The Censor, page 27
*
In the event, Joe Tireling did see Humphrey Carmichael, and, as Sutton and Cadogan predicted, it was of little use.
They arranged it through Charles Carmichael, who got a friend to ask his father to see a visiting American bent on looking around the House of Commons, the Palace of Westminster.
It was the kind of added chore that Humphrey never turned down if he was free.
Tireling was amazed. First, he did not expect the physical presence of the man, not his expert guidance. Humphrey whisked him through the maze of history that is the Palace of Westminster, the Mother of Parliaments, like some talking text book, adding in small points of interest which seemed quite out of character. Like the modesty curtain they had put along the rails of the visitors’ gallery in the House of Lords on the advent of mini skirts.
The Chamber of the House of Commons was smaller than Tireling imagined, but Hollywood always gave things the larger look. Carmichael went on about Winston having out-manoeuvred the faction who, when the Chamber was being rebuilt after World War Two, wanted a circular setting like that in the United States Senate. The old Man claimed that circular, rising, benches would have made it easier for Members to change their party by simply edging around. In this, the traditional setting, where government and opposition face each other, a solid moral stimulus was needed for a man to ‘cross the floor’.
While there was a feeling of having been close to the physical centre of a great democratic system, Tireling emerged into the sunlight of Westminster, with its grind of traffic and knots of sightseers, feeling that he had not come anywhere near Carmichael the man, or the politician. He had been given a set piece, an old routine which Sir Humphrey had learned years ago, adapted on change, and now performed when required. For the rest, he could have been a blank sheet on which this one activity was etched clearly. The agent saw that a private and personal approach to Humphrey Carmichael was impossible.
*
‘How do you find things now?’ Price had not seen Dorothy for a couple of weeks. The consultation now was at her own request and his initial question seemed almost mundane.
‘I’m fine. So far.’ Dorothy laughed and launched into a description of the dinner party and its attendant mental horrors. ‘I know this’ll sound funny coming from me,’ she said after relating the facts. ‘But you asked a lot of questions about Humphrey. And you saw him. He was strange after you saw him and I got the impression the other night, after he’d talked with Irving Scholes, that he was agitated. I’m worried about him.’
Price appeared to spend a long time looking at his hands. ‘As well you might be,’ he said at last. ‘Our society is in a state of incredibly fluid change, I’ve no need to tell you that. Fast change. Violent change. In the hospitals, where I act as consultant, I see more and more people who are unable to cope with the change. People who’ve gone to the wall because of obsessions shattered by reality.’
‘You think Humphrey’s going to be shattered?’
‘I think he might be in a dangerous situation. He’s no fool. The facts speak for themselves. He’s always been a good businessman and a reasonable politician, taking into account that all politicians are blind to their own faults. But he wouldn’t have been so successful in both professions for so long if he wasn’t capable. But he is obsessive. Part of him lives in a hygienic capsule, and that part is taking control of the whole man. I believe that deep down, Humphrey Carmichael is a highly sensual being. Maybe quite early in life the sensuality was suppressed, and he’s gone on suppressing it. Now, the general opening up of sexual discussion offends his sense of decency, because he’s afraid of what it might do to him.’
‘You mean his attacks on liberal literature and art are symptoms of a disease?’
‘Well, I think they may be symptoms of some definite circumstance. It’s all part of what the younger generation calls a hang up. In a way it’s a kind of fetish. It’s certainly obsessive and neurotic.’ He paused again. ‘I think you’ve done wonders. You’re gradually coming to terms with your problem. It might help you to help him.’
‘He’s in that much need?’
‘I think he’s close to the edge. But one can never tell with people like him.’
*
Humphrey Carmichael had begun to dream. Not the dreams of deep sleep, but half waking dreams in the early hours. The anxious photographic negative was beginning to take form and shape. The corridor of memories, through which man lives, had started to reverse. Pictures of childhood came unheralded. The house. His father, Mother. Long days spent alone. The person and the shape he could not quite recall or block out. There were periods during his waking hours when his mind would slip back into the teeming past as if in search of some answer.
In the week before the publication of The Golden Spin, Humphrey Carmichael wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions. A strong, simple letter protesting at the publication of the book, pointing out that its mixture of sex and violence was more explicit than anything to have yet reached the open British market, and expressing hope that the Director would take some action.
The Director of Public Prosecutions received Carmichael’s letter at the same time as a ten page report on The Golden Spin. He noted the letter and replied with his usual courtesy. But the report was disturbing. The book, it seemed, contained certain elements that could be dangerous. While the policy of non-prosecution was uppermost in his mind, the Director could see that it might well be necessary to take expert opinion on this particular work.
*
David Askelon told Tireling of the situation between himself and June just before the weekend prior to publication. Joe had finished In The Hair Of My Children and spent a considerable amount of time trying to put the work into perspective. It was undoubtedly a book of great brilliance, but he was at pains to point out to David that while it would certainly sell well, it was not going to be a blockbuster like The Golden Spin.
Askelon was surly and touchy. The new book was his consuming passion and he quickly turned Tireling’s steady, controlled criticism into mental doubts, accusing his agent of not liking the book, of having no faith in him as an author of immediate and urgent stature.
At the end of one outburst, Askelon flared out, ‘Oh, and by the way, I won’t be around much this weekend.’ As though underlining some domestic split.
‘You weren’t around much last weekend either, David. That’s your business. You tell me when you’re ready. In the meantime, get it straight. This book’s a whizz, a knock-out. All I’m telling you is that it’s not going to be the bombshell that Spin was. You’ll get fabulous reviews. It’ll lift your image. Okay?’
Askelon had been lion pacing. Now he flopped into a chair. ‘Okay Joe. I’m sorry. I just want it all over so I can get the hell out.’ He straightened up and carefully began to dole out the facts to Tireling.
When he had heard everything, the agent calmly took the pipe from his mouth. ‘This is one for time, David. Time alone can cure it, or fix it.’
On Friday evening, Askelon called June as he always did. ‘Is the coast clear?’ In his goofy private eye voice.
‘If that’s the milkman, yes, my husband is gone. I am alone. Six pints please.’
Half an hour later they shared the settee in the Essex Place house. There were no movies or shows they wanted to see and the old one on television had been bad when they first released it. Neither of them could be bothered to face the night traffic, or even the pedestrians, to go out for food. They simply sat close, talking a little, sharing the pleasure of their company.
‘How the devil do you do it?’ June asked from the warmth of their silence.
‘Do what?’
‘Where do you glean them from? Characters I mean. The characters in Children? How do they get into your head?’
Askelon chuckled. ‘They come by stealth.’
‘In the night?’
‘Dead of.’
‘Seriously. Tell me about characters.’
‘It’s one of the black arts, Junie. Everybody has his own way. You can be clinical and work the whole thing out on paper, trace the life to the moment you begin to use the person. Sit back and examine. See what makes him tick. What moves him. Or there’s the instinctive way.’
‘And that is?’
‘The difficult, agonising way. You create a major character in a whirlwind. In a moment. One second the paper’s blank, the next you have him trapped, and as the book progresses, he traps you. You discover him. He begins to live. You see him and hear him. You know far more about him than you ever let any reader know. For you he becomes both friend and enemy. Hey, I’ve got a favour to ask.’
‘Mmmm?’
‘How about me staying here over the weekend?’
June stiffened. The decisions had been made. They had not really discussed the sexual progress, but, mainly because of David’s sensitive understanding, she took it for granted that their bodily moment would not be until she had made the split with Sutton. Yet her body reacted in its own wilful way. The cold calculation of her mind replied in the negative, while her loins demanded this short, thick built man who had stolen her mind and possessed her in all except the one way of love. Her nipples tingled erect and of their own volition, while she felt the quick juice on the lips of her cunt. She thought the word. It was what she would want David to call it. Yet the suburban spot of guilt remained.
‘Does it have to be here?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘This is John’s house. I’ve lived here with him. Loved him here. Been a wife to him here.’ A sharp, nervous laugh. ‘He pays for the place, David. I can’t play the complete whore on him.’
He looked at her, the smile wry. ‘I wasn’t asking you to. I thought we knew one another well enough for that.’ The smile faded. ‘When I take you, June, it has to be somewhere neither of us have ever been. It’s that important. Somewhere we can’t feel our individual pasts ripping at our backs. I simply wanted to get away from Joe for a while. He’s bugging me a little.’
The irrational tears filling her eyes.
‘Thank you.’ It was out of character for both of them. She knew they were playing the game of romantics, standing outside themselves and watching; saying what a beautiful, sad, maybe even tragic, couple they made.
XVI
THE PUBLICATION OF The Golden Spin came and went. First with the golden trumpets and hymns of praise. The launching party, on the Tuesday, at The Carlton Tower Hotel, in the Tower Room. Too many people; not enough champagne; gimmicks, like the Golden Gambling Wheel, which each guest could spin and win a prize: perfume for the ladies, after shave for the men; all the executives from the Sutton organisation and their women; journalists and their women; free-loaders and their women; David Askelon; Tireling; Cadogan; June Rabel; conversation mainly confined to other people’s books and other people’s beds; gossip; champagne; scandal; smoked salmon; turkey talking; cheese biscuits; lurking; the start of small new friendships which would lead to inevitable small affairs and then crumple to a memory trail lasting a month or so; champagne; bright talk; champagne; The Golden Spin by David Askelon; champagne; I’ve got a flat in the Cromwell Road. It’s not far; champagne and the last of the smoked salmon on biscuits; Darling, quite honestly, some of the sex is so unrealistic. That bit with the ice cubes. Six times, six times in one night. It’s impossible. She would know of course, she worked in Ed Coin’s office and went to the Costa Brava every year, regularly with her slim Jim ad man husband and they would hump to their hearts content at least once a night so it was impossible and she knew; the last of the champagne and June, quiet in a corner, watching the sexual chess of the remaining guests; John Sutton, bleak near her and David Askelon covering himself well by getting a whole scene going with a young, ripe and ready lady journalist; the dregs, and June screaming inside with jealousy.
The reviews in the dailies were cautious, as though their instigators knew that trouble might lie ahead. They made Askelon irritable as nettle rash.
The Sunday papers took on a slightly pompous tone which made the author even worse. Inside, he had expected the raves which had engulfed him in applause from New York to Los Angeles.
He read the Sunday reviews at Essex Place with June. One of the heavies had farmed the book out to a sharp, respected writer of very English novels. Askelon spluttered as he read.
‘Junie, what in the name of sweet Jesus does all this mean? Listen. David Askelon’s saga, “The Golden Spin”, runs for around two hundred thousand words during which the reader is freaked out; copulated with; beaten and smashed; dragged through mud, naked and tied to a horse; raped; masturbated by a teenager in a woodshed; indecently assaulted by a college professor’s mouth; defecated upon; almost burned publicly; is several times stoned; made to witness various orgies (sexual, political, sociological); intimidated; shot at; threatened with brutality; tempted by lascivious whores, college girls, urban matrons, young country housewives, young men in Levis, old men in their bedsocks and a nymphomaniac child bride.
‘All of this takes place while four boys take up the call of the wild and travel across their native America in search of fame and fortune. They find both, only to reject the values that go with the sugar and success. After this whole mighty Wurlitzer of sex, violence and drugs, Mr Askelon finishes his book with the sentence, “That was the Prologue. Now read the future.”
‘From those eight words one would imagine that Mr Askelon has written a prophetic work at least comparable with the Book of Isaiah. He has not. Hell, June, what is that? It certainly isn’t a review. That was the Prologue. Now read the future.’
June still smarted under the words they had flung at each other on the previous evening, the first time she had spoken to him since the publication party. He swore that he had only seen the lady journalist back to her front door; and what the heck, June was still living with Sutton. Could she prove her virtue every night? She still slept in the same bed with the guy. They ended up laughing at their preposterous antics, but June still felt the pinch. She looked up at him now.
‘That’s a very good review. In commercial terms. I agree it’s not the kind of thing one expects from a paper of that standing, but it will sell your book. Where’s your professionalism gone? Where’s the old Askelon take it on the chin? These people are getting under your skin.’
‘Ah shit.’
‘Ah yes. And if it’s not opening up last night’s wounds, have you ever screwed a lady journalist by the name of Celia Aston?’
He turned, a lightning flash, eyes uneasy, face frozen. ‘Who’s said anything about Celia Aston?’ The ice. Her scent. The sultry, yet deadly look she had given him as she left his apartment. The city skyline, Manhattan at night with the eternal rumble coming up from the chasmed streets and Celia Aston lying in wait.
June held out the paper she had been glancing through. It was not one of the heavies.
‘There’s a very nasty, bitter little piece there, emanating from New York which, they tell me, is a fabulous town.’
It was all there. Celia Aston’s vicious piece almost exactly as she had written it. Reshaped, perhaps a little sharper in places, with her own byline and the big heading — WHAT DAVID ASKELON TOLD ME. ‘The weird stuff really drags in the loot.’ Author of ‘The Golden Spin’ tells our girl in New York.
‘I was stoned, but that’s no excuse.’ Their eyes flicked together, then away, then together again, holding, locking on. ‘That was me before you, Junie. It’s something you get if you buy me. You get my past and our future.’
‘You get my past as well: and I’ll buy our future.’ She said it without emotion: the steady acceptance.
*
‘You realise that, if anything happens, I won’t be able to use Askelon now.’ D’Arcy Harrington told Sutton on the telephone the next morning. ‘He can deny the piece of course, but it’s pretty damning …’
‘He doesn’t deny it.’ Sutton had almost been killed twice driving in from Guildford, his mind ground down between the words and the pages of the Sunday Press. ‘I’ve just spoken to him. He says it was his own fault. He got drunk and bedded the girl in New York without realising who she was. He admits he should have known better.’
‘Fornication and adultery, my dear John, are always paths strewn with razor traps and slippery with the glue of emotion.’ There was a pause, the tincture of a second: Harrington’s breathing on the line before he added, ‘As we both know too well.’
Sutton’s conscious stream took a great gulp at June and Daphne, Martha and Dominic. The four weaved together, then split away, circled and came close again. Daphne’s whine about this and that and the butcher, the baker, the silent village people who spread their chat to each other but never entered the wider debate: those who had nothing to do with his world of books and the people who created them: schedules; space in print; rights, film, foreign and serial; attitudes. June with her hair streaming and the blessed, sacred nakedness which had nothing to do with adultery or legality. Martha sobbing herself through the sentiment and emotional bursting of the bud. Dominic, a cynic at twelve. June’s own singular gift of giving: he had always known that he was particularly fortunate to have found someone of her great talent. Daphne restless and meandering life away. doing nothing to alter or stop it. Except complain. June a resting place? Was that all she was? A place into which he crawled, withdrew and hid?
Harrington was speaking again. ‘I feel that Askelon should either go back to the United States or hole up. No Press. No nothing. Nobody knows where he is. I think that would be our best solution for Mr Askelon.’
‘I’ll see to it, but let’s hope nothing’s going to happen.’
Things were happening though. Humphrey Carmichael had not missed the reviews, nor the piece culled from Celia Aston. Neither had he taken chances. On the Sunday evening he spent two hours locked in the study, making telephone calls, trying to gauge reactions.
On Monday he put down a question for the Attorney-General asking what steps were being taken by the Director of Public Prosecutions following revelations in a Sunday newspaper regarding the circumstances under which a novel titled The Golden Spin had been written? It was disturbing enough (he said) that a book of blatant pornographic intent should be published for profit. The author had entirely revealed that intention. Was the Attorney-General aware that the DPP’s Office was already swamped with protests against the book?
