This was what we talked about as we dined. Under the surface — and I know he felt the same — was a surging boiling current of mutual attraction. Let’s call it lust. But we chatted away and smiled, smoked countless cigarettes and ached for each other.
Sholto had fine hair, almost blue-black, parted at the side, which he tried to hold in place with some potent oil but which, under the lights of the restaurant, lost its grip halfway through the meal, and fell, his forelock hanging over his brow. He would sweep it back — a particular gesture I came to associate with him — and seconds later it would fall again.
Sholto Farr. Alexandria, 1943.
He was something of a dandy, I noticed — like Cleve, unlike Charbonneau. His shirt was tailored — you can always tell by the set of the collar — as bespoke as his suit. His maroon silk tie had a neat hard knot the size of a hazelnut, as if pulled tight by pliers. He had a tiny ruby jewel of a razor nick on his jaw by his left ear. His eyes were a very pale blue-grey (I think I’ve told you that already). For a Scotsman he had no trace of a Scottish accent.
I remember, when he dropped me back at Charbonneau’s, I almost gave in and I nearly said, do you want to come up for a drink? I resisted, somehow. I wanted him but I didn’t want him in Charbonneau’s bed. He said goodnight, kissed my cheek — just a brush of his lips — said how much he’d enjoyed the evening and was I free for lunch tomorrow. I said that, as it happened, my lunch appointment had been cancelled, luckily, and that I was able to meet him, that would be lovely. Weber at one? Perfect.
I remember we ate ice cream at Weber — it was famous for its ice cream. By now we had pretty much run out of conversation and the subtext to our second Parisian encounter was almost grotesquely obvious. We weren’t exactly panting at each other with our tongues hanging out but we might as well have been.
We ordered coffee and brandy. We ordered more coffee and brandy. I couldn’t think of anything to say and, clearly, neither could he. So we sat there, smoking our cigarettes, drinking coffee and brandy, smiling stupidly at each other.
‘What really brought you to Paris?’ I said finally, something I hadn’t in fact asked him. ‘“On business” isn’t working, I’m afraid.’
‘I came to Paris to find you,’ he said simply, as if it was self-evident.
‘Oh. Right. . Was it difficult?’
‘No. Surprisingly easy. I remembered everything you said to me at that station in Holland. Your name, that you were a photographer, that you worked for Global-Photo-Watch, that you had an office in Paris. The receptionist at my hotel looked you up in the phonebook and there you were: Agence GPW, 12 bis rue Monsieur, Septième.’
‘Well. Good thing I told you what my job was.’
‘Very fortunate.’
‘Of course I could have moved. Changed jobs.’
‘I would have found you, one way or another.’
I felt tears in my eyes at this — possibly the most romantic words that had ever been said to me.
‘Good.’
He took my hand and looked at my fingers for a moment. ‘My hotel is very small,’ he said. ‘So, I went to the trouble of booking a room at the Crillon.’ Now he glanced up. ‘I think a big hotel — lots of coming and going — is better. More discreet. Don’t you?’
‘What a good idea,’ I said. ‘Shall we go there now?’
I remember travelling up in the lift to the third floor where our room was. We had no luggage, of course (it was being ‘sent on’ from the airport at Le Bourget, Sholto improvised, when we checked in). The lift operator was a small, thin, frail old man who kept his head down, looking at his shiny shoes. He had no doubt seen many a luggage-less couple to their room in the Crillon of an afternoon.
I whispered in Sholto’s ear. ‘There’s something you should know,’ I said. ‘Before.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t have children.’
‘Lucky you.’
*
THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977
I had a postcard from Greer McLennan this morning, from Paris — a view of the Jardin des Tuileries. ‘I demand to know the full Paris story on return!’ she had written.
*
Sholto and I spent four days together that March in Paris, most of the time in our big room at the Crillon that looked out on to the place de la Concorde, wandering out to eat from time to time, then running back to the hotel, unable to restrain ourselves, sexually. But then Sholto had to return to London and, anyway, Charbonneau was due back from Algiers.
‘What’re we going to do?’ Sholto said. ‘I know it’s more complicated for you.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. It may take a little time but I’ll work something out.’
‘Let me know if you need me and I’ll just come over.’
It’s funny how, sometimes, one can be so convinced, so utterly certain, about something as entirely fickle as strong emotion. There was an instant, unspoken mutual trust between us, as if we’d known each other for forty years, not four days.
I may have been certain about Sholto but I was in a state of nerves, worried about how I’d feel and act once Charbonneau was back. Obligingly, the day after Sholto left, my body gave me a severe cold so that when Charbonneau returned, I was in bed, coughing and sniffling, my bones aching, my nose rubbed raw, red and running — most unsightly.
‘You need a holiday,’ Charbonneau said, with untypical sweetness. ‘You’re working too hard. Leave it to me.’
He took me south, by train to Bordeaux and then on to Biarritz on the Atlantic coast, to the Hotel du Palais, perched on its rocky promontory at the end of the gentle crescent sweep of the grande plage. I was apprehensive — and not just because of my own troubled emotional state — Charbonneau seemed to be acting out of character — caring, selfless. What was he up to? Had he some idea about Sholto and the days we’d spent together?
However, Biarritz worked its charms. Charbonneau had said that we needed surf, real ocean — not lapping Mediterranean wavelets — and early spring on the Atlantic coast provided spectacular foaming breakers in endless succession. And the unique aspect of the Palais, as opposed to other grand hotels on seafronts, is that there is no wide promenade between the hotel and the ocean.
We were shown to our suite on the third floor and, flinging open the windows, received the full panorama of the sea, with no interruption of traffic, there in all its surging glory. The creaming white surf rolled in to break on the rocks directly below us. It was loud — the ocean can be very loud — but invigorating.
We settled in to our room but now I was sensing an edginess in Charbonneau — he wasn’t quite his usual hedonistic, cocksure self and I began to suspect this new solicitous persona as he kept asking me how I was feeling. Did I need a rest, should he order me some coffee? No, no, I said, I was feeling much better now that I was beside the sea.
He suggested that we eat that evening in the town rather than in the Palais’ rather stuffy restaurant and we found a big brasserie on the main square. Biarritz had been bombed in ’44 and the repairs to the damaged buildings were still in evidence, almost two years on, roads patched up, gable ends and shopfronts held in place by heavy timber raking-shores. There were concrete gun emplacements on the cliffs — and one realised this was the southern end of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. The carefree resort town hadn’t fully expunged its wartime persona.