Lost Years (25 page)

Shortly after this scene, or maybe even before it, Guy Burgess—by virtue of his status as ex-lover—went into action to defend Jack's rights. He made a bad mistake, however, in trying to pressure Christopher through Forster—as a letter from Forster to Christopher (dated June 17, 1939) shows.
¹⁶
This was the last Christopher heard of Jack Hewit for several years. I don't remember how or when contact
between them was re-established. Maybe Christopher phoned Jack after his return to England. Maybe he had been asked to do this by a mutual friend. Anyhow, Christopher came to the lunch date on March 1 knowing that Jack had forgiven him.

Christopher found that Jack (who must now have been in his middle thirties) had aged a good deal. In 1938, Jack had had a sturdy but fairly slim body; now he was plump and piggy faced. Jack was painfully aware of this; his humility about his lost looks was touching but also off-putting, sexually. He flattered Christopher by declaring that Christopher hadn't changed at all. (This may well have been more or less true. In 1938, Christopher had already passed through the phase of deterioration which begins around thirty. In 1947, he still hadn't reached the next phase, which begins in the late forties.)

I am inclined to feel irritated by Christopher, because the memories he has chosen to pass down to me are chiefly of compliments paid him, of sex encounters and suchlike, while his meetings with (so-called) valued friends seem to have left only faint impressions. Christopher undoubtedly thought of himself as being capable of strong and loyal friendships, and he has been so described by others (e.g. Forster and Stravinsky). But the fact that he can't remember more of what Forster and the rest of them said, implies a basic inattention, and inattention implies indifference. Of course, Christopher himself must have been doing much of the talking—answering questions about his life in California. All that he remembers about Forster's Chiswick flat is Eric Kennington's exciting pastel of Mahmas with his fierce eyes and naked dagger—the original of one of the illustrations to [T. E. Lawrence's]
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
.

Forster was sweetly affectionate, gay and funny. He hadn't changed since Christopher had first met him, in the early thirties.
¹⁷
Neither had their relationship. Christopher was still a little in awe of him. Not because he thought of Forster as a great writer and as his particular master—he did, but this didn't make him uneasy in Forster's presence; Christopher, who spent so much of his life playing the teacher, found it pleasant and relaxing to become a disciple, now and then. It was as a human being that Forster awed him. Forster
demanded truth in all his relationships; underneath his charming unalarming exterior he was a stern moralist and his mild babylike eyes looked deep into you. Their glance made Christopher feel false and tricky. Christopher reacted to this feeling by trying to make Forster laugh. He usually could; the uneasier he felt, the more sparkling his comedy act became.

On March 2, Christopher was driven around town to see some of the bombed areas, by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. At this time, there was still a special kind of rapport between them and Christopher because, at the beginning of the war, they had been in America and had discussed with him the possibility of staying there; they were both pacifists. At length they had decided to go back to England, however, because neither of them wanted to settle in America permanently.
¹⁸

I remember nothing about the visit to the bombed areas—or rather, my memories can't be disentangled from memories of photographs I've seen. For instance, St. Paul's and its surrounding ruins is largely by Cecil Beaton. My only clear personal memory doesn't belong to that visit—it is of ringing the doorbell of a house, one night, for a long time, and then peering in through a window and seeing the moon, shining down into the roofless empty shell. From the street, as I approached, it had looked as solid and lived in as any of its neighbors.

On March 3, Christopher went with Forster to supper at the sadly down-at-heel Reform Club and then saw
Les Enfants du paradis
, which was having a big success. I can't remember what either of them thought then of this hateful film.

On March 4, Christopher moved to John Lehmann's house. He had lunch with Brian Howard and Sam Langford, Brian's lover. Brian had met Sam during the war, so Christopher hadn't seen him before this. (Brian's previous lover Toni, whom Christopher had seen such a lot of in the thirties, in Holland and Portugal, was now in the States, married to a rich woman.) The lunch was lively and
drunken. Christopher nearly always got along well with Brian; and he found Sam cute and refreshingly uncomplicated, after sulky Toni. I'm pretty sure that this was the occasion on which Brian impulsively decided that he must give Christopher a precious stone—or at least a semiprecious one; I remember it as being golden yellow, so it may have been a topaz. The gift seemed princely and somehow characteristic of Brian's Jewish-Oriental persona. Since their lunch had been late and long, they arrived at the jeweler's just at closing time. The iron curtain-gate was being lowered in front of the door. But Brian ducked under it and insisted, with his usual high-handedness, on being served. Christopher had no earthly use for the stone; later he gave it to Caskey, who carried it around for a while in his billfold. I don't know what finally happened to it.

That evening, Christopher had supper with Cyril Connolly and his wife—this was his second wife I suppose, the successor to Jean; anyhow Christopher hadn't seen her before.
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Not one word remains to me out of what must have been a brilliant display of Connolly talk, literary in-jokes, literary scandal, and the latest literary ratings of contemporary writers. No doubt Christopher was drunk as usual. What I do remember, that night, is a blizzard. (There must have been
some
snow all the time Christopher was in London, but the memory of it is attached only to two or three events.) Christopher had great difficulty in finding a taxi, and, when he did, the driver announced that he refused to venture north of Regent's Park; Christopher got the impression that the center of the city was surrounded by a vast snowdrift. Luckily for himself, he wanted to go south. I remember he later described to John Lehmann how the taxi driver had burst forth into a sort of Shakespearian soliloquy, addressing the blizzard and defying it to do its worst—but I don't remember the taxi driver actually doing this. It was probably one of Christopher's fantasies. Lehmann was very easily entertained by such talk—which was one of the reasons why Christopher liked being with him, despite his phases of pomposity.

On March 5, Christopher went to look at Keith Vaughan's paintings, which were in a gallery where Keith had just had a show. Christopher admired them greatly and was planning to buy one. In the evening, Lehmann took him to see Alexis Rassine dance in
Les Patineurs
at Covent Garden.

On March 6, Christopher had lunch with Gerald Hamilton. This was at a flat which Gerald had rented in Glebe Place. Their reunion was strange and comic. When Christopher entered, Gerald embraced
him hastily and said, “Before we talk, I want you to read those—”and he indicated a pile of papers set out in the middle of the dining table, “It's all in there—you'll see when you read them—I've been accused of being favorable to the enemy—it's the most utter libel and I was able to prove it—the first casualty in any war is Truth—all I did was try to stop the war—“

I forget how much Christopher knew about Gerald's case beforehand. The facts (according to Gerald's book,
Mr. Norris and I
) were that Gerald had tried to leave England without an exit permit in 1941 and go to neutral Ireland in order to persuade the Vatican through its representatives in Dublin to negotiate a peace.
²⁰
His letters were intercepted and he was arrested and interned by the British, in the same prison (Brixton) as Sir Oswald Mosley the fascist leader. After a few weeks, he was released, however, because the authorities decided that the terms he had suggested as a basis for a peace conference were not “favorable to the enemy,” and that he had therefore not been guilty of “an act prejudicial to the defense of the realm.”

I'm sure Christopher only pretended to study the case for Gerald's defense. In his eyes, Gerald was
always
guilty—and the seeming nobility of his motives on this occasion only made his behavior look more suspicious. Christopher didn't care whether or not Gerald had intended to commit high treason—if you were going to associate with Gerald at all, you had to wink at much worse crimes than that. So Christopher declared himself convinced of Gerald's innocence and made only one reservation—he refused absolutely to meet Sir Oswald Mosley, who was now at liberty and Gerald's good friend. Gerald found Christopher's scruple quaint. When Christopher called Mosley a fascist, Gerald said gaily that he hadn't heard that word in a long while; it was now only used by
Pravda
, when attacking British liberal left-wingers.

Gerald Hamilton had a young man with him, as usual. [. . .] He seemed charming and simple and quite devoted to Gerald. Christopher said to Gerald, “I always say to myself there
must
be
some
good in you, or you wouldn't be able to get such nice boys.” Gerald was delighted; he loved being talked to in this tone. He repeated Christopher's remark to [his companion], who grinned.

John Hayward lived in a flat in a house on Cheyne Walk, which is only a short distance from Glebe Place. Christopher went on there
after his lunch with Hamilton. John Hayward had been at Cambridge at the same time as Christopher, but I don't think they had met then. Christopher knew Hayward as a friend of Auden. Shortly after coming down from Cambridge, Hayward got some rare paralytic disease. The doctors told him he would die of it within a year or two, but he didn't. The paralysis somehow arrested itself, leaving Hayward in a wheelchair, very thin, with twisted limbs, a rigid torso and spasmodic puppetlike movements. Just the same, he had his own charm and dignity; he was distinguished looking, despite his big slobbery lips, because his large grey eyes were so intelligent. He was a scholar (among other things, he had edited a book of selections from Swift), a critic, a great talker and a close friend of T. S. Eliot, with whom he was then sharing this flat. When he went out to dinner parties, as he often did, he would be lifted into a taxi seated in his chair. He was said to be quite a ladies' man and heartless in dealing with his girlfriends, jilting them one after the other. It was supposed that he managed to fuck them somehow.

This was the first of Christopher's postwar visits to John Hayward. Thereafter, until Hayward's death, they met whenever Christopher came to England. Hayward was very good company and loved exchanging gossip. He had one extraordinary and embarrassing characteristic; he nearly always spoke of himself as though he were a normally able-bodied person. He once told Christopher, “Well—at least you and I can congratulate ourselves that we've kept our figures.” Telling a story, he would begin, “As I was strolling down Bond Street—“ Talking about the flu, he said, “And then, after feeling miserable for weeks, there comes that marvellous morning when you wake absolutely tingling with health and you jump right out of bed—”

On March 7, Christopher had lunch with William Robson-Scott, his close friend in the 1930s—especially during the miserable time in 1937 after Heinz's arrest and imprisonment. (It was in gratitude for his moral support that Christopher had dedicated
Lions and Shadows
to William, the following year.)

But now, to everybody's amazement, William had gotten married; his wife had several children by a previous husband. I'm assuming that this had already happened before Christopher's return to England, although I can't be certain. I only remember that people later said of Robson-Scott that he had started to avoid his former friends—maybe because his wife disapproved of queers. So the conversation between him and Christopher was probably constrained; Christopher longing but not daring to ask: “Does she whip you like your boyfriends used to?” No memory of it remains.

That evening, Christopher had supper with Jack Hewit and then
went to stay with him at his flat. My recollection is that Jack wanted Christopher to spend at least several days there, and that Christopher, because he still felt guilty about his treatment of Jack, had agreed to do so. But, as it turned out, Jack's flat had only one bed and it was very small. Christopher had made up his mind to have sex with Jack, if Jack wanted it; and Jack did. I can't actually remember what happened that night. I'm almost certain that Christopher managed to get an erection and to fuck Jack. But Jack didn't excite him at all, now, and he was well aware that Jack would get a crush on him all over again if he stayed around. So he made the excuse that he couldn't sleep with another person in such a small bed—actually Christopher could sleep anywhere, in the right company—and told Jack he was moving into a hotel. To make up for this, he saw Jack as often as he could manage, during the rest of his stay in London.

On March 8, Christopher got a room at Oddenino's Hotel, just off Piccadilly Circus. That night, he had supper at the Reform Club with Guy Burgess. What actually happened during their meeting will remain a mystery—unless Christopher's letter about it to Forster survives and is produced by his executors.
²¹

All I remember of the evening is that Christopher was very drunk—so drunk that he had no idea how he finally got back to his hotel. After the Reform Club, he and Guy and a young man named Peter Pollock went to several pubs and nightclubs. My impression is that Guy was friendly at first and then hostile—I don't know if this had anything to do with Christopher's treatment of Jack Hewit or not; probably it was just plain hostility. Maybe Guy saw Christopher as a potential convert to communism who had lost his nerve and sold out to pacifism and religion. (When Christopher had met Guy in 1938, Guy had admired Christopher as an orthodox revolutionary writer—on the strength of “The Nowaks”!
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As for Christopher, he had never taken Guy seriously as a communist, and was even more amazed than most people when the Burgess—Maclean scandal broke, in 1951.) Sometime late that night, Christopher fell down a fairly high flight of stairs when leaving an upper-floor club. He told Forster that he suspected Guy had pushed him, but I don't think he believed this. Anyhow, Christopher was drunk enough to fall properly and avoid getting hurt. Burgess and he never met each other again.