DURING THE SIXTIES, one of Father’s closest friends was the notorious Labour minister, Tom Driberg, later elevated to the peerage as Lord Bradwell. Elevated though his position may have been, his thoughts and behaviour were not. Driberg was a showy, many-coloured homosexual who was alleged by some to be a Soviet double agent. Father always doubted this, however, pointing out that his wild shouts, startling indiscretions and rampant promiscuity would have been too great a risk even for the Russians.
On the other hand, misfits and rough renegades were often the very people the Soviets did approach – on the grounds that they were seldom suspected. Par exemple, there was Guy Burgess. Father had become quite friendly with Burgess after meeting him at a London dinner party. The two of them had frequented a not very salubrious nightclub in West London called The Nest. On one occasion, when a customer at the adjacent table failed to stand for ‘God Save the Queen’, Burgess had knocked him down. In this way did the man establish his patriotic credentials.
Father enjoyed relating a story that had circulated when it was proposed that Burgess be posted to the Washington Embassy. A Foreign Office official had pleaded with him to behave with discretion while abroad.
‘Please, Guy,’ he said, ‘no racial incidents, no espousing of left-wing causes and for God’s sake no sexual scandals.’ Burgess had replied, ‘You mean I mustn’t make a pass at Paul Robeson?’
This caused Father such mirth when he told it, that he would have to pause in the middle to collect his wits before continuing. But when it was discovered that Burgess and Donald Maclean had flown to Moscow, Father was astounded. His highly defined notion of the English gentleman – a little bohemian perhaps, but loyal to the core – took a terrible drubbing.
Driberg was an even more complicated soul than the feckless Burgess. He had eyes like the opaque tinted windows on a stretch limousine; he could see out but you couldn’t see in. Like John Wilkes, he was prepared to sacrifice his best friend for the sake of a scurvy jest. A great proselytiser for homosexuality, Driberg maintained that all men concealed a feminine side that could be encouraged eventually and inevitably into active sodomy.
Father scoffed at this theory, saying,
‘Well, you never dared make a pass at me.’
Driberg was all sweetness and spite.
‘You’re not my type, dear Woodrow.’
To prove his point Driberg asked Father to name the most overtly masculine man he could think of in the then Tory government. Father thought for a bit and then settled on a well-known minister with shoulders like the Parthenon. Driberg returned gleefully,
‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
Father was called upon from time to time to act as Driberg’s unofficial scout with regard to his latest crise de coeur. There were plenty of crises. Like many homosexuals at that time, Driberg conducted a great many of his manoeuvres in public lavatories. It didn’t matter which country he was in as long as there were plenty of amenities. Occasionally he stretched the hospitality of his friends a little too far. Poor Sir Harold Acton, the elderly aesthete, was enraged by Driberg’s chasing his cook through the public lavatories of Florence. It was a case of picking up fag ends, Driberg joked. Sir Harold remained stonily unamused.
Oh, the fascination of sin and its misshapen shadow! Such was Driberg’s corruption that he tired of fleeing Italian carabinieri and sought new sensations of sexual tension. Decay was characteristic of the immediate prospect. His passionate absorption in risk led him to extend the field of his activities to the lavatories in the House of Commons. Then as now the Commons was closely policed by the sort of denizens of the law who firmly believed that homosexuals should, for their own moral health, be flogged over the yard arm. To Father this was not reassuring of Driberg’s chances of evading capture. He nonetheless, in a moment of rash amiability, agreed to stand guard outside the lavatory door.
‘Poor Woodrow must have terrible bladder problems,’ was the whisper raised in the House as sightings of Father moving quickly and furtively in the direction of the gentlemen’s cloakroom became more and more frequent. In the fulness of his gratitude Driberg leavened the hours of boredom in the chamber by teaching Father to sing the words, ‘the clerk will now proceed to read the orders of the day,’ to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’. But the likelihood of them both being covered with shame increased as the spring months quickened Driberg’s endorphins. He began to see sex simply as a mode through which he could realise his idea of summertime.
Perhaps inevitably, Driberg was heir to disaster. So too, nearly, was Father. One sultry afternoon he stood guard outside the lavatories when the division bell began to ring. Father was jerked out of his ruminations. For Heaven’s sake, what to do? The choice was stark. Either abandon his post or face the wrath of the whips. Father didn’t take long to decide. He abandoned his post, assuming that Driberg would have acted with similar circumspection. So immersed was the tireless seducer, however, that he carried on regardless. By this time a policeman had begun sniffing around the door, distracted by the sounds that did not quite resemble those produced by conventional ablutions.
Later that day Father was sitting in the bar nursing what he felt was a well-deserved gin when Driberg came upon his recumbent figure. He was trembling with rage and resentment.
‘Why the hell did you leave your post, Woodrow?’ he roared.
‘But I had to vote,’ Father protested. ‘Surely you understand.’
‘Maybe under some circumstances,’ said Driberg, beginning to calm down a little. ‘But in this instance anything might have happened.’
‘You see,’ he said, pausing and licking his lips and anticipating dinner, ‘I was buggering one of the cooks.’