When Leonard Merrows reviewed his childhood he seemed to turn over the pages of an antique book whose legend was often incomprehensible and whose pictures, though brightly coloured, were few.
Therein he saw his home—a long white house over which the elms tossed their spangled shadows. A house surrounded by its wild garden, where the paths were greener than the lawns, and flowers and weeds grew side by side. Tiles had fallen from the coach-house roof, into a paved yard where dandelions filled the crevices. Rats infested the hay-barn and the ruined pig-sties. Down by the river, where there was a gap in the garden wall, the meadow had flowed through like a tide, in wave after wave of poppies. And, beyond, the river itself slipped by, plucked idly at the spinning weed and glided on, under the bridge, past the mill, past the island where the cripples went to be cured, over the foaming rapids and farther yet, past a thousand mysterious places, into the West …
The house itself was old and rambling. In the front hall and on the staircase which mounted in easy flights under a glass dome, the faded portraits of ancestors, cracked and darkened, were hung. One in particular had impressed itself deeply on Leonard’s imagination. When very young, he had first noticed that strange proud lady with her white face and dark staring eyes, and thereafter he had often paused before her frame of tarnished gilt to stare seriously back …
A couple of years later, when Chalmers used to visit me in London, we seldom passed the day without reading from one or other of the four thick typescript files of Lions and Shadows. Such readings were, for myself, orgies of sheer masochism. At each fresh ‘quisb’ (a standard word in our vocabulary, correspondingly roughly to the terms ‘shy-making,’ and ‘shaming’ later employed by the Mayfair society world) we writhed in our chairs, prodded each other in the ribs or jumped up and danced about the room. Then the ‘quisb’ would be mercilessly pounced upon, vivisected, analysed:
‘“To stare seriously back” … Why is that so disgustingly sham?’
‘Yes, let’s get to the bottom of this … Why is it?’
‘Well, I think what makes me want to vomit is the suggestion that children are serious …’
‘No, no, old boy, you’re on the wrong track … I see it now: it’s something far worse … The whole point is: why shouldn’t children be serious? Why does it have to be mentioned at all?’
‘My God, I believe you’re right …’
‘You see, it’s the Grown-up speaking—that’s what’s so vile … He’s standing there and interpreting all Leonard’s sensations for us—like some bitch of a woman at a children’s party … He’s saying: “The dear little fellow’s so serious!”’
‘Faugh …’
And so on. Often, no doubt, our criticisms were captious, far-fetched and unjust; but for myself, at any rate, as the squirming author, they were as brutally stimulating as a Russian bath. However, all that was still in the future. At present, Lions and Shadows was only three-quarters finished; and the passages I have quoted seemed to me, privately, so beautiful that, in re-reading them, I sometimes found my eyes were full of tears.
During my third term at Cambridge, Chalmers and I saw less of each other. There were several reasons for this. Chalmers was now extremely busy. He had the first part of the Tripos examination before him; and he was working on a poem for the Chancellor’s Medal. The authorities (with Mr Holmes, probably, behind them), had persuaded him to enter for this prize. In fact, the persuasion had been very nearly an order: Chalmers was expected to do something to justify his reputation as a literary man. The subject of 1924 was ‘Buddha.’ Chalmers set to work with every possible ironic reservation and the Watcher stationed permanently at his elbow; but soon, I think he began to enjoy himself. When I praised certain passages, he admitted that he’d put them in ‘just to show those swine.’ Meanwhile, we prepared our minds for all eventualities. If Chalmers won the Medal—well, it was a disgrace he shared with Tennyson: if he failed to win it, there was always the precedent of Rupert Brooke, who had been defeated by an embryo don. As for the ‘Combine,’ their methods of intrigue were so tortuous and obscure that nobody could say in advance whether it would best serve their purposes to snub Chalmers or to honour him.
Meanwhile, our interest in our private world had somewhat lapsed. ‘The Other Town’ was essentially a winter fantasy. It was invisible by daylight; and now the evenings were drawing out. The Rats’ Hostel tourist season was over for the summer. But I think my chief motive for seeing less of Chalmers was a feeling of guilt. Wasn’t I betraying him, hourly, in my thoughts?
Wasn’t all my dallying with Lions and Shadows and these public-school daydreams an act of high treason to Wilfred, to Kathy, to Emmy, to the Rats’ Hostel and everything it meant to us both? Not that I ever admitted this, even to myself. Whenever we met, we conversed in the same slang and made the familiar jokes; only the words seemed to have lost some of their power and flavour.
My ‘war’ complex now brought me to a sensational decision: I would buy a motor-bicycle. Chalmers, when he heard of it, made no comment: he lit his pipe with an acid smile. The Poshocracy were much intrigued: Isherwood becomes a hearty—here was a quaint new pose. I could have killed them all. I felt dreadfully silly. But there was no backing out, now. With the expert assistance of Sargent and Queensbridge, I chose the machine, a 1924 model A.J.S. The college tutor, to whom I had to go for permission, remarked: ‘Don’t let it keep you from your work for the Mays.’ He, at any rate, didn’t seem to find anything comic or neurotic in my purchase. I felt quite a wave of gratitude towards him as I left the room.
‘The Test’ had now transformed itself into a visible metal contraption of wheels, valves, cogs, chains and tubes, smartly painted black. There was no avoiding it any more. It was legally and morally mine. I was obliged to visit it at least once daily in its garage and take it out for a ride. How I loathed and enjoyed those rides! The street outside the garage was narrow and full of traffic. My departure was always a moment of sheer terror: no sooner had I released the grip of the clutch than I seemed to shoot forward like a bullet, cleaving my way through wavering crowds of push-cyclists. Three or four experiences of this kind were enough for my nerves; I basely took to walking the A.J.S. as far as the corner of the nearest turning, a broad unfrequented side-road leading right out of the town, where I had plenty of room to mount and wobble. I thus began to fail the Test almost before it had begun.
Out on the long arrow-straight stretches of the Newmarket Road it was glorious. I shouted and sang to myself and rode quite fast, at more than three-quarter throttle. Then the exhilaration of the spring air would overcome my caution; I would open her flat out. I don’t suppose, even then, that the bike did more than fifty-five; but it was more than enough for me. I clung on, horribly scared, with the wind screaming in my ears: I wasn’t allowed to reduce speed until I had counted up to a hundred, at least. Once I went into a bad wobble and very nearly crashed. I was so shaken that, when I got back into the town, I dismounted and wheeled the machine nearly a quarter of a mile, bending, every few yards, to peer and frown at the engine, so that passers-by should think it was out of order.
My ‘social side’ was, again, under cultivation. But this time it wasn’t the Poshocracy. I had got to know a man from another college, named East. He had straw-coloured hair, horn-rimmed spectacles, a receding chin and a mild, diffident, attractive voice. Together with a couple of other undergraduates, he had just founded a Cambridge Film Club. I became a member. I had always been fascinated by films—ever since the pre-war days in Ireland when, at the town’s first tiny cinema, I had never missed a single ‘Western’ or one instalment of the enormous serial about a lady detective who wore a mask and black tights and lived in a house where, at the touch of a lever, all the doors and windows automatically opened and shut, and the staircase folded up like a concertina when the master criminal and his gang were halfway to the top. I was a born film fan. Chalmers was inclined to laugh at my indiscriminate appetite for anything and everything shown
on a screen. He pointed out, quite truly, that as soon as I was inside a cinema I seemed to lose all critical sense: if we went together, I was perpetually on the defensive, excusing the film’s absurdities, eagerly praising its slightest merits. The reason for this had, I think, very little to do with ‘Art’ at all; I was, and still am, endlessly interested in the outward appearance of people—their facial expressions, their gestures, their walk, their nervous tricks, their infinitely various ways of eating a sausage, opening a paper parcel, lighting a cigarette. The cinema puts people under a microscope: you can stare at them, you can examine them as though they were insects. True, the behaviour you see on the screen isn’t natural behaviour; it is acting, and often very bad acting, too. But the acting has always a certain relation to ordinary life; and, after a short while, to an habitué like myself, it is as little of an annoyance as Elizabethan handwriting is to the expert in old documents. Viewed from this standpoint, the stupidest film may be full of astonishing revelations about the tempo and dynamics of everyday life: you see how actions look in relation to each other; how much space they occupy and how much time. Just as it is easier to remember a face if you imagine its two-dimensional reflection in a mirror; so, if you are a novelist and want to watch your scene taking place visibly before you, it is simplest to project it on to an imaginary screen. A practised cinema-goer will be able to do this quite easily.
One of our first lecturers at the new Film Club was the producer, George Pearson. He invited us all to visit him at the Lasky Studios in Islington, where he was making a film called Reveille. I went, during the Easter Vac, with another member of the Club named Pembroke Stephens. Arriving early, we were hurried along passages and up and down staircases into a large and wildly disordered dressing-room. ‘You’ll have to look sharp,’ said our guide. ‘The crowd’s been on the set half an hour already.’ With this, he left us. ‘Good God!’ I said to Stephens, ‘does he mean we’ve got to act?’ Already a wardrobe man had appeared with two bundles: ‘Get into these and look slippy!’ There was no time for coy hesitations. Within three minutes I was a midshipman; Stephens wore the uniform of a Canadian officer. He was much more collected than myself; methodically, he began to make himself up from a box which lay open in front of the mirror. Wildly and vaguely, I applied some colour to my cheekbones, smearing it over with tan powder: my face, when I had finished, looked like a burst poached egg. While I was still unhappily examining the effect, another man appeared, seized us both by the elbows and rushed us down more stairs, into the studio itself.
The studio was the Savoy Hotel on Armistice Night, 1918. This was all any of our fellow-guests could tell us. They were very friendly and chatty, laughed at my make-up, complained of their corns, wondered if coffee would be brought round before lunch. The ladies were all in evening dress, the men mostly in uniform: Christian names were general and everybody was addressed ‘dearie’ or ‘darling’. Somebody had heard that we were going to work late. Somebody else said no; Bill had told him they’d knock off at five—there were half a dozen close-ups on the evening schedule. Meanwhile, high above our heads, the electricians went to and fro, balancing dangerously on their narrow plank gangways, shouting to each other: ‘A bit more round with number four … kill that spot …’ The carpenters were hammering away in the background and the painters were putting the finishing touches to the hollow wooden pillars, turning them, with expert dabs of the brush, into veined marble. There was more noise than in a big railway station.
Noise was my chief impression of the day. It ceased only for a few moments at a time, when the assistant director blew his whistle for silence and Pearson, looking ill and exhausted, in a great-coat, told us what he wanted us to do. Mostly we had to dance, while the people seated at the surrounding tables pelted us with balloons and streamers. Round and round we went. As we passed close to the platform on which the camera was mounted, our faces jerked into smiles of joy which became more and more mechanical as the day wore on. The assistant director bawled through his megaphone; the orchestra, with superhuman endurance, repeated its fox-trot tune. By lunch, which we ate standing crowded round the canteen counter, my feet were like lead; by six o’clock in the afternoon they were aching and flat as fish. I had one big moment: together with a dozen others, I was told to descend a flight of steps, drunkenly, my arms round two girls’ necks. This was a close shot: I must have been clearly recognizable. Needless to say, it was cut out of the finished picture.
Our day ended at 10 p.m. With the others, I limped to the pay-desk and was given twenty-four shillings. It was the first money I had ever earned in my life, and certainly the last I shall ever earn as a film actor. Pembroke Stephens fared very differently. His tall handsome figure had been noticed by the sharp eyes of the casting director. A few months later Pearson made a film called Satan’s Sister in which the hero is an English undergraduate who goes out to the tropics. Very sensibly, Pearson decided to get a real undergraduate to play the part: to the envy of us all, he took Stephens with him to the West Indies. The film was duly shot and released. Pearson’s choice was justified: Stephens was excellent. In fact, he is probably the most convincing undergraduate who has ever appeared on the screen.
June came, and with it the Mays examinations. My artificially sustained sang-froid didn’t desert me until the very end. I had twenty-four hours of panic, and read constitutional history all the afternoon in a punt. When I went into the examination room I had nothing in my head but a few fading memories of Mr Holmes’ lessons. Piously invoking his aid, I sat down and unscrewed my pen.
I got a Two I—a feat which I have always regarded as remarkable, almost miraculous. The college authorities could not, of course, be expected to see it in this light: the tutor’s letter, though lenient, was mildly pained. How was he to know that, throughout the academic year, I had barely opened a book?
In the Tripos, Chalmers and Black both got Thirds. It was the end of poor Black: his scholarship was taken away. Chalmers was forgiven. He had won the Chancellor’s Medal. At a special ceremony, soon after the beginning of the Long Vac. he was obliged to return to Cambridge and read his poem aloud. I wanted to be present. Chalmers forbade me, on pain of losing his friendship for ever. But the Watcher, no doubt, occupied a front seat.
3
Philip Linsley lived in North Kensington, away out at the far end of Ladbroke Grove: my home was on the Kensington Road, only a few hundred yards from the bridge which crosses the railway to Olympia. We visited each other regularly, during the Long Vacation, two or three times a week.
I liked being with Philip. He was chronically unhappy, and always ready to talk endlessly and amusingly about his troubles. He made me feel wealthy, lucky and successful, as indeed, in comparison with him, I was. Philip was at a crammer’s, preparatory to entering the medical school of a big London hospital. He loathed the crammer’s, loathed chemistry and physics, didn’t want to become a doctor. What he did want was to become a brilliantly successful society novelist and man-about-town, perpetually in full evening dress, surrounded by beautiful and expensive mistresses. Symptoms of these ambitions had been already apparent in his school library opus, Donald Stanton. But Donald Stanton had been abandoned long ago. Philip was already three-quarters of the way through a much larger and more ambitious novel of society life. He wrote with astonishing ease and speed, very neatly, on enormous ruled sheets of paper like the pages of a ledger, hardly ever erasing a word. He would usually be writing as I entered his gloomy basement room, which was hung with pictures of favourite film stars. But he would rise at once, never in the least put out, delighted to see me—short, pale, stout, dapper, with faultlessly brushed hair, dazzling white teeth, spotless cuffs and hands. The cigarettes would be produced: usually from some new patent box or specially designed case—Philip had a mania for gadgets; especially if the shopman could contrive to hint that this particular novelty was in favour with the Bright Young People—and the invariable question and answer would be exchanged:
‘Well, boy—how’s life?’
‘Life? You call this Life? Ha … my God! You may well ask—!’
Philip could be very funny when he described the crammer’s. He was a first-rate mimic. He imitated his fellow pupils and treated me to samples of their conversation. The height of their sexual daring was, he said, to ask a strange girl at the Palais for a tango. If one of them had performed this feat, he boasted about it afterwards for days. ‘It’s not,’ said Philip, ‘that I grudge them their simple pleasures, God knows … But it’s the ghastly sordidness of it all … One could simply lie down and weep …’ Philip’s own amours were hardly more enterprising, it is true; but his intentions, at any rate, were of the worst. At the moment, there was a girl named Eva whom he’d kissed once in a taxi, coming home from a dance. Nothing particular had followed the kiss, but, when next they met, Philip had looked at her ‘in a certain way,’ and she had looked back: an understanding, he felt certain, had been established between them. (He demonstrated this special glance for my benefit: it was a sideway squint delivered almost in profile, followed by a slight movement of the left eyebrow.) For several weeks we both waited, in almost equal suspense, for Eva to give ‘the sign.’ Meanwhile, Philip made all possible preparations—from buying a patent scented mouth-wash to sending me on a delicate errand to a shop in Soho, whose window prominently displayed The Works of Aristotle. But the only sign Eva did finally give was to become engaged to a bank clerk. Philip took his defeat like the popular novelist he was one day to become: ‘Poor fools,’ he murmured, ‘one can’t even be angry … I suppose I’m born to be a cuckold …’
With Philip, I felt always perfectly at home. His endless succession of little chills, twinges of rheumatism, worries about his health (twice, already, he had been seriously ill with rheumatic fever) were, somehow, very endearing. He understood perfectly my complex about ‘War’ and ‘The Test.’ He himself did exercises night and morning: he was terribly concerned at the prospect of becoming fat. He wanted, of course, to be tall, lean, angular, saturnine, and struggled desperately against the plumpness which was his essential good-nature, his saving, endearingly vulgar touch. He was generous and absurdly extravagant with his small allowance—and quite rightly, for the least whiff of luxury gave him pleasure out of all proportion to its cost: a stall at a theatre or a cup of tea in a really smart café would compensate him for a whole penniless week. One of our favourite amusements was pretending to be very rich. Wearing our best clothes, we would saunter down Bond Street, pausing at every second shop, entering a watchmaker’s to enquire the price of a gold waterproof wrist-watch, turning up our noses at a selection of seven-and-sixpenny ties, choosing the most expensive tobacconist’s to buy a small packet of cheap cigarettes.
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