Imaginary Toys

by Julian Mitchell

  ‘Elaine, you haven’t turned over a page for the last quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Good morning, darling.’

  6

  The Notebook of Nicholas Sharpe

  Week-end with Delta. Offer no excuses, need none. The relationship, to recall The Ambassadors again, was virtuous. Really. I had no idea that Delta was so rich. The Dorset aunt was a fabrication. Not to alarm me, perhaps. She turned out to be a father and mother, married elder sister and younger brother, latter not present (at school). We sailed in West Bay. Mercifully it was not at all rough, and for a change I enjoyed it. Small boats in calm weather strike me as much nicer than luxury yachts. Delta exactly the same at home as he is here: casual, kind, happy. Is that the kind of temperament one has to be born with? Or is it something that happens after an equable childhood? In any case, I am even fonder of Delta than I was, and even more uncertain about his own feelings. I am terrified that he may be perfectly innocent, which would be virtually castrating for me. I must be extremely careful. Careful? I talk like a middle-aged nanny. But I have to. Anyway, I was happy there, almost without qualification. Almost: Decline and Fall seemed unbearably cruel in that pastoral landscape. I read bits out loud to Delta, who smiled sadly. He has never read any Evelyn Waugh. What do the young read these days? Two postcards from Phi on return. One of a floral clock, the other of an elderly bathing-machine. He must carry those things round with him. Two messages. First: I am making up my mind. Second: Whether to bathe or not. I wonder if they were meant to arrive by separate posts. One of the cancelling marks is blurred, so I shall never know. On the whole I feel benevolent, and assume they were not.

  *

  From notes towards an essay on ‘The Function of Pornography in Twentieth Century European Culture’:

  *

  These faceless automata rut between the expensive green covers of the Olympia Press. Only Apollinaire achieved mastery in the genre. The Debauched Hospidar is a novel as successfully experimental as Ulysses, and much shorter. Since his death there has been a poverty of imagination, a dwelling on sexual cliché, that signifies a decline in the sexual prowess of Western Europeans. The effects of two world wars should not be forgotten. With the economic exhaustion of Europe went a marked decline in the art of obscene photography. The cinematic medium, though popular, has never been used with the discrimination that is necessary for pornography to become art. We may hope, some of us, that the rise of Western Germany may mark a revival of this form, and a new creative outburst. This, however, is mere speculation. Meanwhile, we shall await developments with a jaundiced air.

  One could almost make a book out of it. A little jargon from the sociologists, a few misappropriated statistics, and a Readership could be established. A pity that the best title, The Hidden Persuaders, has already been appropriated.

  *

  It was Delta who told Charles about me working so hard before my exams. They know each other vaguely through Charles’s younger brother. For a moment I was angry that my casual and intimate conversation should be reported. Then rather pleased. If Delta wanted to find out about me from Charles, though, he must have been sadly disappointed.

  *

  So little is sacred these days that it is almost impossible to be profane. Words like ‘Capitalist’ and ‘Communist’—economic, rather than religious, words—have replaced ‘devil’ and ‘witch’. Call someone a devil today, and he will feel flattered. Recognizing this, people assume too quickly that Communism and Capitalism are religions. They are not. Both set up images of an ideal society to be created by economic means. At least, can this be said of Capitalism? Does it have any ideal, beyond the furtherance of the present system? If so, one must ask oneself for whose benefit it should be furthered. It is the radical non-Communist’s duty to ask that question all the time. He is a self-appointed and unwelcome conscience of Capitalist society. It is because he is self-appointed that he is useful. He cannot be dogmatic without ceasing to be genuinely enquiring. A good radical is always asking himself whether or not he is right to criticize. And sometimes he finds he is wrong. There are very few good radicals, as one might expect.

  *

  Jonathan Edwards, quoted by Perry Miller: ‘When we have the idea of another’s love to a thing, if it be the love of a man to a woman [whom] we are unconcerned about, in such cases we have not generally any further idea at all of his love, we only have an idea of his actions that are the effects of love, as we have found by experience, and of those external things which belong to love and which appear in case of love; or if we have any idea of it, it is either by forming our ideas so of persons and things as we suppose they appear to them that we have a faint vanishing notion of their affections, or—if the thing be a thing that we so hate that this can’t be—we have our love to something else faintly and least excited: and so in the mind, as it were, referred to this place, we think this is like that.’

  Very, very good. ‘We think this is like that.’ Precisely. How then to describe someone else in love? Or even oneself? ‘He blushed at her name, and showed obvious, indeed overwhelming, confidence in her qualities?’ ‘His heart was beating so painfully it was as though Vulcan’s anvil had taken its place, showered by the heavy rain of the god’s hammer?’ ‘When he took her in his arms everything became soft at the edges, where she had seen a window, and beyond it fields and trees, lay nothing but a burning, vibrant plain of purple smoke?’ No. Indeed not. No smoke without ashes of inaccuracy, gas-masks for the reader. Faint vanishing notions, those. How then? I have somehow to decide what is happening between Charles and Margaret, Elaine and Jack, myself and Delta. What are the similarities, what the differences? Is there no way that by comparison could reveal something of the common nature of lovers? Edwards seems to suggest, by implication, that being concerned makes one a more accurate commentator. (Or does he?) I don’t think this is so, anyway. I want to try and describe Charles and Margaret in terms of an official report. And Jack and Elaine. Remove all the personal. Prevent myself thinking ‘this is like that’ till I have examined all the evidence. Various questions to be resolved: does a homosexual in love feel any differently, in essentials, from a heterosexual? Does one feel the same thing each time one is in love? Does one pair of lovers ever feel exactly what another pair feels? There is no hope of ever answering any of these questions satisfactorily. That is why they are worth asking. I do assume, though, that the main outlines are common to the genus, the framework of Romantic Love, for instance. Really, I am interested only in myself, I suppose, like everyone else.

  *

  C and M appear to be going through a period of tranquillity. This may be accurately attributed to the examination system of the University of Oxford. Six hours of writing each day are six hours well spent in achieving tranquillity for the remaining eighteen hours. That has long been an axiom of the committee.

  (a) The writing induces physical and mental exhaustion, a desire to sleep, and a wish to relax in preparation for the next assault.

  (b) The amount of concentration required by the papers encourages a lack of concentration outside the examination room.

  (c) Any outbursts of temperament on the part of an examinee are attributed to the stress and tension occasioned by examination, and considered as aberrations, often in the teeth of all other evidence. Applied to C and M, the axiom and its corollaries are being confirmed. The effect of M’s tranquillity is to make C believe that she, M, has qualities of softness, amiability, etc., and since these are the qualities he has always wished to find in her, he is now happier and more tranquil himself, than when M is not under the stress of examination. C is in many ways the dupe of his imagination, the present situation illustrating this opinion beyond contention.

  The committee does not consider that the present period of tranquillity is either normal or lasting. It believes that a situation similar to that pertaining to the pair before the period of examination began will recur as soon as the examination is over. In the committee’s judgement it wo
uld be foolhardy to draw C’s attention to this likelihood, such humanitarian efforts on its part being liable to result in its physical injury or mental wounding. The committee has always had grave doubts about this pair. It has from time to time stated its conclusion that a relationship based on heroine-worship and disdain can be possibly injurious to both parties. Its previous findings may be found supra passim. Optimism at this stage is strongly disapproved. The committee is preparing for an emergency with such supplies as it is able to muster, but the niggardliness of government support is something which it has frequently criticized.