After the bottle of rum had been delivered, I unpacked my few clothes. Senga had a drink, a large rum diluted with water. I had not tasted the stuff since the war and its faint sickly aroma took me back to that day in the Salient when we had gone over the top for the first time. I touched the scar caused by Somerville-Start’s tooth.
“Haven’t you got any things with you?” I asked Senga.
“No.”
“Not even a toothbrush? A nightdress?”
“No.”
We went out to do some shopping. We caught a tram to Portobello and I bought Senga a toothbrush, a tin of toothpowder, a comb, a bar of soap, a flannel and a spongebag. Then we went for a walk on the long beach. Taciturn Senga made an ideal companion. We walked along the beach towards the pier and Restalrig. There was a cold stiff breeze coming off the firth and I had to pull my hat down firmly on my head. My mind was full of thoughts: picnics with Oonagh and Thompson, Donald Verulam taking photographs, Ralph the dog, the drowned men at Nieuport, Dagmar … I fantasized briefly about Dagmar. Perhaps I would go to Norway, seek her out.…
“Hey, mister!”
I looked round. Senga had fallen behind a good way. I retraced my steps.
“I cannae walk inna sond, wi’ these shuze.”
“Take them off, then.”
“Whut? Oh, uh-huh. Silly me.”
She took her shoes off and we set off once more. We must have walked a couple of miles. I think Senga enjoyed herself. As we strolled along, an idea for a film took shape in my head. On the way back to the hotel I bought a notebook to write it down.
Eck Orr had our meal sent up to the room — boiled mackerel and mashed potatoes. Senga sewed up the hem of her coat, which was coming down, and tightened a loose button on my jacket. When I commented how deftly she did this, she explained that she had briefly been a housemaid in one of the earl of Wemyss’s homes. After our meal I wrote out my story idea. It was exactly my own situation: a man obliged to fabricate an adultery to obtain a divorce, the difference being that the man in my story falls passionately in love with the tart he hires, thereby complicating matters disastrously. I thought it might make a nice ironic melodrama. I wrote out a dozen pages while Senga sat silently, drinking rum and water. That evening as we waited to be discovered I felt a strange serenity come over me, and for the first time since my return to Britain sensed a stirring of my old energies. I glanced at Senga. There was in fact something oddly attractive about her astigmatism: it seemed to indicate a latent mischievousness, quite at odds with her true nature.
By eleven o’clock there had been no sign of Ian Orr. We undressed and prepared for bed with decorum. I changed into my pajamas and dressing gown in the WC at the end of the corridor. Then, while I washed my face with the jug and ewer, Senga slipped out of her dress and in between the sheets. I asked her if she wanted to use her toothbrush but she said no.
She fell asleep almost instantly. I lay in the dark listening to her small snores, wondering if Ian Orr would burst in at any moment. I could hear the noise of male conversation from a room below, which I took to be the temperance bar. Outside the summer night faded into darkness; I heard the rickety-tick of a train on the LNER railway line and a few motorcars passing on the coast road to Musselburgh.
The next morning was a Saturday and it was raining. Senga’s bed was empty when I woke, but her dress and coat were still in the wardrobe. I went to the window and looked out at the wet roofs of Joppa. Beyond the coast road the pewtery firth was calm and beyond that lay the rest of Scotland.… Rain seemed to be falling on the entire country from the solid low sky.
Senga came in, from the lavatory I assumed, wearing my dressing gown.
“Oh, yer up. Borrowed yer dressin’ goon.”
She took it off and handed it to me. She had slept in her underwear and cotton slip, which was badly creased. I could see she had small sharp breasts and there was something provocative about the sight of her bare legs and battered high-heeled shoes. I saw a stubble of dark hair on her shins.
“Senga, I—”
The door was flung open and Ian Orr came in.
“Morning, Mr. Todd, morning to youse all.”
I had to pay Eck Orr for the full two nights. I settled all my bills in the hotel’s office, including Senga’s. We drank to the successful conclusion of my divorce. Eck raised his glass.
“Here’s tae us, wha’s like us?”
“Damn few — and they’re a’ deed,” Ian Orr said.
Later, Eck slyly asked Senga to stay on, but I was glad when she refused. We said good-bye to the Orr brothers and walked to the station.
“Where are you going?” I asked as we waited for a train. “Waverley?”
“I’ll get the stopper to Bonnington.”
We sat on the station bench side by side. It was still raining. I felt obscurely cheated of my second night with her.
“Do you go to that pub — the Linlithgow — often?” It was the only reference I had made to her profession.
“Aye, sometimes.”
“Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“Maybe, aye.”
Her train came in five minutes. She got up.
“Thanks for the spongebag, Mr. Todd. Cheerio, now.”
My film The Divorce had its trade show in August 1935. Close-up described it as “a powerful and at times shocking melodrama, very much in the German style.” Bioscope said, “A skillful and impressive film let down by mediocre performances.” In the film the impossible love affair ends with the hero murdering the uncaring prostitute and then killing himself. I shot it full of shadows, unrelievedly murky in every scene. It was a small inexpensive film compared to the scale I had become accustomed to in The Confessions, but I was pleased with it. It was infused with its own strange passion. On the whole The Divorce received a good press, though it did only average business. This was the result of the inept distribution deal negotiated by the film company I made it for — Astra-King. But I was pleased with the movie for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it was a memento of the bizarre twenty-four hours I had spent in Joppa committing adultery with Senga. There were other advantages that accrued. The good notices had attracted interest from Gaumont, J. Arthur Rank and British Lion. The Confessions: Part II was being discussed once more.
My most ardent fan was the celebrated Courtney Young, variously known as Mr. Film, Father of the British Cinema and any number of other flattering epithets. Young was a hugely wealthy man who had made his fortune in the ancillary trades of the film business. He started out hiring equipment — lamps and cameras — then he expanded into the costumier side. He bought a studio during the postwar slump, demolished it and then sold the land to the electricity board. The money he made from this purchased the second-largest cinema chain in the North of England. And so on. He was one of those men who would have done well, and done it in the same way, no matter what industry he went into — he just happened to choose the cinema. Now he was making films. His company, Court Films, had produced two expensive flops: Vanity Fair and Sir Walter Raleigh, but this had not dissuaded him. He was mad for The Confessions.
Young was a huge fleshy man with a handsome face spoiled by heavy bags under his eyes. He had thin ginger-blond hair, which he brushed straight back from a pale freckleless face. He looked as if he should have been dark and saturnine. The fact that he was not was somewhat unsettling. For a while I used to wonder if his hair was dyed, but I saw him naked once (showering in his golf club) and his pubic hair was as pale as old thistledown.