The Censor, page 8
‘And outside the windows the great big world keeps turning and the harvest moon shines on.’
‘That’s it.’
‘What’s the third way?’
‘That’s the difficult one. That’s the way where you have to ask questions. How innocent are the boy and girl? What is going on in the nice neighbourhood, in the world? How are they motivated? You end up with a statement and the reviewers say “here’s a sexy book”, and disregard the statement.’
‘That could just be the author’s fault.’ She was looking at him, eyes smoky over the top of her glass.
‘Sure, nine times out of ten it’s the author’s fault. But he’s tried.’
‘So what about The Golden Spin?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you. Spin started out as a plain simple story. But you start out to do that and suddenly you find that you’re forced up against the issues. You can’t evade the truth as you see it. Spin is a commentary on the society in which we exist.’
‘You comment but you give no answers.’
‘I don’t know if it’s my job to give the answers. What does Spin tell? It tells about four young guys who are lured to Haight-Ashbury. Who are they? Nothings. Nobodies. The boy across the street. The boy next door. But they’re lured because that’s where it’s at. That’s where the scene is. Basically it’s just the same as all those misguided pretty girls who got magnetised to Hollywood in the thirties and forties. Or all the guys who pioneered the West. You go where you think you can do your thing and make it on your terms: which doesn’t necessarily mean making it big with money. Anyway, the boys go because they’re attracted. What happens on the way? Society uses them, because society has already corrupted them. Then when they’ve done it all they emerge; they make it; the land of equal opportunity gives, even among the drop outs, and they find themselves on top. And then what do they do to themselves? They let society do them. If you’ll excuse the language, June, society fucks them: fucks, buggers, sucks and jerks them dry, then leaves them rotting by the road side where even the garbage disposal men won’t pick them up.’
‘You’re crying the same old cry, David. Society’s wrong. It’s society that’s the corrupting influence.’
‘Ach, it’s too simple. Sure society’s corrupt. All society. It’s in the nature of things. It isn’t just society that’s corrupt. People are corrupt to start with. The ordinary guy is already politically, socially and sexually corrupt at birth. And what’s more he’s psychopathic.’
‘We don’t learn from the past?’
He nodded. ‘Nor from the present. Take one facet of our beautiful present. Take the Pop Explosion. In half a century we’ve had two massive wars and a rash of minor ones. The wars have scooped out the adolescent generations. Even with Vietnam the Pop Explosion was the first wave of open adolescent revolt this century. And who were waiting on the sidelines? The exploiters. The gangsters. The commercialists. And what do they do? Point at the billboards and the glossies and yell “that’s what it’s all about kids. That’s where the power is: with the big companies. So grab it while you can, you don’t stay young forever. But while you’re grabbing it, for god’s sake shovel a heap of it in our direction.” And they grab at the TVs and fast cars, the gear and the erotica and the dreams. Especially the dreams. We’re all suckers for dreams: as I said, sexual, political or social. But the dreams they grabbed at weren’t solid, neither were the TV sets, the gear or the fast cars or the music. Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. That tells it, the Bible. But it says nothing about the quality of the dreams and visions nor how they’re affected by desire. What are the visions of the drop outs? The hallucinogenic visions. Instant knowledge heading for instant death. Instant truth. The world is full of things and things corrode and there’s no permanence. So the young men turn to the governments and say, like all kids say “it’s not fair. It’s your fault. you’ve double crossed us.”’
‘So what’s the answer?’
David sighed and crushed out his cigarette. ‘I talk too much.’
‘No,’ she pressed, ‘what’s the answer?’
‘I don’t know. It’s the questions that terrify me. Air pollution; cancer; heart disease; road deaths; the economy of nations; the haves and the have nots; racial equality; poverty; homeless; hungry; violence; war; restlessness. Where are the answers there?’
‘Mao and CM?’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘Do me a favour. The answer in the West doesn’t lie in kids playing at raggedy street communes. Christ, a generation that differentiates between war, black power violence and student uprising can’t last in our structure. They see Cuba and say “That’s how it is. That’s how it oughta be. That’s how we want it.” They think they see China and say “Here’s how we survive”. They neglect the facts: that the situations are vastly different, that history is different, that we’re at a different starting point.’
‘Do you say that because you would lose? Power? Money?’
‘We’d all lose. In the West the idealists can never win. It would be the same old story. In the end it would be back to the gangsters. Election at gun point like in Cicero in 1924.’
June was fascinated. It was as though she had suddenly switched on the lights inside her mind. Over the past years her involvement had been with the drawing and illustrating jobs, and obsession with John: waiting for him; missing him; brooding over him. And when he came? The same old conversations. David Askelon was putting into words things which she and John only touched upon. Touched and dropped quickly.
Askelon was talking again.
‘Take the drugs syndrome. After all it’s only another form of the good old American Prohibition. The whole crazy, nasty business is happening again and we don’t see it. The kids throwing the fire bombs; the campus riots; the whole godamn catastrophe’s a cry for help; an attempted suicide. And I do say that in The Golden Spin.’
‘Yes, I know, where Shelton gets mixed up with the girl …’
‘Connie.’
‘... student militant.’
David drained his glass. ‘Hey, that’s enough about the problems. Where we going to eat?’
She rose, reaching for an ash tray. ‘It’s great talking, David. I don’t get much chance to talk or listen. And you haven’t yet answered my question.’
‘There are too many questions. Which one?’
‘The one about your book being corrupting.’
‘Where we going to eat?’ he grinned.
‘Somewhere quiet, with not too much atmosphere, and it doesn’t matter about the food being good, bad or indifferent.’
Deathly silence through which the trembling in their stomachs could be felt, an uneasy communication learned by men and women from the earth and through growing things; from the touch of the air, the strength of wind and the heat of fire. Not the basics of lust or desire, but the feeling of something planted and in need of nurturing: to be left to the sun, yet watered carefully; tended and husbanded until it grows and blossoms like trees or armfuls of flowers or landscapes of wheat.
They did not take a cab, but walked up Kensington High Street, sparsely peopled at this time of night, but with the traffic rolling heavily. They disregarded a couple of Chinese restaurants, glanced around them and kept walking, watching the lighted shop windows: the smart junk and classy rubbish; the gaudy bits and pieces with which mankind surrounds itself: coats, shoes, hats, phoney jewellery, pictures, reproductions, cameras, stereo sets, televisions, suits (Latest Trend), shirts, gloves, underwear in horrendous colours pitchforked into one store window display as if by a manic saleslady at breaking point.
At last they found themselves opposite the Royal Garden Hotel, its eyeless oblong windows glinting coldly back at the street lighting.
‘That looks as deliciously decadent as anywhere.’ David stood with his feet apart in an aggressive attitude. ‘You think they’ll take freaks like us?’
‘Not in the main rooms. We can try the intimate grill.’
‘Shame on you, using that filthy talk with a man you hardly know, June Sutton.’
‘Rabel.’
‘Where?’
‘My name. June Rabel, not Sutton.’
He shrugged. ‘You’re John Sutton’s girl so I call you June Sutton.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘Okay.’ Another shrug and they were dodging through the traffic towards the hotel.
Downstairs The Bulldog Grill was as smooth as unweighted silk and illuminated with the kind of secrecy reserved for fading models, five figure executives, politicians and the Cosa Nostra.
The waiters could have slid easily from the colour ads in Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Queen: London by night is a fabulous sight; and when the lights go on in London tomorrow you can be there, dining in the contemporary splendour of Augustine’s Beartrap. You’ll never have been closer to the real jet set. And don’t forget — Airusa makes the getting there fun.
After they had ordered (rare steaks and salad) David watched the waiter depart and said, ‘I’ve often wondered about the private lives of those guys. They always seem so self-possessed, in control, masters of their craft. Yet, have you noticed the edginess between them?’
‘I only see the suntan and the pressed uniform.’
‘Yea.’ He grinned again. ‘The one we just ordered from, bet you he lives in a garret.’
‘No. That one has a large house in Hampstead. He’s really a rent baron. Hires out rooms and lives in the cellar. How long are you going to be in London, David?’
‘Depends. Depends on John, his lawyer, the book. A lot of things. We see his lawyer on Tuesday. After that, if it looks like being a long haul, I’m asking Freddy to find me a garret or a cellar, I can’t go on paying fancy prices for ever.’
‘Ask the waiter.’
‘And get us thrown out of here?’
‘Freaks can’t be choosers. And what do you mean, you can’t afford fancy prices? You’re loaded David Askelon.’
The pause was icy. The nerve ends showing raw and swollen. June made a mental note not to touch again.
After the waiter brought their steaks, David caught the mood again. ‘That’s a crazy name, June Rabel,’ he said. ‘Rabel, what kind of a name is that? Rabel, I bet you’re a riot.’
They both gagged on their steaks.
‘Come on then,’ said David. ‘You’ve read my story. Let me hear yours.’
‘I haven’t got a story.’
‘Well, your poem, novella, thriller, suspense tale, sonnet.’
‘It’s just a piece of very blank verse.’
‘So? You should be so lucky to be sitting here. Freaks don’t often make it as cosy as this. There may be lean times around the corner. Enjoy it and keep it so you can snuggle up to it and stay warm when the ice wind blows. Tell me your blank verse. Family?’
‘Horribly ordinary.’
The waiter brought the carafe of wine. David tasted it and said it was terrible. The waiter looked shocked and David laughed, saying it was fine and he was only joking. The waiter retired to the bar and began going over the whole business with the barman.
‘No sense of humour that’s their trouble. They burn the steaks, throw a whole pan of soup over a customer, drop fruit salad down the front of the head waiter’s shirt and nobody laughs. Tough. Now, about June Rabel’s horribly ordinary parents?’
‘Don’t we all get ashamed of our parents?’
‘Sure. It’s part of the great life pattern. Why are you ashamed of yours? Because they’re rich and ignorant, or poor and ignorant? Or because they’re the wisest people God ever created?’
‘They’re not ignorant. They’re innocent. Very poor and very innocent.’
‘Just plain folks?’
‘Mm-hmm.’ She nodded an affirmative. ‘Good, honest, innocent, ordinary people.’
‘And they don’t understand you.’
‘Of course not. Do parents ever understand? They say they do, and they’re kind, so kind, and they let me go ahead and do as I please without making a fuss. But when I go to visit, it’s like being on another planet. We even speak a different language.’
‘Don’t I know it.’ The vision of his father, old brown wrinkled Abe Askelon, who had enough money to buy the world and yet could never see that his son needed to be a writer. He had gone to the old man with an advance copy of Permutations, his first book. His father sat there in his grey suit, behind the desk with its six telephones in air conditioned Tulsa, and flicked through the pages.
So you’re an intellectual yet.
No Dad. I’ve written a book and I wanted you to have the first copy.
The old man smiled and patted the jacket. That’s good, David. Makes me proud. But books I don’t know about. Oil and money I know about. When’re you coming back here to help me?
June was talking. ‘They were very good to me. I went to a Grammar School. Did quite well.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Near Oxford. They still live there, near Oxford. I got a scholarship otherwise they’d never have managed it. I can draw, paint a little. At school they said I should go on to Art School. Maybe we didn’t look into it enough, but my parents said they couldn’t afford it so that was that. That was why John laughed when you asked if I was a journalist the other night. I was for a while. June Rabel, Girl Reporter, on the local hick weekly.’
‘I got a nose for them. After a while they all give off the sweet smell of ...’
‘Corruption. We’re back where we started.’
‘I was going to say the sweet smell of scoop and deadline. How did the journalism work out?’
‘I did some real racy reports on Women’s Institute Meetings. “Get their names, June,” the editor used to say, “nothing sells papers like people seeing their names in print”. It’s a primary rule of local newshawks. You don’t prowl the streets looking for your old pal corruption in local politics, you sweat it out making sure you get the names right, or that you describe the correct hat on the right lady’s head. If you don’t you’re dead. On publication day the editor used to sit white faced and trembling waiting for the telephone calls. We used to think that only ten complaints on publication day was a good week. “I shall never subscribe to your newspaper again. You said my daughter’s bridesmaids wore pink. It was blue, blue, blue.” And there was the famous time when we said that the bride’s office colleagues presented her with an electric cock.’
They laughed and she began to pick at the salad.
‘Sounds fun. They fire you or did you leave?’
‘I left. Under a little pressure, but I left. The editor was a nice man. Unambitious but nice. He had a friend who knew John Sutton. They told me to take my drawings and show them to him. I did and he wasn’t very impressed. I couldn’t understand why John gave me a job at first. Then, suddenly, it was the days of wine and roses. I didn’t need his job any more.’
‘In the tough novels they say, like he got around to romancing you.’
‘Oh it was mutual. The whole singing strings and dirty old London never looking so beautiful. I really got clobbered, David. It was the woman’s magazine fun dream golden sugar-coated fudge-flavoured explodable jamboree. Have you done that bit?’
‘Once.’ He still could not go into Reuben’s without remembering, while to hear The Second Time Around made it as vivid as yesterday. ‘I talked with an eighty year old lady once. She got hit when she was fifty-nine. She said age and knowledge and experience makes no difference. It reduces you to a common denominator. They can sneer, laugh and be cynical; and you know it’s sentimental, corny and unfashionable, but when you get hit you get hit.’
‘And it hurts.’
‘Like the rack, the boot and the thumbscrews. Your only consolation is that it changes. It becomes different, and when it does, watch out, it’s like measles, you can get it twice.’
She wound some lettuce round her fork, speared a piece of tomato and lifted it towards her mouth. ‘I dote on him, adore him. He has me in thrall as they say.’
‘Then what’s he doing leaving you alone over the weekend with a fink like me knocking around town?’
‘He also has a wife and two children.’
She popped the forkload of salad into her mouth.
At the next table a young couple leaned towards each other and touched brows.
The waiter was still being voluble to the barman about David and the wine. June was conscious of David’s right hand index finger rubbing to and fro on the tablecloth.
‘One of those,’ he said flatly.
‘One of those. I’m a dirty girl, David. A kept woman. Publisher’s Love Nest is how they’d describe that beautiful little house if it got into the papers. You want to leave now or shall we finish the meal?’
He turned to her slowly. ‘Don’t be melodramatic. And don’t ever let me hear you talk about yourself like that again. Apart from anything else it’s self indulgent. Does she know?’
‘Who?’
‘John’s wife.’
‘He says so. I believe him. Sometimes I believe him.’
‘Divorce?’
‘Mustn’t hurt the beloved children.’ She shook her head: negative.
‘That makes two finks you’re acquainted with.’
The waiter came over and asked if they had enjoyed the steaks and the wine. ‘Especially the wine,’ David told him. He asked if they would like some strawberries, flown in from California. David said wouldn’t that take rather a long while but the waiter remained sullen-faced. June nodded so David said yes they would love some strawberries from California as long as they didn’t have any MACE on them. The waiter had never heard of MACE and it took a long while to explain that it was a riot gas.
Over coffee David asked. ‘Does he leave you alone every weekend?’
‘Just about.’
