time. As well as at birth. As well as one fine day in March, when she was a maid.
Her Oxford days! Her Oxford years! Oh they were great days. She saw Oxford all right. It was an education. And, to be perfectly honest, she was sometimes in some respects the
educator. Even of some of the best brains in the land. How many, in Oxford? Oh, she couldn’t remember now. And of course it was in Oxford that she met her husband, Donald Campion. But that
was a whole other story. It was funny how you could say even of life itself: that was another story.
‘It wasn’t the smoothest of marriages, was it? You and Donald Campion?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well—two minds. Two careers. He was the bright young philosopher, wasn’t he?’
She didn’t say, ‘It was a thing of bodies too.’ Though at eighty she might have got away with it. If the truth be known—but Donald himself had never known it—Donald
had reminded her of Paul Sheringham. And she certainly wasn’t going to reveal that in an interview.
‘You mean there wouldn’t have been room for both his books and mine?’ But she didn’t say that either. She could clam up sometimes just as effectively as she could quip.
What a good mask it was, being turned eighty, with a face like a squeezed-out dish mop.
‘And—so tragically short.’ Her interviewer blundered on.
‘Donald or the marriage?’ But she didn’t say that either.
‘Yes, it was tragic,’ she said, with a voice like flint. And didn’t say, as she might have done—at eighty she could be oracular: We are all fuel. We are born, and we
burn, some of us more quickly than others. There are different kinds of combustion. But not to burn, never to catch fire at all, that would be the sad life, wouldn’t it?
But she’d said it anyway, or something like it, in a book somewhere. And if the truth be known, grief at Donald’s death, the second grief of her life, was like the end of her own
life. She might have jumped on his pyre. Instead of which she became a better and famous writer.
In the Mind’s Eye
. It wasn’t published, it wasn’t finished—in some ways, it wasn’t even
begun
—till after Donald was taken away from her in the
autumn of 1945 by a brain tumour. His bleak joke was that he’d been too brainy. Another was that there’d be no chance now of his breaking any Secrets Act. He had safely survived the war
as a code-breaker, and his best work was perhaps still to come. It would all now, she thought—her own bleak joke—be like a work of fiction.
‘We had the same quandary, you know, Donald and I. Words and things.’
She had toyed with
All in the Mind
. She had even toyed with
Secrets Act
. But fancy publishing a novel called that.
In the Mind’s Eye
. . .
All in the Mind
. . .
Either way, it sounded abstract, even rather cerebral. Ha! Twelve years the wife of a philosopher.
In fact it was her most physical, her most carnal, her most downright
sexual
book. She had found a way, at last, of writing about all that
stuff
. And it was her first big success.
She was forty-eight, not so old (there are some mercies) for a writer, but too old to be the mother that, for her own reasons, she’d always shied away from being. You might say she was given
no good examples in motherhood. Except Milly. Now, with Donald and his blue-grey gaze and his rat-a-tat laugh gone, she wished she’d yielded.
Forty-eight and famous.
In the Mind’s Eye
. Some people were shocked and scandalised. It was only 1950. It would look tame in twenty years’ time. And she was—to make it
worse—a ‘lady novelist’. A lady novelist? Where did they get that phrase from? And where did they think she came from?
Forty-eight and famous and widowed and childless and not yet halfway through her orphaned life.
‘I have some distressing news.’
Even as Mr Niven spoke, words displayed their fickle ability to fly away from things. Such was his evident struggle to find words and such her recent
Her Oxford days! Her Oxford years! Oh they were great days. She saw Oxford all right. It was an education. And, to be perfectly honest, she was sometimes in some respects the
educator. Even of some of the best brains in the land. How many, in Oxford? Oh, she couldn’t remember now. And of course it was in Oxford that she met her husband, Donald Campion. But that
was a whole other story. It was funny how you could say even of life itself: that was another story.
‘It wasn’t the smoothest of marriages, was it? You and Donald Campion?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well—two minds. Two careers. He was the bright young philosopher, wasn’t he?’
She didn’t say, ‘It was a thing of bodies too.’ Though at eighty she might have got away with it. If the truth be known—but Donald himself had never known it—Donald
had reminded her of Paul Sheringham. And she certainly wasn’t going to reveal that in an interview.
‘You mean there wouldn’t have been room for both his books and mine?’ But she didn’t say that either. She could clam up sometimes just as effectively as she could quip.
What a good mask it was, being turned eighty, with a face like a squeezed-out dish mop.
‘And—so tragically short.’ Her interviewer blundered on.
‘Donald or the marriage?’ But she didn’t say that either.
‘Yes, it was tragic,’ she said, with a voice like flint. And didn’t say, as she might have done—at eighty she could be oracular: We are all fuel. We are born, and we
burn, some of us more quickly than others. There are different kinds of combustion. But not to burn, never to catch fire at all, that would be the sad life, wouldn’t it?
But she’d said it anyway, or something like it, in a book somewhere. And if the truth be known, grief at Donald’s death, the second grief of her life, was like the end of her own
life. She might have jumped on his pyre. Instead of which she became a better and famous writer.
In the Mind’s Eye
. It wasn’t published, it wasn’t finished—in some ways, it wasn’t even
begun
—till after Donald was taken away from her in the
autumn of 1945 by a brain tumour. His bleak joke was that he’d been too brainy. Another was that there’d be no chance now of his breaking any Secrets Act. He had safely survived the war
as a code-breaker, and his best work was perhaps still to come. It would all now, she thought—her own bleak joke—be like a work of fiction.
‘We had the same quandary, you know, Donald and I. Words and things.’
She had toyed with
All in the Mind
. She had even toyed with
Secrets Act
. But fancy publishing a novel called that.
In the Mind’s Eye
. . .
All in the Mind
. . .
Either way, it sounded abstract, even rather cerebral. Ha! Twelve years the wife of a philosopher.
In fact it was her most physical, her most carnal, her most downright
sexual
book. She had found a way, at last, of writing about all that
stuff
. And it was her first big success.
She was forty-eight, not so old (there are some mercies) for a writer, but too old to be the mother that, for her own reasons, she’d always shied away from being. You might say she was given
no good examples in motherhood. Except Milly. Now, with Donald and his blue-grey gaze and his rat-a-tat laugh gone, she wished she’d yielded.
Forty-eight and famous.
In the Mind’s Eye
. Some people were shocked and scandalised. It was only 1950. It would look tame in twenty years’ time. And she was—to make it
worse—a ‘lady novelist’. A lady novelist? Where did they get that phrase from? And where did they think she came from?
Forty-eight and famous and widowed and childless and not yet halfway through her orphaned life.
‘I have some distressing news.’
Even as Mr Niven spoke, words displayed their fickle ability to fly away from things. Such was his evident struggle to find words and such her recent
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