Free Hindsight by Peter Dickinson Page A

stopped being angry. The semi-appalling seemed to have happened, but not, this time, to me. I waited.
    â€˜You tell me you don’t know much about Steen,’ said Dobbs at last.
    â€˜Not really.’
    â€˜You are aware that he was bisexual?’
    â€˜I’d gathered that much.’
    â€˜I have a theory on which I have put considerable weight in my book. It is well known that Steen had far more affairs with women than with men, but was at the same time more casual about his heterosexual relationships. My belief is that he had adapted for his own purposes the ethos of the warrior tribes among whom he spent his early manhood. Those years were crucial to him in a number of ways. Among these was the fact that the tribesmen were polygamists who regarded their wives as property whose primary function was to breed more warriors. The man’s most important social relationship tended to be with an apprentice warrior, and this expressed itself in a kind of ritualised homosexuality. You follow me?’
    â€˜Not a very fashionable attitude these days.’
    â€˜No. Following this line I argue that the really important people in Steen’s life were about five young men.’
    â€˜What about Molly Benison?’
    â€˜I wish I knew. That’s why I’m going through these bloody trunks. But let me finish. I have a reasonable amount of material on the first four of these men, but almost nothing on the fifth. Steen was sharing an apartment with him in Paris in 1921, but did not go about with him as he had with the others. His existence, or presence at a gathering, is occasionally reported. All I have is a phrase in a letter of Rose Macaulay’s that he had the head of a Roman emperor on the body of a ballet dancer, and a remark by Reginald Turner that he was a sinister figure who used to talk about being wanted by the police of three countries. His name was Richard Smith.’
    â€˜Good lord!’
    â€˜You see why I felt the necessity to ring you at this unpleasant hour?’
    â€˜Yes. Hold on a tick while I get my dressing-gown.’
    Dobbs had evidently been waiting impatiently enough to be speaking before I got the receiver to my ear.
    â€˜â€¦ what this means?’
    â€˜Smith knew Molly Benison?’
    â€˜What? Oh, I expect he did. They were in Paris …’
    â€˜I don’t think they gave much sign of it when they met.’
    â€˜You saw them together?’
    â€˜Two or three times, I suppose. At Molly’s Sunday teas. She once asked me …’
    â€˜I’d prefer to put her on one side for the moment, if you’ll forgive me. The question is, is it the same man?’
    â€˜Looks like it. Tell me, did Steen prefer his young men to be beautiful?’
    â€˜Within reason.’
    â€˜I’d be prepared to concede that Captain Smith was striking, but … Oh, I don’t know. Twenty years younger and without that incredible moustache …’
    â€˜You agree it is probably the same man?’
    â€˜As a working hypothesis.’
    â€˜All right. Let’s go on from there. I need to know everything I can about Smith, not simply to tidy things up. I believe him to have been much more than the last major figure in Steen’s emotional life, in fact to have had a crucial influence on him which may explain Steen’s dramatic shift of viewpoint to pessimism about the human condition in his last two books. These are in my opinion Steen’s crowning achievement, really important contributions to our understanding of ourselves and of the world. Their bleakness of outlook after a lifetime of preaching a gospel of hope has never been adequately accounted for. The change coincides with the end of his affair with Smith.’
    â€˜Yes, I see.’
    â€˜I suppose there’s a possibility the man’s still alive. He would have to be a little over eighty. Do you know how long he stayed at St Aidan’s?’
    â€˜I think he