Anonymous: Muriel

Phillip Mansfield's Day-Book

Where there is silence there is pain; where there is music there is often pain; where there is absence there is pain. And sometimes all these congregate, even in the presence of the once-beloved, becoming like a veil across the eyes, a tight band round the forehead, so that the pain obtains the greyness of an early-evening mist, obscuring the thoughts, the words, to which the mind would otherwise give birth.

In such moments, clamped within my own being, and feeling that the very spaces around me (those spaces between the furniture and the walls such as encroach on one in moments of douleur more than do the physical objects themselves) are areas of the alien, of foreignness, even though lived in, walked in, day by day-yes, in such moments I am drawn into a dullness, an unspeaking, a sense of being separated from myself and from all others.

It is because, I am told, I live too much in my mind, when in fact I would that I could live in others' minds- for I, the real Phillip (seemingly unknown to those I hold most dear) have sat and held his once-beloved's hand, discoursing with her in the manner of a flowing stream and pausing only at the stones and bridges of her words, absorbing and enfolding them to show my true identity with her. Ah, how often-how often-did I clamp my lips upon my wife's (aware that my own were too wet and too loose sometimes) and swear to her that in my love for her I would become her, dissolve and disappear in her, and know our souls to be united.

'They cannot be', she would say and turn her face. Downstairs a piano might be tinkling-its notes wounding with their brittle, careless sounds. Then would come a silence and my wife would stir. The bed must be smoothed, she would say, or the maid would see, and this despite my protestations that we had not made love, nor I as much as flirted a hand beneath her skirt.

'Even so, Phillip, even so', she always murmured and would pat her hair with that distracted air of a woman who is not appeased or, if she is, has her mind elsewhere, though she will not acknowledge it.

'I cannot be other than myself any more than you can be other than yourself, she often said.

'And thus there is a vacuum where love should be', said I.

'No vacuum, Phillip, but rather an enclave of desire that will renew itself. I cannot help myself if love between my legs enchants me more than is in my head'.

'Impure!', I cried, but said it only in my head.

The words we spoke grew rougher through the years, the intervals between our kisses longer. Hiding our deceptions as we might before the children, we could never quite dissemble them. Words of parting rose, and Amy cried, clung to her mother. Richard, whose nineteen years I then relied upon to make him manly, would not speak to either of us, yet I saw him in the last week of their abiding here kiss his mother thrice, and once in fullness on her lips, whereat she threw her head back, stroked his hair.

I could not shout at them to stop. Such is the guile of circumstance that I would have been accused by her of 'being miserable'. Pretending not to see, I turned away. The hour was late. Amy and Sylvia were both in bed. Passing straight-backed, straight-legged, out of the room, I heard a succulence of mouths, yet chided myself and not them for impure thoughts. 'Darling', she called him, though had never called me more than 'dear'.

A whole hour passed before she came to bed that night, her nipples stiff. I saw them as she dropped her camisole. I wished to ask why she had stayed so late downstairs, but could not bring myself to ask. The bows of her drawers were all untied already, and they fell down loose, at which she turned towards the bed wherein I lay and asked, 'Do you not like me thus-not like me thus?'

Her bottom cheeks were pink as though they had been clutched. There were fingermarks upon her bottom cheeks, I swear.

The lamp was on. One does not look between a woman's legs in light. I had not stirred nor answered her. She heeled the drawers off nimbly and I saw a damp stain there, down at the crotch.

'I am so moist there-put it in', she said. Her face was flushed from drinking too much wine-the red that brings a flush into her cheeks. Richard ascended from the drawing room where they had been. He passed our door on tiptoe and closed his own as though he feared the noise to sound.

'Do not speak so', I said. I would not look. She frequently had such a lewdness on her in her words.

There was a silence then-that silence of foreboding such as when a house stands dark and empty on a moor and the first snow falls upon the silent eaves.

'You do not want to-will not challenge your cock to my nest?', she asked, and laughed a scornful laugh that hurt my mind. 'If you believe your sinful thoughts of me, then sinful I may be, just to fulfill the image in your mind, Phillip. Come-challenge! — take me under you and I will tell you very naughty things. I only have my stockings on. You like to feel my stockings, do you not?'

Ah, wheedling voice, and yet I did not speak. That was the voice of sin and not of love. I felt her kneel up on the bed and knew her legs to be apart. I strained away. Her hand touched at my shoulder and then fell. It was the breaking point perhaps. I knew it to be so but could not help myself.

Then I shall sleep elsewhere', I heard her say.

O utter loneliness of that wide bed when the door opened, closed, and she had gone! Her long, frilled nightgown lay still on the bed. I heard the slither of her stockinged feet. All night, it seemed, moans sounded in my ears. One cannot write of such, cannot. No words were spoken at the breakfast table. Amy and Sylvia were mute and hushed. Richard took coffee in his room. Within an hour the bags were all brought down. Solemnity fell upon us like a pall.

To Liverpool, she said-told Sylvia, not me. Dear Sylvia, she did not wish to leave. Or not as yet, she said, or not as yet. Her mother kissed her fondly, then was gone with Amy and Richard silent in her train.

Perhaps I should have spoken, said, asked, pleaded. No-I would not plead. I had trodden once too often on that stony ground, watching my words fly beyond her ears-not wholly disregarded, so I like to think, but such curt phrases as she often uttered blew my quieter words away. I have no mere words to utter to her-I have none. The bed in which she had slept that night was ruffled and I feared the maid would see, both pillows used where she perhaps had rolled. Too many purple and impassioned things she often said at nights that frayed my mind with their wild, wicked urges, things that should not be spoken of, and that I cannot bring myself to pen.

Thoughts of that night grow dark and dreary in my mind. I fear for what I think of that stained, twisted sheet, and must not think. I shall pray for her deliverance, and mine, though we may never meet again.

Sylvia played upon the garden swing today. Her sixteenth birthday is upon us soon. Our maid, Rose, should not push her quite so high. I saw above her stocking tops. Someone should speak to her of that, for I cannot. Such subjects are improper-thorn the tongue and prick the lips.

'You look sad, Papa', she laughed. I turned away. I am often told such when in truth I feel but serious. Such innocence becomes the young who feel no pain from silence, music, absence, but ever turn their minds towards some other thing.

Sylvia Mansfield's Day-Book

I did not wish to side with anyone, but neither did I wish to go to Liverpool. Mama, I'm sure, forgives me that. I shall visit them at Christmas, anyway. Perhaps she did not understand that Papa needs quietness to pursue his work. His desk is all about with pages of his novel. I am sure his writing was the cause of it, because he wished for quietness, but Mama was hardly ever that. Richard was always kissing her of late. I wonder why. Perhaps he has long wanted to go to Liverpool, for he prefers a city life, and so I expect him to be pleased. I asked Mama is it nice to kiss, and she laughed and said 'Of course it is', but would not tell me any more until my birthday, so she said.