Imaginary Toys

by Julian Mitchell

  It is immoral to hope, with the Communist, for a slump. In doing so one is expressing the utmost contempt for the human race. I would have people treat each other with charitableness. They should not need hell or hunger to drive them to it. Is this too idealistic? If I am wrong, then my politics founder completely. The humanitarian has no use, he is not dealing with real men, but men as he wants them to be. The dictator is right. Men are beasts. What do I want? I want every man and woman to have the opportunity to develop his and her self to the fullest possible extent. The one saying of Christ that is rock-like: ‘more abundantly’. The same message occurs in the unlikeliest places—Pater, Henry James. Neither of those would approve of my kind of radicalism. But the spirit is there. The Renaissance, Strether’s speech to little Bilham in The Ambassadors. And in the poets, almost at random. But how would the poets have liked the politics of the second half of the twentieth century? But one does not, mercifully, find the message only in literature. If one did, one would give up altogether.

  Current feeling: the shortness of time and the immensity of space and the unlimited amount of human suffering.

  Current philosophy: a responsible hedonism.

  3

  Jack Evans to Elaine Cole, undated

  Elaine, I can’t call you darling, or dear, or my very dearest, or any of those things, those are for ordinary lovers and their ordinary loves, you are Elaine for me, nothing else, not more, not less, not dear, not very dear, not darling, Elaine, though all of those things, all of them, of course, and much more, but now I can’t use them, how could I use them? I love you more than all the kingdoms of the world and they couldn’t tell me how much, but your name, Elaine, Elaine, is everything that is loved, everything, Elaine, Elaine, Elaine. I can’t tell you how much I love you, not when you’re there with me in a room or on the street or anywhere, because I don’t have to, do I? am with you and you know, you understand, but you miss the words, you wish I could say them, but I have never been able to say words, not like that, I could never tell my mother I loved her, or my father, I could only look, and they did understand, but they don’t understand any more, and you do, only you do, Elaine, I know you do, and you know why I can’t, why I can’t say, my speech is all twisted, involved, incoherent, trailing away, I never can speak, but why should that matter, I am not afraid of words, you have my letters, I despise grammar, love has no grammar, love has no punctuation, stops and commas and semi-colons, no sentence-structure, I don’t think in sentences about you, Elaine, I think in a continual flow, like the letters I write to you, like this, the commas are pauses for breath, they don’t signify, I hate style, I hate elaborate paragraphs in beautiful prose, style, ugh, funny word, ugh, style, the manner in the way of the matter, all wrong, but in love there should be no manner, no manners, love is all matter, it’s truth without embellishment and literary device, without grammar, it’s a waterfall of thoughts, Elaine, Elaine in a blue dress, Elaine turning with a smile, Elaine laughing, not thoughts but pictures, that is what you are for me, when you’re not with me, a waterfall of pictures, a whole world of pictures, simply pictures, darling, my very dear, no, those are words in the way, old used words, worn-out words, push them aside, write Elaine, Elaine, Elaine. Some people are clever with words, make words spin and twirl like tops, make them stand on their heads, go through loops, to confuse you, like Nicholas, his words are active bemusing words, not to say but to stun, politician’s words, not a lover’s words, I know you like Nicholas, and so do I, but he would talk to his mistress as if she were a crowd, argue her into bed with him, argue himself out again, he doesn’t let words distil in his mind, a word like Elaine, he covers it in mattresses of explanation, so there’s no sight of it left, it’s like the pea under the princess, you have to be sensitive, to catch the allusion, the metaphor, the complex argument all the time, he can’t say what he feels, it all has to go through the giant sorting-machine in his head, files whir, and fizz, there is the sharp postage-mark of logic, the letter is put in a pigeon-hole, it has the right address, it’s in the right pigeon-hole, but the envelope is more important than the letter inside, often he only reads the envelope when you speak to him, he ignores the message, he listens to the rumble of his own machine, sorting the envelope away, a fine machine, an excellent machine, a machine I envy, for certain things, but not for us, Elaine, we don’t need a machine, we speak through the eyes and through the hands, through sympathy, not through the post like Nicholas, and what we have to say is far more important than the way we say it, and we know it, and we don’t care about the manner, the style, we care about the feeling, the love, about the power, the power of a single word, Elaine, not the power of a logical sentence. And if I could say, as I can’t, if the words didn’t turn round in my mouth and say the opposite of what I mean, if I could make myself talk like Nicholas, or like Charles, I envy Charles, he talks in a flow, even if I could, I still wouldn’t, Elaine, because I don’t write to tell you anything, Elaine, I don’t speak to tell you anything, there is nothing for me to write or say, there is you and I, and there is you and I, and there is nothing to say, so I am happy to let my mind freewheel, let the pen float over the paper like a duck skimming the surface of a pond, not stopping, swooping backwards and forwards, trailing a wing or a leg to cause a ripple, but not settling, not having any reason to settle, simply causing a ripple now and then to let you know I am, and that I know you are, and I might as well not use words at all, what is the point? But I think in words as well as pictures, sometimes one, sometimes the other, and there is no hope of me drawing anything, I can only write these pages and pages of nonsense, and why not, what is wrong with nonsense, in love we grunt, and gasp, we don’t say ‘That was good’, we’re too busy, we use our voices for crying out, for sound as sound, meaningless noises, with all the meaning in the world, throw words away, when in love, let them float away on the wind, they’ll come back when you need them, I’ve needed words so much, Elaine, all my life I have lived for words, on words, by words, reading, I’ve read my way through life, at school, at home in the evenings, in public libraries, at bus-stops, I’ve made words my master, I have never mastered words, they were too important, I could never be offhand with them, I shall always be clumsy with words, without them I’d be down a pit now, all I’d read would be the Mirror, I’d read the advertisements on television, and the racing news, and the pigeon news, perhaps, I’d be a nice lad who works at the pit, like my brothers, a bit of a brainy one, I might even become a trade union leader, in the end, I’d demand for others the education I wouldn’t have had for myself, I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t found words, and let them use me, master me, the words that got into me, that came out again on paper, which answered questions, they aren’t mine, the words, they belong to other people, we share them, I hire them out, I’m grateful to hire them, they’re few enough, but they master me, I’m in debt to them, I am their child, a child of borrowed words, of borrowed books, of teachers, the son of a coal-miner, the son who never went down the mine, I wouldn’t ever go down, I was afraid to go, I could have done, it’s all too easy to go down, but words took me in charge, and I learnt them, and I never went down the mine, and the words meant money, they’re like cheques, I’ve traded the words for scholarships, for hours in libraries, for education, for the chance of a better life, to escape from the dark hole in the ground and the showers at the pit-head, the hole that swallowed my father, the hole which will swallow my brothers, and they give you coal to take home, but I have no coal, I have words, and words are no use at home, I’ve given up home, I can hardly go back, what are you doing, they say, I meet them on the street, and I’m trying to dodge them, but they stop me and say, what are you doing, and I say, I’m at the university, and they say, doing your studies, I suppose, and I say, yes, that’s right, I’m at my studies, and they look so pleased, pleased because they’ve guessed right, it’s so shameful, pleased because they guessed, that I do my studies at a university. I took up rowing, I told you, I told you bef
ore, but you won’t mind, love is an endless conversation, we come back to things we’ve never quite said properly, time doesn’t matter, I took up rowing, with a lie in my heart, because they knew about Oxford, because of the boat race, and I knew I shouldn’t ever, ever, row in the boat race, I didn’t want to get into the crew, not even that, but I did it, in case they asked, was I an oarsman, and I could say yes, and then they could say, why, we never knew that, look, here’s Jack who’s an oarsman, an oarsman at Oxford, one of the boys, and I would never have told them, never the truth, I wanted, I don’t know what I wanted, I wanted them to recognize me, as something, as anything, something they knew, because I was a stranger, and it would have been a lie, but they never asked me, they never asked, Elaine, never, they said, oh, at Oxford, and they didn’t remember the boat race, Oxford is seventy miles, no, more than seventy, I try not to count, but a hundred years and farther than the moon, the Oxford we know, where we live, how we live, and it needn’t be, I shall teach children, and when it’s a bit nearer, as near as my fist from my shoulder, then I can go home, and we’ll know each other again, but now we don’t know each other, not at all, we use the same words, but it’s a different language, I hate the words, I don’t trust them, they twist and turn in my mouth, they say so many different things in the same way, with the same sounds, and we don’t speak to each other any more, not now, I’ve forgotten my native tongue, we gabble at each other, and smile, and we can say facts, there is a new baby at number fourteen, and there may be a strike in the spring, and I am well, and you are well, and he has been poorly, but we are all right, I am taking an exam next term, and George has a touch of the flu, but love is out of the language, it’s a look, a look so troubled, Elaine, she doesn’t understand what I’m saying, my mother, she looks, just looks and looks, and her face wrinkles, and her arms, your arms will never get like hers, Elaine, hers needn’t have done, all sinew and strength and muscle, and once they were lovely, perhaps, like yours, Elaine, but not by the time she was your age, all gone by then, she didn’t have words, you see, not like me, and her arms are crossed over her chest, and she looks at me, and she says, Jack, my boy, and I say, Mum, and we don’t say anything else, and she cries when I go away, cries as much as she did the first time, and I never have cried, the words were in charge, the words would not let me cry, I would hug her and stroke her hair and say, Mum, and she’d hug me, and we still love each other, Elaine, but we speak in separate languages. Listen to my accent, I’ve tried so hard to be honest, not to put on airs, but I talk all wrong for them, all stuck up, you lose your accent, you can’t do anything about it, it goes, it sounds all false when you try and go back to it, I can do better at a Yorkshire accent now, better than at my own, I wouldn’t try any more, but it’s true, I don’t have a voice of my own, not any more, perhaps that’s why the words all get lost and choked and twisted and turn around in my mouth, I don’t have a voice of my own to say them in, talking of voices, Elaine, your voice is your own, all the sounds of your body are yours, I can hear you always, in your voice and the rumble of your belly, and the cough in your throat and the creak in your knee when you stand up suddenly, Elaine, Elaine, Elaine. Do you think, when we’re married and all this suspense is over, do you think we’ll live in a house with a name, or a house with a number, I’d like a name, I’ve never lived in a house with a name, but Elaine, Elaine, you must wait, you must understand, you must realize, oh these words, they block, they’re like sermons, never as good as the text, you don’t listen, you wait for the text to come back again, but Elaine, I love you, I love God, you love God, but it’s not the same God, words again, they sound the same, they’re even spelt the same, but your God you can change, you alter him, he alters to suit you, one day he says, thou shalt not, the next day he says, of course you can, you’re Elaine, but we’re all special, Elaine, all of us, and none of us any more special to God than the rest, oh these words, don’t you see, yes, you do see, you don’t want to see, though, I love God, and I know, I can’t explain why, why do I love you, why do I love God, no one can explain, love isn’t like lust, it’s not a matter of genes and of glands, I love you, I love God, and there’s no contradiction, we shall love each other that way again, we can wait, we must wait, I want you all the time, but not like that all the time, I want you now, Elaine, I want you every hour of the day, awake and asleep, but not like that all the time, only sometimes like that, and when you smile at Charles, and I think it’s my smile, for me only that smile, I can’t bear it, Elaine, do you know, I believe when I see you using that smile, giving it out to someone else, I believe you love him the way you love me, you’re sharing your love, that I’m only one of your lovers, and Charles is so nice and smooth, and good-looking and gay and amusing, and I’m not, the words clutter up in my mouth, I can’t tell funny stories, I can’t make jokes all the time, and I feel that Charles has a part of you, a part I can’t ever have, and when you went out with him, I know I’d been difficult, I know I’d been stupid, but you see, or do you, do you, Elaine, I had to be, I love you, and Charles doesn’t love anyone, not even Margaret, not the way I love you, he worshipped, he didn’t, he doesn’t, know how to love, and not the way I worship God, but in a small, a lusting way, not with the love we have for each other, or the love we have for God, which is the love of a man for his father, the creator, like the love of a son, but more than that, and different, and God isn’t someone to love, he’s a means to live, a way of behaving, that involves every hour of the day, and your neighbour, and loving mankind, it’s a gratitude, too, for the world, and it never complains, it accepts, and Charles complains all the time, I don’t complain, do I, not the way Charles does, and you complain, too, you and Charles both complain, but one shouldn’t, never complain about God, he’s made things to be, and we must obey, and not to obey is to sin, and I will not sin, it’s easy to be obedient sometimes, because there’s no choice, it’s obvious, intelligent, but so hard at other times, human love is so strong, and man’s love for God is so weak, and they should strive together, not against one another, my love for you is weakening my love for God, Elaine, but you mustn’t let me be weak, oh Elaine, all these words, they sound so childish, so simple and weak and so twisting, they master me, the peace of God, that means something to me, we have known that together, haven’t we, you and I have known that, Elaine, it’s like the humming of the universe as it goes round and up and down and out, the rightness of everything, the peace of God, but it’s rare to hear that, do you hear it like that, I wonder, how could we ever describe it, and I write all this nonsense, and some of it must make a sense of a kind, Elaine, do you like it, and that peace is so good, and to sin is to break that peace, we must never do that, Elaine, we must always try and deserve it, and it’s difficult, you know how difficult, but we can manage, we have each other to help us, it’s only the sex that disturbs us and we can wait, we must wait, Elaine, we have each other, can’t we wait, why does it torture us so, the waiting, we’re both so weak, and I am so jealous, and Charles, it’s so silly, I know you don’t care about Charles, you don’t love him, he’s clever and funny, but your love is for me, but the thought of him with you, I go cold, terribly cold, the air has gone wrong, I can’t breathe, it’s got stuffy and icily cold, there’s gas in the air, we’re all going to die, because of him, because you’re with him, and I know it’s all nonsense, but yet, but yet, there’s a weight on my chest, I can’t breathe, and the air gets fouler and fouler, and the pain gets worse and worse, and I lie down and fight it, a nightmare that won’t go away, when you can’t wake up and someone is sitting and squeezing the life from you, sitting more and more heavy, on your chest, and you struggle, you struggle, and you wake up, thank God, at last you wake up, but you still can’t catch your breath for a minute, and your heart beats and beats and the room is full of a sinister gas, and it gradually goes away, as though by waking you’ve opened the window, but it nearly got you, you nearly died, that’s what it’s like, Elaine, and it’s worse than that, because t
errible things are happening in the nightmare, and I can’t stop them, because of the man on my chest who is squeezing, and they’re things that people are doing to you, terrible rapes and tortures, and it seems it will never end, and then when I saw you, I couldn’t say what I meant, and I told Nicholas I was going to kill myself, and I’d never do that, because it would be against God, and against you, and against the world, and mad, but I said it, the words got out, I didn’t mean to say it at all, and then when I’d said it, it suddenly seemed possible, do you know that feeling, you’ve never thought of doing something, and suddenly, without meaning to, you’ve said it, and then you actually start thinking about it, and Elaine, Elaine, I did think about it, in a crazy madman’s way, I was nearly out of my mind, and why should this happen to us, and I knew that nothing had happened, that you loved me, not Charles, I trusted you more than ever, then, in the fit, and it was a fit, the work of some devil, the devil, perhaps, they take over, these fits, I lose all control, and you mustn’t surrender me, ever, Elaine, to the fits of the devils, I shall never be able to look Charles in the face again, Elaine, don’t make it worse for me, I love you before God, there, I’ve said it, before God I love you, how the words crumple and spill, the man on my chest, and the sound of the universe, and why do I write to you, because I am never free from your presence, you are here in this room, looking over the sheets that I’m writing only you’re not, you’re asleep, I expect, you are so beautiful when you’re asleep, I can’t speak, I can’t say, I can’t write, I just want, you must know, Elaine, what do I want, I want the whole world and God, my cake and eat it, you must have a hundred letters like this, and I hope you destroy them, anyone would think I was mad, but I’m not mad, Elaine, I just can’t speak, or say, and I love you, and life is terribly difficult, isn’t it, I love you, all words, little money-boxes, words, but all been forced open and empty now, if I were a poet, what wouldn’t I write about you, can you feel me under all this nonsense, behind all these words, you must find me in this, Elaine, I’m here somewhere, and I cannot live without you, remember the man on my chest, and the sound of the universe, and tomorrow I shall see you again, and you will see me, and I’m not ashamed of a thing, I love you, words, but I love you, and only you and I know what that means, other people have their own love, but ours is ours, and we don’t want anyone else’s, it’s ours, to be kept in cupped hands and cherished, and suppose I could speak, it still couldn’t be said, it’s unsayable, it can only be felt, it’s a tone of voice and the slant of a smile, not words but a tone of voice, and I have no voice it’s lost somewhere between Wales and Oxford, got off the train at Bristol, there’s a joke for you, Elaine, good night, it’s bedtime, Elaine, Elaine, Elaine, good night. I love you, Elaine.