I felt my fear mounting — and I wasn’t being helped by the evident funk that Greville was in. I’d never seen him so abjectly insecure and jittery.
‘What do I do now?’ I asked, feebly.
‘I think you should find yourself a lawyer.’
The lawyer I found — a solicitor — was the brother of my best friend at school, Millicent Lowther. Millicent’s eldest brother, Arthur — in his early thirties, I calculated — was more than happy to take up my case, so he said when we met at his offices in Chancery Lane. He was a gaunt, solemn young man, almost bald. I thought he might have been quite attractive if only he’d allow himself to smile, now and then. Although he was very thin his features were even and his eyes were kind. But he had armoured himself in this persona, all serious intent and rigid efficiency.
‘Yes, they’re sticking with the obscenity charge, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘As the leaseholder of the gallery, you’re to appear at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday week.’
‘What do you advise?’ I asked, weakly. Following the assault by the Daily Express there had been other pieces written by journalists quick to condemn me even though they had never seen the exhibition, so swiftly had the pictures been confiscated. It didn’t matter — the epithets mounted: depraved, sordid, shameful, mentally unbalanced, scandalous, degenerate, vile, disgusting, and so on, were the words whirling around my name. Easy defamations produced by total strangers — it was a perfect vilification.
Arthur Lowther asked if I minded if he smoked his pipe. I had no objection, I said, and lit a cigarette to keep him company. A good two minutes later he managed to produce a thin curl of smoke from his small briar. It made him look foolish rather than grown-up but I knew he was doing it for my benefit, to add weight to his deliberations.
‘I suggest you plead guilty,’ he said.
‘No! Categorically, no!’
He closed his eyes. Waited. Opened them again. They were a nice shade of greyish-brown.
‘In that case, we could try and present a defence showing that the photographs were works of art.’
‘Yes, good idea.’
‘But we would need eminent people to vouch for them. In that light.’ He took out a penknife device from his waistcoat pocket and tamped the glowing tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. It seemed to go out at this point. He put it down, irritated. He looked back at me.
‘Do you know any famous artists? Politicians, people of standing in society?’
‘Ah. . No.’
‘Then plead guilty, Miss Clay. Pay the fine. Promise never to exhibit these photographs again in England.’
‘What’ll happen to my photographs?’
‘They’ll be destroyed.’
‘But that’s so unfair, Mr Lowther!’
‘Do call me Arthur. Millicent talked about you all the time. I feel I’ve known you for years.’
‘It’s so unfair, Arthur. . These are photographs of. . of documentary evidence. This is how people live — in Berlin. All I’ve done is show the world the truth about people’s lives.’
‘I believe you, Amory — if I may,’ he said with manifest sincerity. ‘But you managed to cause mighty offence to the Daily Express, which is why we’re in this stew. You’ll save much time and money — not to mention stress and strain — if you do what I suggest.’ He went on to outline the case he’d make to the magistrate: my youth, my zeal, the fact that the gallery was a club — all this would help when it came to the fine — that would be somewhere between £20 and £50, he estimated.
I sat there thinking about the options ahead of me and realised that there was nothing I could do, realistically. The Grösze and Greene adventure was over.
On Tuesday week I sat behind Arthur Lowther in the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court as he informed the magistrate, Sir Pellman Dulverton, that his client, Miss Amory Clay, wished to plead guilty to the charge of obscenity and apologised unreservedly to the court. I was fined £30 and ordered never to show my ‘disgusting images’ to the British public ever again. Sir Pellman Dulverton — a pale, impassive, bespectacled man with a small bristling moustache — called me a foolish and misguided young woman and he hoped I had learned a valuable lesson. I kept my head down and nodded — demure, chastened.
Arthur Lowther and I stood outside the court on Bow Street and each smoked a cigarette — no pipe, I was glad to see.
‘It seems like an awful defeat, I know,’ Arthur said, ‘but in a week you’ll have practically forgotten about it and in a month it’ll have vanished from your life entirely. You don’t want something like this dragging on forever, casting a cloud over every waking moment of your existence.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ I said. ‘I just have to think of it that way, I suppose. Try not to be bitter.’ I was looking around for Greville, who had promised to come and lend moral support, but there was no sign of him.
‘Might I ask you to dinner one evening, Amory?’ Arthur Lowther asked, a blush rougeing his sunken cheeks. ‘We can commiserate and celebrate. And I’d like to get to know you better. Not have to talk about “obscenity” all the time.’ He managed one of his rare transforming smiles.
I said, yes, by all means, not having a ready excuse available, and gave him my card. I was grateful to him, after all, and his fee had been surprisingly modest. I was going to have to borrow more money from Greville to pay my fine. Arthur hailed a passing cab.
‘Heading back to the office. Can I drop you anywhere?’
I said no thanks, I had an appointment, so we shook hands and I strode off to the Underground. I had suddenly realised, now my photographs had been destroyed by the court, that I had to make sure my negatives were safe.
I found Greville in the Falkland Court mews darkroom with Bruno, both wearing white coats over their suits as they were about to start developing. Greville apologised for missing the court case — some earl’s daughter had announced her engagement and wanted her photograph taken immediately.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘You didn’t miss anything — it was all over in minutes. I just want to pick up my negatives.’
‘What negatives?’
‘Of my Berlin photographs.’
‘Bruno, dear, could you just pop back to the flat and fetch my briefcase?’
When Bruno left on his errand, Greville turned to me and I could see instantly that his fretful, twitchy mood had returned in full force.
‘Darling,’ he said. ‘The negatives were seized. I told you.’
‘Seized? No you didn’t tell me anything about that.’
‘I’m sure I did. That evening after the gallery was closed. I’m convinced I told you. That same police inspector who raided the gallery called round and demanded them.’
I felt a kind of draining inside me, as if my blood was being sucked out of my body.
‘But, Greville, why did you tell him you had them? You could have — I don’t know — made up any old story. You could have said I had them.’
‘Very easy for you to say, Amory, dear one. But you weren’t standing facing an inspector and two ghastly enormous police constables in your own drawing room.’ He took off his white coat and threw it in a corner. ‘They said they were going to search everywhere. Most aggressive.’
I looked at Greville as he fished in his pockets for a cigarette and felt a sudden heaviness of heart. The old expression was absolutely correct — I felt as if my heart suddenly hung heavier in its cavity in my chest, and I knew that something had ended between the two of us and I suspected that we were both instantly aware of the fact. Nothing would be the same ever again. I exhaled.