Briefing for a Descent into Hell Part 14

And again, I suppose it won't seem much when I write it. Sometimes when you read a book or story, the words are dead, you struggle to end it or put it down, your attention is distracted. Another time, with exactly the same book or story, it is full of meaning, every sentence or phrase or even word seems to vibrate with messages and ideas, reading is like being pumped full of adrenalin.

Ordinary everyday experiences can be like that.

I was walking down the street outside London University. It was a late afternoon. May I think it was; at any rate, it was not yet summer. It had been raining. Things were glistening in the street lights. Do you find too that about the time the sun goes down the world gets brighter, and more intense. And sometimes very sad. Particularly when it has been raining. Well, I'll get on-I know that atmospheres or sights that move one person leave another cold. I had been walking briskly to keep warm; it was a typical English spring day, as cold as winter! Outside the University entrance, which I pa.s.s often enough, since I live near there, I slowed and began glancing in at the great porticoes and pillars, the formal pompousness of the place, and I was thinking that such impersonality, formality, is how one can most easily identify a place of learning-school, university, college, and that this atmosphere in itself must set a condition of thinking for a young person being educated in it. I saw a man come down those steps, but this was a time for people to be going home, and there was a steady stream of them coming across to the gates. I was looking at them idly and thinking how tinily unimportant these human beings looked beside the great cold buildings that were supposed to be their servants, and that no young thing learning there could ever believe that human beings are more important than their inst.i.tutions. Words, teachers, textbooks could say one thing: the building itself shouted the opposite.

I was watching this man for some reason, and thinking that as I stood still I was getting cold. This was my strongest thought-that I was cold. At the same time I thought that I knew this man. All at once there welled up in me a strong feeling of knowledge of him-no, not just friends.h.i.+p, and remember that I am sixty years old, and not a romantic girl. I can't say more than this: I can't remember a time when I've felt so powerful a kins.h.i.+p with someone, as if I really knew someone through and through, and was linked deeply with him. As this feeling faded, leaving me rather astonished and even amused at it, I realised that of course I knew him: it was Frederick Larson. Perhaps you know the name? No, he is not a well-known person, but I do not think it is really a foolish question. For one thing, how often does one say to a friend or acquaintance about another, Do you know so and so, and he does-improbably. But in this case there is more. It turns out that as we-I'll explain the "we" in a moment, meet each other, and attract others, in fact we are already in the same orbit, if I can put it like that. We know each other, or have friends in common. The actual meeting is only a confirmation of an existing link. Anyway-Frederick knows your name, and your work, and he says that in fact he met you once, but there were people there-another lecture, it is doubtful you will remember, if you ever heard, his name.

When he came up to the gate and saw me standing there he said smiling: "And now tell me about yourself."

I'll explain. It is an old joke. It was twenty-five years ago that I first heard of him through my sister Marjorie. She was with her husband in Greece. He was an archeologist. He got some form of blood disease, and was a long time ill before he died. During this time, Frederick Larson, who was an old friend of his, befriended him and Marjorie. He was an archeologist, too. He got long leave to be with his friend, my sister's husband, while he died. My sister was lonely and miserable and wrote long letters to me, two or three times a week. She told me all about this marvellous friend of her dying husband's, of this friend's kindness and patience and lovingkindness, and so on. She told me all about him, his early life, his struggles, his education-everything. In short, I knew everything about him and he knew everything about me, because there seemed no particular reason why we should ever meet. We were to each other more like characters in a long-running serial story, but the story is being written as one reads. We knew the most intimate things about each other. It was not the first time-nor the last-that I have had this relations.h.i.+p with people I haven't met. But now of course I wonder if this extraordinary intimacy at second hand means that one day we are bound to meet. Well, one day at a party I was next to an American I had never met, and yet who seemed familiar. I had not caught his name when introduced. And he felt the same about me. We started telling each other things we knew about each other, as a joke, withholding our names. We knew each other extremely well-we knew more about each other than many who meet every day of their lives. Well, at last we came out with our names, and all was explained. The beginning of a beautiful friends.h.i.+p? Not then, at any rate. He was just off to a dig in Turkey, I was to take one of my children for a holiday, our lives were in very different grooves. We joked that there was no point in our being friends, because we already knew everything there was to know, and there could be no surprises. After that we kept running into each other, in the street, at friends' houses. Of course, he was often abroad, and when my children were half grown, we would take them travelling. Before we left on a trip I would jokingly make a bet with my husband that we would run into Frederick somewhere. We did, more than once. When we met, one or other would say: "And now tell me about yourself." More often than not, we already knew-mutual friends had kept the serial story running.

This time, when he reached where I stood, he turned and looked in at the court-but it is too big to be called a court-where tiny people hurried away from the great building. He must have seen what I was seeing, because he said: "There are buildings as large as that one which have flights of steps to them in scale with their size."

I didn't understand.

"There's a building in Peru for instance. It has stairways which could not be used by our size of human being. Imagine that building there with steps up to it in scale-steps the height of a man. The reason why that building dwarfs us so, is because of the proportions of the steps and the building itself. It is in the proportions."

"But it would be a building for giants," I said.

He quoted, laughing: "But there were giants in those days."

I was getting very cold by now, and I was late for a visit I was making. As I thought this, he said, "Well, I expect we'll run into each other again."

I had already said good-bye and turned away when I had to return. It was like a panic, a warning, a sense of possibilities being lost, of vanis.h.i.+ng opportunities. Into my mind had come the memory of your talking on that dreary platform. Frederick had also turned back after having walked away a few steps.

He said: "I spent last summer working on a site in Turkey. About half an acre of a city has been exposed. It must have been some miles across. It looks as if under the top level are many other levels. Human beings have lived on that site for many thousands of years. Probably the climate has changed in that time, changing everything, vegetation, animals, people. Based on a summer's work and that exposed half acre we know everything about that civilisation-its beliefs, its rituals, its habits, its agriculture. Learned papers are being written by the dozen. I've written three myself. Yesterday I did not feel very well and I stayed at home and watched television between the hours of four and seven. Based on that experience I am prepared to conclude the following about civilisation in Britain in 1969. First of all, the most outstanding characteristic of an extraordinary civilisation: all events are equally important, whether war, a game, the weather, the craft of plant-growing, a fas.h.i.+on show, a police hunt.

"Another, to us incredible trait, is their ability to accommodate such a wide variety of incompatible beliefs. They are a highly developed technical society, but they also believe in witches, fairies, supermen, magic of all kinds, and they take pains to inculcate these beliefs in their children side by side with scientific techniques.

"At the same time they have a deity, superior to the subsidiary G.o.ds, but this deity is more backward than they, and less powerful-for the second-rate G.o.ds, like Superman, in fact use modern techniques like levitation and s.p.a.ce travel. The superior deity is placated or invoked by being sung to, or at, in front of priests who wear highly decorated garments, as part of an elaborate ceremonial that takes place in elaborately decorated but backward and archaic buildings. These priests, probably as part of magical ritual, use sound in all kinds of ways, chanting, intoning, droning, and so on.

"Their use of sound is altogether challenging and enigmatic. While they communicate with each other entirely verbally, usually by means of lectures-a man or woman talking at length on some isolated subject-they have little belief in the effectiveness of words by themselves, because these talks, or lectures, are introduced by, accompanied by, interrupted by, concluded by, a variety of sounds, usually musical. It is my belief that their use of music in this way, if we could understand it, would be the key to that civilisation. It is probably to do with indoctrination or brain-printing. To my mind there is no explanation for the entirely arbitrary, casual, fragmentary nature of this heightening or accompanying music except that it must be part of the technique used by a hidden priestly or technically superior caste to control the plebs. If this is the correct explanation, then this culture is remarkably advanced in some ways, even if so backward in others. Have I mentioned that they are a deeply animistic culture, believing that animals and plants have human and sometimes magical characteristics? ... Yes," he said, "I can a.s.sure you that this is quite a.n.a.logous to our methods in Turkey or in Africa or anywhere else. Now, if I had watched the television between eight o'clock and twelve, my conclusions would have been quite different, but of course, equally-emphatic ..."

We went to a pub nearby, where I telephoned the person who was expecting me, to apologise for not coming. I could not leave Frederick then. He was, in fact, in a very disturbed state. It turned out that during the last few weeks we had had the same experience. In his case he could not remember a definite beginning to it all. He could not say: It all started because one evening I sat in a cold lecture hall listening to an enthusiast about education. No, but one day he realised that he was in a different state or mood. But he couldn't define that mood. His work which he loves and usually puts before everything-even before his wife and family, as he readily admits-this work had become a routine, something to be done. He thought he might be ill. He even went to the doctor and was given a tonic. He found he was sleeping badly. He described it as the kind of sleep one has before a journey when you have to start very early, and you keep waking yourself up to make sure you don't over sleep. He was offered a chance to do some work on a site in the Sudan, and though he had been wanting to work in Africa again, he said no. Yet he knew this was foolish, and might be a decision he would later regret.

Finally he said to himself that he was slightly mad, and perhaps this was due to discovering he was indubitably middle-aged! But he stopped caring about the whys and wherefores. He said everything had become heightened and alive, and it was like being in love, that condition when for hours, days, weeks, everything is soaked with the personality of the other person. Yet he was not in love.

And there was no other person. He said it was as if everything-person, place, tree, plant, building-was full of riches, promise, yet each turned away from him as he approached. "It was as if I approached a mirror and found it blank." I know this feeling well. Do you? I told him of my experiences on "the night of the children" (which is now my label or catch-phrase for it). We stayed talking until the pub closed, and then went to my flat because we both had the same feeling-each to the other was a jar full of possibility, but a closed jar, sealed. But if we talked long enough, some revelation would emerge, some clue.

One trouble was that our lives have been so different, he always travelling, always finding new places and cities, and I have been a teacher and a housewife and mother seldom leaving England. Yet we did have this thing in common, the having been struck by a condition like extra wakefulness. Other people's responses seemed slow. They seemed half asleep. Yet this condition was also an affliction, for it was a strain and a difficulty-a challenge it was hard to rise to.

I've written about that meeting with Frederick in detail, because it was like "the night of the children." Now I'll abridge things, and try and make some order.

Frederick and I met nearly every day-we have now reached early summer, end of May, beginning of June. As I said, I've retired, and he had left himself at a loose end. He is an energetic man and dislikes idleness. He set himself up for a couple of lectures about the site in Turkey. He has done a lot of lecturing. One evening he came to see me, about ten at night, saying that when he had stood up to start speaking, a couple of hours before, it being the first lecture, he started stammering so badly he could not go on. He literally could not bring the words out. Excuses were made, that he had been overworking and so on. Apologies, much embarra.s.sment. He came to see me, astonished, shocked, and not a little afraid. He had returned to his belief that he might be ill. Yet although he had not been able to bring out two consecutive sentences-had not brought out one word without stammering it-with me he did not stammer at all. He was as usual. Suddenly he remembered that it had happened to him before, about ten years before. But the thing had been so unpleasant he had pushed it out of his mind. He said: "It was such a bizarre thing, when I'm so fluent and talkative that I could not a.s.sociate it with myself. It really did seem to be happening to someone else." He had finished a year's work on a site on a Greek island. He was lecturing on the Iliad and the Odyssey, in connection with certain discoveries he and colleagues had made. He began stammering. He battled on, because it was not something that had ever happened to him, yet after a few minutes a fit of stammering so bad he could not go on attacked him, and he had to end the lecture. It was as if, he said, his tongue had been numbed or frozen.

He went home and there finished aloud the lecture he had intended to give to the audience. He did this perfectly easily, in his normal fluent way. But he noted that as he talked, another stream of words paralleled the stream of words that he was actually using, and this parallel stream expressed opinions not precisely opposite to those he was using, like an echo or mirror image-which, said Frederick, would have made some sort of psychological sense-but opinions rather off at a tangent, and, he said, he could swear they were not opinions he had read, or heard spoken of. They were crazy, dotty, batty, cranky. But he could not prevent that silent stream going on, quite distinctly, while he came out with his ordered and sensible lecture. He said that he felt that if he relaxed a vigilance or censor for one moment, his tongue would begin voicing this other crazy stream, he would be as helpless as a ventriloquist's dummy.

Well-he cancelled the course of lectures, and went on a holiday with his family. He took sedatives prescribed by his doctor, and when the holiday was over he went off on another dig, and soon he had forgotten completely that he had stammered at all.

I am going into more detail about the stammering than I otherwise would, because on "the night of the children" you said in pa.s.sing that you had had trouble with stammering.

Frederick cancelled his series of lectures on Turkey. He went to a psychiatrist, who was not able to unearth any private trouble, Frederick insisting that he is happy in his work, his life, his habits, his wife and his children-now grown up. He then told the doctor about his state of mind in the last few weeks, and discovered that he is suffering from the male menopause and manic depression. This he found interesting in an academic way, but unhelpful. It occurred to him that going to the doctor had added another parallel track, "like a railway line" to his life. Discussions with the doctor about his condition went on alongside the condition, without affecting it in any way, or affecting what really interested him-which was, and is, the discussions with me, and with one or two other people. I'll simply say at this point that shortly after my meeting with Frederick, both of us made other encounters, of the same quality. These meetings were separate, and fortuitous, yet Frederick's friend and mine knew each other, and had, in fact, the sort of relations.h.i.+p I and Frederick had had for years-the long-running serial story. If you come to meet us, which I do hope this letter will have the effect of achieving, then you will meet me, Frederick, and two others, all of whom had their lives changed in the last few months, yet in ways which are very hard to describe, so slight and imperceptible are these changes to an outer view. Back to Frederick. After half a dozen appointments with the psychiatrist, Frederick was still stammering whenever he approached any aspect of his professional work, and was quite fluent and easy-tongued on any other subject.

The psychiatrist offered Frederick various treatments, all chemical, but Frederick left him and found himself a specialist in stammers, not a doctor, but someone outside the medical profession. This man uses a method which cures stammerers by making them speak very slowly, sounding every letter, with measured pauses between the words. The sounds that come out are emotionless, without the usual flow and movement of speech. It is a machine speech. But the method does cure some people. Frederick did go to half a dozen cla.s.ses, and then it occurred to him that the method was a way of putting a lock on one's spontaneity, creativity. The method was a censors.h.i.+p. Watching every syllable as it comes to one's tongue means more than focussing a total attention on one's speech-it means putting the censor further back, into one's mind. Sorting out, or choosing, words when they have already arrived at one's tongue's end, that is too late. No, the choice must have been made earlier, in the mind. Frederick found that he was getting very good at it. In cla.s.s he was sounding like someone who had just learned English and had to work out every sentence before using it. Or like someone living in a dictators.h.i.+p, who has to keep a guarded tongue. But when he broke into uncontrollable stammering, it was as bad as ever, though less frequent. He left the cla.s.ses, and decided not to return to the psychiatrist. He had understood that-there must be something that he should be understanding.

Together we went over and over the period immediately preceding the first stammering fit of over ten years ago. It was the work in Greece, which resulted in a book called, I believe, New Light on Homer-or something like that. But it turned out that was not the beginning. Before Greece, he had been travelling in Africa. He had visited a tribe whose life is based on the movements of a river. The river floods every year, and a large plain disappears under water. In the plain are mounds where villages are built. When the flood rises to a certain height, the people of the villages get on to boats and go to live on the sh.o.r.es, until the waters subside again. Now-and this is the point-Frederick had this thought: Suppose the flood rose twenty feet higher than usual one year and inundated the villages, and the people then decided not to return to the villages, but to live somewhere else, then in a very short time indeed, probably no more than two or three years, it would be impossible to know that human beings had lived there. The huts were of wood and earth. The roofs of thatch. Most of the vessels were of wood. The earthenware was not fired, but sun-dried and made to be used and thrown away easily. The tribe had been peaceable for some time-the weapons, spears, were of iron and ritualistic. Water and ants could destroy all these things in months. The only objects in these villages that would survive were modern tinware and plastic things. But this society could have existed a thousand times over, on these mounds, with floods between, and nothing, but nothing would have remained.

Yet, Frederick said, if you judge a society by harmony, responsibility towards its members, and lack of aggression towards neighbours it was a society on a high level indeed. And-and this was the place where Frederick was. .h.i.t-it was a society more integrated with Nature than any he could remember, and for Africa that is saying a great deal. Not only did this tribe's life centre on the flooding and subsidence of the river, but it was very highly ritualised around the seasons, the winds, the sun, the moon, the earth. But in conventional anthropology it is tantamount to saying that a society is barbaric, backward, to say that it is animistic, or bound with nature.

Frederick left this place deeply perturbed. Visiting this tribe, and the thoughts he had had as a result, struck at his confidence as an archeologist-that was how he experienced it. That he had the equivalent of a religious person's "doubts," and it was necessary to dismiss them before going on. The chief thought was that our society was dominated by things, artefacts, possessions, machines, objects, and that we judged previous societies by artefacts-things. There was no way of knowing an ancient society's ideas except through the barrier of our own.

This experience's effect on him he decided was "unhealthy" and "morbid."

I am sure you will have gathered by now that Frederick is and always was a man of great vitality, a.s.surance, and has never been one to be afraid to voice opinions, take sides-a.s.sert himself.

If he had been less self-confident, probably the effect of that visit in Africa would have been much less.

However, he overcame his temporary loss of spirits, and started his lectures on Greece, which he had to abandon because of his first attack of stammering.

To come to the period just before he and I met outside the gates of London University.

There was a small, apparently minor incident ... he was visiting an old colleague, who was engaged in an excavation in Wilts.h.i.+re. He had stayed the night in a local inn, and had walked over next morning to visit his old friend. It was mid-morning and the work was in full swing. The professor himself, half a dozen amateurs there for the love of it, and two archeological students. A trench loosely filled with rubble had been exposed. The professor was unaware that Frederick was there. He was saying that the type of trench indicated that the foundations were for a stone building-the stones that had been keyed in to the stony rubble having been taken away for other later building. At which one of the students timidly piped up that he had recently been in Africa and had observed that in a village he was visiting, the people were making a hut of poles, mud plaster and thatch. The first stage of this was to dig a trench, the second being to stand the poles of the future walls in the trench, the third being to pack stony rubble around the poles. The professor did not comment on this. He walked away and Frederick followed him and announced himself. The professor took Frederick around the site and when he came to the trench filled with the rubble he said: "In my opinion this is the foundation of a wood and not a stone building, after all, certain primitive people did start wood huts by ..." and etc. and so on. But if there had been no student back from a jaunt to Africa, the professorial voice would have announced with total authority that this building must have been of stone. And this was how the emphatic p.r.o.nouncements of archeology are arrived at. It was this minor incident that made Frederick remember certain disquiets he had suffered last summer in Turkey. If "disquiet" is the right word for it.

All through the summer in Turkey he was thinking of his visit to the river-dominated society in Africa more than ten years before. He could not shake off the memory of it, although the two places had so little in common, one being under water for months of the year, the other being so high, dry and exposed. He could not shake off thoughts about the bases of modern archeology, which usually he just accepts as not more than nuisances no one can do anything about. Particularly about finance-that the financing of an excavation was always the key to it, and particularly whether it took place at all. Certain people got money easier than others. Some people couldn't get money at all, or only with great difficulty. Some countries were easy money-extractors, others not. Countries had runs of popularity, were in vogue for a while, then went "out," like styles in dress. He, Frederick, had been working on that particular site and not one he wanted to work on, because he had been able to get money for that site from an American source-a museum short of a certain kind of artefact which was known to be freely available on that site.

Certain ideas were accepted, sometimes for decades or centuries, dominating archeology; suddenly they were doubted. That "Greece was the mother of Western civilization and Rome its daddy" directed archeology and excavation for a long time-yet he, Frederick, would be able to make out a case that the Arabs, Moors and Saracens were parents to "Western" civilisation, sources of its ideas, its literature, its science, a case based on the same kind of evidence that made us legitimate heirs to Greece and Rome ... this case wouldn't necessarily be more true, but its bases would be as powerful.

Throughout the summer he amused himself by concocting, one after another, papers describing the civilisation he was unearthing from the point of view of civilisations not ours-Roman, Greek, Aztec, etc., and so on. With his tongue in his cheek he framed various versions of the paper that he would probably publish about his work of the summer.

This paper would begin, or end, with the ritual sentence that of course the conclusions drawn were tentative due to lack of knowledge, lack of money, lack of time, and because only a fraction of this level of the site had been excavated, let alone all the levels beneath. But this bone having been tossed to the dogs of doubt, all else would be a.s.sertion and statement. The paper would draw the fire of opposing professors schools and theories. Textbooks for universities and schools would result. These would contain statements like: Writing was not discovered in the Middle East until 2,000 B.C. The Sumerians believed so and so. The astronomers of the Akkadians believed such and such. The Egyptians mummified their priest-kings because they wanted the corpses to last a long time. The world was created by G.o.d 4000 years ago. That African civilisations prior to the coming of the white man were nonexistent/barbaric/plentiful/backward/spa.r.s.e/or whatever was the current notion. And so on. Frederick left Turkey in a disturbed frame of mind which he a.s.sociated with his previous state of mind after his African visit. It so happened that he chanced on a book describing a Victorian clergyman's crisis of Doubt over the existence of G.o.d. The clergyman's character struck Frederick as being similar to his own: energetic, and confident. The man had been upset by Doubts about the exact date of the creation of the world by G.o.d. His state of mind was very like Frederick's as he read. He was on the point of deciding that it was his moral duty to leave the Church, as he could not with honesty remain in it, when his tenth child, a girl, became engaged to a clergyman. This was a very good and by then despaired-of match, as the girl was an old maid, being nearly thirty. The father knew the girl would not keep this man, if he, the father, aired his Doubts and left the Church. For if he left the Church there would be a family-engulfing scandal and the daughter's fiance was a conventional man with a future to guard. The father's crisis now became a nice exercise in balancing responsibilities: his conscience, or his daughter's future. With much anguish, he put off his leaving the Church until his daughter was wed. This meant he had to go through marrying (personally officiating) his daughter to the clergyman son-in-law with his mind full of Doubts. But when he examined his conscience after the ceremony he found his Doubts much less. As if the act of going through the ceremony had relieved them. "It was my love for my poor Daughter; my fears for her comfortless future; my anguish of mind that my own misery and confusion should poison Others-it was these that had caused me to act, as I then believed, Dishonestly. Thanks be to G.o.d in His Great Mercy that he led me, through my Valley of the Shadow, back to Himself ..."

In short, that Victorian crisis was over. Frederick was left with two thoughts. One, that this frightful, painful, and very real conflict had taken place about a hundred years ago, which was nothing at all, even in human time. It had been a very common conflict indeed. Some of the best Victorian minds had suffered torment, even collapse. Careers had been ruined, families destroyed, lives laid waste. But by even a few decades later these Doubts looked ludicrous. (In religious terms, Doubts looked ludicrous, for in our time Crises of Doubt are experienced most noticeably in the political context.) The second thought was-that his state of mind after the African visit, his state of mind due to visiting the Turkey site, were identical with that of the Victorian clergyman in his religious conflict. But the Victorian had not had the benefit of modern psychology. (Though he could have remembered that the hand of the dyer is subdued to his craft.) There was, however, no excuse at all for him, Frederick, not to take a cool look at what was bothering him, which was nothing less, unfortunately, than Profound Doubts about what was going on in Archeology, Doubts about its bases, premises, methods and above all, its unconscious biases.

If he were to do what that poor Victorian had done, he should accept the job in the Sudan, on the grounds that if he did not, his wife would have to go without a pleasure cruise to Madeira, on which she had set her heart, and it was not fair to make her suffer for his crisis of confidence. But if he did this, since the Mind of the Worker is conditioned by his Work, he would have soon forgotten all about his Doubts, which would begin to look silly and unhealthy. Luckily Frederick's wife is a sensible woman whose att.i.tude towards archeology has always tended to be that it made for attractive holidays for herself and the children, and all she said to Frederick was that she could hardly complain about not going to Madeira when she had been able to get about so much. She went off to stay with a friend in Spain who has a villa, leaving Frederick in London.

And now for an interesting psychological fact ... in an account which I hope you'll agree is not short of them. Frederick forgot all about his Doubts that resulted from the African visit-this is not surprising since it happened a decade ago. But he also forgot his Doubts of last year after the Turkey excavations. Forgot completely, until just recently, after his visit to Wilts.h.i.+re, when he made a deliberate effort to remember things he might have buried because they were painful. He then slid into a Euphoric, or Male Menopausal, or Manic Depressive (pay your penny and take your choice!) state of mind which he enjoyed enormously. If enjoyment is the word for such a bonus. He walked about London, and amused himself by going to museums and looking at pots and spears and stones and things and inventing theories as powerful and as convincing as currently accepted ones, about previous societies. And so now I've reached the end of what I agreed to write and tell you. If what I have said doesn't mean anything to you, then I have made a mistake, but I do find that hard to believe. I don't know why it is, but I am sure you will understand. Would you like to come and see me next time you are in London? I would be delighted, and so would Frederick and the others.

Incidentally, about Frederick's stammer, in case this is of any use to you, he has cured it by letting the "parallel stream" of ideas, or words, that inhibited him from saying the usual things, come out: he listens and then voices it. Aloud. Either to himself, into a tape recorder, or to me. The results are surprising....

I do look forward to hearing from you, Sincerely yours, ROSEMARY BAINES.

DEAR MISS BAINES,.

I don't know when I have felt so flattered. What a large result from what I am afraid I have to tell you was nothing but a routine occurrence for me. For my sins I give quite a number of lectures outside my own field. My wife says that I have too much energy for my own good. Perhaps she is right. The remarks which struck you so disproportionately-if I may be so frank!-I am afraid are one of my stock ploys. When I run dry or run out of breath, I have a few old standbys to get me started again. Yes of course I do feel that education is not what it ought to be. But few of us do not. I suppose I have to admit that what was once a crusade, a bit of a bee in the bonnet, has cooled rather. As regards your kind remarks about stammering, I am extremely grateful, of course. I have recently been overworking, or so the doctor tells me, and I developed a tendency to stammer. But I don't seem to remember doing so at that lecture. But you appear to remember it all in such very remarkable detail. Perhaps my making a joke about stammering had a prophylactic effect? I have found this to be the case. As regards Frederick Larson, I do seem to know the name, but that is all. I take his word for it that we have met. I think he is making too much of the stammering. Mine was relieved by remembering to speak very slowly and carefully, particularly when tired, and above all, by not forgetting to take the doctor's pills. I am sorry I have to disappoint you in replying so churlishly to your quite extraordinarily lengthy letter. But alas, I have not yet retired, with my time to myself. Which must be my excuse for not accepting your extraordinarily kind invitation to meet you and Mr. Larson. I am very seldom in London and when I am my time is taken up with interviews and visits in connection with my work.

Yours truly, CHARLES WATKINS.

DEAR DOCTOR Y,.

Professor Watkins came to consult me in the spring of this year, in connection with stammering. I prescribed Librium and a holiday. I also gave him the address of a speech therapist, when the stammering did not stop. He has been on my books for five years. I took this practice over in 1964. He has not been ill in that time, except for influenza last year. He seemed to me to be in pretty good physical shape in March. He said he had lost weight. When I got your letter I asked his wife to come in and see me. I know her rather better than I know him, because I attend the children. She doesn't seem able to throw much light. But in her interests, I suggest she see her husband pretty soon. Of course I am only that old-fas.h.i.+oned thing, a family doctor, and I don't know as much as I should about mental health. But Mrs. Watkins is under heavy strain.

Yours sincerely, DOCTOR Z.

h.e.l.lo Charles.

You are ...

I'm your wife.

Would you like to sit down?...........................................

I'm sorry, I don't know what to say.

But Charles it isn't possible that you don't know me?

I'm sorry.

But I just can't ...

Then Felicity ...

How do you know my name is Felicity?

They told me. They said you might come today.

You didn't ask to see me then?

No........................................

Charles you sit there and you tell me ... oh, no, I just can't believe it. Oh, I'm so sorry.

Tell me then?

Tell you what?

For instance, how long have we been married?

Fifteen years.

The doctor says he has had other cases. I'm not the first, by a long chalk. Why are you laughing?

You always say that, just like that, "by a long chalk."

Do I?........................................................................

When they told me you were coming, I hoped that if I saw you I'd remember ...

And you don't?

No. You're so angry. I didn't expect you to be angry.

Angry? Of course I'm not angry. What a funny thing to say. It's not your fault you've lost your memory. It happens to people. I'm very sorry for you. I really am.

No, you are angry.

Well, if I were angry ... it's so like you Charles. All the time, since I knew you had lost your memory I couldn't help thinking, That's so like Charles.

But why is it? Have I lost my memory before?

No. Well, not so far as I know. You never told me, if so. But you don't tell me things, do you?

There, I said you were angry.

Oh no, now I'm in the wrong again. I simply can't believe........................................................................

Don't cry.

We've lived together for fifteen years. Fifteen years, Charles.

I'm sorry. I'm really very sorry, Felicity. And now you are angrier still.

I'm not angry but I can't help crying. Wouldn't you?

Please go. You must go away. I don't know you, you see, Felicity.

Patient was visited by his wife today. Visit terminated at patient's request.

Wife hysterical subject, better kept away from patient for the time being, in my opinion.

DOCTOR X.

Doctor X, I simply have to see you.

Ah, Mrs. Watkins, I thought you had gone back home. Well, sit down, I'm very pleased to see you. Now, what can I do for you?

What can you do for me! Doctor X, he's been here now nearly two months.

Yes, I'm afraid he has. But he is better, we think.