50
PARTISAN REVIEW
concealed from him tha t I was to play a concerto with the Bourne–
mouth Symphony Orchestra since he was far too shaky to go. However
he somehow had found out and when, after the concert was over, and a
dinner wi th the mayor and council was in progress in the vas t and
o therwi se deserted dining room of a la rge hotel, Raymond suddenl y
arri ved white-faced and ghostl y in full evening dress with white silk
scarf, lurched towards the table and said he'd come to ta ke me back to
London. Lady Groves persuaded him to join us, and after dinner he
was helped , a lmost ca rried, by the conductor Stanford Robinson to the
wa iting car-a very upri ght and ancient Roll s Royce the floor of which
was covered with sil ver ice buckets full of champagne and carna tions, a
sight remini scent of a scene from one of hi s novels. We three bowl ed off
for Londo n th rough the night-stopping a t Raymond 's insistence to
drink champagne, with the aged chauffeur jo ining us, and wild New
Fores t ponies wandering up towa rds the car. Soon Raymond was
as leep and Stanford and I ta lked . Then Raymond, waking as we neared
LOlldon , sa id vei'y quietl y and soberl y, " 1 know wha t you a re a ll do ing
for me, and 1 thank you , but the truth is 1 rea ll y
wan t
to d ie." It
sounded simple, undrama tic, and the na tural encou raging repl y
seemed suddenl y impossible to utter.
Lunch eons with each of us, dinners with o ther friends, or evenings
when we ba ttled for hours to lift his depressions continued . His var io us
sagas of hi s to ugh-guy exploits or sexual encounters became even mo re
incredibl e. There was the instant "affair" with a bejewell ed blond he
ha<;l met in the lift a t the Connaught who was "just res ting" after her
umpteenth di vorce, and who silentl y foll owed him out of the lift to hi s
room on the fourth floor; or there was hi s heroic punch-up by which he
fo iled the a ttempt by two hoodlums to sna tch his wall et; and above all
there were stories of rescuing ladies in di stress when there was "no one
else around to do it so I had to." Some of these ta les became part o f his
life story, frozen (like some of hi s pet hates amongst acquaintances)
into immutability. T hough ometimes his hold on rea lity made him
selective about the audi ence for certain stories (and hi s American
fri ends, by some accounts, received an Arabian Nights version o f his
London life), a t other times he could stick to hi s own account of a
situa ti on o r event even to the person who had actuall y been a witness of
it. His highl y drama tized views o f our lives (for he treated a ll the
shuttle ser vice fri ends in a pa ternalistic manner ) were often to tall y wide
of the ma rk , and it was useless to a rgue aga inst his strong des ire to
impose hi s interpreta tion . Fo r him we became cha racters in one o f his
novels and to introduce our rea lity into his dream was to arouse his
