The New Confessions (53 page)

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.

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?

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.

The day war began in Europe was the day my temporary resident’s visa ran out. As Adolf Hitler invaded Poland on September 3, 1939, I left my home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, to drive south across the border to Tijuana, Mexico. I had an old gray Mercury in those days, a 1935 model. It got me down to Tijuana with no problem.

I drove on to Rincón, a small village outside Tijuana on the road to Tecate, on the other side of the mesa where the airport is. In those days it was just about preserving its status as an independent township. There was a main street with a small square at one end, a couple of hotels and a courthouse, nothing too attractive but far more pleasant than Tijuana and much cheaper than the scandalously inflated prices you find there. Saving money was the only reason you stayed in Rincón while you waited for your resident’s visa to be renewed. I say “you” but I mean the Europeans, the exiles. There was a fairly constant shifting population of about two dozen Europeans—Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Poles—
from Los Angeles. The odd composer, artist, musician or novelist, but mainly people from the film world. The two hotels were the Vera Cruz and the Emperador Maximilian. The Max, as it was called, had a very small swimming pool and a restaurant. The Vera Cruz was cheaper. At the back were six clapboard cottages for long-term residents. The last time I had been here was a year previously. It had taken only a week to arrange a new permit. Once we had that document we could drive back to Los Angeles and pick up our lives for another year.

I checked into the Max. It had been a long drive. I had some ground steak, fried potatoes and
fríjoles
with a glass of beer and then went up to my room. I hadn’t recognized any of the other faces in the restaurant. I stood at my hotel window looking down on the main street—the Avenida Emilio Carraza—lined with dusty nutant trees. It was getting dark. The streetlights all worked but they were irregularly spaced. Two together brightly illumined the forecourt of a gas station. A little mall of shops and a doctor’s surgery stood in inconvenient darkness. Overhead a twin-engined airplane came in to land at Tijuana Airport. Further down the street multicolored fairy lights were strung in the two large
fresno
trees that shaded the terrace of the Cervecería Americana. Some Mexican youths lounged outside a cinema that was showing
Los Manos de Orlac
. I saw an elderly German novelist and his wife return from their morose constitutional. A dog urinated against the whitewall tires of an old Ford. It was a warm night.