Read Online Any Human Heart by William Boyd - Free Book Online
Authors: William Boyd
Tags: Biographical, Fiction
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obviously very surprised to see us back so early from Innsbruck. She cannot feign unconcern, Mother — anger, yes, indifference, no.
‘What’re you doing here?’ she said, cross, despite her best efforts. ‘You go to Innsbruck for two hours? What a wasting.’
‘Who was that man?’ I asked, somewhat audaciously, I admit. ‘A doctor?’
‘No. Yes. Of a sort, yes. A, ah, physician. Yes. I was asking him some advice. Very helpful.’
Her lying was so inept it was all we could do not to laugh. Later, comparing suspicions and intuitions, Lucy and I both agreed he was an admirer. Lucy’s mood, I’m glad to report, improved at the discovery of this subterfuge. We played dominoes in the lounge and she let me kiss her (cheek only) when she said goodnight.
Friday, 25 April
Spent the morning effortfully pushing father in his bath chair through the streets of Bad Riegerbach. A bath chair can be an unconscionably difficult thing to steer if you only have one hand to provide the power. Father worked the wheels as best he could but I asked him to stop, as all his energies being expended in this way rather defeated the purpose of having him in the chair in the first place. So I parked him in the small square by the post office and I read him articles out of last Wednesday’s
Times.
He was well wrapped up and the day was not cold, but every time I glanced up at him he looked pinched and uncomfortable.
I asked him from time to time how he was feeling and his replies never varied: ‘Absolutely tip-top’, ‘Right as rain’. My mood kept surging from ineffable sadness to huge irritation. Sad that his son was obliged to push him about in
a fauteuil roulant,
irritated that I should be spending my precious time thus engaged. And yet I can’t remain angry with him for long. I was furious with him when we arrived for presenting Frau Dielendorfer with a gift package of Foley’s potted meats, corned beef, hams in aspic and such like. I said to him, Father, we are not travelling salesmen, there is no need to disperse Foley’s products around Europe. Don’t be so pretentious, Logan, was all he replied and I felt very ashamed. I apologized to him later — he has this effect on me.
Mother had told me to take Father out for a ‘good three hours’, but when we returned to the pension, Mother was away. ‘She’s been out all morning,’ Lucy said, ‘left immediately after you did.’ Father was served some soup and then hauled himself up the stairs for a nap. For the first time an awful foreboding strikes me that he may never be fully well again and I feel angry at myself for my chronic inability to think more often of others and how they may be feeling.
I am writing this in the pension’s drawing room, alone, listening to Brahms’s first piano concerto on the gramophone. The adagio is reliably calming and contemplating its serene beauty I find myself wondering why Lucy has turned not cold, exactly but lukewarm towards me. I tried to take her hand in the train back from Innsbruck but she snatched it away. And yet five minutes later she was chatting away (about her father’s new hobby: lepidoptery) as if we were the best and oldest of friends. But I don’t want to be her ‘friend’: I want to be her lover.
Saturday, 26 April
Father back to the sanatorium routine for baths of boiling mud and gallons of sulphurous water and God knows what else. Lucy came to my room after breakfast and said to my surprise that she had formulated a plan — which we duly carried out. We told Mother we were going to take the train to Lans, where there was a local festival (a festival of what, we did not specify: it could have been a festival of lederhosen for all Mother cared) — Mother thought it an excellent idea. So we had Franz, the head waiter and general factotum, drive us down to the station in the pony and trap, whereupon, as soon as he had left us, we took the funicular back up to the old town.
We waited in a
‘What’re you doing here?’ she said, cross, despite her best efforts. ‘You go to Innsbruck for two hours? What a wasting.’
‘Who was that man?’ I asked, somewhat audaciously, I admit. ‘A doctor?’
‘No. Yes. Of a sort, yes. A, ah, physician. Yes. I was asking him some advice. Very helpful.’
Her lying was so inept it was all we could do not to laugh. Later, comparing suspicions and intuitions, Lucy and I both agreed he was an admirer. Lucy’s mood, I’m glad to report, improved at the discovery of this subterfuge. We played dominoes in the lounge and she let me kiss her (cheek only) when she said goodnight.
Friday, 25 April
Spent the morning effortfully pushing father in his bath chair through the streets of Bad Riegerbach. A bath chair can be an unconscionably difficult thing to steer if you only have one hand to provide the power. Father worked the wheels as best he could but I asked him to stop, as all his energies being expended in this way rather defeated the purpose of having him in the chair in the first place. So I parked him in the small square by the post office and I read him articles out of last Wednesday’s
Times.
He was well wrapped up and the day was not cold, but every time I glanced up at him he looked pinched and uncomfortable.
I asked him from time to time how he was feeling and his replies never varied: ‘Absolutely tip-top’, ‘Right as rain’. My mood kept surging from ineffable sadness to huge irritation. Sad that his son was obliged to push him about in
a fauteuil roulant,
irritated that I should be spending my precious time thus engaged. And yet I can’t remain angry with him for long. I was furious with him when we arrived for presenting Frau Dielendorfer with a gift package of Foley’s potted meats, corned beef, hams in aspic and such like. I said to him, Father, we are not travelling salesmen, there is no need to disperse Foley’s products around Europe. Don’t be so pretentious, Logan, was all he replied and I felt very ashamed. I apologized to him later — he has this effect on me.
Mother had told me to take Father out for a ‘good three hours’, but when we returned to the pension, Mother was away. ‘She’s been out all morning,’ Lucy said, ‘left immediately after you did.’ Father was served some soup and then hauled himself up the stairs for a nap. For the first time an awful foreboding strikes me that he may never be fully well again and I feel angry at myself for my chronic inability to think more often of others and how they may be feeling.
I am writing this in the pension’s drawing room, alone, listening to Brahms’s first piano concerto on the gramophone. The adagio is reliably calming and contemplating its serene beauty I find myself wondering why Lucy has turned not cold, exactly but lukewarm towards me. I tried to take her hand in the train back from Innsbruck but she snatched it away. And yet five minutes later she was chatting away (about her father’s new hobby: lepidoptery) as if we were the best and oldest of friends. But I don’t want to be her ‘friend’: I want to be her lover.
Saturday, 26 April
Father back to the sanatorium routine for baths of boiling mud and gallons of sulphurous water and God knows what else. Lucy came to my room after breakfast and said to my surprise that she had formulated a plan — which we duly carried out. We told Mother we were going to take the train to Lans, where there was a local festival (a festival of what, we did not specify: it could have been a festival of lederhosen for all Mother cared) — Mother thought it an excellent idea. So we had Franz, the head waiter and general factotum, drive us down to the station in the pony and trap, whereupon, as soon as he had left us, we took the funicular back up to the old town.
We waited in a
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