It troubled me not to be straight about things, to lurk in the shadows so to speak. I wished I could tell Van Vechten what I was after – although such were Muriel’s scruples, I didn’t know exactly what that was – and to put an end as soon as possible to this pantomime, to rid myself of his company, his presence, all of which I already found disagreeable or soon would. It wasn’t that he himself was unpleasant or didn’t try his best to be agreeable, most of my friends liked him despite the great difference in age, and he was far better received than I’d expected. When I first turned up with him in tow, they all stared at him as if he were a Martian, but it didn’t take him long to blend in – insofar as that was possible, of course – and not be seen as an intruder, a nuisance, a spy. He did his bit, he was cheerful and affable, he gave advice when asked, and my friends and acquaintances inevitably saw him as a man with experience of life, they also consulted him about their fears and anxieties – doctors have it easy in that respect, they’re always welcome everywhere. He bought many a round of drinks and that always helps one to be accepted into a group, and at the end of the night – if he lasted that long, some of the older people understandably flagged when we younger folk could still keep going for hours – he would deliver each of us to our door in his flash car, it was as if we’d suddenly acquired a chauffeur, which was very convenient, a blessing really, saving us the expense of getting a taxi or making the long walk home under the influence of whatever excesses we had indulged in during the night. Van Vechten justified taking such pains by saying that he couldn’t allow the girls to go home alone in the early hours, that one must always accompany a lady to her door, that’s how he’d been brought up, and we should take advantage of his old-fashioned ways.
I noticed that he almost never took the most logical route, never dropped us off in the most convenient order, thus avoiding having to take a circuitous route or drive unnecessarily long distances, instead he always arranged things so that the last person to be dropped off would be a girl, thus ensuring that he would be left alone with her in the car once we had all been dispatched. I was on good enough terms with most of the girls to be able to ask in a jokey way: ‘So, how did you get on with the Doctor the other night? He obviously wanted to be alone with you, and you didn’t exactly seem to mind.’ I knew that an older man would, in principle, have difficulties getting anywhere with a young woman, but I also knew that a lot of girls – at least when they’re going through a phase, as so many of them do, of going out every night, night after night – are impressed by wealth or its appearance or its symbols, and by savoir faire too, so that a man of the world often finds them easy to dazzle, especially if he’s good at laying the flattery on thick both before and afterwards. Some young women feel somehow honoured if a much older man shows interest, especially if they discover they can give him exceptional pleasure, or so he tells them: ‘No, really, I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life, and I’ve known a fair few women in my time, you know …’ I soon learned not to discount anything, the most unlikely combinations are possible. When one reaches maturity, it’s almost embarrassing to think how easy it can be to deceive youth.
Whenever I put that or a similar question to a female friend or acquaintance or ex-girlfriend (‘girlfriend’ in its widest sense, including one-night stands), I would be met with an almost serious silence and a rapid change of subject, as if something had happened on the drive home which she preferred either not to talk about or to forget altogether. And so in the end I asked him:
‘So how did it go the other night with Maru? It was pretty obvious that you wanted to be alone with her. You certainly went a hell of a long way round just to drop her off last.’
This was the first time I’d asked him this openly. Van Vechten smiled broadly, like someone amused to be found out or to be complimented on his technique, however banal. Or grateful for an opportunity to show off.
‘Was it that obvious?’
‘Well, I don’t know about the others, because they were all pretty pissed, but I’ve been aware of it for a few nights now. Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you by mentioning it when you’re driving us home. I won’t pull your leg about it. If I did, that would be an end to it. The girls would smell a rat and feel awkward and wouldn’t let themselves be left until last. Anyway, how did it go? And on other nights too. Do you ever get anywhere with them?’
He didn’t make the most of this first interrogation to boast and show off. I had not yet gained his entire confidence, the Doctor (or ‘Jorge’, as he insisted I call him, especially when we were with my friends) still wasn’t sure to what extent I was like him or not, if, that is, he was like that. He was somewhat reluctant to tell me, to respond, and he answered only vaguely.
‘Well, some nights I do and some nights I don’t. But they’re pretty good, those girls of yours, you don’t know how lucky you are. Considering the age difference, I really can’t complain.’
‘I could give you a few tips, if you like. Not that you need it, I’m sure. You can probably tell who’s likely to come across with the goods even before she does. But as in any group anywhere, some girls put it about more than others.’ I would never have used such an expression to describe the conduct of any of my friends, but Muriel had advised me to be coarse and contemptuous, and thus encourage Van Vechten to do likewise, again always assuming he was that way inclined or could be. And he certainly looked as though he could. Almost all men could if given the chance. I knew this, although I myself tended not to be.
Some days later, I boasted to him about a few imaginary conquests and what’s more with girls I’d only just met, which are the kind of conquests that win you most kudos and provoke most envy: I’d come on to a girl and she’d ended up sucking me off in a dark corner of La Riviera, or whatever it was called, which had a bit of a garden at the back; in Pintor Goya I’d got off with the drop-dead-gorgeous daughter of a government minister, who was known for both things, for being his daughter and for being gorgeous, anyway, I’d taken her home with me and fucked her twice. That was the kind of lexicon I used, or worse of course. None of that had actually taken place, but I told him it had happened on the nights when he hadn’t come out with us, because he didn’t always join us, partly because he was unable to keep up with our supposedly fast pace, but mainly because he had certain obligations, family and professional. I say ‘supposedly’ because, at the time, on many of the nights when I didn’t take him out with me, I simply stayed home or worked until late at Muriel’s apartment even if he wasn’t there (he had begun shooting the only film he made during my time with him, the Harry Alan Towers production based on a script on which I’d lent a helping hand), either compiling one of those exhaustive lists of authors or working on some other such minutiae, meanwhile discreetly keeping Beatriz and the children company, listening to her play the piano, not that she ever kept this up for long, for she soon tired of it. By then, it had become clear to me that the occasional ‘sacred’ meetings between her and Van Vechten were purely utilitarian for both parties. In his case, and having seen what I’d seen, he was hardly likely to turn down the chance of occasionally screwing a woman almost twenty years younger, the world of women thirty-five years younger having only just opened up to him.
The Doctor immediately took the bait and, despite his age, gave me a blunt description of what had happened. He had certain traits that were inappropriately juvenile, incorrigibly immature.
‘When I took her home the other night, she sucked me off in the car, right outside her parents’ house. What do you think to that?’
I gave an admiring whistle, not just congratulatory, but surprised too. There was always the possibility that his conquest might be as imaginary as mine, but I thought not.
‘Really? She went that far? To be honest, I would never have thought it. How did you manage that? I don’t mean to underestimate you, of course, because you look great, like some American or English actor, but you are old enough to be her father, if not more, and, forgive
me, but I really can’t see her suggesting it. I’d imagined that, at most, she might have let you touch her tits or shown them to you without you touching them, because you asked her to. I don’t mean to offend, but you must have amazing powers of persuasion. How did it happen? Tell me. Did you offer her something in return? Lifelong medical care? Did you suggest listening to her chest and then one thing just led to another?’
I tried to adopt a light tone, a mixture of jocularity and amazement. Ever since that poker evening with Celia and all his blunt questions, I had got into the habit of sometimes gently pulling his leg. Perhaps I went too far this time. I saw at once that he was not amused, as if it really riled him to see that I considered he was not in himself seductive enough. His eyes grew cold and hard, and the rectangular smile he’d worn as he pinned on his metaphorical medal, as he told me of his triumph, vanished completely. He was one of those people who, because they look younger than they are, end up believing that nothing at all has changed since their youth. If they’re not stupid, they only believe this now and then and when alone, and they know it’s not true; and Van Vechten wasn’t stupid. He was proud of his fine appearance and made good use of it, but he wasn’t just a conceited fool or blind to what he could see in the mirror, or perhaps his mirror was the wife he saw each morning, who looked much older than him and reminded him of his real age. He was hardly ever seen out and about with her. Perhaps they lived separate lives, like Muriel and Beatriz, or even more so, perhaps they were just waiting for divorce finally to be made legal in Spain. There were an awful lot of such couples waiting impatiently or desperately, appallingly unhappy couples who had been forced to put up with their lot for more than four decades, if not centuries, because the brief truce of the 1930s hardly counted.
After a few seconds, his eyes softened and he recovered his smile, his principal charm and weapon. More than that, he even laughed, although whether this was a forced laugh or not, I couldn’t tell.
‘Lifelong medical care. Listening to her chest,’ he repeated. ‘Oh, very funny, very witty. I could also have offered to examine her for cysts, you forgot to mention that, although at her age, girls have other things on their mind. But like I said, I never offer anything in exchange. I’ve never paid for sex, and what you’re half-jokingly suggesting would be tantamount to paying. Albeit cheap at the price.’
He had maintained his smile throughout this speech, but his tone had been ever so slightly more serious. I was quick to correct him, so that he wouldn’t take offence.
‘There was no half-joking about it, Jorge, it was a joke, pure and simple. Anyway, how did it happen? How was it? Did it just come out of the blue? To be honest, I’m staggered. I take my hat off to you.’ And I made a gesture as if doffing my hat.
‘You’re surely not expecting me to reveal my methods to you, Juan.’ He was smiling unreservedly now, flattery can soften anyone and often proves to be our undoing, our downfall. It encourages us to talk too much.
‘At least give me a clue. Lessons from the master.’ I immediately bit my tongue, I’d gone too far and he might get annoyed again. ‘Don’t play hard to get. After all, I’m the one who introduced you to all those girls.’
He hesitated. No, he wasn’t stupid, and couldn’t possibly hope to persuade me that whatever had happened with Maru had been at her instigation or had happened spontaneously without some trick on his part, some entreaty, some trap. Maru was quite a wild young woman, who laughed loudly at the slightest thing, regardless of whether it was funny or not, she might even have creased up at one of the Doctor’s ancient jokes. But there was a vast difference between that and fellating him while he was at the wheel of his car, in downtown Madrid. He shrugged and opted for an enigmatic silence, but I sensed in him a desire to crow about his methods, which he didn’t yet want to reveal. I was sure he would talk more freely on the next occasion.
‘It isn’t only a matter of how you get something, Juan’ – and he said this rather in the tones of a master, a maestro, so perhaps I hadn’t gone too far – ‘what matters is getting it in a way that gives you most satisfaction. And nothing gives one more satisfaction than when a girl doesn’t want to do it, but can’t say No. And I can assure you most of them do want to do it, once they realize they’re obliged to. They want it once they’ve experienced it, but they’re left with the memory, the knowledge, the resentment, that the very first time, they had no choice. And as I’m sure you know, it doesn’t get much better than that: new desire mingled with a touch of old resentment.’
What he had said was pretty nebulous, not to say cryptic, but it seemed worth mentioning it to Muriel, informing him. Van Vechten had referred to something that could be relevant to my boss’s first semi-explicit words, to the doubts possibly sown in him by ‘a spiteful, devious person who harboured an implacable grudge’ against Van Vechten, ‘the kind of grudge that never dies’. That is the defence Muriel imagined the Doctor would use if he asked him point-blank about the troubling story someone had told him, the story that had eventually led him to send me on this mission: ‘malicious lies or the product of some vile settling of accounts’, mere ill-intentioned rubbish. Those first words had remained engraved on my memory, as have so many other first words spoken to me by almost everyone: ‘What stops me simply dropping the matter, rejecting it as frankly unbelievable and not even worth considering, is that, according to what I’ve been told, the Doctor behaved in an indecent manner towards a woman or possibly more than one … That, to me, is unforgivable, the lowest of the low.’ Now Van Vechten had stated that he found nothing more satisfying than ‘when a girl doesn’t want to do it, but can’t say No’ and he’d spoken of them feeling ‘obliged’ to do it and of having no choice ‘the very first time’ and of an ‘old resentment’. I had taken pains to remember his words exactly, which is something I’ve always been good at, I’ve always had the ability to report verbatim what people say in my presence, with no summarizing, no paraphrasing, no approximations, as long as it’s not a long lecture of course. However confusing I found Van Vechten’s words, I was ready to repeat them to Muriel, and they would doubtless be more meaningful to him than to me, or he could perhaps throw some light on them. What I found most bewildering was this: if Van Vechten neither paid for nor offered anything in exchange, why on earth would Maru or any of my female friends say Yes when their first reaction was to say No? I didn’t think the Doctor would be capable of violence or of making physical threats. And if that had been the accusation, Muriel wouldn’t have used a subtle, moral term like ‘indecent’, which was too flimsy a word to describe any action involving force or rape.
And so I dared to interrupt my boss in the middle of making his latest film, and he arranged to meet me two mornings later, very early, taking advantage of a brief return to Madrid to shoot a few scenes in the studio, although he usually spent whole days away when he was on location, this time in Ávila, Salamanca, La Granja and El Escorial, and from there they would later have to travel to Baeza and Úbeda, and finally, to Barcelona. He was too busy to come back to the apartment and would instead be staying in a hotel with the actors. When I arrived, he was doing repeated takes of a stern speech given by the British actor Herbert Lom, who was less of a mythic figure for me than Jack Palance, but whom I had known and admired and, indeed, feared since my childhood visits to cinemas showing double bills, and had seen him in dozens of films, often playing the refined or exotic villain (he tended to appear in oriental costumes). Seeing him in person confirmed to me his fine voice and excellent English diction, although I have since found out, after his recent death at the age of ninety-five, that he was Czech by birth – or, rather, Austro-Hungarian – and that he didn’t come to England until he was twenty-one, fleeing the Nazi invasion, and with an unpronounceable surname, as long and complicated as the professional name he adopted was short and simple: he was originally called Kuchačevič ze Schluderpacheru, but I doubt that such a name would have been allowed either on screen or on a poster. He had played min
or roles in some major films, for example, Napoleon in War and Peace, probably more because of his short stature than because of any other physical resemblance, although his broad forehead with a single lock of hair brushed forward certainly helped; he had also played Captain Nemo and the Phantom of the Opera and one of the murderers in The Ladykillers, and he had appeared in Spartacus playing a Cilician envoy; but I had found him particularly frightening in El Cid as the Almoravid Ben Yusuf, all dressed in black and with his face covered throughout the film (you could only see his eyes), and with his drumming hordes, who disembarked in my own country of Spain. It didn’t much matter that the action took place in the eleventh century, panic travels fast in fiction or in what one experiences as fiction.