like that.”

I asked him for news of Doon. He told me he had none. We talked on about the occupation of the Rhineland, life in Berlin and mutual friends. He told me that Georg Pfau had died in some kind of internment camp. Karl-Heinz was in a successful play at the Schiller-Theater but was still living in Georg’s old apartment, which he now owned.

“Place is full of dead insects,” Leo said. “Doesn’t seem to care.”

“I must write to him. Get him over to meet Young.” I looked at Leo. “What do you say to keeping The Confessions a Todd-Druce production? I’ll talk to Young about it.”

He set down his coffee cup and looked solemn.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, John.” He held up his hand, palm outwards. “No, I mean it. I tell you, that business with Lola almost finished me.”

“Don’t give it a thought,” I said. “What are friends for?”

Leo moved in with me for a week or so until he could find a place of his own. I introduced him to Young, who quickly agreed to his producing The Confessions. In the meantime Young set him to work overseeing a musical version of Major Barbara while I got down to some serious revisions on my script. I was quite happy with the reemphasis Young had proposed. I now saw Part II as, in essence, a film about exile. It opened with Rousseau on a Channel pacquet boat approaching Dover Harbor on a wet squally day. He is alone (Thérèse le Vasseur is following later, escorted by Boswell^*). His thoughts turn to the past, the fame and disgrace he had known, the celebration and vilification. He meets Hume and is soon settled in England. Then, reunited with the faithless Thérèse, he begins to write his Confessions. His mind goes back to his youth, Geneva, Maman, Paris and early fame.… In a series of fragmented memories we relive his past life (here I could employ some of the footage from Part I). Gradually, however, his loneliness gets the better of him. He does not warm to England or the cold English. He begins to suspect Hume of intercepting his mail.… I worked on steadily and with growing satisfaction. For the first time since I had left Berlin I felt a modicum of contentment again. I even grew to enjoy my solitary bachelor’s life — working in the morning, lunch in a local pub, a stroll round Islington’s streets, perhaps some shopping, then another long session of work until seven or eight in the evening. Then I might go out to the theater or the cinema and have a late supper. Often I’d meet up with Leo. He was dallying now with a chorus girl from Major Barbara (I rebuked him for this cliché) called Belinda, and I would join them and assorted friends in restaurants or parties or wherever the “fun” was to be had that night. I met a fair number of bright ambitious girls on these assignations, but they must have found me disappointing company. My mind was full of Jean Jacques again and I barely listened to the humorous chitchat that flowed insatiably between the others. In the summer I went down to the Courtney Youngs’ for house parties every second or third weekend. It was there one Saturday that I read in The Times of my divorce from Sonia on the grounds of adultery committed at the Harry Lauder Temperance Hotel, Joppa, Midlothian, with one Agnes Outram. (“Very Johnny Todd, somehow,” Young commented when he read it. This annoyed me.) I felt no grief or disappointment and smiled blandly through the sophisticated commiserations of my fellow guests. Instead I thought rather poignantly of that bizarre couple of days and the strange charade we had played out — myself and Senga and the efficient Orr brothers.…

A few days later Sonia wrote to inform me that she was marrying her lawyer, Devize, and that he proposed to adopt my three children as his own. I gave them my blessing in the enterprise. There was nothing for me there anymore.

Then I received another letter that filled me with real joy.

Hello, Johnny!

My God, you should be seeing Berlin now. We are in heavy trouble. I am a great success in a bad play. Famous again, like Julie. Good news about Jean Jacques. I make a little more money, then I come to England. Poor Georg is dead, you know. I tell you when I see you. Tell to your Mr. Young that I want one thousand pounds a week for your film. Hello to Leo.

Good-bye. A strong English handshake from your German friend,

Karl-Heinz

It was a warm drizzly Wednesday in late July when I was telephoned by Courtney Young and asked to come and see him. I knew it was Wednesday because I had gone out after lunch to buy some bananas and found the shops all shut. I had forgotten it was half-day closing. I had returned home and was just beginning to write the scene where Rousseau accuses Hume of plotting to defame him when the phone rang. Young wanted to see me straightaway.

During that summer of 1936, curious though it is to relate now, a novel called Great Alfred by one Land Fothergill (an unlikely name for a woman) had enjoyed a huge success both in Britain and the U.S.A. That afternoon in his office in Portland Square, Young told me he had just bought the film rights for fifty thousand pounds, a vast sum, in competition with MGM and 20th Century-Fox. The novel was about Alfred the Great, preposterously romanticized (I had reached page 7 before I had hurled it away), but Young said it would make the English epic to rival anything the Americans would produce. The cast would include Hartley Dale, Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Cecily Dart, Charles Laughton and Felicia Feast. He envisaged a budget of around a million pounds. There was only one man who could direct it — John James Todd.

“Don’t say anything,” Young interrupted quickly. “Think about it. My commitment to The Confessions is absolute, rock solid. But this is an opportunity we have to take.”

“But what about The Confessions?” I asked. “Karl-Heinz is coming over.”

“Superb, wonderful. There must be a role for him in Alfred. We’ll do The Confessions after.” He went to the window and spoke to the plane trees in the square. “Think, John, think. After Alfred … The whole world’s talking about that book. Think what we’ll be able to do with The Confessions.” He turned, his pale face was almost flushed. “And you’re the only man who can do it. You’re the only English — sorry, British — director who’s worked on this kind of huge scale. I saw what you did with The Confessions. You’ll have a million quid for Alfred.…”

He went on sousing me in statistics, predictions and the grossest flattery. I went home and thought about it for hours. I telephoned Leo and said I needed his advice. We met that evening in a quiet restaurant in Bloomsbury.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Leo said.

“What?”

“You have to stick with The Confessions.” He spoke with tense sincerity.

“I know.”

“Young’s trying to sidetrack you. He’s got this hot property. If he can persuade you to postpone The Confessions once, he’ll try again. You’ll lose his commitment once he sees yours can be diverted.”

“You’re right.” He was. “I know.” I smiled at him. “I think I just needed to hear it from someone else. Thanks, Leo.”

“Christ, we’ve waited long enough,” he said. “Let’s keep forging on, for God’s sake. What about another bottle of rosé?”

This was how events went. I telephoned Young the next morning. I said I was deeply honored to have been asked, but I had devoted years of my life to The Confessions and that to set it aside now just as it was reaching fruition would be, in my opinion, disastrous. Alas, I had to say no to Great Alfred. It had been one of the hardest decisions of my life.

“Thank you, John,” he said. “I’m sad, I wish you’d change your mind, but I think I can understand your position.”

We said good-bye. I said I was looking forward to seeing him and Meredith that weekend.

The next day in the Manchester Guardian I read that Land Fothergill’s Great Alfred was to be filmed by Courtney Young’s Court Films. The director was to be “the internationally celebrated film director Mr. Leo Druce.”

That afternoon I received a telegram. REGRET CONFESSIONS NO LONGER OF INTEREST TO COURT FILMS. They wished me luck.

That evening Leo Druce stood in the middle of my living room trying to lie his way out of a tight corner. He was agitated; he kept running his hands through his thick hair.

“You must believe me, John. I didn’t know. I swear. I had no idea when we spoke. I never dreamed he would ask me.”

“You fucking liar.” I had said this about twenty times so far.

“He rang me out of the blue. We met. He said The Confessions was off. Finished. Did I want to direct Great Alfred? You’d turned it down flat, he said.”

“You should have told him where to stuff Great Alfred.”

“What good would that do? Look, I’m broke. I’ve got no job. This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“You stinking filthy scum.”

“I swear—” His voice cracked. “I never knew. The Confessions is over, Johnny. Put yourself in my place.”

“No, thanks.”

“Go back to him. Say you’ve changed your mind. I don’t care. You do it.”

“You’re vermin, Druce. I wouldn’t piss on Young’s grave, now. He’s filth. You’re a perfect match. I hope you’ll be very happy.”

“John, I beg you.”

I felt my face harden, as if it were being slowly frozen.

“I made you, Druce. I’ve given you every break. When I think—”

“John, please—”

“When I think what I’ve done for you. How many times I’ve helped you. This is what you do to me.”

“I’ll tell him I don’t want it. Say you’ve changed your mind.”

“You disgust me. Get out.”

“John—”

“GET OUT!”

I actually screamed. The dam broke. I called him every vile name I could think of. He stood there and took it for a minute or so, then left. After he had gone I sat down and plotted murder. I was going to kill Young and his wife and their children. I was going to torture Druce in unspeakable ways until he died. Then I was going to seek out their families and relatives and spring on them from the darkness. I was going to conduct my own private pogrom, cleanse the world of this worthless contemptible human bacteria.…

Well, this is the sort of thing you do — these are the words you say to yourself in such moments. It was the lowest point my life had reached. The darkest depths. The nadir. Only thoughts of vicious revenge kept me going. Eventually I began to calm down. The first thing I realized was that I had to get away. I had to leave London. So where did I go? I went back to Scotland.

I rented a small freezing cottage on old Sir Hector Dale’s estate at Drumlarish. Somehow the old chap was still just in the land of the living. He was bedridden and quite gaga 90 percent of the time. A grandson, my cousin Mungo Dale, ran the increasingly decrepit estate. Mungo was a big, fair, utterly stupid man in his early forties whose company I found oddly consoling. I never saw him wear anything but a kilt. From time to time he would come by the cottage and ask me if I wanted to participate in the life of the farm — repairing dry-stone dikes, feeding sheep and cattle, and so on — but I always politely declined. I have never sought solace in physical labor. My energies are purely mental.

Mungo was far too shy ever to marry, and in fact was quite happy looking after the estate and his ancient grandfather. None of the other Dales enjoyed living at Drumlarish and were all firmly established in Glasgow and Edinburgh in various easy jobs. Mungo would inherit the house and land when old Sir Hector finally passed away. Mungo lived with him in the big house (colder than my cottage) and said with some pride that he had slept in the same bedroom for over forty years. An old couple saw to their food and tried to keep dust and all types of encroaching decay in hand. Somehow, with the occasional help of the sale of a few shares, a good picture or a piece of furniture, the leasing of pasture and moorland, the place just managed to keep going.

I went into a kind of mental hibernation during the winter of 1936–37. I grew a beard. I did some token work on my script and tried to keep warm. My social life consisted of visits to Mungo and Sir Hector and the occasional trip to Glenfinnan to stock up on provisions and draw money from the bank. My finances were about as healthy as Sir Hector. I spent Christmas at my father’s with Thompson and Heather but returned to Drumlarish before New Year’s Eve. I avoided buying newspapers and listening to the radio. My only source of news was Mungo.

“There’s a war going on in Spain,” he said to me in January, as we drove into Glenfinnan to buy paraffin.

“Oh yes? What’s happening?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, John, I’m no very sure. But it’s pretty bad, I believe.”

“I see.”

“Ever been tae Spain, John?”

“No, can’t say I have.”

“I hear tell it’s an awfy beautiful country.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Thus we conversed. We could talk for hours like this, usually at night in the kitchen of the big house, a whiskey bottle and two glasses in front of us. Slowly I healed. I shaved off my beard. In February I finished my script of The Confessions: Part II and then neatly retyped it.

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.

One man spoke and the other two nodded. Thompson stared expressionlessly at his steepled fingers poised on the table in front of him.

“We were very impressed with your … your ‘film’ proposal. All of us, I think.” Nods, grunts of accord. “You will understand, Mr. Todd, that the ‘cinema’ industry is not one in which the bank normally invests.” I nodded. This man had a deep superpolite Scottish accent. He pronounced “bank,” benk. “But I’m glad to say that in your case it was felt that this was an area which was well worth entering.”

I felt relief ooze through me, warm and comfortable, almost as if I had wet myself.

The senior man (I think his name was McIndoe) consulted his notes. “Consequently the Investment Division has decided to advance your company fifteen hundred pounds at current rates of interest. But at your brother’s insistence — and he, ha ha, put the case most eloquently — we have raised the loan to twenty-five hundred.”

McIndoe stood and stretched his hand across the table.

“Delighted to be doing business with you, Mr. Todd.”

I managed — how, I will never know — I managed to control myself. I produced some sort of smile and shook Thompson’s hand as he escorted me to the main door.

“It’s not as much as you hoped, I know,” Thompson said. “But it’s a start.” He smiled. “You can have no idea how heretical it seems to the board — some members of our board — to lend money to a film company.” He chuckled. “It wasn’t exactly a unanimous decision, I can tell you — in confidence, of course — cries of nepotism and all that.”

“I’m very grateful to you.”

“Remember, John, great oaks and little acorns …”He clapped me on the shoulder. “Good Lord, is that the rain on again?”

I think it was my impotence that really distressed me. I was not quite able to rage and shout against injustice. I could hardly berate Thompson for not standing up for me, either. I honestly think I would have been happier if they had got their flunkies to throw me out on the street. What earthly good was twenty-five hundred pounds? What film studio was going to be convinced by this munificence? I had to get out of Thompson’s house at once. It was bad enough with Heather’s frozen good manners, but Thompson was so pleased with himself. His sunny pleasure in his good deed was intolerable. I think he had always felt guilty about me and somehow this loan canceled out all his childhood indifference. He was really upset when I said I had to go. I moved temporarily back in with my father, which proved a ghastly error. He was there to witness the final indignity.

I was sitting in his drawing room half-reading The Scotsman. Father was in his study across the hall. It must have been four or five days after my meeting at the bank. I had an account there now, credited with twenty-five hundred pounds. From time to time I wondered what to do with it. I was coming to the conclusion that I should just give it back — I was not sure I could manage to pay the interest for more than a couple of months.

I heard the doorbell. Jean, my father’s housekeeper, answered it. Some conversation ensued, then I heard my father emerge from his study. More chat. I paid it no further attention until my father came into the room.

“John, there’s a gentleman here to see you.”

Ian Orr entered. He wore his old shiny suit and carried his hat in his hand, hollow crown facing me so I could see clearly the effect of years of Orr sweat and brilliantine on the lining. I stood up. What could the man want?

“Hello, Orr. What can I do for you?”

“Are you John James Todd?”

I looked closely at him. Was he mad? He seemed slightly embarrassed. His face was as badly shaved as ever, red and sore looking. He had sticking plaster on an earlobe.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Yes, of course he is,” my father said eagerly.

Orr gave me a buff envelope. I opened it. “Dreadful sorry about this, Mr. Todd. I wish I could have said no. But there you are.”

It was a writ. Leo Druce was suing me for defamation of character.

My father took it from my hand.

“Could I have a wee look? Thanks, John.”

Three days later in London my solicitor explained the problem to me. He was a pale young man with long wrists, or at least that was the curious effect his hands gave as they extended from his starched cuffs. He was called Cordwainer and was a partner in the firm of Devize, Broome and Cordwainer. I had phoned Sonia to see if Devize would represent me. He declined but passed me on to Cordwainer.

Cordwainer’s white clean hands needlessly smoothed the blotless blotting paper in the pad on his desk as I considered the news he had just given me. My crucial error did not lie in the fact that I had accused Druce of fabricating his role in the attack on Frezenburg Ridge. It was the allegation that he wore medals to which he was not entitled that had provoked litigation. I felt suddenly helpless. My brain emptied. All I was aware of was noises: distant traffic, someone talking down the corridor, the dry susurration of Cordwainer’s white hands on his blotter.

“Can you prove,” he asked softly, “that Druce ever wore medals to which he was not entitled?”

“Well, morally he’s … No,” I said.

“We have no choice then,” he continued. “You must pay for a printed advertisement in the Herald retracting the statements in your letter and apologizing.”

“Jesus Christ.…”

“And Mr. Druce’s lawyer informs me that an out-of-court settlement of two thousand guineas will be acceptable.”

“Two thousand guineas!”

“That’s correct.”

“But, God Almighty, I just don’t have … that … kind … of money.…”

So Thompson’s loan placated Leo Druce. Once I had paid for the advertisement (as loaded with ambiguity as I could make it), my legal fees — Devize charitably arranged a 10 percent discount — I was left with some 325 pounds. I felt with powerful certainty that the only course of action available to me was to flee the country. But where could I go?

VILLA LUXE, June 25, 1972

Something odd is happening to Emilia. Today she came to work wearing a new dress, scarlet with white polka dots, and strappy shoes with wedge-shaped cork heels. Her broad horny feet looked most inappropriate in them. She’s being very friendly and solicitous.

I compliment her on her dress. A terrible mistake. She simpers like an ingenue. The horrible suspicion strengthens: she is responding to what she sees as my own carnal interest in her.… But then, I rebuke myself. Her life isn’t circumscribed by her domestic duties at the Villa Luxe. God alone knows what she gets up to when she’s left this place.

As she serves lunch she says, “Oh, yes. My friend told me a man was looking for you in town.”

“In town? Not the village?”

“No, in town. You know my friend who works at the post office. This man was asking there.”

I drank some water. My throat was suddenly parched.

“What was he like?”

“She didn’t say. She just said a man. An American.”

“Did she tell him anything?”

“Of course not. This information is confidential. You want some more melon?”

“No thanks.”

“I brought it specially for you.”

“No, no. I’m not hungry, thank you,”

I felt the Past again, like a fog creeping in from the sea, curling round the house, seeping through its rooms. A damp, old, saline smell.

* I discovered in 1955, on the publication of Boswell’s diaries, that Boswell and Thérèse had taken this opportunity to have a brief affair. According to Boswell’s log in his journal, they fucked fourteen times in three days. Thérèse was insatiable and the young Scot utterly exhausted. The revelation came as a genuine shock to me. To this day I cannot forgive Boswell his vile betrayal of Jean Jacques.