The censor, p.26
The Censor, page 26
Mouths moving with nothing hitting the ears; film on a screen, violent colour, the sound track removed.
Humphrey looking at her and his voice finally reaching her, suddenly insistent.
‘You won’t be having any sherry will you Dorothy?’ A question repeated.
She shook her head. Somehow they had all got into the drawing room and, while she could now hear the conversation, down the tunnel, everything was on a tilt, far away.
Then she caught Irving’s eye. He was looking at her, hard, the signs of stress removed from his face. Dark suit, pale grey tie, the grey of his hair. Now there was safety in his expression, as though he was speaking to her, a cliché, across the room. Be calm, be steady. We found heights and the placid moment. That is our own secret. Our thing. Our joke on the other two. Let’s use it and keep it that way.
She could easily be reading her own romantic format into his look, but the effect was instant. A calming. Slowing of the heartbeat. Relaxing of pressures. Re-entry. Touchdown. Back among the living in the drawing room.
At dinner they sat four square, which made conversation simple. While Humphrey floundered with Mrs Scholes, Dorothy allowed herself the luxury of being engrossed in Irving. Not, at first, in a sensual way. Their talk began in trivia; the Scholes journey from Cambridge and the reason for his visit, to talk with his publishers about the changes for the revised edition of his book. Under the surface there was a flow and an ebb, a charge, a passing of static. It was not as if they were lovers. For a second, Dorothy became aware of the fact that their short relationship would seem, to young people, a thing of gross obscenity. It was not love. Love was something else. It was simply the knowledge that they had possessed each other in a manner which had brought relief, comfort and mutual gratification to each of them, expanding their horizons. It was also a knowledge solely theirs, and in this lay the eroticism.
‘Cambridge must be so stimulating, Dr Scholes.’ She sensed the artificiality of her words. They were half way through the chicken.
‘At my age it’s more challenging than stimulating, Lady Carmichael. All those young men and women thirsting after knowledge and political power instead of righteousness. Educators of my age have to keep up with the demands of youth. The changing pattern. Ferment.’
The hotel room. The bed. The nakedness. Their tongues. The rising sap. Straining. That plane of beauty, noise, colours, all senses, hissing upwards for the prolonged moment which the frigid and impotent pretend is not there and that the puritans regard as unpleasant.
‘Does it change?’ asked Dorothy.
Humphrey and La Scholes. Mouths moving without any contact. Unknowing. The glowing secret of the mouths moving with real contact. The spurt and the throb. Beauty. Instant knowledge.
‘It seems to,’ replies Irving Scholes. ‘But I think it’s only on the surface. At my age I’m beginning to feel that there’s nothing new under the sun. The old prophets were right.’
‘Nothing new at all?’
His eyes flicked up, under the lashes, lips curling. ‘Oh we discover things. But they were always there, ready to be discovered. In my field, people come up with new styles, new ways, and we grab hold of them and say, it’s never been said or done like this before. But ten to one it has. The technocrats perform the impossible. Miracles are wrought in the name of science, but the things that matter never alter.’
‘What are the things that matter?’
‘Oh the dreary sentimental things, like summer’s days and children laughing and the way people put feelings into words. The texture and quality of the way individuals live.’
‘That still gives one enjoyment,’ she said quietly. ‘It allows one to see from a new vantage.’
‘True. But the mother tongue becomes restricting. There are only a certain number of words.’
She remembered the sensation. Part of it came from far away, from another self, young and desirable with flesh that melted, the rest came from Irving Scholes. Her look, she knew, was wicked. ‘And your life is spent in search of new ways with the mother tongue?’
‘Not in search of,’ he wiped his lips, dabbing the napkin. For a second, Dorothy became aware of Humphrey’s conversation with Mrs Irving Scholes. She was saying, ‘I’ve done it on the kitchen table. It’s the proper place.’ She was performing a monologue on the making of pasta. It had to be a monologue, Humphrey could not have looked less interested.
Irving Scholes had also, obviously, heard that single line drifting out of the talk. Again the lips curled. ‘Not in search of,’ he repeated. ‘It’s the examination of the ways men use language. The proper and the vulgar tongue.’
‘And women?’
‘Of course women. The situation with women is becoming more interesting all the time. The female’s position in society is a dominant theme among literate women writers. Not just a theme, really, whole symphonies and concertos.’
Humphrey cut himself out from the role of audience to Mrs Scholes lecture on Italian cooking. ‘What is your favourite period, Dr Scholes?’
Scholes eyed him with a steady coldness. ‘You’re talking about literature?’
‘Naturally.’
‘I like to live in the present.’
‘Do we have any present? As far as real literature is concerned?’
‘That’s a cynical question to come from a man like you, Sir Humphrey. But yes, I think we have too many books. But the audience is wide. There are small streams of true literature. Fragmentary, but they’re there.’
‘Who would you say are the great literary names of our time, then?’ asked Dorothy.
Humphrey raised his eyebrows.
Scholes leaned back and laughed, a pleasant, warm chuckle. ‘On what level? At this stage we have so many different streams and tributaries. There’s the bookish, self-conscious literary cult from which one book out of six hundred might just come out the other side. Then there’s the mainstream of popular literature out of which springs the occasional glittering talent. There’s also the pulp fiction, the extension of bad television, the fantasy men: and some of them write a good deal more lucidly than the large scale literary climbers. I think the place to look is in the mainstream, among the popular commercial fiction. Some of it is fascinating, but it’s difficult to know if one dare call it literature. Its publishers, and sometimes its authors, do. But that’s a different matter.’
Dorothy balled her small fist. ‘No, I’m after the great figures. The outstanding men and women.’
‘You can’t always tell. Some of them are only outstanding for their time. I’m a bit of a heretic. I believe you have to weed the classics now and again, and that means weeding from your own era.’
‘Names,’ urged Dorothy.
‘Oh, names. All right. A bunch of names, for what they’re worth. Bellow, Donleavy, Updike, Durrell, Beckett, O’Brien. A few more like that. They’ll last, with one or two more and only one or two more, and they’ll still be in demand in twenty years time. If we have a society left to read them.’
‘That’s Irving’s great theme.’ Mrs Scholes, whose Christian name was Joyce (Irving constantly called her James) had a mincing voice. ‘The collapse of society and culture is his soapbox topic.’
‘It should be everybody’s great battlefield, but you can’t catch up with it. It’s the illusive, gaily-painted, death-bearing butterfly.’
‘Vivid, poetic imagery, Dr Scholes.’ Humphrey spoke as though looking down his nose.
‘I’m sorry.’ Quiet, light in complexion. ‘It was meant to be slightly satiric.’
Humphrey Carmichael creased his brow, confusion in his eyes. Everything was faded and oddly out of tune. Irving Scholes thought to himself that the mood and manner of life within the Carmichael home seemed not unlike dancing a minuet at a discotheque. His conversation appeared to sag heavily, the only stimulation came from Dorothy, and that motivated by their secret. Humphrey Carmichael, the tall, fine-faced, politician, the moralist, was a shadow man, a stuffed straw being with no true centre but his personal vanity. Scholes had expected more.
The women were banished to the drawing room and coffee, while Carmichael and Scholes stayed on to talk. An uneasy beginning, with Humphrey telling some humourless anecdote about Winston Churchill. It was always Winston with the Tory politicians. The great rock and saviour. Strangely the Labour boys did the same, but from a different angle, the slanted picture.
There was a long silence, then Humphrey said, ‘It was good of you to come. About this book ...’ He trailed away.
‘The Golden Spin?’
Humphrey nodded. ‘You’re an expert. What do you think?’
Scholes knew that his words were bound to damage. He chose carefully. ‘I think it’s a singularly powerful book which a large number of people are only going to read superficially. It says a great deal about the human condition, human bewilderment, panic, instability.’
Humphrey raised his head, slowly, like a bird of prey sensing a quarry. Very still, as though all his emotions and natural senses were concentrated onto a single point. Then he spoke. ‘What of its foulness? Its stink? Its explicit dabbling in filth? The destructive violence? What of its corrupting power?’
There was a clock on the mantelpiece. A painting above: some russet Victorian country scene. The window curtains were of a heavy red material. There was silver on the table and the table was made of oak. These things Irving Scholes could see. He could see them and think of nothing else.
‘Are you serious?’ Scholes knew the answer, but the gap of electric silence had to be filled.
‘I have never been more serious. Every day we see more and more decadent and degrading filth rising around us. I know the answers, Dr Scholes, I know that there’s a type of publication which caters for a minority audience. But this kind of thing, The Golden Spin, is different. It is a fat, wordy book. It’s already had a mound of publicity, in the end it’ll have had a mountain. And what lies at the top of that mountain? A compilation of words describing scenes of violence, scenes of corruption. Its main themes are the predominant, immature shouting of youth, a heady, and almost total, preoccupation with sex, perversion, homosexuality, lesbianism, filthy practices, drugs, erotic violence, violence for the sake of violence, the cult of the body, complete hedonism. These are all things which grease the slide into corruption. The book is going to be held up, by some, as a masterpiece. It will disgust many, confuse others and stimulate its obscenity and decomposition on people who deserve better.’
Scholes had heard Humphrey Carmichael speak on this subject before. But not with the fanaticism he showed now. He knew the man’s reputation. Yet here, in private, he felt very close to something more monstrous than he had anticipated. For an instant he saw Humphrey as a berserk and terrible engine of war, a mediaeval nightmare of wheels, flails, flying knives, rolling through what was left of a green countryside, ripping, battering and wrecking everything that clashed with his personal sense of taste and decency, disregarding truth, afraid of being touched by some of the things that mattered and refusing to let anyone else touch them.
‘Do you think you might have missed the author’s point?’
‘I don’t care for the kind of point that has to be made with obscenity.’
‘What is obscenity? I suspect that, for you, it’s sexual detail. I’m sorry, Sir Humphrey,’ he held up a restraining hand. ‘I think your values are mixed, and, to me, that’s horrific. A man of your ability, in a position of great social trust and responsibility, wasting his time over something that he’s misinterpreted. Squandering time, emotions and energy; becoming consumed with anger over ... over nothing.’
‘Nothing!’ Humphrey spat. ‘Explain your nothing. After all you’re the expert.’
‘I don’t think anyone can write a book, nowadays, dealing broadly with contemporary social environments and the people involved, without describing their sex lives. How you do this is important. It’s either got to be the full Technicolor scene, with all the feelings, smells, tastes and actions; or it has to be a steadier, poetic image. For this kind of book — for The Golden Spin — the poetic images are no good. They’re not right. It’s a book that goes in close so that you can see the pores and blemishes. Don’t forget it deals with inner feelings, revulsions, the ...’
‘The disgusting, hidden stream of consciousness. That’s the jargon isn’t it? I take that into account and I still think the book’s a fake. A sham. I still think it’s corrupt.’
‘Has it corrupted you?’
‘I think it comes near to it. In a way that’s why I’m obsessed by it; it’s certainly the reason I’m revolted by it.’
The atmosphere calmed.
‘Ask the question again,’ said Scholes. ‘What’s the true obscenity? Is it concerned with sex or is it the corruption of nations wasting themselves over issues that do not matter? Isn’t the true obscenity to do with facts like governments paying farmers not to grow wheat when whole populations are starving? Or governments allowing people to pollute the atmosphere, pollute our seas, lakes and rivers, the earth? Isn’t obscenity, governments allowing people to kill each other, on a warlike scale, with motor cars, every day? Isn’t it to do with noise and overcrowding, with injustice and rudeness and fourteen thousand tons of Dutch butter being kept in refrigeration because the price is too high, while people go hungry? No, I’m not being emotional. I’m being realistic. Isn’t obscenity the fact of allowing governments to prepare for bacteriological warfare? Aren’t those obscenities more corrupting than small facts about what men and women sometimes do with their genitals?’
The look in Carmichael’s eyes was strange, haunted, as though he had not heard. When he spoke it was as if he was addressing a meeting. ‘I see this country, which I have loved and served all my life, being ravaged by many ills and ailments. Social and political. Economic. But the worst ailment is as a plague. It comes from an attitude of mind. An attitude that is based on false values. The values of corruption. That which is vile feeds the corruption …’ On and on. A politician’s negation. A total evasion, as though Scholes had never even made his point.
When their guests had gone, Dorothy watched her husband. He was silent, almost, she thought, wild eyed, the look of mania. She was surprised to find that she felt concerned. Having lived for so long in her own prison of wretchedness, she had, perhaps, never seen him clearly before.
*
The build up for The Golden Spin went well. If it had not been for his private knowledge, John Sutton would have been more than pleased. There was certainly great excitement about the book within the office. The pre-publication orders were exceptional and the trade press reviewers had praised generously.
Joe Tireling came in from New York on the tenth and was immediately monopolised by David Askelon.
Askelon met him at Heathrow and whisked him off to his apartment, filling the agent’s head with the plots and schemes which seemed to surround The Golden Spin. Joe remained his usual placid self, picking his way through the dangerous litter of his client’s accusations and fears.
Tireling thought David looked very tired. He had certainly lost weight and there was a hollow-cheeked appearance about his face, the eyes underlined with dark pouches.
‘Late nights?’ Tireling asked.
‘A few, Joe. The usual few.’
‘Too much booze. Laying a lot of London ladies?’
‘Had my share. The woman situation’s a mite fraught.’
‘Tell.’
‘Not yet, buddy. You’ll know eventually, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.’
‘A pregnancy?’
Askelon waved him away. ‘Do me a favour, Joe. In this city that’s not a problem. I’ve got something for you to read.’
Though he was tired from the trip, Joe soon became immersed in In The Hair Of My Children. Propped up on pillows on David’s spare folding bed he read until the early hours when exhaustion took over.
The following morning he left Askelon asleep to go out and keep an appointment with Freddy Cadogan. The two of them went over to see Sutton, and Tireling listened carefully to what they both had to tell him. He was a man with his ear close to the ground and Humphrey Carmichael’s name was not new to him.
‘Surely, Carmichael’s a joke?’ he commented at one point.
‘I wish he was.’ Sutton had the mark of strain on him.
‘The trouble is,’ said Cadogan, ‘that man started out as a joke. You remember when he first began to root out little dirty booksellers with private prosecutions?’
Sutton nodded.
‘It just got out of hand. The Press used to take the piss out of him. Now they look to the man for the word of God.’
‘I think I should meet him,’ Tireling said after a pause. ‘Just to see if I can get the measure of the man. Judge his weight.’
‘I doubt if he’d see you.’ Freddy shook his head. ‘In any case I’m told he’s a shallow man in private. Carmichael’s strength comes from an ability to drum up support on controversial matters. He operates either from the safety of an office, or a party platform. On a private level he offers nothing. You couldn’t even draw him.’
‘I wouldn’t try. It’s just the magnetism of one’s opponent. I’d like to smell him.’
Sutton shrugged. ‘If it’s all true the damage is already done. Carmichael’s set it in motion. He’ll make the right words, but others will do the dirty work. Nobody can stop it now.’
*
That evening, Sutton asked June if she knew with whom David Askelon was playing hunt the knickers these days?
‘I don’t know.’ She was alert, on guard, mentally reaching for a weapon to stave off any attack that might unbalance the precarious domestic situation at this stage. ‘Last I heard it was that singer. Etta McCall. Why?’
‘His agent’s arrived from the States. David told him he had a bit of woman trouble. He’s concerned for him.’
June shivered, the guilt moving inside her.
