by Mo McDonald
Then…
Dear Jack,
Hallo, I was pleased to have you ‘visit’ me on Saturday. You were right about the American writer – he did interest me. I agree with his comments regarding ritual and ceremony. The Catholic Church was a very rich atmosphere to grow up in during the fifties, with the beauty of the Latin and the theatre of the service. The English liturgy of today has lost the splendid mystique. Like you, I was intrigued re mankind as ‘a programmed virus’, but he did not include the rest of nature, so I find that difficult to accept.
Last night, when picking up A Book of English Poetry, the page just fell open at, ‘An Essay on Man’ by Pope. He says a great deal about creation, man, nature and God, ending with, ‘And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite. One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, is right.’
It’s wonderful to get lost in books and learn about the Arts. The unrest in this country scares me and the words of Enoch Powell have come back to haunt us with his previous warnings of ‘rivers of blood’. The Brixton riots earlier and now more than 100 people arrested and five police officers injured in clashes with the young black groups in Finsbury Park, Forest Hill and Ealing. I always feel so safe in London, but it worries me now for the sake of my children. My sister Melanie says that it’s all down to unemployment reaching 2,500,000 for the first time in 50 years. It is worrying.
Bye, hear from you next week.
Take care.
Love,
Marian
I had enjoyed talking about religions of the world; they had always interested me and the idea that man was programmed and was a form of virus was fascinating. I was pleased she had enjoyed it. What more could a broadcaster want than a personal feedback concerning each programme and each subject featured. I felt, in a funny way, that she had become a valuable part of the team. The professional armchair critic listened with only half an ear – to them, it was no more than a job. This correspondent of mine listened in order to learn and to comment on. I loved her for it and she gave my work new meaning. I was thrilled and felt guiltless, conducting this relationship from a distance, through my work, under everyone’s gaze. Not even the gossip columnists had a clue what I was up to. They sniffed around trying to label me a celebrity, waiting for me to step out of line, never suspecting that in my editor’s room I performed the tricks of the puppeteer. Talking heads, with a cut here, an emphasis there, said what I wanted to convey, as well as having their own meaning. My imagination was having the time of its life, allowing me a freedom that I hadn’t known before.
It gave me great pleasure to present a profile, right at the beginning of May, on how, through films and novels, artists have often shown us links with the past and the present. I explored many moving accounts detailing the struggle of poor farm labourers and their families and how wealthy farmers often sacked a man for as little as cutting down one of many trees in order to make a cot for their children. I also showed the plight of a poor widow and how her young son worked the land from morning till night so as to keep his brothers and sisters together. I had written many of my early novels around the very same theme, drawing on my connections with country people and the hard lives they lived on the land.
As I mentioned, I came from Southern Ireland. I was born to a gentleman farmer in 1941, who also owned the village shop, pub and bakery. I had a taste of the good life, but unfortunately our family fell on hard times. I was only twelve years old when the death of my father saw our land and shops reclaimed by the bank because we could no longer repay the loans. As the eldest son of four children, I was immediately kept home from school to work the land. The agreement was that although we no longer owned the land, we did own the house and the bankers, being the brothers of my dead father, allowed us to feed ourselves from whatever we farmed and produced.
The long hard toil couldn’t stop me from daydreaming and the sensitive scholarly side of me was deeply encouraged by the surroundings of nature. Tending the sheep and the cows, ploughing and fighting the seasons, cemented my need to express my inner world. I took to reading and writing poetry in the evenings. So, with no formal education beyond the age of twelve, I developed my inner self and by my nineteenth birthday I was very pleased to become a published writer of poetry in Dublin. I moved to England, where I was taken on as an apprentice in the relatively new industry of television and soon showed how earnestly I wanted to learn the craft and become a broadcaster. The rest is history and I consider myself a lucky man.
Receiving Marian’s next letter was a joy!
Dear Jack,
Hallo, thank you for the lovely programme about the hardships of country life – how beautiful it was. What a lucky man that you have access to all the artists and their work, who express themselves like you do with regard to the land and its people. The programme reminded me of the traditional folk song, ‘To be a Farmer’s Boy’.
‘The sun had set behind yon hills,
Across yon dreary moor,
When weary and lame, a boy there came
Up to a farmer’s door.
Can you tell me if any there be
That will give me employ,
To plough and sow, and reap and mow
And be a farmer’s boy?’
Somehow, it also brought back fond memories of my childhood visiting family in Ireland. Back in the fifties, it was another world – one still at the turn of the twentieth century. How I loved it. I suppose because my father comes from Ireland, that is what draws me to you.
Oliver Goldsmith wrote a beautiful poem back in the eighteenth century discussing the move away from the land called, ‘The Deserted Village’.
‘A time there was ere England’s griefs began,
when every rood of ground maintained its man;
for him light labour spread her wholesome store,
just gave what life required, and gave no more;
his best companions innocence and health;
and his best riches, ignorance of wealth.
But times are altered; trade’s unfeeling train
usurp the land and dispossess the swain,
along the lawn,
where scattered hamlets rose etc. etc.’
I really thank you for the subjects you cover and for being in my life. My dream lives and grows, thank you. Please remember that it is the month of May. I visited the studio in a bygone May.
Once again, thank you.
Love,
Marian
I received it the very next day and I replied immediately.
Dear Marian,
I hope all still goes well with you. I am so pleased that you follow the programme with such interest and what a surprise that your father is also from Ireland! Another strange thing is that you mentioned Goldsmith, because I have been comparing his work with Hardy’s and I am sure that you will agree his work is more telling, although softer, than Thomas Hardy.
Yours sincerely,
Jack
It pleased me to let her know that we thought along the same lines. Obviously we both had a love of the land that went back to our childhoods. By wishing things to go well with her I knew that she would feel my encouragement to keep close to me in her thoughts.
Dear Jack,
Hallo, you are nice to write to me so often. Thank you for your letter. I shall take your advice and read Thomas Hardy’s poetry about the countryside. I greatly admire his novels and read Jude the Obscure only last week. As I turned each page, I wanted to say, ‘No, please don’t do that!’ It was almost too painful to read. I loved it. What a wonderful gift it is to be a writer. I find it sad to think that so many people prefer TV or the cinema – a book is such a personal thing. I suppose reading is a selfish pastime, though. If I got your birthday right, the day and the month are my father’s, but the other way round; I wonder what the stars would read into that! By the way, on another vein, I
went to look at Homebase, which has just opened as a DIY superstore. It is quite splendid but Croydon is not exactly nearby, so it was a one-off visit until maybe a branch opens closer to my house. It is a bit like the Canadian Tyre chain that I visited in North America, although on a smaller scale – and, of course, it doesn’t sell firearms!
Love to you,
Marian
I continued editing the sound to catch her attention, so, for example, when a novel was discussed that involved a family in which the dad had left home for another woman, I questioned the writer, ‘Do you think people should behave like that? I think it’s just an excuse when they say it will be better for you if I clear off.’
The programme ended soon after that. By her letter, I gathered she agreed that it was selfish if one partner should walk out on the other. My own marriage was not what it should be but I would never end it. I could tell that Marian’s was happy, which made me understand that she had turned to me because I could tell that she was not fulfilled intellectually due to the limited education of her day. The way that she wrote to me meant that she had a lot of growing up to do. It struck me that Marian was the right person for me but that I had met her at the wrong time. Chance had played its hand in our meeting, but I would not have felt so fulfilled creatively if Marian was part of my domestic life. Our relationship was the way that it was meant to be. Jung requested that I recognise her as a very real part of my imagination, though, and to build my fantasies around her; only then would I acquire my quest of individuation.
JACK
Then came my anniversary gift to Marian. I hoped that she would understand that I had chosen Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor as a special reminder of when we had met, because of its passion, in the hope that it cemented our close correspondence. At the end of May, we explored the fascinating facts about Lucia’s last act and what had caused her to go mad. The sound of the glass harmonica was played at the end of the programme as the titles rolled up the screen, casting a haunting sound of longing and anguish for what could not be. Donizetti’s music showed the brilliance of the madness of love and how being with the wrong person was the cause of insanity. He was saying that his heart went out to all those who suffered loyalty and responsibility and that to see their true love in eternity was the only hope.
There could be no better tribute to my correspondent than that. I hoped that she would not realise. I was, of course, psychoanalysing myself constantly through my work; it was a many layered, complex operation that I performed for many years.
Dear Jack,
How sad I felt when you left me after Donizetti’s ‘Lucia’. Thomas Hardy must be right when he says that human emotion is a flaw and a mistake in creation. When writing to you for the first time, I wrote in such innocence – life is very, very strange.
Love to you,
Marian
She had felt my pain, I was glad.
The next week, we previewed The Royal Academy’s summer show. That evening, she wrote…
Dear Jack,
I have just enjoyed your programme and, as the house is quiet, I would like to say ‘Hallo.’ I find it hard to understand modern art. Listening to your interview brought to mind my reaction when reading Freud’s lectures on dreams. I was filled with wonder at the symbolism in dreams and wondered how he could know this to be true. Then, he explained the connection with folklore, myths, fairy tales, etc. I accept what Freud says, but have to be convinced on such things regarding cubism etc. I am sorry if I sounded cynical last week by agreeing with Thomas Hardy’s view on emotions. Your ending, or should I say your editing of ‘Lucia,’ was such that I could not but feel sad. The big puzzle to me is trying to understand free will and fate. I already believe in free will and yet fate plays a big part in life. One seems to contradict the other. I wish that we had a secret mailbox so that you could answer all my questions. Do you think a pigeon would be a good idea?
I know that you are still writing about the history of Ireland and that you will have been shocked by the fourth man to die in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland this month. Bobby Sands, I read, is one of four who are trying to achieve prisoner of war status, instead of being named as terrorists. They see themselves as freedom fighters, I suppose.
Love,
Marian
So, she had now found symbolism. Ever since the start of my second marriage, I had written using the dream symbols, so as to hide while yet expressing myself. As she had symbols in mind, I decided to try to get her to ring me by putting a circle before my name in my reply. My secretary typed the letter, then I signed it in ink as usual but with an O, also in ink, before my signature, meaning ‘ring Jack.’ I would not ring her but if she were to ring me after a message like this, my control over her would be even greater. I dictated the usual formal letter as follows:
Dear Marian,
Your note pleased me. Modern art does take some understanding so I hope that visiting the Royal Academy shone some light on the subject for you. Our programmes for this season are coming to an end soon and not returning until just before Christmas. Reading is a great enlightener; enjoy it.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Then, I signed in ink:
O, Jack
I was bad to play games but that was how I wanted it!
I didn’t respond to her regarding the hunger strikers, as that was too political. It was a very difficult situation regarding Britain and Northern Ireland, best left alone in our correspondence. I was nearing publication of my account of the History of Ireland and had accepted a request to speak about it on Irish television in a couple of months’ time. My work would speak for me as usual.
During June, we featured more on the art of painters and their drawings; in particular, the accepted artists from behind the Iron Curtain were mentioned and even one or two non-conformists. Of course, this was in the days before the fall of Communism, so such subjects were quite different then.
It was noticeable that Marian was not responding to my little test, whether deliberately or not. She hadn’t rung the office and her next letter made no reference to it.
Dear Jack,
Thank you for the programme on the Art from behind the Iron Curtain. It made me realise just how much we take freedom of the soul for granted in this country. Also, I heard you on the radio and smiled when it came from your hometown in Ireland. I could almost smell the peat fire, hear the evil jukebox and see the gang of tearaways! Did you meet any old flames there? I liked the way you explained that the house where you once went to school is now a nursing home. I have lived in such a cosy little world. I admire the nuns who give up their lives to care for the elderly there. The saddest thing in life is to see the geriatric cases; it seems so cruel that a body that has been strong and dignified, should end up in such a way. Or a mind that has been alert reduced to a vegetable. Life is so short; I am really grateful to you for encouraging me to open up my mind and not to feel guilty about writing to you. The imagination is a wonderful gift and I was afraid of mine until you helped me.
Love to you,
Marian
When she referred to the smell of the peat fire, the jukebox and the gang of tearaways she was remembering my last book. It pleased me that she quoted from my fiction of the days of growing up in the fifties.
As she had still not telephoned me, I thought of another way to test her imagination and to see just how closely she was following my train of thought. I had to know before we went off air for the summer, so at the end of June I used Traditional Jazz as the subject to do this. Three British bands featured and while they made music, I played around with the soundtrack and had a telephone ringing in the background. Then, to close the programme, I had one of them say, ‘That brings us full circle to the end.’
I knew that this remark would go unnoticed by the audience, who only listened with half an ear. I also knew, howeve
r, that there was a very good chance that Marian would be hanging on to every word, so I left it to chance. And within two days, a postcard arrived.
Dear Jack,
Oh dear, what a sleepless night you gave me!
Bells ringing!
Full circle = O = RING.
What do I do? It may just be my imagination. Gears out of control again!
Help!!!
Love,
Marian
Still, she did not ring. I waited. Then, to my amusement, the following letter reached me about a week later.
Jack
The gears plus the accelerator need a little attention. Due to a slight depression, the matter has been difficult to handle but should be as good as new as things pick up.
Yours sincerely,
M. Davies
I laughed at the fact that she was using her imagination, even though she was afraid to trust it. I had pulled out all the stops to tease her and I wanted to encourage her to pick up the phone, but she was obviously nervous now and questioning her own state of mind. I liked the fact that she was putting the brakes on, even though I wanted her to respond to my signals. I was once asked what I valued most in a secretary and, thinking about it, I answered that I liked to be private and would do anything to avoid a scandal; my office and team had to be unaware of my hidden communication, conducted in a very public way, in front of the eyes and the ears of the viewers. Marian was not the only one to be flying high with her fantasy; I, too, was completely obsessed with her and realised that now she was no more than just a thought away at any time.