Imago Bird Read online

  Imago Bird

  Nicholas Mosley

  Imago

  1. Final and perfect stage of an insect after it has undergone its metamorphosis, e.g. butterfly.

  2. Idealised mental picture of oneself or another person, especially parent.

  Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  A Note on the Author

  I

  Ever since I can remember I have thought the grown-up world to be mad; its way of talking to itself and being outraged at the answers; the bright look in its eye as it goes off to feed on disaster. Aristotle said it was self-evident that human beings wanted happiness; but it seems to me they are more at home in sadness and confusion; that if these are taken away they are exposed to the heat of the sun like snails without shells or dark places.

  When I was eighteen I was staying with my uncle who happened at the time to be Prime Minister. He was not living at 10 Downing Street because, I think, he did not expect to be Prime Minister for long. He lived in the house in Cowley Street where he had been when he was a member of the Cabinet. I was staying with Uncle Bill because my mother and father were abroad—my father was directing a film in India and my mother was involved in social work in California—and it had been arranged before Uncle Bill became Prime Minister that I should stay at his house in London and should go each day to see a doctor. It was thought I should go to a doctor because I stammered. I had stammered quite badly since I was seven. My stammer played a great and terrible part in my life, yet I seemed oddly reluctant to try to get rid of it. I sometimes wondered if in this respect I were representative of what I felt about the grown-up world.

  At the time at which I am beginning this story (why do people write stories? in the hope they might not be talking to themselves?) I had been going to this doctor for an hour each weekday. Where Dr Anders lived was an hour’s journey from Cowley Street, by underground and on foot, so my visits took up most of the afternoons. I spent most of these mornings in bed. I had done my A-levels at school that summer, and I had a year to wait before going to a university. I would lie in my room at the top of Uncle Bill’s house and would listen for footsteps coming up the stairs. I both was sad that people did not more often come to visit me, and planned how I might hide from them if they did.

  I had been to two or three other doctors before about my stammer. One of these had said, after months—Perhaps you don’t want to get rid of your stammer. I had been outraged by this. I had also thought—Isn’t it your job to make me want to get rid of my stammer?

  My room in Uncle Bill’s house was next door to the attic. Once or twice during these mornings Uncle Bill came up to see me. He would stand at the bottom of my bed looking huge beneath the Dr Caligari ceilings, while I pretended I had been sitting up for some time working. He asked me if I would not like to decorate my room—to stick posters and suchlike on the walls—to make myself feel more at home there. I thought I might explain that I did not want to feel at home there: that I wanted home to be somewhere in my head, where I might one day get to. But I thought this would sound ungrateful, and pretentious.

  When I had first gone to Dr Anders, just before the time when I am beginning this story, I had told her of what the previous therapist had said about my possibly not wanting to get rid of my stammer; and she had said, cheerfully—But of course you don’t want to get rid of your stammer! And I had felt for a moment that I should be outraged again at this; and then I had felt as if I were starting on some journey.

  I should have explained that Dr Anders is a woman. She has a brown wrinkled face, blue eyes, and a pudding-basin haircut. When I talked to her this first time there was the impression that the journey we were embarking on was one of which she had had a sudden glimpse of the end, and it was this that made her cheerful.

  I had from time to time realised that my stammer might be some protection.

  On the day when I am beginning this story Uncle Bill had been having a row with his secretary, Mrs Washbourne. He and Mrs Washbourne often had these rows: I think they gave to them some sense of protection; of being at home in an irrational world that they felt they had to try to order. I had been coming down the stairs at Cowley Street into the hall when I heard Uncle Bill shouting from behind the closed door of his study. Noises in this household often seemed to come from behind closed doors: it was as if we were from time to time involved in some Greek tragedy. Uncle Bill used to shout at Mrs Washbourne in a quite impersonal way as if he were selling newspapers; or as if he were the man in Greek tragedy who specialised in making noises of murder or self-mutilation off-stage. And Mrs Washbourne would smile rather knowingly as if she were the Mona Lisa with a moustache drawn on her. Of course I could not see Mrs Washbourne through the closed door of the study, but this was a scene that had been enacted often enough before to have created some sort of pattern.

  I do not know how I should try to describe these people. Novelists I suppose try to make their characters life-like; but also for propriety they try to disguise them. However, most people, and especially politicians, seem to spend much of their lives pretending to be someone else: so perhaps it is lifelike to make Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne, who were having an affair, to appear somewhat like actors.

  Uncle Bill was a large red-faced man with white hair. Mrs Washbourne had gold hair and was rather icy. After a time of shouting, Uncle Bill would take his spectacles off his nose and hold them by his groin and whirl them round and round there as if they were Catherine wheels and he was signalling some sort of relief or celebration.

  On the evening of this particular row I was standing on the stairs and listening to the noises from behind closed doors (why did the Greeks make things like murder and self-mutilation happen off-stage? was it because they knew that these things are mostly in the imagination?) when Aunt Mavis—I have not before mentioned Aunt Mavis: people often seem not quite to mention Aunt Mavis: as if she were a member of the chorus of a Greek tragedy, there only to carry reflections of the terrible events off-stage—when Aunt Mavis came from the dining-room into the hall. She was carrying a glass. When people do not mention Aunt Mavis perhaps it is because she often, at that time, seemed to be carrying a glass. She is a thin, rather concave woman as if people had been treading too much on her and she has become hollowed out like a step. When she heard Uncle Bill shouting she stood still. She looked up at me on the stairs; or rather she seemed to look right through me—as though I were a member of an audience and thus in a different category to that of the people on a stage. I wondered—Did the Greeks like to be told of murder and self-mutilation off-stage because this reassured them that other people had awful imaginations like their own? But nowadays people want their stage-horrors in full view, so this could mean they might begin to think their imaginations funny —

  Aunt Mavis stood in the hall with her drink in her hand. She looked right through me. I thought—Might not actors in fact begin to glimpse their audience as if it were their unconscious? Then Uncle Bill stopped shouting; and there would be Mrs Washbourne looking at him with her smile drawn on her
like a rope; tugging at him with it, or at his spectacles, as if they were rings through a bull’s testicles —

  There was silence in the hall for a time. Then there was the sound of a pistol shot.

  Or perhaps I thought it was like a pistol shot because that was the sort of thing we had come to expect from behind closed doors.

  What had Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne been doing, we as an audience might ask, in those moments before the pistol shot? Had she taken out a pistol to stop him shouting? Had he taken out a pistol to stop her smile? I had thought it suited Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne to be thus shouting and smiling. How else could people like King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, who were otherwise so boring, gain an audience’s attention? And they could come alive again, of course, after a pistol shot: to be ready for the next night’s murder and self-mutilation.

  Uncle Bill came out of his study. He was this red-faced man with white hair. He was carrying his spectacles by his groin. He said ‘I was cleaning it.’ Aunt Mavis said ‘Was it dirty?’ I was much interested at that time, since I was going to Dr Anders, in psychoanalytic language; which of course is supposed to point out the connections between things like pistols and penises. Aunt Mavis was leaning towards Uncle Bill with her glass in her hand, as if she were a bull and he were her matador. He said ‘Is that funny?’ She said ‘Is it meant to be?’ There was the peculiar tension between them which actors can create just by doing nothing on stage. Uncle Bill said ‘It hit the ceiling.’ Aunt Mavis said ‘That’s where you were aiming it?’ I did think this quite funny. It seemed as if they had forgotten their lines and were ad-libbing; or were waiting for the prompter to say something off-stage. Then Uncle Bill looked at me. I thought I should try and say something, since otherwise he might notice that I had thought this funny. When I begin to stammer it is as if a valve gets stuck in my head and I go on breathing in and cannot breathe out; I become like a diver with a madman at my windpipe. I was trying to say two things at once: both—I came downstairs to ask what I should wear tomorrow night (I was being taken to some party the following night); also—It’s all right, I won’t tell anyone. Because of course there would be people interested in things like pistol shots between Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne, even if he had just been cleaning a pistol which I suppose he might have been however unlikely this was according to psychoanalytic language. I had heard a rumour that Government Ministers had recently been allowed to keep pistols, after the kidnapping and murder of some Italian politician when his body-guard had been shot; and it seemed probable that Uncle Bill might like possessing a pistol. But he and Mrs Washbourne would not in any case want anyone to know about a shot: so it looked as if I had them in some sort of power. But I did not want to have them in any power, at least not in this sort which was trivial. Stammering, it seems to me, is often caused by a person’s wanting to say two or more things at once; which, it also seems, is often the only way in which things can be made to sound true. But ordinary language is not suited to this: or at least, not without the struggle.

  Mrs Washbourne came out of the study into the hall. She was this statuesque woman with gold hair. She was holding her left wrist with her right hand. I wondered if Uncle Bill had shot her there. She was wearing a dress with wide flat shoulders so that she looked like the Jack of Clubs. The Jack of Clubs is one with fair hair but no moustache. I thought—Or Uncle Bill might have shot her smile off? She said ‘I just think he should see someone that’s all.’ Aunt Mavis said ‘See who?’ Mrs Washbourne said ‘See anyone.’ They were talking about Uncle Bill as if he were not there. I remembered this sort of scene from my childhood—an aunt and my mother talking in front of me as if I were not there. (I thought—Or as if I were their unconscious?) Uncle Bill said ‘Where’s Woodcock?’ Woodcock was one of the detectives put on to guard Uncle Bill We seemed to be waiting for Woodcock to come in like the prompter; or like a stage-manager from another dimension to tell us that the murders and self-mutilations were not real.

  After a time Woodcock did come in. He was a man without striking features—the ten of clubs, perhaps, after the King and Queen and Jack. Mrs Washbourne said ‘Can’t he say he did it?’ Aunt Mavis said ‘Can’t he say he did what?’ Mrs Washbourne said ‘I suppose he’d lose his job.’ They were still talking as if neither Uncle Bill nor Woodcock were there. Woodcock went through into the study. I could see him looking up at the ceiling and then at the walls and the floor. Aunt Mavis said ‘He shouldn’t have been playing with it.’ Mrs Washbourne said ‘Why do you think he was playing with it?’ I wondered how much any of them knew about psychoanalytic language. Aunt Mavis began to smile. When Aunt Mavis smiles, she seems at the same time to be trying to keep her mouth straight, as if it were a mountain-ledge from which she is hanging. I was still trying to get more breath in, or out, or anything: I was like a balloon over a volcano. Uncle Bill said ‘Have you seen a vision or something?’ He was talking to me. It was unusual, in front of others, for him to talk to me. What he had said was a reference, I think, to something I had once told him, which was that I had bicycled to Bognor one day to visit the beach where Blake had seen visions: I had collected some shells there. I had at last to let my breath out: at the end was a small hiccup, like a pendant. I thought that now I might smile. Uncle Bill was smiling. I thought—But do not Japanese people smile when things are alarming? Mrs Washbourne said ‘You frighten me.’ Aunt Mavis said ‘You frighten me too.’ Woodcock came back into the hall. It was as if he were a person who has found what he has been looking for in a game of hunt-the-thimble. He locked the door of the study behind him. Aunt Mavis began coming towards me on the stairs. Sometimes when Aunt Mavis comes towards you she seems about to go, as well as to look, right through you; but even for ghosts you have to step aside. I thought—Actors have that smile on their faces like mad archaic statues: they are trying to get back to an impossibly innocent past. By this time other secretaries and aides had come into the hall. I thought—Soon there will be enough for a full crowd-scene; then we can jump up and down and shout things like ‘Rhubarb rhubarb’; and we will not have to worry any more about meanings. Woodcock was putting the key of the study door into his pocket. I thought—But if what happens off-stage really goes on in the mind, then indeed can it not be seen as funny? even murder and self-mutiliation? And might not this, the knowledge of it, stop it? However—What about language then, for protection and self-justification. The people who had come into the hall were not quite looking at Uncle Bill; nor at Mrs Washbourne; not quite catching each other’s eyes. I thought—Actors of course do not recognise each other as they really are when they are on the stage: it is their job to pretend, to cover up, to put something over. And by this they give comfort. The people in the hall were already not interested in finding out what in fact had happened in the study: they were interested in discovering what sort of parts they should play in order to preserve, whatever had happened, some customary function and identity. Like this they could give comfort: but did not the reality, locked in the study, remain in their unconscious like a hungry lion?

  II

  ‘There was a shot —’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your uncle came out of his room —’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And said “I was cleaning it” —’

  One thing that happens in the course of analysis is that you are made to feel something of a fool. Or rather, you feel as if you would have been made to feel a fool if you had been talking to anyone but your analyst. But because one of the reasons that you have gone to him or her is that you think he or she might know more about what you are trying to say than you do yourself, so, on this quite different level—that of learning—you do not feel a fool at all.

  I said ‘— Why shouldn’t he have been cleaning a pistol —?’

  Dr Anders said ‘You think he might not have been?’

  I said ‘You mean—What would he have been cleaning a pistol for, while he was shouting at Mrs Washbourne —?’

 
What analysts do is to get you to play your words back to yourself so it is as if you can hear yourself speaking. Then you begin to question yourself, because you hear different patterns and inflexions. It is like hearing your voice on tape; but the difference from what you expected is not just of tone, but of content and intention.

  Dr Anders said ‘You knew he had this pistol —’

  I said ‘I knew there was a rumour that people like him could have pistols —’

  ‘Well if it went off he must have had it.’

  It is a layman’s idea about analysts I suppose that they take ordinary words and ideas and translate them into things like breasts and penises. And often they do. But they do not like it if you suggest this.

  I said ‘Why am I smiling —?’

  She said ‘Well, why are you?’

  I thought—But it is another of the jobs of analysts after all to encourage you not to mind too much if other people do not like it when you suggest things.

  Dr Anders said ‘Do you really think it is myself who, when you say something like pistols, makes you make the connection between them and penises?’

  I wanted to say—Well, don’t you?

  I said ‘Well I think it’s under your influence that I do.’

  She said ‘Why?’

  I wanted to say—Because it’s funny.

  Or—Aren’t you trying to make me see that whatever connections are already there, are funny?

  I said ‘Well, it’s funny.’

  She said ‘You haven’t told me much about it yet.’

  Sometimes with Dr Anders there was a warm and pleasant feeling as if you were lying in a bedroom with a fire in the dark.

  I looked at her bookcase, the frieze on her wall, the spire beyond her window.

  I said ‘Well, I was coming down the stairs and Aunt Mavis was coming out of the dining-room. Then there was this shot. I’m sure it was a shot. Then Uncle Bill came out of the study. But what actually happened inside, of course, I have absolutely no means of knowing.’