DREAM COMPROMISE

 

I used to hate visiting old Mrs Donnelly, and would invariably wait until she wrote me an invitation before ringing her up and agreeing to a date.  That would be once every three or four months, so I never had to visit her more than a few times a year.  Nonetheless even that proved inconvenient to me, ever since I had first answered her invitation about four years ago.  There were times when I needed all my perseverance and willpower to persuade myself to go!

     It was an aunt of mine who had first written to Mrs Donnelly about me, and so it was she who was at the root of all this inconvenience.  I used to dread getting letters from her because they would invariably mention the old lady and reprove me for not having contacted her for some time.  Somehow Aunt Mary imagined that I would rush into Mrs Donnelly's arms as into those of a long-lost friend or future saviour.  But when it eventually became clear to her that I entertained less than flattering opinions of the old woman, she instinctively resented it and took a highly critical attitude to me in her letters.  I would get a scolding from her for not having taken due advantage of Mrs Donnelly's generosity, and, inevitably, a letter would subsequently arrive from the said lady inviting me to lunch and/or tea whenever convenient.  The noose seemed to be tightening around me and I would invariably fall into it, like a convicted criminal, and ring my prospective hostess in order to fix a date.  Regrets would automatically follow, but by then I was resigned to my fate and in no position to back down.  I used to dread the prospect of another vituperative letter from Aunt Mary even more than the impending visit to old Mrs Donnelly!

     Considering I had no other friends or contacts at the time, it might perhaps seem strange that a person like me should be so recalcitrant where the prospect of a little friendly company was concerned.  But although I had spent a number of solitary years in an insalubrious part of north London, I was by no means eager to rush into the company of an octogenarian like Mrs Donnelly.  There were a number of reasons for this, not the least of which was the extraordinary facility she had for repeating herself, like a parrot, on each of my successive appearances, and doing so, moreover, without the slightest awareness that I had heard that particular story - usually a tale of woe concerning her late-husband or life under the Blitz - several times before.  Old age had rendered her severely senile in this respect and I was obliged to pretend, for form's sake, that what I was hearing for the umpteenth time was not only new to me, but as exciting to hear as it evidently was for her to relate.  Not surprising if after the sixth or seventh visit I began to grow restive and somewhat lacking in that enthusiasm for the privilege of her company which Aunt Mary, herself more than a touch senile, apparently expected of me!  It was far worse by the eleventh or twelfth visit!

     But I said there were other reasons, and so there were.  For all her faults, Mrs Donnelly was a devout Catholic and would attend Mass every morning virtually without fail.  Like many genteel Irishwomen, especially of her generation, she was a religious fanatic and couldn't open her mouth without saying something about the Holy Virgin or the Blessed Saints or the Holy Fathers or the Good Lord or whatever.  At eighty-two, and well-advanced in repetitive senility, she was probably more fanatic than she had been twenty or forty or even sixty years before, and it was this aspect of her life which constituted another of my reasons for being less than keen to visit her.  I was almost certain to be bombarded with a résumé of Catholic doctrine, or recollections of the mystical experiences she had undergone in various odd places, or memories of the priests she had invited home to dinner, and so on, throughout the time I spent in her company, much of which, incidentally, was spent in the twilight of approaching darkness, since she only switched on the light as a last resort, as and when she was obliged to make me some tea, and must have feared that her conversation would be adversely compromised by her wrinkled features,  did she not avail of the dark both to conceal them and enhance her personal standing with me at the same time. 

     Initially, she had high hopes of converting me, a lapsed Catholic in her opinion, back to the Faith, since she didn't know enough about me to realize that such a conversion was the last thing to which I would succumb.  But slowly, by degrees, it began to dawn on her that, even in the approaching darkness, she wasn't getting anywhere and that, rather than admitting to faults, I was becoming ever more adamantly opposed to her faith and convinced of the validity of my own, which ran somewhat contrary to hers, though not in a Protestant manner.  Slowly, the light started to fade from her eyes, and she began to perceive that I lived in a different spiritual world from the one she was accustomed to inhabiting.  Her invitations to lunch thereafter grew less frequent, though by no means less cordial, and as though by a reciprocal compensation the threats and reproofs from Aunt Mary grew ever more frequent.  But I wasn't to be swayed.  I could see through Mrs Donnelly too easily to be in any way ashamed of who I was, and would console myself in the knowledge that I had the truth while she lived in illusion.  Besides, I soon discovered from the excellence of the home-made and fresh food she provided that her religiosity was more a matter of lip-service to symbols to which long habit had ingrained her than any consciously-lived asceticism carried out, in defiance of the flesh, with intent to cultivating the spirit as much as possible.  There was little of the half-starved saint about old Mrs Donnelly, who always prided herself on eating only 'the best', no matter how expensive.  Religion didn't interfere with her stomach, nor, one might add, with her appetite, which for a person of her age was anything but slight.  Yet, frankly, I would be a hypocrite to pretend that it interfered with mine instead.  There is little of the half-starved saint about me, either!

     I would ward off Mrs Donnelly's Catholic sermons as best I could, trying, in the process, to convert her to my transcendental standpoint, in which spiritual self-realization was the ultimate ideal.  That, however, was no more likely to succeed than were her attempts at converting me to prayerful worship, and so we would eventually agree to a truce and tactfully change the subject.  My literary career was sometimes an alternative one, and when, one day, I was able to tell her that I had at last found a publisher, she almost died of a heart attack, so unexpected was the good news.  A publisher meant I would now have some money, and Mrs Donnelly had quite resigned herself to believing that I would always remain poor and dependent on the state.  Now I was going to be self-supporting, and that came as something of a shock to her.  She congratulated me in the most cordial terms and offered to pour me an extra cup of tea, which I gladly accepted.  At last I should be able to afford somewhere better to live, she hoped, since my domestic problems were by now well known to her.

     As luck would have it, that was the last I saw of her.  For she was to die in the New Year, a few weeks after Christmas, and I received notification of the fact from her sister, Polly, one evening.  It came as a surprise to me in view of her previously good health, though not as great a surprise as the knowledge that she had bequeathed her property to me - a two-storey semidetached house in Palmers Green.  At first I thought I was imagining things, hallucinating or imposing subconscious hopes on the letter in my hand.  But no, it was for real, and I, Nicholas Brennan, was to inherit her property!  I could scarcely believe my luck!  Without wasting any time, I dashed over to her sister's place, was given confirmation of the bequest, and duly handed the keys to the property that very same day.  I was to have a home of my own at last!

     Moving in was one of the most exciting experiences of my entire life, especially since the lodging house I was moving from was so dilapidated and depressing as to be a permanent nightmare in which to live.  I couldn't wait to get away from the noisy neighbours in whose vulgar company I had spent the past four years, and was accordingly impatient to set-up home in this small private house, where I looked forward to a life of dignified peace-and-quiet instead of constant torment from aggressive boors.  There were three rooms on the ground floor, including a kitchen-cum-dining room, and three upstairs, with the addition of a bathroom and toilet.  The road in which the house stood was agreeably quiet, being wholly residential, and at the back stood a pleasantly elongated garden which gave-on to a tranquil canal that suggested not only peace, but privacy as well.  The nearest houses, on the far side of this canal, also had gardens backing-on to it in similar fashion, so there was a wide-open space in-between, quite unlike anything to which I had been accustomed in recent years.  Here, if anywhere, I believed I would be able to get rid of the depression I had contracted from the squalid boxed-in urban environment of my previous residence.  More regular contact with nature was precisely what I needed!

     The front room of the house was quickly transformed into a study, and I began to acquire a collection of books to line the bookcase I had placed against one of its walls.  Previously I had been dependent on the local library for reading material, but now that I had some independent means I could at last afford to start a small private collection, to augment the worn paperbacks purchased by me as a youth.  Thus I acquired a number of my favourite novels, including works by Lawrence Durrell, Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Henry Miller, and Anthony Burgess, which I knew I'd feel inclined to re-read from time to time.  Additionally, I purchased some philosophical works by Teilhard de Chardin, Lewis Mumford, Arthur Koestler, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and these I placed on a higher shelf than the novels.  I had only to get some further works of a poetic or aesthetic nature in order to have the rudiments of a representative collection of choice twentieth-century writings, and was satisfied that my study would be a sufficiently dignified sanctum in which to carry on from where such great minds had left off.

     As for music, I quickly acquired all the Shostakovich, Ravel, Martinu, Delius, and Prokofiev records I could get my hands on, and to these incomparable masters I added a number of modern-jazz albums by the estimable likes of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock for good measure.  All I needed now, I felt, was a person with whom to share my house and tastes.  But this desire was soon to be realized, since I received a letter, one day, from a young woman with whom I had been madly in love some years before, albeit without requital.  She had read my recently-published novel, recognized herself in it, and, obtaining my new address from its publisher, was curious to find out whether I really meant what I had said about her.  I invited her over to see me and duly reassured her that I did.  Her name was Sheila, and she became my mistress that very first visit, despite being married.

     In due course, she obtained a divorce from her husband on grounds - probably genuine - of infidelity, and came to live with me permanently.  I fell in love with her all over again and duly proposed marriage to her, which, thankfully, she accepted.  I had great need of such company as she supplied, and found that my depression was gradually lifting in consequence of our blossoming relationship.  She was truly a beautiful woman and very generous with her charms, which were more than ample for my needs.  I would make love to her virtually every day, using every resource for variety at my disposal.  Life was beginning to improve for me after years of solitude, poverty, and pain.  My wife gave me the sensuality I had so desperately needed, and this enabled me to get over my enforced celibacy.  My writings were improving all the time, as was the public's response to them.  People would write inquiring about my work or congratulating me on a particular literary achievement.  The number of books in my private collection was steadily expanding, and to such an extent that I soon required an additional bookcase in which to house them all, as well as extra shelves for my records.  Occasionally Sheila's friends would pop in to see us and talk about literature and philosophy.  Someone brought me a large poster of Hermann Hesse, whom I was said to resemble, and someone else one of Nietzsche, my favourite philosopher.  I would talk about politics and religion as well, and often enough we would end-up listening to a Shostakovich symphony or a Martinu concerto - a fitting climax to the evening.  Sheila would pour a final round of wine or sherry, and I would go to bed feeling slightly giddy but relatively content.  Her body was there beside me in the dark, and I had only to stretch out a hand to feel its softness and warmth.

     One day, I followed her into the toilet and watched her going through the motions of relieving herself.  Strangely, I felt curiously aroused by this spectacle and, before she could replace her panties, I lifted her up and carried her into the adjacent bathroom.  There I quickly removed her jeans and panties and made her straddle the sink, so that her rump was facing me and I was able to soap it.  She made no protest as I continued to lubricate her rear, but remained facing the wall with a vague smile on her lips.  She had guessed what was coming next and, when it actually did, merely whimpered and blushed faintly.  I was able to satisfy my lust while she pretended not to be aroused.  But I could tell that she was secretly excited by this extension of our sexual relationship and able to fulfil herself in due course.  Why had I done it? she wanted to know afterwards.  I smiled weakly and replied that it was a concession to the post-dualistic nature of the age, which seemingly required a degree of artificial or unorthodox sexuality of one.  However, I assured her that I wouldn't do it very often, since it was less satisfying than regular sex.

     She smiled understandingly and brushed a gentle kiss across my brow.  As long as I didn't become actively homosexual or even bi-sexual, she was prepared to tolerate such occasional deviations from strict heterosexuality.  After all, she was a modern woman, which meant, amongst other things, that she was less natural and feminine than would otherwise be the case, had she been living under different or more traditional circumstances.  In some respects, a modern liberated woman was almost a man, and therefore someone capable of attaining to greater freedom from nature or the natural than women had ever done before.  I had already impressed this fact upon her in certain other contexts, including the cultural, and it had evidently sunk in, since she was anything but ashamed of the unusual experience I had just imposed upon her.  Rather, she teased  me for being like Salvador Dali, whose Unspeakable Confessions had shortly before made such a profound impression on us.  Yes, I was rather proud of the analogy and told her so.  Dali had been one of the world's most civilized men, and I still had high hopes of becoming another - with or without the aid of my beloved.  I would be to literature what Dali was to art, only more so!  She smiled approvingly and continued to regard me with a vaguely mocking look in her dark eyes.  She could tell that she was as indispensable to me as Gala had been to Dali.

     Later on, she came downstairs in nothing but a pale-blue semi-transparent nylon sari and asked me, in penetrating her, to wheelbarrow her around the house in the manner of an oriental despot.  It was then that, realizing what was required of me, I panicked and woke up!  Across the table, old Mrs Donnelly was still droning-on, in the merciful semi-darkness, about the Blitz and the Holy Fathers, seemingly oblivious of the fact that I had spent most of the preceding hour fast asleep.  None of this, thank God, had really happened!  Though die in the New Year she duly did, releasing me from any further obligations towards her.