are dragging our greatest playwright through the mire, and I will not stand for it a moment longer. Anyone who wishes to join me in making a swift exodus to the nearest pub is more than welcome. Come, Harold.’ On this occasion he was wearing – as was often his way – a black, silk-lined cape, which he swirled around himself in the most effective and compelling gesture before stumbling out over the legs of the other audience members in his row, dragging me after him while everyone (including the actors) looked on in outraged astonishment. To me, prone as I was to an attitude of deference and self-effacement whatever the circumstances, this was a frankly mortifying experience. My cheeks flamed under the knowledge that hundreds of pairs of eyes were fixed upon us, whereas Roger, I am sure, savoured the moment. He liked nothing more than to be the centre of attention. Afterwards, as we were sitting in the pub, he laughed heartily. ‘Someone had to show those idiots up for what they were,’ he said. ‘Everyone else would just have sat there like a flock of hypnotized sheep.’ Then, observing that I was upset and embarrassed by the whole episode, he began to chide me for my timidity. ‘Harold, you lack spirit,’ he said. ‘You are too cowed by inhibitions, which make you afraid not only to speak your own mind, but even to look inside and find out what’s really in it. Your sort will do anything to preserve the status quo. I’m afraid you will never amount to anything, with that sort of attitude.’
This sentiment was to be expressed several times during our friendship. It next happened after I had made the mistake of showing Roger some of my own poetry, an act of presumption on my part which led to a most painful evening together – the first evening I ever spent with Roger when for a while I really believed that I hated him, and wished him dead. As usual, we were in The Rising Sun, where we had been sitting for more than an hour and a half, while he lectured me on ancient British pagan rituals (the latest field to have attracted his fickle, quicksilver interest) without alluding once to the precious manuscript which I had put into his hands two days earlier in an anonymous A4 manila envelope. Finally, during a brief interlude in his monologue, my patience deserted me, and my curiosity would wait no longer.
‘Have you read them?’ I blurted out.
He hesitated, and swirled the gin around in his glass.
‘Oh yes,’ he said at last. ‘Oh yes, I’ve read them all right.’
The subsequent pause seemed to go on for ever.
‘Well? What did you think?’
‘I thought … I thought it probably best if I didn’t say anything, on the whole.’
‘I see,’ I said – not seeing at all, but feeling very wounded, all the same. ‘Didn’t you have any criticisms to make?’
‘Oh, Harold, what would be the point?’ Roger sighed heavily. ‘You have no poetry
He regarded me almost kindly as he said this, and clasped me by the hand. It was an extraordinary moment: our first instance of real physical contact, I believe (after seeing each other for so many weeks!), which sent a pulse of exhilaration through my body, so that I could almost feel the blood tingling through it, as if a circuit had been completed at last. And yet, at the same time, I felt an absolute revulsion: my fury at his rejection, at the sheer contempt in which he clearly held my attempts at verse was so strong that I could not speak, and withdrew my hand sharply after only a second or two had gone by.
‘I’ll get some more drinks,’ he said, rising to his feet. And I was sure I could glimpse an almost daemonic smile in his eye as he looked back over his shoulder at me and carelessly asked: ‘Same again?’
I was in thrall to Roger. However cruel he was to me, I could not escape him. I had made very few other friends in London, and besides, his personality was so much stronger than mine, I accepted even his severest criticisms of me and believed them to be well founded. We continued with our schemes of pleasure and self-improvement. But he did not take me by the hand again, for quite a while.
A recurrent feature of our conversations was our plan to take a long trip together, at some unspecified time, through France and Germany and thence down to Italy, to visit Florence, Rome and Naples, and to view the splendours of the ancient world. Like all of Roger’s schemes, it was grandiose. He would not contemplate a quick journey there and back by rail. There were many places he wanted to see on the way down; and he even began to talk about returning along the Italian and French rivieras, with a possible detour to Spain. The whole excursion, he said, if carried out properly, would take a number of months, and would cost several hundred pounds. And so the main obstacle standing in the way of this scheme was entirely predictable, and seemingly intractable: a serious lack of funds.
The germ of a solution presented itself, however, early one evening in March as we were making our way towards the bar of the Mermaid Theatre, where we were intending to have a drink and perhaps see the performance afterwards. As we strolled together down Carter Lane, we passed a tall City gent in his pin-striped suit and bowler hat walking in the other direction. Roger stopped in his tracks and looked after him as he ambled by.
‘That’s Crispin,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a word. I’ll introduce you to him.’
‘Will he be pleased to see us?’ I asked, somewhat nervously.
‘Horrified, I should think. That’ll be half the fun.’
Crispin had disappeared through the door of a pub which also, I noticed, went by the name of The Rising Sun, despite being less than a mile from our regular haunt in Cloth Fair. We found him standing at the bar, bent in deep thought over the pages of the
‘Good evening, Mr Lambert,’ said Roger, in a deferential tone I had never heard him use before.
‘Roger!’ He looked up, thoroughly startled. ‘Good gracious. I didn’t know that this was one of your watering holes.’
‘One of many, Mr Lambert, one of many. Allow me to introduce my friend, Harold Sim.’
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ he said, extending a lukewarm handshake. He hesitated, waiting for us to move away. But we stayed where we were. ‘Well …’ he said, after an awkward silence, ‘I suppose you gentlemen will be wanting a drink?’
Once we’d had a few drinks together, Crispin Lambert turned out to be amiable enough: not that I took a very active role in the conversation. He and Roger soon fell to discussing their work on the Stock Exchange floor, and I found myself lost in a thicket of financial jargon of which I had not the least understanding. My mind drifted off and I began thinking of other things. Some lines of a sonnet occurred to me and I began writing them down in my notebook. I took no further notice of my companions, in fact, until several minutes later, when I realized that Roger was addressing me directly.
