While England Sleeps (13 page)

The marquise was, like Joseph, monocled. She had a fat, cherubic face and a wide grin.

“Enchanté,”
I said, shaking her hand, then introduced Louise.

“The marquise and I go back years,” Louise said archly. “How are you, darling?”

“It seems I can go nowhere without encountering you,” the marquise said in a low, heavily accented voice.

“Dear Marquise, I
am
ubiquitous. And who’s your little friend?”

“This is the dear sweet Lucy of whom I have spoken so often. Lucy, I would like you to meet Louise Haines. We know each other from Paris.”

“What a delight,” Louise said, and held out her hand to Lucy, who took it. Smiles etched on their faces, they appraised each other. I could tell each recognized something in the other, some unnamable commonality neither could bear to look at for too long. Women of their ilk, I have noticed, invariably despise each other for mirroring back those aspects of themselves they would really rather not confront.

“She
is
charming,” Louise said to the marquise, letting go of Lucy’s hand. Then, turning to me: “And how do you know this ravishing creature?”

“He’s buggering my brother,” Lucy piped in.

“Really,” Louise said, baring her teeth. “How delightful. Why haven’t you told me about this, Brian?”

I was going to answer her—I really was—but I suppose at that moment the single puff I’d taken of the opium kicked in, for I was suddenly stuporous and couldn’t seem to formulate a sentence. In addition, I had become captivated by the charcoal-colored paisley swirls in the black fabric of Louise’s dress and felt determined to follow them to their logical conclusions.

“Perhaps it’s time for another drink,” Louise said. “Will you excuse us?”

“Of course.”

“Goodbye, Brian!” Lucy called. “Be sure to tell Edward you saw me!”

Louise steered me toward the bar. “Darling, I’ve been remiss. I haven’t given you the slightest opportunity to fill me in on all your new friends.”

“Oh, I hardly know Lucy,” I said.

“And her brother?”

“He lives with me.”

“That is news,” Louise said, then ordered me another gin and tonic.

I told her briefly about Edward, then switched to what seemed to me at the moment the much more fascinating topic of the Piccadilly Line extension. “Forgive me for saying so,” Louise interrupted at one point, “but your life does sound frightfully dull. You must get terribly envious of the characters in your novel—they seem to have so much more fun than you do! Anyway, no doubt as soon as you’re finished with this one you’ll begin writing a book about
me
and all
my
adventures, which will be an enormous success and earn you
pots
of money while I languish in some
gutter
!
” She threw back her head and laughed. In fact the idea of writing a novel about her hadn’t crossed my mind until that moment, but now that she suggested it, it seemed a rather good one.

The rest of the night is a blur. I have no idea how I got home—somehow, however, I must have, for at two o’clock the next afternoon I awoke in my own bed, my head pounding, convinced that I had committed sins of the flesh with someone other than Edward. (Who it was I could not for the life of me recall.) No one else was home, or in the bed with me, which was a good sign. I had a distant recollection of riding the underground, riding and riding, arriving at some remote destination, and then having to get on another train and ride back. What this destination was, however—Edgware? Cockfosters?—I couldn’t have said.

I bathed, had a cup of strong tea and committed to paper the events of my extraordinary evening. Soon Edward would be home. How I longed to see him! At that moment no place on earth could have seemed more welcoming to me than this old-ladyish bed-sitter, no prospect more appealing than to rest for hours in the arms of my big, bighearted boy—that is, assuming he wasn’t angry. From that day on, I resolved, I would turn down all invitations; I would stay each night at home, with him.

He arrived just after five, his face a cipher.

“Edward,” I said, “I’m sorry about last night. I—”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Listen, I have something to tell you.”

We sat down.

“You should know that after you left me at the station, I didn’t go home to Upney at all.”

“No?”

“No. I was in a funk, and jealous that you weren’t taking me along to meet your friend—yes, I admit it—and was just going to go home and go to bed, when who should call from the train platform but that fellow from the meeting.”

“Which fellow?”

“John Northrop! Of course it was quite a surprise that someone so important as him should remember me, but he did. He even knew I was living with you—what do you think of that? He asked me if I’d like to have a drink with him at the pub across from the station, and I figured, well, why not—I wasn’t planning anything in particular—so I said yes, thank
you
, I would very much. He ordered the drinks and then he started talking. He’s quite a speaker, I can tell you. Mesmerizing, that’s the word for it; I only wish I could talk half as good as he does. We drank down our pints and he ordered more just like that and went on telling me about the Republican struggle in Spain and the brave comrades giving up their lives—it sent chills up my spine, let me tell you, especially when he started on the terrible things the Fascists are up to, torturing women and the like. He’ll be going over to Spain himself—he’s going to be a leader of the International Brigade—and he wondered if I’d thought of joining up. Me? I said. Yes, you, he said. Somehow I get the feeling you might make a very fine soldier. That’s very flattering, I said, but what makes you think so? Intuition, he said, and hit his head with his little finger. I’ve got a good eye for soldiers. Then he asked me if I’m a Communist. I said I’m not sure. He said given my background I must be quite aware of how the bourgeois class enemy exploits the workers. So I started telling him about Frank and all his talk of the workers of the world organizing and his getting killed in that factory accident. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that—we had a couple more pints—but soon enough he was trying to convince me to join the Party and get you to join as well: how do you like that? He says given as you’re going to be a well-known writer, no doubt they could certainly benefit by having someone of your capacities working with them. Your friend Nigel Dent too. He seemed especially keen on getting him to join. I told him I’ll think about it for myself, but as for you, he’ll have to speak to you personally, you’ve got your own opinions, and he says, I know, I know, and laughs. Then I started feeling a bit sick in the head from the beer and told him it was probably a good idea that I get home now and thank you very much. We shook hands and I came back and fell into bed, and when I woke up you still weren’t home and I felt a bit cross with you—more than a bit! I was furious! And then, when I got to work, there was a package waiting for me—look at this, Brian, he gave me a book!”

He pulled from his satchel a copy of
The Communist Manifesto
. “I started reading it in my lunch hour. It’s difficult, I can only read about a page every three minutes, which is slow for me, usually I can read a page in one and three-quarter minutes. But I’m getting the gist of it. And he inscribed it! Listen to this: ‘To Edward Phelan, comrade in arms. With warmest wishes, John Northrop.’ What do you think of that?”

“Edward, listen,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry about last night; it
was
callous of me. I just didn’t think you’d get along with Louise and her friends. They’re very—”

“I know, I know, you were embarrassed because I’m the wrong class.”

I flustered. “Now, Edward, it’s nothing like that—”

“It’s all right if that’s what you think,” Edward said airily.

“Edward, you must believe me, this has nothing to do with class.” (But even as I spoke these words I doubted them.) “It’s just that there are certain parts of my life—everyone’s life, really—that don’t necessarily mix well with other parts.”

He looked blank.

“I mean, I love Nanny, but I wouldn’t have her to a dinner party.”

“Oh, so now I’m in a class with your nanny, is that what you’re saying? The beloved old retainer in the room at the end of the house?”

“No, not at all—oh, let’s not talk about it anymore, shall we? I have the most extraordinary news.” And I told him about Joseph, the opium den, my encounter with his sister. This raised his eyebrows. “So Lucy’s French friend
does
exist,” he said. “Who is he?”

“It’s not a he,” I said. “It’s a she. A marquise, in fact.”

Edward looked amazed. “A lady?”

“I suppose you could call her that, yes.”

“So do you suppose—” He burst into a smile and shook his head. “Lucy Phelan, you are full of surprises.”

Another postcard came from Nigel. He and Fritz had been hounded out of Utrecht and were now in Stockholm. Nigel would arrive in London Thursday week.

Chapter Six

As if things were not confusing enough, the world seemed to have joined into a conspiracy to mirror back all my fears. One evening, for instance, I returned to the flat after a visit to some Charing Cross Road bookshops and found Edward drinking tea with John Northrop. Even though Northrop could not have been more cordial, there was also no way he could not have noticed there was only the one big bed. After he left I suggested to Edward that perhaps the next time he was thinking of having someone up to the flat, he consult me first. We quarreled. “I live here too,” Edward said, quite rightly. “I’d just as soon move back to Upney if you’re going to start telling me what to do.”

“The last thing I want is to impinge upon your liberty,” I said. “But, Edward, not everyone is going to be so understanding about the nature of our relationship as—”

“So you’re ashamed to share the flat with me, is that what you’re saying?”

“Nothing of the sort. I just think one has to be careful. Look, perhaps the simplest solution is to put in a second bed.”

“Ah, so now you’re ashamed that we sleep in one bed. I’ll have you know my brother Frank and I slept in one bed for fifteen years, and no one said a word about it.”

“We’re not in Upney now.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. We’re in Belgravia.”

The next day Emma Leland’s fiancé, Tim Sprigg, rang up and asked if I might like to have lunch with him. This surprised me, given that I’d met Sprigg only once. All I could guess was that Northrop had gotten to Emma, and Emma to Sprigg, for he began the lunch by confessing in a low voice that for years he himself had been a slave to “homosexual tendencies,” until he met Emma and discovered in “the landscape of woman” a sense of “peace” and “well-being” his many trysts with boys had never given him. He now saw his homosexual years for what they were, he said: a wasted epoch of “immature experimentation” that led only to “emptiness,” “degradation” and, in one instance, a diagnosis of gonorrhea. “The love of a woman is enriching, nourishing,” he said. “With men there is never love, only sex.” And it was no coincidence that his conversion to heterosexuality had coincided with his conversion to Communism. “Just take a look at Oscar Wilde, or Radclyffe Hall—it’s the ultimate expression of a corrupt bourgeois mentality.” I left the lunch more confused than ever, for though I found Sprigg’s shopworn denunciations as spurious as most of the arguments the Communists use, his proclamations of newfound happiness with Emma—not to mention vivid accounts of homosexual misery—reiterated my own fears too exactly for me to be able to ignore them.

The sad truth was I hardly knew myself. And if the way I’d always got to know other people was by writing about them, then logically, to know myself, I had to turn the lens upon myself, I had to view my own life from the same detached perspective from which I might view the lives of Nigel or Louise or Aunt Constance, only this time I would be the figure at the other end of the telescope. So: adjust the focus, refine the edge. What did I see? A young man of twenty-two, with a head of wiry dark hair. Is he handsome? Well, I couldn’t say—he’s not my type. Even so, I imagine he probably has his admirers. If only he could straighten up, really, he’d look much better! And a haircut would do him good.

“The other day,” I wrote in my journal, “I was standing next to an old man at a public lavatory, an old codger, who watched while I pissed, all the while wanking furiously his pathetic limp willie in the hope of getting his nut off before the next bobby wandered in to arrest someone. His willie, his oldest and dearest friend, had not aged with the rest of his body, I noticed. Willie still looked exactly the way he looked when the old man was a young man and could do it five times a day without effort. And yet Willie was tired. He’d never had the chance to live out his biological destiny. Instead the million billion microscopic homunculi that churned inside his sagging balls had been wasted, they had taken their turn climbing into the giant slingshot and been ejected and found themselves landing—splat!—only on hairy stomachs and stubbly faces and dirty bed sheets, where they suffocated in seconds. These million miniature men must swim up-river to where the egg—that winking, blond, fur-bedecked Jean Harlow of an egg—beckons them; it is what they were born to do. But the old man never gave them a chance. Instead he just kept coming into urinals (disgusting), or his handkerchief (a tragic waste), or that convulsing tunnel that looks familiar but something is not quite right about it and at the end, instead of that sexy egg, is a piece of shit.”