Lost Years (35 page)

On April 30, Caskey and Christopher crossed to England. In London, they stayed first at John Lehmann's house and later in a Kensington hotel, the Tudor Court. The journal describes a big champagne party given at the offices of
Horizon
on May 7, at which they met Arthur Waley and Lucian Freud, a supper with Henry and Dig Yorke on May 9 and a lunch with the Cyril Connollys, Rose Macaulay and Raymond Mortimer on May 11. On May 13, Christopher went up to stay at Wyberslegh. Caskey remained in London, where he had already made himself popular with several of Christopher's friends, particularly the Yorkes, Keith Vaughan, John Minton
⁶
and Alexis Rassine. Later, Forster invited him to come and stay at Cambridge.

In the journal, on May 17, Christopher remarks that he hasn't yet seen Richard, who had gone off to stay with the caretakers at Marple Hall, just before Christopher's arrival. According to Kathleen, Richard had worked himself into a fit of jealousy of Christopher. I can't remember that Richard had shown any signs of jealousy during Christopher's 1947 visit, but he undoubtedly did remain jealous of Christopher as long as Kathleen was alive.

On May 18, Caskey came up to Wyberslegh. He was on his best behavior and helped Kathleen in the kitchen. His easy southern manners impressed her favorably, but I don't think she really warmed to him. She was shrewd enough to be suspicious of his campy politeness, which now and then became a send-up of everything female. When Richard returned to Wyberslegh on May 20, Caskey tried hard to make friends with him too. Richard responded, up to a point; but he too was suspicious, merely because he regarded Caskey as Christopher's ally.

Caskey and Christopher were at Wyberslegh until June 6—except for a two-day trip to London (May 22–23) to see Truman Capote, presumably because Truman was in England only on a brief visit. Caskey took a lot of photographs during his stay—of Lyme, of Marple Hall, of Wyberslegh and of the Stockport viaduct, which he greatly admired. One day he went into Stockport alone and began shooting the viaduct from various angles, running up and down flights of steps which lead to the river that flows beneath it. His movements must have seemed eccentric—photographers do often behave very oddly when they are at work—for he was stopped and questioned by police officers who were on the lookout for an escaped criminal lunatic. This was probably John Edward Allen, “the mad parson.” Christopher's journal refers to him on May 29, but without mentioning Caskey's adventure.
⁷

On June 7, the day after their return to London, Christopher and Caskey travelled down to Aldeburgh in Suffolk for the festival. This was the first year it was held. Forster and William Plomer lectured and Celia Johnson and Robert Speaight gave a poetry recital. But the stars were Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Ben played the piano, Peter sang, and Ben's opera
Albert Herring
had its first performance.
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This was their hometown and they were putting it on the map.

Christopher still felt warmly toward both of them and would continue to do so. No doubt Ben was already beginning to assume the airs of royalty, even then, but Christopher had spent so much time among musicians that he took their grandeur for granted—he would have been far less tolerant of such behavior from a fellow writer. Did he regard musicians as a slightly inferior artistic caste? Maybe. He certainly claimed the right to be friends with them without showing any particular interest in their work. And, in Ben's case, Christopher's attitude had been very much that of an elder and wiser being, when they were both young, although the difference in their ages was only nine years. Perhaps Ben had always resented this condescension. If so, he took an awfully long time to show it. During their days together at Aldeburgh, Ben made himself charming to Christopher and to Caskey whenever he had a spare moment amidst his many responsibilities.

Aldeburgh itself left vivid impressions in Christopher's mind: the embattled look of the houses along the pebbled beach, confronting the menace of the sea which will one day swallow them; the rugged old martello towers, built to confront Napoleon, a menace who never materialized; the strong smells of boats and fish and the hard brightness of the flat land in the windy east-coast sunshine.

On June 10, Christopher and Caskey returned to London and went to stay with Cuthbert Worsley. They were there for the rest of the month, meeting friends and going to parties, plays and films. On June 16, Caskey went down to Brighton and spent the night; someone had probably invited him. Christopher had supper with Tony Hyndman and this was most likely the night (or one of the nights) when they had sex together. The sex was as enjoyable as it had been in the old days, only now it was Tony who fucked Christopher. On the 16th, Christopher also saw Gore Vidal, who had just arrived in England, at John Lehmann's. Lehmann was publishing an English edition of
The City and the Pillar
and was trying to get Gore to agree to some expurgations—which he finally did, under protest.

Tennessee Williams must have arrived at almost the same time. Christopher and Caskey saw him and Gore at John Lehmann's on June 18. This is the only mention of Tennessee in the day-to-day diary for that month—yet I have a memory of Tennessee, Caskey and Christopher together in a cab at night; it is foggy, and Tennessee exclaims, “We are the dreaded fog queens!” and utters his screaming laugh. Whereupon, all three of them begin to elaborate on the fantasy—how the respectable citizens shudder and slam their shutters and cross themselves as the dreaded fog queens ride by, and how one
darling little boy disregards their warnings and looks out of the window and sees the fog queens and they are
absolutely beautiful
, so he shouts to them and begs them to take him with them, and they do, and he is never heard from again.

A day or two later, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal decided to pay a visit to Forster at Cambridge. Neither of them had met him. In a letter to Christopher, dated June 25, Forster writes: “Tennessee Williams got up too late to reach Cambridge. Vidal arrived and I wish hadn't, as I disliked him a lot.” It appears that Forster took great pains to show Vidal the sights of Cambridge and that Vidal, far from displaying the proper enthusiasm, seemed totally uninterested; all he would talk about was his own career and his rivalry with Truman Capote. The climax of Forster's indignation was reached in the Great Court of Trinity, when Vidal glanced around him and condescendingly commented, “Pretty!”
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Caskey and Gore Vidal had their inevitable clash. It was at a party. Caskey got drunk and told Gore that he was a lousy writer—which was unfortunate, because Gore naturally suspected that this must be Christopher's private opinion which Caskey was merely echoing. I'm not sure what happened next. Caskey certainly said many other nasty things. I think Gore hit him.
¹⁰
The quarrel was patched up, but the ill feeling remained.

On June 20, Cuthbert Worsley gave a party. I am only guessing but I believe it was during this party that Christopher got a phone call from Gottfried Reinhardt at MGM. Gottfried wanted to know if Christopher would be willing to come back as soon as possible and work on a film about Dostoevsky called
The Great Sinner,
which he was producing. Christopher said yes; the only condition he made was that he wanted to travel by boat and train, not by plane. Gottfried agreed to this extra delay. What I can clearly remember is Christopher's enjoyment of the dramatic moment when he returned to the room in which the party was being held and casually told Cuthbert and his guests: “That was Hollywood. They've offered me a film job.” Sensation!

A genial but basically unpleasant society queen named David Webster took up Christopher and Caskey in a big way; I think he
was the business director of the Covent Garden opera house. He invited them to two parties and a lunch within the space of five days. At the first party, on June 27, a cute radio and nightclub entertainer named Cliff Gordon gave a really brilliant black comedy act: Churchill's speech on the day England lost the war. (Christopher had met Cliff Gordon about ten days previously and gone with him to the steam bath in Jermyn Street, where they had had exhibitionistic sex in front of an excited old man; on another occasion they had fucked at Gordon's flat—after which Gordon, who was a hypochondriac, had become worried because Christopher didn't take regular syphilis tests, as he did, and had talked Christopher into being examined by his doctor. This doctor, who was the coy type, later informed Christopher of the negative result of the test by cabling to him in Los Angeles the single word, “Congratulations.”) Webster's second party, on July 1, was a very grand affair, full of theatrical and ballet stars. Introducing Christopher and Caskey to Alicia Markova, Webster said, “I don't think you've met the Isherwoods?” which was characteristic of his would-be-daring vulgarity. But he failed to amuse or startle Markova; she behaved as if he had said nothing unusual. (Or did she merely assume that Caskey was Christopher's son?) Further along in the evening, Christopher was sitting on a couch holding forth to a couple of fellow guests about Anton Dolin's performance in the ballet
Job,
which he had seen the day before. Dolin, said Christopher, was amazing—nearly stark naked, he had executed great leaps up and down a flight of steps; he was as agile as a boy and his body looked magnificent—“And to think,” Christopher added, “he was born the same year as me!” At the other end of the couch, slumped and silent and seemingly in deep depression, was a grey-faced withered man who might easily have been in his sixties. Looking at him closely now for the first time, Christopher recognized him with a shock of embarrassment. It was Dolin himself.
¹¹

On July 2, Christopher went up to Wyberslegh again, for a short
farewell visit. The day-to-day diary doesn't say that Caskey came along, and probably he stayed in London. On July 5, Christopher returned. He and Caskey spent their last few days in England staying at John Lehmann's house with Alexis Rassine. John was in Paris but came back before they left.

On July 6, Christopher and Caskey travelled down to Trottiscliffe(?)
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to see Graham Sutherland; Caskey wanted to photograph him. I don't remember who gave them an introduction to him; I'm pretty certain they hadn't met before. He was dark and handsome and friendly and his wife was charming. (I remember hearing, maybe much later, that their otherwise happy marriage was saddened by the fact that she was unable to have children and they therefore as strict Catholics felt bound to refrain from sex. This was probably sheer fiction.) While Sutherland was showing them his studio, they noticed a watercolor landscape lying, along with other discarded work, on the floor. They offered to buy it. Sutherland told them they could take it, saying, “If I ever come to the States and run short of money, you can give me a hundred dollars.” (This never happened.)

That evening, back in town, they had supper with Morgan and Bob Buckingham. It was perhaps on this occasion that Forster took Christopher aside and asked him gently not to drink so much. “You always seem a bit dazed, nowadays,” he said.

On July 7, Christopher had lunch with Berthold Viertel. This was the fifth time Christopher had met Viertel in London; and they had met about the same number of times in New York—sometimes with Elisabeth Neumann, whom Viertel married in 1949. There has been nothing to say about him here, for he was no longer an important figure in Christopher's world. As Christopher became increasingly detached from his own German-refugee persona (which belonged to the post-Berlin years of travel around Europe with Heinz) Viertel had lost his power to make Christopher feel guilty and responsible for him. On Christopher's side, strong affection remained. But Viertel's huge old-fashioned ego, his demand to be respected as a German Poet and Thinker, his masochistic Jewishness—“I wanted only to keep the wound open,” he had declared in one of his poems—had made it hard for Christopher to go on being intimate with him; it was just too much trouble.
¹³

This was to be their last meeting. Though Viertel didn't suspect it yet, he was about to begin enjoying the five most successful years of his life—directing plays in Zürich, Berlin and Vienna, among which were translations made by himself of
The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire
and
The Rose Tattoo
. During that period, Christopher came back to Europe only once, and then their paths didn't cross. Viertel died on September 24, 1953.

On July 9, Christopher and Caskey sailed on the
Queen Elizabeth
for New York. They landed on July 14. Caskey had decided to stay in the East for a while before returning to California. He was going to visit his mother in Kentucky. Christopher left next day for Chicago on the
Twentieth Century
.

The eight hours you had to spend in Chicago between trains were always a challenge to adventure. This time, Christopher determined not to waste them wandering around the Art Institute. So he looked up steam baths in the phone book, chose one whose name, printed in extra black letters, suggested that it would be big and busy, and called a cab to take him there. The cab driver, a fatherly type, asked him if he wasn't a stranger in town. Christopher said yes, he was. The driver said that was what he'd guessed—because the bath Christopher had mentioned wasn't the kind of place he'd care for; all manner of bad characters hung out there. “I'll take you to a nice quiet place,” he added, “where you'll be comfortable.”

To Christopher, the driver's meaning seemed obvious; the bath Christopher had picked was queer. So he hadn't the courage to insist on going there. Cursing his luck, he let himself be taken to the nice respectable quiet place the driver recommended. It was called The Lincoln Baths and was in the midst of a residential district. When Christopher entered, he was a little surprised to find a very obvious (black) queen who took his money, grinned archly and told him to “have a good time.” But far bigger surprises followed. The “bath” could hardly be described as a bath at all—for there was no steam in the steam room. It was just a shabby dirty warren of cubicles, nearly pitch dark and quite crowded; everybody was cruising. Christopher didn't have much of a good time because the clients were mostly his own age. But this, at least, was an adventure—and an utterly mysterious one. What had been in the taxi driver's mind?