Imaginary Toys

by Julian Mitchell

  Me: shattered.

  What love can do.

  *

  Jack and Elaine came to say goodbye the other afternoon. Delta was here, of course.

  Elaine: Do you sleep together?

  Delta: Yes. Don’t you?

  Elaine: Oh yes, thank goodness. It’s marvellous, Nicholas, you have no idea.

  Me: I have some.

  Jack: No, you haven’t. It’s no good pretending that it can be anything like the same.

  Me: I don’t see how one can tell, do you?

  Delta: I’m sure someone must know. People must have tried it both ways and written books about it.

  Elaine: If there were any books Nicholas would have read them. But it doesn’t matter, because we’re not jealous of you, and you aren’t jealous of us, are you?

  Me: No, I’m delighted. What happened?

  Jack: Well, it started when I hit Charles, and then—that’s how it started, anyway.

  Me: You see, you normal people have so much more excitement in your lives than us dull old queers. I haven’t hit anyone since a pressed boxing-match in the Army. Do you think we should be jealous, Delta?

  Delta: I don’t think so, Nicky. We don’t have anyone to hit, do we?

  Jack: Well, that was how it started, anyway.

  Elaine: And then we went to bed. It was marvellous. Goodness, I must sound ever so fleshly. I like being fleshly.

  Me: I suppose it’s all right in its way.

  Elaine: Don’t be stuffy. We all know you’re not platonic, you’ve said so.

  Delta: You’ve no idea how high-flown our conversation is when we’re in bed together. Very high-flown, I promise you. Especially when we wake up.

  Jack: If you had any idea of what was in store for you, you wouldn’t sound so happy. Father Gibbons told me I shouldn’t be ‘altogether forgetful of our Saviour’s words about the unrepentant sinner’. He also said a lot about the sacrament of marriage. Quite right, of course.

  Elaine: Poor Jack, he’s still in a terrible muddle. He thinks he’s a hoary sinner, but loves it wickedly. He’ll learn.

  Me: But what happened?

  Jack: Everything sort of exploded.

  Elaine: You’d have loved it, Nicholas, there was Jack talking about his lower-class loneliness, and Charles talking about his upper-class guilt, and they were both being ever so responsible. It was an absolute hoot.

  Delta: Oh dear, class. One thing about being queer is that no one will allow you into his class.

  Elaine: Oh, I wouldn’t be without a nice class. Otherwise there would be nothing to react against.

  Me: I thought you said everyone was being responsible.

  Elaine: I never said I was.

  Jack: I’ve been thinking, Nicholas——

  Elaine: There, what did I tell you?

  Jack: I’ve been thinking about religion as a substitute for personal responsibility? Do you think that’s what happened to me?

  Delta: Nicky, when they’ve gone away, will you tell me what on earth they have been talking about?

  Elaine: Of course he will. We can be the subjects of one of your nice early-morning platonic conversations.

  Delta: What makes you think we wake up only in the early morning?

  Elaine: Oh, you wicked things, you’ll both go straight to hell. The time of day or night doesn’t matter at all, does it?

  Me: I think this conversation is becoming too personal. Elaine is showing a quite unnecessary interest in our private lives, and making eyes at Delta, as well.

  Jack: It’s all right, Nicholas, she can be trusted. I only hope, for your sake, he can be, too.

  Delta: Well, I’m damned. Elaine, how can you love a man who talks about you like that?

  Elaine: It’s because he talks about me like that that I love him. He means it, you see.

  Me: Jack, I wish you’d tell me what happened.

  And he did, as far as he could. He made it sound as though he was the sort of person who can only believe a thing in the teeth of all the evidence. He’d been getting a curious satisfaction out of not sleeping with Elaine, because this demonstrated that he was strong enough to overcome Satan, or some other Christian jargon like that. I said I thought this was perverted.

  Jack: I think you may be right. But you see it was having nothing but Elaine to tell me I was strong that set me off in the first place. At least, that’s how I see it now. When I joined the Church it was for Elaine’s sake more than anything else. And then you know how converts are always much stricter than anyone else. Well, that was me, you see. Churches had never entered my life till then, but she’s been all her life. It was a challenge. So I took it up, I thought that, if this was what she and her bloody parents wanted me to be like, I’d show them I could be more like it than they were. At least, I think that’s what drove me on. I don’t know, Nicholas. It’s a new idea to me, and I don’t know how I shall feel on Sunday morning. Might be a bit tricky. Anyway, it made us both bloody miserable, as you know, and it made me a jealous fool, and it made her go out with Charles just to spite me, I reckon. And that wasn’t any way to live a life, was it?

  Me: No. But what happened?

  Jack: I’m trying to tell you. I had this row with Charles, and we were really going it, and I called him a snob, and he called me things, too, and then I hit him. And then I thought: ‘You’re a bloody fool, aren’t you?’ And I felt a fool, I can tell you. And then we had this long argument over dinner, and he said he thought I was just doing things to try and be a nice middle-class boy, which I’m not. And then we went to this party, you see, and I was thinking like mad. And that’s how it all happened, really.

  Elaine: All lies, of course. Charles didn’t say that, he was much more long-winded and muddled.

  Jack (huge grin): So I told the old fool he could go to hell, and he was likely to get there before me, and he could keep a seat warm for me, if he wanted, otherwise, goodbye.

  Delta: You said that to Charles?

  Jack: Oh my God. No, to Father Gibbons.

  Delta: Nicky, you will explain when they’ve gone, won’t you?

  Me: I don’t think I can. It’s not at all clear.

  Jack: Listen, Delta, don’t ever let them tell you that stuff about the sacrament of marriage. You just tell them you know that it takes two to tango, and they don’t even need a licence if they don’t want one.

  Elaine: Silly Jack. They’re married already, can’t you see, and they couldn’t get a licence even if they wanted one.

  Jack: It’s a pity in a way. You can have sex your way, I suppose, but you can’t ever have the feeling of partnership, of being a regular pair.

  Delta: You’re wrong, you know. We may not be husband and wife, but there are other forms of partnership.

  Jack: Maybe. I’m against it myself, but then no one has ever been silly enough to ask me.

  Elaine: You’re being horribly illiberal, Jack.

  Jack: No, it’s not that. I hope you’ll be happy. I just can’t see it, that’s all. Damn it, it’s not natural.

  Delta: I withdraw from the conversation. Nicky will now give a sermon.

  Elaine: No he won’t, we haven’t got time. I’ll give Jack a little lecture on our way to——Goodness, look at the time! We must fly.

  Me: Jack, be a success, and don’t let her hair get in your eyes.

  Elaine: Oh, if only you knew!

  Delta: And try and be nice about us, won’t you? We promise not to corrupt any of your children.

  Jack: That’s it, you see. You can’t have a family without children. But forget what I said.

  Me: No, honesty is always welcome. We can’t have children, it’s perfectly true. But we can still love each other.

  Elaine: Well, God bless, and I hope you do. Because we haven’t got any children yet, and we’re terribly happy.

  Delta: Now that’s a really nice thing to say, Elaine, and thank you.

  Jack: I’m a mean man, Nicholas, and I’m sorry.

  Me: That’s all righ
t. Give my love to your future parents-in-law.

  Jack: And I talk about you having difficulties.

  When they’d gone Delta said: ‘Are all our friends going to treat us like that, do you think?’

  Me: Yes, to begin with. But wait till our queer friends find out, and then see how much nicer it is to have Jack and Elaine around.

  Delta: It’s not going to be easy, is it?

  Me: Know thyself. It’s up to us, not them.

  Delta: I like Elaine.

  Me: I’ll tell you all about them.

  Delta: Not now, Nicky. There’s something very special I want to tell you.

  Me: What?

  Delta: I want to see you in the daylight.

  Me: But we can be seen, Delta.

  Delta: I’m not ashamed, are you?

  Me: Of course not.

  Delta: Then come on.

  There is one window from which we could have been seen by someone with very sharp eyes in the house opposite. But, as Delta said, we had nothing to be ashamed of.

  *

  Delta says I should burn this notebook, but I shan’t. Once, when I was dancing with Phi in a club in Paris, some ordinary couples came in. I wanted to stop, feeling suddenly foolish. But he said: ‘If you ever feel ashamed of loving a man, or a woman, you will never be able to love him properly. I don’t mean you have to flaunt it about, that’s merely vulgar, dear. As vulgar as feeling ashamed. Now let’s start again, you seem to have lost the step.’ Dear Phi.

  *

  The dossier on Nicholas Sharpe.

  b. 1931. Norwich. Father d. 1953, Birmingham. Mother, living, Hastings. Father’s profession: shopkeeper, clerk, shopkeeper. Only child.

  Educated: geographically scattered primary and grammar schools; Oxford, B.A. 1954; Paris, no degree; Louisiana State University, M.A. 1958; unfinished Ph.D., Oxford. National service: Army, corporal.

  Hair: black. (Also chest, etc.)

  Eyes: brown.

  No distinguishing scars.

  Spectacles.

  Height: Five feet, ten inches.

  Weight: 160 pounds.

  Bachelor.

  First sexual experience: thirteen.

  Knowledge of opposite sex: minimal till seventeen, then disastrous.

  Virgin: nought to thirteen, seventeen to twenty-three.

  Homosexual.

  Politics: left of left-centre.

  Religion: the human race.

  Ambitions: unlimited.

  Profession: none.

  Publications: none.

  Immediate intentions: love, politics, journalism and the human race.

  *

  Jazz and the English intellectual: whereas no standard American intellectual has ever heard of Miles Davis or Lester Young, and certainly could not tell the two apart, his English counterpart feels uneducated without at least a smattering of discographical small-talk.

  This is because the English intellectual is able to project all sorts of political and sociological meaning into the music—as into Western films. Both are based on literal historical facts—but whereas the Western is largely a sub-branch of hagiography, with a now classical form, in which good always triumphs over evil, jazz is still the music of a genuinely oppressed race. There is a challenge in jazz to the moral sensibility. The American, since he lives with the problem, finds its musical expression uninteresting from this point of view. The Englishman can romanticize and feel involved with the Negro on a clear issue of right and wrong. And since the Negro has not yet won, and the Englishman has a natural preference for the under-dog, he becomes extremely enthusiastic. (Cf. English reaction to Little Rock incidents, lynchings etc.) Furthermore, it is sentimental music. The Englishman hates sentimentality about his own country, but jazz is not English, therefore he can love it. (Cf., on another level, the success of absurd bogus songs about Paris; the French singers and actresses who put on phoney French accents for English audiences, and are received with rapture.)

  Delta says that I am wrong, that the music is in any case very moving, whatever one’s political views. I agree that it is moving, but I’m not sure if my emotions aren’t extremely cloudy ones. Delta smiles when I say this.

  Delta: What are your motives for having been born, Nicholas? You worry too much about yourself.

  And perhaps I do.

  We put on the Modern Jazz Quartet, and decided we really preferred Duke Ellington. So we put that on instead, and danced.

  In dancing I lost my thread of argument. It’s much harder to justify my opinion with music that is written by a composer. But I do, in fact, prefer jazz that does not come from way down yonder. Why do I waste time on such speculation?

  *

  Curious feeling of having finished something. And of having started something else without knowing it. My life has been a series of starts and stops. I have never settled. My father always moving. Paris. America. Trips all the time. No sense of belonging to a particular place. I have used places, gutted them of what I want, like someone gutting a sturgeon just to get the caviar. On the whole I have been lucky, more caviar than entrails. One needs to know so much before one can start. There must once have been a time when one could have had a sufficient knowledge of contemporary theories and arguments about poetry, physics, geography, georgics, everything. A world-picture. One would, though, have in fact known just a lot of rubbish. Learning should never stop. When it does one goes steadily rotten, like a fruit after it’s ripe. Human beings are never ripe. Ripeness is all, perhaps, but unobtainable. As love is, in one sense, a perpetual revelation, so should life be. Dogmatism in anything is a sin.

  What have I finished, though? What have I begun? If I could ever know, I suppose, life would hardly be worth living at all. Worth is what you give, not what you take out. Delta says that life isn’t worth living in itself, anyway. But one can make it worth living. We argued a bit. After about ten minutes he started to roar with laughter. ‘The only people who talk about life are bores,’ he said, ‘how lucky for us that we are both bores about the same things, Nicky.’

  *

  I seem to be leaving longer gaps than ever before in this notebook. Partly this is because I am not alone any more, and therefore don’t have the long blanks before bed to fill. Partly it’s because I don’t need to write things down, we discuss so much, and move over so many different fields that only our heads could possibly store it all. And besides, if love is a perpetual conversation, as everyone says, one can’t stop and make pronouncements, as I’ve always done in the past. I am writing now because Delta has gone to a Commem at his college. He had arranged it months ago. I don’t mind in the least. We can dance whenever we like.

  It is one of those endless Oxford evenings when it seems that the light will never quite die away in the west. Outside our window an occasional car swishes along the street, the engine seeming to talk to itself like a gossip without a listener. The limes are in full scent. I feel perfectly content for the moment.

  In an hour or so I shall go and join him. I shall climb over the wall and drop among the dancers like the terrible ghost of some past enormity. Meanwhile I sit and think, and let my mind meander. There is a great deal to be done. Already I have drafted a few articles. But, however much there is, we shall do it. I have never felt so certain of anything in my life. With him, with them, my ambitions seem possible. Where I felt vaguely that something ought to be done, I now consider practically what will be done. I am moving from the academic to the real.

  But then this evening is too beautiful for anything to be true. And he is there waiting. And we shall be absolutely silent together.

  17

  Elaine on the London Train

  I can’t read. I’ve looked at this paragraph for minutes, and I haven’t an idea of what’s going on. Not the author’s fault. Oh, Reading, do we stop here? That time we were in the public gardens. And the statue to the Afghan War, with a man called John Slaymaker on it. And the bush planted by Princess Maria of Tek. And the abbey. And the prison
. Not a prison now. Nicholas making us go and stand for a moment in silence before the gates. ‘I hate Oscar Wilde’s life almost as much as I admire some of his writings, but what martyr is ever very nice?’ Nice, nice, nice. We say it all the time. Giles was nice. Nice. We are stopping. No, it is a prison, for juvenile delinquents. Isn’t it? Awful to be caught. What can you do though, people will steal and kill and hurt each other. Dreary platform. Why are there always those chickens being sent back and forth? And pigeons. One-day-old chicks. Terribly cruel to take them away from their mothers at that age, but perhaps they’re from incubators. How horrid. An incubator for a mother. And little puddles of water everywhere. Hasn’t rained for days. Where does it come from? So gloomy to be a porter, half the time drinking tea, the other half being shouted at by stupid people who expect you to know why their train’s late. Think of collecting tickets all my life. Squdge with the clippers. Baskets full of clippings. And what do they do with all the old tickets? Lots of them torn in half, anyway. Oh, I’m tired. And bother, there’s a man coming in, can’t he go somewhere else? I shall have to sleep with my legs crossed. Pins and needles at once. Trains. So many people wanting to go away. Where are they all going? Aren’t we ever going to move back into the sunlight? Horrid station. Filthy, too, ever so dirty. They ought to scrub it every morning with stiff brooms and hot water and carbolic. Disheartening. Like having to empty the ashtrays in a hotel. I suppose we’ll start again eventually. Perhaps not. Perhaps we’re here for ever. No, my good man, you can look at that window as hard as you like, but it’s going to stay open. Go to another carriage if you don’t like it. I shan’t look at you. If you want to speak to me, you’ll have to begin the conversation with me looking out of the window. I shall pretend not to understand. It’s a lovely day. I don’t want to be all sticky when I get to London. He’s even got an overcoat in the rack. Where can he be from? Perhaps he’s just back from a long spell of duty in Arabia somewhere. ‘It was pretty damn’ hot on the Gulf, you know. Hundred and ten in the shade at lunchtime. Mind if I shut the window?’ I mind very much, I’m afraid. Go and sit in the engine, in front of the fire. In your overcoat. I want to get the sunlight through the window on my cheek. I want to hear the telegraph poles whip past. And I want the window open, anyway. And I’m a lady, so you can’t do anything about it. No, I’m not a lady, what a strange thing to think. Using my accent as a weapon for fresh air. Jack would hate me for saying that. Well, I’m a woman, a girl, and you’ll have to do what I want. Odd the way women can get away with it. As though they didn’t have bodies at all, no arms to carry things, no legs to walk. All wrong. Some countries the women do all the work. Men just lie around. That’s silly, too. Goodness, think of Jack lying round the house waiting for me to get back from work. I’d kick him out pretty soon. And he’d be furious if he found me lying about, too. Can’t lie about and be human, you’d just fall to pieces, with boredom. And indigestion. Oh, Jack, Jack. How many days? Nine. I wonder if that’ll be time. Will they ever understand? I think Daddy will, but Mummy will be awfully hurt. She’ll think I’ve done it on purpose to hurt her. But she always finds such ghastly young men for me. Can’t bear me having gone to a university. Nor can Daddy. Think it’s unnatural. Goodness, the things one’s up against. Unladylike to express an opinion, to know things, that’s a man’s job. What am I supposed to do, then? Get married, and have a lot of children. Not too many, that’s unladylike. Make a nice, there it is again, home. Be kind to my husband. Make sure he’s kind to me. If he’s unfaithful, go home to Mother. Make his life miserable till he stops. Don’t express an opinion, you don’t know what you’re talking about, only men know about these things, darling, and if you can make him happy in bed, you’ll find everything else will be all right. ‘Feeling better, Bertie?’ What was it Granny was told by her mother? ‘It’s horrible, dear, but shut your eyes and let him get on with it.’ Must have been awful being a Victorian. Did they ever see each other naked? Awful not to, like making love over a telephone. But they had all those children. We shall have three, Jack says. Never thought of a number. One boy, two girls, Jack wants. I’d rather it was two boys, one girl. One of us may turn out to be infertile. Ever so terrible. Could adopt some. I shall have to work at first. We’ll need all the money we can get. Saving up for the children. The kiddies. But me a career woman, no. No career for me, except Jack. Not always like that. Wanted to be a nurse. Then a vet. Then an actress. I must have been fifteen. I was—forgotten the name already. Iago’s. Goodness, that didn’t last long. Then what? Oh, singing. Opera. Never wanted to be a dancer. Why opera? Frightened of getting fat, perhaps. Now, breakfast every morning. The bliss of breakfast every morning. Tea for Jack, coffee for me. Extra work. Bliss to do extra work. Nicholas says Americans all drink orange-juice for breakfast. Might be nice, but lots of it, not just one of those tiny glasses. Must be fresh, too. No cereal. Always hated sugar and milk and soggy cereal. Snap-crackle’s not so bad. But no, no cereal, and no porridge. Sausages, eggs, bacon, what about pork-chops for breakfast? No. Eggs for breakfast. Not every day. Then off to work. What will I be? Sort of personal assistant. I’d be a marvellous personal assistant. Bliss! And long lunches with the other girls, while they talk about their boy-friends. Then more work. Then home. Will Jack get home first? He mustn’t, that would be awful. And he’ll have different holidays and more of them. Where shall we go? No car. Paris or Rome are out. But bicycles in Brittany, I suppose. Dull. We must wait, that’s all. Then, with the children, we’ll go to Rome. Jack won’t like the continent, but he’ll learn. Then there’s all England and Wales and Scotland. I’ve never been to Scotland. Italy, Austria, Switzerland and France, but not Scotland. Silly. Ought to know your own country. Never been to the lakes. Never been north of Sheffield. Changed trains there for Uncle William’s funeral. Awful. Hate funerals. People crying because they weren’t nice to him when he was alive. Awful to die. Never can live long enough. But you get old, and that’s awful, you don’t feel the same, people disappear, you can’t do what you want to do. Ugh. Better be dead. Gloom. High time this train started. Man’s going to sleep. Good. Feel awake again. Jack hardly let me get on the train. Ever such an exhibition. All the porters looked at us as though we were something out of the films. ‘Say goodbye to the lady, sir, we’ve got to get started.’ Oh, that was funny. ‘Say goodbye to the lady, sir, we’ve got to get started.’ Me, ‘the lady’. Oh, and Jack, and it’s only nine days. He’ll hate them, be miserable, because he’s scared stiff of meeting them. He thinks Daddy is an ogre with special boots for trampling on the workers. And Mummy’s a sort of Lady Bracknell. Wait till he’s tasted her cooking. Lady Bracknell wouldn’t have known one end of a saucepan from the other. Wilde again. Oh, at last, we’re going to move. We’re moving. Where’s the prison? Come on, engine. Get us out of this dreary station. That’s better. Sun again. Ugly town. There it is. Red brick. Octangular bit. Will Nicholas and Giles end up in prison? Nice man, Giles, glad about that. Awful if he’d been nasty, one of those sinister ones. Poor things. Why poor? Perhaps they—but it can’t be the same. I wonder who’s the boy and who’s the girl. Perhaps they don’t do it like that. I wonder why it happens. Don’t have to worry about having babies, though, lucky things. He’s woken up. Looking at the window again, I bet. It’s June and a nice day, why can’t he move if he doesn’t like it. Selfish people are. Look at me. Oh, I’m glad I’m a girl. I got here first. My right to decide about the window. Bliss being a girl. Utter bliss.