Best-Kept Boy in the World (10 page)

Through Aldous Huxley, they found a teacher of
hatha-yoga exercises, which they practiced “for purely athletic
reasons; ...the exercise did make us feel wonderfully
healthy.”
⁷⁴
Christopher’s Swami disapproved of these
lessons.

“‘What is the matter with you, Mr. Isherwood?’ he
asked me reproachfully, ‘surely you do not want Eternal Youth?’

I was silent and hung my head—because, of course, I
did.”
⁷⁵

Like any eager beginner learning a new skill, Denny
in those spring days of 1941 kept careful notes of his first
meeting with their yoga instructor, who, as Isherwood described,
“though perhaps a lot older than she looked, was the embodiment of
suppleness and serpentine charm.”
⁷⁶
Their lessons were
each Thursday afternoon at 4:30 p.m., and Denny in his notebook
recorded just what they were to practice on their own:

stretches—prone 3 ea

alternate breathing sitting cross-legged, separate
nostrils. At end hold breath long as pos. let out slowly 12
rounds

Balance on Coccyx—shakes—(tuch up) 6 rounds

Spine-rock (ironing) (many as we like)

Abdominal on elbows with knee up—
20 times swallow
air
before

Same on hands and knees (cat hump)

Their instructor, they found, was “a perfect lady”
who “never lost her social poise. Having explained that the air
which is passed through the body in the air-swallowing exercise
should come out ‘quite odorless’ she merely smiled in playful
reproach when we discharged vile-smelling farts.”
⁷⁷

Another page of Denny’s handwritten notes sketched
out a regime of alternate breathing exercises, from the “Hollow
tank (3),” the “Jackknife—6 at least to 12 as many as we can,” to a
shoulder stand and “abdominals—swallow air + water—prone on elbows,
knees up (20) + cat hump—(20).” For the next lesson on Tuesday at
four o’clock they were to read the book “
Heaven Lie Within
Us
—Bernard.” Another session featured the “cork-screw rock,”
the “inch worm from above into snake + back,” and the “snake
posture,” all of which was to be practiced “1/2 hr morning and 1/2
hr evening.” Denny’s notes for another routine began with: “1. Run
on beach—swim if warm enough,” to “a chair + stool push-up” to
“Belly punch,” “the tuch” and “beauty roll.”

The lessons became more advanced. As Christopher
noted: “Our teacher began to urge us to learn the yoga technique of
washing out the intestines by muscular action alone; you squat in a
bowl full of water, suck the water in through the anus, swirl it
around inside you, expel it again, thus cleansing yourself of
poisons. Until this technique had been mastered you should use an
enema everyday. And meanwhile, the sphincter muscle of the anus
must be made more flexible, through dilation ... A set of rectal
dilators now appeared. The largest was a wicked-looking dildo,
quite beyond my capacity but dangerously tempting to my curiosity.
I told Denny that, at least as far as I was concerned, our lessons
would have to stop—lest sex should sneak in through the back
door.”
⁷⁸
That ended their formal sessions, but they
continued some of the exercises they had learned.

It was not surprising that, living with an author,
Denny was beguiled by the writer’s life and the potential monetary
rewards of telling stories; surely he had lived more than a
lifetime’s worth of fiction. It was during these idyllic days with
Christopher, between meditating and exercising, that he tried his
hand at writing a novel.

“Chap. I” he wrote in his confident, neat script on
a page of lined school notebook paper, and then began:

Two men [Denny crossed out those first two words and
gave the two men names, inserting Eduardo and Sefton]—watched the
New York plane take form in the early morning California haze and
settle in front of the Glendale Airport. They both had hangovers
and had eaten no breakfast but were drinking splits of sour
domestic champagne on the visitors Terrace to celebrate Prim’s
arrival.
⁷⁹

The two men had anticipated this moment and had
dressed the part for Prim’s benefit since she jokingly had accused
them of having “gone Hollywood.”

Denny’s amateur, first draft efforts become apparent
in the next few overwritten sentences; he is dealing with an
interesting insight but is having trouble weaving it into the
narrative. In describing how the men dressed for Prim, he
wrote:

This was more than affectation, however, and in fact
formed a fundamental aspect of their whole attitude toward America.
For, although they were citizens, they had spent most of their
lives abroad, and when the war reminded them forcibly of their
birthright, their resentment at having to take advantage of it knew
no bounds. They openly pretended to a tolerant but incorruptible
hatred of everything American to cover up the guilt of their
compromise with a profound aversion to their roots. California was
considered to contain a more concentrated essence of the “soul
destroying” qualities of America then [sic] anywhere else. Eduardo
and Sefton’s clothes were to indicate that, although immersed, they
were immune and could still laugh with the most contemptuous.

At the bottom right corner of this first page, and
each page thereafter of the manuscript, Denny carefully recorded
his word count.

Prim gets off the plane in an outfit that more than
matched the mens’: high-heeled sandals made of clear plastic, red
pajamas, and large sunglasses. Again, Denny analyzes the scene:
“This combination suggested to all three the ultimate esoteric
comment on Hollywood, and so exquisitely complimented the sartorial
efforts of the two men that for a while they floated giddily on a
wave of mirth which carried them high above their individual
considerations, isolating them from the rest of the world in an
impenetrable cell of sly, superior intimacy.”

Rather than telling a story, rather than letting his
characters’ personalities emerge through their actions and words
and having a narrative unfold through the characters, Denny is
filling in the missing pieces for the reader, and in doing so, is
bogging down the story. “Prim rather fancied herself in her
‘get-up,’ however, and no flattery was ever too gross to be
absorbed by a physical vanity which was the only portion of her ego
that Eduardo and Sefton provided no nourishment for whatsoever. It
was the only deficiency in their relationship and what disharmony
existed between them was chiefly caused by Prim’s extra-relational
satisfaction of this need and the two men’s resentment and ridicule
of it.”

The three climb into Eduardo’s new Cadillac
roadster. It becomes clear through their conversation that Eduardo
and Prim have been lovers, sharing “spells of almost religious
intimacy—that is, when they were not actually fighting,” though we
learn a little later that Prim is married to a RAF officer who has
been missing in action in Libya, though none of the three friends
“could care less if he was dead or alive.” As they drive along
Hollywood Boulevard, Eduardo concedes that the roadster isn’t paid
for but that he was given the tires by a man who has asked Eduardo
to cash some checks in the East, which Eduardo in turn has sent to
Prim to put through her bank account; for his efforts in laundering
this money, the man gave him a choice of tires and Eduardo buys the
roadster to go with the new tires. Eduardo knows little about the
man, other than “everyone in Hollywood knows him” and that the man
knew Eduardo’s mother. Eduardo, the reader learns, is her only
child, the son of her first husband who died on the Titanic.
“(Lusitania?)” Denny writes in a parenthetical, a decision he would
have to make later.

Eduardo’s mother “knew everyone in Europe, and that
included Kings, Dictators and Prime Ministers. Her very intimate
and indiscriminate relationships in this powered category was
inexplicable to most people except in highly romantic terms and she
was universally looked upon as a Dangerous Woman.” As the novel
opens, she is living in Portugal and will not return to the United
States until her protégé, a young Greek poet, receives a visa;
although many of her friends assume the two are having an affair,
the young poet is, as Denny describes him, “thoroughly homosexual.”
Although she has never been close to her son, she is relying now on
Eduardo to help her secure a visa for Niko, the poet.

Eduardo pulls the roadster into a parking lot and
the three get out of the car just as a chauffeur in the parking lot
opened the door of a gray Rolls Royce for a “small dark bald-headed
jew dressed entirely in white”; Prim recognizes him and calls out
“Pepe!” Pepe knows Eduardo also and asks Eduardo to join him in the
Rolls so that they can talk as he is driven downtown. Reluctantly,
Eduardo gets in Pepe’s car.

As Chapter 2 opens, Prim and Sefton follow their
porter past a swimming pool to a bungalow, where apparently the
three of them will be staying. They pour themselves drinks, and as
Sefton watches Prim, “a great rush, of tenderness for her filled
his heart, overwhelming him.” Denny continues: “‘Prim, darling, I
do adore you,” he said feelingly as he snuggled down next to her.
“This horrid place and all the boring [here Denny crossed out the
word “boring” and inserted “horrid”] people—I can’t tell you, it’s
too ghastly.” As Prim strokes Sefton’s hair, Sefton admits he is
concerned about Eduardo, that he is acting differently.

Here the manuscript text gets out-of-order, and on a
blank page Denny has written “notebooks like Chris,” perhaps a
recognition of the value to Isherwood of his diary of daily
jottings, observations, snatches of dialogue, character sketches
that could be worked into a novel or feed a writer’s
imagination.

The pages pick up with Sefton in a bar having dinner
with a character named Boney, who, Sefton learns, is in California
to arrest Pepe. Pepe, Boney explains to Sefton, is a spy involved
in a Nazi sabotage plot: to dump a load of high explosives at
Consolidated Aircraft sometime Tuesday night; Pepe would be there
himself to master mind the plot, and would be arrested. At the same
time, as Sefton is meeting with Boney, Eduardo and Prim are having
lunch on the terrace with an unnamed king.

And there, after the sixty-eighth handwritten
notebook page, ends the first and only draft of Denny’s novel.

Certainly Denny has introduced some characters and
some plot lines with the potential to build a novel. The
relationships between Eduardo, Sefton, and Prim are ambiguous,
which lends a tension to the text. We know that Prim is married to
a missing-in-action RAF officer and has also some romantic feelings
for Eduardo. In the car, Eduardo puts his arm around Prim,
“cuddling her in an extravagant display of affection which
characterized their behavior toward each other in between their
spells of almost religious intimacy.” Sefton, too, feels close to
Prim: “Oh, Prim, darling, I do adore you,” Sefton had said to Prim,
“feelingly as he snuggled down next to her.” It’s not yet clear
what feelings Eduardo and Sefton may have for each other; in the
car, “Sefton ruffles Eduardo’s hair and laughs happily like a
child,” and, learning for the first time what Eduardo has done to
get the new tires, Sefton “gave Eduardo’s head a little push.” Prim
tells Sefton he should go away on a little vacation, and Sefton
responds that “I don’t want to go anywhere unless Eddie comes with
me.” Then there is the mysterious, secret agent man, Pepe, who has
used Eduardo to launder money and may be involved in a Nazi
sabotage plot, and Eduardo’s mother, who sounds very much like a
female version of Denham Fouts, she who “knew everyone in Europe,
and that included Kings, Dictators and Prime Ministers,” someone
who was “universally looked upon as a Dangerous Woman.”

In these opening pages, Denny has set in motion a
cast of characters able to carry several lines of intrigue, all of
which could have been woven together into a novel: the relationship
between the three friends; what Eduardo was doing for Pepe and why;
whether Pepe was a Nazi sympathizer and would be exposed; whether
Eduardo’s mother would get the visa for her protégé; how these
different plot lines would intersect and resolve themselves.

All the seeds were there to germinate into a novel,
but as Robert Louis Stevenson knew, this was just about as far as
any amateur could get: “There must be something for hope to feed
upon,” the great novelist wrote; “The beginner must have a slant of
wind, a lucky vein must be running, he must be in one of those
hours when the words come and the phrases balance of
themselves—even to begin. And having begun, what a dread looking
forward is that until the book shall be accomplished!” As Stevenson
added: “Anybody can write a short story—a bad one, I mean—who has
industry and paper and time enough; but not everyone may hope to
write even a bad novel. It is the length that kills ... Human
nature has certain rights; instinct—the instinct of
self-preservation—forbids that any man (cheered and supported by
the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the
miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be
measured in weeks. There must be something for hope to feed
upon.”
⁸⁰
Like countless before him, Denny concluded
after drafting a chapter or two that the writer’s life was not all
it seemed, and certainly not as easy as it seemed, and, for him,
not worth the effort.

These days of bliss, of living intentionally, ended
on August 21, 1941, when Denny, who, like Paul, had filed as a
conscientious objector, was called to report to a forestry camp in
the mountains of San Dimas, about twenty miles outside of Los
Angeles. “We spent a melancholy two weeks buying his ugly
trousseau,” Christopher wrote in his diary, “the stiff blue denim
work clothes and the clumsy boots ... I drove him as far as
Glendora, where the camp director’s wife would come down to fetch
him. As we approached the scene of parting, Denny began to talk
nostalgically about Paris, and his former loves and
triumphs.”
⁸¹