While England Sleeps

by David Leavitt

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I admitted.

  “I would imagine you would. You’ve been in Spain, from what I hear.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened to you in Spain?”

  “Something very similar to what happened to you in Brussels.”

  “Ah, yes. I gather there was a boy. He ran off and joined the brigade, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then?”

  “He died.”

  “I’m sorry, Brian.”

  “Well, it was months ago. Since then I finished my novel. It’s to be published, you know. I’m sure you’ll loathe it.”

  “Most likely.”

  “In the meantime I sit here all day. Sometimes I go cottaging. Just your run-of-the-mill wretched buggerer. You know what I was thinking about doing when you arrived?”

  “What?”

  “Slitting my wrists.”

  “Saved by the bell,” Nigel said.

  He stood then; stretched his legs. I stood as well. We were looking at each other, smiling fondly, when the strangest thing happened. Nigel touched me, on the shoulder. My mouth opened in surprise. “Ssh,” he whispered. Very gradually his hand moved to my cheek, stroked the wounds there. I closed my eyes. He kissed me.

  We made love. It was not the last time; we have made love sporadically, casually, at other odd moments, in the intervening years. No, what was different about that afternoon was that on it a rare note of tenderness entered into our fractious dialogue. It was as if, naked, we could remember we were young—boys, really. From Nigel’s lips emerged not scathing witticisms but soft noises of pleasure. His head briefly ceased to be the receptacle for that monstrous, overgrown brain; instead it became a bumpy globe, a fur-covered medicine ball, a thing to hold and kiss. Knowing it was what he liked—we knew everything about each other—I smeared mineral oil over my cock and balls and belly and let him squirm and slide atop me. He came within a matter of seconds, as was his habit. (It later became a terrible problem for him.) And I held his head as he cried out, as he bit my shoulder, his strong hands gripping my arse.

  “We both have fat arses,” he said afterwards. “It is the fate of pianists—and writers—to have fat arses.”

  “Is it?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  It was noon. We lay together on my childhood bed and did not speak. And in a corner, not far but far enough from where we lay, grief crouched, fended off, at bay. I knew it would wait until we fell asleep before it pounced again; this time, however, when we woke in terror, we would at least not wake alone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Train to Cockfosters was published that winter. Despite Nigel’s predictable condemnations, it got good reviews and even sold a few copies. In addition, Channing finally relented and allowed Caroline and me to rent our parents’ house, bringing each of us some income in the process. For the first time in my life I had money of my own and did not have to depend on the caprices of Aunt Constance to get by.

  I rented a small flat off the Edgware Road. I started work on my second novel. Then Channing and Caroline both got married, contradicting Aunt Constance’s predictions. Only I was alone—no Edwards, no Philippas—though often in the evenings I went cottaging or hoisted myself over the fence into Dartmoor Park. I had affairs that year with many men, among them an Ethiopian dockworker, an accountant from Stanmore and a gardener from Leamington Spa, and though most of these affairs lasted only a matter of minutes, they meant something still. Who touches the body, however fleetingly, also touches the soul.

  Meanwhile, in Spain, the Republicans were losing badly; in Germany, Hitler’s progeny were savaging the Jews. Oddly, this imminence of disaster provoked not panic in me so much as a peculiar calm. So Europe would destroy herself, I remember thinking. What of it? We deserved what we got. I saw no reason why the rest of the human population should be spared, either. The young, in times of crisis, resent the happiness of strangers, just as the old take comfort in it.

  Once, in the Charing Cross Road, I thought I saw Lil peering into the window of a bookshop. I turned and ran the other way. A few days later, I became so convinced Lucy Phelan was sitting at the other end of my underground carriage that I got off three stops before my own. Soon I was avoiding apparitions of the Phelans as assiduously as in Barcelona I had chased down apparitions of Edward. I went so far as to stop taking the District Line, simply because its trains went to Upney.

  Then one cold afternoon, in the lavatory at Green Park station, I had a wank with a rather chatterboxy boy who followed me out afterwards, told me how much he fancied me and asked if I’d like to have a cup of tea. We repaired to a grimly decorated venue off Piccadilly, where he informed me that his name was Albert and that he worked for an insurance concern in the City, in the underwriting department. Although his family hailed from Yorkshire, his father and mother had moved to London in the twenties.

  “What part?” I asked casually.

  “Upney,” he said.

  I nearly spilled my tea.

  “Or Downey, as I prefer to call it, since it is the arse end of nowhere.”

  “Yes, yes, I know it.”

  “You know Upney?”

  “I met a family there once. The Phelans.”

  “Why, the Phelans lived three doors down from my mum and dad!”

  “Lived?”

  “Yes. They left a few months ago. After the son, Edward, got killed over in Spain.”

  I looked into my cup. You don’t want to know any more, I told myself. You don’t need to know any more.

  “Where did they go?” I asked.

  “So far as I know, the oldest daughter—Lucy—she’s in Paris. And the younger one, Sarah, she’s got herself engaged to a plumber’s assistant from Barking. As for Mrs. Sparks—Lil—well, it’s a sad story, the way my mum tells it. She had another son, see, who died in a factory accident a few years before. And losing her second—it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, was how Mum put it. And since her husband ran out on her, and she only made money taking in sewing, after a time she couldn’t afford to keep up the house anymore. So she moved to Tunbridge Wells. She’s got a brother-in-law there who runs a baker’s shop.”

  “A baker’s shop.”

  “Yes.”

  I looked into my tea. Don’t listen! I told myself. What you heard was only hearsay, gossip, corrosive neighborhood chitchat. Yes, most likely Lil had moved to Tunbridge Wells. But who was to say she hadn’t done so gladly? Who was to say she didn’t savor the change of scene, wasn’t happy there, or, if not happy, at least comfortable, in that cheerful baker’s, that pleasant, fresh town?

  Bidding Albert adieu, I went back to my flat. I could not write, could not read. Instead I paced the floor, trying to convince myself, as I had a thousand times before, that it wasn’t my fault, that in fact Edward had gone to Spain of his own volition, and become ill by a fluke. Unfortunately this effort only exacerbated the anxiety it was intended to allay. Soon I had reached a point where I thought I would go mad from panic. So I put on my coat and went to Dartmoor Park. The gates, as usual, were locked. It was a warm night, the sky gray-blue and velvety.

  I waited until I was sure no one was looking, then hoisted myself over the fence, landing like a cat in the bushes. Immediately the sounds of the street receded, the stench of petrol fumes gave way to the scent of lavender. I crept out onto the gravel path. All around me shadows were moving, shadows of men seeking and making love. One of them beckoned me; I followed it, down a narrow way, into a clump of brush. He was a young man, so far as I could tell. He had hot breath and cold skin. His coat gave off a musty odor, as if it had got wet and not dried properly. I could not make out his face in the dark, only his contours: lean legs, narrow shoulders.

  We did not speak. We were fumbling with each other’s belts. Suddenly a streak of light passed over his face, fleeting as a moonbeam through a break in clouds. For a millisecond Edward’s eyes stared into
mine.

  The light passed. “Edward?” I heard myself whispering. He broke away, running, into the night. “Edward!” And now the sound of footsteps filled the air, the sound of pants being pulled up, of change jiggling in pockets and belts being redone. The bushes had come alive; everywhere men were abandoning their lovers of a few moments, hurrying toward the fence as they fled the torches that danced like fireflies and were getting closer. I crouched back down. I could hear boots on gravel, growing louder; then came the torch, flailing, causing me to squint . . . and all at once it was dark again. I opened my eyes. Through a crack in the branches I saw the backs of the two policemen, receding.

  I stepped out of the bushes, onto the path. Over the course of minutes the park had grown eerily quiet, the only sound that of the crickets pulsing. It was a clear evening, a lovely evening. In the sky, a full moon hung, its creamy opalescence shot through with cloudings of blue.

  But Edward—if he’d been there at all—was gone. And the men who just moments before were groping in the darkness, they were gone too; they had dispersed all over the neighborhood, blurring into the crowds that surged into the tube station, breaking out of trots, sweat running down their foreheads, their panicked hearts just starting to decelerate though their cocks were still half hard, caught in the flies of hastily pulled-up trousers. And what were they thinking? Nothing noble. Only: That was a close call. Might anyone have seen me? And of course the coward’s eternal lie: Never again. How many thousands of times had they said those words, Never again, and still gone back: not the next day, probably not the next day after that, either; but soon enough.

  I was alone now. Alone, I walked, until I came to a little lake where during the day you could rent a rowing boat or feed the carp. Once again the moon had cast its trembling path of light out over the water, that path that perhaps ghosts use when they make their earthly visitations. And here, just moments ago, Edward’s ghost had trod—or perhaps I had merely invented him.

  Meanwhile, outside the gates of the park, the innocent slept. They slept even though a dead boy’s body could know no resting place, even though it drifted, drifted, among the reefs and seaweed, the eyeless fish and the great dark motions of the tides.

  That night I didn’t go home. Instead I wandered the park, I wandered the hushed streets of Notting Hill. Dawn found me outside Victoria station, where I caught the first train out to Tunbridge Wells. I remember watching, through my window, houses thinning out, fields of hops, box-hedged gardens from which old elms stretched their craggy branches. Sweet Kent! There is no countryside more kindly. Alternating squares of yellow and green spread out from the tracks, stitched together by fences, undulant with hills: a quilt thrown recklessly over an unmade bed. And yet in the early light women were folding sheets. A group of laborers was loading bales of hay into a nag-drawn cart.

  The dull, the ordinary day.

  We pulled into Tunbridge Wells. I got out. As luck would have it, one George Phelan had a baker’s shop not far from the station, specializing, its placard said, in “Cream Cakes, Gateaux, Tarts and Breads for Every Day & Special Occasions.” There was a butcher’s on one side and a grocer’s on the other, neither with beaded doorways.

  And through the glass I saw Lil, aproned, packing something into a pink box, then tying it with ribbon. She had her hair in a net; otherwise she looked the same as before; the same color rose from her cheeks as she chatted up her customer, an old woman with a hump. Pearls rested on her bosom, which heaved appealingly. And what was she saying? Something about grandchildren, no doubt. Then she finished wrapping the box, the old woman paid, turned, wheezed out. From behind the counter Lil smiled after her, until she saw me lingering there; then her smile disappeared.

  “Lil,” I said. “Hello, Lil.” And I moved toward her, but she ran to the door and tried to shut it in my face. “We’re closed!” she cried. “Go away!”

  “Wait!” I said, pushing against her.

  “Go away!” she cried again.

  I let go. The door slammed shut and locked, the shade flew down over the glass, the open sign flipped to closed. When I moved to the window, she switched off the lights, retreating to the shadows.

  “Lil!” I called. “I did all I could! I tried to save him! Oh, Lil, please, please talk to me!” But she stuffed her fingers in her ears.

  And I turned. I turned away from her. And then I whirled around and heaved my fist against the glass, so that she screamed, and the whole window rattled, but did not break. And then I was running toward the station, my hand swelling with a pain that seemed like cold, but also burned, as if I had just dipped it into some unimaginably icy water, the water, perhaps, of the moonlit sea where Edward’s corpse was thrown.

  It was April 1938, and I was twenty-four years old.

  Epilogue: 1978

  The war we knew was coming came; I spent most of it holed up in country houses, doing intelligence work, and only afterwards learned about the horrors that had happened at Treblinka, the guard dogs trained to attack men’s genitals, the knives. When it was over, the house in Richmond, the house I’d grown up in, had been bombed to rubble. My sister and brother and I spent an afternoon sifting through the blocks of wallpapered plaster and porcelain shards, but we didn’t end up taking anything away. Our ideas of what was worth saving had changed. Those a generation ahead of us, who had grown up under the watchful eye of the elderly Queen Victoria, proved less resilient. They retreated to country houses, those that still stood, heating what rooms they could afford to heat. Or they sought refuge in rivers. Or, like Stephen Tennant, the brightest of the bright young things, in pink furniture, mirrors, maquillage. Became anachronisms. Resistance to change can produce that kind of madness.

  Other things persisted: for instance, Scotland Yard’s zealous campaign to entrap homosexuals in public loos. It was just after V-E Day that I had my own unfortunate encounter with one of its plainclothes officers. During the trial I felt obliged to mention his rather tumescent state at the time of arrest; the young bobby stood up in court, red-faced, shouting, “That’s a lie!” But I was acquitted. A few days later I fled England, my homosexuality now having been made public knowledge. Which was exactly what John Northrop had threatened might happen ten years earlier, except that this time no one’s life might have got saved as a consequence.

  The ship that took me to America rode, for a while, over the same waters into which Edward’s body had been thrown. I felt better once we got out into the Atlantic. Not that I’d forgotten him, but my guilt had become manageable. Ask the hit-and-run driver, the nurse who injects her patient with the wrong hypodermic, the mother who has accidentally smothered her infant: they will tell you that after the first few years, you learn to live with blame. Your standards lower. The human capacity for pain being limited, you find you can’t inflict nearly so much on yourself as you can on someone else (or as someone else can on you). Thus you run away from the pain inflicters, you go to a new place and, because it is new, try to convince yourself that the old place no longer exists; that distance erases history; that the boy who died because of you belonged only to your imagination and therefore never died, and therefore his mother, his sisters, his survivors, survive no one, nothing; they are just people getting on with their lives. And if you loved this boy, if you are his survivor as well as his killer, then you must sacrifice the memory of your love. You must bury grief if guilt is to be endured. As I did, in Los Angeles, for thirty-one years.

  Did I succeed? When I look back, I recall mostly peaceful days, if not joyous ones. Oh, certainly there were bad moments, such as when I’d see a stranger on the street and think, That’s what Edward would have looked like at thirty, at forty, at fifty. But they passed quickly and, as the years wore on, became more and more intermittent.

  Don’t think that I never knew love again, either. I did. Sandy Fairfax and I spent twenty-two happy years together, and while it would be incorrect to characterize our relationship as a grand passion, there was between us an e
asiness, a companionability, that in my opinion is a far rarer commodity. And when, eventually, it became necessary for Sandy to move on, I bore him no grudge. “Go in peace,” I said. He lives now with Peter, a young dancer, and we three are great pals. Last year we even went on holiday together in Hawaii.

  You see? Things end. Even the blacklist ended, when Kirk Douglas hired Dalton Trumbo to write Spartacus—under his own name. A few years later Spartacus was finished, and a group of us, all card-carrying members of the choir, not to mention the Communist Party, got together for a screening. You can imagine our reaction to that famous scene where Tony Curtis, as the slave boy Antoninus, gives the general Crassus, played by Laurence Olivier, a bath. “Do you eat oysters?” Crassus asks Antoninus. “When I have them, master.” “Do you eat snails?” “No, master.” “Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?” “No, master.” “Of course not. It is all a matter of taste.” “Yes, master.” “And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals.” Antoninus says nothing, until Crassus turns toward him and emits a low, suggestive, “Hmm?” “It could be argued so, master.” “My taste,” Crassus says, “includes both snails and oysters.” (Of course the scene was cut.)

  The fifties slid into the sixties. I looked for, and occasionally found, work. Somehow, however, my career never quite kicked in again, or at least not to the extent it once had. It would have been pleasant to blame McCarthy for this, but the fact was, the sort of films I was good at writing had gone out of style. It would have happened anyway. And while I made a valiant effort to catch up with the times, in the end I just didn’t have it in me to script psychedelic comedies in which girls wearing hoop earrings cry, “Don’t be a square, grow your hair!” and try to seduce oafish businessmen. So I retired to a small house in the hills above Hollywood, where among palm fronds and statuettes of cartoon chipmunks I cultivated a cottage garden, as well as a reputation for foppishness and eccentricity. I was an old poofter with money, a relic of prewar England washed ashore on the beaches of Malibu. A dinosaur.