The collected stories (70 page)

'I'd like to drop the whole damned thing,' I said.

Horton paused, and he peered at me with interest in spite of his nagging phone. 'And why is that?'

'I don't see the importance of it,' I said.

'It is very important,' he said. 'And of course I'm interested in your technique. You see, in this Embassy one is constantly trying to point out that there is a sensible, productive way of doing things - and there is the British way. Tactful persuasion is such an asset, whether one is dealing with a misunderstood aspect of NATO or an infraction of the dress regulations by a serving officer - I mean, Hogle's earring. I hate even the word.'

'I'll do it,' I said. 'But my heart isn't in it.'

'That is precisely why I want you to do it,' Horton said. 'If nothing else, this should teach you that feelings have nothing to do with this job. Now, please, get it over with. It's starting to make me sick.'

I chose the pub carefully. It was in Earl's Court and notoriously male; but at six-thirty it was empty and could easily have been

CHARLIE HOGLE'S EARRING

mistaken for the haunt of darts players and polite locals with wives and dogs. Hogle was late. Waiting there, I thought that he might not turn up at all, just to teach me a lesson. But he came with an excuse and an apology. He had been telexing an urgent cable. Only he had clearance to work with classified material after hours, and the duty officer - Yorty, a newcomer - had no idea how to use a telex machine. So Hogle had worked late. As an ex-Army man he understood many of the military cables, and he had security clearance, and he was willing; I knew from his file that he didn't make mistakes. His obedience had never been questioned - that is, until Horton spotted the earring. I began to see why this detail worried Horton so much: Hogle, in such a ticklish job, had to be absolutely reliable.

He said, 'I've been thinking over what you told me.'

He looked tired - paler than he had three days ago. It was not the extra work, I was sure - he was worrying, not sleeping well. Perhaps he had already decided to resign on a point of principle, for in spite of his wilted posture and ashen skin, his expression was full of tenacity. I suppose it was his eyes. They were narrow, as though wounded, and hot, and seemed to say No surrender.

I said, 'Don't say anything.'

He had been staring into the middle distance. Now he looked closely at me. He winced, but he kept his gaze on me.

I said, 'I've managed to prevail. I took it to the highest possible level. I think everyone understands now.'

'What do you mean, "understands"?' There was a hint of anxiety in his voice.

'Your earring,' I said.

'What's there to understand?'

'You've got nothing to worry about. We don't persecute people for their beliefs anymore. If that were the case I wouldn't be in the Foreign Service.'

'Wearing an earring,' Hogle said. 'Is that a belief?'

'It depends on how naive you are,' I said. 'But be glad it doesn't matter. Be glad you live in a free society, where you can dress any way you like, and where you can choose your friends, whether they're British or American, white or black, female or male-'

Hogle became very attentive.

I said, 'I'm grateful to you. It's people like you who break down barriers and increase our self-awareness.'

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (II): THE LONDON EMBASSY

'I don't want to break down any barriers,' he said. Tm not even sure what self-awareness is all about.'

'It's about earrings,' I said. 'The other day I told you your earring was nice. I was being insincere. May I call you Charlie?'

'Sure.'

'Charlie, I think your earring is fantastic'

His hand went to his ear. He looked wary. He did not let go of the earring or his earlobe. He sat fixedly with his fingers making this plucking gesture on his ear.

'It's a very handsome accessory,' I said. His fingers tightened. 'A real enhancement.' They moved again. 'An elegant statement-'

I thought he was going to yank his ear off. His hand was trembling, still covering the earring. He said, 'I'm not making a statement.'

'Take it easy,' I said, giving him the sort of blanket assurance of no danger that convinces people - and rightly - that they're in a tight spot. 'You've got absolutely nothing to worry about!' He looked very worried. 'You can relax with me.' I ordered him a drink and told him there was no point in discussing the earring.

'To be perfectly honest,' I said, 'I rather like your earring.'

'I'm certainly not making any kind of statement,' Hogle said. The word worried him. It had implications of being unerasable and hinted of hot water. 'I got the idea from one of the delivery men - an English guy. He wasn't making any statement. It looked neat, that's all.'

'It looks more than neat,' I said. 'It has a certain mystery. I think that's its real charm.'

He winced at this, and how he was pinching his earlobe. He lowered his eyes. He did not look up again.

'I feel funny,' he said.

'Be glad you work with people who say yes instead of no.'

I gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder, the sort of body English Horton would have approved. It made me feel uncomfortable and mannered and overhearty. It amazed me then to realize that Horton was always punching and hugging and digging in the ribs. Hogle was unresponsive, not to say wooden. His eyes darted sideways.

The night's clients had started to arrive in the pub - men in leather jackets, with close-cropped hair, and heavy chains around their necks, and tattooed thumbs, and sunglasses. Some were bald,

CHARLIE HOGLE S EARRING

some devilishly bearded; one wore crimson shoes; another had an enormous black dog on a leather strap. All of them wore earrings.

'Have another drink/ I said.

Hogle stood up. 'I have to go.'

'What's the hurry?'

He was breathing hard. A man encased in tight black leather was hovering near us and staring at Hogle. The man had silver chains with thick links looped around his boots and they clanked as he came closer.

'No hurry,' Hogle said. Now he was reassuring me in the way that I had reassured him earlier, giving me hollow guarantees as he backed away. 'Hey, I had a good time.' He stepped past the clanking man, whose leather, I swear, oinked and squeaked. 'No kidding. It's just that' - he looked around - 'I told this friend of mine, this girl I know, that I'd - I don't know, I'd give her a call.' He looked desperate. 'Hey, thanks a lot. I really appreciate everything you've done!'

Then he left, and then I removed my earring. That was easy enough to do - just a matter of unscrewing the little plunger and putting the foolish thing into my pocket. And I hurried out of the pub, hearing just behind me clanks and squeaks of reproach.

In my report for Charlie Hogle's file I recorded the earring incident as a minor infraction - Inappropriate Dress. I left it vague. What was the point in explaining? I noted the two meetings; I described Hogle as 'compliant' and 'reasonable.' There was no innuendo in my report. I spared him any indignity. It sounded no worse than if he had come to work without a necktie.

Indeed, it was no worse than if he had come to work without a necktie. I had had no objection to the earring, nor had any of Hogle's co-workers in the telex room. Horton had made it an issue; Horton was minister, so Horton was obeyed. And Hogle did not wear his earring again.

'It's for his own good,' Horton said later, and he squeezed my arm. I was the team member who had just played well; he was the coach. He was proud of me and pleased with himself. He was beaming. 'I feel a thousand times better, too! That really annoyed me - that kid's earring. I used to go down to the telex room a lot. I realized I was staying away - couldn't stand to look at it!'

'Aren't you being a little melodramatic?'

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (il): THE LONDON EMBASSY

Tm completely serious,' he said. 'That situation was making me sick. I mean sick. I got so mad the first time I saw that thing on his ear' - Horton turned away and paused - 'I got so mad I actually threw up. Puked! That's how angry I was.'

'You must have been very angry,' I said.

'Couldn't help it. We can't have that sort of thing-' He didn't finish the sentence. He shook his head from side to side and then said, 'You were too easy on him in your report. That kid had a problem. Incredible. I took him for a clean, stand-up guy!'

I said, 'He may have feelings of which he's unaware. It's not that uncommon.'

'No,' Horton said. 'I'll keep an eye on him.'

'Fine,' I said. 'Anyway, everyone's safe now, coach.'

He smiled and smacked my arm and sent me back to my office.

In the following weeks I saw scores of young men Hogle's age wearing earrings. They were English, and all sorts, and I was ashamed that I had been a success. It was not merely that I had succeeded by deceiving Hogle, but that I had made him think there was something dangerous and deviant in this trinket decorating his ear. And he never knew just how handsome that trinket made him. Hogle would be all right. But after what he had told me, I was not so sure about Horton.

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (II): THE LONDON EMBASSY

posture that had probably evolved out of a fear of banging his head.

His strong, distinctly radical views were well known - his position on South Africa, nuclear disarmament, NATO, and even such rarefied issues as the exploitation of nonunion labor in the wine-growing region of Northern California. He had led peace marches in the 1960s, when he had been regarded as the soul of propriety in his dark gray three-piece suit and hand-knotted bowtie and gold watch chain. You might have taken him for a Tory politician or a banker or an Episcopalian preacher. He had a copper-bottomed look of authority, of solidity and trustworthiness; he had a good old name. The ragged, angry protest movements of the sixties needed his respectability, and they were probably surprised by how vocal he was on their behalf. He had the appeal of John Kennedy - in fact, the two had been classmates at Harvard. His 'Elegy on the Death of JFK' was celebrated for its intimate and unexpected details of the two men's friendship. Within a very few years of this poem, Bellamy became a public figure, who stumped around the United States reading his poems and giving encouragement to the anti-Vietnam protesters. He was noted for his willingness to share a platform with a folksinger, a jailbird, or whoever. Most people agreed that he was the conscience of his generation. Bellamy seemed to have no fire, but that was not so surprising. A conscience does not shout - it murmurs.

What else? Yes, he looked wonderfully well fed. This alone was an amazing characteristic in a poet, but he was a most unrepresentative figure. The more I found out about him, the more bewildered I was. He had a large following, but he was not only a poet. He was like a spiritual leader, like one of those bearded domineering Indian gurus; but for Bellamy poetry was the medium of instruction. His humility was so conspicuous and challenging it was like arrogance; but his sense of certainty, and the preachiness of his poems - and his physical size - attracted many people to him. He had considerable influence, and I was very glad it was for the good. His followers were a peaceful and romantic bunch on the whole -the college crowd - who perhaps trusted and liked this well-dressed father figure more than the middle-aged men who also wrote poems and carried banners and played to the gallery, and who dressed like chicken farmers and long-distance truckers, and who could be pretty embarrassing in the cold light of day.

THE EXILE

Bellamy had the strange privacies also of a spiritual leader. There were no rumors and stories of his excesses, but there were resonant and suggestive silences. To look like a banker and to be known for his nervous breakdown - that was what made him. And his marriages had also given him fame. He had been married three times. But he was no philanderer - he had been victimized and thrown into confusion by these messy affairs. Each of his wives had been extremely rich.

It was some measure of his fame that he was known as a writer to people who did not read him, and a great writer to those who did not read at all. He was all the more celebrated for not living in America. When Walter Van Bellamy came to England from New York in the early seventies he was called an exile. It did not seem the right word to describe a man who was often on television telling lively stories, or else doing something public and political before a crowd. I thought of exiles as gaunt silent men, with red eyes, pacing the rocky foreshores of barren islands; or else unshaven men in hot overcoats who spoke in thick accents and slept on sofas. Bellamy did not fit my stereotype. And were you still an exile if you occasionally flew home first class in a jumbo jet to attend a New York party? I did not think so. Some years he taught at Harvard. He had money. His rich wives had been sympathetic. They were more patronesses than wives. He was lucky. He had always lived well - he was in his way a socialite, a party-goer, if a somewhat reluctant one. He had a house in the depths of Kent and an apartment in Eaton Square. Perhaps the most unusual thing about him was that, as a poet, he made money. People bought his books, even if they didn't read them. The books were symbols or tokens of belief. Buying them was a political act, an affirmation that you were on his side - whatever side he was boosting at that moment.

I had been introduced to him at Everett Horton's house, when he was drunk and deaf. I was eager to meet him again, because I had read him at school. He too had been to Boston Latin, and his books in the school library and the thought that he had sat under these same windows, this whiff of literary history, fueled my own ambition to write, until I drifted into the State Department. I had wanted to talk to him. It is a natural desire to want to meet a writer and size him up. But I did not see him again until the Poetry Night of the London Arts Festival, where he was reading.

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (il): THE LONDON EMBASSY

His poems that night were dense and full of his personal history, but his reading was vigorous and gave life to what seemed to be little more than spidery monologues about his domestic affairs -how he had cleaned out a sink and swept a room and ordered a pint of milk and so forth - modern poetry, as a lady behind me said out loud. There is a personal tone in some poetry that is so intimate it gives nothing away - so private it sounds anonymous. Bellamy's was a sort of general confession of practical untidiness with which any youngster might identify. I say 'y° un g ster ' because Bellamy seemed to be addressing younger people, implying that he understood them and offering them reassurance. This restrained snuggling was a popular approach. The audience clamored for more, and that was when I noticed how lonely he looked in the spotlight - how solitary and anxious to please.