Time at War

by Nicholas Mosley

  12

  Humans seem at home in war. They feel lost when among the responsibilities of peace. In war they are told what to do: they accept that they have to ‘get on with it’ In peace it seems uncertain what they have to do: they have to discover what the ‘it’ is to get on with.

  I had been keen to get home to be with my family and friends, even if it was only for a month before going out to Burma or wherever. But if the war was really about to be over, then it might be possible that I could be at peace in the Far East with my so-called clique of friends. This clique I had fantasised about in Italy was a sort of alternative family, to be enjoyed if possible in conjunction with both my father’s and my sister’s establishments. At school my friends and I had been, yes, in our attitudes homosexual; though only in one pairing occasionally practising. For the most part we were fantasy-gay in style, in conceits. In war this style had had to be carried on mainly by letter. But as part of occupying forces in Burma, Malaysia, might not three or four of us form an exotic home from home?

  When I had gone from public school straight into the army this had seemed to be a continuation of a homosexual world in which there were no natural family ties – no responsibilities, no chance of children. In this sense it had been like the Garden of Eden. Would it be possible to create a peacetime Eden?

  In the army in Italy I had hardly thought of myself as homosexual: I had scarcely felt myself sexual at all – sex was an itch that war had pushed into the sidelines. Then, when I had been in Naples with Anthony (with whom my friendship was strictly platonic) I had written to a third member of the clique who was recovering from D-Day wounds in England – ‘Anthony keeps talking paternally of the ultimate necessity of marriage and family-rearing which, he maintains, involves SETTLING DOWN at some quite early date. I do not grant him this last proposition, for I hold that it is just as preferable to be UNSETTLED in marriage as it is out of marriage.’ And then – ‘I WILL NOT BE RESPECTABLE.’ And earlier – ‘I am both ignorant and disinterested in women.’

  But then, when I got home to London in September 1945, I found that the whole grandiose social whirl had started up again as if there had been only a blip since September 1939. Almost every night there were what used to be known as debutante dances, to which those thought to be socially acceptable were invited and to which I had the entrée through my sister Vivien and my Aunt Irene Ravensdale. And each of these dances seemed to consist of an enchanted garden of girls. How was it possible that I had not noticed girls before? Now, suddenly, they seemed to be everywhere and infinitely alluring; as thick on the ground as – how might it be put? – ‘autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa’? But had not this been Milton’s reference to fallen angels? Well, so be it. If it was love that one wanted – take one’s pick!

  But here was a problem: how on earth did one pick and choose? In a heterosexual world it seemed that one was expected to fall in love with just one girl, but surely with such profusion one wanted the whole lot – or at least a big bunch, an armful. But this was held to be not acceptable.

  Such were the dilemmas when one was over the edge into peace. I learned that two of my old school friends were settling in to the Far East. But now, surely, it would be more pleasant and even vital for me to stay in London and explore the peacetime possibilities, however baffling, of getting to grips with women.

  But with my orders to embark for Malaysia having come through, how would this be possible? After such homosexual affectations, in the heterosexual world had my luck run out?

  Then, at one of these dances – at the Savoy Hotel, I think – I had retired to the bar in some exhaustion from trying to squeeze what dalliance I could into what time I had left, and there I came across a major whom I knew slightly, or perhaps he was a friend of my sister’s; and he asked me what I was doing nowadays; and I said I was just off to the Far East. And he said – ‘My dear fellow, why on earth do you want to do that?’ And I said – ‘I don’t.’ So he said – ‘Come and see me in the War Office in the morning.’ So I did, and I did not know if he would even remember me. But there he was, behind a desk even if somewhat holding his head; and he said – ‘I’m afraid I can’t quite manage the War Office, but would a job in Eastern Command, Hounslow do?’ And I said – ‘Indeed, thank you, Eastern Command, Hounslow would do very well.’ So in a day or two I received papers taking me off the draft to the Far East and instructing me to report to Hounslow Barracks – a gaunt building like a furniture depository some ten miles west of London. There, no one was expecting me, but I was given a desk and a chair, where I sat and wondered once more in what style I would one day be able to try to write about war – its luck that seemed to take the place of conventional responsibility. At intervals I played ping-pong with the man with whom I shared an office, using our desks pushed together as a table and copies of The Manual of Military Law as bats. Eventually work was found for me, which was to do with officers’ pay and courts martial – the latter often dealing with officers caught and photographed as transvestites. And in the evening I would catch the District Line back to London, where I continued to learn the pleasure of prowling in search of – yes, this was surely a better way of putting it – the rose among the rosebud garden of girls.

  So this was peace? But there remained the problem of how to make sense of responsibility.

  When people said at the end of the war that they found themselves at a loss – they could no longer feel that that they just had to ‘get on with it’ but now had to find the ‘it’ that they had to get on with – was this ‘it’ really just the evolutionary business of finding a mate, settling down, procreation? But humans had always found confusion with this; was it not a sort of war? But in so-called ‘peace’ there were no longer orders coming down from on high; or if religion or social custom claimed that there were, then it was still up to the judgement of individuals to respect these or reject them. Humans had to make their own dispositions to deal with the ‘its’ that they were finding they had to get on with – work, faith, relationship. And regarding these they felt not only at a loss, but that such a feeling was somehow reprehensible – for should not at least love, the commitment to love, the care of children (so they had an instinct to believe) be sweetness and light? And if it was not, should there really be only themselves to blame? Humans were thrown into the deep end of peace and had to learn how to swim. But why had it ever been thought that peace should be easy? If peace involved the requirement to take responsibility for oneself, then all right, yes, it could be seen how obedience in war might be easier.

  I remained in the army working at Hounslow for another year. During this time I did not in fact feel that I had much responsibility. It was still ordained that I should travel on the Underground out and back each day. In the evenings, among those with whom I behaved irresponsibly it could be accepted that I was still involved in some hangover from the war.

  At weekends I would go to stay with my father, who was now out of politics as well as house arrest and was leading the life of a country gentleman in Wiltshire. When I had first arrived home, landing off the troopship at Liverpool, I had gone straight to my sister Vivien who was still with her friends Rosalind and Rosie in a flat off Knightsbridge. Then, late that night we had driven down to my father and Diana, who were waiting up to welcome me with cups of tea and snacks. There was so much that might be talked about that I at least could hardly talk at all; I wondered if I would ever be able to talk about the war. This was my family and had been my home; but it did not seem, however my war ended, that I would be able to settle here again.

  When I was working in Hounslow and went to stay with my father at weekends, we chatted easily enough about our shared philosophical and literary interests; but our conversation did not have the same intensity as our letters had had in war. I remained perhaps closer to my sister Vivien, who set up her own establishment in the country with our brother Micky and our old nanny. When Mervyn Davies came home shortly after me, I introduced him to
Vivien and hoped they might form some relationship, but, I suppose inevitably, nothing came of this. When Mervyn got out of the army he resumed his studies in law, on his way to becoming a QC and then a judge. We still see each other at intervals to have lunch.

  My friends in the Far East wrote that they were having a fine time running a local radio station through which they could broadcast their poetry. And they were sharing a mistress. Affectations of homosexuality seemed to be being blown away by peace.

  I discovered that there was a way by which I could get out of the army earlier than I had expected. Shortly before I had joined up in 1942, I had taken a scholarship exam for Balliol College, Oxford; I had done little work for this knowing that I would be going off to war. But Balliol had said I had done well enough for them to keep a place for me if later I wanted it. And now it seemed that if I chose to take up this offer I could be demobilised by October 1946 rather than almost a year later. This I did. I wanted to read philosophy – to continue in a more disciplined manner my efforts to understand, among other things, why humans seemed to be at home in war, but refused to acknowledge this and thus were unable to deal with it.

  When I got to Oxford, however, I was told that this was not what philosophy was about. The ancient Greek tragedians, yes, had been interested in such questions, but they came under the heading of Classics. The Existentialists? Nietzsche? They did not ‘do’ these at Oxford. What did they do? Descartes, Hume, Kant: Epistemology, the Theory of Knowledge: what do we mean when we say that we ‘know? But was not this what Nietzsche was on about? Was it? But I had always felt that I would have to work things out for myself.

  I stayed at Oxford for just the year I would otherwise have been in the army. Then I left to write my first novel. If academic study insisted on dealing with only the bones of theory, then surely it was up to novels to portray the flesh of life. Also, I left Oxford to marry Rosemary, my eventually chosen rose from the rosebud garden of girls.

  I had first noticed Rosemary at one of the innumerable fashionable dances in London. It seemed she had noticed me. But we had been wary: if one pounced conventionally, surely any quarry worth catching would have to try to get away? So how, in fact, when it came to it, did one pick and choose? One waited for some sign, some singularity, some jungle test like that of a smell?

  I bumped into Rosemary again some months later in a coffee bar in Oxford. I said, ‘Do you remember me?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ said, ‘Good.’ She said, ‘I thought you were that murderer.’ There was a murderer on the loose at the time who was said to chop up women and dissolve them in the bath. I thought – Well this indeed is a singular signal that one can hardly explain; but might it be what is required?

  I took her out to dinner. She hardly spoke. I rattled on. After a time I said, ‘What are you thinking She said, That I could send you mad in a fortnight.’ I said, ‘Why wait a fortnight?’ I went out to where my car was parked and I gave her the keys. I lay down in the road where she could run over me. She said she did not know how to drive. I got up to show her. Then we drove back to her lodging. By the end of the evening I think we both thought we might marry.

  The next weekend I suggested we go in my car for a drive in the country. She asked if we could visit her old grandmother who lived in Hertfordshire. I said – Of course. I had the impression that Rosemary’s family must be hard up, for in spite of her presence at London dances she appeared to have no money for bus fares and to possess no smart clothes. On Sunday we drove through country lanes and eventually came to the gates and lodge of a drive leading to what must be a large country house. An old lady came out from the lodge to open the gates. I wondered – This is her grandmother? The old lady waved us on. We drove through what seemed to be endless acres of parkland and came to a long low house like a battleship. We went in through a back door and along stone passages where all life seemed to have stopped; then through a baize door to a small sitting room, outside which Rosemary asked me to wait for a moment. Then when I went in there was a very old lady in a wheelchair who, when her granddaughter had introduced me, said, ‘And I was such a friend of your grandfather’s!’

  I still had no idea who this lady could be who had been a friend of my grandfather George Curzon. (I managed a bit later to glimpse an envelope lying on a desk addressed to ‘Lady Desborough’.) She asked Rosemary if I would like to see what she referred to as ‘the paintings’. She gave Rosemary a huge old-fashioned key and we went down a central corridor of tattered grandeur and into a long high picture gallery where, when Rosemary had opened a creaking shutter, there appeared – through cobwebs – a Van Dyck? An Italian Renaissance Holy Family? A huge portrait of a soldier on a horse that could be – surely not! – a Rembrandt? (Rosemary said – ‘Yes, they say it is.’) I thought it important that I should not appear to be bowled over by all this. Why should it not be as natural as anything else? But it seemed more likely than ever that we would marry.

  *

  So this was peace. But there still seems to me, sixty years later, to be a problem of how to write about war. From the complexities of peace you can produce an artwork. From the simplicities of war – can you portray in one breath both heroism and horror?

  People are not supposed to write about their successful exploits in war: this is considered to be bad form. And about the exploits of others – well, this is easier to write when they are dead. There is a whiff of immature triumphalism in stories about successful killing – unless one has paid the price of being killed oneself. Good stories were able to be written about the First World War because then the whole absurdity could be seen as just horror, a senseless disaster. But the Second World War had not been like this – had it? It was held to be just and right. And yet there were the horrors, the disasters. There are very few good accounts of the fighting in the Second World War – one of them, as I have mentioned, is Raleigh Trevelyan’s The Fortress about the landing at Anzio. A good story about the Second World War has to comprise a way of writing about the horror and the rightness, the misery and the satisfaction, the evil and the good, all in one. Not a problem for epistemology? No?

  Perhaps more a problem for religion. The old Greeks had gods – and so did Nietzsche, although he exclaimed that his god was dead. (I later suggested in a novel that such a god might better be seen as a successful train robber retired to the Argentine.) Anyway, not much of a task here, it is true, for logical or verifiable thinking. But then what should be the style? What about my own candidate for Good Fairy: that which goes on at the heart of matter? Here, one is told, things can both be and not be at the same time; an observer affects that which is observed; reality is a function of the experimental condition. So why should not this be the style in which one might float in the deep end of peace? A lifetime’s effort indeed! Or would one rather drown?

  Humans seem at home in war; they do not feel at home in peace. This cannot be said often enough. So long as it is denied – so long as it is thought that peace is prevented by the actions of certain misfits – then humans cannot learn. There are few novels written about how to live in peace; they are held to be boring. People prefer to read about, and indeed many to experience, the senseless excitement of the simulation of war; the dicing with destruction and the risk of being dead. But if this is the condition on which evolution has depended and which has brought us to where we are, then it hardly makes sense to object – unless, that is, it is seen that evolution has also brought us to an awareness that this condition has become too dangerous and might be surmounted: one can be conscious, that is, of existence on another level.

  Evolution has depended on carnage: some species have to be destroyed so that others survive. On the way, however, there have also evolved alliances, dependences, symbioses by which some species may help each other to survive, even if at the cost of others. It seems that humans have evolved an ability to be aware of this, even if they do not seem able to stop being at war within and among themselves. They see they have their animal nature; and, somewhat at
odds with this, their human nature which sees the possibility of something different. But they do not seem to have evolved a strategy by which to be at ease with this – except perhaps through religion or the creation of works of art. In the course of evolution, that is, they have experienced an order beyond that of animal or even human nature – an order which seems to be outside evolution because it sees how evolution can be assessed and even reorganised. This order seems to manifest itself as infinite, eternal. Humans have called it the supernatural or spiritual; and it can naturally, of course, be said not to exist. But it seems to have arisen from a tendency of humans to try to make sense of their situation – that of being confined in an evolutionary process and yet also experiencing that a part of them is free of this, and even at times can influence it. They may attempt this by art; or perhaps try to do it by seeing their situation as funny.

  Even in formal war there had seemed to be some spiritual ordering as well as orders coming down through chains of command – how else did I stay alive? You get on with things as best you can – but then what does ‘best’ involve? You keep your eyes and ears open; you learn the limitations of orders; you become aware of an ability within yourself to know what further is required. And then, when necessary, you are ready to jump in at a deep end. But I have told my story.