On the fourth day I gave my evidence. I was less nervous this time than I had been during the hearing of the objection two days before, but I was obliged, on this occasion, to face the jury. It is most difficult to look twelve men straight in the eye at the same time.
The account of my life which I gave in the witness box was substantially the same, if less detailed, as that which I have given here. Mr. Rawlinson questioned me about my feelings for McNally.
‘I was extremely fond of him,’ I said. ‘I was grateful to him for his affection—which helped me in my loneliness—I was extremely lonely at that time. In a way, I suppose I enjoyed the company of somebody whom I thought I could help in various ways. As I said before, he was intelligent, but he wasn’t educated; and I enjoyed showing him things and telling him things. I wasn’t in love with him at that time, but it is very difficult, when somebody else is apparently in love with you, it is very difficult to resist expressing yourself in the same way that they do.’
I was asked about one of the letters, which Mr. Roberts had described as ‘breathing unnatural passion in almost every line’—a straight quotation, incidentally, from the trial of Oscar Wilde.
‘I couldn’t remember exactly what terms I had used, but I knew that I had said a lot of things in it that I didn’t really mean, and that I had also said a lot of things that I shouldn’t have said whether I meant them or not; so when we did meet again it was rather embarrassing, because my letter had put our relationship on a false basis, and to some extent a dangerous one,’ I said.
Mr. Roberts rose, hitched at his wig, poured out a tea-spoonful of cough mixture and inquired: ‘Have you any suggestion to put forward as to why McNally should tell, according to you, what are such wicked lies about you?’
‘Yes, I should have thought the motive was perfectly obvious. He was either doing it to save his own skin or doing it to save somebody else’s.’
‘Save his own skin? How is he saving his own skin by saying what happened to you two?’
I thought this a remarkable question from the man who had promised McNally complete immunity from prosecution, provided that he gave evidence against me. But Mr. Rawlinson objected, so I was not given the chance of replying.
Then Mr. Roberts began talking about homosexuals, inverts and perverts, in a sudden access of scientific zeal. One of the advantages of being cross-examined by Mr. Roberts was that you could see his trick-questions coming a mile away, like flying bombs. I said: ‘I think we all ought to agree on some kind of vocabulary. If I say somebody is a homosexual I am not necessarily implying that they indulge in criminal actions.’
Mr. Roberts brushed this aside and went on talking about inverts and perverts. I knew what he was leading up to. He laced me squarely, peering up at me under his wig, and demanded: ‘Your character has been put in at its highest, and I agree in every way—nothing has ever been brought against your character. You can hold your head high. But you are an invert?’
‘Yes, I am an invert.’
I did not look at the jury to see what the result of this explosion had been. Mr. Roberts was getting ready to launch his next bomb.
‘It is a feature, is it not, that inverts or perverts seek their love associates in a different walk of life than their own?’
‘I cannot accept that as a deduction. I have never heard any suggestion that that is the ordinary rule.’
‘I mean, for instance, McNally was infinitely—he is none the worse for it—but infinitely your social inferior?’
‘That is absolute nonsense.’
‘Well, perhaps that is not a very polite way of answering my question.’
‘I am sorry, I apologise.’
‘Please do not apologise. I know very well you are under a great strain.’
‘Nobody ever flung it at me during the War that I was associating with people who were infinitely my social inferiors.’
I was in the witness box for five hours. The task which Mr. Roberts had set himself was to prove to the jury that the admittedly emotional relationship which had existed between McNally and myself could have only one basis: that of sexual desire. I pointed out that the letters, passionate or not, did not contain a single obscene phrase, nor one which could have been put in as evidence of sexual intercourse if the letters had been exchanged by a man and a woman. The whole of the prosecution case was built up on innuendo—a nightmare edifice of snobbery, deliberate ignorance, and hypocrisy based on the proposition: There’s no smoke without fire.
Mr. Schofield, the Editor of the Daily Mail, told the court that I had carried out my duties well, but that he had always considered me in appearance and manner ‘rather effeminate’. Mr. Schofield, I remembered, was extremely proud of his collection of fancy waistcoats; but he was not wearing one now.
Edward Montagu gave his evidence-in-chief loudly and precisely. He ended by describing his arrest, and the way in which he was prevented from seeing his solicitor.
Mr. Roberts began his cross-examination by asking: ‘Are you complaining about the police? You see, we have had a lot of questions from your learned counsel suggesting that there is some complaint to be made against the police. Are you making any complaint, Lord Montagu?’
‘I think I have reason to.’
I watched the judge carefully. His face twitched with annoyance.
‘Do you realise that the police have their duty to perform whether they are arresting Lord Montagu or Bill Sykes? You realise that, don’t you?’ asked Mr. Roberts.
‘I do.’
‘And that there is no distinction whatever?’
‘I hope not.’
Edward Montagu then proceeded to deny, in detail, the charges against him.
‘Would you like to say,’ inquired Mr. Roberts, ‘if you have any idea, why this airman should make such a wicked invention against you?’
‘Well, I think the best answer would perhaps be found in something that I heard Reynolds say before the magistrates at Lymington.’
‘Yes?’
‘To the effect that he was so terrified that he was prepared to answer “yes” to anything that was put to him; that he had given up hope-’
‘Who terrified him then?’
‘-and that he did not know how much to say in order to please them.’
‘Who terrified him?’
Edward smiled. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said.
Michael Pitt-Rivers was half-way through his evidence-in-chief when the court adjourned for the week-end. I went home to my mother and father. We had not expected the case to go on for so long, and funds were beginning to run low again.
When I got back to the hotel at Winchester on Sunday night I learned from the reporters that my house in London had been burgled. I telephoned a friend in Chelsea who went to the house and reported that nothing of value seemed to have been taken, but that the intruder had searched through all my papers, flinging them about as though he was looking for something. The same thing had happened a few days earlier at Palace House, Edward’s home. Later, we discovered that the only things which had been taken were a wireless set and a suitcase. The police set about taking finger-prints and posted a guard on the house. It amused me to think that most of the finger-prints on my furniture would be found to be those of Superintendent Jones and Superintendent Smith.
The next morning the main headline in the Daily Mirror announced, in letters two inches high: ‘WILDEBLOOD’S HOUSE RAIDED.’ I had ousted the Mau Mau, McCarthy and even a pair of Siamese twins from the front page.
On the sixth day, Mr. Roberts made his closing speech to the jury. It began with a refrain which had become monotonous: the police, whatever they had done, were only doing their duty. The police were perfectly right to search the flats without a warrant, the refusal to allow the accused men to see their solicitors was ‘an ordinary precaution’, and it was extremely unkind to describe Inspector Stuchfield as a ‘Peeping Tom’ even if he did read all Lord Montagu’s letters from his fiancée. Furthermore, if the p
olice had done anything wrong, it was not a matter for the jury. What they had to do was to decide the case on the facts.
Mr. Roberts, rather strangely, complained of the ardour of the defence. He said that ‘every stone, every shell, every insult’ had been hurled at McNally. This seemed to goad Mr. Roberts into a frenzy; perhaps because he feared that a valuable piece of Crown property had been damaged by the bombardment. Innuendo gave way to sheer, frantic invention. I had by now become ‘an obvious homosexual,’ the cider had turned into champagne again, and a perfectly orthodox photograph of Reynolds in bathing-trunks was described, with relish, as ‘a somewhat sexual photograph’—whatever that may mean.
Mr. Roberts ended by saying: ‘Members of the jury, I am sure that if I have over-presented this case, over-pressed it in any way, you will stand as the guardians, the representatives of safety, between the prosecution and the possibility of an injustice. You will listen most carefully, of course, to my learned friends before you have the privilege of listening to my Lord’s summing-up.’ He pulled the folds of his gown tight across his stomach, with a satisfied air. ‘I can only submit,’ he said, ‘that dreadful and sordid as was the story that these two young men had to tell, it is amply borne out by the circumstances and shown to be the true one. The only crime they have committed meriting this interrogation—properly administered by my learned friends —is the fact that they have told the truth.’
He sat down, pulled his bottle of cough-mixture towards him, and found to his annoyance that it was empty.
Peter Rawlinson began his final speech by picking up Mr. Roberts’ reference to ‘this sordid tale’. ‘Of course it is an ugly, sordid tale,’ he said. ‘But for the personalities engaged in it, what interest would any normal human being have in it? My Lord is here for the duty he has to do; you are; so are counsel; so are witnesses; so are the police. One wonders, indeed, that people should queue up and listen, to come here and see what they did when Wildeblood was giving evidence—the crucifixion of a human being, as he explained to you what he feels within himself, how he is moved and how he has behaved. This is something which you have had to see, which my Lord has had to see, those people engaged in the case have had to see. You may think it strange that people should want to come and watch it.’
‘You are not concerned, members of the jury,’ he went on, ‘whether a trial such as this, on charges such as this, is a happy reflection upon our state of civilisation. You are not concerned about the merits of the law. None of us are.’ The question before the jury was: who is telling the truth?
‘My friend (Mr. Roberts) with his rhetoric and with his great experience poured such scorn, did he not, on the sad, miserable story that Wildeblood has told us as to his relationship, his feelings, for this person who now turns out with the character that he has.
‘My friend used his great gifts again on this matter of the social inferiority. You remember Wildeblood’s answer: that nobody flung that at him when he was an Aircraftman serving in the war? What social inferiority? What has that to do with it?’
Mr. Rawlinson then turned to the manner in which the case had been brought. The RAF investigation disclosed that McNally had committed offences with several men in Cambridgeshire and London. ‘Why, then, should the RAF send for the Hampshire police? Why? Why? Why?
‘You remember what was written in those letters. You may remember that there was that mention of the magic word, “Beaulieu”. You may think that started off the train which has ended here in this trial before you.’
He described the handing-over of the case by the RAF police to Superintendent Jones, the mock trial, the continual interrogations of McNally.
‘We have suggested all through this case, members of the jury, that there was this inducement to this man to tell lies. If ever a witness had an inducement to tell lies, didn’t he have it? Knowing they were investigating homosexuality, knowing that he was a homosexual, knowing the term of imprisonment that he was likely to serve, what better thing could he do than fling some mud in the right direction, and to throw it at the person in whom they were most interested—Peter Wildeblood, the Diplomatic Correspondent of a London newspaper?
‘Why should it not be suggested, therefore, by the defence, that McNally had every reason to tell some lies as to that relationship?
‘That this law, such as it is, does contain within itself the seeds of blackmail, everybody acknowledges and knows. Whether we approve of that or not, as I have said before, is not the concern of any of us here in this trial; but I did ask McNally: why did he keep that letter which was written by Wildeblood? I asked him if he thought it would be of any use.
‘Well, it has been of use to him. If he had not got those letters, then this inquiry might not have proceeded; he might not have been given the assurance, as he was by my learned friend, that he was not going to be prosecuted. He might have been facing serious charges and terms of imprisonment—if he had not had that letter.’
Having described McNally’s motive for lying, Mr. Rawlinson proceeded to examine his evidence in detail, pointing out a number of inconsistencies. Then:
‘Wildeblood gave his evidence; and I suggest to you that he gave his evidence with the sincerity, truthfulness and frankness of few witnesses. My learned friend, who now brushes aside all this business about “invert”, “pervert” and “homosexual” in his speech-’ (Mr. Roberts had given up being scientific in these matters and had used the three words indiscriminately, explaining that he ‘was not well up in these subtle distinctions’) ‘-my learned friend was most careful to ask Mr. Wildeblood whether he was an invert or a pervert and what it meant, and insisted that he answer the question, and Wildeblood’s answer “Yes, I am an invert.”’
‘“Yes, I am one of those unfortunate creatures who have within them that desire, that attraction towards another male person, and not the ordinary, normal desire of an ordinary, normal human being.”
‘Members of the jury, those of us who are fortunate enough to have ordinary, normal lives can afford to look at that kind of thing so much more justly, with so much greater pity, than those persons who, for some reason—perhaps that they themselves are not always normal—always adopt an attitude of protesting, perhaps, a little too much.
‘As you saw him there you must have felt some sympathy, and felt that he was telling my learned friend all he could about this relationship which had ended in his standing there in the dock. His attitude to McNally was one of emotional fondness for him, a person who could supply him with company in his loneliness. All he had with this man—who, we now know, was having a physical relationship with some other man somewhere else on these other week-ends—was this emotional relationship.
‘Almost enough to make you snigger, is it not? Almost enough to make anybody laugh, a story such as that. My friend pours scorn upon it and says: “Can you possibly believe that there was no sexual relationship between those two persons?” Is it so impossible? Does it mean that every time a man and a woman exchange love letters or stay in each other’s company, that there is a sexual relationship between them? That is really what it amounts to, isn’t it—that you have to assume a sexual relationship because of the fact that on six occasions they were in each other’s company for a week-end, spent a holiday of seven nights together; and one passionate love letter was written by Wildeblood to that man McNally.’
He read the letters which McNally had received from the man Gerry, a male nurse. ‘“After all, as you realise, it only needs a letter to the General Nursing Council to ruin me; that is the reason for my extreme caution, and please don’t keep this letter!”
‘And,’ said Rawlinson, ‘Master McNally, of course, tucks it away carefully.... Now, is it not understandable that we should accuse him of keeping things for his own use? Is it not understandable that he is a totally unreliable man, not only morally but as a witness of truth? And I therefore suggest to you that he is not a person upon whom you can rely.
‘I would refer you, once again, t
o the misfortune of the man Peter Wildeblood. If you had to choose between those witnesses as to who was telling the truth and who was being sincere, is it not quite obvious that when Wildeblood stood there in that box, he was telling the truth—that he was the man upon whom the whole burden of this trial really rested, that, as an invert, he is the mainstream through which the whole course of this trial really runs?
‘That man is in your hands. If you convict him, you convict him on the evidence of Edward McNally. The matters of corroboration also corroborate his own story, of an emotional feeling, and an emotional love, for this man Edward McNally. You will convict, if you should convict, purely on the evidence of a man who has already been shown to be a liar, and utterly unreliable on all points.
‘My friend has said you will not be moved by sympathy, and you will not be moved by pity. Wildeblood does not ask you for pity. He does not ask you for sympathy. Whatever happens in this trial, he must face a desperate future. All he does ask you for, and what I ask you for in his case, is justice.’
That night, a woman spat at me. She was a respectable-looking, middle-aged, tweedy person wearing a sensible felt hat. She was standing on the pavement as the car went by. I saw her suck in her cheeks, and the next moment a big blob of spit was running down the windscreen.
This shocked me very much. The woman did not look eccentric or evil; in fact she looked very much like the country gentlewomen with whom my mother used to take coffee when she had finished her shopping on Saturday mornings. She looked thoroughly ordinary, to me. But what did I look like to her? Evidently, I was a monster. I was quite sure that she had never spat at anyone in her life before. And yet, she had hated me enough to do this.
Against the Law Page 10