Trio - Hardcover

Boyd, William

 
9780593318232: Trio
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593318234 ISBN 13: 9780593318232
Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

A rollicking novel with a dark undertow, set around three unforgettable individuals and a doomed movie set—from the award-winning, best-selling author of Any Human Heart

A producer. A novelist. An actress. It's summer 1968—a time of war and assassinations, protests and riots. While the world is reeling, our trio is involved in making a disaster-plagued, Swingin' Sixties British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. As the movie shoot zigs and zags, these layers of secrets become increasingly more untenable. Pressures build inexorably. The FBI and CIA get involved. Someone is going to crack—or maybe they all will. From one of Britain's best loved writers comes an exhilarating, tender novel—by turns hilarious and heartbreaking—that asks the vital questions: What makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn't?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the award-winning author of sixteen highly acclaimed novels and five collections of stories. He divides his time between London and France. William Boyd’s Any Human Heart, Armadillo, The Blue Afternoon, The Destiny of Nathalie X, Fascination, A Good Man in Africa, An Ice-Cream War, Love Is Blind, The New Confessions, On the Yankee Station, and Stars and Bars are available in Vintage paperback.
www.williamboyd.co.uk

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1

Elfrida Wing stirred, grunted and shifted sleepily in her bed as the summer’s angled morning sun brightened the room, printing a skewed rectangle of ?­lemony-?­gold light onto the ?­olive-?­green-?­flecked wallpaper close by her pillow. Elfrida, wakened by the glare inching towards her, opened her eyes and considered the wallpaper, bringing it into focus with some difficulty, trying to force her comatose brain to work, to think. As usual, on waking she felt absolutely terrible. In front of her eyes, small sharp leaves seemed to be depicted there, in a stylised manner, she ?­decided—?or were they birds? Bird shapes? Or perhaps they were simply daubs and splatters of olive green that brought leaves and birds to mind.

No matter. Leaves, birds or random ?­flecks—?who really cared in the great scheme of things? She eased herself out of bed and slowly pulled on her dressing gown over her pyjamas. She slipped down the stairs as quietly as possible, wincing at each creak, hand securely gripping the banister, trying to ignore the awful ?­hill-?­cracking headache that, now she was upright, had begun thumping behind her eyes, making them bulge rhythmically in sympathy, or so she felt. Then she remembered Reggie was long gone, up at first light, off to his film. She could relax.

She paused, coughed, then farted noisily and finished her descent of the staircase with careless din, striding into the kitchen and flinging open the fridge door looking for her orange juice. She scissored off the top of a carton and poured herself half a ?­tumblerful before turning to the condiment cupboard and removing the bottle of Sarson’s White Vinegar that she kept there behind the pack of sugar. She added a sizeable slug to her orange juice. Sometimes she wished vodka had more flavour, like gin, but she recognised at the same time that its very neutrality was her greatest ally. Vodka and tap water in a tumbler was her daily tipple when Reggie was around. He never questioned her ?­near-?­constant thirst, luckily, and never wondered why there was always a considerable stock of Sarson’s White Vinegar in the cupboard. Elfrida sat down at the kitchen table and sipped at her vodka and orange juice, finishing it quickly, and then poured herself another, feeling the buzz, the reassuring hit. Her headache was disappearing already.

The title of a novel came mysteriously, unbidden, into her ?­head—?The Zigzag Man. She could almost see the cover in her mind’s eye. A clever use of the two zeds; perhaps different colours for the “zig” and the “zag” . . . She poured herself more orange juice and went back to the cupboard for the Sarson’s, emptying the last half-inch into the glass. Better buy another bottle of voddy, she told herself. Or two. She found her notebook and wrote the title down. The Zigzag Man by El­frida Wing. She had noted dozens of titles for potential novels, she saw, flicking back through the pages. There they were: The Summer of the Wasps, Freezy, The Acrobat, Drop Dead Gorgeous, A Week in Madrid, The Golden Rule, Dark Eulogy, Jazz, Spring Equinox, The Lightning Process, Cool Sun, Mystery in a Small Town, Estranged, Artists’ Entrance, Berlin to Hamburg, The Windrow, The Riviera Gap, A Safe Onward Journey, Falling ?­Away—?title after title of unwritten novels. And now The Zigzag Man could be added to their number. Titles were the easy ?­bit—?writing the novel was the awful challenge. She sipped her juice, feeling sad, all of a sudden. It was now over ten years since her last novel had been published, she remembered ruefully: The Big Show, published in the spring of 1958. Ten long years and not a word of fiction ?­written—?just list after list of titles. She finished her juice feeling a numbness overwhelm her, tears stinging her eyes. Stop thinking about bloody novels, she told herself, angrily. Have another drink.


2

Talbot Kydd woke abruptly from his dream. In his dream he had been standing on a wide beach and a young man, naked, was walking out of the modest surf, waving at him. He sat up, still half asleep, still in a ?­dream-?­daze, taking in his surroundings. Yes, he was in a hotel, of course, not at home. Another ?­hotel—?­sometimes he thought he had spent half his life in hotels. Anyway, he didn’t really care: the room was generously large and the bathroom functioned perfectly. It was all he needed for his stay. London was close, that was the main thing.

Now he swung his legs out of the bed and stood up, slowly, blinking, and rubbed his face, hearing his alarm go off. Six o’clock. What an absurd time to start your day, he thought, as he always did when his impossible job made these demands. He stood, stretched carefully, raising his arms above his head for a few seconds as if trying to touch the ceiling, hearing joints crack satisfyingly, and then pottered through to the bathroom.

As he lay in his bath, steam rising, he thought again of the dream he’d been having. Was it a dream or was it a memory? Pleasingly erotic, anyway, and about a young man, pale and limber . . . Or was it Kit, his brother? Or was it someone he’d actually photographed, perhaps, one of his models? He could remember the body but not the face. He tried to recover more details but the ?­dream-?­memories wouldn’t coalesce and the young man remained immovably ?­generic—?alluring, slim, unidentifiable.

He shaved, he ?­dressed—?classic ?­charcoal-?­grey suit, white shirt, his East Sussex Light Infantry regimental ?­tie—?and ran his two brushes through the ?­near-?­white wings of hair above his ears. The bathroom ceiling lights gleamed brightly on his freckled baldness. Bald at ?­twenty-?­five, his father had once observed: I do hope you’re my child. It had been an unkind remark to make to a young man ?­self-?­conscious about his early hair loss, Talbot thought, recalling his father, who had dense ?­straw-?­coloured hair, driven back from his forehead in tight waves, like a man facing into a gale. But then kindness was not a virtue you’d ever associate with Peverell Kydd so perhaps the slur was evidence of genuine suspicion . . .

He took the stairs down to the dining room and breakfast, expunging thoughts of the old bastard from his mind. Peverell Kydd, dead two decades now. Good. Fuck him and his shade.

He was almost alone in the dining room of the Grand as it was so early. A ?­middle-?­aged couple in tweeds; a plump man with hair down to his shoulders, smoking, were his three companions. Talbot ordered and consumed his habitual kipper, drank four cups of tea, ate two slices of white toast and raspberry jam, all the while idly watching a rhomboid of sunlight on the maroon carpet slowly turn itself into an isosceles triangle. A sunny ?­day—?perfect for Beachy Head.

He had nearly finished his fifth cup of tea when his line producer, Joe Swire, appeared and ordered a pot of coffee from the pretty young waitress with the ?­port-?­wine birthmark on her neck. Why did he notice such smirches, Talbot wondered, and not celebrate the young waitress’s guileless beauty instead? And here was Joe, opposite him, a handsome young man whose good looks were marred by poor teeth, ?­soft and snaggled.

“Break it to me gently, Joe,” Talbot said as Joe consulted his clipboard with the day’s schedule and business.

“The Applebys have postponed,” Joe began.

“Excellent.”

“But they’ve asked for another copy of Troy’s...

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Verlag
Alfred a Knopf Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2021
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593318234
ISBN 13 
9780593318232
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
309
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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