The New Confessions by William Boyd Read Free Book Online Page B

element of Oonagh they seemed to echo and evoke.
    We ran up the beach from the water, gasping Gregor between us. Oonagh wrapped him in a towel and started to dry him, but he shook her off and went in search of other seaside diversions. Oonagh turned with the towel to me as I stood there, fists clenched, arms held out frommy body, allowing my teeth to chatter, an idiot grin on my face. She hung the towel around me and began to rub my back and shoulders vigorously, warming herself through the effort. I looked at her wide face, her jaw undershot, her nostrils red-rimmed from the cold, the absurd cerise frills on her bathing cap.
    “There you go, Johnny,” she said. “There you go.”
    Was it the word “go”? Or the way she said my name? I wept. She held me to her, kissed my forehead, pounded my back, found me a handkerchief, fed me a stream of impossible reassurances. But I saw the swift knuckle at the corner of your eye, Oonagh, my darling, my downfall. You knew I was going away and nothing would ever be the same again.
VILLA LUXE,
May 12, 1972
    On this island where I have made my home for the last nine years we are in the grip of an unusual unseasonal drought. The April rains just simply did not happen this year and the brute sun has been blazing at August temperatures.
    I rent this old villa from Eddie Simmonette. It’s comfortable, if somewhat dilapidated, but it has the advantage of a swimming pool. It sits there before me: blue, enticing, empty. In March a crack developed in one of the sides and it had to be drained for repairs. Believe it or not, the roots of a fig tree, some thirty yards distant, had somehow managed to fracture the foot-thick concrete casing. And now, thanks to the drought, there isn’t enough water to fill it again, without a special dispensation from the mayor. I’ve applied and still wait for a decision. I stand on my pool terrace and look into that perfect dry rectangle of nicely variegated blue tiles and the heat seems to roar up palpably out of it. At my age the only exercise I take is a gentle swim at midday before I mix my first dry martini. There is a beach that belongs to the villa but it’s a good twenty-minute walk away, down a winding path through the pinewoods, then zigzagging down to the sea where the cliff face allows it. The Villa Luxe is set high on the edge of the cliff looking out over the Mediterranean towards Africa. It has a large garden with mature trees—mainly pine and carob—and rather too many cacti for my taste. The villa is quite remote, a half-mile walk from the village, down an unpaved track, which is why I like it and why I stay here.
    I wake early, breakfast, then I write letters and devote the rest of the morning to the organization of my papers. I work steadily through myarchive each day—my many diaries, multitude of notebooks and memoranda, box upon box of correspondence and some fragments of memoir. I sift, I file, I collate. I’m trying to set them in some form of order, trying to discern some underlying pattern or theme amidst all that insignificance and muddle. It’s a good job for an old man with time on his hands. (Whatever wretched biblical sage decided to plump for threescore years and ten did none of us a favor. It is the most arbitrary watershed—why not fourscore years?—but once you pass it a fear is unleashed into your life like a ferret in a rabbit warren. It’s like being out in a war-torn city after curfew. You are out of bounds and it’s a good time to set your house in order, to pick through the fragments.)
    Around noon I break for my swim, then have a drink. Emilia arrives shortly after to prepare a simple lunch and clean the house. On her day off I wander up to the small café-bar in the village. On that day I usually take the local bus to a larger village some miles away where there is a bank and a post office. I post and collect the week’s mail. I try to deal with my dwindling resources and the increasing complications of my