The Censor, page 22
‘No.’ The desire outweighed the method. She closed her eyes, groped down for him, slid her body round, coming down on him, taking a deep breath and opening her lips to the soft flesh. At the first touch of her mouth he came alive. She felt the growth until it was as though she had a second, thick, hard tongue in her mouth and she sucking at it and becoming conscious of other things: his body moving her body until she was splayed upside down above him. Then his lips, hard between her legs and something solid, sinuous in her, his tongue darting between her other lips: tiny, exquisite sensations.
She was on a great plane of cloud. Colours she had never seen before. No, she was not seeing them: experiencing them. The tiny sensations heightened into huge and powerful throbbing movements from the well of her existence. All knowledge was here on this flat land of plenty.
The scream building far away in her brain, a pinpoint of sound, getting louder. The throbbing becoming a single sensation, expanding and contracting, fusing her mind and body with his. Extreme tension. Not breathing. Holding the great build. Then the electric explosion, breath forced from her and the noise becoming her scream of release as the tensions of years poured and gulped and her back and thighs gave spasmodic, massive arching movements. Far away, Dorothy heard his gasp of pleasure, but it was entwined with hers and the sensation went on to the edge of time.
XIV
AT THE OFFICE, Sutton felt that he was operating like Douglas Fairbanks Jr, back in the rapier, chandelier and staircase days. The full cut and thrust of business. While there was naturally a sense of strain, there was also the feeling of being in control. Half of next year’s list was already at editorial stage, and there seemed little doubt that commissioned manuscripts not yet delivered, would be in on time. Every book in their current list was going through on schedule. He moved, it seemed, almost by instinct in his new drive to cope efficiently on both private and public fronts.
As for The Golden Spin, Ed Coin and his department were working small miracles. Features writers were queuing for interviews with David Askelon, and already the TV chat, interview and arty shows were edging in.
They had decided to retain the American jacket, the deep black with a prismatic effect gold disc. Ed came up with what everybody agreed were solid, selling ad copy lines.
They’ve said it all before —
... Passions spin the plot: we are betrayed by what is false within.
George Meredith
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts, is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters, gold.
Thomas Grey
DAVID ASKELON says it again but for this generation. DAVID ASKELON says it better. DAVID ASKELON says it with glitter, dazzle and brilliance in a book of our times —
THE GOLDEN SPIN
The spin is golden but the spin is false And destructive.
THE GOLDEN SPIN
The gold spins and glisters but it is Not purer nor is it gold.
THE GOLDEN SPIN
In spite of the tensions, the motivations seemed to work for Sutton, even though his dreams began to return vividly to him during the day. Dreams near nightmare proportions, all concerning eruptions. Earthquakes, the ground cracking and bubbling. Volcanic action, molten lava, noise and a mighty wind. Boiling seas. Sudden, destructive storms.
June had never been happier since their first coming together. Immediately after David’s proposal she envisaged a time of restless nights and worried days. Then, overnight, John Sutton had sprung back from his moody silences, becoming the John Sutton she knew: witty, sparkling, active. They would go out to the movies or the theatre, or just a meal, and return late, but he never flagged. Their mutual respect grew. Their sex life blossomed and again became entwined with their thoughts and minds.
The weekends with David still meant a great deal, but she was not faced with a great choice, or the conclusive decision. David, thankfully, did not allude to it, remaining silent, waiting for her to come to the point. June knew that she should tell him, but courage failed for some reason not truly divined by her. Perhaps an unwillingness to hurt, or a fear of losing the smaller, but important, relationship she had with the writer.
So life was good. Until, in the first week of August, June found John Sutton, alone and weeping.
He had returned from the office a little earlier than usual. Afterwards, with natural hindsight, June realised that he had looked pale and desperately tired.
They were going to have dinner at home. She came in from the kitchen with the silver to set the table, some bright and frivolous remark in mind. He sat bolt upright in his chair, tears rolling down his cheeks, the stricken look of the shocked and suddenly bereaved. For a second she thought there had been a telephone call bringing bad news.
‘Darling, what is it?’ On the arm of the chair, her hand behind his neck.
He shook his head, lifting a hand to brush away the tears. She would always remember the back of his hand, the light hairs flattened by the moisture, and the excruciating knowledge that something fundamental was happening. Deep inside her the quiver of anxiety, the quake of knowledge.
‘What is it darling? Come on. Tell me.’
A long sobbing intake of breath. She did not associate tears with John Sutton. In their lives the tears always came from her. It was John Sutton, her lover, father, husband, who kissed them away and made things right.
‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to …’
‘It’s okay. Just tell me.’
‘I’m so wretchedly tired.’ It poured out quickly after that. The firm granite crust on which John Sutton was built turned out to be thin and cracking. The resolute and strong picture of the last few weeks had been a final attempt to maintain something which he found impossible to hold. The discipline needed to run a publishing house and keep two domestic situations going was too strong.
‘I just can’t go on splitting my life three ways. I’ve tried to play it down, and I’ve tried to do the firm, hard-working, hard-playing bit. I’m barely middle-aged by modern standards, but I can’t cope, love. I just haven’t got the stamina, or character, to keep the thing going.’
June was silent for a while. Then — ‘Are you telling me I have to leave?’
‘No.’ His hand on hers, almost violently. ‘No. No. No. I don’t want that. Christ, June, I couldn’t do anything without you now.’
‘Something will have to go.’
‘I know.’
A small foothold. ‘Can’t we get away for a while? A week even? A change, so that you can get some rest. Or you. Alone. To think things out.’
The line of his lips hardened. ‘Spin’s coming up next month. There’s a lot on.’
‘There’ll still be a lot on if you’re taken ill. Really ill.’
He nodded again and the flood of words poured on. The fears, the monsters hidden in the night closet of his mind; the myths and legends; the real and unreal. Fears about Dominic and Martha. How he could not leave them totally alone with Daphne, and no court in the country would ever give him custody. Dreadful, indeterminate fears of growing old. Business fears; fears about The Golden Spin; fears about the new breed of young writers —
‘They’re so much more involved with life than I was at their age. And they haven’t had the experience. They’re gusty enough, and write with panache, but they don’t see the political scene in true perspective or context and their philosophy is second hand. Not a new thought, or original idea. As for relationships, they’re as intolerant of my generation as my father was, so that’s a switch. But they can’t see men and women over the age of thirty-five or forty having emotional problems. It seems as though it’s dirty if you fuck over forty. They’ve invented the inverted morality.’
He talked on for much of that evening, June nodding and telling him ‘yes’ and ‘no’ as the weaving pattern of speech called for it, looping, spinning, doing bunts, Immelman turns of jumbled, aerobatic rhetoric. She became very conscious during that long night’s monologue of the crevasse in their ages, and saw that John was seriously being bugged by problems simply because his age made him aware of them, so that he could read his own fears like a road map. Tracing them on the paper but not knowing what the landscape would look like.
June rationalised. Sutton’s dread was that of the middle aged and middle class. The sense that the old ground was crumbling under foot and change was irreversible and would sweep him into a manner of life with which he could not cope. For all his liberal attitudes, Sutton was chained by conscience to the ideal of one man, one woman. The sacred family unit (till death us do part).
Sure, she thought as she climbed. exhausted, into bed. Sure, he has no use for Daphne. She became a drag years ago, but he’s screwed to the system. The system he was brought up on is the Christian morals, one family, if you can help somebody structure. It implies that family break-ups are explosions of badness. Bad for everyone involved, particularly the kids. Bad for the business image. I am stuck, thought June Rabel, as John Sutton’s mistress until he tires of me; even then, his middle class conscience will still operate and he won’t be able to do without me. I am stuck. Glued to a man who has all the marks of becoming an emotional cripple. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe it’s my life’s work. My good deed in the naughty world.
John Sutton was awake until the early hours, mind teeming with the thousand worries which seemed suddenly to have foisted themselves upon him. Indeed, it was as though the rock upon which he had built his life had been moved by an unseen hand: a hand that had the power not only to overthrow the rock, but to split it into small pieces. Fighting within his mind at close quarters he was unable to see that the hand was, always had been, and would be forever, his own. That the moment approached when he would have to settle for the new life, among surroundings slightly changed, and a countryside in which the natural features were shifted from the norm he once knew. The alternative was the easier way. A return to the known. Acceptance of the gloomy familiar. To lose some of life’s spark and become a globule within the small, clinging molten mass of a disappearing society.
*
Through July and August, Humphrey Carmichael’s silent protest against The Golden Spin, grew and took shape.
As she had promised, Dorothy returned on the day after her departure. She came back to The Hall a changed woman. In her twenty-four hours absence she had assumed a new confidence. She smiled a great deal and, to his surprise, Humphrey heard her singing to herself after they returned from church on Sunday.
As Price had suggested, Humphrey reined in his apprehension and did not question her about the sudden departure, though she did offer him some story in which an old school friend had turned up out of the blue.
The fact of her disappearance disturbed him over the weekend, to the extent that he found himself almost looking forward to visiting Price on the Monday.
The psychiatrist seemed unduly pleased to see him, exuding a professional charm which the politician mistrusted.
‘It’s good of you to come, Sir Humphrey. I’ve wanted to talk with you for some time.’ Price ushered Carmichael into a chair.
Humphrey found himself grunting and nodding. ‘I make no bones about it You fellows aren’t my most popular people.’
Price laughed. ‘We sometimes get results though. Now, what about Dorothy?’
‘Came home. Just as you said she would. I kept my word. Didn’t start trying to winkle out all the details. Don’t know what she’s been up to but she seems happier.’
‘Happier? Since when? Since she has been coming to me, or since her little secret trip on Friday?’
‘Since Friday And she did explain it to me. Garbled. Some old school friend turned up in town. Wanted Dorothy to spend the evening with her.’
Price hid his smile, wondering how many men and women had used that old chestnut on each other. He also wondered if Carmichael in fact believed the fabrication. He took a deep mental breath and plunged straight into the deadly areas of this unstable marriage. ‘Sir Humphrey, why won’t you divorce your wife?’
Humphrey Carmichael scowled. ‘No cause. No need. No reason to bring a lot of dirty linen into public domain.’
‘You consider yourself a good husband?’
Carmichael did not pause for thought. ‘That’s not at issue. She’s a damn sight better off than most women. Beautiful house. Good allowance. Freedom in most things. She could have more. Plenty of social life if she wanted to share my work.’
‘That’s the point.’
‘What?’
‘She doesn’t want to share your work or your life. To an outsider like myself neither of you have shared your lives, ever. For years you’ve pottered along on different paths. You’ve used her when the image needed and that’s all.’
‘I’ve been perfectly happy. I have a good business and I’m not a bad politician. You’re not a fool. You know why I’m not prepared to offer Dorothy a divorce.’
‘Yes.’ Price felt smooth, too smooth and superior against his leather-bound books and the collection of glass. ‘Your political image is the reason.’
Carmichael raised an eyebrow, an angry hint.
‘Your political image,’ continued Price. ‘High middle class morality, unwavering respectability, the good life in terms of the unshakable old values. Britain’s still a first class power no matter what the socialists have done to it. There’s still decency, honesty and truth in the average household no matter how much the artists, writers, film-makers and journalists try to show a different picture. Stand fast to the flag, honour the Queen, birch the hippies, burn the books that look obscene, bring back hanging, show the Trades Unions who’s boss, give them a fair deal but show them who holds the whip, and do the same with Europe and the United States, but wogs begin at Calais and don’t forget it.’ He maintained a straight face, knowing he was being deliberately provocative. Carmichael looked as though he was holding back a volcanic eruption. Price continued. ‘That’s what you stand for, and if you were to divorce Dorothy you’d wipe dirt and mud all over the respectability.’
‘Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder.’ Quoted Carmichael, rigid in his chair. ‘There is no cause …’
‘A lifetime of unfaithfulness?’
‘Infidelity must be forgiven.’
‘Infidelity is a symptom. It’s been showing for the whole of your marriage.’
‘There is no cause to divorce her. Dorothy chose to spend the best part of her life with me. There is no reason for her to leave now. The fires of sensuality will burn out in a few years now and I don’t intend to see the whole of my political career, a lifetime’s work, shattered in the gutter because of things which the Press would be only too glad to blow up out of all proportion. There is no reason for divorce.’
‘Your wife wants one.’
‘I dare say. But, honestly, what would happen to her without my protection? You think I have no feelings? I know what she’d become.’ He paused, looking hard at Price. ‘She’s wheedled you into talking to me? Asking me?’
‘No. I’m talking as her psychiatrist. I think her marriage to you has been an irritant. When you saw it did not work you simply opted out by living a full political and business life. With her, what should be only a part of her married life became a preoccupation. I’ve a shrewd idea that the preoccupation is linked to you personally. If she had freedom from you now, there might be a chance of happiness and a certain amount of stability.’
Carmichael half rose from his chair, face flushed deeper. Then, as though changing his mind, he dropped back. ‘Doesn’t say much for me. What do you really think I am?’
Price took him at his word. ‘I only know you by reputation and through your wife. But I’d say you’re a man obsessed with moral guilt.’
‘Not a bad thing to be at a time like this.’
‘Not a good thing if it’s obsessive. Guilt and jealousy.’
‘Jealousy? I’ve no reason to be jealous. Not of anybody.’
‘No? Jealousy isn’t always the obvious green-eyed goddess you know.’
Carmichael made a puffing motion, bubbling his lips. Some of the things the psychiatrist said had hit into his conscience. He prided himself on keeping what he called ‘an even keel of life’. It really simply meant a straight bank balance. Price was right in implying that he had dropped out of the marriage. He should have tried to fill the gap with something more than a good house and allowance. But he still saw little profit in divorce now. It was too late.
Price was speaking again. The mouth moving as though he was taking careful, precise, bites at the words. The moustache. Dandified pencil-line thing. Kind of moustache those professional ballroom dancers used to wear. When was that? Nineteen-thirties. Time seemed to move so swiftly. Obvious, but when you were caught up in it there was consciousness of the speed of time around and within one. Move with the times. For the glimmer of a second, Humphrey Carmichael saw his problem: the anachronism and the failure to accept new ways, new freedoms. Then it was gone and Price spoke on.
‘... The Press and Television are always talking about you as the self-appointed guardian of public morality. How would you define morality?’
Carmichael gave it a moment’s thought, pursing his lips, wrinkling the brow. ‘The principles by which people conduct their lives in relation to what is right and wrong, good and evil.’
‘Right and wrong according to the law of the land?’
‘More than that. The principles needed in order that men and women can live in harmony. It goes beyond the law. Though through law the government must lead the way to morality.’
‘When your name comes into public debate on this issue it’s usually connected with sexual morality. Any comment?’
‘Newspaper question. Calls for a newspaper answer. The slackening of sexual morality leads to a laxity of the whole standard of life. Again it’s the government’s job to ensure that overtly stimulating influences are removed. It seems to me that neither the law nor the government is doing its job in this sphere.’
She was on a great plane of cloud. Colours she had never seen before. No, she was not seeing them: experiencing them. The tiny sensations heightened into huge and powerful throbbing movements from the well of her existence. All knowledge was here on this flat land of plenty.
The scream building far away in her brain, a pinpoint of sound, getting louder. The throbbing becoming a single sensation, expanding and contracting, fusing her mind and body with his. Extreme tension. Not breathing. Holding the great build. Then the electric explosion, breath forced from her and the noise becoming her scream of release as the tensions of years poured and gulped and her back and thighs gave spasmodic, massive arching movements. Far away, Dorothy heard his gasp of pleasure, but it was entwined with hers and the sensation went on to the edge of time.
XIV
AT THE OFFICE, Sutton felt that he was operating like Douglas Fairbanks Jr, back in the rapier, chandelier and staircase days. The full cut and thrust of business. While there was naturally a sense of strain, there was also the feeling of being in control. Half of next year’s list was already at editorial stage, and there seemed little doubt that commissioned manuscripts not yet delivered, would be in on time. Every book in their current list was going through on schedule. He moved, it seemed, almost by instinct in his new drive to cope efficiently on both private and public fronts.
As for The Golden Spin, Ed Coin and his department were working small miracles. Features writers were queuing for interviews with David Askelon, and already the TV chat, interview and arty shows were edging in.
They had decided to retain the American jacket, the deep black with a prismatic effect gold disc. Ed came up with what everybody agreed were solid, selling ad copy lines.
They’ve said it all before —
... Passions spin the plot: we are betrayed by what is false within.
George Meredith
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes And heedless hearts, is lawful prize; Nor all that glisters, gold.
Thomas Grey
DAVID ASKELON says it again but for this generation. DAVID ASKELON says it better. DAVID ASKELON says it with glitter, dazzle and brilliance in a book of our times —
THE GOLDEN SPIN
The spin is golden but the spin is false And destructive.
THE GOLDEN SPIN
The gold spins and glisters but it is Not purer nor is it gold.
THE GOLDEN SPIN
In spite of the tensions, the motivations seemed to work for Sutton, even though his dreams began to return vividly to him during the day. Dreams near nightmare proportions, all concerning eruptions. Earthquakes, the ground cracking and bubbling. Volcanic action, molten lava, noise and a mighty wind. Boiling seas. Sudden, destructive storms.
June had never been happier since their first coming together. Immediately after David’s proposal she envisaged a time of restless nights and worried days. Then, overnight, John Sutton had sprung back from his moody silences, becoming the John Sutton she knew: witty, sparkling, active. They would go out to the movies or the theatre, or just a meal, and return late, but he never flagged. Their mutual respect grew. Their sex life blossomed and again became entwined with their thoughts and minds.
The weekends with David still meant a great deal, but she was not faced with a great choice, or the conclusive decision. David, thankfully, did not allude to it, remaining silent, waiting for her to come to the point. June knew that she should tell him, but courage failed for some reason not truly divined by her. Perhaps an unwillingness to hurt, or a fear of losing the smaller, but important, relationship she had with the writer.
So life was good. Until, in the first week of August, June found John Sutton, alone and weeping.
He had returned from the office a little earlier than usual. Afterwards, with natural hindsight, June realised that he had looked pale and desperately tired.
They were going to have dinner at home. She came in from the kitchen with the silver to set the table, some bright and frivolous remark in mind. He sat bolt upright in his chair, tears rolling down his cheeks, the stricken look of the shocked and suddenly bereaved. For a second she thought there had been a telephone call bringing bad news.
‘Darling, what is it?’ On the arm of the chair, her hand behind his neck.
He shook his head, lifting a hand to brush away the tears. She would always remember the back of his hand, the light hairs flattened by the moisture, and the excruciating knowledge that something fundamental was happening. Deep inside her the quiver of anxiety, the quake of knowledge.
‘What is it darling? Come on. Tell me.’
A long sobbing intake of breath. She did not associate tears with John Sutton. In their lives the tears always came from her. It was John Sutton, her lover, father, husband, who kissed them away and made things right.
‘I’m sorry. I did not mean to …’
‘It’s okay. Just tell me.’
‘I’m so wretchedly tired.’ It poured out quickly after that. The firm granite crust on which John Sutton was built turned out to be thin and cracking. The resolute and strong picture of the last few weeks had been a final attempt to maintain something which he found impossible to hold. The discipline needed to run a publishing house and keep two domestic situations going was too strong.
‘I just can’t go on splitting my life three ways. I’ve tried to play it down, and I’ve tried to do the firm, hard-working, hard-playing bit. I’m barely middle-aged by modern standards, but I can’t cope, love. I just haven’t got the stamina, or character, to keep the thing going.’
June was silent for a while. Then — ‘Are you telling me I have to leave?’
‘No.’ His hand on hers, almost violently. ‘No. No. No. I don’t want that. Christ, June, I couldn’t do anything without you now.’
‘Something will have to go.’
‘I know.’
A small foothold. ‘Can’t we get away for a while? A week even? A change, so that you can get some rest. Or you. Alone. To think things out.’
The line of his lips hardened. ‘Spin’s coming up next month. There’s a lot on.’
‘There’ll still be a lot on if you’re taken ill. Really ill.’
He nodded again and the flood of words poured on. The fears, the monsters hidden in the night closet of his mind; the myths and legends; the real and unreal. Fears about Dominic and Martha. How he could not leave them totally alone with Daphne, and no court in the country would ever give him custody. Dreadful, indeterminate fears of growing old. Business fears; fears about The Golden Spin; fears about the new breed of young writers —
‘They’re so much more involved with life than I was at their age. And they haven’t had the experience. They’re gusty enough, and write with panache, but they don’t see the political scene in true perspective or context and their philosophy is second hand. Not a new thought, or original idea. As for relationships, they’re as intolerant of my generation as my father was, so that’s a switch. But they can’t see men and women over the age of thirty-five or forty having emotional problems. It seems as though it’s dirty if you fuck over forty. They’ve invented the inverted morality.’
He talked on for much of that evening, June nodding and telling him ‘yes’ and ‘no’ as the weaving pattern of speech called for it, looping, spinning, doing bunts, Immelman turns of jumbled, aerobatic rhetoric. She became very conscious during that long night’s monologue of the crevasse in their ages, and saw that John was seriously being bugged by problems simply because his age made him aware of them, so that he could read his own fears like a road map. Tracing them on the paper but not knowing what the landscape would look like.
June rationalised. Sutton’s dread was that of the middle aged and middle class. The sense that the old ground was crumbling under foot and change was irreversible and would sweep him into a manner of life with which he could not cope. For all his liberal attitudes, Sutton was chained by conscience to the ideal of one man, one woman. The sacred family unit (till death us do part).
Sure, she thought as she climbed. exhausted, into bed. Sure, he has no use for Daphne. She became a drag years ago, but he’s screwed to the system. The system he was brought up on is the Christian morals, one family, if you can help somebody structure. It implies that family break-ups are explosions of badness. Bad for everyone involved, particularly the kids. Bad for the business image. I am stuck, thought June Rabel, as John Sutton’s mistress until he tires of me; even then, his middle class conscience will still operate and he won’t be able to do without me. I am stuck. Glued to a man who has all the marks of becoming an emotional cripple. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe it’s my life’s work. My good deed in the naughty world.
John Sutton was awake until the early hours, mind teeming with the thousand worries which seemed suddenly to have foisted themselves upon him. Indeed, it was as though the rock upon which he had built his life had been moved by an unseen hand: a hand that had the power not only to overthrow the rock, but to split it into small pieces. Fighting within his mind at close quarters he was unable to see that the hand was, always had been, and would be forever, his own. That the moment approached when he would have to settle for the new life, among surroundings slightly changed, and a countryside in which the natural features were shifted from the norm he once knew. The alternative was the easier way. A return to the known. Acceptance of the gloomy familiar. To lose some of life’s spark and become a globule within the small, clinging molten mass of a disappearing society.
*
Through July and August, Humphrey Carmichael’s silent protest against The Golden Spin, grew and took shape.
As she had promised, Dorothy returned on the day after her departure. She came back to The Hall a changed woman. In her twenty-four hours absence she had assumed a new confidence. She smiled a great deal and, to his surprise, Humphrey heard her singing to herself after they returned from church on Sunday.
As Price had suggested, Humphrey reined in his apprehension and did not question her about the sudden departure, though she did offer him some story in which an old school friend had turned up out of the blue.
The fact of her disappearance disturbed him over the weekend, to the extent that he found himself almost looking forward to visiting Price on the Monday.
The psychiatrist seemed unduly pleased to see him, exuding a professional charm which the politician mistrusted.
‘It’s good of you to come, Sir Humphrey. I’ve wanted to talk with you for some time.’ Price ushered Carmichael into a chair.
Humphrey found himself grunting and nodding. ‘I make no bones about it You fellows aren’t my most popular people.’
Price laughed. ‘We sometimes get results though. Now, what about Dorothy?’
‘Came home. Just as you said she would. I kept my word. Didn’t start trying to winkle out all the details. Don’t know what she’s been up to but she seems happier.’
‘Happier? Since when? Since she has been coming to me, or since her little secret trip on Friday?’
‘Since Friday And she did explain it to me. Garbled. Some old school friend turned up in town. Wanted Dorothy to spend the evening with her.’
Price hid his smile, wondering how many men and women had used that old chestnut on each other. He also wondered if Carmichael in fact believed the fabrication. He took a deep mental breath and plunged straight into the deadly areas of this unstable marriage. ‘Sir Humphrey, why won’t you divorce your wife?’
Humphrey Carmichael scowled. ‘No cause. No need. No reason to bring a lot of dirty linen into public domain.’
‘You consider yourself a good husband?’
Carmichael did not pause for thought. ‘That’s not at issue. She’s a damn sight better off than most women. Beautiful house. Good allowance. Freedom in most things. She could have more. Plenty of social life if she wanted to share my work.’
‘That’s the point.’
‘What?’
‘She doesn’t want to share your work or your life. To an outsider like myself neither of you have shared your lives, ever. For years you’ve pottered along on different paths. You’ve used her when the image needed and that’s all.’
‘I’ve been perfectly happy. I have a good business and I’m not a bad politician. You’re not a fool. You know why I’m not prepared to offer Dorothy a divorce.’
‘Yes.’ Price felt smooth, too smooth and superior against his leather-bound books and the collection of glass. ‘Your political image is the reason.’
Carmichael raised an eyebrow, an angry hint.
‘Your political image,’ continued Price. ‘High middle class morality, unwavering respectability, the good life in terms of the unshakable old values. Britain’s still a first class power no matter what the socialists have done to it. There’s still decency, honesty and truth in the average household no matter how much the artists, writers, film-makers and journalists try to show a different picture. Stand fast to the flag, honour the Queen, birch the hippies, burn the books that look obscene, bring back hanging, show the Trades Unions who’s boss, give them a fair deal but show them who holds the whip, and do the same with Europe and the United States, but wogs begin at Calais and don’t forget it.’ He maintained a straight face, knowing he was being deliberately provocative. Carmichael looked as though he was holding back a volcanic eruption. Price continued. ‘That’s what you stand for, and if you were to divorce Dorothy you’d wipe dirt and mud all over the respectability.’
‘Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder.’ Quoted Carmichael, rigid in his chair. ‘There is no cause …’
‘A lifetime of unfaithfulness?’
‘Infidelity must be forgiven.’
‘Infidelity is a symptom. It’s been showing for the whole of your marriage.’
‘There is no cause to divorce her. Dorothy chose to spend the best part of her life with me. There is no reason for her to leave now. The fires of sensuality will burn out in a few years now and I don’t intend to see the whole of my political career, a lifetime’s work, shattered in the gutter because of things which the Press would be only too glad to blow up out of all proportion. There is no reason for divorce.’
‘Your wife wants one.’
‘I dare say. But, honestly, what would happen to her without my protection? You think I have no feelings? I know what she’d become.’ He paused, looking hard at Price. ‘She’s wheedled you into talking to me? Asking me?’
‘No. I’m talking as her psychiatrist. I think her marriage to you has been an irritant. When you saw it did not work you simply opted out by living a full political and business life. With her, what should be only a part of her married life became a preoccupation. I’ve a shrewd idea that the preoccupation is linked to you personally. If she had freedom from you now, there might be a chance of happiness and a certain amount of stability.’
Carmichael half rose from his chair, face flushed deeper. Then, as though changing his mind, he dropped back. ‘Doesn’t say much for me. What do you really think I am?’
Price took him at his word. ‘I only know you by reputation and through your wife. But I’d say you’re a man obsessed with moral guilt.’
‘Not a bad thing to be at a time like this.’
‘Not a good thing if it’s obsessive. Guilt and jealousy.’
‘Jealousy? I’ve no reason to be jealous. Not of anybody.’
‘No? Jealousy isn’t always the obvious green-eyed goddess you know.’
Carmichael made a puffing motion, bubbling his lips. Some of the things the psychiatrist said had hit into his conscience. He prided himself on keeping what he called ‘an even keel of life’. It really simply meant a straight bank balance. Price was right in implying that he had dropped out of the marriage. He should have tried to fill the gap with something more than a good house and allowance. But he still saw little profit in divorce now. It was too late.
Price was speaking again. The mouth moving as though he was taking careful, precise, bites at the words. The moustache. Dandified pencil-line thing. Kind of moustache those professional ballroom dancers used to wear. When was that? Nineteen-thirties. Time seemed to move so swiftly. Obvious, but when you were caught up in it there was consciousness of the speed of time around and within one. Move with the times. For the glimmer of a second, Humphrey Carmichael saw his problem: the anachronism and the failure to accept new ways, new freedoms. Then it was gone and Price spoke on.
‘... The Press and Television are always talking about you as the self-appointed guardian of public morality. How would you define morality?’
Carmichael gave it a moment’s thought, pursing his lips, wrinkling the brow. ‘The principles by which people conduct their lives in relation to what is right and wrong, good and evil.’
‘Right and wrong according to the law of the land?’
‘More than that. The principles needed in order that men and women can live in harmony. It goes beyond the law. Though through law the government must lead the way to morality.’
‘When your name comes into public debate on this issue it’s usually connected with sexual morality. Any comment?’
‘Newspaper question. Calls for a newspaper answer. The slackening of sexual morality leads to a laxity of the whole standard of life. Again it’s the government’s job to ensure that overtly stimulating influences are removed. It seems to me that neither the law nor the government is doing its job in this sphere.’
