Letters to the Editor

by Mo McDonald

  I received a couple of letters from her referring only to the fact that the Falklands War had ended and how terrible it was that so many lives had been lost and how the Government was benefiting from the victory because the public was, in the main, behind them. A Mori poll showed that 51 per cent approved of the war and that the Conservatives were most likely to win in the general election the next summer. Also, she mentioned the Provisional IRA killing eight soldiers and wounding forty-seven people and their causing the death of seven horses by planting two bombs in central London.

  She did also write a friendly letter regarding Pope John Paul II’s visit to London, which made him the first reigning pontiff to ever do so. His historic meeting with the Queen, as the head of the Church of England, and then his visit to Canterbury pleased her, too. She suggested that it was a pity that the Roman Catholic Church had lost all its beautiful buildings since the time of Henry VIII and his break with Rome. She pointed out that his case for divorcing his first wife because she couldn’t produce a male heir was rather a pathetic excuse and that we now know that it is the male sperm that determines the sex of the unborn baby anyway. She said that she was proud to take her four children to welcome the Pope, amongst the crowds who waved him on.

  Then, towards the end of June, a change in Marian took me by surprise once more.

  Dear Jack,

  I feel that I have been used. What right do writers or broadcasters have to influence people’s minds? Who are they except people who put themselves in the right place at the right time? No more, no less. I was so simple-minded that I played right into your hands. How stupid I have been. A famous man like you must have many silly women writing to him.

  Marian

  I took some comfort from this outburst because it helped my weak resolve to end our relationship. It had more than run its course and had been an experience that neither of us would ever forget. However, to my dismay, she quickly followed with a tender letter in a couple of days. She was obviously confused and maybe frightened by her own feelings. The battle she fought still played ping-pong after all those years.

  Dear Jack,

  Please forgive my letter of two days ago. Most days I can play the game and it is fun!

  Forgive me.

  Marian

  I was glad to get away on holiday with my family, out of her reach. I even began to feel hostile towards her, a trifle bored. My mood changed and, with it, the feeling of infatuation turned to dislike, I determined to rid my life of her. Jung warns man ‘not to be taken in by an unreal dream of love, happiness and maternal warmth; a dream that takes him away from reality.’ Once again, I acknowledged the fact that I had projected my romantic fantasies on to Marian who, although very real, could never be in my reality. Just in time, I was able to switch to the inner voice of reason and I listened to the guide within my unconscious, in time to save myself from her clinging demands.

  Thus, I started back at the office with a new determination. I would no longer play an intellectual game, even for the sake of my art. Marian really would have to find her own way forward without me.

  More verses that she had mused over awaited me on my return in September and I disliked them intensely, the sight of her handwriting now brought up an anger in me that was close to hatred. This thing that I had encouraged vexed me now beyond compare and I felt stifled by the very look of her name. I remember loosening my tie as if to breathe more freely as I sat down to read what was before me.

  1. How lustily I allowed you to penetrate my brain

  as though you were my lover and I enjoyed the pain.

  Deeper and deeper we both explored until the unconscious could not be ignored.

  How frightened I was at the start but you understood that it was in my head not even my heart.

  Stand back from your childhood and look from afar, you must go back to see who you are.

  I now see me and I understand, thank you for guiding my hand.

  The me I see is not all nice but less superficial without that sugar and spice.

  If I listen to the prompting from my mind, perhaps I can do something before it’s too late, to guide my destiny and shape my own fate.

  To go through life in a blind man’s bluff is oh so cosy but it’s not enough.

  I will try very hard to do as you bid, so as not to waste the hard work we both did.

  2. Your child was conceived with the seed from your sperm,

  at the same moment in time you gave birth to your book,

  the words that were germinated from our first look

  It was only your body that gave her your son,

  I consider the art and the act to be as one.

  3. As individuals we stand alone despite family and home.

  The island that we inhabit deserted even though we learn the social habits,

  to please, to care and even to love.

  But who really knows what goes on within,

  the face shows the world only a mask

  to get through life is a very hard task?

  4. My letter of yesterday was not very nice

  I wanted to hurt you and to be unkind.

  The mood that was in me was like a terrible rage,

  the characters moving in my head as though on a stage.

  The demon within got the better of me, turning the woman who is gentle and kind into a he!

  5. When I was a child I was taught to be nice,

  to be seen and not to be heard;

  I listened respectfully and took advice.

  As I grew up, I tried hard to serve and to do as I was bid

  To do and to say only what others would wish.

  How unkind it was to programme me so

  Not to allow my own feelings to show.

  Too late I have realised that I too have a mind,

  Too late to make use of it, I should have stayed blind.

  My family are used to me always there,

  How can I make a career without letting them down?

  I so badly need to fulfil the desire to explore the world beyond the house,

  I have more to offer than to be a dormouse.

  6. Sadness is a very beautiful and selfish emotion

  the pain like a vitamin feeds the soul.

  Most people experience sorrow, boredom, regret and remorse,

  These are quite different from sadness, I know.

  To be sad is to be isolated within your own head,

  feeling the hurt and almost wishing to be dead.

  But to be dead would only ease the pain

  and you want to experience it again and again.

  That terrible feeling that is hard to swallow,

  deeper and deeper you want to wallow;

  self-pity engulfing you, there can be no tomorrow.

  To be happy is a fleeting thing, but to be sad is endless if you play the game right.

  It can be your very own secret, no one need know.

  The mask of everyday living fits very tight.

  7. I want to see you and to talk to you

  but the rules of society do not allow.

  Why should it be wrong or sordid to meet a kind friend?

  Does difference of sex immediately forbid any friendship just because of what

  Adam and Eve once did?

  8. Your head is full of such interesting things,

  about life and people and this and that.

  Please help me to understand how to use my words as wings.

  9. Fear of the unknown made it a difficult birth,

  Holding back she fought against nature for all she was worth.

  Many long days hard labour and then a tender emotion

  between Mother and Child, but guilt set in the very next day,

  once again Mother Nature wanted things he
r own way.

  Her breasts leaking with the liquid of life she felt like an animal instead of a wife.

  On weaning her child she experienced the need to be free;

  Yoga helped to stimulate and relax her, enabled her to find her identity.

  The experience awakened within her an unending need, fulfilment

  Through knowledge and the pursuit of excellence

  behind her every deed.

  Union of mind and body had to be weaved if action

  and initiative were ever to be achieved.

  The world of books became her escape, broadening

  her horizons within her landscape.

  ‘Return to your childhood and look from afar, you must go back to see who you are.’

  The words of Jung and Freud filled her head,

  they helped her how to live, even though they themselves were dead.

  10. How strange that we ordinary people look to the world of fiction for our escape,

  while the man of letters looks to us for inspiration to colour his landscape.

  We who are busy living life cannot see the drama.

  It takes a vain and conceited mind to exploit the ordinary by making them blind.

  He takes their imagination within his hand and shows them glimpses of the Promised Land.

  ‘How clever he is!’ we all exclaim

  Quite forgetting that he has taken advantage while making his name

  as he writes his words seeking his fame, who is he after all?

  A man with a plan to shape his own fate, not caring to explain that we the ordinary, we the plain, dwell within his domain.

  11. If I could I would not be good,

  I would run amok like a local hood.

  Where does it get you the noble life,

  you still end up dead when the blood leaves the head?

  It is in the head the need for right or wrong

  and how you are judged when you are gone.

  We are conditioned long before birth

  so what hope is there for the Universe?

  Try as we may for original thought

  The pre-historic ancestor still has his way

  and returns in the unconscious day after day.

  With these verses, Marian enclosed a note saying:

  Dear Jack,

  Although my verse is not very good, I will try to improve it to show that something has come out of my admiration for your work. By the way, Proust is helping me to understand still more!

  Marian

  I read through Marian’s verse and I didn’t like the direction that her mind was going in. It was one thing to have a devoted fan, but I hadn’t reckoned on the power of individuation and how my work could influence her thought patterns in such a way. She was becoming a victim of my success, all be it a willing one, and she was in danger of growing too big for the small world that she inhabited. Seeing her handwriting did unnerve me, because I could see that I had been a fool to think that I could fulfil myself while at the same time encourage a married woman to develop herself, regardless of what it might do to her mind and, in turn, her life. I felt contrite. I could have replied offering advice to her, but I had gone too far in bringing her out of her comfort zone. I had to let her go, make her go. The fact that she mentioned Marcel Proust disturbed me, too. It was yet another piece of the jigsaw of my mind that she had pieced together. She had read all the signs that I had posted within my books, finding her way to the core of my intellect. She had unravelled yet another writer who had inspired my work. Jung, Freud, Gide, Lawrence and now Proust. I didn’t like her seeing into my very soul. Nobody had ever paid me so much attention before – I had hidden in my secret world – and yet this complete stranger had pieced together the very core of my being and I was naked.

  I didn’t reply to any of this, believing that time would reveal to me the best course of action. I was witnessing the coming to life of my new creation and it perplexed me because she was in danger of not following my instructions and would then be a loose cannon that would endanger both her own family life and mine, and more importantly my career! I felt threatened again, so I didn’t even acknowledge that I had received her verse. I was aware that I was being cruel and it was deliberate.

  Then, she laid it on even thicker in her next note.

  Dear Jack,

  Proust is helping me to understand more and more!

  Love, Marian

  PS ‘GRIN ASLEEP!’

  Marcel Proust had taught me to use my memory and to look to the inner world for my imaginings. He said to express the unconscious world would interest someone, somewhere. He also believed that if, as a reader you enjoyed and admired a particular writer, the next thing was to feel that you could do as well or even better yourself. Marian was doing just that; she was trying to be productive. However, by telling me that she had found Proust was like saying to me she had sliced open my mind and could see the mechanisms ticking away. I was truly fearful, when I ought to have been flattered. There was no cause to celebrate that my experiment was succeeding beyond my wildest hopes and expectations. I started to feel like a condemned man!

  It didn’t take a brain surgeon to rearrange the letters from GRIN ASLEEP to PLEASE RING. She was getting her own back for my teasing her with bells ringing etc. I can honestly say that I would gladly have rung her – but not her phone, her neck! My mind worked overtime thinking how I could get rid of her. I couldn’t write her a rude letter – I had to think of a subtle way. I decided that the best course of action would be no action. Surely she would give up writing to me if I blanked her.

  However, a postcard soon arrived from her, full of sarcasm.

  Jack,

  How very kind of you to spare two minutes of your time – it would have meant so much!

  Marian

  If I had thought to silence her, I was mistaken, as inevitably another letter quickly followed.

  Dear Jack,

  I am really hurt with the way in which you have handled the situation. I know that you are living out your fantasies in a creative way, so as to reach your full potential, which is fine. But please don’t tell me that you stopped writing for my sake. If only you were prepared to give just a little bit more. Why should you, though? You have everything going for you. Given the right encouragement, I might have reached my potential. I will always need more than my family in my life, but they are in my life. I must protect my marriage.

  Help me,

  Marian

  PS Please grant me an interview in your office for a chat face-to-face and with a bit of luck we won’t even like each other. You have plenty of heavies in your employ to protect you. You owe me that. M

  I had to reply! I instructed my secretary to use a BBC envelope so that her husband would see it and she would have to explain herself. I no longer wanted a secret liaison. I could tell that she was in the frame of mind to speak out against me; her conscious state was such that she was ready to reveal our relationship and bring it into reality, despite herself and her family. But I knew the safest way was if her husband was the first to know because he would put a stop to her telling the wider world.

  Dear Marian,

  Thanks for your letter but I am dumbfounded as to what to do. Your letters have been arriving for a very long time now and I have only tried to help you by sometimes replying. I have done nothing to encourage you but simply answered a few questions. It worries me that you have got the situation between us all wrong and completely out of hand. I cannot imagine why you have made me into some sort of fantasy. No purpose whatsoever would come from us meeting. Frankly, I recommend that you seek a doctor’s advice.

  Kind regards,

  Jack K

  MARIAN

  I was taken aback when the envelope arrived. It sat on the mat with BBC boldly displayed on the front and I ass
umed that Hannah had used it by mistake. I was annoyed by Jack’s suggestion that I ought to seek a doctor’s advice; did he mean my husband or a psychiatrist? I had told him that Robert was a medical doctor, but as Jack’s work was so psychological I was unsure. Was he suggesting that I was ill?

  I knew that I was a bit preoccupied that evening and so as not to show it, I encouraged Robert to talk about his lifelong commitment to handicapped children at the hospital. Gladly, he welcomed my manipulation of him, as he was always ready for the opportunity to talk about his work. It was demanding and it absorbed him, but what he was saying was very dull to me at that moment, as my irritated mind raced to make sense of what Jack had meant and indeed what I ought to do about it.

  Looking at me while speaking of his patients, Robert had not the slightest reason to doubt my state of mind. He continued telling me tales of unhappiness, injustice and despair. I felt sad for the first time that my actions could hurt this good man and I decided that I would take a step to further my desire to write.

  The next day, I enrolled on a creative writing course. I felt that I could at least give it a go.

  JACK

  It felt like stalking. I was trapped, so I had to shut Marian up before she could go any further. The code that I worked under had been broken; I was not as clever as I had thought! The work of Marcel Proust had taught me to use my memory and to look to my inner world for my imaginings. As I mentioned, he had said to express the unconscious world would interest someone, somewhere, and I had shown Marian the way. How right he was; she had followed the leader. However, he didn’t warn of the price one had to pay for such attention.