At the moment
they don’t even have a real place to be.
Even though someone put a ring on me recently, my bedside books are
tilting off an unclosed suitcase. They
are uncomplaining as long as I open them often enough and pick up the ones that
have slid to the floor. At present, I
have Jung to choose from, Mrs Mortimer, and a certain Monsieur Mauriac. They
change all the time. A relay race. One finished, and the delicious moment arrives
when I can sink down beside the book case and have my fingers glance over old
friends or halt at something worthy waiting there, unread on the shelf, for its
timely discovery. A gift. And I will unwrap it every night until it is
consumed, and we are a part of each other.
So there I had been; they had all ran the race
and were now hanging about on my makeshift bedside table. A pile up. And the lonely moment of respite had been going
on and on for days. What to choose? What did I feel like? Where was I to go? I had just met Anne Wiamesky, a fine, honest
writer. She had let me in on a world to
which I was a real stranger; a world of films and banter, where life, tricky
yet forgiving, got taken for a walk in a safe part of Paris when evening fell. A little bit of research later and her
grandfather, François Mauriac, was on my list of things to do. After all, Anne had invited me in, even to
his study, so why not see what he had been writing there? Thinking I’d hitch a lift if he ever came my
way, two days later I found myself at a village fête, tracing my fingers along dusty
discoloured ridges of unloved paperbacks, unread romances. Lo and behold! There he was, tucked up
amongst the shriff and the shraff!…Mauriac’s ‘Noeud de Vipères’… and the exchange with the lady who was emptying
her attic was sweet and short.
Now, he is by my bed but I am not entirely
faithful. A few days before Mauriac, I
had found Jung forgotten under papers on my desk. I had reached for him initially to help with
my novel but since, despite the size of
‘Psychological Types’, it had been laying there under the fall out of novel
writing; shirked irrelevant notes, collaged scribbles and random stationary… I
had wanted to unpick my characters so I could create something vivid on the
page, threads running between them, like a beautiful abstract textile project. On second thoughts, I decided I would rummage
around inside my own psyche as, after all, they were my creatures and, of
course, I had been an introverted sensation type long before I delved into
Jung, so I would just let things happen naturally. Therefore, he had lain forgotten until a
shift in desk geography had him thudding to the floor. And I picked him up, shameful, and took him
to bed.
Now, Penelope I had found on the bottom shelf,
next to Ms.Drabble, but I think I’ll slot her back onto the top one. I had devoured ‘The Pumpkin Eater’ once
before, and here I was doing it again, after picking it out simply to have a
little breather from male viewpoints.
It stayed in my belly. It was
private and sickly within. I wouldn’t
have been able to talk about in public.
“So, you’re reading Penelope
Mortimer?”
“No…am
I…how did you find out?...It has nothing to do with anyone…”
No one.
Except me. I have never sought
out critical views of Mrs Mortimer’s work.
I don’t want to know how she was thought of by everyone else. Later short
stories left me disappointed. But ‘The
Pumpkin Eater’ lays bare a woman’s thoughts, has them reeling on the floor;
then dressing themselves up in something that is deemed respectable only to be
ripped off again by her own hands so that she may breathe. ‘The Pumpkin Eater’ is between Penelope
Mortimer and me. It is a talisman and it is a joy at the side of the bed, or
often on the bedspread, where I have left it, laying it down by my side, whilst
I close my eyes and gorge on words. A
very unhealthy way of falling to sleep, I am sure. In the morning, I make the bed around her. She will be there when I have a moment during
the day…
And how shall I do it? How shall I get back to her without upsetting
anyone, or shirking duties? Or, feeling
guilty! Well, sometimes we ladies just have to find these moments for ourselves!
Like Emma Bovary, we must close the
shutters and lay out with our books, let our husbands (or whoever. Or the world) come to terms with the idea that
we would rather ‘stay in our bedrooms and read’ than do anything else. This luxurious past time arouses the
suspicions of the elder Madame Bovary into stopping her daughter-in-law’s
supply of books from the library in Rouen.
And perhaps she was right for it was Emma and Léon’s shared love of books that drew them together;
and her memory of heroines and the ‘lyrical legend of … adulteresses’ in the
books that she had read that fuelled her affair with Rodolphe. Unfortunately, in Rudolph’s bed side drawer
can be found only letters, locks of hair and handkerchiefs from his past Loves
to which Emma’s offerings will be added as the most recent.
It is so terribly intimate what we leave there,
by our pillows, at hand to steady ourselves as the night thoughts gather round. A guest might climb the stairs and spy the little pile, perhaps in part hidden by the
flung duvet; a hint at who we share our
private moments with. Rodolphe chooses proof of his
beguiling charms, whilst Emma piles up books.
Books; past lovers and future. They charm her away from the window, and
the grey unsympathetic day passing below.
They reveal to her luxuries and living beyond her confines. I think Flaubert should have popped one in
her purse, too, for those occasions when Léon kept her waiting.
Each
to their own bedside table. We may roll
from them now and again onto common ground, and share our common points
together, our carnal needs, yet all the while – just an arm’s length away –
guard our illumined vision of the world, propped up by our solitude.
I
wonder what was lying on Emma’s bedside table, dusted daily , with lace
embroidery between it and the varnished wood. All that finery, and words and
guts…
Not
wanting to intrude too much, but Flaubert suggests Walter Scott, Hugo
and Voltaire. More rides to hitch. More
giants to add to my race track accident scene on top of a suitcase.
*
When they found my aunt, they found a stack of
books by her bed as well. Or so the
story goes. After she was cremated,
these books remained in a bundle and were kept by people who had loved
her. First, my granny, and then my mum,
her sister. There they were; a whole colony of little penguins,
silky cold to the touch [1].
They look good enough to
paint. Or frame just as they are. They seem strangely un-thumbed, but perhaps
good old-fashioned quality of printing has kept them intact and their mythic
bedside status is not to be undermined…?
They are all nigh-on identical in size, going on two hundred pages or
so, and all of them bought for no more than 25p. The 1960’s yell from the front
covers; a spring coil between fierce orange type welcome the reader to ‘Human Aggression’,
whilst ‘Anxiety and Depression’s’ turquoise and violet hypotrochoids lure you in. Perhaps my aunt did have these piled up in
the room but I don’t think she had read them yet. And I wonder how close they
were to her bed? They indicate many of her concerns, on the back burner whilst
she got on coping with life and doing her best to fight off mind spectres with
daily stuff, like we all do. She was an
apprenticed lawyer. She had major Life
Plans. The only book that has tell-tale tiny dry rivers running along its spine
is Stengel’s ‘Suicide and attempted suicide’, which I am willing to have on top
of the pile. It was a subject she kept too
close and delved into more often than the others. She must have got comfortable in the single,
too soft bed, and filled her head with statistics and read about the
research. It was published ten years
before she offered herself as just that, and it is in my hands now. I breathe it in and feel exactly the same
fullness and impatience as she must have before these unread cradles. I smell the same, strong pages, each one a
variant musk. In one of the books there
is a shiny page, slippery to the touch, whereon a reproduction of a 15th century engraving shows a
potential dreamer holding Zizaa, a
stone heralded for generating marvellous dreams.
I hope you held
tight as you transformed yourself to an eternal sleeper, and that your dreams
have been peaceful.
But, more than
that I hope you let your hair down sometimes and sniffed at some fiction just
for the fun of it. I hope you escaped
the flat and your future super projects and gasped with glee as Julien brought Mathilde to her knees, or you read again your favourite Auden
poems, in a favourite broken-banked-river-spine edition that you would stride through
until you fell asleep, comfy in your single bed.
I think they
had fallen under the bed and weren’t gathered up with the other things. I think whatever you had really been reading
remains a secret, like why you chose to go.
*
The constant relay race that goes on beside
the bed does have some almost ran’s. These are the Stalwarts. Hardly ever budging. With me, it is often
Jean Rhys. Nearly always, Stendhal. I
wouldn’t give ‘Le Rouge et le Noir’ back
to the library after I had saved it from the bottom shelf, forgotten and
falling apart. Shiny silver with the
inevitable Red and Black letters and a photo from the film adaptation. I was in love and jealously so. I used the cheap, tatty binding as an excuse not
to give it back, handing over a new edition to the suspicious librarian, whilst
keeping their rightful copy very close. My
donated copy is now in pride of place between Steinbeck and Sulitzer in the
small village library and I got away scot free.
Whereas ‘my’ shining, chosen copy is never far from my pillow. And I’m sure it will be there when the time
comes for my loved ones to gather round.
On my bedside table now the lay of the land
has changed. For a start, I found myself
one! Metal work the colour of young vines, strips of wrought iron interlaced
beautifully so that it serves very badly as a surface for anything that might
spill or that you may take off at night.
Coffee mugs and rings and all else have found their place on the floor,
leaving my books masters of all they survey.
For the time being I am hosting Huxley’s ‘Island’ and James Kings’
appraisal of Virginia Woolf’s writing life.
There they found themselves together, and imagine my surprise when the
introduction in one mentions the other.
Almost as if it were meant to be….
LA FIN.
[1]
Personal relationships in
psychological disorders, Gordon R. Lowe. Penguin, 1969.
Pschoanalysis Observed, Charles Rycroft &
others. Penguin, 1966.
Suicide and attempted suicide, Erwin Stengel;
Penguin, 1964.
Human Aggression, Anthony Storr; Penguin,
1968.
Anxiety and neurosis, Charles Rycroft;
Penguin, 1968.
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