Imaginary Toys (11 page)

The committee said that it found her story interesting, up to a point, but what was the point, it wondered.

E said that the story was not yet over. The experience of the first day had unnerved her somewhat, and she determined to return next day, not only to please J but also to overcome the feeling that his failure was anything shameful, and to determine whether or not he was speaking truthfully in not feeling shame himself. On this occasion, and on the following two days of the rowing festival, J’s boat ‘rowed over’, that is to say it neither ‘bumped’ nor was subject to the indignity of being ‘bumped’. By the third day, E said, she was aware of the rules of the sport and able to follow it with some approach at intelligence. But that she was aware at each race in which J took part, and in no race in which he did not take part, of a feeling of intense excitement. She described herself as scarcely able to look down the river after the gun had gone off. She said that she was at once thrown into a mental confusion. She could not bear the thought of his boat having been ‘bumped’ or having ‘bumped’ out of sight, since in either case she would not know what had happened, and would, furthermore, be prevented from seeing
him indulging in his sport. The alternative, however, was if
anything
still more distressing. If his boat rounded the distant bend, it was necessarily either pursuing or being pursued. In both events E found herself in great mental agony as J’s boat, and of course J himself, approached, the effort being intense. She was consumed with anxiety lest the boat fail to make the ‘bump’ it was attempting, or failed to evade its pursuer. She described these feelings as absurd and exhausting, but inevitable. The same thing happened upon all subsequent occasions that she watched J taking part in this sport. She had subtly prevailed upon him to abandon it, but he had not done so till his academic work forced him to spend more
afternoons
in the library. She said that she was not at all sure whether the events she had described would help the committee to define the phrase ‘in love with’, but the only explanation she could offer for her feelings was that she was ‘in love with’ J, and that this state, if it could be described as a state, was responsible for her admittedly foolish anxieties.

The committee thanked her very much for the evidence she had given, and bought her another cup of coffee. Shortly
afterwards
she left, and the committee added her evidence to what it already had on the case. Previous evidence includes verbal
conversation
with both E and J, reports from other sources, visual observation and overheard fragments of conversation between E and J.

The new evidence is valuable in many ways. It confirms previous reports and findings that to be ‘in love with’ someone, or simply to ‘love’ him, involves a certain amount of irrationality on the part of the patient (patient being used in the sense that Mr T. S. Eliot has used it in his drama
Murder
in
the
Cathedral,
a document otherwise unhelpful to the committee). The patient is aware of the
irrationality
, and may try to overcome it, almost inevitably without success.

The evidence also clearly establishes a connection between what E described as a ‘heightened sense of awareness’ and the state of being ‘in love’. It may also have established a connection between physical and mental confusion—the clutching at the rail of the barge seems to have been definitely connected with E’s state of mind with regard to J. This connection, however, has long been established in such cases. Its value here is only in confirming that E really is ‘in love with’ J by the usually accepted standards.

What, though, is new, what previously unknown is now known as
a result of this voluntary narrative? Nothing. The committee states this with much regret. The nature of love remains as mysterious to it as heretofore. It does not regret, however, hearing the
evidence
, as the committee now feels that it knows even more about E than it knew before, and it likes E, anyway.

The committee considered the relationship of E and J after the interview was at an end, and decided that nothing was changed. The couple are definitely ‘in love with’ each other, and the
problems
that they experience are ones of temperament, exacerbated by social and religious difficulties not always within the couple’s control. The narrative illustrates the differences in temperament, particularly at the point where E confessed her feeling to J, who seemed surprised. E’s feelings are not always very clear, whereas J’s usually are. This should not, however, make for permanent difficulty.

The committee has previously had opportunity to express its contempt for the social system of Great Britain, and for the evils of organized religion of any sort, but in particular of the
Anglo-Catholic
movement within the Church of England, and of one Father Gibbons even more particularly, an especially evil side-kick of a long-established tyranny. The committee considers the
arguments
of that movement to be the purest historical hogwash, to adapt an American phrase of which the committee is perhaps too fond, regarding the borrowing of Roman rites, rituals, vestments and all that jazz, as little short of barefaced robbery. The
committee
however believes that E and J are not so craven as to fall victims to the propaganda of the holy sacrament, and that if it comes to a race would put its money, short of funds though the committee is, owing to the niggardliness of government support, on the couple rather than on the thurifer.

*

One of the advantages of being homosexual is that one is prevented from being class-conscious. There are, of course, those who can only have sexual relations with truck-drivers and sailors, but this is a preoccupation with occupations rather than social status. As a homosexual, one divides people into two groups. Not, as most non-queers would imagine, into queers and non-queers, but into those that mind one’s queerness and those who don’t. It is a defensive classification, but a necessary one if one is to avoid
unpleasantness. I think the lack of class-consciousness is an advantage. But at the moment I can’t think of any others.

*

Books to be written. Wanted—an enterprising publisher.

A
History
of
Onanism,
with many two-tone illustrations. Tweed and Potomac, 425. ($8.50). Limited edition of thirteen copies, with illustrations in colour by Salvador Dali. One hundred guineas, three hundred dollars. By Strunk, White, Hillard, Botting and Russell. Reviewed by Lionel Trilling in
Partisan
Review
.
Expanded review printed in
Encounter
and later collected in
Fugitives
from
the
Double
Image
of
Liberal
Tradition.
Fugitives
reviewed by Barzun in
Partisan
Review
.
Expanded review printed in
Encounter
,
collected, etc. In England the review of the review would be serialized in the
Observer
and given flattering reviews in all the reviews. After a month it would be remaindered, after a year sold for pulp. But
A
History
of
Onanism
would by then be in its eighteenth impression.

A
Hurried
View
of
Attica
—aerial photographs of Greece, with text by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Lawrence Durrell, Robert Liddell, Maurice Bowra and Lionel Trilling. There would be no one left to review it, so it would sell like mad. Preface by Freya Stark. Poems by Seferis.
Tradition
and
the
Individual
Talent
—a new novel by I. Compton Burnett.
The
Uses
of
Illiteracy
.
An autobiography, by Richard Hoggart,
introduction
by Raymond Williams. Describes his gradual withdrawal from contemporary life, his discovery of the beauty of the Middle Ages, and his contempt for the classlessness of modern society. Dedicated to William Morris. There is a photogravure of Kelmscott Manor, and a reproduction of the binding of the Kelmscott Chaucer.

Historical
Argument
and
Logical
Analysis,
the controversial memoirs of H. R. Trevor-Roper as told to A. J. P. Taylor.

*

Delta starts his exam tomorrow, so tonight I gave a small party. I’m afraid Charles guessed, damn him. I made a very foolish slip of the tongue to him the other day, calling Delta Delta. Why do I use these Greek letters? I can’t remember now, I always have done. Fear that this notebook may fall into the hands of my landlady or the police? I don’t think so. An innate love of secrecy, perhaps. Or
do I write this in the hope it will be found after my death? That I shall be a sufficiently interesting person to have my biography written? Do I write this to give clues to my biographers? ‘Who is the dark man with freckles of the notebook? Many suggestions have been made, including some which can only be called
unscholarly
. It must be said at once that there is little likelihood that Nicholas Sharpe was at any time in love with the Vice-Chancellor of the University or the Stationmaster of Oxford. There is not a shred of evidence to support these suggestions, in the notebooks or elsewhere. No, we must look more closely at the lorry-drivers of the period. It is well known that all homosexuals are attracted to lorry-drivers, and we need not think that Sharpe was any exception to the rule….’

[The very fact that I write such absurdities shows that I
do
hope to be written about. The paragraph above may be taken as a deliberate hint. What then about this piece in brackets. That way madness lies. Perhaps I should burn the notebook at once.]

The party was small and enjoyable. Delta, at any rate, seemed to find it amusing. Charles brought Margaret, who was much nicer than usual. (See above.) When Delta left, before the party was over,

That, as they used to say in America, is the way the cookie crumbles. Elaine and Jack seemed happy. Conversation generally dry. Plenty of wit, but not too brittle. I think I may be rather good at giving parties. I must learn to cook. Dinners are so much less exhausting. Once the food is cooked you can sit back and forget about the awful business of filling glasses and mixing drinks and fetching ice. None of that wandering around overhearing fragments of dull dialogue. None of that constant anxiety for one’s carpet.

*

Phi has been unusually silent. No telegrams, no postcards. This can mean either a sudden unannounced appearance, or a very long
heart-breaking letter, followed by a sudden appearance. What on earth would I do with him now? The parties do not begin properly till next week. I hope he can delay his arrival till then. I have sent an overnight telegram to Delta saying:
THE FRIENDS OF THE
BODLEIAN LIBRARY WISH YOU NOT LUCK BUT CHANCE TO SHOW YOUR
FULL ABILITY
. An absurd waste of money. It comes of having associated with people like Phi. To them money is something to be used for pleasure. To me it is still something to be used for getting the basic necessities, food, alcohol, books, cigarettes. Not that I am short at the moment. It isn’t a question of being short at all. It is a question of attitude. If I had as much money as Phi I would still not spend it in the way he does. Partly because I wouldn’t know how, partly because I wouldn’t really want to. I should be equally extravagant, I expect, but on quite different things. Money is only intolerable when it obsesses one. The trouble is that if one has ever been short, one is always likely to be slightly neurotic about it. One should fight against obsession. I still can’t help feeling that it was a waste of money to send that telegram, though. Perhaps if I had given him a rose, as Charles did to Margaret. But that would have involved expense of a quite different kind. And I did get a definite pleasure in sending it. Because I think he will know at once who it is from. I shall certainly be very disappointed if he doesn’t.

Schizophrenic, homosexual, a little drunk, it is high time I went to bed. If only one could sleep without dreams.

On the last morning, when I drove her down to the Examination Schools as usual, I was really rather excited. When I dropped her I said: ‘Don’t forget, Margaret, after this morning we’re going to have the time of our lives. You just go in there and show them.’

‘It’s too late now to show them anything they don’t know already,’ she said. ‘Honestly, after a week of these papers I feel as if I won’t know what to do this afternoon. It gets to be a habit, going in there and writing.’

‘Don’t worry about this afternoon,’ I said, ‘I have it all cared for.’

‘Well, thanks for the lift, Charles.’

And off she went for the last time, in those long black stockings which really gave her something extra, I’m not sure what. That absurd uniform that girls have to wear for exams makes most of them look awful, like overgrown schoolgirls, but Margaret seemed to be taller and grander, and the silly little hat they have to wear looked on her like the badge of some terribly O.K. foreign
decoration
. Dear Margaret, I thought, it will be nice for you to look ordinary again. But for a moment I kept the picture of her in her black hat and black stockings and black skirt, and wondered whether she shouldn’t just pause for a minute before she threw away the hateful things, pause to consider how they’d protected her for three years, in a sense, how the sheltered little world of Oxford had given her a pretty good time, and whether the outside world was really quite as attractive as it always seems in the days before you enter it. Anyway, I didn’t think about this for very long, partly because, although I
had
had a pretty good time myself, I’d also had enough, and after a while the continual postponement of life can have a very bad effect on one’s character, and make one
very dissatisfied and gloomy and even intellectually arrogant, and partly because I had to go and buy the lunch I was going to give her.

The market at Oxford is one of those covered ones, so that you can wander about in it for hours, quite lost to the vagaries of the weather. For instance, among its many attractions is a shop which sells things like tinned grasshoppers and chocolate ants and bumble-bees, and there’s the pleasure of selecting from about fifty different kinds of cheese, and then there’s the appalling problem of the kind of bread one’s going to have, so that one really can spend hours in a world of delicious sights and smells. And nothing in the lunch I was planning was in the very least ordinary,
everything
had to be not just special but extra-speciaj (and pretty expensive too, I don’t mind saying), and rare and a treat and delicious. Kumquats I bought, to begin with, and smoked salmon, which isn’t all that special, I admit, but a treat all the same, and really brown brown bread to go with it, and then I thought perhaps she would prefer caviar, so I bought some of that, too; and then, for the main part of the meal, since we were going to eat it out of doors, thick slices of ham, chosen with great care for juiciness and flavour, nice and smoky, and six lettuces so that we need only eat the hearts, and some spring onions (which could always be
replanted
somewhere along the river-bank if she thought them too daring), and some tomatoes and a whole cucumber and some celery, really crisp young celery, without any of those hairs that spoil the crunchiness; and as well as the ham I bought some slices of cold beef, the sort you put between great hunks of new white bread with lots of butter, which you guzzle rather than eat, and then new white bread, of course, and pounds of butter, and then fruit, peaches and apples and even some ripe apricots. And that was only the beginning. By the time I’d finished I had a whole line of men carrying bags, I’d spent pounds and pounds, and there was quite enough to keep two people alive very comfortably for a week, without either of them having to do anything more strenuous than pay a visit to the refrigerator. And then of course there had to be wine, lots of it, because if you spend a whole afternoon and evening drinking, even quite slowly, just sipping in fact, you can still get through an awful lot of liquid. So I bought every colour—
rosé
for the river itself, and for the chicken (did I mention that?), white wine for most of the time, red for the evening. And not just any old wine, either, but the sort which costs much too
much, however good it may be, because it’s smart and clever to drink it, and the swank papers pay wine merchants masquerading as connoisseurs to write about it in chi-chi little columns. And there was even a bottle of brandy, in case we needed it for medicinal purposes, or stayed out too long and got cold.

As I loaded all this into my car I was very glad that I had the sort which you can take the roof off, otherwise there simply would not have been room. Because I also had in the back a very ancient gramophone, the sort that has a huge horn and you can’t hear anything because of the scratch of the needle, but which looks marvellous on the prow of a punt, if a punt can be said to have a prow, and which is just marvellous, anyway. Besides, you can always take the horn off, if you want to, and use it as a megaphone, and I thought that morning that if we were going to be silly we might as well do it thoroughly. With this went my collection of worn 1920 records,
Tea
for
Two
and
Hey,
Maggie
;
Yes,
Ma
;
Come
Right
Upstairs
and
Ukulele
Lady
and
Yes,
Sir,
That’s
My
Baby
and other similar gems of the period. I don’t know what it is about the records of that period—I suppose they’re the ones to which my generation’s parents got married and had our elder brothers and sisters, but unless there’s something very horrid and deep-seated and neurotic about that, it can’t be why they have such an appeal. Perhaps we remember them from the not-quite-soundproof womb, I don’t know. Anyway, they’re funny, and they’re also extremely good tunes, and besides it’s marvellous to have ancient gramophones on which to play them. Actually, I prefer Lionel Hampton and Billie Holliday to almost anyone you can mention, but the dear old Savoy Orpheans also have their place in my hagiography, with their beat so heavy you can feel the musicians chomping along as though they were in a chain-gang, and their absurd violins, and their plunkety-plunkety ukuleles. Those may not have been the days, and how should I know whether they were or not, but it’s nice to pretend they were and we’ve missed them, and therefore we’re deprived and to be pitied. Well, not really, but they do make one very nostalgic.

Anyhow, to get back to the story, at half past twelve I’d already been waiting for Margaret for twenty-five minutes, because I hadn’t frankly expected her to see the thing out to the bitter end, but she did, and at last she appeared, having given the academicians far more than they deserved, even though it can’t have been all that much. But at least she’d made her effort, and I had made mine,
too, the necessary champagne waiting in my car wrapped in wet towels (the Proctors always got very cross if you started drinking it in the street, I can’t think why), and as soon as I saw her I went to greet her with my arms stretched out, to tell her to come and eat, drink and be merry, but first, drink. But one can’t keep one’s arms outstretched for very long when there are a whole lot of people in the way, so I stopped pretending to be a bird, or a head-waiter, folded my wings, as it were, and tried to force a passage through to her. Throng was the only word for it, hundreds of people telling each other how shamefully they’d done, correctly enough, I dare say, and how simply divine, my dear, it was that the whole bloody thing was over. There were one or two calm self-sufficient-looking men who spoke to no one, and one girl in tears, and these men at least looked as though they were already certain of their success (I think they must have got jobs before they’d even sat down to start writing), but most of the place was filled with hooligans shouting and laughing and jumping on their mortar-boards and such like juvenilia, and there was Margaret, too, in the middle of a lot of hooligans, moving very slowly and noisily towards the door. My heart began to sink a bit as I got near them all, because they were actors, for the most part, and actors don’t have to act to look like hooligans, and when they
do
act like them they make a very good job of it indeed. I don’t have much against actors when they’re acting, but when they’re not I find them extremely
tiresome
. For one thing, even when they’re not on stage, they’re still always giving some sort of a performance, and when you get about six of them, as there were then, each one is doing his damnedest, which is pretty damned, usually, to act the others out of the room, or, in this case, out of the huge vestibule of Thomas Jackson’s masterpiece, the Oxford Examination Schools. And as I edged my way to them, my heart sank a little bit more, because I wanted Margaret for myself, and I knew that if these intolerable little show-offs didn’t move off pretty quick I’d be left with Margaret
and
a cast of thousands, as it were, which would not be in any way the same thing at all. They were jabbering away like parrots, too, which annoyed me, because Margaret could hardly hear what I was saying, which was, roughly: Come along down to my car, baby, where the champagne is just bursting to get out of the bottle. In fact she didn’t catch on till we were all half-way out of the door, but then she did, only too well.

‘Champagne! Oh, Charles, how marvellous! Goody!’

Well, by the time we were actually outside Thomas Jackson’s masterpiece and on the pavement, she’d expressed her delight so loudly and cheerfully that all the actors wanted champagne too, in fact they said: ‘Oh, how
nice,
Charles’, and ‘Oh, Charles, how sweet of you’, and ‘Charles thinks of
everything
’,
and ‘Did someone say champagne?’ So I was in something of a fix. But I wasn’t having all that lot drinking my drink, and certainly there wasn’t room for them where I was going with Margaret, and anyway they were being, I considered, unduly presumptuous. So I said: ‘Sorry, chaps, the champagne is for
Margaret,
not for you’, only not that,
something
much ruder and more to the point, though with roughly the same meaningful content. But they didn’t pay any attention they simply said: ‘Oh, but
Margaret
will give us some, won’t she, Margaret?’ and ‘We know you, Charles, you’ve got
bottles
of it,’ and ‘Charles has got bottles and bottles of bubbly for
everyone
,’
and ‘I
did
hear someone say champagne, didn’t I?
And so I said: ‘
Margaret
, for Christ’s sake,’ and she just shrugged and shouted over the general hullabaloo: ‘Don’t be a spoilsport, darling,’ and after all it wasn’t every day that she called me ‘Darling’, so I gave in, and we all went off to my car, and we drank the drink out of the bottle, and they were really
very
nasty young men, I thought—in fact I loathed them—but Margaret seemed quite happy, and wanted to throw the bottle through a window, but we stopped that, and then suddenly everyone moved off to a nearby pub for lunch and more drink. In fact, after a moment of stunned incomprehension, I noticed that Margaret had gone, too, which annoyed me very much indeed. To be frank, I was getting rather ill-tempered by now, so I marched off after them, and got hold of Margaret and said I had everything laid on, and why didn’t she come? And she said, oh, but she must just have a drink with her friends, and I said, for God’s sake, there were quantities and quantities of drink
waiting
for her with
me,
and she said, oh, but that wouldn’t be quite the same thing, would it? and, anyway, after about a minute of really foul language when one of the actors stubbed a cigarette out on the thigh of my trousers, I agreed to
one
drink, but only one, and then we really must go.

I expect you can guess the rest—there was not just one drink, there were many, many drinks, and I didn’t get Margaret out of the pub till it shut, and half her heroes were dead drunk, or making a very creditable attempt to play the part, and she’d eaten two revolting pork-pies and a ham sandwich, and the lunch I’d
so carefully arranged (not to say expensively) might just as well have stayed where it was in the shops. I can’t remember what anyone said during those hellish two hours to closing time, but to give you an idea of the general wittiness and intelligence of the conversation, I think this is not an unfair pastiche of it:

‘Frank, that’s
my
cigarette.’

‘Don’t be so possessive, Charles, jealousy is a most terrible thing. You could make yourself quite unhappy if you treated everything you owned as
yours,
like that.’

‘Oh, I remember when I was playing Iago to Vernon’s Othello, and Desdemona—who was Desdemona?—oh yes, Josephine—well, Desdemona forgot her lines—how does it go?—that bit where …’

‘And I
told
Jeffrey, I
said
Neville would
never
allow it, and of course he
didn’t,
and Jeffrey was
terribly
upset, and so everyone
else
got nervous, and the whole performance was absolutely
ruined.
’

‘That is
my
cigarette.’

‘… hopeless. So we tried again. This time
I
took Hamlet, and
he
took Horatio, and of course it worked
per
fectly, so of course when the time came and I was given Rosencrantz …’

‘When was the last revival of’
Tis
Pity
She’s
a
Whore
?’

‘… Beckett, I ask you, as though anyone could hope to be
definitive
in Beckett. He’ll learn. When he’s done a few years at the Theatre Royal, Southsea, playing the wronged husband, and lost a bit of that hair he’s always combing, he’ll make a very passable second footman—provided he can train his toes not to turn in so much.’

‘Charles, can you lend me any money? I don’t seem to be able to pay for this round, quite.’

‘… so he said “Mushhhrrrumps” and …’