For a first novel, Look
Down in Mercy is an extraordinary achievement. Like many
fictional accounts of the Second World War, it is based on first-hand
experience. Walter Baxter had taken part in the 1942 campaign against
the Japanese in Burma, and had joined the subsequent retreat into
India. The novel's version of these events is rendered
psychologically plausible with a wealth of detail about physical and
mental endurance, in a hostile climate, on the face of an unforgiving
landscape, and at the mercy of an efficient and ruthless enemy. As a
hardcore novel of warfare, it is persuasive and compelling.
But there is more to
it than that. This is more than a pulp-fiction account of heroism and
derring-do. Despite its depressing moments of racism about both the
Japanese enemy and the Indian allies—moments which, like the book's
similar evidence of routine sexism, are quite unremarkable for their
era—the novel is no mere celebration of British strategic or moral
superiority. Yes, it includes accounts of Japanese war crimes; but
its British central character, Tony Kent, is all the more
interesting for the fact that, in his personal relationships no less
than his professional behaviour as a soldier, he is morally
compromised throughout.
A further degree of
complexity is added to an already sophisticated book by what we might
call its 'gay theme', the intimate relationship that develops between
Kent and his batman, Anson. So anguished is this relationship, on
Kent's part at least (for Anson seems to accept it in good heart,
with a docile equanimity that is often very moving), that it is
perfectly in keeping with the context of the war. Like the retreat
into India, on foot and in the extremes of illness and thirst, the
love affair is no sentimental romance, but an epic of resistance and
endurance. Even if the protagonists survive, it is hard to see how
their love will.
Kent's attitudes to
homosexuality are unquestioningly negative. Most of his moments of
intimacy with Anson are compromised by guilt feelings and followed by
attacks of self-loathing or, at best, of regret. Even at the decisive
moment of their first embrace, while the narrative suggests the
abandonment of scruples ('without considering the consequences'),
nevertheless we are told that Kent puts his arms around Anson
'believing that what he was about to do was utterly disgraceful and
criminal'. (Not until 1957 would the Wolfenden Report recommend the
partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts, and not until 1967
would those recommendations be enacted, if only in England and Wales;
but this liberalisation would not apply to the armed services.) So
deeply ingrained is Kent's disapproval that, even when disregarding
the specific consequences of this particular embrace, at this exact
moment, at this precise map reference, he cannot help being flooded
with an awareness of the possibility of social scandal: informally,
in any social milieu he knows, this sexual act must be judged
'disgraceful'; and formally, should it ever reach the courts, martial
or otherwise, it must inevitably be judged 'criminal'. So much for
the pleasure of the two men's first embrace.
In the morning, Kent
feels 'misery and regret' over what they have done, even if 'he could
almost feel love' for the man he is lying next to. In the hours that
follow, he deliberately takes on a risky leadership role that he
might normally have delegated to one of his non-commissioned
officers, in part because 'he wanted to prove something to himself
and to Anson, but what it was he did not know'. To have become the
lover of another man—if only perhaps once, only perhaps in a moment
of weakness, only perhaps for lack of the presence of women—is to
run the risk of obliterating one's masculine identity, albeit while
still wearing the uniform and insignia of membership of the armed
services. To have spent a night in another man's arms is to call into
doubt one's manly capabilities. Hence the test and the proof. In the
hot light of day, 'something' needs proving, to the satisfaction of
both parties. At this stage, it seems, Kent wants to prove that last
night was an aberration and that he is still a real man.
Kent has read the
British newspapers and he has seen, or heard of, the visible presence
of homosexual men in Britain. In no respect does he identify with
them, either as individuals or as a cause:
As for being a pervert (the word conjured up, for him, repelling
images of furtive old men peering over the tops of public urinals,
clergymen volunteering to undergo 'treatment' for six months to avoid
prison, and effeminate shop-assistants talking like a music-hall
comedian), last night was the first time that anything of that nature
had happened to him.
He persuades himself
that nothing of the sort would have happened if he had not been 'away
from Celia for so long' (she being his wife); and that no such thing
will happen again because he intends to track down 'that nice nurse'
Helen Dean, with whom he spent a drunken night on the ship that was
taking them to Rangoon. In other words, regardless of his fondness
for Anson, he knows he does not belong to any of the limited range of
homosexual types he is aware of—never having actively sought sexual
contact with another man, never having been deemed a suitable case
for either treatment or punishment, and not being effeminate (even if
this needs proving to himself and Anson)—and he knows that, as soon
as suitable circumstances can be arranged, his heterosexuality will
prevail.
That is one step
towards reassurance on the morning after. More difficult to achieve,
because demanding a lack of witnesses, Anson's discretion, and
continued vigilance, is that nobody else should ever become aware of
the two men's relationship. After they first spend a night together
in the security and comfort of a private bedroom and bed, Kent is
again both ashamed and calculating: 'He had committed the
unforgivable sin, and now there was nothing to be done except not to
be found out'.
As we have seen, on
the morning after their first encounter, Kent reassures himself that
'last night was the first time that anything of that nature had
happened to him'. But, as it turns out, he has either forgotten his
own schooldays or discounted them. There is a conversation between
him and Anson, much later in the book, in which Kent explicitly
claims never to have done 'anything like this' in his life. Anson,
who presumably has, suggests that he must at least have 'known
something about it … when you were a kid at school. Kent replies:
Yes, but that was different, utterly different. You must know what
little beasts boys are. It was just dirty-mindedness, it didn't mean
anything. Once, maybe twice, fooling around in the lavatories.
He adds, 'It wasn't
anything like this.' This lack of meaning, as attributed to sexual
encounters between schoolboys, clearly refers to the 'passing phase'
theory of adolescent homosexuality, so useful to excuse the past
indiscretions of men who had been through the English public (i.e.
private) school system. Youthful experimentation, lack of female
company, the hothouse atmosphere of a closed institution—these
allowed for both romantic attachments and (as long as no one caught
the miscreants) frictional release. But his and Anson's relationship
is, as Kent says, 'utterly different'. It is, of course, more
dangerous—running the risk of court martial and imprisonment or
'treatment'—and, as he has finally begun to realise, more
meaningful. What he does with Anson is no mere 'dirty-mindedness'.
When the odious
Goodwin arrives, 'venomous and sneering', to attempt to blackmail
Kent, all of the latter's fears about the consequences of his
'criminal carelessness' prove justified. (The novel's opening
chapter, in which Anson and Goodwin take a shower next to each other,
proves to have been a mischievous diversionary tactic on the part of
the author.) Imprisonment apart, blackmail was the main risk
homosexual men faced during the era of criminality. It could be the
outcome of any homosexual encounter with a stranger; and it could
result from the negligence allowing a third party to witness a
compromising encounter. Fear of blackmail kept many men celibate.
Walter Baxter exploits
such fears for most of the novel, using Goodwin to embody the threat.
The fact that we know he is a murderer eliminates any moral ambiguity
about his repulsive personality. It is always going to be hard even
for the homophobic reader to sympathise with him when he calls Kent
'nothing but a bloody nancy boy' and a 'gutless nancy', since he is
such a manifestly nasty piece of work. Indeed, even the homosexual
reader might understand how Kent, when faced with Goodwin's threats
and insults, reflects that 'he would rather be suspected of murder
than homosexuality' and picks up his revolver...
Goodwin is all bad,
Anson all good. Both are rather two dimensional characters. But, as I
have already suggested, the real power of this novel comes from
Baxter's willingness to develop a central character who is morally
ambiguous even to the extent of being thoroughly compromised. Kent is
both a hero and a coward, a saver of lives and a killer, a homophobe
and the lover of a man. He treats Anson as if he were disposable—and
we can be sure that he would sacrifice Anson if his own safety were
at stake. Anson knows this. And yet, in spite of all the negative
aspects of his personality, Baxter still manages to use Kent as a
positive representative of homosexuality: masculine, patriotic,
mature and capable (in all these respects matching the less visible
but steadier Anson).
Similarly ambivalent
are both of the book's two endings, that of 1951 for the British
market, and that of 1952 for the American (printed here as an
appendix). One is unhappy and the other happy, but neither is
definitive. I shall not go into detail about this, but Baxter clearly
wanted to leave open the possibilities in each, not least in their
moral implications. Compared with the heavy-handed alternative
endings of Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar (1948 and
1965), one involving murder and the other rape, these are—even if
dramatic—subtle and suggestive in ways that, in both cases,
appropriately round off a novel that consistently avoids resorting to
the obvious.
Walter Baxter's second
novel, The Image and the Search (1953), about a widow who
takes several lovers in a quest to replace the image of her late
husband, turned out to be far more controversial than Look Down in
Mercy. In March 1954, Lord Beaverbrook used the pages of the
Daily Express to put pressure on the publishers, Heinemann, to
withdraw it. They did so, and also withheld it from Putnam's in the
USA. In October of that year, publisher and author were charged under
the Obscene Publications Act. They had to endure two trials before
finally being acquitted. Anticipating by some sixteen years the
absurdities of the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover, one of
the prosecutors asked, 'Would anyone give this book as a present to
his daughter or his typist?'
Like E.M. Forster
before him, Baxter found the pressure not to write about the topics
that interested him too much to bear, and he gave up writing.
Instead, he eventually became a successful restaurateur. His greatest
success was in running, jointly with his lover Fergus Provan, the
Chanterelle in South Kensington. If at some point he makes an
appearance in Christopher Isherwood's diaries as a self-pitying
drunk, we can offer him the courtesy of our indulgence. After all,
this was a man who had written two daring and accomplished novels,
both of which raised the topic of homosexuality at a time when for a
homosexual novelist to do so took some nerve. And, having been
daring, he had been ordered not to dare.
[This essay was first published as the introduction to Walter Baxter, Look Down in Mercy (Richmond, Virginia: Valancourt Books, 2014), pp.v-x).]
