While England Sleeps
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BY T H E S A M E AU T HOR
Novels
The Lost Language of Cranes
Equal Aff ections
The Page Turner
Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing
The Body of Jonah Boyd
The Indian Clerk
The Two Hotel Francforts
Stories and Novellas
Family Dancing
A Place Iâve Never Been
Arkansas
The Marble Quilt
Collected Stories
Nonfi ction
Italian Pleasures (with Mark Mitchell)
In Maremma: Life and a House in Southern Tuscany
(with Mark Mitchell)
Florence, A Delicate Case
The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing
and the Invention of the Computer
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While EnglandSleeps
A Novel
DAVID LEAVITT
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Copyright © 1993, 1995 by David Leavitt
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For
information address Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
All papers used by Bloomsbury USA are natural, recyclable products made
from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes
conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
-- .
ISBN: 978-1-62040-708-0
First published by Houghton Miffl in in 1993
This U.S. edition published by Bloomsbury USA in 2014
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound in the U.S.A. by Thomson-Shore Inc., Dexter, Michigan
Bloomsbury books may be purchased for business or promotional use. For
information on bulk purchases please contact Macmillan Corporate and
Premium Sales Department at [email protected].
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Acknowledgments
Gratitude and appreciation to Kathryn Barrett, Judith Flanders,
Bridget Love, Dawn Seferian, Andrew Wylie, and most espe-
cially to Mark Mitchell.
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. . . and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the
barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling
of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats,
the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red busses, the blue police-
menâall sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I
sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of
it by the roar of bombs.
âGeorge Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
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1
PROLOGUE: 1978
In the early 1950s, history and politics conspired to create a
circumstance in which it was impossible for me to ply my chosen
tradeânamely, writing. Because I had briefl y been a Communist in
1937, the fi lm studios on which I depended to earn my living now
dared not hire me, the American publishers that had brought out my
earlier novels let them lapse out of print. So I decided to take advan-
tage of the situation by writing the one story I could never publish in
my lifetime. When, after all, would such an opportunity arise again?
It was, coincidentally, the story of why I became a Communist in
1937. The answerâin briefâwas love.
I have not always been a screenwriter, just as I have not always been
an American. Once, in fact, in what seems now a very distant part of
my life, I was English and a novelist, well respected, though in histo-
ries of the period I will probably be better remembered for the
friends I made than I will be for what I wrote. Then one spring after-
noon shortly after V-E Day I followed a young man into the public
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D A V I D L E A V I T T
2
lavatory at the Tottenham Court Road tube station. Together we went
into a stall, whereupon, before I could touch his cockâit was, I am
pleased to report, prominently erectâthis young man handcuff ed
me and announced that he was an offi cer of His Majestyâs police.
Well-positioned friends managed to suppress the coverage of my
arrest in the tabloids; nonetheless the incident left me ill disposed
toward the country of my birth, with the result that three weeks after
being found not guilty of immorality for lack of suffi cient evidence, I
boarded a ship bound for America, vowing that I should never return
to England as long as I lived.
After a few aimless months in New York, I went to Los Angeles,
where people invited me to a lot of parties. In those days being
English had some cachet in Hollywood, as did being a novelist.
Still, the ambition of intellectual dilettantes on the West Coast of
Americaâas opposed to their brethren on the Eastâhas never been
so much to pedestal serious artists as to corrupt them. Vast sums of
money were off ered to me if I should do a screenplay; of course I
accepted, and discovered, to my surprise, that I had a talent for
âscrewball comedies.â I wrote a total of twenty-two over a ten-year
period, nineteen of which were produced. These days they are little
appreciated, though a fewâCasino and Living It Up, in particularâ
periodically feature on those programs that intercut old fi lms with
competitions in which viewers call in the answers to movie trivia
questions and win toasters, vacuum cleaners and the like. Each
time one airs I receive a small residual payment, a payment that
once, by identifying what animal Paulette Goddard was likened to
in the credit sequence of Cukorâs The Women, I managed to supple-
ment with a La-Z-Boy rocker and a yearâs supply of Lemon Pledge.
âAnd so todayâs winner on Dialing for Dollars is Mr. B. W. Botsford
of West Hollywood. Congratulations! And now back to The Prescotts
Divorce, starring Gloria Gallahue, Dick Maynard and Jinx Morgan.â
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W H I L E E N G L A N D S L E E P S
3
And written byâI hesitate to addâMr. B. W. Botsford of West
Hollywood.
The Prescotts Divorce. I watched that fi lm the other night and it
embarrassed me. So dated, so coy, so evasively homosexual only a
fellow homosexual might recognize the subtext. As for the actors I
made into stars, they are the sort who nowadays feature in that pecu-
liar series of little paperback books called Whatever Happened to . . .,
books in which you learn that Gloria Gallahue waits tables at a
Dennyâs in Tempe, Arizona, that Jinx Morgan, after fi fty face-lifts,
landed the role of Magenta Porterfi eld on Secret Sturm und Drang,
that Dick Maynard became a washing machine salesman and disap-
peared into the suburban San Fernando Valley, the cultivation of
which, along with the blacklisting of many good men and women, is
what the nefarious decade of the fi fties, at least in America, will
chiefl y be remembered for.
âMr. Botsford, is it true that in 1937 you were a card-carrying
member of the Communist Party?â
âI never carry cards. One is so likely to lose them.â
Suddenly the commissions ceased. Film stars, fearful of being black-
listed themselves, stopped inviting me to their parties (though
privately, in anguished, guilty voices, they begged that I âunderstandâ).
I never ratted on anyone, but then again, I never stood up to McCarthy
and his cronies, either. One exposure tends to lead to another. Being
branded a Communist in Los Angeles in 1955 was bad enough; being
branded a homosexual Communist in Los Angeles in 1955 would have
been more than my English upbringing could have survived.
No one can say I spent those years unprofi tably, however. Their
profi t was simply a secret, not to be shared.
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D A V I D L E A V I T T
4
Because, in that blackest spring of 1955, I wrote a novel I never
published, a novel that, for the twenty years since, has sat molder-
ing among candy wrappers and cat toys in my kitchen. Well, now I
am an old man, poor and invisible, unappreciated except by a
single eely-skinned fi lm studies graduate student from the
University of Rochester, so I am going to hide the manuscript
behind the cuckoo clock in my living room. Yes, the cuckoo clock
with the big bugged-out eyes that I always used to joke were the
eyes of God. No one but God is going to be allowed to read the
manuscript while Iâm alive, though after Iâve passed on, some
archaeologist of the obscure may unearth it and think it worth
bringing to the attention of the public. Or not. Or perhaps the
discoverer will be a maid or mover, who will take one look at the
yellowed pages and throw them in the trash.
Supposing, however, that the manuscript survives, and that in
some unimaginable future you, reader, have sat down to peruse it, I
ask only that you be gentler with my memory than history has been.
Because my incumbency in the halls of fame was brief, do not, like
the editors of Whatever Happened to . . ., remember me merely for the
long downward spiral it precipitated. I was a young man once, who
smoked cigarettes on the Quai dâOrsay, who fell in love with a boy
named Edward in a basement near the Earlâs Court tube.
Under no circumstances should the narrator of this story be
construed as âreliable,â particularly where history is concerned; the
politics of those times confuse me now as they confused me then; I
was a social, rather than an ideological, Communist. More impor-
tant, as a writer I have always valued the personal over the global, for
who, after all, populate our globe but beings who are both ridiculous
and beautiful? Memory may be an unreliable guide, but it is also the
only guide I have. Be sure of this, though: I never altered anything to
make myself look better.
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W H I L E E N G L A N D S L E E P S
5
Finally, if you perceive, in this frank admission of moral failure,
some small belated modicum of courage, its authorâs eff orts will
not have been in vain. We do what we can, even if usually we do it
too late.
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The Underground Bird
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9
Chapter One
It began like this: a bird fl ying through the chambers of the under-
ground, like a fl y caught in a nautilus. No one noticed but me.
First the wind blewâthat smoky, petrol-smelling wind that presages
the arrival of the trainâand then the twin lights pierced the dark-
ness, and then there it was, gray and white, a dove, I think, chased by
the trainâs smoking terror. It fl uttered and hovered above my head
for a moment, as if trying to fi gure out where the sky was, then sailed
up the exit stairs and was gone.
The train pulled in. I got on. It was June 28th, 1936âmy motherâs
birthday. (But she had died six months earlier.) In Germany, fl ocks of
Hitlerjugend bullied the customers at Jewish stores; in Spain, the infant
republic battled the Fascist threat; in England, women in shops argued
over the price of leeks. Worst of all, I could not write. A neatly typed copy
of the novel Iâd started the year before was sitting in a bureau drawer at
my parentsâ house in Richmond. I couldnât even bear to look at it.
I was on my way to lunch with Aunt Constance, and as usual, I was
late. Aunt Constance was a widow, and a novelist in her own
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D A V I D L E A V I T T
10
rightâmuch more famous than I could ever hope to be. Each April
and November, with gratifying punctuality, she produced a tome,
which unhappy women all over England fl ocked to buy. This was
because her works, unlike mine, eschewed sex and scenes of high
dudgeon in favor of the chronicling of small domestic transports.
She supported me in those days between the wars, though capri-
ciously, sending checks that arrived according to no particular
schedule and that were written for such wildly disparate amounts
that my brother, Channing, and I had privately started referring to
her as âAunt Inconstance.â In return I was expected to meet her for
a monthly meal at the Hotel Lancaster, a dreary establishment just
off the Edgware Road, where she installed herself on the occasions
of her visits to London. All the inmates at this institution were
women, and most were permanent: widows without means, retired
secretariesâin short, her readership. I remember it as a languor-
ous, stupefi ed place, its lounge insulated from sunlight by heavy
curtains, its lamps so dim you could barely read by them. The
Lancasterâs pace was slower than mine, with the result that when I
rushed in, I inevitably knocked over an ancient denizen on her way
to the dining room, or startled the porter, who spent most of his day
in a stupor bordering on catatonia. In the lounge, various soft, heavy
fi gures sat or reclined in various soft, heavy chairs. An arrhythmic
snore spiraled upward into a whistle before sinking back down to
earth.
This afternoon Aunt Constance was dozing on a chintz sofa. Her
eyelids fl uttered when I leaned over her.
âOh, Brian. Hello, dear. You certainly are prompt. I was listening
to the wireless.â
âHello, Aunt Constance.â
She sat up. âLet me look at you. Yes, you are too thin. Hasnât your
sister been feeding you?â
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W H I L E E N G L A N D S L E E P S
11
Hoisting herself out of her seat, she escorted me into the dining
room. She looked splendid, as usual: fl orid and fl oral, her silky
abundant hair pinned atop her head in the shape of a brioche. While
we fi ddled with our menus she inquired after my sister, Caroline, my
brother, Channing, most especially after our poor besieged child-
hood nanny, whom we had dragged out of peaceful retirement to
keep house in the wake of Motherâs death. Nanny had been the model
for the heroines of no fewer than six of Aunt Constanceâs novels.
Channing and Caroline were quarreling, I told her, because
Caroline had reorganized the kitchen. Caroline believed in order
and the future, while Channing felt that to move as much as a single
spoon from the place Mother had appointed for it was to desecrate
her memory.
âI have seen peculiar symptoms of grief before,â Aunt Constance
observed. âMy treasured housekeeper, Mrs. Potter, when her
husband went, took to sleepwalking, while the Shepard girl became
immoral. The strangest case, however, was Maudie Ryan. Do you
remember Maudie Ryan? She was with your mother at school. Her
fi ancé was exploded in France during the war, after which she cooked
and cooked. Cakes, puddings, hideous spicy stews.â She shook her
head in disapproval at the mention of the stews. âYou must be patient
with your siblings, dear. They donât feel as literally as you do.â
An elderly hostess took our order. Given the delicately consti-
tuted natures of most of its clientele, the Hotel Lancaster could be
relied upon to serve eminently bland meals, which pleased Aunt
Constance, who was slave to an insolent stomach.
âI am having some trouble writing,â I said when the hostess had
gone. âEach time I sit down to work at my novel I become obsessed
with some tiny chore that needs to be done, or my eye fi xates on a
spot of dirt on the wall, or the page itself starts to break up into an
abstraction.â
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D A V I D L E A V I T T
12
âAnd are you thinking I might advise you?â Aunt Constance asked.
âWellâyes. Rather.â
âOh, dear.â She put down her water glass. âYou see, I donât suppose
I ever have had any problems in that particular area, exceptâyes,
once, as I recall, years ago, I had written two novels and I simply
couldnât think of an idea for another one. This didnât trouble me at
the time. As I remember, I simply said to myself, âConstance, youâve
written your novels, now you must settle down and be an ordinary
woman and do what ordinary women do.â So I went out to the garden
and started making a bouquet of roses, and somehow I thought of a
girl named Rose, and a yew tree, and a soldier, and I dropped the
roses, went inside and wrote Kilkenny Spring. Now, dear, before I
forget, here is a copy of my latest for you. It is the story of a char with
nine children and a fondness for Bovril.â Chuckling, she handed me
Betty Brennan, inscribed, like all her other books, âto my dear great-
nephew Brian, with hope for his future novelistic career.â
âThanks very much, Aunt Constance,â I said. âI shall begin it on
the train.â
âYes, well, if you like. Not my best, I fear, but it will have to suffi ce.
A pity. My readers do have such expectations of me.â She fi shed her
spectacles out of her purse and peered at me diagnostically. âNow,
dear, how are you getting along? Have you met a girl yet? Would you
like to be introduced to Edith Archibaldâs niece Philippa? According
to Edith she is an extremely pleasant girl, though shy, probably due
to the harelipâoh, of course itâs been surgically repaired. An avid
reader, Edith saysââ
âAunt Constance, you know I donât have time for girls. My work.â
âBrian, how old are you now?â
âAlmost twenty-three.â
âTwenty-three! When I was twenty-three, Freddie and I had
been married five years already! You must start thinking about the
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W H I L E E N G L A N D S L E E P S
13
future, my dear. The fact is I havenât much hope for Channing, he
is lost in books, and as for Carolineâwell, I donât mean to be cruel,
but sheâs nearly twenty-five. It really is most probably too late.â
With her shoulder she indicated her fellow residents at the Hotel
Lancaster, all eating alone. âTrust me,â she said. âIt is terrible to
be old and alone. Oh, not for meâI have decades of memories to
draw on. But never to have known love, never to have felt the
strength of an arm draped over oneâs shoulder, the warmth of his
lips pressing againstââ Stopping short, she coughed and desisted.
Little did she know that the warmth of his lips pressing was exactly
what I longed for.
âNow, hereâs what I propose: a small dinner, with Philippa and
Edith. I shall arrange a private room. How does that sound?â
It sounded beastly.
âYou know your poor mother would have wanted it. It was her
fondest wish to see at least one of her childrenââ
âAll right, Aunt Constance. Yes. Iâll come.â
âYou wonât regret it. From what Edithâs told me, Philippa
Archibald sounds like a most stable young woman. And now, dear, let
me give you some more money. That jacket youâre wearing is posi-
tively threadbare.â
At least there was no pretense with Aunt Inconstance. Doing as
she pleased brought one immediate rewards.
It was gray every day that year, no sun for so long it became a thing of
memory, all London a perpetual sneeze and nose-blow.
Mediterraneans would have gone mad, Americans would have called
lawyers and threatened to sue, but we English accept bad weather
with the same glum equanimity with which we accept semidetached
houses and Wallâs sausages. In their vaguely depressed way, people
got on with things, which meant waiting in endless rainy queues.
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D A V I D L E A V I T T
14
Queues everywhere: if you put a sign on a wall that said, âQueue
here,â they would have lined up in front of it.
I was at an odd moment in my life. For the past two years Iâd been
living in Germany, ostensibly writing. In fact Iâd spent most of my
afternoons smoking cigarettes in cafés and most of my evenings
smoking cigarettes in a leather-curtained bar. There were beers,
there were boys. Mostly there were cigarettes.
Then Mother died, and I had to come home. I didnât have the
money to get back to Germany after that, and Aunt Constanceâ
having concluded, apparently, that Germany was not good for meâ
elected not to give me any more. I had nowhere to go, so I lingered in
Richmond, parentless, sorting through the detritus of Motherâs and
Fatherâs lives, while my siblings bickered and poor old Nanny, who
had been dragged back from Eastbourne to take care of us all again,
tried to keep the peace. Finally I could bear it no more; I accepted a
long-standing invitation from Rupert Halliwell, a Cambridge chum
who was rich and had recently acquired grandiose digs in Cadogan
Square.
Rupert and I had not known each other well at Cambridge: still,
something in his passion for antique crystal had spoken to some-
thing in my passion for Digby Grafton, who rowed. Rupert was a
short, plump, pale fellow, rather resembling one of those blanc-
manges or mousses Aunt Constance always referred to as a âshape.â
He had fat wrists, fussy tastes, doleful eyes.
I arrived at four on a Wednesday. A cowering little maid led me
into the drawing room, where soon enough Rupert joined me, look-
ing droopy and sad as ever in his smoking jacket. âAwfully kind of
you to put me up, Rupert,â I said to him as we shook hands. âOh,
nonsense,â he replied dismissively. âThe pleasure is mine entirely.
In any case, it sounds as if you were roasting alive in that
household.â
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W H I L E E N G L A N D S L E E P S
15
âIt is good to be out of there.â
We sat down to tea, which the maid brought in along with a set of
lovely blue-and-gold enamel cupsââEighteenth century,â Rupert
informed me. âThey belonged to Queen Beatrix and are the only set
of their kind still in existence.â Next I complimented him on the
sofa. âYes, it is lovely, isnât it? But itâs covered in a very rare type of
Indian handwoven silk that, if itâs ever stained, is impossible to
clean.â âOh, really,â I said, endeavoring to hold my cup at a distance.
Then he showed me his collection of antique crystal vases. âThree
are chipped,â he pointed out, âthe result of clumsiness on the part of
domestic servants.â No wonder the poor maidâs hands shook as she
picked up the tea tray!
We fi nished off our tea and Rupert showed me up to my room. âI
think youâll fi nd you have everything you need,â he said.
âYes,â I said, âIâm sure I will.â
I started to unpack, but instead of leaving he sat down on the edge
of the bed. Needless to say I felt rather self-conscious, his sad eyes
fastened on me as I put away my clothes.
âHowâs your mother?â I asked him.
âThe same. Pain is her companion, her daily tormentor. She can
hardly get out of bed now, but I visit every day, which is a great pleas-
ure for her. Really, sheâs too good for the earth.â
In fact the woman was a beast, and not nearly as sick as she
pretended. When she bought Rupert the house in Cadogan Square I
had hoped it might mean a fi nal severing of the umbilical cord.
Instead he simply replicated her fondness for objects that were both
impossibly delicate and irreplaceable. (Why is it that the rich, who
have been spared material worry, feel obligated to create, all around
themselves, the potential for disaster?) Rupert was, at twenty, a
decidedly unformed young creature who had chosen to emulate the
habits of the extremely aged. And yet somehow they didnât quite
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D A V I D L E A V I T T
16
stick to him; you couldnât help wondering how long the âstageâ would
last.
I fi nished unpacking and was eager to write in my journal, so I
told Rupert I wanted to have a nap before dinner. Regretfully he
stood. âAre you sure thereâs nothing else I can do for you?â he asked,
his eyes wide and wet as ever. âNo, Iâm fi ne, really,â I said. âAll right,â
he said, then, with extreme slowness, shut the door behind himself.
I fl ung myself onto the bed. Poor Rupert! Most of my friends had
no patience for him; for them, he was merely an example of the
deadening self-indulgence into which the bourgeoisie was irrevoca-
bly descending. Rupert and his kind, according to my friends, were
dead branches on a living tree that must be pruned for the sake of the
tree.
I understood this point of view. Still, there was something so sad
and ineff ectual about Rupert, locked up in his palace with all his
precious objects to protect and no occupation and that beastly
mother summoning him to her sickbed every half minute, that I
couldnât help but feel a kind of pity for him. I doubted he had ever
had sex with anyone, male or female. He loved to hear my recita-
tions of erotic philandering and yet would never himself have
dared venture even to the pubs I sometimes frequented, with their
cargo of friendly police and guardsmen. Instead, ludicrously, he
seemed to have attached all his erotic feelings to me, lingering at
my door or staring longingly into my averted eyes, hoping against
hope, I supposed, that I would invite him in for seduction. What a
laughable thoughtâI, who had no aptitude for seduction! He would
be a cold and anguished lover, I suspected. I could not imagine him
naked; he dressed and held himself in such a way as to discourage
contemplation of his body, even, perhaps, to deny the existence of
a body at all. And yet, somewhere under there, there had to be
nakedness.
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We ate a quiet, congenial dinner that night, during which most of
the conversation focused on Digby Graftonâs wedding, to which
Rupertâbut not Iâhad been invited. Afterwards, pleading fatigue, I
excused myself and took to my room.
At half past twelveâI was already in bedâthe door creaked open.
âBrian, Iâm dreadfully sorry to wake you, but Iâve just had the most
frightful row with Mother. Might I sit down?â
âOf course, Rupert,â I said.
He tiptoed in, perched on the edge of the bed, then began his
tearful litany of regretsâhow Mother was always chastising him and
telling him what a failure he was; her agony and pain, which justifi ed
everything; his loneliness and need for love. I knew what he wanted,
yet somehow could not bring myself to give it to himâI drew back
from his white, fl eshy forearms, the soft black hairs on his wrists. So
I consoled him as best I could, explaining that certainly Mother
didnât mean it, that she loved him desperately and it was only the
pain speaking, and eventually, feeling ashamed and realizing he
could get no more from me, he apologized for the interruption and
bade me good night.
It was diffi cult for me to go back to sleep after that. Digby haunted
my thoughts: his beautiful dark skin and wheat-colored hair. Digby
naked by the lake, shaking water from his body, the drops hanging
like beads of glass from the hair on his chest and legs and around his
long, disinterested cock, which of course was normal and rose only
for girls. My obsession with that cock, my longing to draw back its
helmet of foreskin and lick the treacly fl uid dripping from the head,
kept me thrashing, so much so that I had to wank off four times
before I was fi nally able to get to sleep.
The next morning I woke late, cross and with a sore throat. Rupert
was in the sitting room, endlessly turning an irreplaceable silver
spoon in an irreplaceable china cup presumably fi lled with the rarest
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and most perishable of teas. He informed me in curt tones that he
had invited a guest to dinner, a âcharming ladyâ who took great
pleasure in meeting âartistic young peopleâ and in whose good graces
it was imperative that he should establish himself. âAnd it would
probably be a good idea not to bring up politics, Brian. Lady
Abernathy isâwell, rather unmodern in her ideas. We wouldnât want
to shock her.â
I stared out the window. Rain thudded against the glass, so much
rain that I wondered for a moment if perhaps that was Rupertâs
problem, if like so many Englishmen he had simply got soggy in the
head. I wished I could concoct an excuse to get out of the house that
evening; unfortunately none came to mind. As Rupertâs guest, I
appeared to be his slave.
The phone rang. To my amazement, it was for me.
âBrian, itâs Rose Dent. Nigelâs mother. I hope you donât mind me
ringing you here; your sister gave me the number. Iâve called to tell
you Nigelâs in London.â
I was shocked. Nigel hadnât given me any indication he intended
to visit London.
âHow long is he going to be here?â I asked hopefully.
âOh, but thatâs just it. Heâs leaving tomorrow. Heâs been here a
fortnight already.â
âA fortnight?â
âVery busy, Iâm afraid. But he did wish to see you. Tell me, could
you pop round for tea todayâsay, around four? But I must warn you
that Nigel has a cold and might not be in the best of spirits.â
I said of course I would come. She rang off , and I sat down to
ponder why on earth Nigel might have come to London for a fort-
night and not called me. This wasnât like him.
Nigel and I had been inseparable since public school, where I
fagged for himâshined his shoes, made his bed, and so forth. You
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could say our relationship hadnât progressed much since then. Even
now the bark of his disapproval reduced me to a quaking fi rst
former, desperate to please this older, bigger, deep-voiced master,
and in the end always fl ubbing the simplest task. I âfollowedâ him
to Cambridge, then to Stuttgart, where he went to study piano with
the renowned Clara Lemper, and from where he wrote the fi rst of
his âLetters from Abroadââessays on musical and political themes
that would later make him more famous even than his recordings of
Ravel and Liszt. In Stuttgart we practically lived together, and,
though I now had a deeper voice than his, I continued to shine his
shoes and make his bed. I was, as far as I knew, his closest ally: we
shared early drafts, confi dences, even lovers. Oh, certainly, our
friendship had a fractious edge. He tormented me regularly, the way
an older brother will torment a younger. Still, I loved him and had
no doubt that he loved me. For him to have spent two weeks in
London without ringing meâwell, something would have had to be
gravely wrong.
I passed the afternoon in a state of restless anxiety, then at three
headed off to the Dentsâ house in St. Johnâs Wood. The rain was piss-
ing down and I had left my umbrella on the underground and so
asked Rupert if I might borrow one. Drearily he rummaged in a
cupboard before locating the necessary implement.
The tube ride to St. Johnâs Wood took almost forty minutes,
presumably because of the weather. Happily the rain had cleared up
by the time I got there. I walked through a puddled and intermit-
tently sunny atmosphere to the Dent house. I was sent up to his
roomâMrs. Dentâs room, rather, claimed by Nigel for the duration of
his stay. There he was, in bed, very red in the nose, surrounded by
papers and books. The place reeked of cigarettes. On the fl oor were
stacked stained teacups, which Mrs. Dent hastily gathered.
âHello, Brian. How nice to see you,â said Mrs. Dent.
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âI havenât shit for three days,â Nigel announced. âJust wanted you
to know.â
Mrs. Dent left hurriedly.
It was obvious that he was indeed not in the best of spiritsâin fact
he was in a bloody beastly frame of mind, cruel and teasing, as if
testing how much I would take from him before I lashed back. Still, I
was determined not to give in.
âSo whatâs brought you to London, Nigel?â I asked, trying to sound
as if I really didnât care.
âNegotiating a contract with Heinemann. They want to collect my
âLetters from Abroad.â Iâm not sure, though. Heinemann is not
exactly avant-garde.â
Pride and envy coursed through my blood in equal measure at this
information. Also bewilderment; the Nigel I knew, upon receiving
such monumentally good news, would have called me instantly.
âNigel, thatâs wonderful,â I said. âCongratulations.â
âYes, well. Now Iâve got something to say to you, Brian, and it isnât
going to be pleasant. Iâm sure youâre wondering why I havenât rung
you up when Iâve been in London close to a fortnight. Well, thatâs why
I wanted you to come by today, to explain to you that Iâve had it with
you. You annoy me thoroughly. Youâre sniveling and loud and alto-
gether too much of a presence. You parrot my views. You dress
embarrassingly. And as for that story you sent meâdreadfully bad.
Unspeakably bad. I thought you had potential once, Brian, I really
did, but youâve quite extinguished what little hope I had for you with
thisââhe held the off ending sheets out in front of him, as if they
positively reekedââthis loose stool.â
My mouth opened in instinctive protest. âItâs only a fi rst draftââ I
began.
âA fi rst draft! A fi rst draft!â He gave one of his whooping laughs.
âYou really are such a big girlâs blouse, Brian, the biggest blouse any
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girl ever wore. I attack your story, which, by the way, I honestly
consider to be shit, and what do you do? Do you defend it, or your-
self? No! You try to sneak away from it, you try to disclaim it.â
âBut really, I think youâre right, it does need workââ
âBut thatâs just my point! First draft my arseâyou thought it was
brilliant until this minute! If you really aspire to be a literary man,
you must learn to hold your own, and not just gobble like a turkey and
agree with what everyone else says just to please them. And you must
get out of the habit of changing your views so that they match mine.
If you say, âI think S. is a good poet,â and I say, âI think heâs shit,â the
next minute youâre kicking dirt back like a cat to cover it up. Which
brings me to my fi nal point. Tonight, as you may have heard, Anne
Cheney is having a dinner in my honor. I donât know if youâre invited,
but if you are, I should prefer you not attend. And if you do attend, I
shall leave.â
The bluntness of this demand stunned me. âWell, all right, Nigel,â
I said. âIf thatâs how you feel, I think I shall leave right now.â
âDonât be ridiculous, youâve just arrived. Have some tea.â
I glared at him.
âOh, youâre pathetic. Just because Iâve said what Iâve said, you act
as if weâre no longer friends. All right, go then, if thatâs how you feel.â
I walked out of the room, upsetting, along the way, a cup of cold
tea his mother had somehow neglected to clear away. Nigel took no
notice and, getting out of bed, followed me into the hall. âA new
piece Iâve written,â he announced, thrusting an envelope into my
hand. âItâs about left-handed pianism. It is to be the leadoff for the
new volume.â
âThank you,â I said. We shook hands grimly, and I departed.
On the tube ride back I read Nigelâs essayâit seemed brilliant to
me, which made me even more miserableâand arrived back at
Rupertâs around six. Almost as soon as Iâd stepped through the door
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I had the ghostly sensation that I was not holding something I should
have been holding. Of courseâit was Rupertâs umbrella! So before
going into the sitting room, where Rupert was waiting with tea, I
asked the maid if I might use the telephone. Nigelâs mother answered:
no, she was sorry, I hadnât left any umbrella; indeed, as far as she was
aware, when I arrived I hadnât been carrying an umbrella at all. I
thanked her and rang off , feeling annoyed at the money I would have
to waste replacing not only Rupertâs umbrella but my own. Two in
two days was a record, even for me!
Rupert was in his smoking jacket, pouring tea. He seemed to be in
considerably higher spirits. âHello! Do sit down. Iâve just had a fresh
pot brewed. How was Nigel?â
âRupert,â I said, âIâm afraid Iâve lost that umbrella you loaned me.
Awfully sorry. Iâm such an oaf when it comes to umbrellas.â
His smile disappeared.
âWhat?â he said.
âI said Iâm afraid Iâve lost that umbrella you loaned me.â
âWhere?â
âOn the underground. Rupert, Iââ
âThen itâs hopeless. Weâll never get it back.â
He stood, turning away from me, his face ashen. Really, I was
thinking, all this fuss over an umbrella!
âOf course Iâll replace it,â I off ered.
âReplace it! Good God, donât you have eyes? Didnât you see the
silver on the base? The ivory handle? The monogram?â
âWell, as I saidââ
âThat was no ordinary umbrella you lost, Brian! My God, it was
antique! From before the war! Worth a hundred pounds, at least!â
âA hundred pounds,â I repeated faintly. âOh, God.â I sat down,
aghastâa hundred pounds for an umbrella! Then I stood up again. âIâll
call the lost property offi ce at Baker Street,â I said. âMaybe someoneââ
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W H I L E E N G L A N D S L E E P S
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âDonât even bother. Any idiot could tell how much that umbrella
was worth. Probably itâs being dismantled as we speak, the silver
melted down to sell, the ivoryââ A tear snaked out of his left eye. He
fell back into the cushions in an attitude of despair, and I turned
away, overcome by contradictory emotions: horror and guilt at
having lost something of such value, and at the same time amaze-
ment that Rupert would have loaned me the umbrella in the fi rst
place. Certainly had I been aware that it was not just an ordinary
umbrella, I never would have taken it.
âRupert,â I said fi nally, âI donât care if it cost a thousand pounds;
Iâll replace itââwondering where on earth Iâd come up with that sort
of money. But Rupert gulped and heaved, and with what seemed
Herculean eff ort recovered his good breeding.
âDonât give it another thought; itâs in the nature of umbrellas to be
lost. Iâve simply overreacted because of its sentimental value, for
which I apologize heartily. Now have some tea.â
He poured out the tea, which by now was bitter and black, and
with great wrenching and ripping hauled the conversation away
from that fatal object with which we had both becomeâand would
remain for some timeâhorribly and unalterably obsessed. âDid I tell
you about Daisy Parkerâs wedding? What a nightmare that was! Her
old fl ame showed up, drunk, just as I was giving my toast!â I hardly
listened. Instead my mind was crawling backward, trying to recollect
the exact moment the umbrella had been misplaced.
After tea I went upstairs to rest but could not stop thinking about
the wretched umbrella, which in truth I had hardly looked at. Was I a
fool not to have appreciated its value? No, it had simply never
occurred to me that there could be such a thing in the world as a
hundred-pound brolly!
Around seven-thirty the doorbell rang. Dutifully I dragged myself
downstairs. Across the living room sofa from Rupert, a jowly old
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woman was peering through an old-fashioned pince-nez at the
antique crystal collection. I recognized her face, though I wasnât sure
where from.
âBrian, may I introduce Lady Abernathy? Lady Abernathy, Mr.
Botsford.â
âHow do you do.â
Her hand barely grazed my own, and she returned to examining
the crystal. I sat next to Rupert. A mask of politesse barely covered
the stricken look that had taken his face like a palsy.
âBrian is a writer,â Rupert said to Lady Abernathy, as we sat down
to table. âHeâs just about to fi nish his fi rst novel.â
âAh,â Lady Abernathy said. âAnd am I correct in presuming that it
will be a modern novel?â
âI suppose you could say so. Yes.â
âThen Iâm afraid I shall never read it. The other day, I attempted
to read a novel by Mrs. Woolf that dear Rupert had recommended.
Quite horrifying. After fi fty pages I was obliged to reach for my
Bible.â
âSo you value traditional works, Lady Abernathy,â Rupert said.
âThere is only one novel I consider worth reading anymoreâJane
Eyre. I read it every Christmas.â
âAh, the BrontĂ«s,â Rupert said. âSo quintessentially English.â
âRupert,â Lady Abernathy said, âI have brought a letter I wrote. I
wondered if you might read it and give me your opinion before I post it.â
âOf course,â Rupert said. âAnd to whom is the letter to be sent?â
âTo Mr. Hitler.â
Rupert went white. âMr. Hitler?â
âIndeed. I felt he might appreciate knowing that in spite of what
the press may claim, there are many of us here in England who
recognize his capacities and understand that he alone can save his
country.â
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âOf course Iâll be happy to read it for you, Lady Abernathy,â Rupert
stammered. âDo you wish me to make substantive criticism or
simply check the grammar?â
âI am more concerned that the style be . . . fl owing, shall we say?
And you were always such a talented writer, Rupert. He should write
novels,â she added to me.
âHow impressive it is, Lady Abernathy,â Rupert said, âthat you
consider it worth your valuable time to engage with the politics of the
day.â
âThank you. However, in doing so I am merely carrying on in the
tradition of the late Lord Abernathy. He was, as you know, an invet-
erate letter writer, and never one to shrink from an opinion because
it was unpopular.â
An awful silence ensued. The maid brought in the soup.
âI suppose the war in Spain can only become worse,â I said.
âI was just recalling, Lady Abernathy,â Rupert said, âthe great
pleasure I took at Lady Manleyâs tea last week upon hearing your
charming recollections of Deauville.â
âRupert, dear, your friend has no interest in tedious anecdotes of
my youth.â She turned to me. âI have been keeping abreast of the
situation in Spain and can only say my hopes are with the rebels.
Why, just the other night at dinner I was discussing the matter with
Herrâoh, I am so bad with namesâthe German ambassador, and we
quite agreed, the rebels are the only hope for Spain.â
âIâm afraid Iâm of the opposite opinion,â I said. âThe Republican
government is an elected body.â
âI havenât had the pleasure of meeting the German ambassador,â
Rupert interjected, âalthough Mummy dined with his wife when she
was in Dresden last year. She brought back the loveliest chinaââ
âMr. Botsford, you are young,â Lady Abernathy said, âand, if I
might be so bold, susceptible to the worst sort of infl uences.â
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âI appreciate your frankness, Lady Abernathy,â I said. âIf I may be
so frank myselfââ
âBy all means.â
âThe German ambassador is Hitlerâs hack. I have lived in
Germany, I have seen the blood that fl ows when the National
Socialistsââ
âI have always felt politics to be beneath artists,â Rupert thrust in.
âArtists must look beyond petty mortal confl ict. It is what I so admire
about Brianâs workâat least those snippets I was privileged to read
during our years at Cambridge. There is a serenity of vision that
seems to rise above the din of the contemporary.â
âThe German ambassador,â Lady Abernathy said, âis a gentleman
in every way. Ah, I fear his government has been quite misrepre-
sented in the popular press, which is not surprising, given the fact
that the popular press is now almost entirely under Jewish control.
Itâs no wonder that young people see such a distorted picture. The
Jews as a race, if I might quote Lord Abernathyââ
My chair made screeching noises as I pushed it out from the
table.
âExcuse me, but under the circumstances, I must retire.â
âPardon me, Brian?â
âAre you not feeling well?â Lady Abernathy asked.
âI can only say that under the circumstances, I must retire.â
âBrianââ
I turned and walked up the stairs and into my bedroom, where I
immediately started packing. Even though I felt calm, my pulse was
racing. What would Nigel have counseled me to do? Storm away?
Upend the table? âLady Abernathy, if your hatred of foreigners is as
boundless as that of your hero Mr. Hitler, then I am afraid, being half
Polish myself, my continued presence at the table will upset your
appetite, something I would never dream of doing.â Oh, but one
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never thought up such clever retorts until one had already left the
table. Lâesprit de lâescalier, the French call it. And how I wished I had
walked away indignantly rather than fearfully!
I had gathered together my clothes and books and was about to
leave the room when I remembered the umbrella. Putting my things
down for a moment, I wrote Rupert a check for a hundred pounds
(Aunt Constanceâs gift had been forty), left it on the edge of the bed
where he had perched, then fl ed downstairs and out the servantsâ
door.
It was drizzling out. I caught a taxi to the underground, then the
District Line to Richmond. I had twenty-two pounds to my name.
In the morning I told Nanny the story of the umbrella. âWhat I
donât understand,â I concluded, âis why someone would loan out a
hundred-pound umbrella in the fi rst place.â
âIt seems obvious to me,â Nanny said. âHe was trying to impress
you.â
âImpress me? I donât care about umbrellas! For me, umbrellas
only exist when it rains!â
âApparently they mean more than that to him,â Nanny said.
âApparently so,â I said, and thought of Forster, Howards End,
literatureâs cache of fatal umbrellas.
âWell, it doesnât matter,â I concluded. âItâs lost. The umbrellaâs
lost. Just another object in a history of lost objects. I shall never
speak of it again.â
But I was wrong.
That afternoon I went out to look for cheap rooms, and by the next
morning had installed myself in a bed-sitter in Earlâs Court that had
for the past twenty-seven years been the domain of one Muriel
White, a stenographer. It had a coin-operated gas fi re and a lavatory
the fl ushes of which sounded like the coughing fi ts of a dying
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emphysemic. And here I settledâjobless, rent paid to the end of the
monthâand tried to decide what to do next.
Every day I listened to the wireless. The situation in Germany
grew worse every day; every day, it seemed, Hitler made more
advances, the noose tightened around the necks of the Jews.
Meanwhile the European nations had signed a nonintervention
treaty in regard to Spain, which the Germans and Russians appeared
to be blatantly defying. Curse Eden! Curse England for her
cowardice!
I made halfhearted attempts to work on my novel, but in light of
present eventsâin light of hideous Lady Abernathyâs opinionsâit
seemed a useless endeavor. Once, it had been enough to explore the
delicate shadings of a conversation, the etiquette according to which
an old woman poured out tea, the thoughts of a young boy as he
descended in a lift toward the underground platforms. Now, however,
history was pressing down from all sides, and sensibility seemed
more than insuffi cient: it seemed criminal. Soldiers, not writers,
determined the fate of the world.
An envelope arrived one afternoon in the post, forwarded from
Richmond. It contained the check Iâd written to Rupert, uncashed.
No note. Rupert, I was beginning to suspect, wasnât nearly so fragile
as his teacups. So now I had one hundred and seventeen pounds to
my name. Enough for a few months, at most.
Nigelâs essay on left-handed pianism was published in The
Gramophone and hailed as a masterpiece.
Around that time rumors started circulating among my friends in
London and Cambridge about a fellow called Desmond Leacock, the
heir apparent to the publishing fi rm of Leacock and Strauss. He had
taken a double fi rst at Oxford and wore on his face a look of tortured
regret, which only added to his attractiveness. Leacock had always
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had an air about him of heroic predestination, so it was no surprise
to any of us when one day he decamped to Spain and joined up with
the Republican forces. Confl icting reports about his progress
through Catalonia and Aragon came through the mail and the tele-
phone: Monday he was dead, Tuesday he had lost a leg, Wednesday
he had led his troops to victory, Thursday he had deserted. What
fi nally evaporated these rumors was his physical return to London,
bruised and half starved but with all his limbs intact. He was to give
a talk about his experiences in the war in a basement in Chelsea.
Political speeches, like sermons, can be a call to arms if one is
there to hear them. In novels they have the eff ect of glue poured
directly onto the page. Therefore I am going to ask you to take it on
faith that Desmond Leacockâs speech that evening stirred the heart
of my generation and that we left it convinced that only by shoring up
Spain against the Fascist threat might we prevent Hitler from taking
power in Germany.
In short, knowing nothing about battle, knowing only that I could
not aff ord to keep paying rent on my rooms for much longer, that the
prospect of returning to Richmond was unbearable and that Nigel,
my closest friend, had turned against me, I decided to go to war.
My fi rst step was to attend an Aid to Spain meeting in another
basement, this time in Earlâs Court.
My life changed irrevocably that night, though not in any of the
ways I expected.
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