10.3: Sex: playing safe
Nick suggested that we might invent an experience or two. But I have always been useless when it comes to any falsification of the truth. I felt it was safer to adopt a more gentlemanly approach, declaring it to be nobody's business but our own, just how many girls we might have enjoyed. In the event, nobody was misled by our restraint on information. Several of our friends jumped to the conclusion that what we were in fact concealing was that our holiday had been a homosexual debauch. And now that the untruthful stance had been detected, there was very little we could do to sound plausible in our denials.
Not that it really mattered at this level in our school careers, that we might be suspected of homosexuality.
So I am curious to speculate how I myself might now have been behaving, if it had not been for my traumatic experience of the [F] crisis. I had been left with the feeling that I simply couldn't cope with the taint of homosexual scandal. It didn't worry me if others might choose to indulge in such activities, but I had decided that there were enough problems in life with which to cope, without taking on these as well. And they were quite unnecessary into the bargain, in that my heterosexual prospects were developing quite favourably of late.
It didn't worry me that Kate Smith neglected to come down to Eton any more. There was a new admirer to take her place - namely Jane Howell, whom Michael Parker brought down one Sunday, and we all went out for the traditional tea at Rowlands. I was congratulating myself on the idea that this instant success with girls might be my due. I was also gratified by the continued attentions of Sarah Crawley. And despite the fact that numerous other Etonians were gathered for her tea parties, my standing as a member of Pop set me way above the rest. And I could sense just how much my company was appreciated by Sarah, to the envy of all those who were something less than rivals - despite the fact that a tea-room at Rowlands was hardly conducive to any opportunity for advancing the relationship carnally.
My desire was firmly fixed upon the possibilities for heterosexual development, but I was still aware of my homosexual attraction to others. And my feeling towards Antony Rouse was something of which I was fully conscious, even if I kept it repressed. We were in many of the same classes, but I felt inhibited to make any attempt to get to know him better, realizing that I was on too dangerous ground. Someone like [A] would have made a ribald comment, and I would have found myself blushing uncontrollably. But I regarded Antony something in the light of the potential soul-mate which I had never been permitted to have within my development, because it went against the grain of our cultural upbringing. Nevertheless, I felt convinced somewhere deep inside, that we'd eventually, someday, find the means to become friends - once the tribulations of growing up had all been surmounted.
During the final week of the half, Antony in fact wrote me a letter which came close to an overt avowal of such feeling. I think he was thanking me for sending him my leaving photograph. But he went on to say how much he had always admired me, and how he had always felt constrained from telling me so to my face; but now that I was leaving, he felt at liberty to confide his thoughts to a letter.
The boy he sent round with this letter declared to me, quite firmly, that there was no answer expected. So I took him at his word - and sent none. But I was to discover after the end of half, that this had been an error, for Antony wrote me a second letter to Sturford, apologising for the first letter - on the grounds that it had been rather too emotional in content, by the standard to be expected within English public schools. "If letters could blush," he wrote, "this one would be like blotting paper." And I too was embarrassed by the whole situation. But I did send a reply on this occasion, explaining the reason why I had neglected to answer the previous one, while reproaching him gently for ignoring the unwritten taboo on matters as delicate as this. I concluded by saying that I felt sure we'd come to befriend each other at some future date, but that whenever that might be, I hoped that he would refrain from making any mention of this exchange of letters between the two of us.
I had just a couple of weeks on my hands before I was due to report at Windsor barracks, for the start of my two years' National Service in the Life Guards. But this brief period of holiday got off to a good start with my attendance at a ball that was being given in London by Lady Rothermere.
At a dinner preceding the dance, I was seated between Princess Alexandra and Lady Caroline Childe-Villiers; an indication I daresay, of the bracket of aristocracy from whom society hostesses anticipated that I might soon select a wife. But the odds against me marrying into royalty may have lengthened on this particular evening, due to my inept attempts to make amusing conversation to Alexandra's mother, the Duchess of Kent, when I was invited to sit opposite her in the car carrying us from the dinner to the ball. I found myself recounting an inappropriate joke, which gave rise to no laughter whatsoever - causing Sir Malcolm Sergeant who was also with us, to interrupt me with a swift change of conversation. I was uncomfortably aware of my gaucherie, which may have reinforced me in the belief that I had best submerge my anxieties in the consumption of champagne.
I suppose that I did have this feeling that successful behaviour at a party involved stoking myself up on alcohol, to the point when I emerged in best form: amusing to others and perhaps even, as I imagined, the life and soul of the party. And it struck me on this occasion, as before, that I was easily outpacing all my fellow Etonians in the imitation of such adult ways.
Not that I was being quite such a success as I had initially supposed. There were some girls who were quite evidently avoiding my company, because I was becoming clumsy and tripping all over the place - even if I was effervescently loquacious. I noted with some dismay how Venetia Murray, whom I had counted as a conquest at that dance the previous summer, now displayed scant patience with me and quickly ditched me to dance with another, who was identified to me as Michael Naylor-Leyland, the brother of Vyvian, who had once been escorting Caroline for a while. So the whole situation was beginning to flag on me, and after it had been murmured by some that I was obviously inebriated, I began to think that it might be time for me to go home. Just then however, and to my delighted surprise, Venetia came hustling back to me, suggesting that I might like to take her to a night club. Confused by my own sex-appeal, I accepted without demur.
In the taxi I learnt that we were on our way to The Four Hundred, in Leicester Square. It occurred to me to me to worry that I didn't happen to a member of that club: nor of any club, for that matter. But Venetia brushed my protests aside. She would manage to get us in. She did too. She told the man at the door that this was the brother of Lady Caroline Thynne. I realised that I should feel proud of having a sister who counted for something in this world. We were ushered to our table, where Venetia got me to order champagne. But she still wasn't paying any real attention to me. Instead of that she was peering fiercely into the gloom around us, as if endeavouring to identify each face in our vicinity - after which she appeared to relapse into a deep depression.
Then little by little, her spirits began to rise again, until she was finally giggling. She had a confession to make, for she had dragged me here under false pretences, supposing that we'd disrupt the evening for Michael Naylor-Leyland, who had left the Rothermere party in the company of some debutante whom Venetia regarded as a rival; and she had wrongly supposed that he was taking her to The Four Hundred. Well he wasn't, as she now saw. So we were saddled with each other, and we might as well endeavour to make the best of it. That was fine by me and, from that point in time, the evening was a huge success for me.
Something which helped greatly was that Venetia espied my cousin, Sally-Anne Vivian, with some young man at a neighbouring table, and it was suggested that we could join up together. It had been some years since I had last seen Sally; but it should be recollected that I had bashfully regarded her as my girl-friend, in days gone by when I was still at Ludgrove. And she was certainly aware of this, and perhaps eager to see how I had turned out. Nor was I embarrassed any longer to find myself in her presence. And with the excuse of having drunk rather more than I was accustomed to drink, I felt at liberty to indulge in some mildly libertine behaviour.
By the end of the evening, I was draping myself round both Sally and Venetia in turn - kissing them chastely enough, and proclaiming that I loved them both dearly. Sally's escort pronounced his astonishment that I appeared so adept in my amorous advances, when he himself had never experienced such luck. And the two girls were encouraging me - taking some pride in the fact that others in the night-club were perhaps amused to witness such overt cradle-snatching, when my sister was well known to them.
I do not have any clear recollection of how the evening finally came to an end. But without anything much having actually happened, I had been given the impression that I must really be hot stuff when it came to natural sex appeal. And this was a memory upon which I had to feast myself throughout the barren months of my army training, upon which I was just about to embark.
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