Imaginary Toys (23 page)

*

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.

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.

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.

‘Do you mind if I raise the window a little, miss?’

‘Yes, sir, I do.’

Taylor-Knatchbull?’ said Jeremy Travers. ‘I don’t think I know her, do I?
When did she come out?’

We were having dinner before the Commemoration Ball, about six couples and me, with nothing to accompany me but the telegram Elaine had sent. She’d changed it a bit, actually. It said:
MUMPS MUMPS MUMPS TOO GHASTLY TERRIBLY SORRY DARLING BUT
MUMPS LOVE LOVE LOVE ALISON
.

The restaurant was the best Oxford could produce, that’s to say much too expensive, but not too bad as long as you knew the head waiter and did exactly what he said. We’d finished eating and were sitting back with our fingers gently stroking our
brandy-glasses
or the girl next to us, and we had several minutes before we need go and take up our positions of responsibility for the dance. Everything was there, the champagne, the marquee, the bands, yards and yards of carpet and additional tent-work of all kinds, and the statue of the Founder, in all his decrepitude (it was before they got around to raising all that money to polish the place up a bit), our dear revered Founder was lit, if not by a flood, at least by enough candle-power to blind him to the goings-on.

‘Poor old Charles,’ said someone.

‘Yes, poor old Charles,’ said Jeremy, mercifully not pursuing Miss Taylor-Knatchbull’s social career. Jeremy had a thick black beard and long black hair, so that if you got him, with the right light coming from the right angle behind him, he looked like a minor saint with a halo which had somehow slipped too far down. ‘Let’s all do the decent thing by old Charles. I shall let him dance with Diana at least twice.’

Diana was a sexy, Egyptian-looking girl, all dark and sinuous,
and, well, sexy, with black rings painted round her eyes to make her look as if she was dying of one of the less interesting kinds of plague. She had adopted an Egyptian mode about the time of Suez, and at one time she was generally known as The Refugee from The Forest Fire. (One of Nicholas’s inventions, of course.) Well, I didn’t mind dancing with her at all, in fact I thought it might be really rather interesting, since it was quite obvious that she thought Jeremy was one of the biggest bores in the world, which he was, in a way, though only minor-league.

A major-league bore, in fact an international, was Helen Graham, all six feet two and thirteen stone of her. I can’t think who could have asked her, but he was a brave man, whoever it was. She was rather nice in a booming way, but after about ten minutes one reached for the ear-muffs. She liked to talk, particularly about Madame de Staël, her favourite cultural heroine, though not mine (mine is Marilyn Monroe, who is the wittiest comedienne since Sarah Siddons, and I don’t propose to argue about it), and Helen actually proposed to do some research on her, Madame de Staël, that is, and frankly I didn’t ever dare tell her that an awful lot of ground had already been ploughed several times on that subject, because I thought she might hit me, or, worse, burst into tears. They would have made a remarkable pair for one of those interviews in the
Paris Review
—where the interviewer always knows more about the author’s books than the author, who wishes he’d never published half of them, even if they had earned some money. But when the interview was over, Helen would have had nothing to say at all.

‘I shall certainly dance with Charles,’ she said.

Strike one, I thought to myself. (All this baseball jargon came from Nicholas, and I’m sure he got it all wrong. He’d spent some time in America, he said, and we all believed him.) And the other girls all volunteered, too, to help me pass the evening, except for Virginia Spence, who was half drunk already, and who said: ‘I shan’t dance with him, because I’ve got Teddy.’ And really, in spite of the insult, I felt sorry for Teddy, who was a nice enough person in an innocuous way until his family gave him a seat in the House of Commons and he could afford to get married (not on the salary, of course, but the family thought he ought to be given his head a bit now he had a career). I felt sorry for him, because, although Virginia was very beautiful, she was obviously going to pass out in a few hours, and he would be left without a partner, having
brought one in good faith and having played the game like a gentleman, while I, who didn’t regard it as a game to begin with, was going to have my pick all night long.

And looking round the table I had a moment of stifled hysteria when I thought that these people weren’t even my friends, particularly, and here we all were, like a lot of Victorian business men, bloated, flushed, in one case even properly hirsute, and we were the youth of the country, in which all politicians put their trust sooner or later, or so they say, and I wouldn’t have trusted any of us to arrange the time-table of a one-track, one-train-a-day railway. And yet I was wrong, really, because Teddy is, after all, in there voting as the Whip tells him, between courses at his club, and even by doing that he must, in some eyes, be contributing his mite to the running of the country; and Jeremy is on his way to being a director of a firm that makes flywheels for something I’ve
forgotten;
and, of the others, one has started writing unexpectedly good film criticism; and another claims to have been instrumental in starting a new battle between rival soap companies on the nation’s television screens; and another is somewhere in the Far East watching her Britannic Majesty’s interests, and—well, they’re all something, and I certainly wouldn’t have thought they ever would be as I sat and looked at them. So perhaps there really is something in education, or maybe it’s just the magic name ‘Oxford’—but they’ve all got on in their little ways, and, trust them or not, they all have power of one sort or another, God preserve us.

Well, anyway, we moved off to the College and the dance began, and quite soon I discovered that I was going to drink steadily through the evening and into the morning, but that I wasn’t going to get drunk. It’s one of my favourite feelings, a sort of strength of mind showing itself. I knew I probably wouldn’t recover for days, but that was too bad, because I was going to consume a great deal and enjoy it
now,
and the next few days could look after themselves. So I did, and I danced with various girls, swooshing from one end of the marquee to the other, and one of the bands was the usual forward-side-together, forward-side-together dance band, and the other was England’s idea of a jazz band, that’s to say a lot of pale and exhausted-looking people remembering what they’d learnt from the gramophone records of the Hot Five and the Hot Seven and reproducing it, not quite exactly, but close enough to remind one just how good the Hot Five and the Hot Seven were. The evening, in fact, passed quite satisfactorily into the morning.

About two in the morning, though, I decided I wanted to be alone for a few minutes, to smoke a cigar I’d pinched from an old member of the College when he thought he was offering his case to a young don, and to consider the stars, and to get my breath, and to have a drink, and generally to rest a bit. Now, when there’s a Ball on, everyone gives up his room, and all the rooms are
redistributed
to parties of dancers. Just then I didn’t want to join my own party, because so far I’d avoided Helen Graham, and I needed, as I’ve said, a rest, before I found the courage to grapple with her. So I thought a bit, and I came to the conclusion that Giles Mangles was around somewhere, and he probably still had his room, and maybe there was a ball going on there, as opposed to a Ball, and anyway I wanted to see the room after what he’d said. Giles lived in a quiet corner of the College, quiet, that is, at most times of the year, and even tonight it was less raucous than some other places. So I went up the stairs, having seen there was a light on, and breezed in without knocking, which could have been a foolish thing to do, but it was all right, because Giles was there and so were about ten other people, including, of course, though to my amazement, Nicholas. So I said I was sorry to intrude, but I wanted a change of air, and they made room for me on the floor, and gave me a bottle to drink out of, and went on with their own conversation.

They were talking, it soon became obvious, about British colonial policy, and even more obviously they were against it, on the whole. Nicholas was being very quiet and persuasive, in a way he had when really serious, a way which would make me vote for him even if I thought he’d gone off his head. He’s always ready to justify everything from first principles, and it’s almost impossible to disagree with him without becoming illogical. Listening to him, I wondered how many of the others knew that he cared
passionately
about what he was saying, because he never gave a hint of feeling, he just reasoned and reasoned, growing apparently more objective every time someone disagreed with him. I knew him well enough to know that he could be most unreasonable at times, as much a victim of whim or passion as the rest of us. But, when it came to debate, Nicholas could have been from another planet, settling the issue by pure brain-power, sheer logic, utter reasonableness.

Well, after about five minutes there was nothing left to talk about. The man who’d been arguing with Nicholas, a South
African, got up and said: ‘I disagree with everything you’ve said, but I can’t argue with you, because you don’t know the facts.’

And Nicholas said: ‘If that is your position, then argument is obviously going to get us nowhere at all. But if I
don
’t
know the facts, would you mind telling me some that might in some way alter my point of view.’

‘No,’ said the South African, who was quite nice, actually, and brilliant at squash or one of those games, ‘because the facts won’t speak without their background, and till you’ve lived in South Africa there is no way you can understand them.’

‘That is only true,’ said Nicholas, nodding as if in agreement, ‘if you think that South Africa should be treated as a special case for discussion, unlike any other case, with its own rules for argument. Now, you were criticizing the Russian intervention in Hungary a moment ago. Did you know all the facts?
We both agreed about that, didn’t we—but if I’d known that you thought one must live in a country before you can criticize its policies, I don’t think I would have done, because, you see, I’ve never been to Hungary, have you? Don’t you think Hungary might be another special case?’

‘Look, man,’ said the South African, ‘I just don’t want to talk with you any more, do you mind? I don’t know the facts about Hungary, all right, so I don’t. But——’

‘But you won’t let me even think about South Africa without having been there.’

And the South African, who wasn’t, alas, persuaded, but knew when he was beaten, turned to his partner and said: ‘Let’s go and dance, Harriet.’ Then he turned back to Nicholas and said: ‘All right, you win. But thank God you’ll never win anything more than an argument. Because if people like you ran the world, no one would be allowed to do anything. And you can beat me in
argument
a thousand times, but I still shan’t change my views on apartheid.’

Nicholas shrugged and said nothing, and the man went out with his Harriet, but as the door was closing we heard a little fragment of conversation which went: ‘But, John, he’s right, isn’t he? I mean——’ and then the man’s voice: ‘For Christ’s sake shut up.’

And we all sat in silence for a moment, and then Nicholas said: ‘He’s so bloody right, that’s what makes life so intolerable. Win an argument, lose an election. Look at Adlai Stevenson. Those idiots
will only admit they’re wrong when they find a knife in their back.’

‘Good riddance,’ said someone.

But Nicholas looked even more pained when he heard it, and we thought about the idol of the eggheads for a bit, and we saw what he meant, and we all felt sorry for Nicholas, except Giles, who said: ‘Come off it, Nicky, you’ll be Under-Secretary of State for something yet.’

‘Yes,’ said Nicholas, ‘for Sport, I dare say.’ He really did look upset for a few minutes, so we all talked about other things.

It’s odd the way really intelligent people like Nicholas can be shattered by things like that—spiteful, defeated remarks. It comes of knowing you’re right, I suppose, and knowing at the same time that pigheadedness will stop you getting whatever it is done. Or like being Socrates, on a rather smaller scale, and knowing that they’ll make you take henbane or hemlock or whatever it was, just because they know they’re wrong but simply can’t stand being told so any longer. For people like Nicholas, there is a lot of sheer cussedness in human nature which takes an awful lot of loving.

Nicholas hadn’t got a dinner-jacket on like everyone else, he wasn’t even wearing a suit, he was in grey flannels and an
open-necked
shirt, which was slightly
outré,
but which he explained as a memory of Nieman Marcus of Dallas, Texas. I think most people imagined Nieman Marcus was a man, but actually it’s a very grand shop—very grand indeed—and you have to be very rich, Nicholas says, even to be allowed in. Anyway, he didn’t look as though he was about to take to the dance-floor. Giles was all dressed up, in fact he got up quite soon and went off with Marianne Summerson, and they weren’t going to play tennis in those clothes, so I supposed they were going to dance. After a time everyone moved off except Nicholas and me, and we had a nice natter about life and things, but especially about life. And after he’d asked me who my partner was, and why I was neglecting her so shamefully, and after I’d shown him the telegram from Alison, or rather Elaine, though I didn’t tell him that, he said he thought he’d go away for a week or two and let the place calm down, then do some hard work.

‘What about everything, then?’ I said vaguely.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Nicholas, Giles and all that.’

‘Oh,’ he said, and he seemed to perk up a bit. ‘I’m going to live in London and work for this new paper. Giles and I will be living together, if that’s what you want to know.’

‘I didn’t say I wanted to know, but thanks for telling me all the same.’

I must have sounded a bit acid or something, because he looked at me and said: ‘You have no idea of the difficulties of our kind of life, Charles. It may be because of them that my politics are what they are. Any member of a minority that is discriminated against gets the feeling that other minorities may be having just as bad a time, and that he ought to help them as well as himself.’