I sat and considered my options. Could I rejoin GPW? No. That road was closed. Was there another way? I couldn’t just buy a plane ticket and fly out to the country like a tourist. Or could I. .? And then the sensible portion of my mind recalled that I had a secure and steady job, albeit moderately paid, and I should just head on up north to Inverness and the bagpipe competitions and forget all this impulsiveness, this foolishness.
Yet the more the realistic, sensible, solutions lined up and presented themselves the more the idea of somehow trying to go to Vietnam began to consume me. I wanted my old job back — I wanted to be a proper photographer again. The thought of Vietnam and its distant war seemed like the perfect antidote to more Scottish weddings and eightsome reels.
I think now — now that time has passed — that what I really wanted, fundamentally, was to confront warfare again. Not so much to test myself — I had been tested — but to see how the ‘me’ that existed then would function in a war zone, would experience war differently. War had shaped, directed and distorted my life in so many ways — through my father, Xan, Sholto — that I think that the zeal I was feeling was an unconscious response to this deeper need. After Sholto and my life with him, I wanted to experience something of what he had gone through but with my new knowledge — about him, about me — informing everything. I couldn’t rewind time and be wise after the event but I could go forward and seek some answers out for myself. The newer, older, wiser Amory Clay could live through what the former, younger, more innocent Amory hadn’t been able to evaluate fully. My education as a person, so I reasoned, would never be complete if I didn’t do this, if I didn’t see for myself — and then see myself, plain. I needed to learn how I would react and respond, what it would tell me about my life and my being.
Or so I internally argued as the evening wore on in the bar of the hotel. But I was a mother, also, I made the point, with two much-loved, precious daughters. Were my arguments specious or genuine? Was I being true to myself or selfish? Well, I would never know until I actually travelled out there and confronted my demons face to face.
It was as I wandered homeward in the dark that the answer came to me: I realised I knew exactly whom I could call — not Cleveland Finzi, but another former lover who might well be in a position to help me out. More to the point, he owed me a big favour, did Lockwood Mower, from way back.
I travelled down to London and arranged to meet Lockwood — much to his delighted surprise — in his offices at the Daily Sketch where he was now the senior picture editor. Lockwood was stouter, greyer and his moustache was wider though startlingly dark, like his eyebrows. The effect was strange, as if he were wearing a rather bad and conspicuous disguise. Once the pleasantries were over, I told him why I needed his help in what I wanted to do. He was aghast.
‘Vietnam? Are you out of your mind? You can’t go out there, Amory, you’re too—’ he didn’t finish as he could see my expression change.
‘You owe me this favour, Lockwood. Look at you — picture editor, big office, national newspaper.’ I leant forward. ‘Just add me quietly to your team.’
‘We don’t have a team. You can’t go out there on our ticket. Mr French would have a fit.’
‘Who’s Mr French?’
‘The editor.’
‘Then where do you get your Vietnam stuff from? You do know there’s a war on out there.’
‘Very funny, Amory. We buy it in from agencies.’
‘What agencies?’
He thought for a second.
‘We get most pictures from the Yanks, of course. A lot from this company, Sentinel Press Services. Very reasonable.’
‘American. Even better. I worked for an American magazine for years. Tell this Sentinel I worked for Global-Photo-Watch, ran their London and Paris offices in the war.’
He rubbed his chin.
‘No harm in trying, I suppose.’
‘I really want this to happen, Lockwood. Think about it — if I’m out there I can make sure you get all the good stuff.’
He agreed, it made sense. I lit a cigarette, sensing him looking at me in his old intense way, almost as if we were working together back in Greville’s studio.
‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you, Amory? It’s not some kind of whim, some mad idea?’
‘Deadly serious.’
‘All right. I’ll put a call in to the Sentinel people. See what I can do.’
I stayed on in London while I waited for news from Lockwood. I took Blythe and Annie out for dinner to a Vietnamese restaurant on the Cromwell Road called the Nam Quoc Palace as a rather too obvious pretext for letting them know my plans. When I told them that I wanted to pick up my old career again and go out to Vietnam to be a photojournalist, Annie appeared as excited by the prospect as I was — but Blythe seemed almost shocked.
‘It’s bloody dangerous, Ma,’ she said, frowning darkly at me. ‘What’re you thinking of?’
‘I’ve done it before,’ I said. ‘It was my job. I know what I’m doing — and I won’t be taking any risks, I can assure you.’
But Blythe kept on at me.
‘If you’ve done it once I don’t see why you need to do it again.’
‘I have to prove something to myself.’
‘What? Prove that you’re stupid?’
I let that go because I didn’t want to sour the mood of the evening any further. When Annie left to catch her train to Brighton Blythe stayed on and we ordered another coffee and some kind of sweet rice dumpling. Her mood seemed to calm and she took my hand and twiddled my wedding ring.
‘It’s because of Papa, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘That’s why you feel you need to go.’
‘Partly, yes,’ I said, trying to hide my surprise at her insight. ‘And it’s partly to do with me. And my life.’
She turned my ring round on my finger, then sighed and let my hand go. She busied herself meticulously rolling a thin cigarette. I lit up to keep her company and the two of us puffed away in silence for a few moments.
‘It’s so far away,’ she said, finally. ‘I think that’s what’s bothering me. You’re going to be on the other side of the world.’
‘I won’t be there forever.’
‘For how long, then?’ she asked, almost aggressively.
‘I’m not sure, yet. I have to get out there first.’
‘I may never see you again,’ she said, her eyes suddenly large with tears.
‘Don’t be so silly, darling,’ I said, perhaps more testily than I meant. ‘You know, I have a life to lead as well as you two. I can’t just sit and rot on Barrandale.’
‘Of course,’ she said, letting her body sag in the chair, closing her eyes and smiling to herself. ‘I just like the idea of you being close at hand.’
We hugged goodbye on the pavement and I promised I would call her as often as possible. She seemed more reconciled to the idea of my going away, now we were outside the restaurant, and I wondered if the pointed Vietnam theme had been a bad idea. Too late, anyway. I watched her saunter away towards her bus stop, a tall, thin and limber young woman in her shaggy coat, her long hair halfway down her back, and felt the old love-pang corkscrew through me. My pretty, stubborn, clever, complicated daughter.
When I returned to the hotel there was a message to call Lockwood at the Sketch.
‘Hello, Lockwood, it’s me.’
‘You’re on. Bon voyage.’
BOOK SEVEN: 1966–1968
1. THE VIETNAM SCRAPBOOK