I will tell you something. I have a picture of an island. It is bleak but the people are gentle. Oh they are gentle enough and polite and well mannered … But it may be the gentility of the dead. I see them sitting by their TV sets as here and not walking casually into each other’s houses as before without knocking. There is nothing we can do against that, but prepare ourselves. Gentility is not enough in the world we’re born into. It is a weakness. To break the will of the children is wrong.
What have I seen in the city since I came? I have seen beggars and lonely men, I have seen the yellow lights of the mind, and the crooked shadows. Yet we must learn to live with it. I know we must. You should not have written that letter. Children should be able to respect their parents. You must try to learn to understand. I know it is difficult but you must learn to try. There is nothing else for you to do, nothing else.
Sometimes I get terrified. In this house there are seven or eight people. The landlady—what does she live for, but the making of money? And what will she do with it? She will leave it to her children. And her husband who smokes his pipe and watches films twice or thrice a week? Were the two of them always like that? Or were they once like Jake and Joan? How have they been cheated? And this lady lecturer, who spends her evenings sewing or visiting her friend, the other lady lecturer, what has she to look forward to? These things have to be answered. I sometimes wonder: Might they not as well be dead? Perhaps that’s what happened to man: he was unfortunate enough to be able to prolong his life. For most people might as well be dead at thirty. And yet … I feel that’s wrong. There is some meaning if one can find it—a precarious balance somewhere. One looks out and sees, like the Lady of Shalott. But one day the mirror breaks. One should not think like this. Or is it that others don’t see it, the abyss?
Jake and Joan are happy. They will be married. They follow each other with their eyes and to others appear silly: but they are precious to each other. And perhaps that is enough: even for a short while. I don’t know. Today I got a wedding invitation from Norman, Norman Morrison. He knows I can’t go to the wedding but he sent me the invitation and a flattering letter calling me his dearest friend. And it’s true I suppose. We went to school together. We used to be sent out gardening together by the head-master. We ate the stolen strawberries with their almost unbearable tartness together. We studied for our bursaries and read the crates of books from the library, surreptitiously checking over our answers to arithmetic problems. And I am glad he is to be married, but I know that we will never speak to each other again in the same way.
I am sick of our melancholy, sick of it. I want to see things as they are. It is necessary. I am sick and tired of people saying No. It is necessary to stop saying No.
I am sorry about your letter. I am very sorry and shocked. I do not think you should have written it. I think it’s time you went out amongst people more. I think it is time you depended less on me, although I shall never abandon you. It is time you looked at the facts. I do not want this burden of guilt. It is time we laughed more—high time.
Your loving son,
Kenneth
TWO
Yesterday quite by chance I ran into Fiona. I went into the cafe in front of the reading room—where I sometimes study—and there she was. After my ten days at home I had completely forgotten about her. She was sitting by herself in a corner seat drinking coffee. At first she didn’t see me, and I watched her. She was idly stirring the coffee with a spoon—her brown and white leather bag was slung over a chair: and she was staring into the cup as if it was—well, perhaps something nuclear! Then she saw me, her face brightened and we began to talk.
I have this bad Highland manner of wanting to know about people—all about them. I pointed to her CND badge and asked her about it. She also showed me the card they are given with its peculiar biblical message. I think she intends going to Aldermarston for the march.
‘I’m tired of studying,’ she said, ‘I feel suffocated. Honestly I do. Suffocated. As if I can’t get enough air. Sometimes I walk down to the quay and watch the ships. That helps a little but not much.’
I found it strange listening to her because that was how I felt when I was home—as if I were being strangled to death by invisible hands. However I don’t feel so bad now.
She talked fairly freely about her parents after a while: ‘My mother’s dead,’ she said, ‘my father’s alive. He’s a lawyer. He’s a fairly successful lawyer—here. Once he had a chance to try for a bigger job in England: but my mother was ill at the time, with her nerves, and he couldn’t go.’
She twisted her fingers on the table and I’m sure she didn’t notice.
‘They used to have the most terrible rows at first. He used to blame her for holding him back. He drinks a lot. Families are like that,’ she said, looking out into the street where the large statue of Sir Walter Scott confronted us. ‘They fight each other and kill each other and feed off each other.’
I told her a little about George.
‘That’s different,’ she maintained, ‘that’s honest. My father wasn’t like that. His hatred at the end was a cold hatred. Eventually he wouldn’t speak to my mother at all. It’s strange that. Sometimes I saw him actually grit his teeth. She was one of these defenceless people who invited bullying. But he didn’t bully her. He would simply get drunk and ignore her. Once I saw her pouring tea into his cup. It was late, I remember, and he had just come in. The hot tea spilt over her hand. She didn’t scream and I saw the red coming up on her hand. But he did nothing. He carried on drinking his tea, as if he hadn’t noticed. But I saw that he had noticed, and yet he pretended that he hadn’t.
‘When my mother died two years ago I left him. That was all. One afternoon when he was at the office I simply packed a bag and left the house. I left a note. I remember I had difficulty with the key. First of all I locked the door and then I had the key in my hand. So I threw it in through the window and walked away. He didn’t ask for me back. It was as if he was tired of the lot of us. He tried to give me money (it’s very easy to give people money) but I didn’t take it. I had some from my mother. She was saving up in a bank for me. She was all I had you see. Anyway he didn’t really bother about me much. I can imagine him in the morning shaving and sitting down to have his breakfast and getting the car out, but it’s as if I was thinking of a stranger. I have no sympathy for him. I don’t hate him, I have no feeling for him. That’s all.’
She added, ‘I think that was why I joined the CND.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. It’s something to do with that pressure. Do you think about it like that?’ I didn’t understand. Sometimes I’m quite stupid.
‘Well, the pressure builds up and you get a nuclear bomb, that’s all. But I don’t want it to be like that—that would be like my father you see. Something went wrong in his ambitions and the pressure built up. It would have been more honest if he had left my mother. But in his position, you know, that would never do. Like a lawyer I heard of recently. His girl friend wanted to be married in a registry office. But no—not him. He wanted a church wedding: and he’s an atheist too.’ Looking out of the window she suddenly burst out laughing, a pure bell-like laugh. It’s difficult to describe it. It’s not the laugh of innocence. It’s the laugh which has gone beyond pretensions, it’s the pure laugh of comedy which almost for a moment accepts the universe as it is.
Yet I didn’t laugh like that. I believe these lies and hypocrisies are evil. They are the greatest evil. And they are within the church too. I dream of another church, a more precarious one, and that laughter will be its bell …
I didn’t know what else to say except:
‘It’s the same everywhere. Because people refuse to look. They’ve got to protect themselves.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Can I get you a coffee?’
Instinctively I said ‘No’ (By the way that’s a very funny thing about me which I thought of recently. If anyone asks me a question
and I haven’t been listening but I pretend that I have I always say ‘No’: I never say ‘Yes’) because I don’t like women buying anything for men, and because she can’t have much money. Then I changed my mind for some reason and said ‘Yes’.
For a long time we said nothing and then we went out and walked along the street in the cool of the evening. We said nothing at all. When we parted I simply said ‘Goodnight Fiona’ and she said ‘Goodnight Kenneth’—she had asked me no questions about myself or my home—and I walked home. That was all. The sky was green above the tram rails.
When I got home George was not yet in. At ten o’clock he came in slightly drunk. I had never seen him drunk before. I think it’s a bad sign. I managed to keep him from stumbling over anything and from getting himself entangled with one of the stair rails which is slightly loose and got him to bed. He slept almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. His red hair was sweating and his face was white. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.
This is quite a long letter. I shall write again soon. I hope you are well.
Goodnight,
Your loving son,
Kenneth
Tonight at seven I put down my books and I thought I’d write to you. I kept finding there was something I ought to explain but I couldn’t think what it was. Then George came in and we played some records. He lay on the bed with his hands behind his head looking up at the ceiling and saying nothing. Sometimes I caught him looking at me as if he wished to say something but he didn’t. (By the way Jean and Jake have announced their engagement. When Jake told us about it he was grinning and there was oil on his face: I thought that was very endearing.) I nearly asked George what was the matter with him but I didn’t. I just sat and listened, or rather at first I wasn’t listening at all. Then it came into my consciousness that this was a woman singing and there was a kind of catch in her voice. It was the Blues—a sort of jazz—and a spiritual. For some strange reason this made me think of our church. I think it must have been the black disc spinning. (All this time George was lying on the bed looking up at the ceiling, perfectly motionless.) Then it struck me. This was the sort of church I wanted. This woman had more faith and more depth and more sheer melody of life than our Minister.
I remembered an incident which took place at home. You know Mrs McInnes the widow, the one with a son in Australia. I was in her house one night and Mrs MacLeod was there. They were talking about how her son had sent money home by a local sailor and they had never seen it. He must have spent it. This Mrs MacLeod—she’s got a sort of moustache and I remember she was wearing a sort of rabbit collar—she suddenly said:
‘He will pay for his sins. There’s one thing I always believe in. People must be made to pay for their sins.’
I looked at her and there was hate in her face. Her lips were tight. And yet really it had nothing to do with her. She wasn’t even concerned. Listening to that record I thought of that and I realised something which I suppose I must have known for a long time.
WE ARE A NEW GENERATION.
WE ARE DIFFERENT FROM YOU.
I remember too when you were reminiscing with some of your friends. I didn’t understand you. You told each other your jokes but they had no meaning for me. They were past. They were finished.
And I think I know why George started drinking. The reason is he is supposed to cure people, but he doesn’t know WHAT FOR. That is why he listens to the music. He wants to find out why he should cure people. That’s all. I watched him. His eyes were open at first and I could see him studying the light bulb. Then slowly they shut but he wasn’t sleeping. It was as if he were really listening. I heard a trumpet, one clear note—a single pure note like water—no, George said it was like a drink of cool milk during fever or after a hangover, the very cold milk you get in cartons from these machines—this single note held perfectly steady—like a guarantee of something—rising out of the wrestlings of the music, out of the sweat of billiard rooms and men with green eyeshades—this single pure note, and then George opened his eyes, and that was all. The record ended then.
I wanted to tell you that because it’s the thing that’s been troubling me. The pressures are so tremendous. You must try to understand, please. It will be terrible if you don’t try.
I haven’t had an answer to my last letter yet so this is an extra.
Your loving son,
Kenneth
I am sorry I’m late in answering your letter. The truth is, I’ve been ill but not at all seriously. Strangely enough, it is a recurrence of my asthma which I haven’t felt since I was 12. I was sitting down to my books the other night when it began. I went to bed and felt like a fool.
I lay in my room in absolute silence for most of the day. It was a strange experience listening to the silence, and watching the leaves swaying slightly against the window. My room is high up and I don’t hear the traffic. In the evening George would come in and sit at my bedside (for company) studying. He has exams soon and he’s working hard. He looks more cheerful now. Jake also came to see me, and appears more responsible. I think Joan must be making him wash the oil from his face. He doesn’t spend so much time with his motor cycle now.
The landlady left me alone during the daytime. In a way it was a luxurious illness. I felt, not quite alone, but rather at ease for the first time during an illness. I read nothing and would lie there for hours not even thinking but allowing thoughts to flit across my mind like leaves across the window pane. I can’t understand why I should have this asthma now.
The landlord sometimes came in after he’d been to the pictures. He is fairly tall with a moustache and very white teeth. He told me all about the pictures he had seen. At first I used to laugh at him quietly inside myself but I don’t any more, My new humility almost frightens me. He talked to me about the taxis. Apparently he prefers to drive by night. That’s surprising isn’t it? When he has no film to speak about he says nothing but sits there with his hands between his legs as if he were a guest in my house. Funny, isn’t it? George listens to his stories very seriously which is a new development.
One morning I was awake watching the dawn come up. Usually in the past I have felt nervous in the early morning, with a hollow in the pit of my stomach. This morning however I felt at ease as if in tune with the day which was coming into being like a poem into a poet’s mind. And I thought: what a miracle light is. What would happen to us if one night we suddenly realised that the thick darkness would last forever, the thick furry darkness. Fiona wrote me a note but did not come to see me.
I spent four days in bed and when I got up I decided I would not be sick again. I went into the bathroom. The sun was shining on the white bath, and its rays were on the mirror. The diamonds on the floor were very bright and real. After I had shaved and washed my face I felt new. Then I went downstairs for my breakfast: it was like a royal entrance. I loved everybody. Rising from the sick bed is like being reborn. I knew that this love of mine would not last but it did not matter. For that moment it was precious—the stumpy landlady with her vulpine face appeared angelic, her tray silver and her tea wine: her two children could even have sprouted wings: red-haired George was my dearest friend: Jake and Joan were Adam and Eve in the Garden: and there was no evil in the world. (Strangely enough I happened that same evening to overhear the landlady complain about her tiredness caused by her climbing stairs with my food but that did not matter either.)
No, I believe that people are essentially good. If it is possible to see them like that at all, then that is the way we must see them. (Do I sermonise too much?)
In the evening George and I went to the cinema. It is an old cinema. Once upon a time one could get in with empty jam jars (presumably lemon curd for the balcony) and during the performance, believe it or not, a man sprayed us all over with disinfectant. It was a western film and I enjoyed it very much. After sickness, how much one enjoys the world, like a dewdrop on a thorn! We had no need to talk to each other.
Tomorrow I’m going to on
e of the CND parades with Fiona. It should be interesting.
I hope you are well. Here the weather is good and I suppose it will be the same at home.
I mean that: I’m not going to be sick again.
Your loving son,
Kenneth
An extraordinary thing has happened which I must think about. Today Fiona and I went to the CND sit down demonstration. We sat down on the pavement opposite the City Chambers which are next to the Art Gallery. It was all very quiet and companionable somehow, people sitting down in the sunshine eating sandwiches as if they were on holiday. The pavement was quite warm (unusually warm—mind you, I don’t make a practice of sitting on pavements). There were no speeches. The speeches had already been made at Hutton Park. We sat there surrounded by a crowd of people most of whom we had never seen before and would never see again. It is interesting to watch people passing. After a while you only see their legs, some dumpy, some thin, some active, some slow, some old, some young. There were one or two mounted policemen. They look tall on their gleaming horses, and in their leather leggings.
What does one talk about? We talked about examinations mainly. It was almost weird. I wondered what many of them were doing there. I wondered what I was doing there. Everyone was very orderly and placed sandwich papers in bags or in those wire bins one sees attached to posts. There was one woman beside me: she was dressed entirely in red and reading Woman’s Own. Extraordinary! Then something happened. We were such an orderly crowd with this hum of conversation going on, like a gala, girls in light summery dresses, men in open-neck shirts. There were babies, milk bottles and lemonade bottles.
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