Letters to the Editor
Page 13
Dear Jack,
A poem by W. H Auden
“THE DESIRES OF THE HEART ARE AS CROOKED AS CORKSCREWS.”
It likened life to a dance.
M.
Looking back, I am impressed how Marian was quick to find appropriate poems in reply, especially as it was in the days before the internet and Google. She had to know her stuff back then, with no easy search engine to find instant information or a quote.
MARIAN
Dear Jack,
Hallo, please don’t think of me as the bad penny turning up yet again! I read your article today – how I wish it were possible for me to write. For a long time, I have thought that you were trying to show me how to set about writing, as far back as Ordinary People, it occurred to me. To write is something that I would love to do, but as I cannot even spell, I can’t imagine anything more remote. I have started to scribble though, which is most enjoyable. However, I think it a terrible conceit on my part! I do long to achieve some one thing in my own right. Once, I believed that to help my husband, so that he could study and gain success in his job, would fulfil me. He tells me that my success is in the success of my children, but I am selfish enough to want my own success. I have tried to make them happy and independent, but what happens when they no longer need me? They are not going to want Mum to live her life through them.
Bye,
Marian
As if I had no control over my own actions, I found myself telling him that I was indeed trying to write even though I had felt too embarrassed to admit such a thing. I surprised myself by letting him know. I had quickly changed the subject… but I had referred to it.
Dear Jack,
Hallo, I really enjoyed the classical music last night. Shakespeare, once again, says it all.
‘BUT MUSIC FOR THE TIME DOTH CHANGE HIS NATURE
THE MAN THAT HATH NO MUSIC IN HIMSELF,
NOR IS NOT MOVED WITH CONCORD OF SWEET SOUNDS,
IS FIT FOR TREASONS, STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS;
THE MOTIONS OF HIS SPIRIT ARE DULL AS NIGHT,
AND HIS AFFECTIONS DARK AS EREBUS
LET NO SUCH MAN BE TRUSTED.
MARK THE MUSIC.’
Love,
Marian.
PS Melanie is worried about the rise of the tabloid press with its huge following. She says The Sun now sells more than 4,000,000 copies per day, on a regular basis, mainly due to the introduction of Bingo. Although, she pointed out that it does have a political editor, which seemed to her to be surprising. It reported yesterday that the European Court of Justice rules that schools in Britain can no longer allow corporal punishment against the wishes of parents. She is getting very fired up again because of the SDP-Liberal Alliance and says they are the only hope against the ‘evil Tories’. Gosh, look, I am a writer already. All this stuff proves it!
He was quick to reply.
Dear Marian,
Thanks, I am delighted you enjoyed the programme. It can certainly be rewarding to start to write. I am glad for you.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Jack Kelly
JACK
I knew that she ought not to be tied so much to me; I realised that I would hinder her creative flow. She was expressing a desire to write and Carl Jung would have said that a woman must forget about love in order to reach her fourth and full state of consciousness. I spent a few days thinking this through before sending the following letter.
Dear Marian,
I would hate for you to become dependent on your letters to me and my, alas, occasional replies – maybe you would find it useful to stop writing to me. You might be better off, although I do appreciate your letters.
Best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Jack Kelly
Her reply was quick.
Dear Jack,
I don’t understand. You were happy to encourage me, now you wish to be rid of me, just like that. I really don’t understand. I have never let things interfere with my family. It seems so strange of you. Of course, I will do as you ask, but I think that you have been cruel. Why are you afraid for us to continue our friendship?
Bye,
Marian
It was so hard to keep to the rules imposed by Jung and implemented by myself, but if we were to both grow from the relationship I had to keep my distance. I endeavoured to manipulate her through my work so as to allow this brainchild of mine to develop. I seemed cold and calculating but that was not how I felt at all. It was a discipline that I felt had to be adhered to.
Towards the end of February, she sent a heartfelt letter because for the second time the IRA used a unit to hijack a pilot boat, in Lough Foyle. They bombed and sank a Glasgow registered coal ship this time, the St Bedan. Her writing was speaking for her already as she told me of what her sister-in-law had informed her about in the following:
Jack,
The likes of me and my family, living here in Britain, are filled with shame. My dad is Irish, as you know, but he fought for the British in Normandy and in Germany. He does not agree with the IRA terrorists even though he doesn’t approve of the partitioning of his country, Ireland. Melanie’s husband is in the police force in London and he and his men have so much to endure from the unrest on the streets and from the constant threat from the IRA. She says that the Government knew all this would take place and they were shrewd enough to get the police on their side as soon as they reached office in 1979. She says that the Labour Party commissioned Edmund Davies to look into pay and conditions and he recommended a 40 per cent pay increase. Thatcher knew that she was going to cause even more unrest than the Winter of Discontent did for Callaghan, so she built up her police force ready for battle. My brother-in-law is an honourable man and puts his life at risk constantly for the citizens of this country. I feel very strongly that the public ought to be aware of this.
Marian
Of course, I didn’t reply to her regarding politics and I kept busy editing the programmes with a careful message each week. I even took delight in making it very obvious what I was up to, by having a woman editor of advertisements explain the art of editing. It gave me pleasure in showing this over the heads of the unsuspecting audience, directly into the home of Marian. I was still the circus manager who wielded the whip when required. The following week, we showed clips from the film Reds, paying particular attention to the fact that the heroine pleaded with her lover to leave her alone and shouted at him about how impossible it was to function as a writer with him around. I wanted Marian to understand that she must free herself of me, now that I had shown her the way. She had to express herself in a creative way, not waste her talent by corresponding with me. I wanted her to be intellectually and emotionally strong. I pondered, for a while, on how selfish I had been to encourage her in order to satisfy my own need. The good man in me was, once again challenged!
It was around that time that Mary Whitehouse lost her legal case against the National Theatre concerning alleged obscenity in the play The Romans in Britain. I went along to see it with Pauline. It was essential that I made up my own mind on such matters, feeling as I did that work ought to be shown in its original state. Freedom to speak out as an artist, in my view, was an important issue throughout time.
The next week, I featured a pop singer from America, showing in detail how she made use of sound. The telephone combined with, or next to, the television was part of her act and I hoped that Marian might take the hint and ring my office so that I could explain why I wanted her to stop writing, but she didn’t ring. I tried again the next week to get Marian to pick up the telephone by playing a song from the soundtrack from Guys and Dolls, which was in rehearsal at The National Theatre. The song was called ‘If I Were a Bell’. Instead of telephoning she wrote.
Dear Jack,
I wanted to phone you at the office today but I
held back, realising that had you wished to speak to me you would have rung me. A man who lives by his imagination would get through if he wished, I told myself. I have survived this last month without depending upon my letters to you! At first, I wanted to write in haste to accuse you of hiding behind symbols, a secretary, a wife etc. I thought of you as a coward, afraid that having encouraged me you would be compromised. I am not quite so spiteful now. I still feel sad to think that you are not prepared to correspond. I delighted in the anticipation of a word from you – it meant so much. The idea that I had about writing was so silly and I have rid myself of such rubbish. I can only write about feelings; I have no story to tell. It has all been said before, so often. I have a successful marriage, a happy family, I work two days a week. I have so much and yet I want so much more. What more is there? Romance? I explained to my eldest son only yesterday that to be ‘in love’ is an illness that one must recover from.
On a different note, I have just heard the news that an Argentine scrap metal dealer raised the Argentine flag in South Georgia, near the Falkland Islands, and that the Argentinians have landed today, which could mean war for us. I didn’t even know that we owned the islands!
You must be excited about the Barbican as an arts centre. I enjoyed a lunchtime concert there on Wednesday, which was beautiful.
Bye, Marian
PS ‘If I were a bell?’ I have my imagination under lock and key!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With the letter, she enclosed a cutting from a newspaper. It read:
‘BRIGHTON THEATRE ROYAL: ‘DEAR LIAR’, BY JEROME KILTY. DIRECTED BY FRITH BANBURY, WITH ROBERT HARDY AND SIN PHILLIPS. A PLAY BASED ON CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AND MRS PATRICK CAMPBELL. A WITTY COMMENTARY ON FOUR DECADES OF THEATRICAL LIFE.’
At the bottom, she scribbled… ‘It is possible.’
I must just add here that Marian mentioning the Barbican was because it was newly opened at the time, promising an adventure playground for the Arts. How dull and tired it seems now, though.
A couple of days later, a postcard arrived. She wrote on it:
I liked it!!!
This was a comment on a programme in which I talked to a composer about his music. He said how he liked to make himself and his music accessible to his public. After going into some of his compositions in depth, I edited the show to end with him saying, ‘People ought to explore their creative life. I am the way in.’
Marian had said that I always knew how to start her thinking, so I hoped that would be the case. I wanted to convey to her that I had encouraged her all that time so that she might expand and develop the masculine side of her mind. I was her way into her creative self. If only she would copy my style, take my books and build her own style around them. She had a gift, if only I could get her to use it.
Around this time, I decided that I needed to rescue my marriage. At least, I needed to put the brakes on before my obsession with Marian ruined everything that I had. My relationship with Marian was just a distraction and Pauline really did love me, even though I didn’t deserve it and I treated her like a paid servant. I came and went from her life as I pleased, like a well-behaved lodger. I was financially supportive, I paid the bills, I gave her a good home and I was polite. In return, I expected clean laundry and a good breakfast. I was suddenly aware that I behaved like a free man, a bachelor, and Pauline let me get away with it. She was magnificent in her understanding and tolerance. Maybe that was what I found so irritating and intolerable. I wanted freedom, but I despised it, too. I wanted to roam at will, yet I longed to be needed and held accountable. I was the constant husband who wasn’t constantly required to be constant. I had an arrangement with my wife that suited my artist’s lifestyle, but I actually dreamt of being accountable to a demanding wife. It was absurd to the extreme, but I felt that if Pauline had been more demanding I would have loved her more and respected her more. The fact that she was so accommodating filled me with contempt and yet I knew that she put up with me in order to please me. I had to admit to myself that I was beyond understanding and I even confused myself. I was a pain and undeserving of love.
Love was what I was yearning for, didn’t every artist? ‘Love is all you need’, sang the Beatles. Love was the be-all and the end-all of what my work was about. I wrote about it, I spoke about it, I dreamt about it. I pursued it, I sought it, I created it and I loathed it. It made me feel alive and dead all at the same time. I felt that to love was to give in to still being a child. I was a child in a very grown man’s mind; what good was that? I was as weak as a baby emotionally – that was why I was determined to fight it, for the sake of my manhood. I would be the warrior and slay anyone in my path to whom I felt attached. Not for me, the tenderness of love; that would defeat me. I wanted to be the bull in the china shop, not the lover’s fool. I would rid myself of any foolish sentimentality about Marian and concentrate on the domestic state of my marriage. If I could, I really would, I told myself.
I was aware of an overwhelming feeling of anxiety. My thought patterns started to be very strange and to alarm me. I felt negative thoughts about myself and everyone about me. It became common for me to question my own behaviour and I felt I was two different people. On the one hand, a very able, confident man and on the other a feeble, confused, messed-up individual, approaching midlife and with a crisis. I had heard about the weird happenings to women as they reached their middle years, but I had not expected such swings and roundabouts in me, as a man.
I started to reflect on life and wondered had I had it too easy, too good. When I was a boy in Ireland using my imagined world to write poetry, I was propelled into a certain notoriety at a very young age. Then, arriving in the UK and joining the BBC as an apprentice, once again I was propelled into a good job that got me noticed, and before very long I was a leading light. Within no time I was plucked from the production team and out in front of the camera. My rise to fame had been, in some ways, effortless and I needed to protect myself from a fall. I knew I had talent and I trusted in that, but my reputation was also very important and had to be guarded. I decided to take more care of the company I kept and to try to remember that I had a family, something I so often forgot. I was aware that as a very successful public figure I was under scrutiny as never before, so I would cover my tracks. I remember thinking what a damn nuisance Marian was in snooping about in my work. I was beginning to get the jitters about my own identity and fear that my cover would be blown.
I needed to get under the radar again, but with such a good secret agent as Marian covering me, I was in a dangerous position. Somehow, I needed to score a goal without the back defender marking me. The aim now was to see Marian, one more time, and then knock her off the pitch in a final tackle. I needed to think of a way to break her spirit. I knew that I was mixed up in the head at that point in time and I had to find a way out.
JACK
As often happened because the programmes were pre-recorded, my mood had changed by the time a favourite writer of mine had agreed to be interviewed. He had proven to be an interesting communicator. He described the different subjects and plots that he had written about and I had edited the interview with me giving a summary of his novels, stressing that the author’s words should be listened to carefully. His voice was then heard reading a passage from a book. It went something like this…
‘As he looked across at her, it was impossible for him to convey his true feelings.’
So ended the programme.
Marian responded by sending a picture postcard. The picture showed a clown holding a large seashell to his ear. She wrote: ‘I listened very carefully!’
Once again, I couldn’t help myself. I had to reply to her. The clown had a big tear running down his sad, painted face. I was in a state of utter confusion, both intellectually and emotionally. Jung’s advice was not easy at all to follow. My resolve was shaky, trying to remember that the creative life and real life had to be kep
t apart. The imagination had to be separate from reality, yet I had to remember that I had to acknowledge how very real it was, in order to remain true to his teaching and true to myself. Individuation was what I was truly seeking and it was not easy, not at all.
Dear Marian,
Many thanks for your letter. I only stopped writing for your sake. It pleases me so very much to receive your letters, but I am concerned about you. I never meant to hurt your feelings. If it is okay by you, I will only reply now and again. I am truly glad that you are still enjoying the programmes.
Yours sincerely,
Jack Kelly
She responded in a different vein.
Dear Jack,
I have been glued to the news over the past week ever since the Argentinians invaded and the British Falkland Islands’ Government surrendered to them. We happened to be in Portsmouth as the Royal Navy Task Force set sail. It was an impressive sight, but it made me glad that my boys are not yet old enough to go. As a Mum, it does seem awful that our sons are being sent to fight for a land so far away. I just had to share this with you.
Marian
We had a number of Russian exiled composers and writers over the next few weeks, presenting both their work and their daily habits living here. Some were small fry, some huge, but all were energetic men; some tyrannical, some affectionate, a few hypochondriacs and all passionately homesick. Many works unleashed the storms of orchestral writing, while some of the writers of the written word conjured up the steely cosmopolitan life of the exile. The common language expressed was of the loneliness of spending life in waiting. I made sure to edit the end of the three programmes with the yearning of that waiting, waiting, waiting.