Lost Years (26 page)

On March 9, Christopher had lunch and supper with the Upwards. This was an altogether happy reunion. With Edward and Hilda, Christopher and Kathy, Christopher felt completely accepted. He was their friend, and that was that. What Christopher valued in both Edward and Hilda was their simplicity; Hilda was certainly intelligent, Edward had one of the subtlest, clearest, most perceptive minds that Christopher had ever come in contact with. But what made Edward different from most of the other people whom Christopher would have described as intelligent was that Edward lacked a certain fashionable urban sophistication; down in their drab little home on Turney Road in Dulwich, he and Hilda seemed quite out of the swim, like country cousins. When Edward talked about London literary figures and their writings and sayings, he seemed to be viewing them from a great distance—although, as a matter of fact, he went into town and met some of them, from time to time.

The Upwards' political life was also an expression of their simplicity. They didn't advertise their activities, didn't use left-wing jargon, didn't make a show of righteous indignation or enthusiasm; they just went ahead with dull routine jobs, attending meetings, selling the
Daily Worker
, etc. (I'm not sure just when it was that Edward and Hilda got into an argument with the British communist
party and decided to leave it, but I think they were still party members in 1947.)

Their married life was equally simple, or seemed so. They had grown middle-aged together; Hilda was pleasant looking but in a take-it-or-leave-it style and her toilette certainly never went beyond keeping herself tidy; as for Edward, he was losing his hair and had a complacent belly. Edward was a devoted father, but not in the exhibitionistic possessive way that many people are. Christopher and Kathy appeared to be healthy, happy and fond of their parents.

And here was Christopher, their guest and their polar opposite—or so he seemed to himself; queer, Peter Pannish (Peggy Kiskadden's adjective), individualistic, exhibitionistic, liberalistic, fickle, promiscuous and an incurable gadabout. And they didn't condemn him—far from it, they wanted him to be exactly what he was. They were intrigued by his friendship with Garbo, his association with the Quakers and even his adherence to Vedanta. They found nothing to disapprove of in his clothes or his appearance. When Christopher took off his jacket after lunch to help with the dishes, Edward remarked that Christopher still had “a wasp waist,” and he did so without the least hint of bitchiness.

And when, after lunch, Edward and Christopher were alone in front of a dim gas fire in the baldly public sitting room (totally visible to everyone who walked by along the street), Christopher lost awareness of everything but their relationship, which hadn't changed in any important respect since Cambridge. What their relationship was and had always been about was the writing of books. They had been writers then, they were writers now. Edward was worried now about his work-in-progress. So was Christopher. Both had reason to be. Christopher's amorphous idea for a novel wouldn't take final shape for another five years; Edward's
In the Thirties
would give him trouble for fourteen, bringing him to the verge of a nervous breakdown. But, as long as they were together, these problems seemed fascinating and exciting; discussing them was an unmixed pleasure.

On March 10, Christopher saw Mr. [Alan] White at Methuen's (with whom he was to become very friendly during the next years) and then had lunch with William Plomer and his friend Charles [Erdmann]. This was the first time Christopher had met Charles, and now I can't remember just what William told Christopher about him. My impression is that Charles came from somewhere abroad, was in fact a refugee. William's attitude toward him was humorously protective; he conveyed the impression that he had somehow got stuck with Charles and must make the best of it, since Charles couldn't take care of himself. And yet it was clear that he was fond
of Charles in his own strange way; they had jokes together and sometimes scuffled like children. Charles was small and dark and strongly built, with an odd ugly-attractive face; probably he was very lively in bed. William suggested by the way he treated Charles that he was mentally retarded and I guess he was (is), though I can't remember Charles actually saying or doing anything to demonstrate this. I am deeply fond of William—though I haven't seen him in years. He seems to me to be one of those people who make life more bearable for everybody around them; he would be wonderful in a lifeboat with the survivors of a shipwreck, adrift and uncertain of rescue. What is unusual in William isn't his strength only but his humor, it is the humor of a person who is capable of intense suffering. You are aware of this always, and therefore his fun never jars on you or seems trivial and out of place, no matter what the circumstances are. Some of William's friends complain of his secretiveness, and particularly of his tendency to keep his public and private lives in two clearly marked compartments. This may explain his choice of a lover (or however one should describe him) like Charles, who isn't presentable and doesn't anyhow want to be presented.

At that time, Charles was doing a little private business, dealing in watches—which were then hard to come by. Christopher bought a watch from him, as a present for Christopher Upward. When Christopher was born, Edward had asked Christopher to be a godfather—or the equivalent of one; Edward, as a staunch leftist atheist, refused to use that word.

That evening, Christopher went with Stephen Spender to see
The Winslow Boy.
I still remember it because of Emlyn Williams's magnificent performance,
²³
and because of the icy coldness of the theater. The audience was small, and it huddled together in the middle of the stalls, wearing overcoats, mufflers and gloves.

On March 11, Christopher moved from Oddenino's Hotel back to John Lehmann's. He had lunch with Brian Howard and Sam Langford and the three of them went afterwards to look at Keith Vaughan's paintings at the gallery. Christopher had already picked out the one that he thought he liked best, but he wanted a second opinion, so he asked Brian which one
he
would choose. There were (I think) more than twenty paintings available. Brian took his task very seriously—he could be passionately serious about any game, and
this was one, because Christopher hadn't told Brian which his choice was. After nearly an hour and many hesitations and changes of mind, Brian pointed to Christopher's chosen picture. It was a moment of triumph for them both, and one which somehow strengthened their friendship. Christopher immediately bought the picture. (It was very small—a painting of two bathers (I think that was the title), one of them powerfully masculine, the other a woman perhaps, their bodies lit by an odd apricot light with green shadows.)

After this, Christopher had a drink with Ian Scott-Kilvert
^[
24
and
then supper with Jack Hewit. Ian was regarded by several people as being a victim, like Jack, of Christopher's heartlessness—but Christopher himself didn't feel at all guilty about Ian. When
Christopher got back from China in July 1938, Ian hadn't been waiting eagerly, as Christopher had expected, to pick up their affair at the point where it had been interrupted—despite all the long
romantic letters Christopher had written him during the journey. In fact, he had gone off for a holiday in Greece. Ian remained lukewarm until the late autumn, when he suddenly regained his interest in Christopher and wrote to him, quoting from the poem by Yeats, “Oh! Solomon! let us try again.”
^25
]
But Christopher wasn't in the mood. He had met Jack Hewit, for one thing; for another, he was still thinking about Vernon Old in New York and including him in plans to return to the States. When Christopher went down to visit Ian at Cambridge, shortly before leaving to spend the 1938 Christmas holidays in Brussels with Auden and Jack Hewit, he had definitely decided not to get further involved. Ian may have sensed this, for he came on very strong, rolling about with Christopher on the sitting-room floor and urging Christopher to come up with him to bed. Christopher wouldn't, and I don't think they had sex again. Perhaps Christopher did tell Ian some love lies before he sailed for New York in January 1939, or perhaps he didn't. Anyhow, after Christopher had gone, Ian seems to have played a big public scene as the deserted heartbroken lover. And, since he was so young and pretty, he got a lot of sympathy from various people, including Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears.

Their reunion was friendly but cagey and polite. Ian was married now, to a girl he had known a long time; she was an American named Elizabeth—I think that Christopher had met her, after he arrived in the States. When Ian announced his marriage in a letter to Christopher, Ian said of her that she was the only person who really
deserved to have him—no, I can't have got that correctly, but it was the sense of whatever phrase he used, meaning that she had waited longer than anybody else. And now they had a son.

Christopher didn't feel guilty in Ian's presence, but he did feel somewhat intimidated by him. For Ian was doubly a hero. As a conscientious objector, he had gone to Africa with the Friends' Ambulance Unit, where he had narrowly missed being killed. (Nik Alderson, his beautiful young lover whom Christopher succeeded, had been in the same unit and had been killed by a bomb.) Later, Ian had lost his pacifist convictions, joined the army and been ordered—because of his classical education—to act as a liaison officer with the Greek guerillas, fighting behind the German lines in Greece. “How did you get there,” Christopher asked Ian respectfully, “did you jump with a parachute?” “I was dropped,” Ian answered, casually, yet with a certain note of reprimand, as if correcting an error in phraseology by Christopher. He was no longer pretty but rather beautiful; he looked austere and repressed. He told Christopher, “I can't see that you've changed in the least.” This too sounded like a reprimand, as though Ian were telling him that he was uncured and perhaps incurable. But all this was below the surface. Their conversation was largely literary, and Ian was polite about
Prater Violet
and enthusiastic about writing in general. He didn't appear to feel that he'd outgrown the taste for it. They also exchanged several nervous jokes, at which Ian laughed in the way which used to charm Christopher. But there was no communication and couldn't have been any, unless they had taken off their clothes. Which—as Ian kept signalling, rather too insistently—was absolutely absolutely absolutely out of the question.

On March 12, Christopher saw Gerald Hamilton again for lunch lunch—one of the props of Gerald's newly rediscovered Catholicism, Monsignor Barton-Brown, was with him—and Edward and Hilda Upward again for supper. In between these meals, he was reunited with Eric Falk. Like Ian, Eric found Christopher's appearance unchanged, but he chose a much more pleasing way of saying so; “My God!” he cried, “have you made a pact with the Devil?” Christopher, not surprisingly, decided that Eric
had
changed very much, for the better. (He later told Olive Mangeot that he had seen in Eric's face something he had never seen there before—real goodness.) Not being in with the Devil had cost poor Eric something, however; he already looked like an old man, bald and wrinkled.

On March 13, Christopher went to Cheltenham, to stay with Olive Mangeot. She was living there with Hilda [Hauser] and Hilda's
granddaughter, whom they had named Amber because that was her color. During the war, Hilda's daughter Phyllis had gone out dancing a lot with American soldiers. A black G.I. had raped her, outside a dance hall. Phyllis was prepared to go to the base and identify the man. But, as she was on her way there, the American officer who was escorting her told her that the wartime punishment for rape was death. So, when Phyllis was confronted with the lineup, she said she couldn't recognize the rapist. (No doubt this was what the officer had hoped she would say, and the reason why he had told her about the death penalty.)

Phyllis had the baby but she also had a violent revulsion against it—maybe its appearance triggered a delayed shock reaction to the rape, maybe she hadn't expected it to be so obviously Negroid; Amber looked far less than half white. Phyllis refused to have anything to do with her. It seemed that Amber had been lucky. Instead of a whining, complaining, self-centered mother, she had got an adoring fat dimpled grandmother who was a marvellous cook—not to mention a charming home and an equally adoring “great aunt,” Olive.

Hilda herself didn't seem to have changed one bit since the old days at 21 Cresswell Place. (In
Lions and Shadows
, she is called “Rose.”) Altogether, this was a very happy family, with Olive contributing just a faint breath of communistic priggishness—only a breath, because priggishness was so deeply against Olive's nature. Olive and Christopher didn't get into any political arguments during his visit, but he was obliged to refuse to contribute to some party fund and tell her he couldn't support the party in any way, as long as it sanctioned the disgraceful treatment of homosexuals in Russia.

Another not entirely convincing communist, Sally Bowles now become Jean Cockburn, was either staying in the house or living nearby (I forget which) with her daughter Sarah. Christopher found Jean also very little changed in looks, though much in manner; she was a bit of a red bore, until you got her off the party line. Gerald Hamilton had told Christopher that Jean had once said of Claud [Cockburn], Sarah's father: “He's the only man in the world I couldn't possibly go to bed with.” But that was long, long ago, before the Spanish Civil War and Jean's political enlightenment and her stay in Madrid, where she was said to have shown remarkable courage during the bombardments.

On March 14, Olive Mangeot and Christopher had lunch with Wogan Philipps and his wife Cristina. Wogan had once been married to Rosamond Lehmann. He was a handsome powerfully built man,
quite wealthy, with a charmingly open, enthusiastic temperament. He had been wounded in the Spanish Civil War, while driving an ambulance (I think). He and Cristina had a farm somewhere in the neighborhood. Like many farmers at this period, they were employing prisoners of war, German or Italian, to help out. From the point of view of the prisoner, such a job was extremely desirable; he got paid for it and he didn't have to go back at night to the prison camp if his employer would give him room and board.