MR BROWN: Excellent.
And then they both gave tight little smiles and we stood up. Brown asked if I had any money and I said only American dollars. He gave me a £10 note that I had to sign a chit for and I was then shown back to the front door by puce-suit where my suitcase was waiting for me.
I travelled down in the lift alone and stepped out into the first glimmerings of dawn in St John’s Wood. I hailed a passing taxi and asked to be taken to an all-night café. This proved to be in Victoria bus station where — beneath blazing fluorescent light — I ate, and hugely relished, a greasy breakfast and drank many cups of strong tea.
But I was feeling increasingly strange as I sat there in the refulgent cafeteria considering what had just happened to me in the last forty-eight hours or so and I realised I had experienced this sensation before but I couldn’t remember when. That sense of fearful powerlessness; of other forces suddenly taking over the direction of your life that you had chosen; of being completely out of your depth in what you thought was familiar society. And then I remembered. My ‘obscenity’ trial over my Berlin photographs, all those decades ago — sitting in the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court pleading guilty when I knew I was innocent; learning that my photographs were to be destroyed; being admonished and humiliated by the judge.
When you encounter the implacable power of the state it’s a deeply destabilising moment. In an ordinary life it happens very rarely — maybe never, maybe once or twice. But your individual being, your individual nature, seems suddenly worth nothing — you feel expendable — and that’s what frightens you, fundamentally, that’s what makes your bowels loosen.
When the world was stirring I telephoned Blythe at her flat in Notting Hill but there was no reply. So I tried Annie at her student hall of residence at Sussex University.
‘Ma! I don’t believe it! You’re back! How wonderful, why didn’t you tell us?’
‘Yes, it is wonderful and all very sudden, but I’m here to stay, my darling. No more travelling.’
We spoke some more and I told her I’d tried Blythe with no success. Annie said to keep trying — she hadn’t moved. I had a powerful need to be hugged, close and hard, by someone I loved. I telephoned again, but there was still no reply so I hailed another taxi and was taken to Ladbroke Grove, to a peeling stucco four-storey house with twelve brimming dustbins outside it. I rang the bell for Blythe’s flat and eventually a bleary, long-haired American came to the door. Was Blythe in? I’m her mother. Sorry. Blythe’s been away for weeks. Gone on a long holiday. I couldn’t take any more and began to cry.
BOOK EIGHT: 1968–1977
1. ROOM 42, SAN CARLOS MOTEL
I checked in at reception to a bored gum-chewing young man with a middle parting and an acne problem and was assigned a cabin, room 42, out on the parking lot at the rear of the motel complex. I didn’t care. The Californian desert sun was hammering down as I parked my teal-blue 1965 Dodge Coronet as close to my door as I could. I lugged my suitcase in, switched on the air conditioning and unpacked. I had a huge bed, an ice-making machine, and a clean white-tiled bathroom with a prophylactic polythene shield on the lavatory. I hoped I didn’t have to stay here long.
*
THE BARRANDALE JOURNAL 1977
One of the most inexpensive joys available to almost everyone — if you’re lucky enough — is to wake up in your warm bed and to realise that you don’t have to leave it and that you can turn over and go back to sleep again. The first three mornings I spent in the cottage when I returned to Barrandale I didn’t quit my bed until well after eleven o’clock. I needed that calm, that banal quotidian luxury of sleep.
I opened up the house, aired it, stocked up on food and drink, reclaimed the dog, Flam, from the farmer who had been looking after him. Flam’s evident delight at seeing me again was another emotional high point — staccato barking, leaping up, face licking. It took him hours to calm down.
Very swiftly I put the pieces of my old life on Barrandale back together. I took long walks around the island; I visited my friends to let them know I was home again and all the while I was re-familiarising myself with this existence that I’d put on hold while I was in Vietnam — but of course what had happened in Vietnam and my precipitate return kept thrusting itself into my mind.
Even now, after so much time has gone by, I still wonder if I was only allowed to leave Vietnam because of my title, because I was the widow of Sholto, Lord Farr. God bless the British class system. What would have happened if I’d been plain Amory Clay? Without ‘Lady Farr’ I’m more and more convinced that on one of my trips I’d have gone mysteriously MIA and been found dead amidst the detritus of some firefight with the Viet Cong. Another foolhardy photographer caught out looking for a scoop. It would have been very easy to arrange. My title and the fact that Frank Dunn knew me and had served with Sholto in the war made the difference. My long wait in the St John’s Wood mansion flat represented the time taken to evaluate the risk I posed, now I knew the secret. A meeting would have been convened. Lady Farr? Widow of Lord Farr MC, DSO? We can’t really do anything to her, can we? Soldier’s widow. Make her promise to keep quiet, see if we can trust her to keep her mouth shut. Mr Green and Mr Brown would have reported back: she’s no fool, she knows what’s at stake. We can let her go.
*
In that first week back Joe Dunraven’s office sent me on a package of my mail — I’d had everything diverted to them so that bills could be paid, the house maintained, and so on. Once a month they had forwarded personal letters to the Sentinel bureau in Saigon. The package that arrived only contained the post of the last few weeks and was insignificant, except for one letter, postmarked in Los Angeles. Inside was a piece of card.
Darling Ma,
I just wanted you to know that I am well and happy and am living in America, now. I won’t be coming home. I’m very happy and very well so please don’t worry about me.
All my love,
Blythe
Under her signature was a small symboclass="underline" a Christian cross, with a stylised eye drawn above the upright.
I called Annie.
‘I’m not sure if this is some kind of a joke but I’ve had a very strange card from Blythe.’
‘So have I,’ Annie sounded upset. ‘I had a letter.’
‘Posted in America?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know she’d gone there.’
‘Neither did I.’ She paused. ‘It’s all very sweet and lovely and she keeps going on about how happy and well she is. But she says she’s never coming back. Ever.’ Now there was a catch in her voice. ‘But it doesn’t sound like Blythe. It sounds like she’s taking dictation.’
‘Is there a funny kind of symbol on it?’
‘A kind of cross with an eye on top. I think.’
‘It is her handwriting though.’
‘Oh yes. But the tone seems wrong.’
Now I felt disturbed, a small shiver of alarm and worry. I told Annie I’d been to the Notting Hill flat and had been told she was on ‘holiday’. Maybe somebody there would know something. I’d spoken to an American guy who was living there, I told her.
‘I’ll go this weekend,’ she said.
‘No, don’t worry. I’ll go myself.’
The journey to room 42 in the San Carlos Motel had not been straightforward, I reflected, as I unpacked my clothes. I’d already been two weeks in California and at times had despaired — but now, in theory, I was only a few miles away from Blythe herself; it couldn’t be very long before we were face to face.