Imaginary Toys

by Julian Mitchell

  *

  Jack came to see me just as I was going to bed. Elaine doesn’t love him any more. Why? He’d arranged to meet her for lunch yesterday and she hadn’t shown up. Oh. She’d gone off somewhere with Charles. Excellent, she will have cheered Charles up a bit. Couldn’t I be a little more sympathetic? No, not at that hour of night. Did Jack want some whisky? Yes he did. What about today? She was being difficult, she was in love with Charles, Jack was going to commit suicide. No, he wasn’t. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Well, it would probably happen again.

  I told him everyone was suffering from nerves, it was the end of the academic year, there were exams. I said I thought Charles was far from being a soul of honour, but that he was tied and gagged by Margaret. What harm could an afternoon on the river do? How did I know they’d been on the river, he wanted to know. I said I didn’t know, I guessed. Where else would they go?

  He left eventually, and I don’t think he’ll kill himself for a day or two. Perhaps these people really do know I’m older. They’re always coming to me with their problems. As if I didn’t have enough of my own. Those two couples could easily become a great bore.

  *

  Bloatedness. One doesn’t notice when one becomes bloated, it is always one’s friends that tell one. Or one reads about it in newspapers. The point is that it is relative. If everyone were very rich, everyone in the whole world, no society would be bloated, though all might be by our present standards. One should never use descriptive adjectives like that to serve moral purposes. When we use the term about a society we probably mean ‘self-indulgent’, in the sense that resources are being misused. Other societies could put them to more immediately important uses, ‘better’ uses. There would be no objection to rococo tail-fins on cars if there was no need for steel to build dams in, say, the Congo. If all the material needs of the world were satisfied, it would be impossible to say that there were ‘better’ uses for steel. More beautiful uses, perhaps, but not better ones. There is a constant confusion in our language between morality and political expediency and aesthetics. It is the human weakness for metaphor.

  *

  Jack and Elaine. Charles and Margaret. What am I expected to do? Elaine appeared this morning and said I was to ignore anything Jack may have said last night. I said I had already forgotten everything he said. She became angry and asked if I didn’t care about my friends.

  Me: Yes.

  She: Well, Jack was in a most terrible state last night, couldn’t you see that?

  Me: Yes. How is he now?

  She: He’s better. He’s so absurdly jealous. I can’t ask anyone the time without him accusing me of being a whore.

  Me: Buy a watch. If he’s all right, why have you come to see me?

  She: Because he thinks he may have said something silly last night and is ashamed to come and admit it. And I want to know what he said.

  Me: He said he was going to commit suicide. I told him he wasn’t. He drank a lot of my whisky and went away.

  She: How did you know where Charles and I had gone?

  Me: I didn’t know, I guessed. Where the hell else could you have gone?

  She: We could have gone to the cinema.

  Me: For heaven’s sake, what does it matter?

  She: Jack thinks you’re prying into his affairs.

  Me: He didn’t say so to me.

  She: Jack thinks you encouraged Charles to take me out. He thinks no one loves him because he’s from the working-class.

  Me: Well, I didn’t go to any public school. Jack’s an idiot.

  She: Oh, I thought you had. You sound like it.

  Me: Is that a compliment or an insult? Listen, I don’t care whether Jack went to Eton or Slough Grammar School. I’ve never asked him, and I never will. Schools are a matter of complete indifference to me. No one should even remember what school he was at. A school is something to be got through as quickly as possible, it’s a necessary passage of time. People are people, not schoolchildren.

  She: Don’t lecture me, Nicholas, for God’s sake.

  Me: Then don’t accuse me of class-prejudice.

  She: What am I to do about Jack, then?

  Me: Marry him, I suppose. I can’t see any other solution.

  She: I don’t know whether I want to.

  Me: Why not? Class-prejudice?

  She: Think of having to live with a man who never trusts you.

  Me: As a matter of fact I have lived with a man who didn’t trust me. Don’t look surprised. I don’t recommend it as a lasting proposition.

  She: Well, what should I do?

  Me: Not marry him.

  She: Oh, don’t be so stupid.

  Me: Well, what do you want me to say? What is the matter?

  The matter, apparently, is quite simple. Jack has been gathering like a storm for the last fortnight. Father Gibbons, the dirty old swine, tells them sex is a sin. They both believe him up to a point, but both want to sleep together. This has been going on for several months, but now trouble: the strain is too much for them. Jack sits beside her in grim silence, watching her.

  Elaine: I can’t help it. But when I know he’s expecting me to do something awful, of course I do it. I can’t help myself, Nicholas, really I can’t. All right, so I’m a flirt, but Jack knows that, he’s known it for ages. I don’t want to sleep with anyone else, I just want to enjoy life, to be gay. And now he watches me all the time. I shall fail my exams, I can’t get any work done. Every second of the day I feel I’m being spied on. I’ve even turned the mirror against the wall. I’m becoming a wreck.

  Me: Why do you believe all this Christian double-talk?

  She: I know you don’t believe it, Nicholas, you don’t believe in anything, do you? But you’re quite wrong. Of course God exists, you’re simply frightened that if you admit it you’ll have to stop sleeping with your boy-friends. Like me. Only not. When you’ve lost the first physical assault of youth, you’ll realize.

  Me (very angry indeed): If you know all about the difficulties of sex for moral homosexuals, why can’t you manage your own more normal life?

  She: bursts into tears.

  Me: I’m sorry, Elaine, I know things are terribly difficult for you, but don’t ever, ever, give me your views on religion and homosexuality again. Where on earth did you get that awful phrase about the first physical assault of youth? Is that one of Father Gibbons’s gems?

  She (more tears): Yes.

  Me: What possible connection is there between the teachings of Christ and the slobberings of that old Anglo-Catholic idiot?

  She: If you don’t understand, Nicholas, you don’t. Let’s not talk about it. I don’t think I could face it this morning.

  Me: Well, you’ll have to face it some time.

  She: I think you do understand perfectly well, too. You just won’t admit it. I’m sorry, but that’s what I think.

  Me: Elaine, will you please get it into your head that I do not believe in the existence of your or anyone else’s god, and that I am not a hypocritical sinner. The only ethics of any interest are ones which come from human experience and intelligence. Just because you believe something does not make that thing true. You’re as bad as a Roman Catholic or a Communist. You want what you believe to be true for you, so it has to be true for everyone else as well. Drop it.

  She: I think I may become a Catholic.

  Me: Good. It is at least the one Christian Church with a reasonable attempt at rational theology that doesn’t positively insult an intelligent man. After a year or two of realizing what it involves you’ll come down to earth again and start paying attention to human beings instead of to your personal relationship with the Most High.

  She: What on earth do you mean?

  Me: You still haven’t explained why you attack my disbelief on grounds of bad faith.

  She: Oh please, Nicholas, I’m sorry.

  Me: You’re as bad as Jack. You both sell your intelligences to the most-incense-swinging bidder. Jack has gone furth
er, he’s selling himself completely. He’s deliberately allowing himself to be corrupted by the bourgeois ideal of good behaviour. He’s had to fight against the swine from the very beginning, and not only against them. Against the incomprehension of his family, lack of money, the whole bloody system. And when he finally wins out, what does he do? He rushes off and joins a faith which says, basically, if you’re a ploughman stay a ploughman. Your Church is ultimately conservative in the extreme. And Jack has to go and become a Christian. He’ll probably spend the rest of his life being beastly to little boys who want to have the same kind of success he’s had. In Jack I see a whole possible social disaster. As the standard of living rises, miners will go down the pit in bowler-hats and white collars. They will come home to a virtuous evening at the Methodist Hall. It will be called a social revolution, and they will be slightly less happy than they were before. Adopt the standards of the class above and go to heaven. God! Can’t you see what damage Jack is doing to himself by believing all this cant Father Gibbons dishes out? Was Jack a morose dullard all his life? Of course he wasn’t. He’s been shackled down by that bloody Church, he lets them tell him what he should do and think, when to copulate and when to excrete and when to get on his knees and thank Father Gibbons for being such a splendid help. What maddens me is the way he bends down and helps them fasten the shackles. What you should be doing is telling him to stop making such a fool of himself. If you’re not careful he’ll start regarding your smile as a punishment from God for his presumption in not going down the mine and getting injured like his father. If you’re in love with him, then get on and do something about it before it’s too late. Love isn’t all metaphysical gymnastics.

  She: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Me: Well, it’s about time you did. Listen. If you believe that God is just and life is what He meant it to be you can’t be a radical. A radical wants to change things, and God doesn’t want things to be changed, does He? It’s His will that they are the way they are. Now, if——

  She: What has all this got to do with Jack and me?

  Me: I thought your problem was religious. I’m trying to tell you about the evils of organized religion.

  She: Nicholas, you are the bloodiest man I know. (More tears.)

  Me (not able to cope with female tears, rather want to cry myself, but for different reasons): Elaine, don’t you realize that all I’m getting at is that in my religion it is wicked not to sleep with the man you love? Under your circumstances, anyway?

  She (drying eyes): You’re quite wrong, Nicholas, but thanks all the same.

  Me: I am not wrong. You may not agree with me, but I am not wrong. Not just like that, without argument, anyway. Don’t be so positive.

  She: You’re too intellectual, that’s your trouble. Everything’s all worked out, isn’t it? But you simply don’t understand about things like faith. Probably not about love, either.

  Me: True about faith, utter libel about love.

  She: Well, what do I do?

  Me: Sleep with Jack, join the Romans, confess, have a lot of children and be happy.

  She: Thank you. But what should I do about Jack now?

  Me: Try and help him. I don’t know. I’m not one of those columns with an answer for every emotional problem. Try prayer.

  She: God, you are awful.

  Me: Not at all, it was a pleasure.

  She: Do you think he will try and commit suicide?

  Me: Not for a moment. But for heaven’s sake don’t go out with Charles again. We’d all like a bit of peace and quiet. Go and do some work or go to a film or something. But keep him out of church.

  Time; ten to ten forty-five. Place: Bodleian Library, Oxford streets, Christ Church Meadow. I have some work to do. She goes to coffee with Jack. Talking so much completely failed to appreciate one of the finest mornings of the summer. What am I supposed to say to people who come to me with their problems? My own love-life is bad enough. How should I know how to smooth the path of true love? Why do they pick on me? I said nothing of the slightest interest, but I made her cross, which was good. She should have felt a bit better afterwards. Nothing like tears and talk. Jack next, I suppose. Really!

  *

  Pop-songs. Smoke gets in your eyes. Heard from an open window this evening. Immediate desire to weep in the street, clasp strangers by the hand. Most pop-songs awful. Nothing to do with jazz, really. Explain in not more than five hundred words the difference between Lester Young and Victor Young.

  *

  Postcard from Phi. Picture of Queen Victoria. We are much amused. Postmark ‘Brighton’. Nothing else. No love or name, simply: We are much amused. And so am I. Phi is really very nice. When I got the card I smiled out loud, if such a thing is possible. No pang, no pain. Like waking up after a terrific party without a trace of a hangover? To say that would be to risk emotional shipwreck.

  *

  Charles, if no one else, seems much happier since his day out with Elaine. I asked him if he knew what havoc he had wrought. He grimaced and said there was nothing like a change of air for making one appreciate the smell of home. No one ever answers my questions. So I repeated this one and he said no, he didn’t feel in the least guilty, if that was what I meant. But it didn’t sound very convincing.

  Charles: Margaret never said anything about me not meeting her that morning.

  Me: Did you try the flower trick again?

  Charles: Not bloody likely.

  *

  Charles’s college, which happens also to be Delta’s (how tactfully I put that), is rather beautiful at this time of year, small and cool and full of green shade. One stands in the front quad and pretends one can hear the sound of pages being turned in the rooms. One can’t. Delta seemed rather surprised to see me. He was still in his pyjamas. He blushed like a schoolboy caught in the act. (Perhaps he had been in the act, one never knows.) While he was dressing in the bedroom we talked through the half-open door. It was ajar, I think deliberately, so that I could occasionally catch glimpses of him in the mirror over the basin. Why I allowed myself to do this I am not sure. I think the ambivalence of my feelings for Phi is partly responsible for the lapse. I don’t feel quite attached to the earth when I am with Delta, or when I think of Phi. Suspended. Detached. Interested. And amused. I wonder how I shall hit the earth again. Hard, no doubt. Delta seemed to linger unnecessarily long over his dressing, I thought. But he never once looked in the mirror, not even to brush his hair. So I think he knew perfectly well that I could see him. And did not want to be disappointed in case I wasn’t looking. Really, the stratagems of … love?

  Later, when he was dressed and shaved, we walked to the Rawlinson, but it was too late for coffee. I told him he should be ashamed at getting up so late, and what had he been doing the night before? He said he couldn’t sleep properly, it was too hot. I suggested cold baths, and he laughed. Wet towels, and he laughed again. All the time while he was laughing there was distinct venery in his eye. I think. I have done no work at all today. With Delta all or most of the morning, and asleep in the library this afternoon. Delta insisted on me having one more beer than I usually allow myself for lunch. In this state of suspension I have no power to resist minor temptations. Too busy resisting the major ones, I suppose. And of course an extra drink in midsummer is not really a temptation at all, it is a way of life. I think I need a holiday. Where? Not Brighton it seems, anyway. Delta is going off to Dorset, of all places, to spend a week-end with his aunt.

  *

  Perry Miller quotes John Winthrop: ‘For wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us.’ If the founders of America were really concerned to reform Europe rather than create a new society in America, is it not now the duty of Europe to try and reform America? I loathe all Puritanism. The founders of America were a most unpleasant collection of bigots, no loss to the religious strife of England. But they did have a vision, they did have a sense of mission and purpose. Now that Amer
ica has indeed become a City upon a Hill—a completely different city, of course, and a completely different hill—now that the eyes of the world are in a very real sense upon it, the sense of purpose and mission has been lost. Or rather it has been corrupted into unintelligent Communist-hunting. You have to be a bit of a bigot to have a sense of purpose, I suppose, but chasing bogeymen is rather undignified for modern America. Her danger is in her empiricism. She is too powerful for it to be safe for her to drift, as she does, from one crisis to another. She does not know what to do with her enormous wealth and power. A radical Europe could give her a sense of purpose. It could at least try. It would probably be as unsuccessful as the original American settlers, but it would at least give Europe something to do in a world where she has ceased to lead. But there is no need for Europe to be censorious. Americans are quite self-critical enough already. (All that phoney breast-beating sociology.) We get a false impression in Europe, we see Americans over-anxiously advertising their country. They are bad travellers from the ad-man’s point of view. They are gluttons for our culture, but ashamed of their own. But theirs is living and ours is dying, if not dead. (Is this true? True enough.) What Europe could do is lead America towards a realization of the liberty and equality that are asserted so grandiloquently on her postage stamps, but are banished from a large section of her population. Europe could create an ideal, instead of filling a space between two competing powers. Europe needs a function.

  America’s problem is illustrated by the Eisenhower administration. A general is put in the White House, but he can give no orders because there is no one to tell him his objectives. If only Europe would think, instead of torturing colonists, trying to match the great powers’ fire-power, pretending that it is still 1900. But is there any hope of a radical flourish from Europe? If one lived only in the universities one might think so. If one spent all one’s holidays on protest marches one might even feel certain. I only wish I could feel there was some hope. But De Gaulle, Macmillan, Adenauer. The right continues to thrive on a diet of flags, national anthems, royal babies, economic prosperity, private atomic tests, colonial mayhem. I will not believe that human beings are so craven, so selfish, as to have feelings and consciences only when poor. And yet radicalism has been submerged beneath full employment and the massive production of consumer-goods. (Or has it?)