But here was a problem: how on earth did one pick and choose? In a heterosexual world it seemed that one was expected to fall in love with just one girl, but surely with such profusion one wanted the whole lot — or at least a big bunch, an armful. But this was held to be not acceptable.
Such were the dilemmas when one was over the edge into peace. I learned that two of my old school friends were settling in to the Far East. But now, surely, it would be more pleasant and even vital for me to stay in London and explore the peacetime possibilities, however baffling, of getting to grips with women.
But with my orders to embark for Malaysia having come through, how would this be possible? After such homosexual affectations, in the heterosexual world had my luck run out?
Then, at one of these dances — at the Savoy Hotel, I think — I had retired to the bar in some exhaustion from trying to squeeze what dalliance I could into what time I had left, and there I came across a major whom I knew slightly, or perhaps he was a friend of my sister’s; and he asked me what I was doing nowadays; and I said I was just off to the Far East. And he said — ‘My dear fellow, why on earth do you want to do that?’ And I said — ‘I don’t.’ So he said — ‘Come and see me in the War Office in the morning.’ So I did, and I did not know if he would even remember me. But there he was, behind a desk even if somewhat holding his head; and he said — ‘I’m afraid I can’t quite manage the War Office, but would a job in Eastern Command, Hounslow do?’ And I said — ‘Indeed, thank you, Eastern Command, Hounslow would do very well.’ So in a day or two I received papers taking me off the draft to the Far East and instructing me to report to Hounslow Barracks — a gaunt building like a furniture depository some ten miles west of London. There, no one was expecting me, but I was given a desk and a chair, where I sat and wondered once more in what style I would one day be able to try to write about war — its luck that seemed to take the place of conventional responsibility. At intervals I played ping-pong with the man with whom I shared an office, using our desks pushed together as a table and copies of The Manual of Military Law as bats. Eventually work was found for me, which was to do with officers’ pay and courts martial — the latter often dealing with officers caught and photographed as transvestites. And in the evening I would catch the District Line back to London, where I continued to learn the pleasure of prowling in search of — yes, this was surely a better way of putting it — the rose among the rosebud garden of girls.
So this was peace? But there remained the problem of how to make sense of responsibility.
When people said at the end of the war that they found themselves at a loss — they could no longer feel that that they just had to ‘get on with it’ but now had to find the ‘it’ that they had to get on with — was this ‘it’ really just the evolutionary business of finding a mate, settling down, procreation? But humans had always found confusion with this; was it not a sort of war? But in so-called ‘peace’ there were no longer orders coming down from on high; or if religion or social custom claimed that there were, then it was still up to the judgement of individuals to respect these or reject them. Humans had to make their own dispositions to deal with the ‘its’ that they were finding they had to get on with — work, faith, relationship. And regarding these they felt not only at a loss, but that such a feeling was somehow reprehensible — for should not at least love, the commitment to love, the care of children (so they had an instinct to believe) be sweetness and light? And if it was not, should there really be only themselves to blame? Humans were thrown into the deep end of peace and had to learn how to swim. But why had it ever been thought that peace should be easy? If peace involved the requirement to take responsibility for oneself, then all right, yes, it could be seen how obedience in war might be easier.
I remained in the army working at Hounslow for another year. During this time I did not in fact feel that I had much responsibility. It was still ordained that I should travel on the Underground out and back each day. In the evenings, among those with whom I behaved irresponsibly it could be accepted that I was still involved in some hangover from the war.
At weekends I would go to stay with my father, who was now out of politics as well as house arrest and was leading the life of a country gentleman in Wiltshire. When I had first arrived home, landing off the troopship at Liverpool, I had gone straight to my sister Vivien who was still with her friends Rosalind and Rosie in a flat off Knightsbridge. Then, late that night we had driven down to my father and Diana, who were waiting up to welcome me with cups of tea and snacks. There was so much that might be talked about that I at least could hardly talk at all; I wondered if I would ever be able to talk about the war. This was my family and had been my home; but it did not seem, however my war ended, that I would be able to settle here again.
When I was working in Hounslow and went to stay with my father at weekends, we chatted easily enough about our shared philosophical and literary interests; but our conversation did not have the same intensity as our letters had had in war. I remained perhaps closer to my sister Vivien, who set up her own establishment in the country with our brother Micky and our old nanny. When Mervyn Davies came home shortly after me, I introduced him to Vivien and hoped they might form some relationship, but, I suppose inevitably, nothing came of this. When Mervyn got out of the army he resumed his studies in law, on his way to becoming a QC and then a judge. We still see each other at intervals to have lunch.
My friends in the Far East wrote that they were having a fine time running a local radio station through which they could broadcast their poetry. And they were sharing a mistress. Affectations of homosexuality seemed to be being blown away by peace.
I discovered that there was a way by which I could get out of the army earlier than I had expected. Shortly before I had joined up in 1942, I had taken a scholarship exam for Balliol College, Oxford; I had done little work for this knowing that I would be going off to war. But Balliol had said I had done well enough for them to keep a place for me if later I wanted it. And now it seemed that if I chose to take up this offer I could be demobilised by October 1946 rather than almost a year later. This I did. I wanted to read philosophy — to continue in a more disciplined manner my efforts to understand, among other things, why humans seemed to be at home in war, but refused to acknowledge this and thus were unable to deal with it.
When I got to Oxford, however, I was told that this was not what philosophy was about. The ancient Greek tragedians, yes, had been interested in such questions, but they came under the heading of Classics. The Existentialists? Nietzsche? They did not ‘do’ these at Oxford. What did they do? Descartes, Hume, Kant: Epistemology, the Theory of Knowledge: what do we mean when we say that we ‘know? But was not this what Nietzsche was on about? Was it? But I had always felt that I would have to work things out for myself.
I stayed at Oxford for just the year I would otherwise have been in the army. Then I left to write my first novel. If academic study insisted on dealing with only the bones of theory, then surely it was up to novels to portray the flesh of life. Also, I left Oxford to marry Rosemary, my eventually chosen rose from the rosebud garden of girls.
I had first noticed Rosemary at one of the innumerable fashionable dances in London. It seemed she had noticed me. But we had been wary: if one pounced conventionally, surely any quarry worth catching would have to try to get away? So how, in fact, when it came to it, did one pick and choose? One waited for some sign, some singularity, some jungle test like that of a smell?