Letters to the Editor
Page 21
London has played a huge role in shaping modern creative thinking, never more so than in the sixties, of course. I first arrived in this city from Ireland then and found it to be full of treasure, the place where talent could be found and explored. It was very exciting to me, a country lad seeking a career. It welcomed me as an artist and offered me a place to live and to earn my living and I learnt my trade as a writer and a broadcaster. The world of culture was, and is, what I work hard to understand and I have had the great good fortune to realise my ambition and become successful. Hard work in the field that I love has seemed almost too good to be true.’
I moved nervously before continuing.
‘I am an emotional man and at times of deep depression or personal pain, Art has been my redemption. It has indeed helped me and that is why I have tried to make it easily accessible to the many. I wanted them to see that it is not a strange and a wonderful thing only to be enjoyed by the idle rich. Art, after all, is of the people. To me, it is the only true religion because it speaks from the heart and the minds expressed by feelings.’
I raised my hand after saying that.
‘No, sorry. I don’t intend to preach.’
I paused.
‘But understand, I feel that strongly about it.’
Someone passed me a glass of water as I cleared my throat and I looked around the room at the attentive audience about me. I smiled my boyish smile, recognising the bond between us as I continued.
‘In order to understand my work, you must realise that I have followed many writers and their advice. Marcel Proust taught me to realise the importance of the world within the imagination and to dip into my memory bank and I agree with him regarding the two states of existence, boredom or pain – pain being of the most value because its emotion can stimulate creative ideas.
‘D.H. Lawrence is out of fashion but I hold him and his attitudes in high esteem. Thomas Hardy, too, influenced much of my work as a writer because of his feel for the countryside and its people.’
I looked around and laughed before continuing.
‘Perhaps also because he hated married life!’ I paused again here to take a deep breath and I pulled my mouth back towards my ears and bared my teeth, making a grimace.
‘Long ago, I decided that it is not the woman and her child that make a man restless and unhappy. It is merely the situation. Jude the Obscure is very close to my own plight, but I will not go into that here.’
I looked at the ceiling as if for inspiration.
‘André Gide was one of the first writers to speak to my inner ear, quietly, whispering his struggle within himself. He described the world within his unconscious and its battle with his conscious life. Then, after my first wife left me I took to reading Freud and Jung and gained strength from their views and help from personal psychoanalysis that I imposed upon myself. It all taught me that in order to go on I must go back, so as to understand what had made me what or how I am. It was a long, painful experience, but it helped me to understand how the child IS the father of the man.’
Someone coughed to the side of me and I had to gather my thoughts so as to focus on the moment.
‘I started to become more in touch with my unconscious and expressed this in my fiction. However, so as not to expose my very soul and so as not to hurt those close to me, I used Freud’s dream symbols as a means of a code behind which to hide my meaning. It was an experiment at first, but soon it became a habit and it pleased me to play the harmless tyrant as my pen composed.’
I gave out another nervous laugh and the silence of the room was a little unnerving.
‘The biggest impact on my writing, and indeed on my life, was Carl Jung. His belief that man must listen to and develop his anima, or in a woman her animus, has been invaluable to me. He stressed that in order for a man to reach his full potential as a man, he must recognise his fantasies as being very real, dwell upon them for a long time and then, only then, was it possible to achieve the highest potential, and in my case creativity.’
I became aware of Ben and his camera for the first time and I wished, for just a split second, that I didn’t look so dishevelled, but the actor in me knew that what I was about to say might even come across better with me looking in such a state – for once, my behaviour had not been planned. I even acknowledged to myself that I was behaving out of character – the careful consideration I paid to detail was absent in that live performance. I had acted on impulse, after weeping so bitterly in the street. I pulled the fingers on my right hand down my curly beard to the tip and cupped it as I continued:
‘About four years ago, a woman started to correspond with me, admiring my books and flattering me. I invited her along to the studio. I was curious to meet her; no fan had ever paid me so much attention before. At that one and only meeting, I recognised much in her and from then until a few months ago I directed most of my work at her.’
My fingers moved from my chin to my lips as if to stop the words from escaping from them, but I continued.
‘That included the editing of my programmes. Yes, I am telling you that right under your very noses I conducted a personal correspondence, a romance in the mind. I ask you what better way could I have had than to put Jung’s idea of the anima into practice?’
Someone offered me a chair and I took it gratefully, but I was determined to go on as the bodies in front of me seemed to lean towards me, intent on what was coming next.
‘In my conceit, I set myself up as an inspiration to that woman. I was hoping to create, out of my own work, another creative artist. It would have been the greatest tribute I could have imagined. I encouraged her to keep writing to me and allowed myself to dwell on the idea of her so as to reach my full potential. We played the same music psychologically. All went according to my plan, and let me stress that it was a carefully thought-out plan, until she became wise to my experiment and then I put an end to it. It wasn’t easy because I couldn’t shake her off. By then, she had become very attached to me, even dependent on me, and I had obsessed about her.’
I took a long drink of water, emptying the glass.
‘As her wave of letters soaked me, I produced two novels. I owe them her support. My television series has been more successful than even my wildest dreams could have hoped for and how did I repay her? I will tell you. I wrote a letter to her husband accusing her of needing her brain tested and saying that she was the biggest nuisance imaginable to me and my life. I acted as a prat, a vile man, because I was scared of the power that she had over me.’
I stood up and I must have looked a sorry sight in my crumpled clothes and my ungroomed body. I held on to the back of the chair.
‘Yes, the great man of letters and of the Art world was scared. I was terrified that I had been found out and that my cover had been blown. And yes, I was scared of my feelings. I had touched upon a very strong emotion that was threatening my well-ordered life, so betrayal of Marian was the price that she had to pay.’
Looking around, I fixed my eyes on several members of the press who were there.
‘I would very much like you to print this and, if I can get air space, I intend having this run out over the television networks. Marian Davies, if you see this, I send my humble apologies for having treated you so badly. I have no way of knowing how you are or how my action affected your life. My intention was not to harm you but to silence you, please believe that.
‘I live with the knowledge that you must hate me now but I hope that one day you will see fit to forgive me.’
I straightened up and looked straight at the camera as I explained.
‘What I did, I did in the name of Art. But it is only now that I realise that I misused Art and I beg forgiveness. I fanned the flames of your imagination and fed into your subconscious what it wanted to hear. I deeply regret having played games with both your imagination and your emotions.’
I w
aved a hand down my body as I implored.
‘Seeing me, you will acknowledge that I am a broken man. I am finished. The one thing that I held dear in my life was Art; the fact that I have abused it has destroyed me.’
The sentimentality was threatening and my body heaved as uncontrollable sobs escaped from my lips. I took a step forward, falling heavily to the floor. I must have looked like a Cagney character in an old movie who utters his dying words before collapsing in a heap.
The loud sound of snoring woke me with a start. I opened my eyes and looked around me in bewilderment. I was in the fresh air and it was obviously late at night because the traffic had gone and I couldn’t see a single person walking in the street. It took me a few minutes to realise that I was still in the shop doorway and that I must have been asleep, dreaming. I shook my head without moving from my sitting position, with my legs still akimbo. All that stuff about confronting the camera and the gathering at the party had been no more than a dream, a nightmare of confession; and the truth-telling had been but a figment of my imagination. I scratched my head in wonder as it dawned on me what a lucky escape I had had.
The realisation seemed to give me strength and I pushed my back against the glass door so as to lever myself onto my feet. I could see the picture of the dream so clearly in my mind as if it had been a film I had been watching. The relief that I hadn’t given myself away gave me a determination to get home and to sort my life out. I had seen what it would be like to have my reputation fall from me and to be exposed as a callous manipulator of the arts and I knew beyond a doubt from that moment on that I would pull myself together and reclaim my position as patron of the arts and protect my much-admired talent as a writer and a broadcaster. I had been down and out, but going forward I would be in control again.
The dream had the effect of cleansing me. I took control of my state of mind and my behaviour improved immensely. I stopped drinking, started to exercise and I took notice of my wife and family. They returned to me and, as far as I know, Pauline never bothered enough to look at my work for any hidden message – I feel that I was lucky to be spared that. I worked hard but I didn’t play hard any more. I bonded with Pauline and the children and went on to become an even more successful broadcaster. I left all fan mail to Hannah to respond to, steering clear of any temptation to correspond with any one person.
I have to admit that I did wonder about Marian and how she might be getting on in life. Sometimes, I even imagined that we might be passing one another in the street or sitting on a tube opposite each other, not knowing. She would, of course, have known me, due to my high profile in the press and on the television. She would have the advantage there and it would have been possible for her to totally ignore me as if I didn’t even exist.
All of this came back to me after receiving Marian’s letter asking where to send the invoice for services rendered. It had taken me all through the night, pondering on our communication and the events around it. I left the letters and diaries spread upon my desk and went to bed to sleep on it. What price would keep Marian from going to the press now, after all these years? Her granddaughter had flooded social media with a rumour, according to Hannah so it was hard to rest behind my closed eyes. I knew that I had to seek advice from my lawyer later. I felt like a condemned man trying to sleep before facing the hangman in the morning.
It seemed that I would pay the price after all.
MARIAN
After sending the letter in which I spoke of payment for my part in his success, I realised that I had acted out of haste, even if with amusement, knowing that it would be a shock for him to hear from me after so many years. Then, a day or two later, true to form, I followed it up with a second letter:
Dear Jack,
I acted in haste when sending my letter regarding the invoice and out of a sense of devilment too. I wish you all the best at the start of your new career in New York, and you might like to know that I have been a published author for some twelve years now, under a different name. I never wanted you to know that your experiment was, after all, good for me, so I did what women used to have to do and published under a man’s name. In fact, I used the name Freddie Turner.
You will note that I have omitted my address from this and my previous letter. I have no desire to rekindle any correspondence. I had to send this, though, so as to draw the final line under what was, for me, a very complex journey of awakening.
Marian
I wrote it by hand so that he could be in no doubt as to whether it was from me or not. I sent it to his old BBC office, knowing it would be forwarded to him in time before he left the country. The words of a song sprang to mind as I slipped the envelope into the post box. It was an Irish folk song.
‘Let him go, let him tarry, let him sink or let him swim.’