Friday, July 21, 1950
Troy had no idea how to dress for an orgy, so he made no attempt. He wore his black suit, one of many, and went straight from Scotland Yard to Bond Street, leaving as late as he could in the hope of missing something.
A warm night, the windows open, and the sound of Burgess’s farewell was audible almost as far as Piccadilly. Someone had brought Nat Gonella records. Trumpet raucous.
Two young men were leaning in the doorway, smoking, as Troy walked up Old Bond Street. Camp-looking, lean street-trades. Troy could swear they were wearing eye shadow, and perhaps mascara too.
“Who’s a pretty boy?” In a Cockney accent.
He was used to that. A certain kind of man and the occasional woman, who talked to him as though teaching a parrot to speak.
“I am,” he said, and pushed past them.
Burgess’s bedroom was just by the front door. Troy added his raincoat to the pile on the bed and stepped into the sitting room, hoping against hope that Burgess had invited a few ordinary people too.
He had, and at first sight there was not a lot of difference between this party and those his father had thrown before the war.
The ever-present Baroness Budberg—getting stout now and looking more like a real babushka with every pound gained. Burgess’s old boss at the Foreign Office—Hector McNeil MP. A bloke he knew by sight but didn’t think he’d ever spoken to—Anthony Blunt, a cousin once removed (or possibly more, Troy never understood the term) of the Queen, and the appointed “surveyor of her pictures,” whatever that was. Guy Liddell of MI5, with whom he’d had professional dealings and hoped to have no more. The writer James Pope-Hennessy—Troy had met him several times. He had shared a flat with Burgess just after the war. And … he was a man on a mission—the English country house, and as Troy owned one, Pope-Hennessy had invited himself to Mimram. They’d got on rather well, and having no real wish to talk to Liddell or Baroness Budberg, Troy helped himself to a drink and cut a path across the room to greet him.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“James, I think I might be in the minority in not being fancy.”
Pope-Hennessy looked around.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Guy is catholic in his taste. Friends across the sexual spectrum, although I think one or two of them must be aghast at the rough trade Guy’s roped in tonight. Personally … I rather fancy the sailors.”
Troy followed his gaze to two uniformed naval subalterns deep in conversation with a handsome young man who looked much like the two Troy had encountered on the doorstep.
“Do you think he just invites them in off the street?”
“I know damn well he does.”
“Risky?”
“You don’t think of the risk. You think of the man, and inevitably you think of the pleasure. The sheer delight in a young body. Speaking of delight. I have one for you. An old body. Blunt wants to meet you. You’ll like him. Smart as they come. There’s nothing Anthony doesn’t know. He could get culture a good name.”
Pope-Hennessy was right. Troy took to Blunt. Blunt asked a dozen questions about things he’d no idea anyone outside his family knew—about the paintings and statues Alexei Troy had collected on his travels.
“Is it true he knew Gauguin?”
“Doubt it,” Troy replied. “My father didn’t leave Russia until a couple of years after Gauguin’s death. His collecting begins with his exile.”
“Picasso?”
“Doesn’t everyone know Picasso?”
Blunt smiled at this.
“Yes. My father knew Picasso. About the African time … ‘08 … ‘09 … he told me once he’d called on him at his studio and the painting he described Picasso working on was Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.”
“Or something very like.”
“Well said. He couldn’t swear to that, and indeed, he bought a ‘something very like.’”
There seemed to Troy to be only one good-mannered satiation to Blunt’s good-mannered curiosity. He threw out an invitation to visit Mimram and see for himself. He’d take it up or he wouldn’t.
After Blunt, the wagging finger of Baroness Budberg beckoned. Troy prayed for an intervention, and after a couple of minutes it came in the shape of the elusive host.
“You’ve been neglecting your guests, Guy.”
Burgess grinned wickedly.
“S’awright. They haven’t been neglecting me.”
And the grin broadened.
“So soon in the evening, Guy? The night is yet young.”
“And the roughs are even younger. Take a look at the chap taking off his shirt right now. Pecs like scallop shells. A bum like a peach.”
Troy turned. It was one of the two boys he’d encountered earlier, stripping off—much to the amusement of the two Royal Navy officers.
The shirt whirled around his head and flew across the room.
“Guy, you don’t suppose—”
“Oh yes.”
And in seconds the boy was naked, shoulders back, belly out like a dancer in a Moroccan club—but that which shook was not his belly.
The muttered “I say” and “Good Lord” drowned out by the whistles and cheers.
The first cock out had divided the room.
People would make their excuses and leave now or stay on to see what happened next. Troy was unsure which camp he was in.
As the young rough shimmied around the room, Burgess’s old boss, Hector McNeil, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, came up to him, forcing a smile and bidding him goodnight.
“Guy. I have known you for years, and you are dear to me, and whether you like it or not I have shielded you from your enemies just as long. I feel I have earned the right to offer a word of warning.”
“Fire away, old man.”
“For God’s sake, Guy, remember three things when you get out to the States. Don’t be too aggressively left-wing. Don’t get involved in race relations, and, above all, make sure that there aren’t any homosexual incidents which might cause trouble.”
For just long enough Burgess seemed to be giving it the consideration McNeil clearly thought it deserved. Then …
“I think I understand you, Hector. I’ll be OK as long as I don’t fuck Paul Robeson.”
Anyone within earshot burst out laughing at this. It was Burgess at his worst and best. But worse was waiting.
“Hang on a mo’ you bunch of cynics. It’s not that funny. There is a serious point to be made here.”
The look on Burgess’s face told Troy the opposite was far more likely.
“I give you … before your very eyes … you lucky people … the words of the Vice-Marshal of our Diplomatic Corps …”
Cries of “what?” and “who?” went up across the room. “Diplomatic what?”
Burgess pulled a scrap of paper from his back pocket.
“… the one, the only Sir Magnus Lowther, author of Guidelines for the Diplomat Embarking on Overseas Service. HMSO. Revised edition, 1947. Section 3, paragraph 1 … ‘When in Washington … But …’”
Burgess switched from his variety-theatre routine, his Tommy Trinder/Max Miller persona, to a parody of the accent of three-quarters of the men in the room. Posh enough to crack a wine glass.
“‘But … if protocol should present few problems, there are more general standards of behaviour which Mr. and Mrs. John Bull will ignore at their peril.’”
A cry of “when was this written? 1850?”
Burgess had to pause a moment to be heard over the laughter he so relished.
“‘To be shy is a defect.’”
The room exploded. For what seemed to Troy like several minutes, Burgess could not go on. This was better than any music-hall routine and all the funnier for being real.
“‘To look bored is an error.’”
Now it was Burgess consumed in his own mirth, shouting above the hubbub.
“Bored. Bloody hell. Me? Bored? Do I ever look bored? … and I save the best for last … ‘But to appear superior is the eighth deadly sin!’”
It might have been a Roman emperor cuing the next round of the gladiatorial circus, the next bout of coupling in the orgy. It was a world away from the man who’d owned up to feeling lonely. How lightly the star of the footlights rested upon the sad and lost individual to be found at the bottom of the Scotch bottle.
McNeil had had enough. He hadn’t joined in the laughter. Rod had told Troy that McNeil had privately expressed relief when Burgess had transferred to the Far Eastern section of the FO. How relieved must he now be to have him out of the country altogether? Troy doubted McNeil would stay a moment longer, and resolved to leave when he did in the interests of discretion. His mind was made up. If this really did turn into an orgy he wanted no part of it.
A few minutes later he sought out Burgess and made his farewells.
“I was just thinking,” he said. “We’ve been at peace with the USA since 1814 or thereabouts.”
“You think I can fuck it up all on my own?”
“Surprise me, Guy.”
Walking home, Troy found relief mixing with alarm. The Burgess cocktail—stirred not shaken, since Guy managed to stir up everything he touched. Relief, that he might be free of the social quagmire that Burgess pulled him into every so often, a world that was over-sexed, loud, careless rather than carefree, and constantly striving to outrage. Alarm that World War III might be just around the corner and that Burgess might be the blue touch paper.
He parted from McNeil at the next corner. They said goodnight, and Troy could not for the life of him recall that they had exchanged any more words all evening. They had both been out on a limb, and neither wanted to mention it. They had both put up with Burgess for years out of a mixture of affection and apprehension, and neither wanted to mention that either.
Troy wondered if this time he really had seen the last of Burgess.