Authors: Julian Mitchell
is for me, but the thought of him with you, I go cold, terribly cold, the air has gone wrong, I can’t breathe, it’s got stuffy and icily cold, there’s gas in the air, we’re all going to die, because of him, because you’re with him, and I know it’s all nonsense, but yet, but yet, there’s a weight on my chest, I can’t breathe, and the air gets fouler and fouler, and the pain gets worse and worse, and I lie down and fight it, a nightmare that won’t go away, when you can’t wake up and someone is sitting and squeezing the life from you, sitting more and more heavy, on your chest, and you struggle, you struggle, and you wake up, thank God, at last you wake up, but you still can’t catch your breath for a minute, and your heart beats and beats and the room is full of a sinister gas, and it gradually goes away, as though by waking you’ve opened the window, but it nearly got you, you nearly died, that’s what it’s like, Elaine, and it’s worse than that, because terrible things are happening in the nightmare, and I can’t stop them, because of the man on my chest who is squeezing, and they’re things that people are doing to you, terrible rapes and tortures, and it seems it will never end, and then when I saw you, I couldn’t say what I meant, and I told Nicholas I was going to kill myself, and I’d never do that, because it would be against God, and against you, and against the world, and mad, but I said it, the words got out, I didn’t mean to say it at all, and then when I’d said it, it suddenly seemed possible, do you know that feeling, you’ve never thought of doing something, and suddenly, without meaning to, you’ve said it, and then you actually start thinking about it, and Elaine, Elaine, I did think about it, in a crazy madman’s way, I was nearly out of my mind, and why should this happen to us, and I knew that nothing had happened, that you loved me, not Charles, I trusted you more than ever, then, in the fit, and it was a fit, the work of some devil, the devil, perhaps, they take over, these fits, I lose all control, and you mustn’t surrender me, ever, Elaine, to the fits of the devils, I shall never be able to look Charles in the face again, Elaine, don’t make it worse for me, I love you before God, there, I’ve said it, before God I love you, how the words crumple and spill, the man on my chest, and the sound of the universe, and why do I write to you, because I am never free from your presence, you are here in this room, looking over the sheets that I’m writing only you’re not, you’re asleep, I expect, you are so beautiful when you’re asleep, I can’t speak, I can’t say, I can’t write, I just want, you must know, Elaine, what do I want, I want the whole world and God, my cake and eat it, you must have
a hundred letters like this, and I hope you destroy them, anyone would think I was mad, but I’m not mad, Elaine, I just can’t speak, or say, and I love you, and life is terribly difficult, isn’t it, I love you, all words, little money-boxes, words, but all been forced open and empty now, if I were a poet, what wouldn’t I write about you, can you feel me under all this nonsense, behind all these words, you must find me in this, Elaine, I’m here somewhere, and I cannot live without you, remember the man on my chest, and the sound of the universe, and tomorrow I shall see you again, and you will see me, and I’m not ashamed of a thing, I love you, words, but I love you, and only you and I know what that means, other people have their own love, but ours is ours, and we don’t want anyone else’s, it’s ours, to be kept in cupped hands and cherished, and suppose I could speak, it still couldn’t be said, it’s unsayable, it can only be felt, it’s a tone of voice and the slant of a smile, not words but a tone of voice, and I have no voice it’s lost somewhere between Wales and Oxford, got off the train at Bristol, there’s a joke for you, Elaine, good night, it’s bedtime, Elaine, Elaine, Elaine, good night. I love you, Elaine.
While we drifted up and down the river, or lay half-asleep at the bottom of the punt, the afternoon we escaped from the problems of our different loves, the afternoon that made Jack think I was some kind of Casanova, and Elaine was a fickle bitch, we had one of those nice rambling conversations, without any particular beginning and with no specific end, but which have a definite centre round which one can comfortably circle. I mean, we never actually talked about Margaret and Jack in an analytic way, we meandered round them, recalling incidents and phrases, mulling over them, musing, as though we were in a spaceship circling a planet without ever landing on it, just looking at its different surfaces. Of course, we both knew that there was a great deal the other wasn’t saying, but all the same we both said quite enough. We didn’t want to land, we wanted to circle, and to listen to each other’s comments on what we saw. Just talking, under such circumstances, can be very helpful. I mean, every time Elaine said something about Jack, I thought of Margaret in a slightly different way. And every time
I
said something, the fact of Elaine’s presence, the fact that she was listening, made me think of things from her point of view, made me try and put things so that she could
understand
them. In fact it was more like being in two spaceships, telling each other by radio about two different but similar planets. If you see what I mean. You know—mine has two moons, how many has yours, that sort of thing.
I don’t know if that was how Elaine felt about it, but at any rate we were both quite muzzy with understanding each other’s
problems
after an hour or two, or thinking we understood them, and we stopped the boat under some trees, and I said I wanted to swim. We hadn’t brought costumes, and the river was far too crowded
for any naked bathing, so she was against it herself, but I was for it, and I took off everything except my pants and dived in. The water was really too warm, in the way that river water can be—I felt that fish were struggling to the surface to breathe all the time, and that I was in their way—but it was quite nice really, as long as one didn’t try and do something stupid, like opening one’s eyes under water, and I splashed around quite happily, waving at Elaine from time to time, and sinking to the bottom to get the marvellous sensation of coming up again. Something to do with the womb, I dare say. Then I took one of the cushions out of the punt and lay on it in the sun to get dry.
Elaine was too idle to leave the punt, she said. So the
conversation
was conducted between two people who couldn’t see each other without some physical exertion, like raising one’s head, and, as I say, we were fairly muzzy, and head-raising didn’t seem altogether necessary. It was rather nice and curious, like being in a telephone-booth and imagining that the person you’re talking to is, in some magical way, in the booth with you, but invisible. Anyway, it was gloriously hot, and I could feel the water drying on my back, and the sweat soaking out of my armpits, and the talk seemed to hang in the air between us, taking its time to sink into our ears, and then to push its way to our brains. There wasn’t a trace of a breeze, so that talking itself was rather an effort, one felt one had to push the sounds through the air or they would never get beyond the few feet of air outside one’s mouth.
Well, as we lay there, our periods of silence grew longer, and the periods of speech fewer and fewer, and I dare say we both thought the other was asleep. But quite suddenly I found myself listening with both ears and no sense of effort or lethargy at all, because Elaine started telling me what it was like to make love to Jack. Now I am interested, as I hope any human being is, in the intimacies of other human beings. It’s not just prurience, it’s not even the desire to make sure that what you do yourself is what everybody does. No, I think—and I may be quite wrong about this of course—I think that when you sleep with someone you show much more about yourself than you can ever do in any amount of conversation. After all, when you’ve got no clothes on, and you can’t say anything because you’re too busy using your mouth for something else, you are revealed by your acts, by the way you kiss, the way you stroke, the way you handle the other person’s body. And in how you do these things, and who does them to whom, and all the rest of it.
Because then you can only act, and you can’t explain, and if it’s a success you can’t even control yourself. At least, I’m not really an expert on this, it’s just an idea I have, I mean I haven’t slept with all that number of people in my life, in fact I’ve probably slept with less than most (what is the average, anyway?) but I
have
learned from those privileged few a great deal about them, and, indeed, a quite surprising amount about myself, too.
Well, anyway, what I’m saying is that the close attention I paid to what Elaine was saying wasn’t simply that of a
smutty-minded
schoolboy, and, in any case, you would have had to have admitted that what she was saying was really pretty interesting in itself. I must admit that I looked up to see if there was
anyone
within earshot, but there wasn’t, so I lay down again and listened.
‘I don’t do anything at all, you know,’ she was saying. ‘I just lie there, like a lump of flesh, watching him. At least it must look like that to an observer. Not that we’ve ever had one, so far as we know. I suppose Jack can feel what’s going on inside me, but I hardly move a muscle to help. I had no idea sex was going to be like that. I thought it would be all puffing and panting and lunging and things. But goodness … You’d never think it of Jack. His fingers are ever so sensitive. He just strokes and strokes, until I’m not me any more, at least my body isn’t mine any more, it’s all his. And at first I can’t bear it, I feel that he’s taking something away from me, something that’s mine and mine alone, that no one should even know exists, but quite soon that goes, I don’t think anything at all, anything, I’m gone, I mean it’s gone, my body, into some other world where it
does
belong to him, and to him only, and I have no say in the matter at all. And I feel terribly glad that I don’t have to worry about it any more, because it’s in the most careful hands, which will guard it unto death, as we Christians say. There’s a marvellous bit in the marriage service somewhere. “With my body I thee worship.” I think that’s ever so right, and good. And I have to let go of my body and give it up before I can worship him with it. And then I’m not sure what happens exactly, because my mind seems to go away too, to join the body, and somewhere around there his body joins us, and that’s when everything becomes impossible to describe. I’ve never read a good description of sex, have you? I mean the last part? I don’t think you can describe the true thing. One simply isn’t thinking, is one? It doesn’t happen in words at all, it happens in feelings, and one can’t even remember
afterwards what the feelings were like. I just know afterwards that it was ever so marvellous. It’s as though the joy can only exist for a limited amount of time, and after that it fades away even from memory. I can recollect having a marvellous feeling, and knowing I was having it. But I never can remember what the feeling was like. Perhaps that’s just a female way of seeing it, I don’t know. Women get terribly carried away, you know. I just get lost, and when I’m back to earth again, everything’s over. But that’s a wonderful feeling, too, after it’s over. If I had to choose, and it’s silly even to try to, but if I had to, I’d choose the moment when I stop resisting, which is the best before the thing itself, and the relaxation
afterwards
, the … there must be a word for it. But I don’t think about all this at the time, I just know I’m there with him, and it’s the most wonderful place in the world, and nothing can ever go wrong, because we’ve been together like that, and we will again. And we’ve made love, and making love is something terribly important and good. And——’
She sighed and didn’t go on.
Well, I didn’t quite know what to say to all that, because I wasn’t a woman, and it struck me as terribly interesting to hear a woman’s point of view, and, anyway, I’d never slept with Margaret, and I hadn’t wanted, while I was in love with her, to sleep with anyone else, fool that I was, and so I was a bit out of touch, really. But I will say that I was rather surprised. I was surprised about Jack having that effect on a perfectly intelligent girl like Elaine, and I wondered in that vague way men do about each other what he’d got that I hadn’t. And it occurred to me that I’d never thought about sex from the girl’s point of view, before that afternoon. For me the whole thing was much more a matter of exploration, it was all more tentative, more examining. I’ve never got bored with the female body, and I hope I never shall. And perhaps the man thinks much more of his own pleasure and how he’s going to get it. But then, I’ve always got
my
pleasure, since we seem to have got on to this rather private topic, at least I get a great deal of it, from the responses of the woman—I react to them like mad. Which didn’t seem to be Jack’s line at all. That’s what I mean, about people’s
sex-lives
being so interesting. You really never can guess what goes on inside, you have to sleep with them and see. And I dare say you don’t always find out like that, either. But I’m not an expert on sex, and it must be awfully dull to know everything about it, even if that’s possible, and I don’t intend to discuss the matter any more
from my point of view, my personal tastes having absolutely nothing, in my eyes, to do with the story.
Well, while I was thinking some of these thoughts, and one or two others we won’t go into, I lay in complete silence on my cushion and let the sun dry my back a bit more. After a minute or two Elaine heaved herself up on one elbow and said: ‘Aren’t you interested, Charles? Are you asleep?’
‘Not at all. Stunned. Do go on.’
‘There’s nothing else to say, really, but it’s all ever so fascinating, don’t you think
?
’
‘Don’t say “ever so”, it’s a loathsome expression.’
‘Oh, shut up!’
‘Tell me, don’t you do anything at all? I mean, it can’t be possible, can it?’
And she lay down again out of sight and thought for a bit, and apparently this was the sort of question she wanted, because after a while she said: ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I do anything, but I can’t be sure. Perhaps I do. I really never think about it while it’s happening. But I certainly don’t do any of the things he does. I mean, I put my arms round him, and all that sort of thing. But I don’t …
You
know. I’m ever so … gloriously passive. He has the most extraordinary effect on me. You’d think I was a tremendous wriggler, wouldn’t you? Not me.’
And she became silent again. Then she said: ‘I remember once when he didn’t start straight off, as it were. Instead he just looked at me. All over. Every little bit of flesh. As though he was testing it for something. Photographing it, perhaps, for him to look at again when he was alone. I couldn’t move at all, then. I just lay there and let him look and look. It seemed to take for ever. And then when he came to my head, and he was going over everything minutely, so carefully, I couldn’t look into his eyes. And I felt he wanted me to. I felt he’d absorbed all my body, and he’d absorb my mind too, if I didn’t shut my eyes. I thought I might simply cease to exist. It was terribly odd, feeling that. Feeling that I would exist only as something in his head. I had a sort of unreasoning dread. Like walking down an unlit road at night, when there isn’t a sound, but you feel something ghastly is going to leap out at you. I usually run. And I ran this time. I mean I closed my eyes. I don’t know why. But later, I opened them, after he’d started, and he could have had anything he wanted. But I didn’t feel then that he was robbing me. But I did before. Isn’t it odd?’
I thought it was, rather. But there didn’t seem to be anything for me to say, and we lay in silence for a bit more. Now I don’t pretend that all the conversation we had that afternoon was as interesting or as one-sided as that, but that’s the bit I remember best, and you can see why, for heaven’s sake. I mean, you don’t hear that sort of thing every day. It made me think about Margaret, and the waste of youth, expense of spirit, and all that sort of thing. I felt very sad and sorry for myself when I thought about Elaine and Jack.
We punted around a bit more, and then we went to our separate homes, and we’d both enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. At least I had, and Elaine had, too, only Jack tried to make her change her mind about it later. That’s one of the interesting things about what she said. She might not move a muscle when she was in bed with Jack, but out of bed she was the one who seemed to dominate. She never seemed to give a damn about what Jack thought. That was the appearance, and look at the reality. It just goes to show that you have to sleep with someone to know what she’s like, or he’s like. Because if I had ever thought about Jack and Elaine in bed together, which on the whole I hadn’t, I certainly would never have thought of it like
that
.
But then, you never can tell. And, anyway, you can see that an afternoon on the river with Elaine was rather a change from Margaret. (I wonder what
she
is like in bed.)
Nicholas pretended to be very stern with me about it later, but I think he knew perfectly well that there’s nothing very wrong in two people having an innocent time on the river. And for some reason I was much less gloomy after it than before, so my friends could hardly complain. Though Jack, of course, took a rather more self-interested point of view. Margaret never said a word about my failure to pick her up that morning, and things went on rather pleasantly for a while. I took her to Schools every day and gave her lunch and so on, with never a murmur about where I’d been. Of course, she may simply not have noticed my absence. This
disappointed
me slightly, because I would have liked her to be a little piqued by me, for a change. But I soon forgot all about that, because she was always tired at the end of the day, and seemed genuinely grateful for the consideration I gave her, and when I mentioned the fun we were going to have when all the scholarly nonsense was over, she said yes. The week-end was still fine; in fact that period was Oxford at its best, one of those rare summers
when people start looking up in old almanacs for similar spells of sunshine (the English really are tremendous bores about weather statistics, I mean you do want to know what tomorrow’s going to be like, but who cares what it was like the day he was born?), and on Saturday evening we drove out to a pub to have supper, and we sat outside in the garden and watched the river and thought about what we were going to do when we went down, though not too seriously, and Margaret said she wanted to be a journalist, which surprised me, rather, so I asked why, and she said she didn’t know, but it would be fun to write for
Vogue
,
or one of those papers, or even for a gossipy paper, but not for a real newspaper, that would be too much like nosey-parkering. I must say I’d never suspected that Margaret had any interest in the protection of the rights of the individual against the encroachments of the Press, but we didn’t pursue the matter. We got back into the car and drove around the lanes near Lechlade and down the river, more or less, to
Bablock-hythe
, and she
had
remembered that this was where Robert de Vere probably crossed the Thames after the battle of Radcot Bridge, but unfortunately there hadn’t been a question on that. So we took the little ferry there, paying our toll to the man who pulls you across with a bit of wood on the wire, quite how I don’t know, and drove back in the twilight, and I felt that really maybe everything would turn out all right after all, because Margaret could be very sweet indeed when she tried.