The New Confessions (49 page)

My one vague worry was the long silence from Doon. We had spent a rather awkward Christmas in Paris, neither of us accustomed to reunions. We were not at our best. Neither of us was a good letter writer, either, and a month elapsed before I sent a cable to her Paris address, but there was no reply. I was surprised, but assumed she had gone off somewhere to make a film.

The day after I wrote that diary entry, Eddie Simmonette turned up. It was in the evening and we had just finished dinner when he arrived. I knew there was something wrong because his clothes were dirty. He was unshaven and the cleft in his chin was dense with bristles. He had driven all the way from Berlin, via Austria, an arduous journey that had taken him five days. He brought the worst news. First, the luckless Georg Pfau had been arrested and incarcerated for some reason. His connection with Realismus Films had led to the studio’s being investigated. Shortly after that, Eddie had apparently been declared a “non-Aryan.” The scandal attaching to this had prompted the banks to foreclose on him and the creditors to rush in. The studios were shut down, the staff paid off, all Eddie’s property impounded.

“Everything?” I asked. I felt a horrible cold nausea squirming in my body, like something trapped in a burrow.

“The lot.”

“What about
The Confessions?
” I could hardly get the words out. “The negative?”

“Oh, I’ve got that in the back of my car. And that old trunk you kept there. No, I’m talking about my house, the studios—”

There and then I made him take me out to his car—a big Audi—and open it. I saw the flat gleaming aluminum boxes. I counted them—fourteen. I let my forehead touch the car’s cold roof for a few seconds.

“Have you heard from Doon?” he asked.

“No.”

“She made a long-distance call, looking for you. I couldn’t speak to her—the police were there.”

“When was that?”

“Ten days ago.”

It made no sense—I thought she knew where I was—but I had no time to ponder on it. We summoned the crew to a meeting in the hotel dining room and told them what had happened. Eddie said he would pay them off the next day. He speculated vaguely about setting himself up in Paris and reassembling everything at the end of that year once he had a secure base.

Later that evening Eddie and I talked alone. He told me that after paying off the crew and settling the film’s debts he would have approximately two thousand dollars left in the world.

“It’s over,” he said. “I’m sorry, John.”

“For the time being,” I said bravely. “It survived talkies and the Wall Street crash. We’ll just have to postpone it.” Half of me actually believed this, I suppose; the other half wanted to lie down and die.

“You have some money here, don’t you?” he asked.

I had, in Geneva. My profits from
Julie
, which Thompson had told me to transfer from Germany, minus certain payments to Sonia.

“Yes. Why?”

“I want to sell you the negative to
The Confessions,
” he said, “for fifty thousand dollars.”

To this day I sometimes wonder if Eddie fooled me. Sometimes I am convinced he did; at others, absolutely not. He knew I had money in Switzerland because I had passed on to him Thompson’s advice to me—which he had chosen to ignore.

At one dark stage in my life I was convinced he had set up
The Confessions: Part II
only to get me to Switzerland for the express purpose of selling me
Part I
. He must have known I would buy it. In the end, though, I have to absolve him; the plot was far too complicated
even for Eddie’s Byzantine mind. For example, he could not have known he would be investigated and declared a non-Aryan by the Nazis. But out of disaster the cards fell conveniently for him. I had something over seventy thousand dollars in a bank in Geneva. Eddie had pitched his price just right.

It took a couple of days to sort out our affairs in Neuchâtel. We bade each other morose farewells. Karl-Heinz said he would go back to Berlin to see what he could do for Georg. I told him I would go straight to Paris and urged him to join Doon and me there. He said he would wait and see.

Anny La Lance contemplated the sudden demise of her short-lived film career and the resumption of her old identity with surprising calm. She said it had always seemed too good to be true and asked only for a lift back to Geneva, where both Eddie and I were going.

We spent a day with a lawyer. Fortuitously, Eddie had brought all the necessary documents with him. Now we had cause to bless the existence of
Jean Jacques! The Confessions: Part I
belonged entirely to Realismus Films Verlag A. G. The film negative and everything that had been shot of
Part II
were now purchased by John James Todd, Esq., for fifty thousand dollars less the legal fees the advocate demanded. I went to my bank and withdrew the money, in cash—all of which, to my surprise, Eddie managed to fit into his briefcase.

It was a mild wintry day, the sun shone on the lake, as we sat in a café enjoying a farewell drink. Anny was still with us, holding on to her lost future until the final minute. Parked nearby on the curb was Eddie’s big Audi, which was now mine—he had generously included it in the deal.

“So,” I said, “that’s it. When are you off to Paris?”

“I’m not going,” he said. “I’m going to America.” He patted his briefcase. “See what I can do there.” He smiled. “Why don’t you join me? Eh, Johnny? That’s where the future lies.”

“My future’s sitting in that car,” I said. “No, I’m going to Paris. Find Doon.”

I rang the doorbell on Doon’s apartment door. She lived in a rather shabby building on the Rue de Grenelle. There was no answer. I went to look for the concierge. This turned out to be a beefy man in vest and braces who was watering the weeds in the damp courtyard with weedkiller. He told me Mlle. Bogan had gone.

“When will she be back?” I asked.

No. I had not understood. She had gone away. She was not returning.

I felt sadness infect me like a germ.

“Where has she gone? Did she say?”

“No,” he said. “She just left. Monsieur Mavrocordato came and they went away together.”

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.”