Read Online Any Human Heart by William Boyd - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Boyd
Tags: Biographical, Fiction
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rather beautiful lines but the rest was incomprehensible. If I want music in verse I’ll stick to Verlaine, thank you very much.
Saturday, 17 May
At corps Sergeant Tozer was in a fearful bate. He looked like he was about to explode as he shouted and screamed at us on the parade ground. We are intrigued by Tozer — we find him droll — so we take every opportunity to ask him about the war and how many Germans he had killed. He’s always very vague about the exact figure but gives the impression it was many dozen. Obviously he was nowhere near the front line. Today I told him I’d been in Austria for the vac and that Karl, the major-domo at the pension, had been in the war too — ‘Opposite British troops’.
‘What’s that got to do with the price of beer, Mountstuart?’
‘I mean it’s funny to think you might have faced each other, sir, across no man’s land.’
‘Funny?’
‘You could have been shooting at him and he at you.’
‘Or,’ Ben chipped in, ‘when you attacked the German lines you might have come face to face.’
‘I’d have given him short shrift, I tell you. Bloody Huns.’
‘You’d have had his guts for garters, wouldn’t you, sir?’
‘Damn right.’
‘You’d have had your bayonet in his tripes soon as look at him, eh, sir?’
‘I’d do whatever I had to do, Leeping.’
‘Kill or be killed, sir.’
We can and do keep this sort of banter going for ages and as a result Tozer likes us and gives us soft jobs. But he was in a state today because the night exercise was looming and he saw what a feckless bunch we were (Abbey is taking on St Edmunds). Ben says ragging is not enough: we have to come up with a memorable act of sabotage.
Monday, 19 May
I cycled out to Glympton. Still hot — a summery heat but with, somewhere, a layer of spring freshness lingering. We sat in deck-chairs in the sun in Holden-Dawes’s back garden and ate sponge cake and drank tea. I complimented H-D on the cake and asked him where he’d bought it. He said he’d baked it himself and somehow I don’t think he was lying. He asked me what I thought of
The Waste Land
poem and I said I thought it was somewhat pretentious. He found that very amusing. When he asked me what poetry I preferred I told him I’d been reading Rilke — in German. ‘And you think that’s not pretentious?’ he said — then he apologized. ‘I look forward to reading your own work,’ he said. I asked him how he knew I wanted to write and he said that it was just a wise guess — and then admitted that Le Mayne had told him what I’d said at my interview.
‘Show anything you do to Le Mayne,’ he said. ‘He’ll be honest with you. And that’s what you need when you’re beginning more than anything — honesty.’
‘What about you, sir?’ I said suddenly, spontaneously. ‘Could I show you something?’
‘Oh, I’m just a humble schoolmaster,’ he said. ‘Once you go up to Oxford you’ll forget all about us.’
‘You’re probably right,’ I said. I didn’t mean this but H-D brings this sort of thing out in me. He leads you on and then abruptly rebuffs you; seems to admit you into the circle of his affections and then slams the door in your face. It’s happened too many times to me now and I see it coming — so I say something hard and callous just to let him know. All it did was make him laugh again.
Then the doorbell rang and he came back out into the garden with the woman I’d seen him with before, last term, at the bus stop. She was pretty and dark with very arched, pronounced eyebrows. He introduced her as Cynthia Goldberg.
‘And this is Logan Mountstuart,’ he said. ‘We expect great things of him.’
She looked at me keenly and then turned to H-D.
‘James! What a terrible burden to place on anyone,’ she said. I shall be scanning the newspapers for the rest of my life.’
‘Mountstuart needs burdens,’ H-D said.
‘He said, as the camel’s back snapped,’ I
Saturday, 17 May
At corps Sergeant Tozer was in a fearful bate. He looked like he was about to explode as he shouted and screamed at us on the parade ground. We are intrigued by Tozer — we find him droll — so we take every opportunity to ask him about the war and how many Germans he had killed. He’s always very vague about the exact figure but gives the impression it was many dozen. Obviously he was nowhere near the front line. Today I told him I’d been in Austria for the vac and that Karl, the major-domo at the pension, had been in the war too — ‘Opposite British troops’.
‘What’s that got to do with the price of beer, Mountstuart?’
‘I mean it’s funny to think you might have faced each other, sir, across no man’s land.’
‘Funny?’
‘You could have been shooting at him and he at you.’
‘Or,’ Ben chipped in, ‘when you attacked the German lines you might have come face to face.’
‘I’d have given him short shrift, I tell you. Bloody Huns.’
‘You’d have had his guts for garters, wouldn’t you, sir?’
‘Damn right.’
‘You’d have had your bayonet in his tripes soon as look at him, eh, sir?’
‘I’d do whatever I had to do, Leeping.’
‘Kill or be killed, sir.’
We can and do keep this sort of banter going for ages and as a result Tozer likes us and gives us soft jobs. But he was in a state today because the night exercise was looming and he saw what a feckless bunch we were (Abbey is taking on St Edmunds). Ben says ragging is not enough: we have to come up with a memorable act of sabotage.
Monday, 19 May
I cycled out to Glympton. Still hot — a summery heat but with, somewhere, a layer of spring freshness lingering. We sat in deck-chairs in the sun in Holden-Dawes’s back garden and ate sponge cake and drank tea. I complimented H-D on the cake and asked him where he’d bought it. He said he’d baked it himself and somehow I don’t think he was lying. He asked me what I thought of
The Waste Land
poem and I said I thought it was somewhat pretentious. He found that very amusing. When he asked me what poetry I preferred I told him I’d been reading Rilke — in German. ‘And you think that’s not pretentious?’ he said — then he apologized. ‘I look forward to reading your own work,’ he said. I asked him how he knew I wanted to write and he said that it was just a wise guess — and then admitted that Le Mayne had told him what I’d said at my interview.
‘Show anything you do to Le Mayne,’ he said. ‘He’ll be honest with you. And that’s what you need when you’re beginning more than anything — honesty.’
‘What about you, sir?’ I said suddenly, spontaneously. ‘Could I show you something?’
‘Oh, I’m just a humble schoolmaster,’ he said. ‘Once you go up to Oxford you’ll forget all about us.’
‘You’re probably right,’ I said. I didn’t mean this but H-D brings this sort of thing out in me. He leads you on and then abruptly rebuffs you; seems to admit you into the circle of his affections and then slams the door in your face. It’s happened too many times to me now and I see it coming — so I say something hard and callous just to let him know. All it did was make him laugh again.
Then the doorbell rang and he came back out into the garden with the woman I’d seen him with before, last term, at the bus stop. She was pretty and dark with very arched, pronounced eyebrows. He introduced her as Cynthia Goldberg.
‘And this is Logan Mountstuart,’ he said. ‘We expect great things of him.’
She looked at me keenly and then turned to H-D.
‘James! What a terrible burden to place on anyone,’ she said. I shall be scanning the newspapers for the rest of my life.’
‘Mountstuart needs burdens,’ H-D said.
‘He said, as the camel’s back snapped,’ I
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