Doris Lessing - Briefing for a Descent into Hell

You ask about his early life.

Our parents were friends. We were described by them as “great chums” almost from birth. I believe that Charles regards this as wryly as I do — and did then. We went to the same prep school. We were neither of us particularly distinguished. We stuck together out of homesickness — an alliance of mutual aid and defence, if you like. My view of that period does not coincide with Charles’ at all, as emerges rather painfully when we ever discuss it. Briefly, I think he was rather a con. But not deliberately or consciously. However, I’ll skip all that and choose a typical incident from Rugby where we both went together. The summer we were both sixteen our form master invited six of us for a summer’s yachting, based on the Isle of Wight. I was one of the six. The invitations were not “personal,” but issued every holidays on a sort of rota system, in quite a regular, fair way. This master was a kindly man, quite the best influence on my young life, and I daresay on Charles too. The reason why I was invited that holidays and Charles was not was simply that I was minimally older. Now, I had done a fair bit of yachting for various reasons, and my parents were better off than Charles’ parents. I knew he was not looking forward to going home that holidays, and for a variety of reasons. To cut it short, I suggested to the form master that Charles should go instead of me. Again, I must ask you to take it as read that it was not possible for Charles to remain impervious to the fact that this was a real sacrifice on my part. The form master was surprised and touched. No, that is not why I did it. It was just that, given the circumstances, Charles might have been expected to show a consciousness of some kind. When Wentworth told him I had backed down in his favour, Charles simply nodded. Wentworth was so surprised that he repeated what he had said — that I had offered to back down, and Charles said, Yes, thanks, I’d like to. I said nothing to him about it, when he did not mention it. Now, it was a particularly good summer, and I was stuck with a pretty boring crowd, and I am afraid I did spend far too much time thinking of that crowd down there, on the water, and of Charles’ quite extraordinary attitude. I never mentioned it. I could not bring myself to, for it stung so badly. Not until years after, after the war as a matter of fact. I said to him in so many words — perhaps I was hoping to take the sting out of the memory, what I had felt throughout that summer holidays. He looked at me and said: Well, there was no need to offer it, was there?

And of course, there was not.

I am sure that looks a very small thing and very petty, and it does me a great deal of discredit to mention it at all. But you did ask me to say what I thought and that “anything I could tell you might be helpful.”

That incident sums up something in Charles for me.

I must say at this point that our relations were formalised by the time we were nine in this way: Charles was the original eccentric oddball, and Jeremy was the solid dependable one. I’ve always played along with it. I’m stuck with it, as it were. But when I say to Charles and to others that what I admire is his originality and his daringness of thought, and so on, that is not the point at all. For in fact there is something too careless, almost sloppy, about his “originality.” I suppose he is a bit of an anarchist. Of course his experience has tended to make him one.

His father was in business and did badly in the slump. Charles started work, while I went to University. He did every variety of job, and there was talk of his going off to the Spanish Civil War, but he didn’t. The war started and he joined up at once. I was flying throughout the war, and Charles was in infantry, and then with Tanks. We met once or twice. I knew a bit of what he was up to, through mutual friends. He refused a commission, more than once. This was so like him. I asked him why, and he began roaring with laughter and said he had refused to annoy people. I found it then, and find it now — affected. And unconvincing. I told him so. I could say that “this caused ill-feeling” but as I was about to write that, I realised that it might have caused ill-feeling in me, but I don’t think in Charles. We did not quarrel, though I’ll acknowledge that I would have liked to quarrel — at last.

When the war ended, Charles went back to University. This he got through well and easily. He has a not uncommon facility — a memory that is really almost photographic. For an examination he will study day and night for the month beforehand, get phenomenal marks — and will have forgotten most of it three months later. He says this of himself.

Very well. By the time he was ready for a job, I had been lecturing four or five years. I was in a position to pull strings or at least put a friendly oar in. There were a dozen applicants for the post and Charles was the youngest, and least experienced. Well, he got the post and through me — but that is not the point. Which is this. In the crisis week, when things hung in the balance, he came to visit me. He was scruffy, untidy, a bit flamboyant — all this as usual. Nothing terrible — not like our present students, far from that level of exhibitionism, but pretty irritating. I told him that he had to take his appearance more seriously, and that he was putting me in a difficult position. He listened, didn’t say much. Next time I saw him, he had got the post, and — he was looking like me. I must explain that. We are physically different, but I have some mannerisms. Not that I knew of them until Charles showed me them! He had equipped himself with an old jacket of mine — asked my wife for it, she was throwing it away. He had acquired a pipe, which he had never smoked before, and he got his hair cut like mine. When I first clapped my eyes on this, I thought it was a monstrous joke. But not at all. You’d expect this to be a joke between us perhaps? Or at least an issue? No, it was not mentioned for a long time. Yet everyone noticed it, commented. When I came into a room, or saw him across a street it was like seeing a monstrous caricature of myself.

When someone did finally mention it (my wife, as it happened), and I looked at him, hoping for some comment, he merely nodded, rather impatiently, but not very. With a sort of small frown, as if to say: Oh that, what a detail.

I suppose it may strike you as a detail, too. But I may add that now, years later, people tend to think that it is I who have copied Charles, modelled myself on him. And that fact says everything about how we are both judged. And yes, it rankles.

Now an episode from last summer. It so happened that my wife and I were having a stormy patch. I had been overworking and so had she. We had agreed to spend the summer apart. We knew we were on the slippery slope to divorce. We had quarrelled and talked and made scenes, the usual sort of thing, and I daresay we were as much emotionally worn out as anything. She decided to go to her mother in Scotland, leaving the children with friends — as it happens, the Watkins. Both of whom were towers of strength throughout the whole episode. Charles drove Nancy to her mother. Nancy was in a pretty hysterical state, as she would be the first to admit. Now I find it rather hard to describe what happened in a way to convey its importance. Far from Charles behaving badly, it was the opposite. Nancy says he was kind and helpful. But before they even reached Scotland, she was pretty upset because of his attitude — which was that the whole thing was not very important. He took it absolutely for granted that she would be back with me before the year was out — but that if she were not, what of it? Now I must mention Felicity, his wife. I have a valuable relationship with her. I’ve known her since she was a tiny thing. No, I’m not in love with her, nor ever have been, but we have always known that we are close, and that if neither were married elsewhere, we might well hit it off pretty well. My wife has always known of this, so has Charles, there is nothing to hide.