Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd Read Free Book Online

a certain mild despondency. Win or lose, Wolfram’s stay at the pension must be nearly over – he would either be returning to barracks, vindicated, or, disgraced, be cast adrift on to the sea of civilian life. Back to Slovenia, probably . . . He would miss him. He began to jot down some of the facts in the case of Lt. Wolfram Rozman. ‘No human being is entirely innocent,’ he wrote, and the thought came to him that, if one were planning to steal something, it would indeed be a clever ploy to make sure that there were a dozen other potential suspects. A cluster of suspects obscuring the guilty one. He underlined the sentence: ‘ No human being is entirely innocent. ’ Perhaps it was time to tell Bensimon his darkest, most shameful secret . . .
    There was another knock on his door. He looked at his wristwatch – Herr Barth wasn’t due for an hour. He said, ‘Come in,’ and Traudl appeared again and shut the door behind her.
    ‘Hello, Traudl. What can I do for you?’
    ‘Frau Kriwanek is visiting her sister and Herr Barth is sleeping in his room.’
    ‘Well, thank you for the information.’
    ‘As he was leaving Lieutenant Rozman gave me twenty crowns and told me to come and see you.’
    ‘What for?’
    ‘To give you some pleasure.’
    At this she stooped and lifted her thick skirt and apron to her waist and in the penumbra they cast Lysander saw the pale columns of her thighs and the dark triangle of her pubic hair.
    ‘It won’t be necessary, Traudl.’
    ‘What about the twenty crowns?’
    ‘You keep them. I’ll tell Lieutenant Rozman we had a very nice time.’
    ‘You’re a kind, good man, Herr Rief.’ Traudl curtsied.
    No human being is entirely innocent, Lysander thought, going to the door and opening it for her. He searched his trouser pockets for change, thinking to tip her, but all he found was a visiting card. She didn’t need tipping anyway – she’d just earned twenty crowns.
    ‘I can come another time,’ Traudl said.
    ‘No, no. All’s well.’
    He shut the door behind her. River of sex, indeed. He glanced at the card in his hand – whose was this?
    ‘Captain Alwyn Munro DSO,’ he read. ‘Military Attaché, British Embassy, Metternichgasse 6, Vienna III.’
    Another bloody soldier. He put it on his desk.
     
     
    9. Autobiographical Investigations
     
    It is the summer of 1900. I am fourteen years old and am living at Claverleigh Hall in East Sussex, the country seat of my stepfather, Lord Faulkner. My father has been dead for a year. My mother married Lord Faulkner nine months after my father’s funeral. She’s his second wife, the new Lady Faulkner. Everybody in the neighbourhood is pleased for old Lord Crickmay, a bluff, kindly man in his late fifties, a widower with one grown-up son.
    I still don’t really know what I feel about this new arrangement, this new family, this new home. Claverleigh and its estate remain largely terra incognita to me. Beyond the two walled gardens there are woods and fields, copses and meadows, paddocks and two farms spread out across the downs of East Sussex. It’s a large well-run estate and I feel a permanent alien in it even though the servants in the house, the footmen, the housemaids, the coachmen and the gardeners, are all very friendly. They smile when they see me and call me ‘Master Lysander’.
    I have been removed from my school in London – ‘Mrs Chalmers’ Demonstration School for Boys’ – and am being tutored by the local curate, the Reverend Farmiloe, an old and learned bachelor. My mother tells me that, most likely, I shall be sent to a boarding school in the autumn.
    It is a Saturday so I have no lessons but the Reverend Farmiloe has asked me to read a poem by Alexander Pope called ‘The Rape of the Lock’. I am finding it very hard-going. After lunch I take my book and wander out into the big walled garden, looking for a secluded bench where I can continue my laborious reading. I like poetry, I learn it easily by heart,