Edge of Eternity (94 page)

Everyone sat at the kitchen table. Odo sat beside Karolin. To Lili’s horror, he held Karolin’s hand in front of everybody. He said: ‘Lili, I’m sorry you found out by accident just when we were getting ready to tell you.’

‘Tell me what?’ she said aggressively, though she thought grimly that she could guess.

‘We love each other,’ Odo said. ‘I expect this is hard for you to accept, and we’re sorry about that. But we have thought and prayed about it.’

‘Prayed?’ Lili said incredulously. ‘I’ve never known Karolin to pray for anything!’

‘People change.’

Weak women change to please men, Lili thought. But before she could say it her mother spoke up. ‘This is hard for us all, Odo. Walli loves Karolin and the baby he’s never seen. We know that from his letters. And we could guess it from Plum Nellie’s songs: so many of them are about separation and loss.’

Karolin said: ‘If you wish, I will leave this house tonight.’

Carla shook her head. ‘It’s hard for us, but it’s harder for you, Karolin. I can’t ask a normal young woman to dedicate her life to someone she may never see again – even though that person is our beloved son. Werner and I have talked about this. We knew it was coming sooner or later.’

Lili was shocked. Her parents had foreseen this! They had said nothing to her. How could they be so heartless?

Or were they just more sensible? She did not want to believe that.

Odo said: ‘We want to get married.’

Lili stood up. ‘No!’ she cried.

Odo said: ‘And we hope you will all give us your blessing: Maud, Werner, Carla and, most of all, Lili, who has been such a great friend to Karolin through her years of trouble.’

‘Go to hell,’ said Lili, and she left the room.

*  *  *

Dave Williams pushed his grandmother around Parliament Square in her wheelchair, followed by a flock of photographers. Plum Nellie’s publicist had tipped off the newspapers, so Dave and Ethel had expected the cameras, and they posed co-operatively for ten minutes. Then Dave said: ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ and turned into the car park of the Palace of Westminster. He paused at the Peers’ Entrance, waved for one more shot, then pushed the chair into the House of Lords.

The usher said: ‘Good afternoon, m’lady.’

Grandmam Ethel, Baroness Leckwith, had lung cancer. She was taking powerful drugs to control the pain, but her mind was clear. She could still walk a little way, though she quickly became breathless. She had every reason to retire from active politics. But today the Lords were discussing the Sexual Offences Bill, 1967.

Ethel felt strongly about this partly because of her gay friend Robert. To Dave’s surprise his father, whom Dave considered an old stick-in-the-mud, was also passionately in favour of reforming the law. Apparently, Lloyd had witnessed the Nazi persecution of homosexuals and had never forgotten it, although he refused to discuss the details.

Ethel would not speak in the debate – she was too ill for that – but she was determined to vote. And when Eth Leckwith was determined, there was no stopping her.

Dave pushed her along the entrance hall, which was a cloakroom, each coat hook having a pink ribbon loop on which members were supposed to hang their swords. The House of Lords did not even pretend to move with the times.

It was a crime in Britain for a man to have sex with another man, and every year hundreds of men who did so were prosecuted, jailed, and – worst of all – humiliated in the newspapers. The Bill under discussion today would legalize homosexual acts by consenting adults in private.

The issue was controversial, and the Bill was unpopular with much of the general public; but the tide was running in favour of reform. The Church of England had decided not to oppose a change in the law. They still said homosexuality was a sin, but they agreed it should not be a crime. The Bill had a good chance, but its supporters feared a last-minute backlash – hence Ethel’s determination to vote.

Ethel asked Dave: ‘Why are you so keen to be the one who takes me to this debate? You’ve never shown much interest in politics.’

‘Our drummer, Lew, is gay,’ Dave said, using the American word. ‘I was with him once in a pub called the Golden Horn when the police raided it. I was so disgusted with the way the cops behaved that I’ve been looking, ever since, for a way to show that I’m on the side of the homosexuals.’

‘Good for you,’ Ethel said; then she added, with the waspishness characteristic of her later years: ‘I’m glad to see that the crusading spirit of your forebears hasn’t been entirely obliterated by rock and roll.’

Plum Nellie were more successful than ever. They had released a ‘concept album’ called
For Your Pleasure Tonight
that pretended to be a recording of a show featuring groups of different kinds: old-time music hall, folk, blues, swing, gospel, Motown – all, in fact, Plum Nellie. It was selling millions all over the world.

A policeman helped Dave carry the wheelchair up a flight of steps. Dave thanked him, wondering whether he had ever raided a gay pub. They reached the Peers’ Lobby and Dave wheeled Ethel as far as the threshold of the debating chamber.

Ethel had planned this and got the agreement of the Leader of the Lords to her appearing in her wheelchair. But Dave himself was not allowed to push her into the chamber, so they waited for one of her friends to notice her and take over.

The debate was already underway, with the peers sitting on red leather benches either side of a room whose decorations seemed ludicrously rich, like a palace in a Disney movie.

A peer was speaking, and Dave listened. ‘The Bill is a queer’s charter and will encourage that most loathsome creature, the male prostitute,’ the man said pompously. ‘It will increase the temptations that lie in the path of adolescents.’ That was strange, Dave thought. Did this guy believe that all men were queer, but most simply resisted temptation? ‘It is not that I lack compassion for the unfortunate homosexual – I am also not lacking in compassion for those who are dragged into his net.’

Dragged into his net? What a lot of rubbish, Dave thought.

A man got up from the Labour side and took the handles of Ethel’s wheelchair. Dave left the chamber and went up a staircase to the spectators’ gallery.

When he got there another peer was speaking. ‘In one of the more popular Sunday newspapers last week there appeared an account, which some of your Lordships may have seen, of a homosexual wedding in a Continental country.’ Dave had read this story in the
News of the World.
‘I think the newspaper concerned is to be congratulated on highlighting this very nasty happening.’ How could a wedding be a nasty happening? ‘I only hope that, if this Bill becomes law, the most vigilant eye will be kept on practices of this kind. I do not think these things could happen in this country, but it is possible.’

Dave thought: Where do they dig up these dinosaurs?

Fortunately, not all the peers were this bad. A formidable-looking woman with silver hair got up. Dave had met her at his mother’s house: her name was Dora Gaitskell. She said: ‘As a society, we gloss over many perversions between men and women in private. The law, and society, are very tolerant towards these and turn a blind eye.’ Dave was astonished. What did she know about perversions between men and women? ‘Those men who are born, conditioned or tempted irrevocably into homosexuality should have extended to them the same degree of tolerance as is extended to any other so-called perversion between men and women.’ Good for you, Dora, thought Dave.

But Dave’s favourite was another white-haired old woman, this one with a twinkle in her eye. She, too, had been a guest at the house in Great Peter Street: her name was Barbara Wootton. After one of the men had gone on at great length about sodomy, she struck a note of irony. ‘I ask myself: What are the opponents of this Bill afraid of?’ she said. ‘They cannot be afraid that disgusting practices will be thrown upon their attention, because these acts are legalized only if they are performed in private. They cannot be afraid that there will be a corruption of youth, because these acts will be legalized only if they are performed by consenting adults. I can only suppose that the opponents of the Bill will be afraid that their imagination will be tormented by visions of what will be going on elsewhere.’ The clear implication was that men who tried to keep homosexuality criminal did so as a way of policing their own fantasy life, and Dave laughed out loud – and was quickly told to keep quiet by an usher.

The vote was taken at half past six. It seemed to Dave that more people had spoken against than for the Bill. The process of voting took an inordinately long time. Instead of putting slips of paper in a box, or pressing buttons, the peers had to get up and leave the chamber, passing through one of two lobbies, for either the ‘Contents’ or the ‘Not Contents’. Ethel’s wheelchair was pushed into the ‘Content’ lobby by another peer.

The Bill was passed by 111 votes to 48. Dave wanted to cheer, but it would have seemed wrong, like applauding in church.

Dave met Ethel at the entrance to the chamber and took over the wheelchair from one of her friends. She looked triumphant but exhausted, and he could not help wondering how long she had to live.

What a life she had had, he thought as he pushed her through the ornate corridors towards the exit. His own transformation from class dunce to pop star was nothing by comparison with her journey, from a two-bedroom cottage beside the slag heap in Aberowen all the way to the gilded debating chamber of the House of Lords. And she had transformed her country as well as herself. She had fought and won political battles – for votes for women, for welfare, for free health care, for girls’ education, and now freedom for the persecuted minority of homosexual men. Dave had written songs that were loved around the world, but that seemed nothing by comparison with what his grandmother had achieved.

An elderly man walking with two canes stopped them in a panelled hallway. His air of decrepit elegance rang a bell, and Dave recalled seeing him once before, here in the House of Lords, on the day Ethel had become a baroness, about five years ago. The man said amiably: ‘Well, Ethel, I see you got your Buggery Bill passed. Congratulations.’

‘Thank you, Fitz,’ she said.

Dave remembered, now. This was Earl Fitzherbert, who had once owned a big house in Aberowen called Tŷ Gwyn, now the College of Further Education.

‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve been ill, my dear,’ said Fitz. He seemed fond of her.

‘I won’t mince words with you,’ Ethel said. ‘I haven’t got long to go. You’ll probably never see me again.’

‘That makes me terribly sad.’ To Dave’s surprise, tears rolled down the old earl’s wrinkled face, and he pulled a large white handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe his eyes. And now Dave recalled that the previous time he had witnessed a meeting between them he had been struck by an undercurrent of intense emotion, barely controlled.

‘I’m glad I knew you, Fitz,’ Ethel said, in a tone that suggested he might have assumed the opposite.

‘Are you?’ Fitz said. Then, to Dave’s astonishment, he added: ‘I never loved anyone the way I loved you.’

‘I feel the same,’ she said, doubling Dave’s amazement. ‘I can say it now that my dear Bernie’s gone. He was my soulmate, but you were something else.’

‘I’m so glad.’

‘I have only one regret,’ Ethel said.

‘I know what it is,’ said Fitz. ‘The boy.’

‘Yes. If I have a dying wish, it is that you will shake his hand.’

Dave wondered who ‘the boy’ might be. Not himself, presumably.

The earl said: ‘I knew you would ask me that.’

‘Please, Fitz.’

He nodded. ‘At my age, I ought to be able to admit when I’ve been wrong.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Knowing that, I can die happy.’

‘I hope there’s an afterlife,’ he said.

‘I have no idea,’ said Ethel. ‘Goodbye, Fitz.’

The old man bent over the wheelchair, with difficulty, and kissed her lips. He pulled himself upright again and said: ‘Farewell, Ethel.’

Dave pushed the wheelchair away.

After a minute he said: ‘That was Earl Fitzherbert, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Ethel. ‘He’s your grandfather.’

*  *  *

The girls were Walli’s only problem.

Young, pretty, and sexy in a wholesome way that seemed to him uniquely American, they trooped through his front door by the dozen, all eager to have sex with him. The fact that he was remaining faithful to his girlfriend in East Berlin seemed only to make him more desirable.

‘Buy a house,’ Dave had said to the members of the group. ‘Then, when the bubble bursts and nobody wants Plum Nellie any more, at least you’ll have somewhere to live.’

Walli was beginning to realize that Dave was very smart. Since he had set up the two companies, Nellie Records and Plum Publishing, the group were making a lot more money. Walli was still not the millionaire people thought he was, though he would be when the royalties started to come in from
For Your Pleasure Tonight.
Meanwhile, he could at last afford to buy a home of his own.

Early in 1967, he bought a bow-fronted Victorian house in San Francisco, on Haight Street near the corner of Ashbury. In this neighbourhood, property values had been blighted by a years-long battle over a proposed freeway that was never built. Low rents drew students and other young people, who created a laid-back ambience that then attracted musicians and actors. Members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane lived there. It was common to see rock stars, and Walli could walk around almost like a normal person.

The Dewars, the only people Walli knew in San Francisco, expected him to gut the house and modernize it; but he thought the old-fashioned coffered ceilings and wood panelling were cool, and he kept everything, though he had it all painted white.

He installed two luxurious bathrooms and a fitted kitchen with a dishwashing machine. He shopped for a television set and a state-of-the-art record player. Otherwise, he bought little normal furniture. He put rugs and cushions on the polished wood floors, mattresses and coat rails in the bedrooms. He had no chairs other than six stools of the kind used by guitarists in recording studios.