by Gail Godwin
26. “Chink” was a young man whom Gail had just met. He sold bellows.
27. The psychiatrist was Dr. Ian Marshall, an Englishman who was taking Irene Slade’s class along with Gail.
28. The story was “The Illumined Moment, and Consequences,” about an English vicar who sees God in the mist, writes a book about it, and almost loses his soul on a book tour. It was the story that got Godwin into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1966, and was the first story of hers accepted for publication. It appeared in the North American Review under the title “An Intermediate Stop” and was republished in Dream Children under that title. Gail now feels that her original title was the true one.
Part four
ACCOMMODATING
LUCIFER
Beaufort Street, London
MARCH 20, 1965, TO FEBRUARY 12, 1966
Approaching her third year at the London office of the U.S. Travel Service, Gail sat at her familiar desk, poised behind a window that allowed her to view the city’s men-on-the-move, and them, her. Many of her female colleagues had made the transition to other stations in life: marriage, mostly; marriage and divorce, in one case.
Yet Gail continued to follow her course: holding on to a secure job while pursuing her calling as a writer. Security, she knew, could also be gained through a good husband. If a match was right, a married woman could attain more independence than an unmarried one. Among the men-on-the-move, there was a class that appeared reliably at home in their environment: policemen.
MARCH 20, 1965
As I sit in the fishbowl in front of a multicolored map (for which duty I get paid $50 every two weeks), another day begins. Like others, it is dominated and colored by men. Some pass the window and look in. Others come in and ask for travel advice.
There is one who does not pass by. This is the one I look for.
Every five or ten minutes, a policeman walks past—going from the police station to Regent Street, or back. Many walk in twos. The more interesting ones walk alone.
For the last month, I have begun policeman watching as a result of an imaginary affair with one of the policemen who walk alone. He comes in every other week to see if I have any interesting stamps for him. It gives me added interest in this tedious, well-paid job: watching the window for Officer Banks to pass.
I have to wear my glasses for this purpose because I am nearsighted. When I am wearing them, distant things become smaller and farther away, but much keener. Today, a rainy March day, I feel he is not going to pass. There is the sharp-featured one, the best-looking of all those on the W1 beat. Then, the older one with the ginger mustache. Then, two young peach-cheeked ones. But no Officer Banks.
Jack T. Malone, the hobo, comes in, gesturing as he approaches the desk, keeping one eye peeled for my boss, the police, and all those authorities he fears and hates.
Jack never asks for money. All he wants is a few words’ exchange. Jack has been coming in for two and a half years. He makes his living appearing on radio programs and telling what it’s like to be a hobo. He is only forty-two but has heavy lines on his face. He has slept in boxcars and outside in freezing weather for about twenty years. He is fighting the system. Whenever I suggest he get a job, he always has a good excuse. Nobody will hire him. They don’t like his face. He does have an up-to-no-good face. He asks me if I listened to him on the BBC Light Programme last Saturday. I did. Then Jack leaves, asking first, “Do you want anything?” In the past, he used to bring me coffee. Sometimes he would refuse to be paid for it. The day continues.
Fred Cedarberg, a tall, forty-year-old Canadian, bursts in. He has just sold his book, “Mushrooms and Men,” to Michael Joseph!1 He is highly nervous and keeps pacing the office, patting his short gray crew cut, saying, “Jesus Christ! Wait’ll all these bastards back home hear!” He said he knew it would be all right this morning because he woke in his fifth-floor hotel room to the tune of “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover,” played by the Happy Wanderers street musicians [a formally dressed group that featured an accordionist]. Standing in the open window in his shorts, he had thrown 5 shillings into the street below. Then Fred leaves. I go back to policeman watching.
Around the corner wheels Sandy, a Pan Am PRO [public relations officer] from down the street. He sports a bunch of colors, tan from his holiday in Rio, a madras tie, and varicolored shirt, suit, and coat. Something about his pace appeals to me as he hustles by. I greet him through the window with outstretched arms. I know he will come in now. He does, carrying a bundle of tear sheets about Miss Disneyland.2 He stands by the desk. I talk shop with him, but the electricity has already started. “Wait till I run an errand and I’ll take you for a drink.”
He comes back twenty minutes later and we wait for Doreen to come and relieve me in my fishbowl. She does not watch for policemen, but she is nice to everyone who comes in. I tell Sandy about Fred Cedarberg, knowing he, too, is a writer. Sandy looks agonized. Finally Doreen comes. Meanwhile, I have helped two customers and enjoyed Sandy’s obvious observing of me. He is sizing me up. We leave the office and he keeps looking around at me as we go up the street. I do not know whether to take his arm, so keep my hands in my pockets.
We pass the Burlington Arcade. I notice Sandy is a funny man, a boy with shoulder-length red hair. At the zebra crossing, I say, “You’ve still got your suntan, damn it, everyone looks so awful here—including me.”
“You look all right.” He takes my arm, and the zebra crossing at Bond Street is our turning point. As we walk down Bond Street toward Bruton Street, speaking of President Johnson’s speech about Negro rights, there is a strong undercurrent of arm pressing. He keeps looking, appreciating, pressing. At the bank, we meet a friend of his from his Reuters days in Fleet Street. We agree to lunch together at the Guinea pub.
When we left the Guinea, it was still raining. He held my arm, then changed his mind as we walked, and put his left arm around my shoulder. He’d drawn me to him, and it was hard to walk. I had put my arm around his waist. We’d walked back to my office under his umbrella.
THE GUINEA is an “in” pub in a mews behind Bruton Place. I have been taken here several times by people who were trying to impress me; also by Bob Briggs because it is near his bank. We come in out of the harsh rainy noon into the red-and-brown dimness. “I’ve got to go to the ladies’ for a minute,” I say.
“I’m not sure where it is,” Sandy says, looking around.
“It’s upstairs,” I say.
“Oh. I’m not boring you by bringing you to some place you’ve been before?”
“No. It’s just that it’s near the office.”
“It’s good to see you again.” He looks down at me. He’s always sleepy-looking. He also slurs his words slightly.
He is still looking, he is always looking. “I thought you and Bob …”
“I know you did. But we aren’t.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. I mean, I know Bob’s an unhappy man.”
“No, he’s not. He’s just up and down and shows it. Most people wear a mask …”
“And he does.”
“No, he doesn’t. He is just all his moods. He lets people see them all and doesn’t conceal the bad ones.”
“No, you’re wrong. He does wear a mask.”
“All right,” I say. “He does.”
He picks up my hand and turns it over and over, as if he is deciding something. Then he brings it to his mouth and kisses it. Then he looks at me.
“Nice eyes. Let’s see. What other assets do you have? Nice smile.” He looks at other things but does not enumerate them verbally. “I’d like to touch you.”
“Well, you can’t in the Guinea, old chap.”
“What?”
I put my mouth to his ear. His hair is longer than most American men allow it to grow. It smells of rain, feels lank and silky. “I said—you can’t in the Guinea, old chap.”
“I never thought I’d like a girl from North Carolina. You’re quite a … I was very impres
sed with your flat, your books.”
“I rent the flat. The furniture’s not mine. But the books are.”
“I know.”
It is time to go back.
“I don’t want to go back,” I say.
“I don’t either.”
We step out into the rain and begin our walk out of the mews. He takes my arm, then changes his mind and puts an arm around my shoulder. He is much taller. I look up at him. He is thirty-seven and looks as if he’s lived two years for every one. He has good skin, though; blue eyes. Deep lines and pouches under the eyes. Several gold inlays, but his teeth are good. His chin is not his strong point. I try to put my arm around his waist, but he is too tall and I keep reaching up, up. It is now impossible to walk with all those arms. I look up. He looks down. It starts to be a peck-type of kiss, but turns into the kind people usually do not exchange at lunch hour in Mayfair outside a pub. It is a warm exchange. I know from it that this time there will be no games.
“That was a surprise,” he said.
Meanwhile, Gail had another world in which she moved, that of her City Literary Institute class. It involved her with an interesting cast of characters, including Dr. Ian Marshall, a psychiatrist, who introduced Gail to Scientology and would soon propose marriage. At the first meeting, Ian had been with his friend Audrey, a Scientology auditor. Gail invited both of them to her Beaufort Street flat.
MARCH 21
“We’re interested in the workings of the human mind,” they had explained.
So am I.
WHY IS IT, if anyone asked me “What are you most interested in?” I would not answer the truth. What is the truth? What most interests me in the world is my reactions to other people and their reactions to me.
And what is it I should answer? Rather, what is it that would be acceptable to answer?
“Oh the situation in Vietnam … other people … just life going on around me.”
Lies, all lies.
I think most people are interested in themselves. Then, as you get into the more introspective classes of people, they begin to study reactions.
Tonight, for instance. I took on a handful when I asked those two around. Both of them are in my writing class. I don’t know exactly what their relationship is. I think there may be some alliance other than professional. They practice something called auditing, which is part of something called Scientology. They get together with another couple and audit one another when they are not auditing clients. He is a medical doctor but gave up his practice to explore this kind of work. He got out of Oxford in 1950. She also went to Oxford and then went into secretarial work. She met him at a party, and he introduced her to auditing. She is writing a novel, said it was terribly close to her. Miss Slade thought it rambled. So she gave up for a while.
There were a few awkward moments. I shouldn’t even be wondering whether they were bored.
We ended up talking about the barriers people put up. He said he wished there were more people who knew what he was talking about. It was a terribly lonely world. I said, “But you have a way about you that puts people on their guard.” She agreed. “Yes, Ian. You’re always focusing just beyond them.”
I had resorted to a low trick and had felt his pulse. He was mystified. I diagnosed a superiority complex. All this for the purpose of touching him.
I don’t know. It provided entertainment for the evening. But they were so cerebral. I kept thinking of the sleepy eyes of Sandy.
“I have nothing to hide,” said Ian. “I have nothing I wouldn’t want you to know.”
Oh brother, I thought, I have—all my subterfuges, ploys, and ruses. And it is so awful to be caught in one. Like the time I had caught Peter Perry. The only reason I caught him was that he was doing the exact thing I myself had done many times: feigning sympathy for someone in order to get physically closer to that person. But if I go on hiding behind barriers, then I can only associate with people who can’t possibly see beyond those barriers. But how does one rid oneself of subterfuges?
ANDY CALLED. I got through my first big no to him. But I think it was mutual. He is just proper enough to think he should take an ex-fiancée out every now and again.
Dr. Ian Marshall’s method: He says he listens to what people say. But does not try to draw conclusions, to connect or intuit. He simply observes and remarks to himself, “X paused before mentioning his father. Is something not quite defined, then, toward his father? Or, X got visibly angry when he mentioned his job. Why?” These subjects become work points. He observed the accompanying symptoms as the man told his story. He watched how certain subjects affected the man.
MY LACK OF PERCEPTION stems from being overintuitive. I am ahead of every person’s story, usually fictionalizing. Perhaps this can be used in writing. In personal relationships, it is a destroying thing, however. I am always deciding what X “really meant” when he acted such-and-such a way to me. If only I could stop this cerebration and substitute observation. For instance, Tommy G.’s blush as he spoke to his secretary on the phone, all done as a preliminary to asking me out. But there you go, intuiting again, you say. How did you know that was why he was blushing?
Blushes. Nervous habits. Touching one’s face. Picking nonexistent lint off one’s clothes. Looking at the ceiling, down at the floor, away from the eyes of another person. Licking one’s lips. A stiffening about the lips as one talks. (Doreen, when she is nervous, gets a certain “rapt look” on her face. This look wouldn’t apply to anyone else. But it lets me know when Doreen is nervous.)
Some people talk more when they are nervous. Some people pretend to listen. Or keep asking others questions so that nobody will question them. Take people in my immediate circle. Some people who control facial expressions, hands, etc., are still caught by the blush: Dr. Marshall, Officer Banks! Mr. Miller becomes jovial and fast-talking. Pauline smiles. Elizabeth gets pink splotches on her neck. I touch my face, look at the floor or away, have a bad time with my mouth. Peter Perry puts on a display of overconfidence. Shelley Burman used to start pointing up other peoples’ weaknesses: “Your feet are so ugly.” Andy gets tongue-tied. Many people act overly casual: “Not that it matters anyway …” But it does.
MARCH 22
I hope I can remember how one gradually becomes a writer. Gradually the blur that has eluded you comes into focus. All those wishful afternoons when you sat on the grass looking at Tom Wolfe’s mountains, wanting to write like he did, right off the bat. You had ideas. The story of Paul, slightly fictionalized; the story of your affair with A. Oh, you would change names, but you had not yet learned to concede reality to art. So your faithful mimickings of reality seemed more unreal than ever when you set them down on paper. And another thing you noticed: There were parts of stories that bored you to write them. (“I’ll just make myself finish this description.”) It didn’t occur to you that if it bored you, how much more it would bore the uninvolved reader.
WHAT ARE THE most valuable lessons so far?
There is a secret to successful emotional scenes. Chekhov simply reports what he sees, hears; and he lets the reader supply the emotion.
You must try and cut out those details that may mean a lot to you personally, but only tend to separate the reader from you.
For now: Concentrate on taking a small subject (a relationship, an incident) and expanding it until you feel you’ve captured it right down to its tiniest detail, that you’ve seen into it as completely as possible.
HOW TO RESURRECT “Mourning,” for instance: Anna’s father commits suicide. She has never lived with him. She does not cry, but wants to feel something. (She tells her logic teacher, “Yes, he killed himself.”)
This much should be compressed.
She goes to see a priest, Father Flynn. Then she finds Jack Krazowski in the delicatessen. She “uses” her father’s death to elicit sympathy, and finally cries because of the picture Jack has presented of his father.
When Anna’s father committed suicide during her last semester
at State University, she felt no pain. Nothing at all. She went over all the things about him that might make her cry, but none of them did. She had never lived with him (her parents were divorced), but he had signed the checks that had provided her with nineteen years’ worth of good food, clothing, and education.3
He had visited her at school the semester before (his visits were rare) on his way back from the sanitarium where he had been taking the cure. A rather vague person, tending toward sarcasm, he had taken an empty match-cover from his pocket. “I’ve jotted it down on this,” he told her. “What the doctor said I was.” Lip curling scornfully, a flat expression in his eyes, he read from the match-cover.
“Psychoneurotic with compulsion to drink.”
Anna laughed, which pleased him. He and Anna had been sitting in a campus coffee bar. Then they left the coffee shop, walked back to her dorm, and he pressed a $20 bill into her palm and departed. She felt more at ease as soon as he was gone. That was the last time she ever saw him.
Now, six weeks had passed since the funeral. It was a weekend. Anna’s roommate had gone home and she had no date for Saturday night. Aimlessly, she drove, shuddering with doubts about her father’s soul.4 She had inherited his two-year-old Cadillac, but the novelty of driving it around campus, looking appropriately sad, had worn off. Besides, the thing ate up gasoline and drank oil. It was like a dangerous animal that had to be fed.
It was the weekend.
JUST TRY TO EXCITE emotion without becoming sad yourself. Jack Krazowski is the only human, feeling element in the story and thus is able to make Anna feel, too.
“There, there, kitten,” said Jack, the last man on earth, passing her his handkerchief and looking approvingly at the real tears. “You’re not such a goddam beatnik, after all.”
