The Blue Afternoon

We drank some more wine, it was tangy and sharp and Carriscant topped up the glasses. Inland, continents of dark plum-grey clouds were building, threatening the rain that Joao had promised, while out west, over the Atlantic, the afternoon sun shone with that silvery flinty brilliance you find over big oceans, light reflecting back from the huge expanse of shifting waters. We sat in silence for a while and watched the track of a small white steamer trail its saltspill across the flat windless stretch of the Mar de Palha, the Sea of Straw, as it headed lethargically for the docks at Alfama.

I felt full of sadness for Salvador Carriscant. He was in the rare and terrible position of having experienced for an hour or so glimpses of the life he might have led. He had contemplated a parallel existence for himself and had had to face full square the what-might-have-been. This is something we can all do, in moments of idle despair; these possibilities exist for us, but only as reveries or as wistful hindsight. For Carriscant, however, the notional had been made flesh, embodied in the frail shaking old lady he had talked with that afternoon. If only, if only, if only…

'She killed Sieverance,' he said. 'She told me. After she left me she went back to their house for her play, she said, for her play… ' He shook his head incredulously. 'It was an accident. She was creeping out when he surprised her. He had his gun drawn, thinking she was an intruder. She tried to run out, there was a struggle as he tried to prevent her, the gun went off.'

I thought about this: you hear a noise in your house in the small hours of the morning, you arm yourself with a revolver, but the burglar turns out to be your dead wife, whom you saw lying cold and pale beside the body of your stillborn child hours previously… You don't struggle with her, it seemed to me. You might scream, you might collapse in shock. But would you fight?

'I thought,' I said gently, 'that Sieverance was found shot in his bed.'

Carriscant looked at me shrewdly. 'Then she must nave dragged him back.'

'Does she know what happened to you?'

'She knew about the trial. That was when she decided to leave Singapore. She just assumed…' he trailed off.

'She knew we would never be together then'

The clouds build to the east, a great purple range, a massive presence in the panorama, while we sit on, warm in the sun shining on us from over the ocean.

I thought carefully before I spoke. 'I don't believe her, Salvador,' I said, in a measured quiet voice. 'I just don't. She went back to kill Sieverance. To make absolutely sure. It was the most appalling risk. I understand why she wanted to do it, but if she hadn't, if she had gone straight to the docks, straight to Axel… Don't you see? Then everything would have gone according to plan. That's the only explanation that makes -'

'Oh no, no, no. It was a mistake, a terrible accident.' He said this with simple conviction, looking hard at me. 'I believe her.'

'I don't.'

'What do you believe then?' There was a silence before I decided to speak. 'That you killed Sieverance. To set her free. To make sure.'

He laughed. 'Kay, Kay,' he said fondly. 'I love you for that, it makes me sound so very noble.' He reached out and patted my hand. 'She just confessed to me. She told me everything. Let's go back there and ask her, if you want.'

He knew I wouldn't, it was not a convincing gesture and I remained unconvinced. I let it go. What good would my deductions do, my reasoned detections? What do we know of other people, anyway, of the human heart's imaginings? Carriscant's faith was sure and constant. His belief in Delphine Sieverance and what she had done that night was no more absurd than any of the other notions we use to prop up our shaky lives. And he was happy too, that was important. He had achieved what he had set out to -no mean accomplishment – and he had seen the woman he had loved for all these years once more.

'Will you see her again?' I asked.

'No. She asked me not to and I agreed. Besides, I don't want to, don't need to.' He exhaled, and I felt the sadness skewer through him. 'She's going to die soon,' he said, leadenly. 'She has shaking palsy, paralysis agitans, she can hardly walk. She's looking forward to it, can't wait to die, she said. But she's glad she saw me, glad we were together again. I think it helped her enormously.'

His eyes filled with tears, I saw them shimmer and bulge at the eyelid as he thought about her and her approaching extinction. And that provoked my tears too, and I felt the salt sting. I was full of doubts, full of conflicting versions and explanations of this strange and complex story I had been told. But at least I knew now there had been a man called Salvador Carriscant and he had been in love with a woman named Delphine Sieverance. That much at least I could confirm, having witnessed it with my own eyes, and perhaps that was what was most significant. As for the rest, I had my theories, my dark thoughts, my suspicions, my version of events as they had unfolded all those years ago in Manila. But what did it matter? I sat here on this su

'Look at this,' Carriscant said, gesturing at the scene before us. 'It's very rare, this trick of the light. Quite wonderful.'

The purple livid mass of the thunderclouds seemed to dominate the overarching sky, but still the sun shone on our faces as the charged light thickened and changed colour around us. My finger traced a track through the cold beaded moisture on the sweating bottle; the little steamer had almost reached the quay at Alfama; the sound of traffic and voices rose faintly from the busy streets below us, and I smelt the musky bouquet of the wine as I brought the glass to my lips and drank deep.

So what makes the difference – here and now – on this terrace on this eloquent blue afternoon, as we sit caught between perpetuities of sun and rain, held in this particular moment? I look over at Salvador Carriscant, who is smiling at me, his old broad face radiant with his tremendous good fortune, and I know the answer.

About The Author

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and brought up there and in Nigeria. He was educated at Gordonstoun School and the universities of Nice, Glasgow and Oxford. He is married and lives in London. He was a lecturer in English literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1980 to 1983. Also published in Penguin are A Good Man in Africa, which won the Whitbread Literary Award for the Best First Novel in 1981 and a 1982 Somerset Maugham Award; On the Yankee Station (1982), a collection of short stories; An Ice-Cream War, which won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize for 1982 and was short listed for the Booker Prize; Stars and Bars (1984); The New Confessions (1987); and Brazzaville Beach, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for 1990 and for which William Boyd was awarded the McVitie's Prize for Scottish Writer of the Year. Eight of his screenplays have been filmed, the most recent of which is A Good Man in Africa, based on his first novel. Two television films about public school life, Good and Bad at Games and Dutch Girls, have been published together in Penguin as School Ties (1985).