Authors: Nicholas Mosley
Imago Bird
Nicholas Mosley
Imago
1. Final and perfect stage of an insect after it has undergone its metamorphosis, e.g. butterfly.
2. Idealised mental picture of oneself or another person, especially parent.
I
Ever since I can remember I have thought the grown-up world to be mad; its way of talking to itself and being outraged at the answers; the bright look in its eye as it goes off to feed on disaster. Aristotle said it was self-evident that human beings wanted happiness; but it seems to me they are more at home in sadness and confusion; that if these are taken away they are exposed to the heat of the sun like snails without shells or dark places.
When I was eighteen I was staying with my uncle who happened at the time to be Prime Minister. He was not living at 10 Downing Street because, I think, he did not expect to be Prime Minister for long. He lived in the house in Cowley Street where he had been when he was a member of the Cabinet. I was staying with Uncle Bill because my mother and father were abroadâmy father was directing a film in India and my mother was involved in social work in Californiaâand it had been arranged before Uncle Bill became Prime Minister that I should stay at his house in London and should go each day to see a doctor. It was thought I should go to a doctor because I stammered. I had stammered quite badly since I was seven. My stammer played a great and terrible part in my life, yet I seemed oddly reluctant to try to get rid of it. I sometimes wondered if in this respect I were representative of what I felt about the grown-up world.
At the time at which I am beginning this story (why do people write stories? in the hope they might not be talking to themselves?) I had been going to this doctor for an hour each weekday. Where Dr Anders lived was an hour's journey from Cowley Street, by underground and on foot, so my visits took up most of the afternoons. I spent most of these mornings in bed. I had done my A-levels at school that summer, and I had a
year to wait before going to a university. I would lie in my room at the top of Uncle Bill's house and would listen for footsteps coming up the stairs. I both was sad that people did not more often come to visit me, and planned how I might hide from them if they did.
I had been to two or three other doctors before about my stammer. One of these had said, after monthsâPerhaps you don't want to get rid of your stammer. I had been outraged by this. I had also thoughtâIsn't it your job to make me want to get rid of my stammer?
My room in Uncle Bill's house was next door to the attic. Once or twice during these mornings Uncle Bill came up to see me. He would stand at the bottom of my bed looking huge beneath the Dr Caligari ceilings, while I pretended I had been sitting up for some time working. He asked me if I would not like to decorate my roomâto stick posters and suchlike on the wallsâto make myself feel more at home there. I thought I might explain that I did not want to feel at home there: that I wanted home to be somewhere in my head, where I might one day get to. But I thought this would sound ungrateful, and pretentious.
When I had first gone to Dr Anders, just before the time when I am beginning this story, I had told her of what the previous therapist had said about my possibly not wanting to get rid of my stammer; and she had said, cheerfullyâBut of course you don't want to get rid of your stammer! And I had felt for a moment that I should be outraged again at this; and then I had felt as if I were starting on some journey.
I should have explained that Dr Anders is a woman. She has a brown wrinkled face, blue eyes, and a pudding-basin haircut. When I talked to her this first time there was the impression that the journey we were embarking on was one of which she had had a sudden glimpse of the end, and it was this that made her cheerful.
I had from time to time realised that my stammer might be some protection.
On the day when I am beginning this story Uncle Bill had been having a row with his secretary, Mrs Washbourne. He
and Mrs Washbourne often had these rows: I think they gave to them some sense of protection; of being at home in an irrational world that they felt they had to try to order. I had been coming down the stairs at Cowley Street into the hall when I heard Uncle Bill shouting from behind the closed door of his study. Noises in this household often seemed to come from behind closed doors: it was as if we were from time to time involved in some Greek tragedy. Uncle Bill used to shout at Mrs Washbourne in a quite impersonal way as if he were selling newspapers; or as if he were the man in Greek tragedy who specialised in making noises of murder or self-mutilation off-stage. And Mrs Washbourne would smile rather knowingly as if she were the Mona Lisa with a moustache drawn on her. Of course I could not see Mrs Washbourne through the closed door of the study, but this was a scene that had been enacted often enough before to have created some sort of pattern.
I do not know how I should try to describe these people. Novelists I suppose try to make their characters life-like; but also for propriety they try to disguise them. However, most people, and especially politicians, seem to spend much of their lives pretending to be someone else: so perhaps it is lifelike to make Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne, who were having an affair, to appear somewhat like actors.
Uncle Bill was a large red-faced man with white hair. Mrs Washbourne had gold hair and was rather icy. After a time of shouting, Uncle Bill would take his spectacles off his nose and hold them by his groin and whirl them round and round there as if they were Catherine wheels and he was signalling some sort of relief or celebration.
On the evening of this particular row I was standing on the stairs and listening to the noises from behind closed doors (why did the Greeks make things like murder and self-mutilation happen off-stage? was it because they knew that these things are mostly in the imagination?) when Aunt MavisâI have not before mentioned Aunt Mavis: people often seem not quite to mention Aunt Mavis: as if she were a member of the chorus of a Greek tragedy, there only to carry reflections of the terrible events off-stageâwhen Aunt Mavis came from the
dining-room into the hall. She was carrying a glass. When people do not mention Aunt Mavis perhaps it is because she often, at that time, seemed to be carrying a glass. She is a thin, rather concave woman as if people had been treading too much on her and she has become hollowed out like a step. When she heard Uncle Bill shouting she stood still. She looked up at me on the stairs; or rather she seemed to look right through meâas though I were a member of an audience and thus in a different category to that of the people on a stage. I wonderedâDid the Greeks like to be told of murder and self-mutilation off-stage because this reassured them that other people had awful imaginations like their own? But nowadays people want their stage-horrors in full view, so this could mean they might begin to think their imaginations funny â
Aunt Mavis stood in the hall with her drink in her hand. She looked right through me. I thoughtâMight not actors in fact begin to glimpse their audience as if it were their unconscious? Then Uncle Bill stopped shouting; and there would be Mrs Washbourne looking at him with her smile drawn on her like a rope; tugging at him with it, or at his spectacles, as if they were rings through a bull's testicles â
There was silence in the hall for a time. Then there was the sound of a pistol shot.
Or perhaps I thought it was like a pistol shot because that was the sort of thing we had come to expect from behind closed doors.
What had Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne been doing, we as an audience might ask, in those moments before the pistol shot? Had she taken out a pistol to stop him shouting? Had he taken out a pistol to stop her smile? I had thought it suited Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne to be thus shouting and smiling. How else could people like King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, who were otherwise so boring, gain an audience's attention? And they could come alive again, of course, after a pistol shot: to be ready for the next night's murder and self-mutilation.
Uncle Bill came out of his study. He was this red-faced man
with white hair. He was carrying his spectacles by his groin. He said âI was cleaning it.' Aunt Mavis said âWas it dirty?' I was much interested at that time, since I was going to Dr Anders, in psychoanalytic language; which of course is supposed to point out the connections between things like pistols and penises. Aunt Mavis was leaning towards Uncle Bill with her glass in her hand, as if she were a bull and he were her matador. He said âIs that funny?' She said âIs it meant to be?' There was the peculiar tension between them which actors can create just by doing nothing on stage. Uncle Bill said âIt hit the ceiling.' Aunt Mavis said âThat's where you were aiming it?' I did think this quite funny. It seemed as if they had forgotten their lines and were ad-libbing; or were waiting for the prompter to say something off-stage. Then Uncle Bill looked at me. I thought I should try and say something, since otherwise he might notice that I had thought this funny. When I begin to stammer it is as if a valve gets stuck in my head and I go on breathing in and cannot breathe out; I become like a diver with a madman at my windpipe. I was trying to say two things at once: bothâI came downstairs to ask what I should wear tomorrow night (I was being taken to some party the following night); alsoâIt's all right, I won't tell anyone. Because of course there would be people interested in things like pistol shots between Uncle Bill and Mrs Washbourne, even if he had just been cleaning a pistol which I suppose he might have been however unlikely this was according to psychoanalytic language. I had heard a rumour that Government Ministers had recently been allowed to keep pistols, after the kidnapping and murder of some Italian politician when his body-guard had been shot; and it seemed probable that Uncle Bill might like possessing a pistol. But he and Mrs Washbourne would not in any case want anyone to know about a shot: so it looked as if I had them in some sort of power. But I did not want to have them in any power, at least not in this sort which was trivial. Stammering, it seems to me, is often caused by a person's wanting to say two or more things at once; which, it also seems, is often the only way in which things can be made to sound true. But ordinary language is not suited to this: or at least, not without the struggle.
Mrs Washbourne came out of the study into the hall. She was this statuesque woman with gold hair. She was holding her left wrist with her right hand. I wondered if Uncle Bill had shot her there. She was wearing a dress with wide flat shoulders so that she looked like the Jack of Clubs. The Jack of Clubs is one with fair hair but no moustache. I thoughtâOr Uncle Bill might have shot her smile off? She said âI just think he should see someone that's all.' Aunt Mavis said âSee who?' Mrs Washbourne said âSee anyone.' They were talking about Uncle Bill as if he were not there. I remembered this sort of scene from my childhoodâan aunt and my mother talking in front of me as if I were not there. (I thoughtâOr as if I were their unconscious?) Uncle Bill said âWhere's Woodcock?' Woodcock was one of the detectives put on to guard Uncle Bill We seemed to be waiting for Woodcock to come in like the prompter; or like a stage-manager from another dimension to tell us that the murders and self-mutilations were not real.