(Chapter Ten of the autobiography, Breaking the Mold)
TESTING THE WATERS
The center of the lake was a gentle swell, comforting as the measured articulation of a somnolent uxorial breast, and I the dreamer on it. Through a misty veil, which blocked the sun and trapped the heat, the presence of distant mountains loomed like familiar ancestors comfortably beyond knowing. My fragile craft, a skiff, slipped across the surface with a rippling whisper, punctuated by the steady thresh of oar blades leaving pairs of foaming eddies which, sucking and gurgling, receded into the haze like the tracks of some giant water boatman. All at once, with muffled sound, a steamer appeared fifty yards off, its white superstructure and black funnel ghostly in the fog. As I sat, drifting on the oars, my heart pounding as I contemplated the deep beneath, the cheerful waves of a few passengers belied the narrow escape I had experienced.
Sometime, around noon, I landed at the town of Evian, across Lac Leman from Lausanne, where I was staying for a few weeks with mother, having finished my Public school education. In the autumn I was to attend Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, having failed to make Oxbridge as had the rest of my brothers. It was the summer of 1962. I was eighteen and enjoying my freedom. Walking up the beach amongst a scattering of sunbathers, I spied a restaurant where I sat down under an umbrella, intending to have lunch. This was not to be, however, for no sooner had I glanced at the menu than a pair of gendarmes approached demanding my papers. I had neglected to bring my passport and this information brought a brusque query of my origin and thence, as I indicated the far side of the lake and the manner in which I had arrived, an order to see my boat. After a careful examination of the shell and a phone call to the rowing club from which I had borrowed the skiff to confirm my story, I was ordered to leave within the hour. The mayor had just been shot by Algerian terrorists and this was not the moment for me to appear unsanctioned.
Relations with mother, never close, were now strained by distrust and resentment. If the last two years hadn't brought home the truth of them, in her presence it became manifest that she wished to be free of the burden of my charge. Worse and painful was her apprehension that I might in some way, by my behavior, bring disgrace on the family name. The basis for this was murky, involving her inability to converse usefully and my teenage frustrations, the combination producing volatile exchanges featuring my anger and her, rather misplaced I couldn't help feeling, sense of martyrdom. Nevertheless, in an act of contrition, disregarding the merits, I shouldered guilt, supposing, as I had before, that I was in some way inadequate and must bear the consequences for it, whatever they might be.
As it had at school, rowing provided a useful escape from an unwanted situation. I made it a daily event and observed with satisfaction my gradual loss of weight. This, combined with an improving asthmatic condition, encouraged a sense of physical well-being, which did much to offset my emotional misery, suggesting that, all prior evidence to the contrary, I might achieve in a physical realm that at which I had failed academically. One early morning, as I sculled in near silence past a succession of well-to-do shore-front properties in the direction of Geneva, I observed a lone figure standing at the water's edge in a lifting mist. There, clad in a black silk dressing-gown bearing oriental designs, hair slicked back from a receding hairline, with arms folded and a cigarette in hand, stood one whom I took to be Noel Coward; I had heard that he sometimes resided in the area. For a moment we rested alone, the famous man, if it was indeed him, and I, cocooned in the mist. A pair of trees shrouded in the background and the faint ripples on the glassy surface of the water which lay between us completed the simple tableau. As I stared in his direction and he out at me, I experienced, in our chance moment of intimacy, a sense of reassurance which, requiring no commitment, needed no acknowledgement. Drifting out of sight into the fog, I felt a consoling sense of possibility.
Mother, ever ready to think the worst of me, received news of the Evian incident - the club had called her in some alarm - as yet further indication of my downward spiral. No amount of reasoning would satisfy her and, within a few days, I left for England. In London, I was to stay with the brother with whom I did not get on. He was fast becoming mother's agent and was, now, deputized to oversee my activities. Inevitably, it was an uncomfortable relationship wanted by neither of us. As such, we saw little of each other, he busy with a legal career, and I interested in making the most of the city before going to Dublin.
Through a school acquaintance I soon fell in with a fast crowd, many of whom enjoyed a wealth and social status far removed from my flimsy trappings. Nevertheless, it was heady to be a part of their exuberant activities for a brief interlude. There was a Getty of the oil family, invitations to such as the Duke of Bedford, and engagement with the pre-season of the debutante round. I learned quickly to masquerade through subtle hint as opposed to outright deception. However, my limitations determined a position at the outer edges, for which I compensated by exploiting an ability to gain the confidence of women through conversation, a skill I had developed out of need in the matriarchal circumstances of my upbringing, and which stood in bold and effective contrast to the more conventional and often clumsy approaches practiced by my contemporaries.
Quite a few of these women, I soon discovered, were reluctant participants motivated only by parental expectations. Amongst them I came upon the daughter of an extremely wealthy banker and, as our exchanges proceeded encouragingly and considering my increasingly parlous state, I began to entertain thoughts of a life of ease. Her principal, virtually sole, interest was horses and I, with my knowledge of this activity through mother's equine pursuits, found it easy, if a trifle limited, to satisfy her needs. Perhaps it was the sense of an impending life of boredom, or perhaps it was a fit of conscience, that drove me, one night, to boast carelessly at a party that I intended to marry her. I can still hear the cavernous thud of the front door of her father's Grosvenor Square residence, next day, as it was closed to me forever, the butler having denied her presence in a manner clearly unconcerned with her location.
Then, I fell in with the daughter of an American diplomat, whose wholesome body with its overlay of luminous pink baby fat, consistent with manufacture in the "land of milk and honey" as I had come to perceive her homeland, was incautiously ready to engage with mine. Her straightforward, unabashed approach to sex was a delightful change from the repressed fumblings to which I had been used. So enthusiastic were our couplings that on one occasion a bed, structurally compromised, collapsed beneath us, causing hysterical mirth and perhaps the pregnancy which promptly ended our affair. "Daddy" would have none of it, an abortion was arranged, and the temple door, so to speak, shut firmly in my face.
It was during these ignoble encounters, that I met a colonial from what was then known as Tanganyika. Five or six years older than me, he presented an enviable cosmopolitan exterior. A smart dresser with dark tanned skin and piercing blue eyes, women hung off him like bats in a cave, his frequent arbitrary abandonment of them revealing a cruel streak. Entertaining my curiosity and, apparently at loose ends, he invited me to tag along on his social forays. Apart from feeling occasionally like Tonto to the Lone Ranger, especially when asked to act as a go-between in his relations with women, I was fascinated by his amorality. At length, he offered me a room in a flat shared with a female friend, a model acquainted with Christine Keeler, who was to feature in the Profumo affair. I accepted, entering a demi-monde, whose allure was accompanied by vague foreboding.
The flat was in a basement in Notting Hill, handy to the underground. The "model" was nearly thirty and eight abortions had brought her to a dangerous crossroads - she had been warned that another might result in death. Nearby was a pub frequented by businessmen at lunch, and there she solicited custom, which was sometimes entertained in the flat. On those occasions, the colonial concealed himself behind the curtain of an adjacent closet, from which he took pictures of the proceedings, subsequently using them for purposes of blackmail. It took me some time to discover this, becoming suspicious when periodically ordered to absent myself from the flat.
Meanwhile, I had met up with a former school acquaintance, who was seeking to launch a career as a director in the film business. Intense, subject to dark moods, and possessed of large amounts of nervous energy, qualities which were to be reflected in the subject matter of his movies, he encouraged me to accompany him in racing about the city in his Mini-Cooper sports sedan, taking in as many movies as a twenty-four hour cycle and our bodily needs would permit. As soon as the first city editions hit the news stands in the morning, we pored over the entertainment listings like generals mapping out highly complex maneuvers. In this manner, we were able to take in a maximum of five or six films a day, eating hastily between features, often in the car, fuming when traffic threatened to upset the schedule. I learned something of film-making from him, for he had just shot his first amateur production, a grisly tale involving a young woman confined to a wheelchair threatened by a homicidal maniac in a remote rural location.
Meanwhile, life was presenting its own dark intimations. One day, while alone in the basement flat, I observed a policeman passing in the street above. When, in the space of a couple of hours, he repeated this process two or three times, once actually stopping to peer down into the living room in the recesses of which I sat reading, I began to entertain concern. My suspicions were reinforced when I later observed a policeman on the opposite side of the street making a note in his book after observing me as I exited the flat, and I made up my mind to find other accommodations. I was correct in my assumptions, for I learned of the model's arrest not long after.
As the summer drew to a close, I made my way across the Irish Channel to Dublin, doubtful of my prospects. The degree which I was to take was known unofficially as a "gentleman's degree," that is to say it lacked any real weight in the market-place and, though I might have aspired to be a gentleman, I had not the funds to substantiate any such claim. However, by way of compensation, the Emerald Isle, by virtue of what I found to be its singularly quizzical attitude towards the world, was to offer me my first taste of freedom away from the stultifying social hierarchy in which I had been raised. Here, I mixed with all sorts, learning to recognize individual merits regardless of their origin. Though the Irish had their classes and noted the divisions, republican sentiments kept the pot boiling.
Here, as in London, I soon fell in with a fast crowd, the only difference being that money and position carried less weight. To be amusing, artistically talented, or just plain different, was sufficient to merit inclusion. For these reasons, it attracted a healthy quota of poseurs. I was not above affectation myself, discreetly permitting, partly out of insecurity, a fiction concerning my credentials. I had half convinced myself that my father was of noble lineage and, combining this with the knowledge of the existence of a half-brother, I, romantically and conveniently, devised a script in which he got the money and I, the title. Doubtless influenced by Monte Christo and other similar literary allusions, I chose to be a count. This information I shared with a newfound friend, a well-connected Dubliner, also a student at Trinity, adding a caution for my conscience that the facts were hazy, due, in part, to my adopted status. My friend, however, professed little interest in the niceties of my story, referring to me from then on in public as "The Count," "My dear Count," or, simply, "Count." He, no doubt, enjoyed the effect and it at once gave me social legitimacy, bringing with it all manner of invitations. Whether out of simple courtesy or indifference, I was never challenged, but I was mindful of the social graces so as not to invite close scrutiny.
Ultimate acceptance required approval from the group's doyenne, a large domineering woman, who lived vicariously through the relationships she arranged for others. Protocol required a tea engagement for purposes of vetting. Attended by a female chorus of faint hearts, she engaged the supplicant with blandishments, drawing him, or her, out until she had determined a role for them. Any subsequent deviance from her plan was punished by banishment from the circle. In my case, approval was bestowed with what some enviously saw as the highest favor, it being presented that I should meet her "dearest friend," who was just then moving down from Belfast. I learned that this "friend" possessed an unvanquished reputation as a femme fatale and was, herself, no mean competitor in the social lists. Combined with the existence in the background of a longtime wealthy suitor of whom she was said to be growing tired, it was clear that I had been cast as the bait to draw her out.
Inwardly resentful, yet curious as to my female lead, I bided my time until a party at a club where she was to make her appearance. At the appointed hour, she made an impressive entrance with a host of revelers in attendance. Upon my prearranged introduction, I was assessed approvingly, and, after a period in which coy glances were exchanged across the room, we took to the dance floor, where we became the object of attention. As the number came to a close, she ostentatiously let slip a silk scarf from about her neck. There was an almost audible gasp of shock from the onlookers as I turned away, rejecting the invitation to pick it up. I had had my fill of the game.
Amongst the fancies of youth that populated the cityscape were: a penniless ex-Trappist monk, who, wanted for petty theft, hid in the apartment of my erstwhile female lead while the police searched, effectively distracted from looking under the bed where his begowned figure lay, by her semi-nude presence on top of it; the charismatic scion of an aristocratic English family, who courted exclusion by embracing socialism and, dressed all in black, seduced women at late night parties with gentle folk songs accompanied by a deftly strummed guitar - evidently suffering inner torment, he was to drive his treasured sports car at high speed into a wall in an unsuccessful act of self-denial; a shadowy Irish figure who, perennially garbed in a dull mack, appeared at parties to ruthlessly relieve the unsuspecting of their money at poker while taking bets on the horses, and from whom most anything could be obtained for a price - he was never known to smile, it was said he saw no profit in it; and, from another well-bred English family in which the mother had taken up with the head groom confining him for life to a wing of the ancestral manse, their male progeny, an individual of exquisite manners, with impeccable taste in clothing and a limitless knowledge of fine antiques, but no chin.
My friend's family situation was of a similarly unconventional nature. In the absence of his mother, an alcoholic and recluse living apart, he was raised with his sister by an aunt in a fashionable part of the city. In an attic apartment of the house lived another reclusive aunt, a spinster who smoked a pipe and required a daily ration of gin. All of them were supported by the third sister, a shrewd, domineering business woman who delighted in strong cheroots and Shitsus, of which she had a pair. Several were the early mornings when my friend and I sat at the foot of her four-poster bed entertaining her with droll accounts of our lives in the city as she, having returned late from social engagements, lay propped up regally on a mound of pillows smoking, the dogs lying on either side of her, all three of us sipping from brandy snifters. His sister, quiet and reserved, had experienced a hunting accident in childhood resulting in the loss of a hand. In its place she wore a wooden prosthesis, artfully carved and painted, which was seldom visible, for she hid it beneath a scarf. One day, as we three walked along the shore near Dublin in earnest metaphysical discussion, I noticed that the damaged limb swung freely at her side. It was a mark of her acceptance of me within the family circle, the only context in which she made no effort to conceal the injury.
When city life paled there were always plenty of activities in the countryside beyond - house parties, horse and motor racing, and the usual round of rural sports. The Irish love for hyperbole was frequently manifest in their social engagements. At a pre-party dinner party, one of a dozen or more given throughout Dublin on the occasion of a party given by Lady Oranmore and Brown, I sat next to a Persian princess across from the scion of a wealthy Egyptian family. As my friend and I swung up the long drive to our host's house in his sports car afterwards, we passed an abandoned Rolls Royce which had failed to make a curve and lay forlornly on its side in a thicket of bracken. In the great hall, where tables were heaped with food in a manner reminiscent of the Romans, the American pop group, The Loving Spoonful, entertained, whilst members of the Rolling Stones dressed as wizards mingled with the money. Not long after midnight, in search of a bathroom, I stumbled into a small room lit only by a candle on a long table, about which sat a dozen or so individuals in black gowns, as if a Puritan committee deliberating some dreadful insult to the sabbath, passing marijuana joints. At my clumsy entrance, they cast withering glances of scorn and I beat a hasty retreat. Having lost track of my ride home, I threw myself on the mercy of a footman, who graciously led me to a room with a gargantuan four-poster. Late the next morning, I struggled awake as another footman respectfully approached the bed, in one white-gloved hand a silver tray, on it a large Bloody Mary.
Of my academic life, there is little to report. The sole requirement was attendance at five lectures a week. This was easily fulfilled, and such reading as was ordered readily accommodated on nights bereft of other diversion. So unchallenging was the regimen that I cannot recall a single scene from it. Clearly this presented insufficient intellectual stimulus to hold my interest for four years.