The Censor, page 28
Indeed, by Tuesday morning, the letters of protest were flooding in by every post, and showed no sign of abating: Carmichael’s long-sighted plan paying off in dividends by the thousand.
The influx of such vast unsolicited protest forced the Director to place one of his Assistants in charge, giving him authority to form a committee of advisors, the normal first action in these circumstances.
The Assistant DPP chose Irving Scholes as literary adviser; Sir Walter Turk QC was brought in from the Attorney-General’s Department to deal with the legal situation, while Mr Norman Eade, the country’s foremost child psychiatrist was asked to read the book and make comments within his own field.
Dr Scholes’ report arrived first. Twenty neatly-typed folio pages praising the book for its literary honesty, judging it as a work which held up a certain strata of society, at a particular time, in a particular country, to the mirror, and so reflecting truth: throwing reality into clear focus. He pointed out that the essential truth in the book revealed the weakness which lay in one kind of democracy: the weakness of total freedom, and the way in which the young and untried will pit themselves, emotionally and then physically, against the tired elements of a society.
Sir Walter Turk and Norman Eade were less kind, Sir Walter being confident that, with the right witnesses, he could mount a successful prosecution. Indeed, he was convinced that the book demanded prosecution. To Sir Walter, the obscenities were obvious, standing out in the clusters of rampant characters within the book, woven with the pubic hair of violence. He could point to dozens of passages which raised the hackles of his own moral and legal conscience.
The Assistant DPP thought Sir Walter’s pleading strong, but felt he would need a great deal of solid backing in the way of expert evidence. So far the literary feeling was out of key. Not so the psychiatric.
As far as the Director’s Office was concerned, Norman Eade was the clear, quiet voice of sanity. His report arrived, like that of Scholes, immaculately typed. A neat and reasoned argument. The Golden Spin, Eade said, was probably a masterwork, yet it raised many difficulties. It was about the young therefore, presumably, for the young. The effect of some passages on the growing young mind, the unstable, immature or youthfully malleable could, in his opinion, have a catastrophic and inflammatory reaction. This, he claimed, was not so much a question of consent (We have all read books which give similar descriptions of sexual acts, both normal and deviant, and the kind of violence depicted here. Sex and violence per se are not the points at issue), but the brilliant manner in which the author had marshalled his material. The dangers lay in the vivid, almost hypnotic, compulsion within the narrative: the style, which left a distinct, and very disturbing, after burn in the mind. If this disturbed Norman Eade, a trained psychiatrist, how much more would it disturb the immature? Or the neurotic? The fact of the colourful brilliance was, to Eade, the book’s obscenity.
This was the kind of evidence which Turk and the Assistant DPP needed. The Assistant immediately wrote to Irving Scholes, thanking him for his help and saying that it was unlikely that he would be required to give evidence at any prosecution. He also wrote to three leading literary figures, whose views on obscenity and the written word were well known, and an academic, Dr Richard Wood, much revered in certain circles for his scholarly and withering attacks on popular sexio-sadist literature — the mini pornography of a stilted minority which happens to get a majority publicity coverage, was one of his most quoted phrases.
So, in the offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the storm grew. It was also growing within Humphrey Carmichael. A week after The Golden Spin’s publication he faced his first major crisis, and the negative taking shape in his mind became totally clear.
During the past weeks, Dorothy’s concern for her husband had become pitted with anxiety. Humphrey would alternate between long periods of brooding silence and almost grandiose moments of non-stop, high-pitched monologue. She confided only in Price, who offered little help, except to say that she was well capable of taking care of the situation. At the same time he counselled her to be on guard against the moments of grandiloquence: to beware in case the violent words turned into physical violence.
When the moment came, she was not there to help.
Humphrey had left the House early, restless, feeling desperately in need of companionship. Loneliness filtered into him and, possibly for the first time in years, he acknowledged the fact. There was even a flash in his brain: a question, asking if this sudden response to being alone meant that he was out of touch? When? Where had it begun? This need for people unfulfilled. Life as God, live in a great void, part filled with the work of making money, the remaining time spent acting out the role of politician, and of just being the discerning God.
His daughter, Joan, might help. He knew that part of their relationship was acting, playing, but he was able to control that. He did not mind her bantering attacks on his ideals. It was always like playing with a puppy and she would invariably concede the argument to him in the end. Another message in his brain. Was his daughter still acting a kind of love play. The sort of thing young daughters did with fathers. Trying out their first excesses of sensuality on the one safe man they knew. No, he was conscious of the time when Joan had done that. There had been moments of acute embarrassment for him then. But that time had passed. Talk with Joan. Use her young and abrasive personality to sponge away the secret of loneliness.
He told Cotterill to drive to Joan’s address, the flat in Bayswater. It was ten past seven and he knew she was usually in the flat between seven and eight. That could normally be relied upon during weekdays.
The door opened almost as he pressed the bell, as though she had been waiting for someone, hiding behind the door, eager to see the visitor. She was dressed in black. A simple, unadorned black dress, black stockings and black boots. A great, embracing smile of welcome which faded for a second as she took in the fact of his presence, then opened up again, covering the confusion he sensed from his superior position of surprise.
‘Daddy. Come in. What’re you doing here?’
‘If it’s not convenient …’
‘Of course it’s convenient. It’s always convenient.’
‘You were expecting someone else.’ The ring of authority, like a professional mind reader.
She closed the door behind them. ‘Yes, I’m expecting someone, but that’s no problem.’
‘A date?’ Nervous laugh. Why was he nervous? Lonely? On edge?
‘You might call it a date. Come on ...’ She shepherded him into her living room and towards a chair but he protested: ‘No Joan. I just called in on-the off chance. If you’re busy … If you’ve got to see …’
‘Sit down Daddy. I’ll get you a drink.’
A tidy room. Three easy chairs. He did not like or understand the pictures. Loud and too brash for his taste.
Joan moved out of his line of vision, but he could see through the bedroom door. The edge of the bed and something lying on it. ‘Dry sherry?’ she called.
‘You know it is, if you can spare it.’
The sound of the drink being poured and her voice, the initial tense trace gone. ‘How’s that anachronism getting along?’
‘What anachronism?’
‘The House, darling. Your beloved Parliament.’
‘It can do without me for a while.’ He heard himself chuckle, but the reality of the situation was receding. A father visiting his grown-up daughter? It did not feel like that. It had an unpleasant sensation to it: as he would imagine the uncomfortable feeling of a man visiting a street girl. ‘I just thought I’d drop in. You haven’t been over to see us for a couple of weeks.’
‘This weekend. I rang Mother this afternoon.’
‘Good. Good.’ Waiting for her to start their usual game of politics. But she did not start, sitting there with her smiling at him, the dark stockings and her young thighs. He was made uncomfortable by his own daughter’s thighs and it was like talking to a different girl, the conversation pinned down between the weather and how was he, and was Mother really any better? Glances at her watch. The quick look towards the door.
Humphrey began to swallow at his sherry. He could never drink quickly and the amber liquid seemed to take an age to go down. Then he saw it on the table. The gold disc against the smooth jet jacket and the lettering, The Golden Spin, David Askelon.
‘What’re you going with filth like that in your flat?’ It was a quiet question.
‘What filth?’
He pointed, the finger shaking.
‘Is it filth? I think it’s highly readable. But then your tastes in literature are pretty stuffy Dad.’ The giggle of Father baiting. ‘They’re going to gouge that book out of the country.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
He was not responsible for standing up. It was as though some other force pulled him from the chair. ‘I mean that they are going to take that foul conglomeration of words, place it in full view and disclose its true worth; show it clearly for what it is: a scribble not fit even for the walls of public urinals. They will erase it from the memory of mankind. Castrate it. Stamp on it. Rip out the bowels of its pages and shred them. They will mutilate its publisher and, if I have my way, its author. They will ban David Askelon and his work from this island. Cast him back into his own cesspit where he can die in his own stench …’
‘Daddy.’ She stood in front of him, hands tight on his shoulders, and he quivered. ‘Stop it, you’re behaving like a maniac. It’s only a book. We all know you’re god’s gift to the laws of obscenity, but keep your perspective. It’s only a book.’
Only a book. But it’s only a book. Only a book ... A child’s voice coming from the tunnel, but before Humphrey Carmichael could break the spell and crack the cryptic message from within, the doorbell leaped through his frozen fury, bringing him back to now and reality.
‘Dad, pull yourself together. And don’t ever sound off like that in public. They’ll laugh you away, or lock you away. Times are changing and that sort of drama has long gone.’
She turned and walked into the hall. Clearly, he heard the door open and the voice of another young woman. ‘Darling, I’m sorry, I didn’t even have time to change …’
Then Joan’s voice, soft. Muttering.
Humphrey took a deep breath and started towards the door. He had not taken two full paces before Joan re-entered. Her visitor was a girl of about her own age, maybe a little younger. Tall, blonde, feminine, wearing some kind of uniform. A cape and a round pull-on hat. Underneath, where the cape opened, there was a simple striped dress and starched white apron.
‘Come in and meet my father, Jenny.’ Joan switched her eyes between Carmichael and the girl.
‘I’m just leaving.’
‘Oh Daddy are you sure? You all right?’
‘Yes.’ A hand touching his forehead. ‘Yes, I’m perfectly all right.’
Sidelong glances. Or did he imagine that?
‘This is an old friend, Jenny Proud.’
The girl’s hand stretched out and his own encompassed it. Cold flesh. ‘How do you do Jenny.’
She muttered something.
‘Jenny’s a nannie.’
Nod and nod again. Smile. ‘How nice. I really must be going.’
‘Well if you must.’
Another smile. The girl taking off her cape. A slim waist circled by a nurse’s broad black belt. A plunge of pain over his right eye. Only a book. It’s only a silly old book.
Kissing Joan on both cheeks. The door. Stairs. The outer door. Fresh air. Cotterill opening the car door.
‘Home.’
‘Very good Sir Humphrey. Are you all right sir?’
‘Yes. Home, Cotterill.’
Only a book. Only a book. This is an old friend, Jenny Proud. Jenny’s a nannie. The belt. The broad belt. It’s only a book; and the negative in his mind turned suddenly into a positive colour print. Blonde. He thought that she was quite old at that time, but she must have been about twenty-two or twenty-three. The long skirts and the broad black belt. Over all those years he had not remembered her face, or her being, or the incidents. He had called her ‘Nannie’ though she was rightly employed as Nurse-Governess within the family. He could only have been eight or nine years old. So long ago. It’s only a book, Nannie. A stupid old book. He did not even know where the book had come from, the recall was still so dim. Faded paper and faded photographs. Plump women displaying their breasts; in tights; one sitting on a chaise-longue, pert, her head turned towards the camera, knees drawn up to her head, legs naked. He remembered those long legs and fat thighs in monochrome. Fat seductive thighs and great belching breasts, proud nippled. Those photographs excited him, though he could not tell why. There was guilt within him, and he kept the book hidden in his bedroom. Where? No memory. No memory, except he afternoon when he was looking at the book, flushed with something he could not comprehend. His parents were away, who knew where? Looking at the pictures, then, suddenly, awfully, Nannie behind him, shock and anger in her eyes.
It’s only a silly old book Nannie.
Her tirade. A foul, disgusting book. People who looked at books like that went mad, went to hell, were burned in the eternal fires, dirty, degrading, filthy. It must be wiped out of his mind. Evil. Evil. Punishment. The broad black belt and her fingers unbuckling.
Only a book Nannie.
The belt and the stinging fierce strokes over his small naked buttocks, the tears and Nannie leaving the room holding the book as if it was fat with germs. Only the pain and the sense of evil. Guilt. That which is dirty will maim the mind.
In memory, it happened only two nights after, though it could have been a week or a month. He was thirsty in the night. The quiet creep down the stairs, then the panting noise as he passed the drawing room door. Terror. Some horrible, and dangerous animal in the drawing room.
The door was an inch ajar and he peered through the crack. At first he thought it was an animal writhing and threshing on the floor, then he saw it was. Nannie lying there, her dress unbuttoned and drawn up around her waist, displaying her legs like the photographs of the evil woman: only her legs were wide open and between them lay a man (he never knew who it was) moving and groaning while she panted and gave out little sobbing cries, the two bumping and rolling their bodies together.
At one time he thought she was going to see him. She looked up, but her eyes were closed and her face was screwed into a grimace of what appeared to be agony; then, lying on the floor close to the ever moving two-beings beast, the boy saw his book, the harbinger of evil, spread open on the carpet, and he knew that it was all foul and wrong, gross wickedness, and Nannie had been ensnared by the book. The book, and whatever they were doing, whatever Nannie was having done to her, was disgusting and could only by nameless. It’s only a book. Only a silly book. The searing pain as she thrashed him with that black belt, beating away the evil.
Dorothy wanted to get a doctor, he looked so ill when he arrived back at The Hall, but Humphrey was adamant that it was simply a severe headache. He locked himself in the study and stayed there for an hour, yet, whatever went on behind the heavy door did not help. The pain struck like a sword and drained him of energy: his mind wandering in the muffled and shuttered stale past.
In the end, Carmichael went to bed and so escaped into sleep, allowing the memories to recede and return home, joining the countless other goblins haunting the hidden portion of his mind.
*
Two weeks after the publication of The Golden Spin, the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions passed papers to Sir Walter Turk QC, setting out information against John Sutton, as publisher of The Golden Spin. In turn, the papers were sent to the Obscene Publications Section of the Vice Squad, Crime three, New Scotland Yard.
The information was immediately set before a magistrate with an application for a Summons against John Sutton. Everybody seemed to assume that David Askelon, being an American citizen, was at home in his native land.
Following the Celia Aston article, the Press had not rested on The Golden Spin, but Askelon, taking Sutton’s advice, moved quietly into a small Kensington hotel, informing the Post Office that he would not be receiving calls on his apartment number for the next few weeks. In this manner he became immune and unobtainable, except to the few people with whom he had to have contact.
Joe Tireling thought the situation ridiculous and said so, loudly and with force. He also pleaded with David to return to New York.
‘I can’t stay around here much longer,’ he told David. ‘I’ve done some business for one or two other clients, and wasted the hell of a lot of time on the Spin setup. You’re getting a lot of good publicity, what with Carmichael shouting his head off and the Press here seething with rumours. Let it be, Dave. Cut loose and come home.’
‘I’m not coming alone, Joe,’ was the author’s constant reply.
June still refused to move until they knew the outcome of Spin, and David had to follow her dance, hypnotised and commanded by her.
‘I’m going to hurt John,’ she said. ‘It’s only fair to hurt him when he can take it. After he’s out of this sweat. When he’s faced the crisis.’
When it came, the facing of the crisis was made easy. Scotland Yard telephoned John Sutton and told him of the action they were taking. They even booked a time to serve him with the Summons, a simple business performed by a pair of plainclothes men who showed him a copy of The Golden Spin, asked him if he had read it, and if he was responsible for its publication, and then handed him the Summons. At the same time, copies of the book were seized at the firm’s warehouse.
