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
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.
