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?
VILLA LUXE, June 25, 1972
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.
* I discovered in 1955, on the publication of Boswell’s diaries, that Boswell and Thérèse had taken this opportunity to have a brief affair. According to Boswell’s log in his journal, they fucked fourteen times in three days. Thérèse was insatiable and the young Scot utterly exhausted. The revelation came as a genuine shock to me. To this day I cannot forgive Boswell his vile betrayal of Jean Jacques.
15 Pacific Palisades
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.
When I arrived in Los Angeles in 1937—I flew from New York, fifteen hours, a UAL Sky Lounge Mainliner via Chicago — it had almost been like returning home. Half of Berlin seemed to be there — Wilder, Reitlinger, Thomas Mann, Lang, many others. I stayed with Werner and Hanni Hitzig for the first month. Egon Gast lived three houses away. Most of the German émigrés had settled in the cheaper districts around the Santa Monica Canyon, mainly in Brentwood and Pacific Palisades. On our reduced budgets we socialized as energetically as we could in each other’s small houses. I joined the Hollywood Ant-Nazi League and some days spoke more German than English. Most of my fellow émigrés were dejected and cast down — with good reason. Their country had rejected them, or vice versa, and all the fame and renown they had known there counted for little in their new home. They were employed — apart from a few — in dead-end charity jobs in various studios. Most spoke the language badly or not at all. The future was dark, with dwindling prospects. But I, on the contrary, was excited. For a start I liked the sunshine and the proximity of the huge ocean. And I was relieved to be out of Britain. Remember, unlike the others, I was coming to Los Angeles from a position of no great advantage. And I had no language problems. I was not leaving some sumptuous villa in the Grunewald to live in a small frame house tucked up in a steep road in a canyon suburb. To me Pacific Palisades was a more than fair exchange for the Scotia Private Hotel, my father’s house and my flat in Islington. To me at that time Britain represented bad faith, broken promises, my ruined marriage, thwarted ambition and unjust legal persecution. I was perfectly happy to convalesce in California.