The Making of a Writer, Volume 2

by Gail Godwin

  AUGUST 31 • Portrait of 5:30 on a Saturday afternoon

  I have finished ironing and I’ve drunk my badly made tea (too strong). Andrew and Anne Rose have returned from the Kenya Coffee shop, where they go every Saturday afternoon, he to show her off and she because he says they’re going. I go up the carpeted steps to where Mrs. West sits in the little kitchen, beginning to piece together her creative meal, which Andrew will scorn. Anne Rose will be delicately noncommittal and Gian Carlo will fall in with the majority because he is a foreigner.

  I stand in the kitchen talking to Mrs. West for a time. I say: “This is your best time, isn’t it? When you’re sitting there preparing the evening meal.” I say this for an attempt at “reading” her, trying to bridge the gap, as usual. “Well,” she laughs, “if you really want to know, I’d rather be off on that island with Princess Margaret. With the Greek millionaire.”

  “Who, Onassis?”

  “No, the other one. The one who was married to Bettina, the beautiful one, you know?”42

  “Oh, yes.” I don’t. I go to the sink, balancing my ironed clothes on one arm, the hanger digging into my arm, and wash out my teacup to get rid of one encumbrance. I had planned to drink the second cup leisurely in my room, but now I have gulped it all down nervously while talking to Mrs. West.

  “No, Gail, there are a lot of things I’d rather be doing; but I think the thing is, if you know you have to do something, then try to enjoy it.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I say. “You know, I think it takes a real talent to overcome everydayness. Not many people can do this. Oh, a lot can handle their big moments, but when it comes to getting the best of the everydayness, they’re real flops.” I know I am on the right track to her now. I make a move to leave the kitchen while I’m ahead. But these leavings are always awkward. Sometimes she says something as I reach the door and then I must turn back and prolong the conversation.

  “You know, Gail, I’m reading The Ambassadors and …”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I think it’s … well … you’ve read it, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” The first twenty pages.

  “Well, I think it’s fantastic.” Here she screws up her face in that special way of hers.

  “Yes.”

  “I really shouldn’t say this because I haven’t gotten into it yet, but his choice of words …”

  “Yes …”

  “And you know, Gail, I get the funniest feeling … No I won’t say it. I’ll finish it first.”

  “No, no. Say it now and then we’ll compare it later.”

  “Well I feel that the whole thing is … I can’t express myself very well … a sort of satire. No, that’s not the right word.”

  “Irony?”

  “Yes! Well no, not exactly. It’s as though all the characters are engaged in a high form of comedy. Like he’s poking fun at them.”

  “And like they’re poking fun at themselves.”

  “Yes!”

  “I think this is why he’s great,” I say. Oh, I’m onto it now. “He offers something for people on all different levels. The people who don’t see the irony can be content with modeling their lives on the civilized, striving for the morality of his characters. Whereas people like you can go one step further and see the comedy.” (Always before, I had been one of those people who believed in James as a purveyor of incommunicable moral solitude.)

  “I think that you can say this of real people, too,” I continue. “Civilized, aware, intellectually honest people are forever playing a game. Watching themselves trying for various effects, eliciting various responses in other people.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right.” She’s peeling a carrot.

  “The thing is, to recognize that you are playing a game. When you lose sight of this, it’s dangerous.”

  “Yes.”

  “But weren’t they remarkable brothers. Look at William, what he did. And the father was a scholar—”

  “I know. What a family.”

  At this point Mr. West in his checkered sport coat enters the kitchen. “What family? Yours?”

  “No,” I say. “The James brothers.”

  “Oh! Jesse James.”

  “No, silly!”

  I laugh. Mrs. West laughs from the mouth, not from the stomach. A half laugh.

  “William and Henry.” I say.

  He pats me. “Oh, really?” As if to say, I knew, but I’m pretending I didn’t know. Mrs. West and I both know that he meant Jesse.

  “Ah, spoken like a true American,” I say, cheerfully leaving the kitchen. All the way out this time.

  Mrs. West from her table gives a throat laugh. A little more natural than the mouth laugh.

  I start upstairs with my clothes.

  “Gail and I were talking about The Ambassadors, the book I’m reading,” I hear her begin.

  “Say, Gail,” Mr. West calls after me. “You know whose picture is going to be on the new ten-thousand-dollar bill?”

  “No, whose?” I start back to the kitchen.

  “Mine.” He laughs, standing there in the door. Mrs. West in the background laughs. What kind of laugh was it this time?

  I laugh, so he can see me, and then flee, laughing again after I am out of their sight so they can hear me and think I think it is still funny.

  They hear and begin laughing together. This time it is the combined laughter of the two feeling appreciated.

  SEPTEMBER 1

  I do not understand Doreen. She knew the thing started at 2:30, so she shows up when the party for Chief Spotted Back is almost over. “I got tied up,” she says sweetly. Gordon gets back tonight late and if all goes right he should show up at Grosvenor House tomorrow evening.

  Describe moments like now when I am in a state of suspension. I pick up half a dozen books. A spy story in the O. Henry Award volume: no. Doris Lessing’s Daily Telegraph story on her father: no. Kierkegaard: no. I think: I want some maxims. I want someone to tell me how to live. Then a swatch of music, a lighted window—a square of light across the way; the thought of going home. October air and leaves and the inevitable afternoon boredom I will feel. I need that change. And it’s a good life. Living in London and going home once a year.

  SEPTEMBER 3

  It’s 8:30 p.m. and the sky is dark. Color: indigo? Cobalt? No, a pearly luster. I am reminded of Gaert43 and the long nights in Copenhagen when we played Carnaval44 and shared wishes. “What would you wish for, Gaert?” “I think … I think I would wish for the secret of the blue color.” So much comes to me through the crack under the door. Quick! Catch it before it is gone. Isaac Stern and Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D45—Shelley Burman46 trying to force-feed me a three-month survey course in “Culture.”

  Gordon showed up on time at Grosvenor House, wearing a kilt and appearing a little nervous. We did not come together like a clash of symbols, rather we “meshed,” simply took up where we left off. As if I had just come back from a trip to the ladies’ room. I look back upon last night today and have a distinct feeling of being “let down.” Why? Simply because I expect to walk all my life to the accompaniment of stirring background music? He was as easy as one could want. He mixed with the Nebraskans (a constant rose blush upon his face) and he spoke softly and meaningfully to everyone. I knew I could leave him and not worry about him getting self-conscious or “feeling stranded.” He never “gets bored”—I think this is one of his greatest merits—he finds something of interest in every human situation, even when Maggie Bruce-Adams got on his nerves when we went to the Captain’s Cabin (a restaurant) afterward. Henry and Bob Briggs are “city dwellers” to him. He behaved admirably, just almost losing his temper when we found the police had towed his van away for being an obstruction. I made a big thing of being calm myself. “I’m glad I’m with you,” says he, squeezing my shoulder as we go by Trafalgar Square on a no. 53 bus to pick up our confiscated vehicle.

  SEPTEMBER 4

  One month from today—October a
nd homecoming. Today I caught several faint footprints in the sand, as Father Webbe47 would say. I am sitting in the fishbowl looking out at weary rain-conditioned faces moving up and down Vigo and around the corner to Sackville Street. The newspaper seller stands against our plate glass window to get out of the rain. He calls, “Evening Standard,” sounding like a primeval beast in pain. I am sinking into everydayness.48 Then I see the vision, only for a minute. I think (something along these lines) I am seeking a way to celebrate the life I have been given. Therefore the outside forces (meaning in this case the surface qualities one judges in other people, meaning the synthetic “second life” we have created ourselves—a life of shorthand pads and PROs49 and consumer ratings—meaning all this) do not really matter. The difficult thing is staying out of the involvement with these things.

  The other thing is this: As I see this pattern more clearly, I will be able to write about it. It will seek its proper subjects. The theme will be there. “Wesley Phipps,” for instance. I had a nostalgic feeling (quite different from a conviction). I put it down. Then I tried to go back and work it into something “meaningful.” But that was not the right way round. I must distinguish between evocation and edification.

  SEPTEMBER 7

  Gothic-type Sunday morning. The damp gray sky comes into my open window. With cold, clammy fingers, I write about a short experience, listening to “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” on the Light Programme.

  I was lying here about six last evening trying to talk myself out of going to the party. I wanted to go because of the slim chance that a new one would suddenly catch my eye from across the room. But I had about decided to stay home. It was safer—more uncomplicated. Then Andrew burst into the room after his return from the Kenya Coffee shop. “Gail, I’ve got you a man. I’m telling you, he’s got everything. Now shut up, don’t ask me anything.” I gradually wheedled out of him that his name was Barry. He was a stockbroker with pretty teeth. He drove an Alfa Romeo. He wouldn’t give Gordon the time of day on the street. All this sounded pretty phony to me. Plus the fact that he had just been jilted by a model at Yves St. Laurent.

  But let’s do this in scenes. He came to the house, and when I walked into the room, I liked him on sight. He was smiling. Andrew was right about the teeth. There was also a certain nobility. I also knew at once he was Jewish. We immediately began talking of Barry Goldwater. I had said: “At present, all the southerners are for another Barry.” He leaned forward and said: “What’s that? Did you say ‘I love you, Barry’?”

  By the time we left for the party, we were friends. He told Andrew in an aside, “She’s a very sweet girl”—what else could I be after an Yves St. Laurent model?—“but I think she looks sad.”

  I remember one scene in particular. We were driving around Bayswater, looking for Pembroke Villas. We were rumbling (in the way Alfa Romeos rumble) up a hill lighted by orange streetlamps. There was a pub on the corner with red and blue lights above the Watneys sign. The radio was playing a catchy tune. He was at the wheel, now with his horn-rimmed glasses on, confident and lighthearted. I began thinking once again of those memorable words of Camus: “With so much sunshine in my life, how could I have bet on nonsense?” I was thinking: Extraordinary things do go on happening to me. How did I think I would stay in a rut? Here is a man, quite presentable in his envelope, with a worldly style and nobody’s fool—yet no phony. He exists positively enough to blot out Gordon for the moment, which is all I can ask. There is none of this subterfuge. We have plenty on which to dwell. He knows he is attractive to women and therefore can bet on romance. Romantic things happen to romantic people.

  The party was packed with all the old hot-air kids. Sheila grows more hysterical each time I see her.50 Barry and I left and came back to my place. I made coffee for him and we had a conversation bordering on the aggressive. Every time we tried to play false, wham—a barrier went up and we recognized it and stopped. He told me about the model, Christina (“I walked the streets in Paris for two days in the rain”), enjoying the pathos. And then about romance: “I’d rather be hurt in romance than have no romance at all. Then I can always say: ‘I’m seven feet tall and no coward in love.’ ” And about women: “I think they all go through a wanton period when they sleep with everybody, trying to find something or forget someone or make up for something. Then they realize it’s not doing them any good and they clamp down.”

  —

  BARRY GOLDWATER (as I call him) left, kissing me in a brotherly way on the mouth and saying: “We’ll have dinner together next week.” It is nice to have a Jewish man again.

  7:00 p.m.

  “When the golden sun sinks in the hills …” (radio).51 Cooler now when I sit in the window. Summer is truly over. Andrew and Anne Rose and I went to see Smiles of a Summer Night—truly engrossing. The characters are involved in a love dilemma, everyone in love with everybody else. But what is different is the manner in which Bergman chooses his scene. This time: eighteenth-century Sweden. Summer night when the sun never sets. Everyone wins in love—according to their own manner of winning. The cunning lover cannot expect to win the prize that an innocent would win.

  The sun. Not much. But orange and just barely warm on my face. Something super-real about now. The tang in the air. The plane overhead. Andrew hates the sound of planes droning, refrigerators humming in empty houses, and tractors in fields: “They remind me of my own loneliness too much.”

  I make a vow: I will not accept less than life. I will seek the treasure of the serendipiter.52 I will not rest until I find ultrasupersonic understanding with someone—

  SEPTEMBER 9 • 10:40 p.m.

  I heard “Pomp and Circumstance,” cried my eyes out about my father, wrote some on the sly, and am now back knowing what I must do.

  SEPTEMBER 11

  In twenty-three days, I go home. I’m going to buy clothes for this winter, see a Broadway play, walk all over New York with John Bowers,53 and talk to everybody.

  On Saturday, a work morning. Go somewhere, anywhere, in afternoon. To the Ionesco play?54

  SEPTEMBER 13 • Friday

  The interminable week is over. Funny dreams lately.

  Wednesday night’s was as follows:

  It is fall. There is a lot of color and the air has a dreamlike, crisp security. The time is a holiday—possibly Labor Day Weekend. The chipmunk55 is giving a weekend party at his house. I am supposed to sleep there Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights, work Tuesday, and then return to Blowing Rock for Tuesday night’s festivities (a feeling of liquid warmth pervades the dream). I work a hundred miles away from the Rock—only it’s London. I am still with USTS. Also, I am expecting Gordon back this same holiday and I am glad I will have an excuse not to see him because he has been away camping with another girl. A letter comes from him. I am surprised and pleased, but when I open it, I find the writing almost indecipherable. Yet I think: Good. I’ll take a long time reading it because I’ll have to go slowly. The script is tight and small. He starts off with phrases from songs. And I think: He’s trying to get in the habit of writing by saying anything that comes into his head. But that is all right, too. There are many, many arrangements to make in this scene but I don’t seem to be worried about them as I had been in past dreams. My entire family is there and I am thinking: Strange, I do not resent them. I am changed and for the better. Mr. Cole comes riding by in a shiny new truck with the children in it. They are laughing. I think: Funny, I do not mind the truck now either.

  This next bit is confused. There is some little person there that I love. It has certain aspects of Franchelle and certain of Rebel56 and certain animal characteristics. It is very small. The only thing is, it has testicles. They are warm and (I think) furry. I think: I must pick it up with one hand while it is still small enough. It is still growing, apparently. I begin to lift, not thinking I’m going to accomplish it. But I do. Then someone or something comes into the picture and indicates that he would not mind holding this little person for a while. I let
him. He cuddles it and begins licking it as a cat would.57 I think: It is good. Because they both have testicles. The testicles are touching. There is also something about my taking a shower.

  The element of security pervades the entire dream. I am loved and I love; I am invited to parties. I am able to accept responsibilities. But the little creature must indicate some aspect of myself I cannot completely get hold of. Once before I dreamed of a furry, lovable creature (more like a dog). I was leading it by a rope. Then it began to get bigger. I was afraid and panicked. I sicced my dog on it. My dog tore it to pieces. The little creature looked up at me as it was torn to bits, not understanding. In this new dream I wasn’t afraid. Does that mean whatever this furry creature represents is becoming less of a threat?

  GOT OUT MY old writing tonight. I am good. I have to persist.

  SEPTEMBER 17

  Today I had my own little epiphany. I had been sitting at one of the big tables in the Embassy library rereading an article by Marya Mannes entitled “Pardon Me if My Brain Shows.” (This morning I received a letter from Stella58 saying she was marrying Don Trapp, the one she really wanted. There was a paragraph in there to me about being myself, not trying to change myself to be popular for the world.) After I finished the article, I walked out into the smoky autumn sunshine, consciously praying as I walked down the steps of the Embassy. I said: “Please. Let me be honest.” Sometime during the walk back to the office, I saw it all just for a minute, and of course it flashed past—like the flock of pigeons over Grosvenor Square—at the moment that I gained my resolve. It left an imprint this time, as it hadn’t many times before. There had been (before) just a disquiet, knowing that there had been something better, but I hadn’t remembered what it was.