A Scandal in Belgravia (2 page)

I
t would be impossible today to convey to anyone under the age of forty the stunned sense of shock I felt. Difficult, too, to explain my ignorance and naiveté on the subject of homosexuality. I had been to a public school, after all. I can only say that, whatever I might have learnt had I gone to Eton, I had no such experiences at Dulwich College to contribute to my sexual enlightenment. Perhaps this was due to the fact that we had so many day boys, and we tended to stick together. I was neither attractive nor charming, being known as “Plod” Proctor. So
that
subject I learnt about through the odd smutty joke, and through playground allusions of it—that is to say, I remained profoundly ignorant of it.

The fact that I was shocked I would account for by citing factors both personal and public: I was the child of conventional, middle-class parents, people doing dull jobs, leading dull lives and having dull opinions, whose automatic reaction should the topic come up in the Sunday papers was to purse their lips and shake their heads. The papers then treated court cases involving homosexual conduct in the lip-licking style they today use in reporting child sex-abuse cases, or MPs who go in for spanking sessions.

And then there was the Guy Burgess factor. Burgess had disappeared to Moscow only months before, leaving behind a
legion of tales about his brazenly open homosexuality, his liaisons, his gay parties (I suppose the newspapers would have used words like “queer” and “pervert” at the time). The rumour—or was it a joke?—around the Foreign Office was that he had left as his forwarding address: “Stage door, Bolshoi Ballet.” At that very time newspapers were indulging in speculation that was frankly no wilder than some of Burgess's conduct. Questions about him and his activities were being tabled daily in the House of Commons, and Herbie Morrison was struggling to answer them, or not to answer them, as is the habit of ministers when security matters come up.

That, in short, was why I was stunned by Timothy Wycliffe's going off into the bushes with a guardsman. I must have stood there for all of a minute before I resumed my walk to the Underground. If I was unduly thoughtful when I got home it was so close to bedtime that my parents did not notice. No doubt my mother made me a mug of Horlicks and we all turned in to sleep the sleep of the just. I lived, as I say, in a very dull household, and it was all light years away from grandsons of Marquesses and encounters with guardsmen in St. James's Park.

I tried very hard next day to be the same as usual to Timothy Wycliffe. Probably I tried too hard. I am not a good actor, and this often harmed my political career. People knew what I really thought. At any rate I became convinced over the next few weeks that Timothy knew that I knew, had worked out how I knew, and was amused that I was shocked. Sometimes when he was talking to me he looked into my face and there was a satirical turning-up of the corners of his mouth that was not malicious, but seemed to express a sort of delight in the absurdity of people—in this case me. It did not affect his friendliness and openness to me, only my friendliness and openness to him.

It was perhaps two or three weeks later that our friendship reached a decisive phase—a phase when I had to make a
conscious decision whether to accept or reject him and his life. How far he deliberately brought this about I never quite knew, but he did admit that he wanted it brought out into the open.

There were many quaint survivals and oddities in Foreign Office practice at that time that had not been swept away by the advent of a Labour government. Bevin was interested in policy, and the implementation of policy, and if he knew of these oddities he probably regarded them with the Olympian amusement of a Trade Union baron at the eccentricities of the upper classes. One of these survivals was that certain great folk were to be dealt with whenever possible in person, rather than by telephone or letter. However low-level the personal contact (and they didn't come lower-level than me at that time) that was how the business was to be done. The list of these great folk, some or most of them obscure and quite unknown to the general public, had apparently come about in an arbitrary way, with a rhyme and reason that was scarcely discernible to the normal human brain, and this was the only reason I can give for the fact that on an evening in July 1951 I was given the assignment of calling on Lady Thorrington in Belgrave Square.

“A question of residency rights for three displaced persons,” I grumbled to Timothy in the course of the day. “And for that I have to traipse all the way over to Belgrave Square to deliver the papers in person.”

“My neck of the woods,” said Tim. “I'll collect you later and we'll go together.”

He turned up in my tiny office around four thirty, much earlier than need be, saying it was a fine afternoon and we deserved a break. Again we left the rambling pile of the Foreign Office, walked down the steps from King Charles Street, and began across the park. At least I'm keeping him from accosting guardsmen, I thought—a mean little thought, probably springing from embarrassment. We kept up a vigorous conversation, perhaps on my part to prevent him bringing up the question of
my knowledge. We discussed, I remember, the Belgian king's abdication, and the prospects for the new king. I forecast that the country would be a republic within a year (my opinions on foreign affairs at that time were almost invariably wrong, which is still the case with many officials in the Foreign Office today). Tim put forward the idea that monarchies had usually survived in the twentieth century in countries with strong Labour Parties. Typically I regarded this as a brilliant paradox, though in fact it was simply a matter of intelligent observation. We had this conversation as we skirted Buckingham Palace, where the Queen's Gallery now is, and we walked on through an overcast afternoon towards Belgravia.

We were close to Belgrave Square itself when Tim slowed down and touched me on the shoulder.

“Your appointment's for six, isn't it?” he said. “Much too early yet. Come and see my flat.”

We turned into a dim little cul-de-sac called Craven Court Mews, and the apprehension that I certainly felt warred in me with a delicious sense of mixing on friendly terms well above my station. I suppose this sounds incredibly dated, even comic, to a young reader today. But the Conservative Party was not then what it is today: the party of brash new money-makers. The typical young Conservative (of whom I was one) was a snob with a social conscience. I was deliciously thrilled.

We strolled down the mews, which was paved with cobblestones and decidedly shabby, with walls that needed repainting and windows needing repointing. We were still in the era of shortages, remember, and the era when the well-heeled preferred not to show it. Timothy put his key in a door and led the way up some narrow, stuffy stairs. We passed immediately through the tiniest of hallways into a room wonderfully light, the walls washed pale blue, the furniture slim, modern, elegant—a table of rosewood and glass, chairs that looked as if they would wrap themselves round you when you sat down, and a few traditional pieces: an elegant escritoire against the
wall, a long Regency dining table, a couple of family pictures. My memory—it is one of those scenes from that time that remain imprinted on my mind, and will be until I die—is of lightness, airiness, and of a brilliance that somehow laughed at the suburban clutter and knobbiness of the rooms in the detached Dulwich residence in which I had grown up. This was the perfect setting for Tim.

I became conscious, as my mind photographed this room, of the noise of water.

“Oh Lord, Heinz is still here,” said Tim. He raised his voice. “Heinz—the boat train goes in an hour!” He turned to me with an open smile. “Coffee?”

I nodded nervously, suddenly wishing I hadn't come. As he moved towards the little kitchen that I could see through the door at the far end of the living room the shower was turned off in the bathroom. Seconds later a boy appeared. He was perhaps nineteen or twenty, very fair, and sturdily built. Apart from a towel over this shoulder he was quite naked.

“Sorry!” he said when he saw me, and disappeared through another door.

I sat down on one of those spare, shapely chairs, and wondered if there were two bedrooms, and if Heinz was sleeping in the main one. I immediately cursed my naiveté. Of course he was sleeping in the main one. If Timothy was a man who went with guardsmen into the bushes in the park he would not invite handsome foreign boys to his flat and then sleep in chaste isolation.

“Heinz is a friend of mine,” said Timothy, appearing at the door into the kitchen.

“Oh yes?” I muttered miserably. “Is he German?”

“That's right. He's from Dresden.”

I nodded, as neutrally as possible. Then suddenly I was struck by a terrible thought, and I jumped up and faced him.

“Dresden?
But that's in—”

“East Germany? Do you know, I believe you're right.”

And grinning broadly he turned back into the kitchen.

Weakly I sat down again, denied a confrontation. I felt stunned and angry. For God's sake,
East
Germany! And here I was, brought into a ménage with an aristocratic Foreign Office diplomat and a young East German homosexual. I remember actually blushing at my predicament. All my middle-class and conservative instincts rose in horror. If he didn't think about his own career, then he might have thought of mine. I blamed him bitterly, forgetting the warm glow I had felt at mingling in circles far above my own.

The bedroom door opened again. Heinz was clothed now, in flannels and a red check shirt, with a khaki knapsack on his back. He looked now like a very ordinary, nice young man. He called out “I go,” and Timothy hurried from the kitchen to see him off. There was a large mirror on the wall in front of me, and I saw the two of them, in the hallway, put their arms around each other and kiss passionately on the lips.

The phrase old ladies use, “I didn't know where to put my face,” is really a very apt cliché, and vividly conveys how I felt. I wanted my whole body to disappear, to crumple itself up into a little ball and hide itself away under the sofa, but above all I wanted my face to be put somewhere out of sight, where its flushed, miserable embarrassment would not give away my feelings.

The door shut, and Tim moved insouciantly back to the kitchen.

“Do you like the flat?” he asked, with a voice full of ironic amusement, as he came back with the coffee.

“Very much,” I stammered, as normally as possible. “It's very . . . unusual. Stylish. It's . . . it's not the sort of furniture you see around these days.”

Tim nodded, still with a smile on his lips.

“I got most of it from an aunt,” he said, sitting down and pouring two cups of coffee. “She bought it in the twenties and thirties—you know, Bauhaus stuff, and imitations of it. She
was something of a high-flyer, member of a rather fast set. Then a boyfriend was killed right at the start of the war, and suddenly she got religion. Sort of Anglican-cum-theosophy. For some reason she didn't think the furniture suitable any longer. She got herself a lot of heavy oak stuff, with thick tablecloths more like altar cloths—very good for séances, I suppose.”

“How odd,” I contributed in an unnatural voice.

“The eccentricities of our noble families! But I shouldn't mock her—she was very good to me. She died last year in the smog epidemic, and I came in for this flat as well.”

He was walking round the room now, coffee cup in hand. I sat there, oddly close to tears, working up to something.

“It's a lovely room,” I muttered.

“Yes. But it's an interesting story, isn't it? It shows how people regard their furniture: as a sort of stage set, to show off their view of themselves.”

“So what does that make you?” I asked, marching through the conversational door he had opened.

“Frank?” Tim hazarded. “Open? Free as air.”

“You staged all that, didn't you?” I blurted out suddenly.

“Staged?” He stopped beside me and stood smiling down, but not ironically now.

“You staged that scene with Heinz. To bring it all out into the open.”

Tim sat down and sipped his coffee.

“I thought Heinz would be gone, as a matter of fact. He's a dear boy, but he has no sense of time. When he wasn't I . . . I took advantage of the fact. I had been wondering whether to say something over the last week or two. As it was I just behaved as I would have if you'd not been here.”

I looked down into my coffee cup, feeling desperately gauche, as indeed I was.

“Why did you want to bring it out into the open?”

“Why not? You're the closest thing I have to a friend at the F.O. I don't like having secrets from my friends.”

“Wouldn't it be better—”

“To keep it firmly under wraps? I don't think so.”

I was angrily conscious that I was being given a secret, and a role, that I had not asked for and was most unwilling to accept. At last I spoke out, looking him full in the face.

“For God's sake don't pretend you haven't heard all the things people are saying about Guy Burgess. Or read what the newspapers are saying.”

“Well?”

“This . . . sort of thing makes you a security risk.”

“Peter, I am not Guy Burgess. I'm Timothy Wycliffe. You don't believe all negroes are the same, do you? Or Jews? Why should you believe all homosexuals are?”

“But it leaves you wide open to blackmail!”

“Come off it: blackmail is a danger if you're a
secret
homosexual. And that's what you're trying to persuade me to be. And, by the by, there never was a less secret homosexual than Guy. I'd heard about him and his antics long before I joined the Foreign Office. Burgess spied for Russia because he was—still is, presumably—a communist, not because he was blackmailed into it.”