The talk turned back to Tim. Maybe I should have moved away, but there was a sort of grisly fascination in hearing Tim’s assessment of his position within the Foreign Office confirmed in his own flat by people who were accepting his hospitality.
“Mind you,” said Bernard Wriothesley, looking around him circumspectly once again, and bringing his hushed tones from some shadowy recess in his gullet, “if he were to get the F.O., he’d find young Tim more of an embarrassment than an asset. He doesn’t get any wiser in his choice of friends.”
“This lot,” said another of the F.O. guests, a faceless man I cannot put a face to, “is the public face. The private one is by no means as acceptable. Plumbers and bricklayers and jazz-band singers—all sorts of riffraff. Beggars description. God knows where he picks them up.”
“There’s one of his best friends,” breathed Wriothesley, “who’s about to start a public campaign. To get the homosexuality laws changed. Now of course everyone agrees that those laws are positively medieval—”
“Oh, absolutely. Barbaric. Still—”
“Still, a public campaign’s hardly the way to go about it. Right . . .” He nodded wisely. “A few words in the right quarter would do a lot more good. Personally I think a suggestion from the Home Office to the police that they lay off for a bit might work wonders. The laws might just shrivel away, without there being any great fuss. No publicity, that’s the point. But you know what these queers are like: fuss is exactly what they enjoy.”
“Horribly high-pitched, most of them,” agreed the faceless man. “And absolutely unreliable.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
This was in 1956, seven years before the Profumo affair. The greater reliability of heterosexuals would have been more difficult to argue after that little business. At the date I am remembering, though, the Conservative Party hadn’t had a major sex scandal in decades. Imagine Baldwin with a call girl! So homosexuals were fair game for Bernard Wriothesley, though he did have a faint idea that he had just contradicted himself with his wild generalisation, because he added: “Though as I said earlier there is another way of going about it. Think of—”
He named a high-up in the Foreign Office whom everyone regarded with quite breathless awe. I had that delicious feeling of delighted discovery that being in on gossip always gives one: I had never even thought of the man in a sexual light at all. Then I felt guilty about my delicious feeling, and grubby by association.
Any other memories I have of that gathering are no more than fragments. I recall someone saying “Tim’s riding for a fall,” and someone else saying “Of course all Belgravia is chattering—a rich, discreet buzz.” I also remember a chat in a corner alone with one of Tim’s friends in which he said: “The climate’s changed since Guy Burgess, hasn’t it? The F.O. protected him for years. That couldn’t happen today. The first whiff of scandal about Tim and he’ll be out on his ear, won’t he?” I remember that I nodded miserably. The Foreign Office had been subjected to so much criticism and ridicule after the Burgess-Maclean affair that it could no longer afford to have as its first priority the protection of its own.
“Well, I hope Tim does get out before that happens,” said his friend.
My last memory is of helping Tim to collect up glasses and stash them in the kitchen before he went off to the family bash for his mother. By then people had gone, drifting off in ones and twos. We were alone and working at high speed, but at one point I remember I was collecting up dirty plates from the handsome glass and rosewood table I had admired on my first visit when I noticed that a Delft vase was sitting in the middle. It seemed incongruous—too delicate, too old-fashioned in taste. I said: “Not your sort of thing, I should have thought, Tim.”
He looked at it and smiled sadly.
“Present from an unhappy woman.”
And that is the sum total of my memories of that party. I sat there in my study, collating and sorting them, wondering what Tim had meant: was Tim’s mother congenitally unhappy, or was she unhappy about Tim, or what? The reverie was interrupted by the phone ringing.
“Peter Proctor speaking.”
“Yes, well, Mr. Proctor, I’m not going to pretend and be polite, because I feel very bitter about what you’ve done to me.”
My heart sank. I knew the voice and could guess the grievance.
“Mrs. Nicholls, I—”
“You knew I wanted it all to be discreet, you knew I’d asked you to come after dark so the neighbours wouldn’t see you, and what do you do as soon as you leave this house? You go straight down to the Duke of York and start talking about Andy.”
“Mrs. Nicholls, it was just casual conversation.”
“I’ll thank you not to treat me as a fool, Mr. Proctor, because I’m not that. Did you really think no one in the pub would recognise you? And that when they did, it wouldn’t be all round the pub as soon as you went out of the door? Now everyone in the neighbourhood is talking about Andy again, and why an ex-cabinet minister should be interested in him. The whole street is buzzing, and people are looking at me sidelong. It’s just like 1956 all over again.”
“Mrs. Nicholls, I was just trying to help.”
“Don’t give me that. Funny way of trying to help, making sure it’s all raked up again. Well, don’t think you can rely on me. Don’t imagine you’ll get any more help from me. As far as I’m concerned you’re Andy’s enemy, and I’ll act accordingly.”
There was nothing to be said to placate her. And of course she was quite right. I had simply ignored her feelings and wishes. I’m afraid years in government may give one the impression that one can simply ride roughshod over others. I had not thought—and if I had I probably would have done the same. I was sorry, and felt bruised. Yet I was sure of one thing: she would never have been so angry, nor have talked in those terms, if her brother were not still alive.
13
CAPTAIN of LIGHT INDUSTRY
The Portland Metal Box Company was situated ten minutes from the centre of Leicester, in an unlovely suburb that accommodated several other light industrial plants that contributed substantially to the unloveliness. I had taken the train to Leicester (I have loved trains since our family outings to Westcliff-on-Sea as a child before the war). At the station I took a taxi, and as usual I asked the driver to set me down some way from my destination, the Metal Box Company. The driver was Asian, and didn’t want to talk about football. I paid him off, walked about a little, sniffing atmosphere: postwar semis, council houses, several rather anonymous pubs, a long street of shops: supermarket, chemist, video shop, off-licence, wine bar, Chinese takeaway, Italian restaurant—the standard enterprises of Britain as it lurches into the nineties. There was a dank anonymity about the place, a sort of nothing-very-muchness that was depressing, speaking of limited ambition, dashed hopes. But of course this was not where Gerald Fraser-Hymes lived, only where he worked.
Elspeth Honeybourne came up with the gen on him two days ago. Most of it was gleaned from local newspapers, for Gerald had certainly never been a national figure, but she had also discovered information in the old boys’ section of a school magazine, The Margrovian. How she had got on to that I have no idea, nor where such a publication would be kept, but it turned out that Gerald Fraser-Hymes had gone to a small private school outside Cheltenham called the Margrove Towers School (not an establishment, I imagine, that would have impressed the men at the Foreign Office). Gerald was an enthusiastic old boy, communicating to a breathless if small world his various doings: his third-class honours degree, his becoming army ski champion of 1959, a minor military citation for service in Cyprus, civvy street in the early sixties, with a variety of jobs in a succession of large and small industrial firms. An undistinguished life, culminating in positions of responsibility on Chambers of Commerce and local branches of the Confederation of British Industry.
But what turned out to be most useful was a photograph that Elspeth had found in the Leicester Evening Clarion. It showed officials of the South
Midlands Light Industry Federation at its annual dinner-dance: six portly males surrounding their president, Gerald Fraser-Hymes. One might have got the impression from the photograph that the males danced with each other, but that I thought was unlikely. Fraser-Hymes was slimmer, shorter than the others, but wearing an expression of determined bonhomie and confidence in himself and what he was doing. It was the face, the photograph seemed to say, of a successful and contented man.
That photograph gave me a stroke of luck—though there was an element of calculation at work too: I have to admit that I dawdled around the Portland Metal Box Company’s entrance for some time, conscious that it was coming up to lunchtime, so that when I saw a group of sober-suited men coming, talking and laughing, from what seemed like the administrative block in the middle of the plant I dallied by the wall, watching and waiting, apparently poring, head down, over an A to Z guide of Leicester.
Gerald Fraser-Hymes was in the centre of the group, and at the centre of the talk and laughter. His voice was loud, perhaps cultivatedly so, and his laugh hearty. The other men, as in the photograph, were bigger than he (actually I recognised one of them from the photograph), but Fraser-Hymes seemed to be some kind of leader: they didn’t defer to him exactly, but they seemed to respect him, accord him some mild eminence. They turned left at the gates, and headed towards the row of shops, still loudly discussing and laughing, and very much occupying the pavement.
I had a bet with myself that they were off to the wine bar, but I was wrong: they turned into the little Italian restaurant, da Paolo, where I could see through the glass door that they were ushered towards a reserved table. I waited a minute or two and then followed them. The place was decorated with plastic vines and pictures of Tuscany. It aimed at intimacy, but achieved only nondescriptness. However it had the advantage of being small enough for all the tables to be within earshot of Fraser-Hymes’s party. I indicated to the waiter a dark corner table, from which I could study the party with impunity. As I glanced through the menu they were ordering two lagers, two pints of bitter, and a glass of white wine. Though I was not hungry and seldom eat much at midday, I decided I had to stay at least as long as they did: quite apart from anything else there didn’t seem to be anything better to do in the vicinity of the Portland Metal Box Company. I ordered stracciatella and bistecca pizzaola, with a half bottle of red wine. Then I took out the Spectator, put it on my side plate, and prepared to watch and listen.
Fraser-Hymes had a pint of bitter in front of him, and he ordered turkey breast Bolognese with a mixed salad. From the description of the dish in the menu this seemed to indicate a taste for rich food warring with a desire to stay slim. I soon gathered from the conversation that one of the men with him was his second-in-command at the works, while the others were local businessmen from other small firms. The talk, though it was interspersed with broad jokes and loud laughter, was about business, and the doings of the South Midlands Light Industry Federation. Not surprisingly it was not, as conversation, invigorating: “How does this scenario look to you, Tony?”; “There’s going to be a lot of fall-out from that one, Gerry”; “Pete’s not going to accept that without a dingdong battle”—that sort of talk, meaningless to an outsider, and not particularly meaningful to an insider.
It was when I was starting on my beef pizzaola that the talk at the next table became a little more personal.
“Ah,” said one of the bulky businessmen—Pete, Tony, or whoever—responding to some proposal of Gerald’s, “now there just could be a bit of a problem there.” He forked a piece of creamy veal and mushroom into his mouth, chewed it, and then bent his substantial frame over the plate and addressed Gerald in a hushed but still beautifully audible voice: “Now, Gerry, I don’t know if you noticed at the dinner-dance—a lot of people did—er . . .”
“Notice? I probably didn’t. I was pretty busy.”
“Of course, of course. Very well you organised it too. We-ell, the general murmur was that there was something going on between Frank Warner and Harry Goldsmith’s wife.”
“Really?”
“Nothing concrete, you know—nobody caught them behind the door in the cloakroom—it was just a sort of tension: both of them very aware of each other, know what I mean? Little glances you had to be damned sharp to catch. . . . Anyway, that’s the whisper. Right, so if you put Frank in as secretary and Harry in as president, then if something were to blow up . . .”
“Right. Absolutely. Point taken. So what do you suggest? Hold back Harry’s presidency till ninety-two?”
“That’s the ticket. I’m sure you can think up a cover story, Gerry. Ninety-two, year of opportunity—that kind of thing. Then we could have Dave Barton as secretary. No danger of Dave straying from the straight and.”
“That wife of his wouldn’t let him off the lead long enough,” said another, wiping his mouth. “Handsome woman, but you can pay a price for that sort of good looks. . . . Oh boy, marriage! You’ve got the right idea, Gerry, old boy!”
“Right idea, Jim?” Brief, knowing smile.
“Keeping out of it. And when’s the next of these famous weekends, eh, Gerry?”
“Weekend after next.”
“London here you come. Put out the flags in Soho.”
“I’ll just be taking in a show or two.” Again the same smile.
“Showgirl or two, more like. No, there’s no doubt about it: you’ve got the right idea.” He shook his head, preparing to impart a profound piece of wisdom. “I tell you, in the old days, when your eldest son followed you into the business, then there was a point in marriage and a family. Not any longer. Your sons sneer at you, go off to university, where they expect you to support them, then off to some job in the City screaming share prices at a computer screen, where they earn fifty times what you do, and patronise you when they do condescend to come home for the weekend. No, marriage and family have had it. Gerry here was ahead of his time. . . .”
They went back to eating and drinking, and talking about Pete’s sales figures and Harry’s cash-flow problems, and when this new Chancellor would get inflation under control and interest rates down. It was the sort of talk I’ve heard a hundred times in my lifetime. The only time they reverted to the personal was at the door, when Gerry and three of his lunchtime companions said their goodbyes.
“If I don’t see you before the weekend after next, Gerry old boy, have one on me, eh?” The tubby man poked him in the ribs. “Or two or three, if the fancy takes you. By heck, I envy you. Chance’d be a fine thing, eh, Tony?”
And uttering a series of these coded clichés, these verbal totems, they vanished into the dreary afternoon, Gerry taking off to the left with his second-in-command, the rest going the opposite direction. I ordered coffee, to give Fraser-Hymes time to settle back at the office, then I paid my bill and followed him.
There was no security to speak of at the gate of the works, and I walked through and went straight to the small, uninviting administrative block—the sort of not-really-trying architecture that characterised the whole area. When I asked the girl in the outer office if I might see Mr. Fraser-Hymes I handed her my card. She took it without interest.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No. I thought he might see me without.”
The girl glanced up at me. My face seemed to ring more bells than the name on my card. She reached towards the telephone, then changed her mind and slipped out through a door at the side of the office. There was a ripple of whispering, then I was conscious of being watched through a slit in the door. A moment or two later the door swung open.
“Mr. Proctor! This is an honour. I don’t know what we owe it to, but you’re very welcome.”
He was all smiles and handshake. His breath smelt of beer and peppermint, but his eyes were clear and sharp, and close to I had the impression of someone who kept himself in good physical shape. He ushered me through to his office as if this were a proud moment in his professional life (poor fish).
On
ce there it was difficult to know how to start. I couldn’t convincingly say that I happened to be in the area (it wasn’t an area one could happen to be in), and I wasn’t going to pretend to be doing a survey of the fortunes of small companies and how they were coping with high interest rates. Luckily there was no immediate need to put my cards on the table. Gerald Fraser-Hymes had ordered coffee, and he filled in the interval as best he could by producing the sort of waffle that a retired politician meets wherever he goes.
“Sad day when you resigned from the government . . . well, sacked if you prefer . . . moderating hand at the tiller . . . of course they still have my wholehearted support . . . this new business rate, on top of the Poll Tax, is losing you friends in droves around here . . . member of the local association . . . not as active as I’d like to be, but you know how it is . . . filling in the time pleasantly enough, are you? Directorships, Royal Commissions, that sort of thing?”
He ran out of steam, but he’d given me an opening.
“A bit of this, a bit of that. But much of the time I’m writing my memoirs.”
“Look forward to them.”
Liar.
“I’d better tell you why I’m here. Back in the fifties we had a mutual friend: Timothy Wycliffe.”
A Scandal in Belgravia Page 13