22 ~ Introspection

Royal Oak Hotel
Sussex
Thursday 20th September - 1.30pm

Just a brief note to introduce my tape to you, I'm afraid it will make rather depressing entertainment. But it is me, for better or worse. And I am sure you would not want false cheer. Life is just ticking over as it always does at this time of year, and there is no freshness or novelty. Hearing your voice, the undulating moods, just filled me with a profound sense of helplessness. It has reminded me that I really have to do something different soon, but I cannot divorce any decisions from considerations of my family's needs. Anyway, this period between October and June will test both of us and probably confirm the future for both of us. I still cannot really absorb the fact that you have gone away. Remember that I love you.

***

"Hello? It's Thursday morning, quarter to nine. I'm in bed. The family have all gone off to their various jobs. I'm getting lazier and lazier. I'm finding this experience of talking to you extremely difficult. Very unrealistic. I want you to know that I've received your tape and the 2 letters and I'm going to listen now to the tape.

"I'm getting, in my usual way, increasingly unprepared for the work that lies ahead. At the moment it's grey and the wind is battering around the house in the way that you will remember. I'm very isolated.

"I'm putting off going in to college to tidy my room and check my pigeon hole in the way that has to be done sometime. I'm postponing it. After I've listened to your tape I will be in a better position to talk to you as if you were there. Normally when I wake up the first conscious anticipation is towards the time when I shall be able to settle into some hostelry and let the world pass by obliviously, but today the first thing I thought of, the first anticipation, was what you had to say to me. That's what I'm going to do now.

"This must have been a very stumbling initiation. I expect I shall come to enjoy it gradually and improve as time goes by. Perhaps the early morning hours are not the best for initiative. I may rub this off. I probably will. If I can bear the thought of your tolerating it, despite its imperfections, I will leave it on.

"Anyway...God, this is artificial! Anyway..... I think probably,I must seek inspiration from your tape now. You will be, I suppose, fast asleep, fast asleep..... I just don't understand why you're not here. It seems so ridiculous. I've got a lot to tell you and......I'll do that after I've heard from you. I love you very much. Okay.

***

"Hello again. It's now 10.00 o'clock on the same day, Thursday, 20th September. I'm sorry about that rather maudlin performance but I'll keep it on because it's part of the record of my feelings and it would have been false to have rubbed it out I think.

"I've listened to the first side of your report and it was very good to hear you sounding steady and calm and more or less contented and with lots of bonuses to balance out the stresses or rather the challenge of your new job.

"It is very difficult to inject a sense of enthusiasm on a day such as this. The wind is literally howling round the house, you might even hear it on the tape. The rain is thrashing against the window panes, and it’s dark. Were one to go out of the door one would become absolutely soaked within yards of the house.

"However, what I'll do now - I've had breakfast - is a bit of housework, tidy up, then I'll listen to the other side of the tape and then I'll do my best to talk to you about the things that have occurred during the past week since I last spoke with you on the telephone. I have sent you 7 letters now. I lose track, I can't quite remember when, but basically I've sent you one a week with the exception of the fortnight's break. It is extraordinary to hear your tape and realise that it was completed just about as we returned from holiday and so much has occurred since then. But I have kept you in touch with events up to the middle of last week. And so on this occasion, instead of writing a letter, I'll try to include it in the form of this tape and put a little covering note in with it.

"Okay, well......my voice earlier on was redolent of sleep and an inability to come to terms with the task at what, for me now, is a relatively early hour of the morning. ....Nevertheless it probably represented in its stumbling, halting inarticulacy, much of how I feel much of the time. I have time, as you know, to indulge feelings, and no real inbuilt discipline to take me out of myself at this particular time of year. But I do actually think that I have been better than normal. I'm not really sure why.

"Okay, the next time you hear from me it will be news, description. And I thought you managed a very capable performance in your graphic delineation of house and garden and immediate history. I'll probably do much better after I've had a beer. Not a Budweiser."

***

"Hello. It's now 11.11, on the same day. You're hearing me trying to express myself in the morning, which is quite the reverse from what you've been doing. But later on you'll no doubt receive messages from me during the course of this particular recording which will come from different parts of the day when one's moods are shaped and determined by the events of the day and the time of the day.

"I found the second half of the tape both sad and uplifting. I don't think I feel like trying to respond to what you were saying at the moment, I'll do that later. I'm glad you found that the process of trying to give expression to your thoughts and ideas and your feelings in this way a difficult one. I certainly am doing so, but on the other hand, having re-played what I've said already it doesn't sound quite as lacking in substance as it appeared to when I was actually going through the exercise.

"One thing that I think that it is important to remember, or to allow for, is that the communications that we are having at the moment don't match the immediate experience that we're encountering at any given moment. When you had to receive and interpret and respond to letter 3, I had just returned from holiday to receive your 3 letters all in a flood, and of course I was responding to the extravagant emotions that you presented to me at a time when you were going through the most horrendous stage of adjustment.

"Now I'm responding to a tape that was sent a fortnight ago and I won't be sure of the extent to which your feelings, experiences, perceptions have altered since then.

"So, what I think I'm going to do after I've completed this tape, and I don't know how long that process will take, is wait before I write again, till I've heard your initial reply to this. Then I think an illusion of continuity may be able to be achieved.

"At the moment it's great to receive correspondence from you, but it's somewhat confusing as well. I think I'd like the idea of a stage in which one of us gives expression to the state of the game at the moment, and the other responds as quickly as possible. Not, obviously as a fixed rule, but as a security, so that one senses that the relationship, if it sustains itself, is based on a sense of continuity.

"Well, it's half past eleven now. I feel you will be receiving too much of the early morning depression stage of my being and I don't want to invest this with too much of that. So I think I'll make a break now and when I start again, it will be during the course of the day, I will do what I promised and tell you about what's been happening since I last wrote to you. I think that you expressed very cogently and very sensitively the dilemma. I can't see a resolution to things at this stage at all. And I can't be sure how what occurs in the intervening months will shape any possible future for us. I think it has to be a question of getting through the period up to and after Christmas ...... and reflecting then upon what the essential things are for one's life. I can't envisage any possibility of my removing myself from within my family. I can't see any possibility of my family moving from here. The roots are too deep, the commitments are too substantial. I couldn't, any more than you could desert Dan, I couldn't find it within myself to leave my children, in particular perhaps my youngest, who is only 10 and is devoted to me, as she is to Jo. The only way I could come out to San Francisco would be by way of an act of complete commitment to you and rejection of my family. And I can't do that.

"Anyway, I am determined that I will not speak to you again until I'm in a mood that is going to enable me to project something more positive and enable you to see that in fact, what you've heard on the tape so far is not a reflection of a continuous state of being for me, merely a stage of a particular day, at a particular time of year with which you are familiar. I don't think I've got an ulcer this time. And I'm sure I wouldn't get any in San Francisco. But as far as I'm concerned that would have to be just a dream. I'm a person with my own responsibilities and commitments.

"But I wish you were here. But it wouldn't be worth your while. And certainly I don't know what on earth I could say to suggest you should come back if you're happy and the lifestyle is good. I suppose I hope that eventually you will see that there are virtues in living in England which can match those of the sort of lifestyle you are experiencing at the moment.

"But right now I can only think of yet another winter and coping with that and with the compensations that you know all about. Oh dear. Right, I'm going to stop now. I'll probably start telling you about things this afternoon for a bit.

"You're right this is a very difficult exercise but maybe it's easier at night time; but then I can't do it at night time because I have to feel furtive and keep switching things off and checking whether people are coming round doorways and things. But perhaps it will be better in the afternoon. It's an awful day, dreadfully grey. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm putting off even trying to organise myself at home, let alone going into college..."

***

"It's 2.00 o'clock now and things are better. I've been out, braved the elements, walked into the village, bought a paper, walked along to The Royal Oak, written a few lines to you. The weather's improved, the big windy grey Turneresque clouds are gathering over Bognor and the Downs, but there's a clear blue sky more or less cutting Wittering in half over towards the Isle of Wight with a sort of intense, scintillating sun. And...I feel better than I did before.

"I'm sitting in the kitchen at the moment and my voice, apart from its tone will probably sound different in texture because of the acoustics: tiled floor and wooden table and so on. Bernie has just begun to whine, I think he doesn't like the idea of me talking to myself, he's just outside the kitchen door. He thinks I'm going mad. I'll allow you to reserve judgement on that one.

"I should say that Jo now has a broad awareness of things. Because that's the only way it can be. It's the only way it can be I think in order that there be any chance of anything happening fruitfully for us in the future. I realise now that there is no chance, no possibility, no rightfulness in any clandestine relationship to recur. It's never going to be like that again. The only way in which now I think anything can happen is by open market acknowledgement. Jo wants more time to herself, to be able to paint. I think she would barter that for my freedom, for me having time away. She understands the basic principles.
(I've just got to stop a minute because Bernie's whining furiously and I think possibly it's started to rain again. Be back in a minute...)

"Okay, I'm in again and he's extremely worried and you'll probably hear his.....shut up! I'm not talking to myself. I'm talking to a machine. This is directing a message many thousand miles away and if you make a lot of noise you'll have to go out again. It's not raining, it's only windy. So settle down, don't make a fuss. That's Bernie. So where was I? I don't think I can concentrate with him....I'll have to take this next door...yes I think I will. Hold on.

"Hello? I've moved into Robbie's room now, so the sound might be different yet once more. And I've nearly used up the whole of this side of the spool which is the same as three quarters of the amount you sent me, so I'm doing quite well really aren't I.

"Last night, after I'd spoken to you briefly on the phone, that was nice, but you were in a rush to get off to work and we couldn't get very close. I became very depressed and went out to the pub. I took Imogen with me for the first time - she's 14 now so she's entitled to enter a pub premises legally. And I rather enjoyed it because there I met Richard Bassett - you remember a Father Christmas type man who assisted the Police in their ministrations with about 30 youths outside The Singing Sands in Wittering - and another man called, Gordon, an elderly roué-type person married to an actress who understudied for Claire Bloom at The Festival Theatre. So that was quite pleasant. I felt quite proud of my daughter with me. But I was very depressed last night and apparently it registered.

"Anyway, last night was very windy again, very rough; the paper says that there were violent storms all along the south coast. I notice in the paper also, I've just been reading, that San Francisco had a very considerable dip in temperature - from what I've been seeing it's been in the eighties recently - and in today's paper it appears that it was down to 54F. So that must be relatively cold.

"Well, what I'm going to try to do, I haven't got much momentum at the moment, but I feel I want to try to complete this tape fairly soon. I don't think I'll manage it over the course of today because Paul's coming over from his new lady friend in Brighton to meet for lunch and we're really trying to come to some final solution regarding the boat. But I won't bore you with all the details of that one.

"Right now you will be fast asleep won't you. Half past two in the morning."

“Well, I've just played all this back. It's a mixed bag, it's not all a bundle of fun, but that would be unrealistic and I don't apologise for the preponderant air of sadness that prevails. Because I miss you so much. But I've finished the tape, it's, I imagine, analogous to producing a baby or something. Although I'm not actually feeling depressed at the moment I'm rather pleased to have actually managed to have recorded what I have. And how can I finish?

"I had a telephone call this morning while I was playing it back, from Joseph Davies, it was a salutary, somewhat rude intrusion, in the sense that he said, "Are you aware there are 2 meetings on Monday? One at 11.00 o'clock, one at 2.00." And he was just checking in case I wasn't in circulation yet. And we were both talking about being "dangling men" and our experience was apparently very similar. It made him feel better and it made me feel better that there are other people who feel the same way. So I've got a weekend now......and I really am now going to have to start to think positively and wipe other considerations out of my mind. Look closely at the implications of my timetable in order to do my job properly. The actual teaching doesn't begin until Monday week and of course that is October 1st, our anniversary as it were. I hope that you will have received this by then. I hope that you won't....it's very difficult to, particularly because it's been created in such a brief space of time, I hope that this will not be unremittingly depressive, depressing for you. In playing it back there is a certain fascination in hearing oneself on tape for most people, I think probably for everybody. But it didn't seem to me to be altogether without certain redeeming features to make it worth sending.

"I obviously want you to know that I miss you and will continue to miss you. It'll be less intense, almost inevitably as the term begins to bite, and survival becomes the principle consideration, and the rest of my time will be taken up in preparation and marking and being with my family.

"But when you respond to this please keep our hopes alive, if you can. That there may be possible ways in which our paths are not permanently going to fall asunder. I don't think I could go on doing this kind of thing and writing to you indefinitely - any more than you could. I know that I want you to be here - but you will be thinking exactly the same thing if you have those feelings, you will wish that I were there, where you are. And I just can't think that that can be. So it is a question of your deciding whether the life you find yourself in now and all its attendant advantages and comforts is sufficient to replace everything that you left behind. And I would like to know when you've come to a sort of decision, because we would have to withdraw from one another, not irrevocably, but we would have to let the distance grow so that life wasn't a constant source of potential pain, emotional pain.

"I'm going to assume that this is a testing time. And I'm going to assume that you will make a decision sometime in the course of the spring, one way or the other. In the meantime I'm going to involve myself with those things that I've done for so many years and I'll have to do again. And...probably do some reading.

"The most important thing is that you should be content and happy. I think our relationship has brought a lot of pain along with the happiness. And maybe it's not worth it. But if you said you were coming back next June I know that that would fill me with profound joy and expectation.

"Okay. I still can't seem to find a way of ending in a way that's going to be helpful. But you told me when I rang you yesterday that you had sent me 2 letters, so let it be now that I receive those letters, and any conversations that we may have over the telephone, and wait for you to go through this recording realising that it will be about a fortnight after it's been created, and things will by then be much changed. But wait for that to happen and then we'll correspond from then on in the light of whatever mail that we receive. That way we can probably expect that we could be getting perhaps a couple of items per month through to one another.

"Well, this has been an extraordinary experience. I hope this will contain something for you to listen to which will be worth settling down to hear in your house. And.....I'll finish now I think. I may be able to get this into the post quite quickly. This afternoon it will be the weekend. I must try to be brighter within the family context.

"Please remember I love you. Please remember I always will. And we must talk before anything is decided in a way that becomes irrevocable. Let's do that anyway. Bye."

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