Lang. And he writes, “I must remain free, I must be ready for Heinz if he needs me”––which sounds like rank hypocrisy, considering how large Vernon Old already loomed on the horizon. No, the simple truth was, Christopher had realized that Ian wasn’t the right lover for him.
Presumably, Ian was making the same discovery about Christopher, though more gradually, because he was young and inexperienced. Suppose he hadn’t made it? Suppose he had been there to meet Christopher on the dock at Southampton and had convinced Christopher that he still loved him?
Would Christopher have been so dazzled that he would have silenced his own doubts? Would they have remained together through the Munich crisis and the next eleven months, right up to the outbreak of war? It’s improbable but just possible. In those days, Christopher’s plans were all provisional. If he had had someone to stay in England for, he might never have gone to America.
[* From “Solomon and the Witch”: her last line after the lovers realize their union has not been perfect enough to bring about the end of the world.]
¾ 1947 ¾
107
deserved to have him––no, I can’t have got that correctly, but it was the sense of whatever phrase he used, meaning that she had waited longer than anybody else. And now they had a son.
Christopher didn’t feel guilty in Ian’s presence, but he did feel somewhat intimidated by him. For Ian was doubly a hero. As a
conscientious objector, he had gone to Africa with the Friends’
Ambulance Unit, where he had narrowly missed being killed. (Nik Alderson, his beautiful young lover whom Christopher succeeded, had been in the same unit and had been killed by a bomb.) Later, Ian had lost his pacifist convictions, joined the army and been ordered––
because of his classical education––to act as a liaison officer with the Greek guerillas, fighting behind the German lines in Greece. “How did you get there,” Christopher asked Ian respectfully, “did you jump with a parachute?” “I was dropped,” Ian answered, casually, yet with a certain note of reprimand, as if correcting an error in phraseology by Christopher. He was no longer pretty but rather beautiful; he looked austere and repressed. He told Christopher, “I can’t see that you’ve changed in the least.” This too sounded like a reprimand, as though Ian were telling him that he was uncured and perhaps incurable. But all this was below the surface. Their conversation was largely literary, and Ian was polite about Prater Violet and enthusiastic about writing in general. He didn’t appear to feel that he’d outgrown the taste for it. They also exchanged several nervous jokes, at which Ian laughed in the way which used to charm
Christopher. But there was no communication and couldn’t have been any, unless they had taken off their clothes. Which––as Ian kept signalling, rather too insistently––was absolutely absolutely absolutely out of the question.
On March 12, Christopher saw Gerald Hamilton again for lunch
––one of the props of Gerald’s newly rediscovered Catholicism, Monsignor Barton-Brown, was with him––and Edward and Hilda
Upward again for supper. In between these meals, he was reunited with Eric Falk. Like Ian, Eric found Christopher’s appearance unchanged, but he chose a much more pleasing way of saying so;
“My God!” he cried, “have you made a pact with the Devil?”
Christopher, not surprisingly, decided that Eric had changed very much, for the better. (He later told Olive Mangeot that he had seen in Eric’s face something he had never seen there before––real goodness.) Not being in with the Devil had cost poor Eric something, however; he already looked like an old man, bald and wrinkled.
On March 13, Christopher went to Cheltenham, to stay with Olive Mangeot. She was living there with Hilda [Hauser] and Hilda’s 108
Lost Years
granddaughter, whom they had named Amber because that was her color. During the war, Hilda’s daughter Phyllis had gone out dancing a lot with American soldiers. A black G.I. had raped her, outside a dance hall. Phyllis was prepared to go to the base and identify the man. But, as she was on her way there, the American officer who was escorting her told her that the wartime punishment for rape was death. So, when Phyllis was confronted with the lineup, she said she couldn’t recognize the rapist. (No doubt this was what the officer had hoped she would say, and the reason why he had told her about the death penalty.)
Phyllis had the baby but she also had a violent revulsion against it––maybe its appearance triggered a delayed shock reaction to the rape, maybe she hadn’t expected it to be so obviously Negroid; Amber looked far less than half white. Phyllis refused to have anything to do with her. It seemed that Amber had been lucky.
Instead of a whining, complaining, self-centered mother, she had got an adoring fat dimpled grandmother who was a marvellous cook––
not to mention a charming home and an equally adoring “great
aunt,” Olive.
Hilda herself didn’t seem to have changed one bit since the old days at 21 Cresswell Place. (In Lions and Shadows, she is called
“Rose.”) Altogether, this was a very happy family, with Olive contributing just a faint breath of communistic priggishness––only a breath, because priggishness was so deeply against Olive’s nature.
Olive and Christopher didn’t get into any political arguments during his visit, but he was obliged to refuse to contribute to some party fund and tell her he couldn’t support the party in any way, as long as it sanctioned the disgraceful treatment of homosexuals in Russia.
Another not entirely convincing communist, Sally Bowles now
become Jean Cockburn, was either staying in the house or living nearby (I forget which) with her daughter Sarah. Christopher found Jean also very little changed in looks, though much in manner; she was a bit of a red bore, until you got her off the party line. Gerald Hamilton had told Christopher that Jean had once said of Claud
[Cockburn], Sarah’s father: “He’s the only man in the world I couldn’t possibly go to bed with.” But that was long, long ago, before the Spanish Civil War and Jean’s political enlightenment and her stay in Madrid, where she was said to have shown remarkable courage during the bombardments.
On March 14, Olive Mangeot and Christopher had lunch with
Wogan Philipps and his wife Cristina. Wogan had once been married to Rosamond Lehmann. He was a handsome powerfully built man,
¾ 1947 ¾
109
quite wealthy, with a charmingly open, enthusiastic temperament.
He had been wounded in the Spanish Civil War, while driving
an ambulance (I think). He and Cristina had a farm somewhere in the neighborhood. Like many farmers at this period, they were employing prisoners of war, German or Italian, to help out. From the point of view of the prisoner, such a job was extremely desirable; he got paid for it and he didn’t have to go back at night to the prison camp if his employer would give him room and board.
Wogan and Cristina told Christopher at lunch that they had been employing a young German POW (whom I’ll call Kurt; I forget his real name). They had become very fond of Kurt; he was a good
worker, always cheerful, simple, innocent, sweet natured, a typical German peasant boy––or that was how he had seemed to them.
Then, a short while ago, the camp authorities had ordered Kurt to leave the farm and return to them. When Wogan protested, he was told that they had discovered that Kurt had a very bad record; as a member of the S.S., he had taken part in a massacre of civilians, somewhere in Russia. The camp authorities told Wogan that it
wasn’t their job to try war criminals; their position was simply that farm work outside the camp was a privilege only to be granted to prisoners of good character. Kurt obviously didn’t deserve this privilege, so Wogan would have to pick someone else. Wogan had answered that he and Cristina couldn’t believe this about Kurt; they had got to know him well, he was incapable of such a crime, there must be some mistake. All right, the authorities had told him, if that’s how you feel, you may be present at Kurt’s hearing; he will be given every opportunity to prove he’s innocent.