by David Lodge
Jeremy pulled a face. “The last one they gave me had such powerful BO, I could hardly bear to go near her…. But seriously, darling, I’ll keep my eyes open for an opportunity. Something you could do at home.”
“You mean, like addressing envelopes?”
“Yes, sewing mailbags, threading beads, that son of thing.”
What Jeremy came up with, through a friend of a friend, the editor of a woman’s magazine met at a party and invited down to the oast-house for a weekend, was Ann Field. The regular contributor, who had done the column for years, was retiring, and they wanted to experiment with a new, more up-to-date approach. Polly wrote some dummy replies to sample letters and was given a three month’s trial. She had to travel up to Town once a week, but otherwise worked at home with the help of a dictaphone and a secretary who came out from Canterbury two days a week. The change of tone in Ann Field’s column under Polly’s tenure provoked an enormous postbag of comment, but when they totted up the pros and cons in the office it came out at 72% in Polly’s favour, so she kept the job. She found it fascinating, demanding (she replied to all the letters, not just the ones that were published) and rewarding.
“I think of it as a kind of social work,” she would say to her friends. “I know I’m not trained or anything, but most of the women who write know what they want to do anyway. You just have to reassure them. Of course, sometimes they’re in absolutely tragic situations, and then there’s not much one can do except sympathize and refer them to the social services.”
Sometimes she read letters aloud to Jeremy, especially poignant ones from wives with unfaithful husbands, hoping in this way to keep his conscience well-tuned. Some of the most harrowing letters were from Catholic women (and here she had to tread carefully, because the magazine would not allow her to disturb readers’ religious beliefs, even in private correspondence) whose problems invariably derived from the lack of effective birth control: frigidity caused by fear of pregnancy, hideous gynaecological complications caused by excessive childbearing, and desertion by husbands unable to tolerate the consequences of their own feckless fucking, the teeming babies and the haggard spouse. “My God, the Church has an awful lot to answer for,” she would mutter to herself, trying to find some comforting word for these pathetic women that was not false or hypocritical. Yet, deep down, Polly still believed in God, and, willy nilly, He was the Catholic God.
She and Jeremy had agreed that the children should make their own decision about religion when they were old enough to decide for themselves. But when Jason was ill one night, with an alarmingly high temperature, and Jeremy was away from home (he was in the States making a programme about the latest theory of how President Kennedy was assassinated) she was deeply troubled by the knowledge that the child hadn’t been baptized and therefore, according to the Catechism, if he should die wouldn’t go to heaven, but to Limbo. She tried to tell herself that it was all nonsense, that no God worth believing in was going to penalize the souls of innocent children, but it was no use, she couldn’t sleep for worrying about it; and in the middle of the night she got up and baptized her son while he was asleep, pouring a trickle of tepid water from a plastic beaker on to his flushed forehead and whispering, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” as every Catholic was allowed to do in an emergency. Then, thinking that she might as well go the whole hog, Polly went along to Abigail’s room and did her too. (She never told Jeremy or the children about what she had done, and when many years later Jason was converted to Catholicism while a student at Oxford, he was baptized all over again without knowing.)
“Here’s a juicy one,” Polly said to Jeremy one evening as they sat in the living-room after dinner around the open (and essentially decorative) fire, Jeremy going through the weeklies and Polly sifting her Ann Field mail. “I wonder if I dare print it. Listen, darling:
“Dear Ann Field,
I am a Catholic, married to a non-Catholic. Throughout our marriage my husband has used condoms as a method of family planning. Although this is against Catholic teaching, various priests have told me that it is alright for me to submit to it under protest. But now my husband wants me to go on the pill because, he says, condoms are primitive and spoil the act for him. Also, I have never had a proper vaginal orgasm and my husband says that it is because of the condoms too. He attaches great importance to my having a vaginal orgasm. Sometimes I think it means more to him than his own orgasms –”
Jeremy guffawed.
“Quite droll, isn’t she?” said Polly, turning to the second page.
“I have asked two priests about taking the pill. The first one said I mustn’t and recommended the safe method. But my periods are very irregular, and I have been advised not to conceive again (I have had one baby and several miscarriages). The other priest said it would be all right to take the pill for the sake of a higher good (that is, to preserve the marriage). Before I make up my mind, I would like to know if what my husband says is true, namely –”
“It’s frightfully long,” said Polly, turning over another page. Then, as her eye fell on the signature at the end of the letter, she let her hands fall limply into her lap. “My God,” she said, “it’s Violet.”
“Violet?”
“Violet Casey. Meadowes, she is now. A girl I knew at College. She married her tutor in Classics. They seem to have moved up north.”
“She sounds a rather screwed-up sort of person.”
“She was.”
“What are you going to do with the letter?”
“Answer it, of course.”
“In your own name?”
“Certainly not. She wrote to Ann Field. Ann Field will reply.”
“You know, you’re getting a bit schizoid about this Ann Field business. Like Jekyll and Hyde.”
“Which is which?” Without waiting for an answer, Polly went into her study and dictated a letter to Violet. Afterwards she reversed the tape and played it back:
“Dear Violet comma thank you for your letter full stop as to your main question comma two American researchers in this field have recently established by laboratory experiment that there is no such thing as a vaginal orgasm comma i c underline one that is independent of clitoral stimulation parenthesis Masters and Johnson comma Human Sexual Response underline Boston 1966 close parenthesis full stop however I am sure you and your husband would enjoy more relaxed and satisfying lovemaking if you used the pill full stop your second priest sounds like a sensible man stop yours sincerely Ann Field”
Polly pressed another button on her tape recorder and added a postscript:
“Why not experiment with different positions question mark for instance comma sitting astride your husband comma or kneeling so that he enters from behind question mark”
Polly believed fervently in every woman’s right to frequent orgasms, and tried out conscientiously most of the things she read about in the sex manuals and magazines that Jeremy brought back with him from his travels. Jeremy, who had been rather repressed in youth, was making up for lost time. The rediscovery of sex, he was fond of saying, was what the sixties were all about. Every now and then, they sent the children out with the au pair, drew the curtains, and chased each other naked around the house, having it off in various unorthodox places, on the stairs, or under the dining-room table, even in the kitchen, where Polly would spread jam or chocolate syrup on her nipples and Jeremy would lick them clean. Their private code-word for sex was “research”.
When Robin returned from America, not long after Violet’s appearance at Angela and Dennis’s wedding, they got together again; for Robin found that although Violet was pretty impossible to live with, he missed her when she wasn’t there. Violet, he decided, was an addiction, like smoking: it made you feel terrible most of the time, but you couldn’t do without it. To cement their reunion he agreed to start a family, but Violet had several miscarriages (which she regarded as a Divine judgement on them for previously using contraceptives) before
she managed, after an anxious pregnancy and painfully difficult labour, to produce a daughter. Robin was pleased with his little girl, whom they called Felicity, but said enough is enough, no more pregnancies, no more miscarriages, and was supported in this resolve by their doctor. Hence Violet’s letter to Ann Field some years later, though there was another motive for writing it which Violet had not mentioned. She was afraid that Robin might have an affair with one of his students if he felt sexually dissatisfied at home.
By this time they had moved to a new university in the North of England for the sake of a big jump in salary for Robin. It was a place that was setting out to pioneer new developments in curriculum and teaching methods – Robin was in charge of a special programme teaching the classics in translation to all humanities students in their first year – and it attracted a lively, rather anarchic type of student, whose morals were a source of considerable scandal to the local community. The students lived in mixed, unsupervised accommodation, freely supplied with contraceptives by the Student Health Service. Robin, who rather regretted his move, sometimes described the University as “the only knocking-shop in the country that also gives degrees.” This sardonic stance towards campus permissiveness was reassuring to Violet, but she was well aware that if Robin should take a fancy to one of his students it wouldn’t require a weekend in the country and the prospect of marriage to coax her into bed.
When Ann Field’s reply came back, Violet showed it to Robin and saw immediately from the expression on his face that she had done the wrong thing. He was furiously angry.
“You must be out of your mind, Violet!” he shouted. “Suppose they print it? I’ll be the laughing-stock of the campus.”
“They won’t print it. Anyway, they never give names.”
“What in God’s name possessed you, an intelligent woman with an upper second, to write to a trashy woman’s magazine for advice on such a subject?”
“I just thought it would be interesting to get an outsider’s opinion. Have you heard of this book?”
“I think I read about it somewhere,” said Robin. (To be precise, his source was Playboy, which he read regularly at his barber’s while waiting to get his hair cut, but he did not care to acknowledge this.) “They got a lot of people to copulate in a laboratory, all wired up to machines and computers and things.”
“Lord, it’s a wonder they had any orgasms at all, in the circumstances,” said Violet.
In the same year that Masters and Johnson published the results of their sex research, England won the World Cup at football, which millions saw as the bestowal of a special grace on the nation; John Lennon boasted that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ and, to the disappointment of many, was not struck dead by a thunderbolt; Evelyn Waugh died, shortly after attending a Latin mass celebrated in private by an old Jesuit friend; Friday abstinence was officially abolished in the Roman Catholic Church, and the American Sisters of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross became the first order of nuns to abandon the habit completely. The narrator of Graham Greene’s new novel observed: “When I was a boy I had faith in the Christian God. Life under his shadow was a very serious affair…. Now that I approached the end of life it was only my sense of humour that enabled me sometimes to believe in Him.” In the spring of that year, 1966, at Duquesne University, Pennsylvania, and a little later at Notre Dame University, Indiana, small groups of Catholics began to experiment with “Pentecostal” prayer meetings, praying for each other that they might be filled with the gifts of the Holy Ghost as described in the New Testament – the gift of faith, the gift of tongues, the gifts of prophecy, healing, discernment of spirits, interpretation and exorcism. The results were, to the participants, exciting, but passed unremarked by the world at large. Public interest in the Catholic Church was still focused on the cliff-hanging saga of contraception.
In April it was leaked to the press that four conservative theologians on the Pontifical Commission had admitted that they could not show the intrinsic evil of contraception from Natural Law arguments alone. In other words, they still thought it was wrong, but only because the Church had always said it was, and could not have been teaching error for centuries. However, as a letter in the Tablet pointed out, the Church had once taught that owning slaves was permissible and lending money at interest was a grave sin.
Miriam read the letter out to Michael.
“Who’s it from?” he asked.
“Someone called Adrian Walsh.”
“Good Lord! I was at college with him. Shows how things have changed. He used to be a real hardliner.”
The Catholic press, and even the secular press, was full of correspondence and articles about Catholics and birth control. After reading a good deal of this material, Miriam said to Michael one day: “I’ve had enough. I’m going on the pill. It’s obvious that there’s going to be change sooner or later. I don’t see the point of risking getting pregnant again.” Their third child was then a few months old.
Michael was glad to agree, though he probably wouldn’t have had the gumption to take the initiative himself. They continued going to Communion, but not to Confession. People went to Confession less and less frequently, anyway, even the idea of making one’s Easter Duty seemed to have been quietly dropped, and that made it easier. Their sex life improved dramatically. From time to time Michael checked his conscience for symptoms of guilt. Nothing.
That summer, they shared a holiday cottage in Devon with Angela and Dennis. In the evenings, when the children had been fed, bathed, anointed with sunburn cream, read to, prayed with, put to bed, put back to bed, and had finally gone off to sleep, the four adults lolled, exhausted but content, in the little chintzy parlour and chatted. Dennis and Angela, who had found the cottage and were paying rather more than half of the rent, occupied two wing armchairs on either side of the fireplace, while Michael and Miriam sat between them on a small chesterfield. Each husband and wife had come to look more and more like their partners. Dennis and Angela were fair and well-fleshed, red from exposure to sun and wind. Michael and Miriam were both lean and tanned. Michael’s hair still fell boyishly down across his forehead, but he wore it dry, now, not steeped in Brylcreem, while Dennis was beginning to lose his. Miriam, who could never bear to be still, however tired, embroidered, while Angela, six months pregnant with her fourth child, dozed with her hands clasped on her belly. Michael and Miriam, who made most of the conversational running, confided the decision they had made about birth control.
“We may do the same after this one,” said Dennis, glancing speculatively at Angela. “She’s asleep,” he observed.
“I really think you should,” said Miriam. “I know I couldn’t stand the thought of having another one.”
“Don’t tempt Providence, darling,” said Michael, glancing at the ceiling. “Himself might put a dud pill in the packet.”
“Shut up,” said Miriam, aiming a slap at him.
“Well, we’ll have to see,” said Dennis, rubbing the back of his neck where sunburned skin was flaking. “It’s really up to Ange.” As they hadn’t had to worry about safe periods for the last few months, the question had lost some of its urgency for him, and, unlike Michael, he had no financial anxiety about the rapid growth of his family. Dennis had just landed a very good new job with an electronics firm in the Midlands.
“There’s a proposal to install contraceptive machines in the students’ cloakrooms at college,” said Michael.
“You never told me!” Miriam exclaimed.
“In a Catholic Training College? I don’t believe it,” said Dennis.
“It’s a very special machine, designed for Catholics,” said Michael. “You put contraceptives in and get money out.”
Their laughter woke Angela. “What are you talking about?” she yawned. When they told her, she said, “I don’t know. I’m afraid I’d feel guilty even if I was rationally convinced there was nothing wrong with it.”
“But why, Angela?” Miriam thrust her head forward in the
way she had when arguing.
“I don’t know – upbringing, I suppose. I’d feel I was cheating, somehow. Take my Mam and Dad. All those children, I don’t suppose they wanted half that number. Why should we be able to please ourselves, and much better off too?”
“But you’ve got four, Angela, or soon will have. Four is enough in all conscience.”
“Yes,” Angela admitted. “Perhaps four will be enough.”
“According to the population experts,” said Michael, “it’s two too many. If Catholics don’t stop breeding soon, we’ll all be standing shoulder to shoulder eating recycled sewage.”
“Anyway,” said Angela, “I’m determined to have this one at home, so that Dennis can stay with me right through.” She practiced natural childbirth, and had had fair success with it, in spite of uncooperative maternity wards which (to his secret relief) had not allowed Dennis into the delivery room.
“Will the new house be ready in time?” Miriam asked.
“I think we’ll just make it,” said Dennis. “You must come and see us when we’re settled in. You wouldn’t like to be godparents again, I suppose?”
“Why don’t you ask Edward and Tessa?” Michael suggested. “They don’t live far from where you’re going.”
“That’s a thought.”
Upstairs, a child began to cry. Angela and Miriam looked at each other, listening.
“One of ours,” Miriam said, and rose to attend to it. “I shan’t bother to come down again, so I’ll say goodnight.” She winked covertly at Michael.
“I’ll be up soon, darling,” he said.
In October of that year, perhaps disturbed by evidence that increasing numbers of Catholics around the world were, like Michael and Miriam, anticipating a change in the Church’s attitude to birth control, Pope Paul declared that there would be no pronouncement on the issue in the immediate future, and that meanwhile the traditional teaching must be rigidly adhered to. Monsignor Vallainc, head of the Vatican Press Office, when asked by journalists how the Pope could say that there was no doubt about the traditional teaching when his own commission had been appointed to investigate it, replied that the Church was in a state of certainty, but when the Pope had made his decision, whatever it was, the Church would pass from one state of certainty to another. This pronouncement was, according to Father Charles Davis, a leading theologian much admired by Austin Brierley, the last straw that broke the back of his faith in Catholicism, and shortly after it was made he left the priesthood, and the Church, and married, amid great publicity. His claims in the press that he had not left in order to get married were naturally greeted with some scepticism by his co-religionists, especially those of conservative views. Even Father Brierley preferred to believe that Charles Davis might have been unconsciously motivated by the wish to marry, rather than by intellectual doubts about the truth of the Catholic faith.
