Our Evenings

While the first two thirds of the novel chronicle Dave’s youth and early adulthood in detail, these later chapters cover a period of over 40 years in a much shorter space. We get a brief sketch of his consistently if modestly successful career; he is well-known enough to have written a professional memoir about his experiences, Acting as a Career; is currently shooting a film titled Wingate’s War about Burma back in the 1940s (although Dave still has not actually been to Burma since the film is being shot in the Philippines); and is about to participate in a documentary about East Asian actors by Tony Bales, a Bampton alumnus. Juxtaposed with Dave’s career is that of Hector. Hector has become a famous Hollywood movie star, which is fitting considering his ambitious approach to acting and to the dramatically changing opportunities for Black actors in popular culture.

Despite the fact that Hector has optimism for the 1965 Race Relations Act—the first legislation in Britain that made racial discrimination illegal, which reflected increasing immigration to Britain from former colonial countries (See: Background)—the transformation of Britain into a multicultural society is not smooth. The Racism and Prejudice that Dave has faced all his life continue apace, as Hollinghurst’s signature small moments document incidents of hostility and bigotry. A woman scowls at Dave and Hector as they walk arm-in-arm in the street. On the London Underground, when Hector declines to give up his seat for a white woman, a white man nearby looks at him scornfully. They are refused a room at the bed and breakfast, and it is unclear whether anti-gay bias or racism is primarily responsible. Dave’s attempts to understand his younger boyfriend’s experience with race sometimes fail as well. After the distressing incident in which Hector is mistaken for a servant, Dave tries to empathize that he faces discrimination too, but Hector tersely responds, “David, you’re not even black” (355); Hector feels more marginalized and does not appreciate Dave’s equivalence.

As British politics, particularly the divisiveness of Brexit (See: Background), become more prominent in the novel, Giles features heavily as the representative of nativist right-wing beliefs. Dave’s childhood adversary, whose bullying seemed personal, now has a national platform from which to impose his views. Giles’s public ascent to power increases his sense of his own importance. First, he becomes a member of Parliament, where he rises to shadow business secretary, which means that he is a member of the cabinet of the party not currently in power (so, as a Conservative, Giles is the “shadow” of the actual Labour government business secretary). Dave smirks when he sees Giles described as “a prominent thinker on the right of the party,” which he finds “both funny and disturbing” since he believes that Giles has few deep thoughts about anything (398).

Later, as minister for the arts, Giles makes a name for himself as a “Eurosceptic” (398), part of a growing movement in Britain that opposes Britain’s membership of the EU. Giles’s early departure from the Aldeburgh Festival, ruining the concert for everyone else, is an effective piece of dark comedy, symbolizing Giles’s wildly inappropriate status as minister for the arts, a position for which he has neither qualifications nor aptitude. Dave sees Giles as “an adolescent sadist, a spoilt, hand-biting brat, who could never, surely, be taken seriously by anyone” (404). The “hand-biting” comment refers to the fact that Giles has fallen out with his father, Mark Hadlow—another contrast with Dave, who has a loving, kind relationship with his mother and Esme. The irony is that many people do take Giles seriously, as “a man who could be looked to to change things” (404). Dave is also more direct about Giles’s racism: In response to Richard’s inquiry about what Giles was like at school, Dave replies, “He was an absolute shit” (403), who, in addition to bullying him, used to call him a “brown-faced bastard” (404).

At the age of 60, after decades of having The Ease of Falling in Love result in similarly quick falling out of love, Dave finally forms a lasting relationship. He and Richard become a contented couple. Their ability to be supportive partners for one another, rather than simply two men with sexual chemistry and some emotional attachment, stems from external and internal transformations. Because of how much society has changed in its acceptance of gay couples, Richard and Dave can think of each other as husbands and envision a stable future. At the same time, Dave’s experiences with the destructive results of professional jealousy and infidelity in romantic relationships now make him a more committed partner for Richard.

In Dave’s mid-sixties comes a deeper awareness of the passing of time and the presence of death. The subject is first presented in a series of incidents that hint at the end of life. In Chapter 28, Dave meets the actors Hettie Barnes and Lionel Wilshire, who are in their eighties. Later, at the Aldeburgh Festival, he recites an elegy by Victorian poet Matthew Arnold that Arnold wrote for his friend who died. This poem is featured in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s melancholic pastoral piece An Oxford Elegy, which was written between 1947 and 1949, just after the end of WWII. The next day, Dave and Richard walk around a country churchyard that has one new grave, and they talk jokingly, but with a serious undercurrent, of their own passing. Then, the novel moves from death imagery to actual deaths, as both Esme and Dave’s mother, Avril, die.