The Censor, page 12
Jealousy did strange things to people. All that balls about authors eating people. John Sutton, she believed, had a severe case of resentment.
Almost as soon as John left for the office in the morning, June was on the telephone to The Carlton Tower. She asked for David’s room and waited some time before a sleepy voice answered.
‘It’s June,’ she said.
‘So early in the year. Hi.’
She sensed the change, as though he had become fully awake in a second.
‘Hi June my summer sun. I read about you last night.’
‘Where did you read about me?’
‘My taste in bedside literature is usually confined to the jolly far sensuous novels of our time, but I’m getting dreamy these days. I picked up some collected poems. Did you know Robert Bridges wrote about you?’
‘Give.’
‘When June is come, then all the day
I’ll sit with my love in the scented hay:
And watch the sunshot palaces high,
That the white clouds build in the breezy sky.’
‘Aaaah,’ she breathed down the mouthpiece.
‘That’s what I thought. You coming to sit in the hay all day with me, baby? Nowadays it’s hash scented hay and you see the palaces all shot through with mortar bombs instead of sun and one can’t always be sure what those white clouds are in the busy sky.’
‘A great deal of hard effectual talking for so early in the morning. You okay?’
‘Yes. Just trying out a speech I wrote last night, for a character as yet unnamed in my new book. Oh, by the way, he goes on talking about how you can lie there in that scented hay and listen to the kids chanting “Give Peace a Chance” and “We shall overcome”. And the racists howling at the black men and all that socio-political shit.’
‘A new book?’
‘The first nuts and bolts. It’s going to be called In The Hair of My Children. You like that?’
John’s warning sprang like a little crimson tic in her mind, bleeping on and off, but she treated it with disregard.
‘I just called to put you in the picture. My lord and master’s not over happy about us spending nearly all the weekend together.’
‘A touch of the green sickness. He think I’m trying to muscle in on you?’
‘It’s the impression I get. I knew you were seeing him today. Look, David, he’s too sophisticated to mention it, but if there’s an atmosphere you’ll know what it’s all about. I thought I should tell you.’
‘Thanks June. My gratitude comes to you in the three standard packagings, as they used to say in that old wicked consumer society: small, large and my God I have to buy a bigger car. It’s all I need today, baby: a publisher with his knife in me. I reckon that does it though. No more weekend walkouts and talkouts.’
‘Don’t be silly. John’s being stuffy that’s all. We’re not having an affair and he knows that. He needs to be taught a lesson, David. He’s got to learn I have the right to choose my own friends.’
‘He may not quite see it that way kid. But you can try. Freddy’s looking for that apartment though.’
‘It’ll be a great saving.’
‘Soon I might even be able to afford the war in Vietnam.’
She turned from the phone to the domestic matters of the day. The shopping list. Two pounds of potatoes, a pound of onions, two fillet steaks, salad, loo paper, Tampax (she was due tomorrow). The glamorous life of a mistress: all silver and brocade with silk next to the skin and no nasty smells.
*
In the afternoon it rained again. Not the sweet nurturing rain but a vicious downpour of big cracking drops, exploding on the pavements and carried in stinging columns on quick thrusting winds. The rain of baptism, seeking to wash away grime and the smutty indecencies of those who tried to ward it off with tilted umbrellas and clutched hats.
David Askelon and Freddy Cadogan shook the raindrops from their coats and hair, arriving from the sodden no man’s land between the shelter of taxi and stair entrance leading to D’Arcy Harrington’s general office in the Inner Temple.
The ascending steps were bare grey stone, dented at their centres by the wear of feet. The stairs ended at a door through which one entered a narrow passage, carpeted in some man-made fibre, claret coloured: a waiting room for the clients of Harrington and the six others with whom he shared these office facilities. The smell was a mixture of wood, dust, paper and expensive aftershave.
David had expected a certain amount of ritual and was disappointed at the mundane comings and goings from the doors which punctuated the passage.
John Sutton had already arrived with his solicitor, a neat, cheery, nodding man who seemed to view everything with a sense of benign amusement. The four men waited in a small knot beside the frosted glass panelled door which appeared to lead to the fountainhead of all action. Through the door young and spotted youths, sleek suited, came and departed; elderly men with the air of trusted servants passed by. The Law was operating at full throttle; hands clasped thick white oblongs of paper tied about with pink ribbon and the walls seemed to exude a strange reverence for some unseen tradition. Askelon felt that this was a place where the way of doing things had not changed for a century: the only alterations came in the style and dress of those who carried out the duties. It was as though CBS had decided to do a modern dress version of a Dickens’ novel or IBM worked their computers with a mill-wheel.
Sutton greeted Askelon as amiably as usual, thanked him for coming, introduced his solicitor and chatted to Freddy. There was no hint of the atmosphere June had feared.
More clients arrived, their names taken by a small fat barrel with soft white hair who was more than obviously in charge of the flow of traffic.
A middle aged, tall, anxious man with a beaked nose waited with a little shabby woman in a black coat. Neither spoke; they simply stood staring blank and gloomy at the walls. Askelon, with the writer’s thirst, wondered more than idly what it was that had brought this pair in need of a Queen’s Council. Some small business board room plot? Divorce? Was the shabby woman the other woman? If so, did her looks belie her? Was she, to the beak nosed male, the ultimate in passion and the great soaring spiritual moment: a union of souls?
Opposite the glass frosted door there was a short polished wooden bench which nobody bothered to use except for an uneasy teenager who had shifted self-consciously into its corner, flicking chameleon eyes and picking his teeth with the grubby nail of his right thumb.
Through an open door, David could see a pair of young men assisting a mini-skirted marvel with the mail. Accounts and writs and deeds, he supposed, were running through the thirty youthful fingers on their way to cause havoc or soothe.
Time wandered on.
A square man, short and muscular, came hurrying in the way they had entered: chalk-striped double-breasted suit, big hands carrying a gown and a small draw-string white sack. There was quick consultation with the snow haired master of ceremonies and the gown carrier approached the beak nosed man and his black appendage calling out loudly and with a surfeit of self-importance, ‘Sorry I’m late but I’ve just come from the Old Bailey.’
D’Arcy Harrington made no such apologies when he arrived, but whisked them all off swiftly into his chambers at the end of the passage.
The room into which they were ushered had a bland, withdrawn feeling: gas fire, comfortable armchairs that had seen their best days around 1938. Above the fire there were two faded photographs in wooden frames. As he took his seat, Askelon glanced up at them. They seemed identical and out of place. In front of a mock-gothic doorway groups of small boys were ranged in three rows: standing, sitting and squatting cross legged. In the centre, seated, was a hearty looking parson and a thin female who looked dissatisfied with her lot.
Odd decorations, David considered, for a QC’s chambers. Probably you could identify Harrington among the boys. Photographs clung to for the sake of sentimental memory? The last really good moments of childhood? A particular friendship? A key to the man’s personality? Hardly. Harrington gave off all the outward signs of smoothness. It was only when he began to speak that one realised the gloss was that of a hard unbreakable shell. He reeked of tough professionalism and began to talk almost before they were settled, as though a certain segment of hard work had to be dealt with in a limited space of time. He began with a short pithy resume of the Obscene Publications Act and how the law could focus itself on The Golden Spin. Finally he addressed David directly.
‘You fully realise why John Sutton is concerned about the publication of your book?’
‘I realise why anyone in publishing should be concerned with the law in this country. But I don’t see why The Golden Spin should be altered drastically or, in fact, singled out for assault.’
Harrington was on to the point like an arrow, head thrusting forward. ‘What you’re really saying is that you can’t understand why The Golden Spin needs special care when so many inferior novels contain blatant pornography and get away with it?’
Askelon warmed to the man. They would end up on good terms or locked in heated argument. He nodded. ‘There are dozens of books which, to my mind sensationalise sex and all the other things, to the point of obscene boredom. They get away with it. I don’t see why I shouldn’t.’
Harrington nodded his head in comprehension. ‘That is exactly the point.’ As though he was about to give away wisdom at one hundred dollars a box. ‘We have a trite saying that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. Apart from minor cases against the odd magazine there has not been a recent effective case brought against a work of fiction. The law exists and pressures are brought to bear from time to time. Usually those pressures go unheeded. The Treasury opinion is, I understand, that most cases of this kind are a waste of money. They are difficult cases. The Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions do not like activating them.’
He sat back and sucked in a deep breath. ‘However, the law is there and, whether we like it or not, this country contains a large body of people who are all too ready to campaign against that which they consider to be obscene or pornographic. When you have a large pendulum swing towards permissiveness in one area of society, it is likely that you will have a large swing in the opposite direction in another area. It is quite feasible that one book might become the target of a huge action group. If this happened, and if there was no proof that this group was acting under any central organised control, then both the Attorney General and the DPP may have their hands forced.’
Askelon had talked enough with Freddy Cadogan to know that this was true. He felt Freddy’s eyes on him as he spoke. ‘But could you build a case against The Golden Spin?’
‘As it stands you could technically of course, just as you could with any of the others. In the end it is up to the judge’s direction, and he has very well laid down guide lines, and the jury. But it is my opinion, Mr Askelon, that sometime in the next twelve months the vigilantes in this country are going to have their way. The crabbed old men with pseudo moral itches; the questing women with a sense of decency; all the million social millstones who are terrified of the way progress is provoking violence; who see sex as a warped and horrible necessity that must not be mentioned; who claim corruption in a slice of thigh and depravity in someone calling a fuck a fuck: all these will descend upon the unhappy head of the Director of Public Prosecutions and he is going to be forced into taking one book into court and trying to prove that it is of obscene intent.’
He must be very good in court, thought David before asking, ‘Why my book?’
‘John’s going to spend a lot of money on it. The Golden Spin’s going to be very much in the spotlight.’ He looked towards John Sutton for confirmation. ‘There may well be six, seven or eight doleful novels stacked full of explicit sex in every possible permutation published during the same week that The Golden Spin is published, but The Golden Spin is going to get the publicity. It is an excellent book but it does contain all the inflammatory elements: explicit sex, drugs, violence, depravity ...’
‘With the specific intent of providing a mirror to truth.’
‘Try to prove that in a court of law. It might just happen that the publication of The Golden Spin coincides with a down swing of pressure. I have to protect my client from all possibilities even an act of God like that. I’m his insurance.’
David half rose in his chair.
‘Easy David,’ muttered Freddy.
‘I see all that,’ said David dropping back. ‘But are you really telling me that the cuts you have advised will make all that difference?’
‘I think they would make the DPP look a little harder. As the book stands there are five or six scenes that would be very difficult to defend. You describe two LSD trips which make the stuff sound positively beneficial, there are at least four sexual descriptions which would, in prosecution, be described as sensational and depraved ...’
‘And you ask me to remove the words fuck and cunt twenty-eight times.’ Askelon chuckled. ‘I can defend the drugs passages and every sex scene.’ He only hoped that he would not be asked to do so there and then.
Harrington picked him up on the four letter words. ‘Why are you so worried about removing those words?’
‘Because I believe it negates the whole realism of the sequences. Also you have left the words in to the tune of one hundred and fifty-two times.’
‘True, but the twenty-eight I have advised to be removed appear, in the American edition, between pages 201 and 202.’
‘I’m sorry.’ David held out his hands, shaking his head. He looked at the others. Freddy seemed mildly amused by it all. John Sutton betrayed no feelings and Harrington glared. ‘I’m sorry but I don’t see it at all. It’s just playing with words. A bloody great game.’
D’Arcy Harrington shuffled the papers in front of him, examined them for a moment and looked up with a brief smile, speaking as though he had not heard what David had said. ‘There is another point. Detailed and shocking descriptions of violence. These are also most important and I have advised the deletion, or at least amendment, of three specific sequences: the riot; the fight between Shelton and the prostitute, which is also listed in the sexual deletions; and the scene where the two coloured girls fight under the influence of some drug or other …’
‘Dexamphetarnine.’ That had been real as well. Late on a Sunday night. North Beach in some guy’s apartment. A lot of people were taking, and there was plenty to drink. One of the girls was a tall slim negress with a wicked ethnic figure dressed in white. The other stood near to her, shorter, her face more attractive, large breasts, you could see her nipples probing against the silk shirt she wore with a little pleated skirt. Both of them were taking handfuls of Dixies as though they were candies. The girl in white said something to her man who laughed, turning and looking at the other girl and it started in a flash. First the shouting, then the sudden blurred streak as the girl in the silk shirt leaped, nails clawing. Nobody moved to stop them. One or two even laughed as they screamed, bit, scratched and hit out. For the moment David could not recall how he had described it in The Golden Spin, but he could see the end of the evening, with the girl in white, her dress ripped and clawed, soaked in blood, lying in the middle of the floor, her eyes staring up in a vacant film while the other girl quietly sobbed, retching up blood in a corner. The police. The ambulance men and the parchment-faced intern.
Harrington was still speaking. He had missed some of it.
‘…we are going through a period when the whole problem of violence in print, the cinema and on television, is under suspicion. The Act under which your book could be prosecuted can be stretched to cover violence.’
‘There’s nothing in those scenes.’ David spoke quickly. ‘Nothing at all. Nothing that hasn’t already been seen by millions of TV viewers on newsreels.’
Harrington brushed some invisible specks of dust from a lapel. ‘I do not recall having seen a young pop group member fighting with a whore on a newscast.’ He smiled. ‘Not on BBC anyway.’
‘No. The riot. That’s the most vivid and they’ve all seen that before.’
‘To have seen something,’ Harrington answered patiently, ‘that takes place in a few seconds of screen time and to read seven pages of description, listing the feelings of attacker and victim alike, are two entirely different experiences. To look at the news-reel shots of Jack Kennedy’s assassination is very different to examining the Zapruder film or even reading Mr Manchester’s book. All three contain elements of real obscenity; but to examine the Zapruder film frame by frame, or to read the clinical detail in Death of a President is more horrific because it brings the true obscenities into a clear, static focus.’
‘But that’s one of the points I’m making in the wretched book anyway.’
‘I’d be a fool not to see that.’ Harrington glanced towards Sutton, raising eyebrows. ‘As I read it, you use the four boys as a microcosm of young America. They are subjected to a number of experiences: real, dramatic, violent, emotional, true experiences. You then examine their reactions.’
‘And?’ Askelon’s query contained a tinge of surprise, as though he did not expect Harrington to have such a thorough understanding of the book.
‘Well, if I was ever called upon to defend The Golden Spin I would point out that it shows very clearly how real obscenity corrupts. And, to you, the real obscenities are the misuse of power and wealth; war; starvation; social and racial injustice; unleashed violence.’
Askelon nodded, as Harrington, hardly pausing, continued, ‘Our difficulty is that you present them so well. A constant flow of images to the mind. You pick up detail as well as a camera.’
‘That’s part of the job. They used to call it being a mirror of our times. The camera is one of the writer’s most useful pieces of equipment: the camera of one’s eye. You can display the images and interpret them.’
