Report on Homosexuality ran the headline. Recommendations Aimed at the Protection of the Citizen.

I could hardly breathe. I read on.

The report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, published yesterday, considers the function of the criminal law in this field to be to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive and injurious, and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others …

My fingers were sweating into the paper, making damp patches.

Certain forms of sexual behaviour are regarded by many as sinful, morally wrong, or objectionable for reasons of conscience, or of religion or cultural tradition; and such actions may be reprobated on these grounds …

My breathing sounded too loud, as if I might wake up the entire billet. I broke off, came up for air … Nothing, just the sound of snoring, the odd creaking mattress spring. I went back for more.

The committee’s first recommendation in the matter of homosexual offences is that homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private be no longer a criminal offence.

My hands were shaking so much I could barely make out the words. I switched off my torch and closed my eyes, screwing the paper up into a tiny pill. I will dispose of that tomorrow, somewhere out on the parade ground.

03

Hadley lives in a huge flat in Shoreditch which apparently he has owned ‘forever’ i.e. long before property prices in the area were so high that you have to be a millionaire to buy something the size of my bedroom. It’s basically one big space on the first floor of what used to be a sewing machine factory, and he’s got one of the old machines displayed on top of a plinth right in the middle of the room, under a spotlight, like a museum piece. The rest of the space is divided up by cast-iron pillars and screens that create, according to Jonathan, a ‘flexible live-work space’. There is a futon in one corner, with a white folding screen in front of it, and a lot of nightlights in glass holders on a shelf that runs the entire length of one of the walls, and apart from that very little. It’s barer than my flat before any of the furniture was delivered. There’s a huge trestle table at the far end, covered in bottles and glasses and white linen. The bathroom is concealed behind an invisible white door in a white wall. I can’t see any sign of a kitchen and there is no food.

The place is already packed when we arrive even though it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon, but Jonathan says that they will have been going since they got back from the clubs at eleven o’clock this morning, and that wasn’t really ‘this morning’ or even ‘Very late last night’ but in fact ‘even later the previous evening’. Hadley and the rest of the club crowd operate in their own unique time zone, in which what the rest of us think of as ‘Sunday afternoon’ is actually still ‘Friday night’ as far as they’re concerned. Everyone is smoking. There are signs on the wall saying YOU CAN SMOKE HERE.