‘Have we adopted a frivolous attitude?’ said Hughie. ‘The poor old dears are always being run in, you know.’
‘I think I will put it this way. I think it cannot be generally understood and realized in Britain, as we understand and realize it in the States, that morally and politically these people are lepers. They are sickly, morbose, healthless, chlorotic, unbraced, flagging, peccant, vitiated and contaminated, and when I use the word contaminated I use it very specifically in the political sense. But I think you British have absolutely no conception of the danger in your midst, of the harm these perverts can do to the state of which they are citizens. You seem to regard them as a subject for joking rather than as the object of a deep-seated, far-reaching purge.’
‘But they’re not in politics, Heck – hardly any, at least.’
‘Not openly, no. That’s their cunning. They work behind the scenes.’
‘If you can call it work.’
‘For the cause of Communism. The point I am trying to make is that they are dangerous because politically contaminated, a political contamination that can, in every traceable case, be traced to Moscow.’
‘I say, hold on, Heck,’ said Hughie. ‘All the old queens I know are terrific old Tories.’
‘I am bound to contradict you, Hughie, or rather I am bound to put forward my argument, and you are going to see that it is a powerful argument, to persuade you of the exact opposite of what you have just said and to persuade you that what you have just said is the exact opposite of the truth as known to my government. We Americans, you may know, have certain very very sure and reliable, I would even say infallible, sources of information. We have our Un-American Activities Committee sections, we have our F.B.I. agents, we have countless very very brilliant newspaper men and business men all over the world (men like Charlie Jungfleisch and Asp Jorgmann); we have also other sources which I am not at liberty to disclose to you, even off the record. And our sources of information inform us that nine out of every ten, and some say ninety-nine out of every hundred, of these morally sick persons are not only in the very closest sympathy but in actual contact with Moscow. And I for one entirely believe these sources.’
Hughie was unconvinced. ‘But my dear Heck, in Russia you go to Siberia for that. I’ve got a friend of mine who’s awfully worried about it in case they come –’
‘Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. There are some very curious anomalies, things you would hardly credit, Hughie, but of which our agents are cognizant, going on in that great amorphous blob of a country today. But I am not concerned with the pervert in Russia, my concern is with the pervert in Western Europe because my professional concern at the moment is with Western Europe, more especially in its moral and ethical aspect.’
‘Then what about the pervert in America?’ said Hughie.
‘And I am very very glad to say that this very unpleasant problem does not exist in the States. We have no pederasts.’
‘How funny,’ said Grace, ‘all the Americans here are.’
She was thinking of various gay, light-hearted fellows whom she met with Charles-Edouard and his friends. Mr Dexter was displeased with this remark and did not reply, but Hughie said,
‘Perhaps they have a bad time at home and all come here, like before the war one used to think all Germans were Jews. But honestly you know, Heck, what you’ve just said makes no sense, and the more one thinks of it the less sense it makes.’
‘I will make one more attempt to explain my meaning to you, Hughie, and then we must go. If a man is morally sick, Hughie, he is morally sick, if he is sick in one sense he will be sick in another, and if he is sexually sick he will be politically sick as well.’
‘But, poor old things, they’re not sick,’ said Hughie, ‘they just happen to like boys better than girls. You can’t blame them for that, it’s awfully inconvenient, and they’d give anything to be different if they could. But I don’t see that it’s any reason for calling them Bolshevists. I probably know more about them than you do, having been at Eton and Oxford, and if there’s one thing they’re not it’s Bolshevists. Anything for a quiet life is their motto. I’m afraid, old man, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick there, and if this is what your infallible sources are telling you, I should advise a comb-out of the sources.’
The Dexters now got up to leave. The Jungfleisches, they explained, were giving a party for important people, and they had promised to be there early.
‘Poor old Heck,’ said Hughie when they had gone. ‘He does see things in black and white. Funny, really, for such a clever man. I can’t help remembering how all over the Russians he used to be, in Italy. He bit my head off the other day for reminding him, but it’s true.’
‘Like Carolyn,’ Grace said, laughing, ‘she used to be our school Communist. I know it was she, though now she pretends I’ve been mixing her up with another girl. She gets furious when I tease her about it.’
Hughie said, ‘Let’s go and have a glass of wine somewhere before bedtime, shall we?’
Grace felt tired, as she
