In Sweet Caress, William Boyd traces the world of Amory Clay, a documentary photographer whose life reflects the highs and lows of the last century. The novel splices together excerpts from Amory’s journals, not in chronological order, but according to relevance to create the narrative of a complete life, such that one is left with the sense that although Amory is not real, she could and ought to have been.

Born to a comfortably well-off but dysfunctional family in 1908, Amory is complicated, adventurous and unusual. Her father, Beverley Vernon Clay, was a failed novelist and all-round man of letters, who was apparently very different before the Great War but Amory’s recollections of him start after his return in 1918. Her father is also responsible for Amory’s androgynous name, for on her birth he places an announcement in the London Times, announcing “a son, Amory”. A prophetic announcement as Amory eventually becomes a trailblazer, among the first female war photographers.

Years later, in a definitive moment, while Amory is working through adolescent rebellion in boarding school, he attempts to kill himself and Amory by driving into a lake, leaving Amory with a deep-seated distrust of men. Subsequently, B.V. Clay is institutionalised, eventually to be lobotomised, never having recovered from his experiences of WWI.

The key protagonist’s life in Sweet Caress, written as a fictional memoir, is the subtext to the greater occurrences of the 20th century

War is a recurring theme in Sweet Caress, both in its equalising capacity, where for instance the gender of a photographer in Vietnam is irrelevant, to its rot-like impact on character. Amory’s younger brother, Xan, is killed during WWII. In a contemplative state, Amory recounts, “He was only 27. Almost 100,000 RAF airmen died during the Second World War, I read somewhere. The fact that Xan was one unit in that huge number makes it all the more terrible. One butcher’s bill for one family amongst the myriad served up by that conflict.” In this instance the vagaries of war also provide direction to Amory as she has “this overwhelming desire to go to France and find out where Xan died”, and she sets up a Global Photo Watch office in Paris as co-bureau chief.

In reality, Amory finds refuge and direction from the moment when her uncle, Greville Reade-Hill, a one-time photo-reconnaissance observer in the Royal Flying Corps, presents her with her first camera. Greville gives Amory a Kodak Brownie No. 2 as a present for her seventh birthday in 1915. After finishing school, Amory becomes Greville’s photographic assistant. Greville is a society photographer and the niche is exceedingly narrow for Amory.

She gains instant infamy as a result of a photographic exhibition featuring sexual excesses of the Weimar Republic and scandalous aspects of life in Berlin in the 1920s. A pornography charge makes her a photographer of renown and she begins to record events while remaining detached from them. Her métier allows her the freedom to move between London and New York — between journalism and fashion photography. She witnesses the Golden Years of the Weimar Republic, the Mosley Riots of London in the 1930s, the Occupation of the Rhineland and, of course, war-torn Vietnam, while her own life becomes the subtext to the greater occurrences of the 20th century. Her war photography begins at the tail end of the war in France.

“But I was feeling increasingly strange as I sat there in the refulgent cafeteria considering what had just happened to me in the last 48 hours or so and I realised I had experienced this sensation but I couldn’t remember when. That sense of powerlessness; of other forces suddenly taking over the direction of your life that you had chosen; of being completely out of your depth in what you thought was familiar society. And then I remembered. My ‘obscenity’ trial over my Berlin photographs, all those decades ago — sitting in the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court pleading guilty when I knew I was innocent; learning that my photographs were to be destroyed; being admonished and humiliated by the judge. When you encounter the implacable power of the state it’s a deeply destabilising moment. In an ordinary life it happens very rarely — maybe never, maybe once or twice. But your individual being, your individual nature, seems suddenly worth nothing — you feel expendable — and that’s what frightens you, fundamentally, that’s what makes your bowels loosen.” — Excerpt from the book

Boyd uses found photographs vaguely matching the descriptions of characters and events to substantiate his narrative. Photographs that are sufficiently blurred to have belonged to practically anyone allow us to follow Amory’s appearance and career through the century. Not necessarily adding to the narrative, the photographs are a charming conceit given the story is a fictional memoir recounting episodes from an eventful life. Some of the photographs have ostensibly been taken by Amory, while others are illustrative of people who form her stories.

In a game with Greville, Amory sums up the essence of people in four words. It is based on her uncle’s theory that “it took only four adjectives to describe absolutely anyone, anyone in the entire world”. The private parlour-game keeps them entertained as they wait for the perfect photograph and results in scathing judgements like “humourless, religiose, hate-filled, necrophiliac” and “narcissistic, elegant, moneyed, pretentious”.

We are hard-pressed to sum up Amory’s own life in four adjectives. Her journey is driven by personal tragedies and quirks and coloured by larger-than-life events as dramatic as riots and wars. She finds artistic expression in Vietnam, and eventually retires to a small cottage on an island off Scotland, the use of which she inherits from her late husband’s estate. Briefly Lady Farr of Scotland, she is married to a Scottish lord who is an alcoholic scarred by the war.

The birth of her twins is unexpected following an old diagnosis of infertility. Amory had been injured during the Black Shirt Riots, and a specialist, Sir Victor Purslane, had told her that she was infertile. Her pregnancy brings mixed feelings of delight and consternation, pleasure and worry, for herself and her husband.

Writing of her pregnancy, she says, “I was confused as I had resigned myself to childlessness, and was perfectly contented, and now, heading for my 39th birthday, I was about to have two children, simultaneously.” Her husband has a failed marriage and a child already, and the news was “a bomb … that erupted in our lives and blew them apart.”

The birth of the twins changes little for Amory as eventually she picks up the threads of her war photographer career and heads to Saigon. There she innovates and decides to ignore the combat zone and photograph the bases instead. She notes, “My idea was to take pictures of the soldiers, the grunts, off duty. When you saw them shed their carbines and flak jackets, their helmets and ammo packs, you suddenly realised how young these soldiers were — teenagers, college kids.” She becomes a tourist in war-torn Vietnam, recording real life that continues on the peripheries of the war, putting the photographs together as a book.

Approaching her 70th birthday and diagnosed with progressive bulbar palsy, Amory decides that she will take her life by her “own hand” in a final autonomous gesture. She chooses to end her life on 23rd June, 1983. “Yes, my life has been very complicated but, I realise, it’s the complications that have engaged me and made me feel alive”.

The reviewer is a development consultant and freelance journalist based in Islamabad. She is also a director of the School of International Law.

Sweet Caress
(NOVEL)
By William Boyd
Bloomsbury, London
ISBN 978-1408867976
447pp.