Imaginary Toys

by Julian Mitchell

  Nicholas was behaving pretty oddly at that time, I thought, and I kept my eyes on him, too, trying to find out what was up. He didn’t seem to be doing any work at all, and when he did go to the library it was to read something quite outside his field, like Provençal poetry or Ezra Pound (whose economic ideas must have struck him as quite crazy) or some terribly O.K. French poet like Du Bellay. And usually Nicholas worked like a mad thing, like someone who has only a limited number of hours to save the world, and can’t spare the time for a cup of coffee. (Actually, that’s wrong, of course, because it was when he was drinking coffee that he gave this impression most of all, but you see what I mean.)

  I caught him in Blackwell’s one morning as he was glancing at a French dictionary (quite a lot of people use the Blackwell’s dictionaries for their work).

  ‘Hypocrite lecteur,’ I said, quoting something I learned at school. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  But he just smiled and said: ‘Where are you going for the vacation, Charles?’

  ‘I’m not going on any vacation. I told you, I’m going to travel, for months, years even. What are you doing, looking guilty beside the Blackwell’s dictionary? Is it strictly responsible to read dictionaries in bookshops? Is it moral? Oughtn’t you to buy one?’

  ‘Works of reference should be provided free in all places of public worship,’ he said. ‘Blackwell’s is a place of worship.’

  ‘But what were you doing?’

  ‘I was just checking something for Delta.’

  ‘What is Delta? Oh, I see. Who is Delta?’

  Nicholas blushed very sharply and said, was I going anywhere in particular, or just on my way to the Rawlinson, like him? And I said he knew very well that I had nowhere to go, and no one to go with me, particularly not at eleven in the morning, and why didn’t he answer my question? But he still didn’t answer it, so I said, rather unkindly, that I was sure I’d heard of a magazine called Delta, and wasn’t it a rather avant-garde publication and in English? And at last he admitted that Delta was a person, not a magazine, and that it was not just a person, but a rather special person.

  ‘Why on earth do you call him Delta? Is it some kind of homosexual code? Or is it his real name?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘He must be madly Greek.’

  ‘He is English. As English as they come. And,’ he said quickly, ‘they come Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, Scandinavian, German and everything else.’

  Nicholas never likes talking about the people he’s in love with, or, rather, got a crush on, and quite rightly, in my opinion, because, if you’re like him, then for your own sake you should be as little ostentatious as possible. I mean, look what they did about the Wolfenden Report. Took the prostitutes off the streets and put them in phone-booths, and if anyone thinks that’s going to reduce the misery of homosexuals, he’s nuts. All the same, I managed to worm out of Nicholas that Delta was only a name he gave this particular person in his head, and that the particular person certainly didn’t know about it, so there was no point in me running round the streets shouting ‘Delta’ to find out who it was. He also said he used Greek letters to prevent himself from saying things he shouldn’t, and that this was a very good example of how successful his system was, because I still hadn’t a clue about whom he was talking. Which was true, and rather irritating. But all the same it was quite something to get such an admission out of Nicholas, and he made me promise not to tell anyone else, because it was, he thought, rather a shame-making thing to do, if not a positively guilt-loaded one, and if the secret got out he would simply feel a fool. So I duly promised and we talked of other things.

  My life at this time, for these few days, anyway, was just a very pleasant drift. I read novels, not very arduous ones, and not very fast; I looked at all the papers every morning, and read all the cartoons; I lay in the sun with my glamorous dark-glasses on and thought about absolutely nothing; I drank with my friends in the evenings, but only enough to quench my thirst; I drove into the country and took in a country-house here and a church there; I led a life of what in retrospect seems great dullness, but which at the time seemed extremely satisfying. It was a period of anticipation. Everything I did, or didn’t do, was coloured by the prospect of the week to come, when Margaret would be all mine. The rose on the tarmac was forgotten, the feeling that something had snapped seemed ridiculous. There was this interval of time which should be spent in idling, in drifting, in letting the strength gather itself for a prolonged exertion, a great emotional bun-feast, perhaps, but mostly just exertion for and of love. I intended to let my love for Margaret dominate me completely, nothing else would count at all, I would ride the mad white horses of the sea of passion, and all the rest of that stuff. And there would be some sort of trial of my worth as a lover, some difficult test which would win me Margaret at last. Fade-out in rose and gold.

  It was an awfully short period, of course, to prepare myself for anything so arduous, but it wasn’t really preparation so much as gathering that had to be done. A final count of supplies, an inspection of the army. If I make it sound like a military expedition, well, that’s what it was in a way. Once one starts thinking in terms of devoted slaves and knightly warriors, and tests and trials and all the rest of that medieval junk, the metaphor carries one along; one starts hoping for a real dragon as one walks one’s girl home. But of course the whole thing was irrelevant, really, because there was never any suggestion of the battlefield about my love for Margaret. In fact, if we have to stay in the Middle Ages, my passion for Margaret would have been much more accurately described as a feudal manor. I mean there was a hierarchy, and all that, me at the bottom, and Margaret at the top, and whatever she said got done, and whatever I made the mistake of saying got done if it happened to suit her. And, come to think of it, practically nothing I said ever did suit her, except for that one marvellous week-end in the middle of her Schools.

  But I went on dreaming very happily, and lying about oiling myself with sun-tan lotion as though it was some magic ointment which would help me against dragons, and one evening Nicholas caught me gazing into a jeweller’s window, full of rather exciting wedding-rings, and he said: ‘My dear Charles, before you buy a ring you should wait for her to propose’; which made me very angry.

  But I couldn’t think of any very satisfactory answer to that, except that he should mind his own bloody business, and he just laughed. So we went and had a few drinks, and I stopped looking into windows. At least when he was around.

  As I was on my way home that evening, thinking about the general implausibility of modern life, the lack of proper attention given to the meaning of meaning, and other related topics, I came across Mick. Mick was a well-known figure in those days, who claimed to be Irish, but spent most of his time in English jails, for vagrancy and begging and such things, and what remained of it wandering round the streets either dead drunk and harmless or half drunk and accosting passers-by for sixpence ‘for a cup of tea’ and a little less harmless. The tea, of course, was wholly mythical, since every time Mick found anyone with a soft enough heart—and there were few around, because, as I’ve said, he was a well-known local figure, but didn’t add much to Oxford as a tourist attraction—every time he got enough coppers, he would gabble something which sounded like ‘Bless you, me darlin’, but probably wasn’t, and head for the nearest pub which would let him in, these, too, being few in number, and there he would invest in spirits. Mick never drank beer, as he once told a magistrate with some pride. He didn’t have much conversation, Mick, he would shuffle up to you when he saw you coming, and whine till you were close, and try to block your way, and if you passed him without acknowledging his need he would pursue you a few yards with a medley of old-fashioned oaths.

  As I say, he was well known, if not widely loved, and frankly he didn’t distract me that evening from my consideration of the word ‘mean’ and whether it had meaning, and what, if anything, was meant when one meant ‘mean’, and, anyway,
it was a fine night for strolling. But as I walked past him, deep in this problem, he snatched at my elbow so that I was more or less forced to look at him, and to ask him please would he mind letting me go as I had urgent business of a personal nature which did not allow me to banter with stray drunks. Only I didn’t say any of that; in fact, I didn’t say anything at all, I just looked at him, and he whined at me, thinking he’d made a catch, and I suddenly felt an overwhelming disgust that anyone should be reduced to living like him, in an absolutely futile and hopeless way, and then I felt great pity for him, and I put my hand in my pocket to give him something to forget, if he was still capable of remembering, the waste and shame of a drunkard’s life. And I found only two pound notes. And then, for some extraordinary reason, I gave him both of them, and he looked absolutely astounded, and so did I, I expect, and then he dashed for the nearest pub, certain, perhaps, that the leprechauns or DTs had got him at last. After he’d gone, I stood there for a moment getting over the shock, and gradually aware that a new feeling was coming over me, one which I knew only too well, and couldn’t deal with at all, a feeling that somehow it was all my fault that Mick was a useless drunken beggar, and that giving him money didn’t excuse me, it made my crime rather worse, because you can’t calm a conscience by sending a hundred-pound wreath to the funeral of the man you’ve driven to suicide, you can only surfer and suffer. And at the same time I knew perfectly well that there were probation officers, welfare officers, prison officers and many other people who had tried to do something for Mick, and they were all looking at me with accusing eyes. And I knew, too, that if they had failed there was nothing I could do for him, I was only a milk-and-water Liberal, with a conscience of aspen. And I knew it wasn’t my fault, really, and I knew I should have felt awful whether I’d given him money or not, and that Mick wasn’t really my problem, it was something much bigger, a failure of nerve somewhere, a failure to grow and accept myself, I didn’t know which, or even if it was either, but somewhere I’d failed.

  And I thought of myself outside the jeweller’s, and I thought of Mick’s eyes summing me up as a prospect, and of his voice whining for a cup of tea, and I wondered which of us was really the fraud. I’ve always had this sense of guilt, it follows me round like a tin can tied to my ankle, noisy and sharp-edged, but not big enough to slow me down, that’s not what it’s for, it’s to make me ashamed when people stare. Nicholas once said something rather good about me: ‘Class-systems work in two ways: they make people feel guilty of being rich, and guilty of being poor. If you have a really unsuccessful life, Charles, you will manage the double.’ Nicholas talks a lot of balls sometimes, and I don’t give a damn about the class-system bit. He was just so hideously accurate about me. Because now I felt outraged that I should have given so much money away. Giving money away to beggars is like paying parking fines. The next time you park the fine will be bigger. A second offence is always more serious. Ask Mick. It’s a kind of self-blackmail. And I’m not responsible for Mick, I’m not responsible for the whole damned miserable world, I thought, I’m not even responsible for myself. Which was true, in a way, but not very comforting, in fact rather the opposite, because I kept thinking of myself outside the jeweller’s, and Mick outside the pubs of Oxford, and I didn’t want to be a beggar all my life.

  5

  Elaine in the Library

  I can’t sit there. The sun’s too strong, I’d look out of the window. Other side just as bad. Go by the Reserved Books place. But they’re always whispering. Never mind. Place is practically empty. Not early. Shocking idleness. What this morning? Don’t say I’ve left—no, here. Chaucer I did yesterday, didn’t I? Oh, not Skelton, not this morning. Not Milton. He’s for a rainy day. I used to love poetry. I love poetry and hate literature, that’s it. Hours I used to spend just reading and reading. Never remembered a line. Dreamy. Again one day, perhaps. Not for the next few weeks, though. Work. It had better be Wordsworth. No, stick to the schedule, easier like that. Oh, not Skelton, not Spenser. Do this afternoon’s work this morning. Lessen the drudgery. Donne and all those. Like Donne, he’s good, wiry. Stands up to the critics and hits them back. Pretty academic mind, though, himself. Compasses, I ask you, compasses. Nice blue cover. There’s Nicholas. Got so cross with me yesterday, and quite right, too. Always right, Nicholas, that’s why he’s so maddening. Awful Father Gibbons. Where did I put those notes? Shan’t look at Nicholas. Here we are. Oh yes, Jack Donne and John Donne, rake and priest. Give me Jack every time, please. Will Jack go and get solemn and regret his youth? Please not. Perhaps my parents will take him to court, like Donne’s wife’s. Goodness, what was their name? I should know these things. Drury? No, that was something else. More. That’s right, More. They couldn’t, not now, it’d look so silly. But they’d want to. Beneath our station. ‘Elaine’s gone and married some schoolmaster chap she met at Oxford. Nice enough, I dare say, but not quite our sort, don’t you know. Yes, awful blow. Seemed such a sensible girl, too.’ Well, that’s their fault, not mine. Daddy’s grandfather was only a farmer. Awful the way people cling to respectable social position. ‘Pity about Cole’s girl, did you hear? Run off with some terrible fellow. Schoolmaster. No, not public, I’m afraid, grammar, if that. Absolute nobody. Always said it was a mistake to educate women. Poor old Cole, must be livid. Terribly cut up. No, an absolute nobody. Son of a coal-miner or something. Very bad indeed. Let them down awfully badly.’ Stupid, loathsome people. ‘Went to Frinton this year. Always go to Frinton, matter of fact. Children like it. Lots of young people. Nice lot of people. Our sort, you know. Tennis, and all that. Dances for the young. Have a whale of a time.’ It’s no good being unfair, no good at all, stop it. They’re perfectly nice people, they just don’t think before they speak. Don’t think at all. Stopped thinking when they got their first job. Dangerous to think in your first job. Dream about golf and cars. ‘Have you seen my new baby? Really good buy, a Morris Oxford. Runs like a bird. Give you a spin, if you’d like. Marvellous little girl.’ No, stop it. ‘Mummy and Daddy, I have a surprise for you, I am going to get married.’ ‘Isn’t that a bit sudden, darling?’ ‘No, I don’t think so, we’ve been sleeping together for a year.’ Except that’s not true. Why did I have to think of that? Donne. ‘Busy old sun, unruly fool.’ That’s terribly good, really. No rubbish there. Nothing about warming the earth, and being benevolent. That was a nice afternoon with Charles, sun like anything. Shouldn’t have told him that, though. Wanted to tell someone. Why should I do that? Jack’s fault. My fault. Charles won’t tell. Perhaps he will. Oh my God. No, Charles is all right, just that awful Margaret. Not her, but the way he hangs on like a dog. He’d be better if he believed in something, perhaps. Perhaps. Dear God, please let me marry Jack, but we can’t possibly afford it yet, so may we sleep together while we’re waiting? I mean, it’s wrong in a way, I know that, but it’s not all that wrong, is it? We are going to get married. We do love each other. Please God. Donne. ‘Go and catch a falling star, get with child a mandrake root.’ That is academic. You have to go and find out what a mandrake root is. No, that’s not fair, not his fault. But it’s forced. Or is it? I don’t like it. Not when I think about it. No. Catch a falling star, yes, all right. But getting a mandrake root with child. Well, so it is about impossibilities, it’s still not very nice. Earthy in the wrong sense. No one would think of making love to a vegetable, all carroty and covered with earth. And worms, too, probably. Ugh. Not fantastic enough. You could go and try. Can’t even try to catch a falling star. What rubbish I’m talking. Mandrakes don’t exist. But did he think they did? Perhaps it’s all right, then. Still don’t like it. Horrid masculine idea. Where like a pillow on a bed, the pregnant bank swells up to rest the violet’s reclining head, ti-tum. Only not, that’s what’s clever. Tum-ti. Or is it? Sat we two one another’s best. There, same thing again. I am clever this morning. Sex underground again. Pregnant bank. Perhaps he used to go off into the fields and make love to the earth. Where else can he have got it all? Very a
cademic. Or very peculiar. No one would think of making love to the earth. On the earth, yes. That time near Eynsham. Goodness, I must stop thinking about sex all the time. Never did till we stopped. Donne’s fault. You’d never think it of Jack. Ever such delicate hands. Yet they’re big and ugly, with short fat fingers, look almost stunted, the fingers. When he’s praying he doesn’t make a tall pointed arch like me, he makes an igloo. Me a wigwam, he an igloo. But no, he’s not so cold. Would I still go to church if it wasn’t for him? And would he if it wasn’t for me? Nicholas always quoting that thing he saw in America. ‘Find the strength for your life. Worship together this Sunday.’ Ugh. Then he talks about the friendly neighbourhood church. Odd, the Americans must be. Nicholas must be joking. Can’t make religion something like petrol. Perhaps they do, though. Methodists have more and merrier miles. Roman Catholigas is blessed by the Pope. With God you get more kicks per minute. Oh really, I shall fail if I don’t concentrate. Ambiguity. Jack and John. I still dislike pregnant bank. Sounds as if they’re making love on a pregnant woman’s belly. Disgusting. Teeming nature. Everyone always wants the earth to be teeming and fertile. Population getting out of control as it is. Who wrote about Wordsworth in the tropics? Not relevant, he was attacking the Romantics. Huxley. The pathetic fallacy. Not this morning. Must concentrate. Daren’t look up, Nicholas will catch my eye and look stern. Have to pretend that nothing happened yesterday and it did. Why does he hate God so much? Because he’s queer, perhaps. Must be awfully odd, like being a woman, only not. I wonder what they do. Poor things. Jack says it’s because he can’t have children, that’s why he hates God. Can’t be right. He’s creative in lots of other ways. Lots of people who aren’t queer can’t have children, and that doesn’t—perhaps it does. If I don’t concentrate I shall get a Third. Perhaps I should, no, all right then, pray. Dear God, for as much as without Thee we are as nothing worth. No. I won’t say thee, it’s ridiculous. Trouble isn’t God, it’s Father Gibbons. Nicholas right as usual. Jack says you have to accept the teachings of the Church, because the Church is. Oh but. That day was so awful. I thought I would never stop crying. Not again till we’re married. Not again till we’re married. And he’d been so clumsy, I knew something was wrong. I don’t make love to Father Gibbons, Jack, but to you, to you, to you. Stop that. Concentrate. Whoever said that sex wasn’t important for women was mad. Stuff and nonsense. Perhaps it’s different after marriage. You get used to each other, bored. What a dreadful thing. And oh, he says it’s a sin, and it is, but I don’t know. Stop it, will you? But suppose he were to be run over, before we were married. What difference can it make? I love him, he loves me. Shut up, shut up, shut up. He isn’t dead. Then why not? No laws for people when they’re in love. If only I could make Father Gibbons see. Never slept with anyone in his whole life, I bet. Another priest, perhaps. They’re all queers, must be. Perhaps Jack is, that’s why he likes going there. Don’t be ridiculous. If Jack’s queer, go and get with child a mandrake root. Terribly earthy image. But a man doesn’t look like that at all. But then it’s a woman, do wake up. Jack doesn’t look like anything else. I don’t need to be reminded, I suppose. Don’t even have to shut my eyes. There. But I don’t think about him like that alone. So silly to make sex that important. Goodness, there’s a switch. But I don’t think of him as a male animal making love to me. I want him to make love to me, goodness, yes. But not all the time. Father Gibbons says I mustn’t think about it. Simply doesn’t understand. Queer. If he knew what went on in my mind. Shocked out of his cassock. No, too queer to care about women. Then yes, because I think about Jack. What’s in Jack’s mind wouldn’t interest him. Wants to get me out and put himself in. Unfair. There are those two from Jack’s college, there every Sunday. They must be queer. Father Gibbons must enjoy them. But the qualities of God’s instruments do not alter the qualities of God. Clever, that. Must have read it somewhere. Donne knew what he was talking about. Never been keen on sticky palms, though. They all seem to have liked them. Fashions in love change like anything else, I suppose. Else a great prince in prison lies. That is marvellous, marvellous. Ever so right. Would Father Gibbons understand that? ‘But Father Gibbons, it’s by Donne, and he was a clergyman, a dean.’ All those sermons. Morbid, though, dressing up like that. John Donne. Jack. What did Christ say? Not the point, don’t be trapped into fundamentalism. Shall be, though. Fundamentals are very important. Have to argue it out all the time. Missing the point. Morality. Absurd to say we’re immoral when we love each other. Sleeping with someone you love isn’t immoral, can’t be. Nicholas said something about that. Rather nice. When Jack wants me, his arm goes all stiff across my back, and I know he’s trying to control himself. Don’t want him to. Really don’t. Please God, can’t we be happy again? Sound like Eve, too stupid, prayers like that. His eyes look so miserable, dogs begging for a bone. So unimportant, sex, so terribly important. Stupid paradoxes. Hate people who say that sort of thing. Unimportant when you have it, vital when you don’t. Only Father Gibbons, God, someone, says no. Couldn’t be less wicked, it’s truthful and good. I suppose they don’t approve, the Romans, of contraceptives because then the practical argument disappears. Fancy a lot of sworn celibates telling people how to run their sex-lives. But they’re right to stop licentiousness. Goodness, that can’t be what I mean. Untruthful love, sex without love. But that’s not us, we are in love. And—Donne. That’s no argument, everyone thinks he’s a special case, Jack’s right about that. But then everyone is special. Sex without love is bad, though. Nicholas was so nice, really, being unsympathetic, just what I needed. Oh Jack, Jack. Else a great prince in prison lies. Perhaps we could get married now. They can’t make exceptions, everyone is an exception. They’re right, that’s what’s so awful, absolutely right. I don’t care. I want Jack. We’ll break up in despair, otherwise, don’t You see? What with everything else, parents, and him staying here and me going down, it’s going to be bad enough as it is, You do see, You just won’t listen. It’s only when we don’t have it that we quarrel so much, about such silly things, too. You do know. You just won’t answer, why should You, after all. Because the Church knows best in the long run, and the end justifies the means…. You can’t mean that, can You? I don’t believe it. You can’t put us here on earth just to make us unhappy. It would be so pointless. Why should some suffer as an example to the rest? But You must see that we won’t harm anyone else by doing it, in fact we’ll both be much happier and nicer, and then we’ll actively help other people. Didn’t You hear what Nicholas called Jack? A morose dullard? And that could never have been said until You stopped us, or whoever it was. And I do believe in You and love You, but please, please, please. Stop this. Imagery. New science. Structure. Rhyme scheme. At the round earth’s imagined corners blow your trumpets, angels. Here we have the opposition of the old and the new. Round earth, imagined corners. Compare with contemporary cosmology. Show intelligence by comparing effect of Einstein on modern verse. Can’t. Sorry. But then one does have to know a lot to enjoy properly. But do they teach one the right things? Probably not. An age of criticism. It’s like us. I mean—do I? Things more complicated than they look, have to be discussed all the time. Belief, feeling, against knowledge, reason. It’s not a question of faith at all, really. I shan’t stop believing in God. I can’t imagine being without You. You know that. And then there’s the parents. Must be brave and take Jack home. He’ll hate it, be embarrassed. Thinking about his accent all the time. They’re not all that bad. Very simple, that’s it, very simple. Clear and wrong ideas. Clear, though, so it’s easy to know when you’ve done something wrong. You shouldn’t have done it, and there is no more to be said, the dress will be sent back in the morning, and you will wrap it yourself and pay for the postage. And the same with this young man. And when you disagree, it’s like treachery. Like in politics. Family life a continual dissembling. Like a good poem, disparate elements forming a whole that none of them understands. That’s rather clever. Layers and layers of feeling an
d meaning behind each gesture. Ambiguity. Donne, now, please. Heavens, look at the time. Almost coffee-time. Where’s Jack this morning? Well! Sitting right opposite and I never even noticed. Working now, his head down. I’d know that head. Mustn’t let him see I’ve noticed, pretend I’ve been working like mad all morning, too busy even for him. Make him jealous of Donne. No, no more of that. Oh, Jack, dear Jack. He’s got that green tie on again. I told him he ought to buy a new one, that’s getting so dirty. Says he’s saving for our wedding. Liar. Something very nice for his birthday. No, not that. Well, why not? That as well, then. He can have that whenever he wants it, though, not much of a present. Oh, and the sun’s got here, busy old sun, unruly fool. I like that. Like a schoolboy who’s forgotten to brush his hair. We’ll have a boy like Jack, with brown hair that gets all rumpled and crumpled and unruly. Call him busy old fool when he comes in and wakes us too early in the morning, he won’t understand, but we will. But he’ll laugh, and think it’s all our private joke. Oh, education, how it makes life rich and ambiguous. What a nice thought. Here he comes. Books aside. Looking at me? Shan’t look up. Been working all morning, longer than he has. He’s coming. Else a great prince in prison lies. And over the page, why, what do we have here?