Doris Lessing - Briefing for a Descent into Hell

After (believe me) due thought, I am simply sending you the enclosed letter. The letter is one I wrote to Charles. That letter was written after due thought, too. Years of it. What I mean is, I could have written that letter before I did, but I was a fool and didn’t.

I sent that letter (the enclosed one) to Charles at his home address. Not out of spite, but I didn’t have another address. He came posthaste. When I say posthaste, I mean, for him. About ten days went by. He came by train to Birmingham. He brought my letter with him. It was, as it might be, a goodwill visit. He stayed the night. Why not? Old habits die hard. When he left in the morning, the letter was lying on my night-table. The point is, but I don’t expect you to see it as a point, he hadn’t left it there on purpose, or for post-departure comment — we had after all, touched on its contents the night before. To put it mildly. No, he forgot it. It slipped totally out of his mind. So I’m taking this opportunity of returning it to him, via you. He might like to refresh his memory — when he gets it back.

Sorry I can’t be of any use.

With my good wishes,

CONSTANCE MAYNE

DEAR CHARLES,

Don’t be alarmed, this isn’t one of those drivelling slobby w et letters I wrote you when you decided you’d had enough of me. No fear. I’m very far from that now. I woke up this morning and thought it was three years this June since you left me.

The thought of you

So sweet and true

For dreary years

Has been boo hoo.

Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo hoo. BOO!

It occurred to me that far from boo hoo, far from it, I was in a good old paddy, a good old rage. Fury. It occurs to me Charles Watkins that what I feel for you is not boo hoo at all, I hate you. More than that, I simply can’t get over your sheer damned preposterousness.

Now let me tell you a tale.

There was once an earnest idealistic young student taking Literature and Languages, who went, God help her, to a lecture, an Introduction to Old Greece, and heard a mad professor claim that there was only one literature and one language, namely Greek, (Ancient, not Modern). And such was his persuasive force that this stupid student dropped her lovely useful literature and French and Spanish and Italian, and went over to Useless Old Greece, just because this professor said so. Three years passed while this stupid student sweated and got full marks all for the sake of an approving smile or two from the Mad Professor. The day she heard she had got her B.A. behold, it happens this Silly student is in London and there is the Mad Professor giving a lecture on the television about Greece, the Cradle of European Civilisation. Intellectual this and Moral that, and so it went on, but not one word about, it occurs to silly Female Student, Women, let alone Slaves in that paradise of Moral Superiority, Ancient Greece. Stupid student got into a taxi as the lecture was ending on the telly, and went to the B.B.C. and he came out of the building, looking oh so Classical and Woolly, rough tweeds, pipe, rugged charm, the lot, she said to him, In all that there was not one word about either Women or Slaves. To which the Mad Professor returned: Oh, is that you Connie? Well done! Congratulations on your results! Well, you are concerned about Women and Slaves are you? What are you doing about them? It took the Stupid Student five dazzling dizzying seconds to get his drift, and she said to him, Right, you’re on. At which she refused to go back to University to get her M.A. and probably on to Ph.D. and so on ad infinitum but she went off to Birmingham, got a job in a factory, with women making plastic containers for detergents, found they were indeed Slaves while being Women, and she made scandals and fusses with the management, became a shop steward and a communist and three years later went to Cambridge to confront the Mad Professor with the news. Very well, then, I’ve done it, she cried, and told him the tale, three years hard, but very hard, but very very hard, slogging, hard intolerable bloody work for the plastic-detergent-container-making women of Birmingham, and he took his pipe out of his mouth and said: Well done! And then he said: Let’s go to bed.

Yes I do know whether to laugh or to cry. This morning I am laughing and God knows it is about time.

So the love of the century begins, in Birmingham for the most part, but a busy and popular Professor of Classics with a wife and two sons hasn’t all that much time left over for amusements, and the Silly Shop Steward hardly ever sees her Love. In the meantime this same Stupid Shop Steward has a beau, a Steady, a faithful love, being the Shop Steward on the Men’s Component’s Floor, where Men make plastic containers for transistor radios, for since they are Men and therefore more advanced and evolved, they can put on those difficult buttons and screws and handles and things, much more tricky than detergent containers. This faithful and loving swain gets the boot from the Silly Shop Stewardess, because of the Love of the Century. Forlorn and alone she says Boo hoo, Boo hoo, marry me, and he says, the Mad Professor says, Don’t be absurd. But what about your vows, your love, your passion, she cries? He says, anyone who believes a word anyone says in bed deserves what she gets.

How’s that for a Professor?

But I’ve twice changed my whole life for you, she cries, sobbing, weeping, wailing.

No one asked you to, says he, taking the pipe out of his mouth for the purpose.

What shall I dooooooo, she wails. I’ve lost my true real right love, the Shop Steward, and I can’t have you, my life is empty and I want a Famileee.

To which he replies, Well, what’s stopping you?

You’d think the girl would have learned by now? You would, wouldn’t you?

Well, now. You’ll remember that bit, if you have time to remember at all, as a lot of very sloppy letters from me. But actually what was happening was that I was thinking, Well, what is stopping me? For as it happens I was pregnant, but only half knew it.

So I went back to Birmingham, had a fine bouncing son, eight pounds, two ounces, keeping my job more or less throughout and with the aid of some kind and loving plastic-container packers and — that was two years ago.

Boo hoo, boo hoo, all the way.

Yes, the child is two and his name is Ishmael, how do you like that?

No, I don’t want a damned thing from you. Nothing. If you want to see the boy, fine. If you don’t, fine.

I don’t care.

I can manage by myself thank you very much.

It occurs to me actually, yes, it’s true, and thank you very much , I mean it. I don’t need anyone, no, not I.

I’m leaving Birmingham next month and shall spend the summer with a kindly aunt in Scotland, and I shall teach Greek to some misguided idiots who would be better employed learning Useful Italian, French and Spanish. But which, alas, I am not equipped to teach anybody, thanks a thousand times to you. No, I am not blaming you, like hell I’m not.

I heard from an old school chum yesterday that you are going about saying that the classics are a load of old rope and all current teaching absolutely ropy, and that no one understands what it was all really about. Except, of course, you.

Congratulations. Oh congratulations. I’m not surprised that you’ve lost your voice — so a little bird tells me? and can’t utter!

I’ve told you, you are preposterous.

With hate. I mean it.

CONSTANCE

DEAR DOCTOR X,

I can answer your question very easily: yes, Charles Watkins did come to see me in the middle of August last. It was late one night. I think a Wednesday, but I can’t really remember, I am afraid.

Yours truly,

ROSEMARY BAINES

DEAR DOCTOR Y,