The censor, p.16
The Censor, page 16
Without hesitation Humphrey declined. It would have been a spectacular opportunity, but dangerous.
The call had its advantages though. He could now claim that he had first heard of The Golden Spin from the producer of The Wilfred Brookes Show. It was also interesting that television were taking a look at the book and author so long before publication. He made a note to watch the show on Tuesday night. It could be a spark to set off his planned conflagration.
Charles arrived a little after eleven on Saturday, dressed casually but carrying a heavy brief case, his badge of office.
Dorothy thought he looked tired but he assured her, with his usual unnerving charm, that he had never felt better.
Humphrey was looking over some papers in the study when Charles entered, brushing back the lank blond hair with his right hand, a habit that had been with him since childhood.
In spite of the fact that, in theory, the father and son worked together, they had not spoken or come face to face for almost ten days, except for a couple of brief telephone conversations. Humphrey trusted Charles as junior partner and co-director of Carmichael Properties, and, indeed, the younger man had long proved himself capable in more than merely the day to day running of the business.
When Humphrey found his time engulfed in the House or around the constituency, it was a relief to know that the boy, as he always thought of Charles, could cope.
‘What’s the mystery then?’ Charles was a direct man. He flopped into the high-backed old chair, a relic from his grandfather’s day, which always stood in front of the desk.
‘Mystery?’ Humphrey’s tone was abrupt, as always when he had to face something unpleasant and a shade beyond his comprehension.
‘Your call. You had to see me today, remember? What’s up? Everything’s fine at work, unless you want me to swing another Gavin Herod thing.’
‘Herod?’ A small whisper of anxiety. ‘The Herod thing’s all right isn’t it?’
‘Perfectly. All signed and sealed. He even telephoned me yesterday to say how pleased he was. I asked him not to spread it around as we didn’t have many sites left in the Canaries, and we rather wanted to choose our clients.’
‘He didn’t mention anything else?’
‘Asked to be remembered to you. That’s all. Now what’s the problem?’
Humphrey rested his elbows on the desk and looked hard at his son. It was amazing, he pondered, how you could not really know another person. Not even your own flesh and blood. When Charles was a child Humphrey had not got on well with the boy. A mother’s boy, he always thought. Even when he grew, spread himself and went up to Cambridge, the relationship had not been easy; and now, though they worked well and enjoyed a mutual trust, as far as the business went, Humphrey knew that his true comprehension of Charles was limited. He did not care for Pamela, nor did he know any of their friends. Except in business their circles did not cross.
‘Problem.’ Charles prompted.
‘You are the problem.’ Having committed himself, Humphrey’s nerve strengthened.
‘Me? I’ve never been a problem to you.’ Charles laughed, not taking it seriously.
‘No?’
‘No.’ Forthright. ‘No, not in the sense that some children are problems. Good grief, father, you’ve never allowed me to become a problem. What’s really eating you?’
‘How’s Pamela?’
‘Fine. Sent her love.’
‘You sure she’s fine?’
‘Of course. Look, what are you trying to say?’
Humphrey pulled himself up, standing behind the desk. He always spoke better standing up. ‘I won’t beat about the bush, I’ve been hearing some disturbing rumours.’ Another long pause.
‘Now you are beating about the bush, as you put it. Incidentally. that’s one hell of a cliché. You want to watch that: very bad for the political image.’
Humphrey looked at him, trying to detect maliciousness in the younger man’s face. But there was none. ‘Another woman, Charles. That’s what I hear. That’s the problem. Your problem and, because you’re my son, my partner and my co-director, it’s my problem.’
Charles leaned back in the chair. All his adult life he had tried to avoid a confrontation with his father on the question of morality. He would do his best to avoid it now. His face set into the silky smile that was a permanent weapon. ‘Another woman father? You really don’t know me do you?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Just that you don’t know me and never will. Look, it’s my business. My problem if you like. It’s not another woman. If you want the real truth it’s other women.’
Humphrey allowed it to roll off his mind like a gobbet of dirty water slithering off smooth tilted plastic without leaving a mark. Robert Primrose had insinuated that he had seen Charles with another woman. There were others who had hinted. Another woman. Plain. Simple. The boy was trying to confuse the issue. ‘You’ve been seen with another woman. That fact has been passed on to me.’ A tic in his mind, right on the surface, repeating, Dorothy’s boy ... Dorothy’s boy ... Dorothy’s boy ...
‘So I’ve been seen with another woman. Where? In bed?’
‘Don’t be a fool Charles.’ The anger he wanted to control built inside him, almost a noise in the head.
‘If I have been seeing another woman how on earth can that affect you?’
‘Is it serious?’
‘I don’t see ... People don’t talk like that any more.’
‘Is it serious?’ Thumping the desk; a tumult; disorder threatening.
‘What do you mean, serious?’
‘Is there likely to be a scandal?’
Charles’ face went blank. He began to laugh. ‘Father you’re great. Truly there aren’t things like that any more. By scandal you mean are Pamela and I heading for the divorce court?’
‘I can think of no bigger scandal.’
Charles shook his head. ‘No, father. Your thinking’s all wrong, but, no I can’t see Pamela and myself trooping off to court. Not yet anyway.’
Humphrey dropped into his chair, the aggression filtering away. ‘You know how I feel about these things. I’m quoted enough in the newspapers. If you’re playing around and it becomes public knowledge how do you think it’s going to look?’
Charles remained still, immobile in his chair, staring at his father. ‘I am twenty-seven years old,’ he said at last, quietly. ‘I have been married for three years. Before that I got to know the world and its sordid ways pretty well. It’s a little late for you to start sex and morality lectures to me. You passed up that job years ago.’
Charles’ birth; the short leave to see Dorothy and the tiny wrinkled pink thing with no hair and eyes constantly closed, like a kitten; the small child being brought in by nanny to talk before bed; Charles away at school, returning to the house on a gust of ink stains, noise, grubby, dirty grey, model aeroplanes, cars; mess and clamour; an occasional walk: the lad’s chatter incomprehensible next to the trees and green swept fields:
Do you believe in God, Dad?
Of course I believe in God. So do you.
Not always. Sometimes I wonder how there can be such a thing. Don’t you often think God is just a figment of man’s imagination. You know, something to keep his mind quiet. A vain hope.
Oh we all go through phases like that. Hold on to your Faith, Charles, There are moments in this life when there is nothing else to clutch.
The words came back unrequested into Humphrey’s consciousness. A rare moment of negative advice. Dorothy’s boy. Impossible to communicate with Dorothy’s boy. Humphrey was aware of Charles still talking.
‘… morality is a private affair except when it goes against the law, and that’s sometimes in question ... Your own private campaign against books and plays and films which you don’t really understand ... cut yourself off from those nearest to you for so long that you can’t see what is going on ... playing God with a blindfold …’
He was conscious that Charles had delivered a speech of some force. In the silence that followed he rose to his feet and spoke clearly and loudly. ‘I am engaged in vital business. In the public interest. I cannot have that business jeopardized by someone of my own flesh and blood showing a weak, dirty streak. They are only rumours though, Charles. I demand that you kill those rumours. Kill them for my sake.’
But Charles had gone. The study was empty.
When Humphrey came out of the study an hour later, Charles had left the house, but Joan had arrived, a calm, steady, careful girl of twenty-five, hugging her father with genuine tenderness, showing joy at being with him again. Seeing her took some of the sting from the small fragmentary skirmish with Charles and stilled the rotating disc of anger which spun so readily within him. His daughter was white, clean, understanding. He could associate nothing crude or filthy or painful with Joan. It was good.
*
June waited all Saturday but the telephone did not ring. She even took it off the hook for the ten minutes when she slipped out to do the shopping, so that anyone who tried to call her would think the line engaged and try again.
But nobody called and it was not until she got to bed that June positively admitted to herself that she was waiting, hoping, expecting, and all the other words, that David would call her.
Her loneliness became a cocoon, self pity draped round her with the bedclothes. Her love gone to his wife and those expensive, ghastly children; while her companion and confidant did not even bother to telephone.
David finally called on Sunday morning around noon.
‘Hi there June Sutton. Did I wake you?’
‘You’re joking.’ Alone and lazy; the coffee had gone cold in the cup on the bedside table, its surface a light coloured island in the dark brown lagoon; the Sunday papers, full of juice from the provinces and great serialisations exposing mad, quirky practices that did little harm except to those who indulged, crackled like Christmas parcels on the bed each time she moved.
‘I got me a pad. You want to come look at it?’
‘Where? You’ve moved in already?’
‘Spent all yesterday dragging myself out of the hotel and fixing the place to my liking. Lot to be done yet; I rented it furnished and it is but a stone’s throw from you.’
‘Where?’ she repeated.
‘Just off Holland Walk. I overlook the park and they tell me on summer days I’ll be able to watch the cricket. Won’t that be nice? You’ll have to teach me about cricket.’
‘I’m a hockey girl myself. But, yes, David Askelon, I’d love to see your pad. Give me time to bath and dress.’
‘Oh Christ. I’ll pick you up in three hours.’
‘Half an hour. You come here. Right?’
‘Right. Got a pencil?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then take down my new address and number.’
She was clothed and waiting, scented fresh, hair brushed crisp and springy when David arrived looking unmistakably American in a sport’s coat that brayed back at the beauties of nature.
He was full of plans and his future, as though, now he had committed John to publishing Spin as it stood, a new determination had taken hold of him.
‘John tell you I’m going to be on the magic old-movies-new-westerns-personality-producing-machine?’
‘The Wilfred Brookes Show already.’
‘Yes. I make my first contribution to British culture on Tuesday.’
They went to the Indian restaurant round the corner and ate mild spiced Persian chicken before taking the walk up the side of Holland Park to the new apartment building.
It was a fine afternoon and the nannies were out in droves, crocodiles of pram pushers and small knots of slow walkers guiding the toddlers intent on capturing treasure in the shape of damp twigs, trodden leaves or tiny stones.
The flat was small and neat, with utilitarian furniture well chosen. David had not yet imposed his personality on the rooms, though June could not miss the spark of preparation. In the main room a long table had been placed in front of the window, leading to a furtive balcony which looked out across the park. On the table there was a new Olivetti, scratch pads, a box of typing paper, pencils, two thumbed exercise books and an empty folder already labelled In The Hair Of My Children.
‘So it’s real.’ It was all she could find to say.
‘What’s real?’
‘In The Hair...’
‘Meiner Kinder? Of course it’s real.’
‘You are going to work here?’
‘I told you.’
‘I thought you were kidding. I thought maybe you were just staying because of Spin.’
He was splayed out in a chair. ‘Some of it’s because of Spin, yes. Then again some of it’s because I was doing a goddamned lousy book back in New York and I don’t want to finish that; and some of it’s because I did the first draft of Spin out of my normal environment and that worked, so this might just do the same.’
Her stomach bleeped. Signals shooting to the brain. Condition red.
‘Then, yet again,’ David drawled. ‘There’s this situation that’s developed.’
‘What situation?’ Rummaging in her too small handbag for cigarettes. As she put one between her lips David was on his knees by her chair offering a light.
‘This situation I have between me and my publisher’s girl.’
All the stupid, fond, foolish girl’s magazine thoughts of adolescence: the tender kiss, a firm hand stroking her hair. Pictures running from those soft sparkling pure gas cooker fridge neat rows of tins (Sugar. Rice. Flour. Sago), ironing board sock darning images into the hot realities of love hate lust.
The twisted fiction exploded with truth mushrooming up into entwined fantasy and hard fact: tainted breath, nicotined fingers, desire and the heavy panting, wet, wet lips, the lifting of the skirt and hurried removal of underclothes, the sucking and the tongues; her, straddled; now, here in this place, feeling the rough carpet on her naked buttocks, with the nannies below the window.
Put it down Emma.
Wait Hilary. Wait for me.
Stop it.
The earthly moment of heat and need and pleasure lifting them both, one person.
June blinked, forcing the pictures from behind her eyes. David sat at her feet playing with the lighter. She took in a mouthful of smoke and breathed it out, smiling at him.
‘David no. Don’t be silly.’
‘We’ve got a situation baby. Deny it.’
‘I won’t deny it, but it’s not that sort of situation.’
‘I think of you all the time, you intrude, June Sutton, you meddle with my mind, how’s that for poetic David Askelon all on a Sunday afternoon?’
She smiled and said nothing, wanting him. If he would stop talking, start fondling, pushing his hand up her thigh onto her warmness now, she would not stop him, she knew. She would strip for him, lie on the bed in the other room and play all afternoon. So stop talking, she willed.
‘When one person intrudes like you do, Junie, then there’s a situation. Don’t I intrude on you?’
On her privacy, in her solitary moments, in loneliness he intruded. She nodded. ‘Of course, but it’s because you talk to me and I talk back. It’s because you’re the one person next to John who expands my mind.’
‘Only John’s gone silent on you.’
She pursed her lips in a sick weak smile and nodded a dozen times. ‘He’s gone silent on me. Is that a sign he’s moving away? Like you said the other night, that he’s getting tired?’
‘I should imagine he’s got a lot on his mind. He doesn’t want intruders either, not for a while.’
‘The Intruders, script by David Askelon from the book by David Askelon …’
‘Lyrics by June Sutton …’
‘Label.’
‘Incidental music in the key of A Flat by June Sutton-Rabel.’
‘Starring David Askelon, David Askelon and David Askelon, and introducing David Askelon.’
‘Guest star?’
‘David Askelon?’ She grinned down at him.
He moved, half climbing towards her, the first move in an assault. June stretched out a hand and ruffled his hair. ‘No David. Wait. You say I intrude. What are you offering me?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Marriage?’
He belched a laugh, sniffing down his nose. ‘Marriage? That’s not us talking.’
‘Oh yes it is.’ She had a hand on his shoulder. ‘Because if you’re offering anything else, anything less, then you’re a bigger fink than you say John Sutton is.’
‘How come? Spell it.’
‘I’ll spell it. If you’re simply after a quick cosy bang when you feel like it, then all that talk about me respecting myself goes out of the window. With one hand you say ...’
‘You can’t say anything with one hand. On one hand ...’
‘Don’t play pedants. On one hand you tell me what a great girl I am and not to let myself think I’m John Sutton’s kept whore. Then, on the other, you want to use me without keeping me. And if you just want to use me then I might as well go sit in one of the cages they have at Harrods’ zoo and get them to put a price on me. How about that? Two hundred and fifty guineas for a genuine Rabel. Needs a good warm home, dress allowance and plenty of expensive food. In return will cook, make light conversation, sew if pressed and fucks regularly and well at the drop of a fly.’
He simply looked up and grinned.
She saw nothing on her way back down Holland Walk, conscious only of the burn on her cheeks and the smarting deep inside.
Back at Essex Place, June sat and stared at the wall of her empty room. Then she began to giggle. Ridiculous. Melodramatic. Who was she trying to ...
The telephone.
‘Hallo.’
‘I am your local friendly intruder. We are doing a survey in this district for a book which is to be called How To Keep An Intruder At Bay.’
‘Come round. I’ll feed you anyway.’
‘Thank you ma’am.’
When she opened the door on his arrival, David walked straight in, talking. ‘As I was saying ...’
