Against the Law
Page 6
I discovered later, however, that Eddie was one of those people whom it was impossible to get rid of. Worse still, he ‘grew on’ one, like ivy. He invited himself round to my flat on several occasions, and I found myself becoming fascinated by his hurt and angry view of the world. Why did he hate people like me so much? And, hating us, why did he seek our company? Why, indeed, was I beginning to seek his?
It is almost impossible to tell, in retrospect, the truth about any human relationship; particularly when it has resulted in as much agony and shame as that between Eddie McNally and myself. He insinuated himself into my life. We learned, first, to tolerate, and later to like one another. Finally, there grew up between us an extraordinary, passionate tension which resulted in quarrels when we were together and misery when we were apart.
The letters which were read in court, and McNally’s evidence in the witness box, did not tell the whole story. They were given a subtly false twist which suggested that he, a simple young airman, had been dazzled by the ‘lavish hospitality’ with which I overwhelmed him. As a matter of fact he disliked anything lavish, and preferred to spend his visits to me playing gramophone records in the flat and helping me to cook meals on the stove in the hall. Occasionally we would make an expedition to the Tower of London or Kew Gardens, which was the kind of outing which he preferred to an evening at the theatre.
One day he suggested that we should spend our summer holiday together. I had already decided to have a quiet and inexpensive holiday that year, preferably near the sea, and Edward Montagu had previously offered to lend me his beach-hut near Beaulieu for as long as I liked. It was a Spartan, two-room building to which water had to be brought in milk-churns, but it looked as though it might be pleasant enough in fine weather. Although I had some writing work to do, I did not particularly want to be alone all the time, and it seemed quite a good idea to take Eddie McNally along with me. He could help with the cooking and washing-up and take it in turns to fetch the milk from the farm a mile away. He agreed to come, but said he had already half-promised to spend his summer leave with an RAF friend, John Reynolds, and asked whether it would be all right to bring him, too.
It seemed only sensible that I should meet Reynolds before the holiday began, so I asked both of them to come round to the flat on their next week-end leave. In the meantime I had mentioned the plan to Edward, and as McNally was with me at the time he invited us both to have a drink with him at his flat in Mount Street. The flat was, as usual, full of people—Americans, I think—and we only stayed about half an hour, discussing arrangements for the holiday.
Later, McNally wrote to me, saying that he and Reynolds wanted to see a play called Dial M for Murder, at the Westminster Theatre, and asking whether I could book any seats. It was difficult to do this at such short notice, but I remembered that Edward Montagu had an account with a ticket agency, so I asked him if he could get two seats for the airmen whom I was bringing down to stay at his beach hut. As neither of us had seen the play, Edward suggested that he should book four seats and that we should all go together.
The play was about the efforts of a Wimbledon tennis-player to get rid of his wife by means of a perfect crime; I remember being particularly impressed by the performance of Mr. Andrew Cruickshank as an obese but nimble detective from Scotland Yard. It was only eighteen months later, however, that I realised how minutely accurate this portrait had been.
When the play was over we went back to my flat for supper, stopping on the way at Mount Street to collect something to drink from the refrigerator in Edward Montagu’s kitchen. It is typical of the false veil of sinful glamour subsequently thrown over the whole affair that the prosecution should have pretended that this was a bottle of champagne. As it happened, it was champagne cider; one bottle of cider, shared by four.
The holiday began more or less according to plan. Lord Montagu was spending that week-end at Beaulieu with a large house-party, and when McNally and I arrived by train from London he met us at the station, took us into Lymington to buy provisions, and deposited us at the beach hut. Reynolds had been delayed, but arrived later that evening and was brought down to the hut by Edward with some of his house-guests. Some sandwiches and a few bottles of wine were also brought down, by way of supper.
The party which followed has achieved more notoriety than any other since the days of Nero, but I feel bound to confess that it was, in fact, extremely dull. I was feeling rather tired, having been travelling all morning and swimming most of the afternoon. The two airmen sampled the contents of every bottle in sight and became slightly obnoxious, so that I began to wonder whether it had been a good idea to invite them after all. One of the other guests performed his party-piece, which was a rather boring imitation of a champion figure-skater; this encouraged the airmen to throw themselves about in all directions, whooping. I wished heartily that they would all go away. I apologise for this disappointing account, but I insist that there was no dancing between males and no activities which could be described as improper. As a matter of fact, throughout the evening the hut was encircled by Girl Guides, apparently engaged in bird-watching; a fact which does not suggest that anything very lascivious was taking place.
Edward was returning to London next day, so I had to face the prospect of remaining in the hut with Reynolds and McNally, with the possibility of a change in the weather and no transport in which to make my escape. There were no shops or telephone within walking distance. I was delighted, therefore, when Michael Pitt-Rivers suggested a way out of the difficulty.
Major Pitt-Rivers was a second cousin of Edward’s, who had come to Beaulieu for the week-end to discuss business matters connected with his estate, a considerable farming property in Dorset which he managed himself. He was a man with a highly distinguished war record and a member of the Dorset County Council; a ‘gentleman farmer’, in fact. I had met him only once before, but had known his brother and sister-in-law for some years.
The Pitt-Rivers estate contained a curious group of buildings, standing on the outskirts of Cranborne Chase, which had been assembled in Victorian times by Michael’s great-grandfather, a famous archaeologist. His object, I think, was to show the local rustics how people in other countries and at other times had lived: the result was that around a lawn in a forest clearing there now stood, in various stages of dilapidation, a Burmese house, a bandstand, a kind of Oriental theatre and a small Greek temple. The public were no longer admitted to these grounds, which were known as the Larner Tree, but there was an excellent museum not far away containing part of the Pitt-Rivers collection of antiquities, the remainder—which I had often visited—being housed at Oxford.
I had arranged to be away from London for a week, and did not want to cut short my holiday. Michael asked me to come and stay at the Larner Tree, but I explained that I could hardly leave the two airmen stranded at the beach hut. It was therefore decided that they should come too. Michael would not be able to spend much of his time with us, but as he had a car we should not be entirely cut off, as we were at the beach hut. I should be able to explore the museum and get on with my writing; the two airmen could make themselves useful by helping to clear the grounds, which were overgrown with brambles and weeds.
It was a very happy arrangement. The weather was blazingly hot, and we spent several afternoons bathing at the coast. The Larner Tree had a strange atmosphere of its own, compounded of Victorian earnestness, the incongruity of a film set, and the benevolent silence of an ancient forest. The museum contained many rare and beautiful things, including a pottery figure of a horse made by an ancestor of mine, Ralph Wood of Burslem, who had been a celebrated craftsman at a time when one of Michael’s forebears, William Pitt, had occupied No. 10 Downing Street.
I shall always remember that week with pleasure, in spite of everything that has happened since. I was happy, and I had no feeling of foreboding; no suspicion of what was to come. Not long after the holiday ended, however, I saw something which deeply shocked and angered me.
My first thought was that they must be local ‘roughs’ who were trying to rob the old man, so I went towards them and shouted at them to let him go, or I would call the police.
The younger man said: ‘We are Police Officers.’
A woman who had joined us on the street corner asked what the old man had done, and was told that he had been ‘making a nuisance of himself’. He had now begun to struggle violently, and the two detectives pushed him up against the railings of the Cancer Hospital, outside which we were standing. His head became wedged between two iron pikes, and he started to scream. The detectives asked if one of us would ring up Chelsea Police Station and ask for a van to be sent: ‘Just tell them we’re at the top of Dove-House Street, they’ll know what it’s about.’
The woman said: ‘You can do your own dirty work, damn you.’ It seemed to me, however, that the old man might be seriously injured if he continued to struggle, so I went into a telephone box a few yards away, telephoned the police station and spoke to the duty sergeant. He was evidently expecting a message, because the van arrived almost immediately. The old man, who by this time was lying on the pavement in a pool of blood, was picked up and taken away.
It was quite obvious what had happened. The younger and better-looking of the two policemen had been sent into the lavatory for the purpose of acting as an agent-provocateur. It was his duty to behave in such a way that some homosexual would make advances to him. The old man had fallen into the trap, and he would now be prosecuted and perhaps imprisoned. The young policeman, having behaved like a male prostitute, would probably be commended for his night’s work. And, tomorrow night, he would be back there again.
During that year I did not see much of McNally: I was working hard and spent most of my time looking for a house. I was tired of living in an expensive but by no means luxurious two-room flat in the ‘smart’ district of South Kensington, and decided to move to some other part of London with lower rents and less pretensions to gentility.
After looking at various houses in Hackney and Bow, I was recommended by a friend to go to Islington, where a number of war-damaged Regency and Georgian houses were being repaired, redecorated and let on long leases. I discovered that Canonbury, the part of Islington in which these houses stood, was an attractive place standing on high ground to the North of the City of London, the existence of which I had not suspected. The house which I inspected had been uninhabited for some time and was full of dust and rubble, but it was obvious that it could be made extremely pleasant. There was a small garden containing a pear-tree as tall as the house, a fanlight over the front door and balconies outside the first-floor windows. I signed the lease, chose the wall-paper and started to buy carpets and furniture.
In August, 1953—a month before I was due to move in—Edward Montagu told me of a strange incident which had occurred at Beaulieu during the Bank Holiday period. Palace House, as usual, had been open to the public, and a troop of local Boy Scouts had acted as guides for the visitors. Edward and one of his guests, a film director named Kenneth Hume, had gone down to the beach hut with two of the Scouts to bathe; later Edward discovered that an expensive camera was missing, and informed the police. The latter, however, when they came to interview him about the loss, appeared to be less interested in the camera than in Lord Montagu and Mr. Hume. The boys, apparently, had complained that an indecent attack had been made upon them in the beach hut.
I thought at the time—and I still think—that this was an extremely unlikely story. If Edward had had anything to hide, the last thing he would have done would be to telephone the local police station and ask for an inquiry. But I could see that the matter, if pressed any further, could result in a great deal of publicity. What made the whole business doubly unfortunate (and, in my view, even less credible) was that only a week or two before this he had announced his engagement to Miss Anne Gage, an intelligent and pretty girl with whom he was obviously very much in love.
I was now in a peculiarly awkward situation. The Press had not yet got wind of the police inquiries, so I had to be extremely careful in what I said to my colleagues in Fleet Street. Unfortunately another journalist—ironically enough, himself a homosexual—heard the story and conceived it to be his duty to tell everyone within earshot. The result was a series of little paragraphs in the newspapers, plaintively inquiring: Where is Lord Montagu?
By this time, Edward had gone abroad, hoping to avoid the rising tide of gossip and innuendo. His sister was shortly to be married and he intended to stay out of England until after the wedding. His plans, however, were cut short by the issue of a warrant for his arrest.
I shall not write about this case in any detail, except in so far as it affected my own trial. Although I did not believe that the charges against Edward Montagu were true, I shared the general public view that the crime of which he was accused was a serious one, which called for investigation and, if proved, punishment. At the same time, it hurt me deeply to know that someone whom I liked so much should be placed in such an agonising situation. It was intolerable for me to have to listen to the sniggering little jokes about him which were current at that time, told, often enough, by men whose own sexual credentials were not above suspicion.
It seemed sometimes as though every pansy in London was telling ‘Montagu stories’ in a feverish attempt to divert suspicion from himself.
I was, perhaps, too outspoken in my championship of Edward at this time; but, of course, I had no idea that the net which had been cast for him was soon to be expanded to include myself. In spite of certain indications to the contrary, I still believed, with many others, that the police were only interested in invoking the existing sex laws against people who had corrupted children or committed a public nuisance. A man whom I knew had, in fact, been reassured on this point by a senior official at Scotland Yard, who told him that if he was ever blackmailed he would be quite safe in going to the police, who were more concerned with catching blackmailers than with persecuting their victims.
I had forgotten, however, that there was now a new Commissioner of Police at Scotland Yard. On October 25th, 1953, while Edward was awaiting trial, the Sydney Morning Telegraph published a cable from its London correspondent, Mr. Donald Home, about a ‘Scotland Yard plan to smash homosexuality in London’. Since the British Press, at this time, reported merely that Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, the Home Secretary, was calling for ‘a new drive against male vice’, it may be worth quoting the rather fuller picture presented to Australian readers.
‘The plan originated’ wrote Mr. Home, ‘under strong United States advice to Britain to weed out homosexuals—as hopeless security risks—from important Government jobs.
‘One of the Yard’s top-rankers, Commander E. A. Cole, recently spent three months in America consulting with FBI officials in putting finishing touches to the plan. But the plan was extended as a war on all vice when Sir John Nott-Bower took over as the new Commissioner at Scotland Yard in August. Sir John swore he would rip the cover off all London’s filth spots....
‘Under laxer police methods before the US-inspired plan began, and before Sir John moved into the top job at the Yard as a man with a mission, Montagu and his film-director friend Kenneth Hume might never have been charged with grave offences against Boy Scouts....
‘Sir John swung into action on a nation-wide scale. He enlisted the support of local police throughout England to step up the number of arrests for homosexual offen
ces.
‘For many years past the police had turned a blind eye to male vice. They made arrests only when definite complaints were made from innocent people, or where homosexuality had encouraged other crimes.
‘They knew the names of thousands of perverts—many of high social position and some world famous—but they took no action. Now, meeting Sir John’s demands, they are making it a priority job to increase the number of arrests....
‘The Special Branch began compiling a “Black Book” of known perverts in influential Government jobs after the disappearance of the diplomats Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, who were known to have pervert associates. Now comes the difficult task of side-tracking these men into less important jobs—or of putting them behind bars.’
As I was by now Diplomatic Correspondent of the Daily Mail, and visited the Foreign Office every day, I had, of course, heard of the persecution of homosexuals in the United States, where hundreds of men were being sacked from the State Department, on suspicion alone, with a ferocity only equalled by the McCarthy campaign against alleged Communist sympathisers. The excuse was that such men, having something to conceal, were more likely than others to be blackmailed into carrying out spying nativities for foreign powers. The witch-hunt against homosexuals had drawn many protests, both in America and in Britain, and it seemed inconceivable that it should be extended to this country.
Much later, I happened to see an issue of Collier’s Magazine which described the state of affairs in America at the time when Commander Cole was over there, picking up hints. The entire Vice Squads of two US cities had just been sent to prison for living on immoral earnings of prostitutes. There had been numerous cases of homosexual suspects being forced to pay ‘hush-money’ to the police. In some States, young children of both sexes were being trained to go out on to the streets, so that they might trap a potential sex-criminal. The conclusion drawn by the writer was that the current US sex laws were such as positively to encourage wrong-doing, particularly on the part of the police, and that they should therefore be changed. The conclusion drawn by Scotland Yard appears to have been rather different.