Briefing for a Descent into Hell Part 16

You asked me in your first letter if I could remember anything at all in my marriage that seemed to me strange at the time. I don't think I know any longer what strange is-not after seeing Charles in this state. But I'm sending you, after lying awake all night to think it over carefully, the first letter my husband sent me. I did think it very strange then, because he had not said anything about loving me before, although I had been his pupil for seven and a half months. I was only eighteen then. I didn't think it was strange later, when I agreed to marry him, but perhaps I had got used to him. I don't know if you would think it a strange letter. The circ.u.mstances of the letter were that I had never thought of him like that. I admired him very much of course. One afternoon after a cla.s.s he took me to tea and he talked. I thought his manner was rather strange, but then falling in love is strange. When I got his letter I didn't know what to think, particularly as I began to be so happy and proud. And then later, when we agreed to marry, I forgot about thinking him strange, and even now I don't know what to think. Please send me the letter back when you have read it. It is one of my most precious possessions.

Yours sincerely, FELICITY WATKINS.

Oh my G.o.d Felicity, I haven't slept since I saw you-Yesterday?-I don't know-I keep seeing your face-your hair is too bright for my eyes. It was your hair first-I always look for your head s.h.i.+ning in the dark cla.s.s-You are a light in a naughty world-yes and it is enough to look-touching too?-That would be too much joy-And yet if I can look touching could be too-for both of us?-How dare I think it-and yet yesterday with you I knew differently-you too-I didn't sleep-I am old Felicity-thirty-five. You, eighteen? A baby! But girls have no age-they s.h.i.+ne in dark corners-if you could-I keep thinking of you in a big forest somewhere with the sunlight coming down through branches and you and your bright s.h.i.+ning head and you smiling at me-smiling-will you?-oh I don't know if-I wonder if I will post this at all-it is one thing sitting here putting words on a paper and your thoughts rus.h.i.+ng by fifty at least to a word-so what is the use of sending it if I can't send the thoughts-one in fifty-so much diluted-is it worth your attention even?-I wonder-you could take the word for the-I love you. Yes, that is it, I know-you would never keep me a pig in your pen-no, I'm sure. She had bright yellow hair and blue eyes too, she must have had-but it is the soul that counts. Not like that dark one, black hair and white teeth and red lips-those are the colours for pig-keepers. And in war time too-The light and the dark of it. But the yellow-hair locked him in her pen and fed him husks. Later a fatted calf? But I don't dare-Yes. Would you-I've never dared, I've been alone for fear of that. She died, and so could never lock me in her stye. Must I be afraid of you? Felicity Felicity Felicity Felicity-you have a name like bright sunlight to match your hair. If I see you smile tomorrow I'll know. I love you. Felicity Felicity Felicity Felicity Felicity Felicity Felicity DEAR DOCTOR Y,.

I can't say how distressed I am to hear that Charles Watkins is ill and in hospital in your care. Yes, of course I shall be only too glad to help in any way I can. As it happens I heard about his illness when I returned from Italy last night, and my wife telephoned Felicity Watkins.

No, I don't think that Charles showed any unusual signs of stress or strain this year but he is not the sort of person one would take much notice of, if he did overshoot any marks, but I cannot, I am afraid, explain that without going into considerable detail about our relations.h.i.+p. Which is not, far from it, that I am his "superior"-did Felicity Watkins say I was? If so, then I regard that as painfully and sadly significant-not because of Felicity but because of Charles. He is, and has been since he joined us, the "star" of our Cla.s.sics Department, even when I was nominally over him, and in theory Head of Department. I hope that doesn't sound like a criticism. Letters are tricky things, and I certainly would have preferred to talk it over with you, but the term starts tomorrow and, alas, needs must.

I don't know if this sort of comment is in any way helpful, but recently I sat down to write out an account of my own life, a sort of balance sheet. It seemed a useful thing to do, at the age of fifty, well past the halfway mark. But when I came to read it over, it was more about Charles Watkins than about myself. I have always been aware of the influence Charles has had on me, but not, perhaps, quite how much. Of course, all this sort of thing is beyond me, and particularly when it gets into deep waters with mental breakdowns, that sort of thing, but the essence of the thing from my point of view is this: that I have never liked Charles. I believe that I don't admire him, or approve of him. Yet he has certainly been the biggest influence on my life.

You ask about his early life.

Our parents were friends. We were described by them as "great chums" almost from birth. I believe that Charles regards this as wryly as I do-and did then. We went to the same prep school. We were neither of us particularly distinguished. We stuck together out of homesickness-an alliance of mutual aid and defence, if you like. My view of that period does not coincide with Charles' at all, as emerges rather painfully when we ever discuss it. Briefly, I think he was rather a con. But not deliberately or consciously. However, I'll skip all that and choose a typical incident from Rugby where we both went together. The summer we were both sixteen our form master invited six of us for a summer's yachting, based on the Isle of Wight. I was one of the six. The invitations were not "personal," but issued every holidays on a sort of rota system, in quite a regular, fair way. This master was a kindly man, quite the best influence on my young life, and I daresay on Charles too. The reason why I was invited that holidays and Charles was not was simply that I was minimally older. Now, I had done a fair bit of yachting for various reasons, and my parents were better off than Charles' parents. I knew he was not looking forward to going home that holidays, and for a variety of reasons. To cut it short, I suggested to the form master that Charles should go instead of me. Again, I must ask you to take it as read that it was not possible for Charles to remain impervious to the fact that this was a real sacrifice on my part. The form master was surprised and touched. No, that is not why I did it. It was just that, given the circ.u.mstances, Charles might have been expected to show a consciousness of some kind. When Wentworth told him I had backed down in his favour, Charles simply nodded. Wentworth was so surprised that he repeated what he had said-that I had offered to back down, and Charles said, Yes, thanks, I'd like to. I said nothing to him about it, when he did not mention it. Now, it was a particularly good summer, and I was stuck with a pretty boring crowd, and I am afraid I did spend far too much time thinking of that crowd down there, on the water, and of Charles' quite extraordinary att.i.tude. I never mentioned it. I could not bring myself to, for it stung so badly. Not until years after, after the war as a matter of fact. I said to him in so many words-perhaps I was hoping to take the sting out of the memory, what I had felt throughout that summer holidays. He looked at me and said: Well, there was no need to offer it, was there?

And of course, there was not.

I am sure that looks a very small thing and very petty, and it does me a great deal of discredit to mention it at all. But you did ask me to say what I thought and that "anything I could tell you might be helpful."

That incident sums up something in Charles for me.

I must say at this point that our relations were formalised by the time we were nine in this way: Charles was the original eccentric oddball, and Jeremy was the solid dependable one. I've always played along with it. I'm stuck with it, as it were. But when I say to Charles and to others that what I admire is his originality and his daringness of thought, and so on, that is not the point at all. For in fact there is something too careless, almost sloppy, about his "originality." I suppose he is a bit of an anarchist. Of course his experience has tended to make him one.

His father was in business and did badly in the slump. Charles started work, while I went to University. He did every variety of job, and there was talk of his going off to the Spanish Civil War, but he didn't. The war started and he joined up at once. I was flying throughout the war, and Charles was in infantry, and then with Tanks. We met once or twice. I knew a bit of what he was up to, through mutual friends. He refused a commission, more than once. This was so like him. I asked him why, and he began roaring with laughter and said he had refused to annoy people. I found it then, and find it now-affected. And unconvincing. I told him so. I could say that "this caused ill-feeling" but as I was about to write that, I realised that it might have caused ill-feeling in me, but I don't think in Charles. We did not quarrel, though I'll acknowledge that I would have liked to quarrel-at last.

When the war ended, Charles went back to University. This he got through well and easily. He has a not uncommon facility-a memory that is really almost photographic. For an examination he will study day and night for the month beforehand, get phenomenal marks-and will have forgotten most of it three months later. He says this of himself.

Very well. By the time he was ready for a job, I had been lecturing four or five years. I was in a position to pull strings or at least put a friendly oar in. There were a dozen applicants for the post and Charles was the youngest, and least experienced. Well, he got the post and through me-but that is not the point. Which is this. In the crisis week, when things hung in the balance, he came to visit me. He was scruffy, untidy, a bit flamboyant-all this as usual. Nothing terrible-not like our present students, far from that level of exhibitionism, but pretty irritating. I told him that he had to take his appearance more seriously, and that he was putting me in a difficult position. He listened, didn't say much. Next time I saw him, he had got the post, and-he was looking like me. I must explain that. We are physically different, but I have some mannerisms. Not that I knew of them until Charles showed me them! He had equipped himself with an old jacket of mine-asked my wife for it, she was throwing it away. He had acquired a pipe, which he had never smoked before, and he got his hair cut like mine. When I first clapped my eyes on this, I thought it was a monstrous joke. But not at all. You'd expect this to be a joke between us perhaps? Or at least an issue? No, it was not mentioned for a long time. Yet everyone noticed it, commented. When I came into a room, or saw him across a street it was like seeing a monstrous caricature of myself.

When someone did finally mention it (my wife, as it happened), and I looked at him, hoping for some comment, he merely nodded, rather impatiently, but not very. With a sort of small frown, as if to say: Oh that, what a detail.

I suppose it may strike you as a detail, too. But I may add that now, years later, people tend to think that it is I who have copied Charles, modelled myself on him. And that fact says everything about how we are both judged. And yes, it rankles.

Now an episode from last summer. It so happened that my wife and I were having a stormy patch. I had been overworking and so had she. We had agreed to spend the summer apart. We knew we were on the slippery slope to divorce. We had quarrelled and talked and made scenes, the usual sort of thing, and I daresay we were as much emotionally worn out as anything. She decided to go to her mother in Scotland, leaving the children with friends-as it happens, the Watkins. Both of whom were towers of strength throughout the whole episode. Charles drove Nancy to her mother. Nancy was in a pretty hysterical state, as she would be the first to admit. Now I find it rather hard to describe what happened in a way to convey its importance. Far from Charles behaving badly, it was the opposite. Nancy says he was kind and helpful. But before they even reached Scotland, she was pretty upset because of his att.i.tude-which was that the whole thing was not very important. He took it absolutely for granted that she would be back with me before the year was out-but that if she were not, what of it? Now I must mention Felicity, his wife. I have a valuable relations.h.i.+p with her. I've known her since she was a tiny thing. No, I'm not in love with her, nor ever have been, but we have always known that we are close, and that if neither were married elsewhere, we might well hit it off pretty well. My wife has always known of this, so has Charles, there is nothing to hide.

Before Charles left Nancy at her mother's he stayed over for two days, and in those days he behaved impeccably, supporting Nancy against her mother, who was cutting up rather, and taking her for walks and so on. But he was making her worse because of his att.i.tude-not making light of the whole drama, on purpose, but it was implicit in his att.i.tude. He spent a whole afternoon, she tells me, pointing out that he might have married her-and I, Felicity, and it would have been the same, and that we all were much too personal about the whole thing. Yes, "we are all much too personal about the whole thing." He was talking about marriage, after all. After all, we aren't Hottentots. Anyway, Nancy found herself half crazy, because of Charles. She describes it as feeling as if her entire life was made to look silly, and that she was not any more important than a she-cat or a b.i.t.c.h. Well, she was in a pretty emotional state anyway. In the end she screamed at him to go away and leave her. Of course she apologised afterwards, I insisted on it, for he had been wonderfully kind, as had Felicity. Afterwards my wife said to me that the real crisis that summer was not her leaving me to give us both a rest, but the four or five days in Charles' company. Any more of him and she would have cut her throat, she says, or could have done if she had been able to believe it mattered whether she did or not.

I've chosen this last incident because again it ill.u.s.trates something pretty fundamental in Charles. It is that he doesn't even pay lip service to ordinary feelings. Perhaps they aren't as important as we think. But perhaps I would respect him more for his att.i.tude if I believed there was conflict involved, if he had ever thought it out, or even suffered over it, instead of its being his nature.

Now, a final incident. In spring of this year there was an evening at our house which struck me very unpleasantly indeed, but I suppose I am used to being uncomfortable where Charles is concerned. There were present myself and my wife Nancy, Charles and Felicity, a couple of other members of our team-as I like to call it!-and a visitor from America. Now I don't like to think that we have to put on a special show for visiting firemen, but on the other hand there is such a thing as tact. Our American visitor was on his first visit to our country, and was hoping to-and may even yet succeed-spend a year with us. Charles behaved outrageously. I thought he was drunk, though he is not a drinker. It is simplest to say that he behaved like an undergraduate, if I may be permitted that oldfas.h.i.+oned comparison, but I am not one to be proud of flattering the youth. Charles was not even witty, which he very often is. He was boorish, badmannered, in a silly sort of way. The cla.s.sics were "hogwash" and the course of lectures we had drafted together for him "a lot of pigs-swill." And so on. I'm afraid his epithets were pretty limited, but that is the nature of undergraduate humour.

Now, if I were a reactionary and impervious to new ideas it would be easier to understand, but I am not. I cannot remember ever refusing to listen to Charles or to anyone else when they have a new angle. But to say that everything taught under the heading of Cla.s.sics is pigsfeed from beginning to end, and never has been anything else, and that we have never had any idea at all of what Plato or Socrates and Pythagoras were teaching-and etc. and so on, that kind of thing-well, I did cut him off short and sharp more than once during the evening, and he went home early. Felicity his wife was annoyed, and did not go home when he did.

Now, next day he came to me with a demand that he should be empowered to arrange the coming term's work according to ideas which I don't really see much point in elaborating-but suffice it to say that his point of view amounts to d.a.m.ning generations of scholars.h.i.+p out of hand. He said, what was wrong with that? That it is a historical commonplace that ideas valid for centuries can vanish overnight. I may say that Charles is very fond of talking in centuries if not millennia, always the sign of a lazy mind, to my way of thinking. However, I asked him what gave him the confidence-or did I say conceit?-to talk about the work of scholars infinitely better than himself, in such terms. Did he really have no qualms at all. He said no, that it was "perfectly obvious to an unprejudiced mind" that he was right.

I must confess we quarrelled violently. I think it was the first quarrel we have ever had-astonis.h.i.+ngly. He was abusive and derisive. Usually of course he is rather bland, or appears to be indifferent. I was patient-I am, in fact, a patient man. He became increasingly unpleasant. You understand that all the time there was the underlying implication that it must be obvious he was in the right and that I could see it if I wasn't stupid. Finally, I asked him to leave before I lost my temper.

Next morning he rang up-as if nothing had happened. No explanation. His manner, as always, was that an unimportant incident was over. Not that he had been in the wrong, no. Not, even, that I was rigidly in the wrong and that he had had to force himself into my mould-though I suppose that was implicit. No, it was that nothing had occurred that was in the least bit important. Yet that was intolerable, because what in fact he had done, and in front of an American colleague who may yet be working with us, was to d.a.m.n not only our team and its work, and of course our respective careers, his included, but all scholars.h.i.+p in our field to date. Or most of it. And, having done that, and behaved with shocking offensiveness, he was now quite casually arranging to meet me and discuss a series of public lectures which only the day before he had refused to consider at all and about which he had been exceedingly abusive. His manner was appropriate with saying: I'm sorry I was a bit off colour last night, but I had a headache.

I don't know if I am succeeding in conveying to you the flavour of this particular incident.

I don't think I can tell you more, though there is an infinite choice of such examples.

I am at this moment in the usual frame of mind when thinking about Charles-he forces me to ask myself what it means to like or dislike a person. We have always been in each other's lives. We have our friends in common. It is my considered opinion that Charles Watkins is a destructive person. Negative, perhaps, is the better word. I find him a pain in the neck, even, far too often, a bore. I conclude from all this that we do not know very much about human relations.h.i.+ps.

Yours very truly, JEREMY THORNE.

P.S.

I do hope you will let me know if there is anything else I can do to help. It goes without saying, I hope, that I would do anything for Charles. An idea has struck me: I don't know if you have been contacted by Constance Mayne, or if her name has cropped up at all? She has been Charles' mistress, or perhaps still is. She was one of his pupils. No, I have nothing to complain of in his behaviour, as she did not become his mistress until she had ceased to be his student. And I am not a moralist. I tell you this because I believe his wife Felicity does not know of her existence. If you think it might be of a.s.sistance, let me know and I'll get hold of her address for you. She was in Birmingham when I heard last.

DEAR DOCTOR Y,.

Can I "a.s.sist" you in "rehabilitating" Charles Watkins? I don't know. Yes, I do know him, very well indeed. How very tactful you are. I was his mistress. You must know that or otherwise why did you write to me? I would be interested to know who told you, but I don't expect you will. Well, now, about Charles ... he has lost his memory? He can't remember who he is? I am very sorry to hear it, but how does it concern me? No, don't think I am being dishonest. I wish it did concern me, but as it happens, I think you should ask his wife Felicity Watkins. I suppose you must have done. Did she tell you to contact me? If so, it is no more than I would expect of her. What I mean by that, specifically, is that it would be so d.a.m.ned high-minded and above every normal human emotion, just like Charles. I am sure these things rub off. They say married people get to resemble each other, but of course I wouldn't know.

After (believe me) due thought, I am simply sending you the enclosed letter. The letter is one I wrote to Charles. That letter was written after due thought, too. Years of it. What I mean is, I could have written that letter before I did, but I was a fool and didn't.

I sent that letter (the enclosed one) to Charles at his home address. Not out of spite, but I didn't have another address. He came posthaste. When I say posthaste, I mean, for him. About ten days went by. He came by train to Birmingham. He brought my letter with him. It was, as it might be, a goodwill visit. He stayed the night. Why not? Old habits die hard. When he left in the morning, the letter was lying on my night-table. The point is, but I don't expect you to see it as a point, he hadn't left it there on purpose, or for post-departure comment-we had after all, touched on its contents the night before. To put it mildly. No, he forgot it. It slipped totally out of his mind. So I'm taking this opportunity of returning it to him, via you. He might like to refresh his memory-when he gets it back.

Sorry I can't be of any use.

With my good wishes, CONSTANCE MAYNE.

DEAR CHARLES,.

Don't be alarmed, this isn't one of those drivelling s...o...b.. wet letters I wrote you when you decided you'd had enough of me. No fear. I'm very far from that now. I woke up this morning and thought it was three years this June since you left me.

The thought of you

So sweet and true

For dreary years

Has been boo hoo.

Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo hoo. BOO!

It occurred to me that far from boo hoo, far from it, I was in a good old paddy, a good old rage. Fury. It occurs to me Charles Watkins that what I feel for you is not boo hoo at all, I hate you. More than that, I simply can't get over your sheer d.a.m.ned preposterousness.

Now let me tell you a tale.

There was once an earnest idealistic young student taking Literature and Languages, who went, G.o.d help her, to a lecture, an Introduction to Old Greece, and heard a mad professor claim that there was only one literature and one language, namely Greek, (Ancient, not Modern). And such was his persuasive force that this stupid student dropped her lovely useful literature and French and Spanish and Italian, and went over to Useless Old Greece, just because this professor said so. Three years pa.s.sed while this stupid student sweated and got full marks all for the sake of an approving smile or two from the Mad Professor. The day she heard she had got her B.A. behold, it happens this Silly student is in London and there is the Mad Professor giving a lecture on the television about Greece, the Cradle of European Civilisation. Intellectual this and Moral that, and so it went on, but not one word about, it occurs to silly Female Student, Women, let alone Slaves in that paradise of Moral Superiority, Ancient Greece. Stupid student got into a taxi as the lecture was ending on the telly, and went to the B.B.C. and he came out of the building, looking oh so Cla.s.sical and Woolly, rough tweeds, pipe, rugged charm, the lot, she said to him, In all that there was not one word about either Women or Slaves. To which the Mad Professor returned: Oh, is that you Connie? Well done! Congratulations on your results! Well, you are concerned about Women and Slaves are you? What are you doing about them? It took the Stupid Student five dazzling dizzying seconds to get his drift, and she said to him, Right, you're on. At which she refused to go back to University to get her M.A. and probably on to Ph.D. and so on ad infinitum but she went off to Birmingham, got a job in a factory, with women making plastic containers for detergents, found they were indeed Slaves while being Women, and she made scandals and fusses with the management, became a shop steward and a communist and three years later went to Cambridge to confront the Mad Professor with the news. Very well, then, I've done it, she cried, and told him the tale, three years hard, but very hard, but very very hard, slogging, hard intolerable b.l.o.o.d.y work for the plastic-detergent-container-making women of Birmingham, and he took his pipe out of his mouth and said: Well done! And then he said: Let's go to bed.

Yes I do know whether to laugh or to cry. This morning I am laughing and G.o.d knows it is about time.

So the love of the century begins, in Birmingham for the most part, but a busy and popular Professor of Cla.s.sics with a wife and two sons hasn't all that much time left over for amus.e.m.e.nts, and the Silly Shop Steward hardly ever sees her Love. In the meantime this same Stupid Shop Steward has a beau, a Steady, a faithful love, being the Shop Steward on the Men's Component's Floor, where Men make plastic containers for transistor radios, for since they are Men and therefore more advanced and evolved, they can put on those difficult b.u.t.tons and screws and handles and things, much more tricky than detergent containers. This faithful and loving swain gets the boot from the Silly Shop Stewardess, because of the Love of the Century. Forlorn and alone she says Boo hoo, Boo hoo, marry me, and he says, the Mad Professor says, Don't be absurd. But what about your vows, your love, your pa.s.sion, she cries? He says, anyone who believes a word anyone says in bed deserves what she gets.

How's that for a Professor?

But I've twice changed my whole life for you, she cries, sobbing, weeping, wailing.

No one asked you to, says he, taking the pipe out of his mouth for the purpose.

What shall I dooooooo, she wails. I've lost my true real right love, the Shop Steward, and I can't have you, my life is empty and I want a Famileee.

To which he replies, Well, what's stopping you?

You'd think the girl would have learned by now? You would, wouldn't you?

Well, now. You'll remember that bit, if you have time to remember at all, as a lot of very sloppy letters from me. But actually what was happening was that I was thinking, Well, what is stopping me? For as it happens I was pregnant, but only half knew it.

So I went back to Birmingham, had a fine bouncing son, eight pounds, two ounces, keeping my job more or less throughout and with the aid of some kind and loving plastic-container packers and-that was two years ago.

Boo hoo, boo hoo, all the way.

Yes, the child is two and his name is Ishmael, how do you like that?

No, I don't want a d.a.m.ned thing from you. Nothing. If you want to see the boy, fine. If you don't, fine.

I don't care.

I can manage by myself thank you very much.

It occurs to me actually, yes, it's true, and thank you very much, I mean it. I don't need anyone, no, not I.

I'm leaving Birmingham next month and shall spend the summer with a kindly aunt in Scotland, and I shall teach Greek to some misguided idiots who would be better employed learning Useful Italian, French and Spanish. But which, alas, I am not equipped to teach anybody, thanks a thousand times to you. No, I am not blaming you, like h.e.l.l I'm not.

I heard from an old school chum yesterday that you are going about saying that the cla.s.sics are a load of old rope and all current teaching absolutely ropy, and that no one understands what it was all really about. Except, of course, you.

Congratulations. Oh congratulations. I'm not surprised that you've lost your voice-so a little bird tells me? and can't utter!

I've told you, you are preposterous.

With hate. I mean it.

CONSTANCE.

DEAR DOCTOR X,.

I can answer your question very easily: yes, Charles Watkins did come to see me in the middle of August last. It was late one night. I think a Wednesday, but I can't really remember, I am afraid.

Yours truly, ROSEMARY BAINES.

DEAR DOCTOR Y,.

After I posted my letter-two letters, actually-I remembered something about Charles that perhaps you should know.

It is about the last war. Of course to me it is rather old hat, but almost from the start of knowing Charles really well I thought that the last war hadn't done him much good. I once met a friend of Charles (with Charles) who said that Charles once said to him that he-that is, Charles-had decided early in the war that he wouldn't survive it. He was in danger a lot. His friends, that is, the men he was fighting with, were all killed off around him, twice. He was the only one left alive in a group of buddies, twice. Once in North Africa and once in Italy. When he reached the end of the war he could not believe he was still alive. He had to learn how to believe that he was going to live, said this man. Whose name is Miles Bovey. I'll put in the address for you because perhaps you should ask him. He said that Charles had a long stretch at the end of the war when he did not want to begin living. He was drinking then. So Miles said but I have never seen Charles drink more than usually. Then Charles went back to University. Charles once said something to me that I have remembered. He said that ever since the war he couldn't believe that people really found important the things they said they found important. He said he had had to learn to "play little games." He said Miles Bovey was "the only person who ever really understood me." I asked him what little games and he said "the whole d.a.m.ned boiling." Needless to say, I said: Love, too? I don't remember what he said to that.

Yours sincerely, CONSTANCE MAYNE.

DEAR DOCTOR Y,.

Thank you for your kind and explanatory letter. It was not possible to gather very much from Doctor X's letter.

Yes, I suppose one could say that Charles Watkins was "not himself" that evening, but you must remember my knowledge of him to that date was confined to hearing him lecture, and some remarks about him by mutual friends.

I can't tell you if that lecture was important to him. It was certainly important to me. I wrote him a long letter telling him it was important and why. Perhaps writing it was a mistake, but looking back I don't regret it. We sometimes have to take the chance of embarra.s.sing people by claiming more than they want to give-or can. My letter was a claim. Of course I knew it was. You may ask: what did I say in it? but to answer that would mean writing the same letter. Suffice it to say that I heard him lecture, and things he said started me thinking in a new way. Or experiencing in a new way. Of course not in any dramatic exterior way. I did not get an answer to my letter. I thought once or twice of writing again, in case the first letter had not reached him, but there was no reason to suppose it had not. I concluded that my letter had been tactless, or perhaps ill-timed, and that I would not hear at all from him.

But I was sitting that evening in a little Greek restaurant in Gower Street where I go fairly often. Frederick Larson was with me-the archeologist. Suddenly Charles walked in and sat down with us saying: I thought I would find you here.

This was not nearly as odd as it looks. For one thing he knew where I lived, for he had received my letter, and had been to my flat to see if I was in. When he found I was not, he walked about the adjacent streets to see if I was in a pub or a restaurant. As indeed I was.

But his unconventional arrival matched the general oddness of his manner. At first both Frederick and I thought he was drunk. Then, that it might be marijuana, or worse. Then Frederick began pressing him to eat and, clued by this, I realised that his clothes had that peculiarly unconvincingly grubby stale look that grubby clothes get when they are obviously clothes that are usually kept clean. Because he is not the kind of person one would ever expect to wear clothes that have been slept in, this stopped me from seeing at first that everything he wore had a rubbing of grime, and that he had grime marks on his hands. And he had a stale tired smell.

At first he kept refusing food, or rather, seeming not to hear when he was offered it. Then he began eating some rolls on the table, and Frederick simply ordered some food for him, without asking him again, and when it came we could see he was ravenous. He was talking in a disconnected sort of way all the time. I don't really know what about. It made sense while he talked. He was chatting away as if we were both very old friends and able to pick up all his references to people and places. The thing that made this less extraordinary was that both of us indeed felt we were old friends, for we had talked of him a great deal. He was making references to some voyage he was thinking of making, and even seemed to think we would be with him. Of course by then we had understood he was not at all "himself"-as you put it.

When the meal was over we asked him back to my flat. The three of us walked. It was not more than a couple of hundred yards. In my flat he did not sit down. He was restless and walked about all the time, examining objects very carefully, examining the surfaces of walls, and so on. But I got the impression that he had forgotten or lost interest in the thing he had just examined so carefully by the time he put it down. This went on for two or three hours. He was talking about getting out of the trap, getting out of prison, of escaping-that kind of talk. And it did not seem as odd to us as perhaps you may think it should, because our own thoughts were running on similar lines-or it sounded like that, but I am sure you have often found that one may talk for hours-indeed for days, or a lifetime, with a friend, and then discover that the words you use stand for very different things.

I have no way of knowing how real to Charles that night were the prisons, the nets, the cages, the traps that he talked about. If you can call so disconnected and rambling a stream of words "talking." But I and Frederick Larson have very definite meanings for such words. But Charles? I can't say. Once when Charles was out of the room (he suddenly noticed his hands were dirty and went to wash them) we discussed whether or not to call a doctor, but decided not. He did not seem to us unable to look after himself. Perhaps we did wrong-after all, there was the evidence of his grimy clothes, and his obvious need for food, and the general strain and exhaustion. But I am one who does not believe that other people's crises should be cut short, or blanked out with drugs, or forced sleep, or a pretence that there is no crisis, or that if there is a crisis, it should be concealed or masked or made light of. I am sure that other people, and they would be those that a doctor might consider responsible, would have arranged for a doctor to come and take Charles into custody-forgive me for putting it like that. But his state of mind-as far as I could judge it-seemed not unlike my own at times in my life which I have found most illuminating and valuable.

And then, too, I wanted to go on listening to him.

While his remarks may have been scattered, there was an inner logic to them, a thread, which sounded at first like a repet.i.tion of certain words or ideas. Sometimes it seemed as if the sound, and not the meaning of a word or syllable in a sentence, gave birth to the next sentence or word. When this happened it gave the impression of superficiality, of being "scatty" or demented. But we have perhaps to begin to think of the relation of the sound of a word with its meaning. Of course poets do this, all the time. Do doctors? Sounds, the function of sounds in speech ... we have no way yet of knowing-have we?-how a verbal current may match an inner reality, sounds expressing a condition? But perhaps this sort of thought is not found useful by you.

At about midnight it was clear that the framework of ordinary life was going to make a pressure for Charles. For without it, he would not have made a move. Frederick had to go home. His decision to go brought to Charles' notice that it was in fact midnight. He went with Frederick. It was an automatic going. He might just as well have stayed. In the street, he said to Frederick: "I'll see you next time round." And walked off. And that was all we knew of Charles until I got a letter from Doctor X at your hospital.

I hope that this rather inadequate account of that evening may be of a.s.sistance. I am sorry he is so ill. I have it in me to envy him. There is a good deal in my life that I would be very happy to forget. May I visit him perhaps? I would like to, if it would be helpful.