Frank Baker Read online

  Many attempts were made to catch them in order to imprison them as curious specimens behind bars in a place called Zoological Gardens where every known animal was in captivity. But nobody so far had succeeded in enticing the birds anywhere near the various traps devised. They rarely, in those first days, alighted to the ground. A very brisk trade was exchanged between corn-chandlers and kindly old ladies who hoped to invite the birds to earth with seed. Pigeons were renowned for their courtesy in accepting this invitation. But these birds would not accept.

  They were very strange days. We never knew where next we should see the birds, nor in what numbers. We grew less afraid of them when it seemed obvious that they intended no harm. We assumed that they were perplexed by the hard, treeless streets over which they flew in such bewilderment. They had come from some far country, we said, and could not find their way home again.

  Meanwhile the drought continued, the sun seemed to burn a hole in the hard sky, no cloud appeared from dawn to evening, and at night the stars were brilliant in their splendour. In the suburbs, householders who rarely opened their windows, now never closed them. The seaside resorts were thronged with holiday-makers; a continual flow of people flocked in and out of the railway stations every Saturday and Sunday, seeking release from the heat in some cool shaded place by river or sea.

  It is hard to remember the exact sequence of events. But I know that it was about this time, a few days before my holiday, that another aspect of the birds began to present itself to me.

  I came home one evening and fell on my bed in a heavy lassitude. Lillian came and sat in my bedroom, for it was cooler there, and we talked in a desultory manner. We neither of us felt very well; the heat was driving the life out of us.

  I found some maps and began to visualize the country I was soon to visit.

  “Mother,” I said, “you’re not well. You need a change. Why don’t you come with me?”

  But no, she would not come. “It would shake me up too much to go all the way to Wales. Besides, you’d rather go alone.”

  She had spoken the truth, for I wanted to go alone. But I did not feel easy at leaving her in the care of Annie. I had a premonition of some danger I could not define.

  While I thought this, idly turning over my maps, I heard a sudden tapping on the window-pane. I then realized that in spite of the heat, the window was closed tight. Outside, two grey, drab birds fluttered against the glass.

  Lillian jumped to her feet, startled and frightened. “They’re here,” she cried. “They’re here.”

  I crossed to the window. The birds rose and flew straight for the pane, dropping to the ground when they hit the glass. I made as though to open the window. If I could catch one of these creatures my name would be famous. So I thought. But in my heart I knew I should never catch one.

  Lillian ran to me.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “Why, letting them in,” I said, forcing myself to laugh light­heartedly. “If we can catch one——”

  I broke off, seeing she was really terror-stricken.

  “What’s the matter, Mother?” I asked, putting my arm round her shoulder. She turned on me in rage.

  “You little fool,” she cried. “If I hadn’t closed all the windows they’d be here in this room now.”

  “Well, what would it matter,” I argued, “if they did come in?”

  “It means that both of us would die,” she said. “Do you under­stand what I mean? We should die; both of us.”

  It was an old superstition that a bird in the house meant death. I was silent.

  Suddenly she went to the kitchen and called our cat.

  “Tibby, Tibby; come here, dear. Tibby——”

  I stood by the window looking at the birds. They were sitting in the dried soil, miserably cocking their heads now and again at the window. They looked very tired.

  I heard our old tom-cat bounding down the stairs from the bed where he had been sleeping. Then I realized my mother intended setting him on the birds.

  I ran into the kitchen which adjoined my room. She had the cat in her arms and was holding him against the pane, showing him the birds.

  An unreasonable rage seized me. I took her arms, released the cat, and drove it upstairs again. Then I flung open the window, my mother holding on to me, attempting to restrain me. Seeing, how­ever, that she could do nothing, she left the room, slamming the door behind her.

  “You will have to pay for it if you let them in!” she cried.

  I ignored her, and throwing some bread out into the garden, waited to see what would happen.

  The birds took no notice of the bread, but sat there and looked at me solemnly. Their eyes were deep and cold.

  The window was open. There was nothing between me and these strange creatures.

  Suddenly I was frightened. I could not face the thought that they might fly into the room, circling wildly round and round, smashing cups and plates, hitting my head and emitting that offen­sive odour which already I could smell. I would have to pay for it, my mother had said. Perhaps she was right.

  I closed the window gently so that she could not hear. Almost immediately the birds flew away in a heavy, graceless flight.

  We learnt next day, Anna, that many in our street and elsewhere had been disturbed by the presences of solitary birds around their windows. Most people were reluct­ant to say much about it.

  *

  What picture have I given of the youth who was me in those days? Serious, rebellious, self-centred, discontented, unromantic?

  Let me at any rate cancel the last of those adjectives by telling you that he fell in love, not with one but with several persons, though he generally contrived that these passions should not overlap. What do I mean by “falling in love”? It is a phrase that has dropped out of use, since in these days we do not lapse into love as though it were a disease; we love, simply and naturally, without any of that consuming self-analysis which generally accompanied sexual passions in my youth. Falling in love was a complicated business. In young people it was regarded as comic, a subject for much hilarity amongst the elders who very soon forgot their own early days. Overt loving was not easy then. We had not long emerged from an era in which the sexual passions had been so obscured by a false cover of chivalry and maidenly modesty; so robbed of their stamina by the honeyed phrases of novelists who depicted their heroes and heroines as ignorant of the most elementary functions of their bodies—that it was hard to face the real truth in oneself; the unblushing truth that what we needed and were often unable to get was sexual satis­faction. The war, that I mentioned earlier, had broken down a great many old conventions, for in times of stress the simplest passions of men and women are laid bare and, faced with death, youth will not be denied that which its blood demands. Those years forced upon us almost savagely the fact that men and women were all fundamentally the same, needing the same stimulus from each other.

  I was then a boy at school, and it was during those schooldays that distortion of our sexual natures began to take place. Even in adolescence, we possessed a most ambiguous conception of the physiological structure of the male and female bodies. We were never told anything about the body. We did not even know the difference between our liver and our kidneys; to us they were merely mysteries upon which from time to time a thing called “chill” could settle. If we dared to show the smallest amount of open interest in our genitals we were, even at a very early age, most severely rebuked.

  In such ignorance we were left to rake about as we liked in the morbid dunghill of our undefined, and correspondingly alarming, desires. All boys were much the same and, I dare say, all girls. Schools were vicious places where children of one sex were herded close together, rarely seeing children of the opposite sex. And sex was a joke.

  Yes, a joke; the most daring, most manly joke that could exist. Only between members of the sa
me sex was it openly mentioned. Our elders never made any attempt to untwist the ravelled cords within us. It was indeed impossible to associate one’s parents with the dreadful fleshly desires that so bewildered us. How well I remember finding it distasteful, even impossible to accept the fact—when I came to know the facts—that my father had begotten me; that through his passion my mother had borne me. And when I came ultimately to accept this, I remember looking upon my parents in a new light. They too were “wicked”; they too, guilty of a sin classed by the church as amongst all other deadly sin. The picture grew, various eminent figures of the day rose in my imagination; they too, the same as myself. Something unseen, something shameful that every man and woman bore.

  There is one phase of school life I must touch upon. That is the development of homosexuality brought about by close contact of adolescents of the same sex.

  The term “homosexual” which we do not use here, signified that the victim was powerless to form any attachment with the opposite sex. Being as human as anyone else, he therefore turned his attention upon his own sex. You will notice I said “victim,” and you may well ask why, when here it seems natural to allow love to flower in any form—whether between youth and youth, maid and maid, or youth and maid. But in our days the homosexual was held in such grave dishonour that any outward manifestation of what were known as perverse passions, brought him within the severest punishment of the law. Yet by reason of the one-sexed atmosphere of our schools, these very disorders were encouraged. At all schools, romantic friendships between boy and boy, or girl and girl were prevalent. They often developed into physical relationships, though the authorities did their utmost to disguise this. We all know here how natural it is for a boy at puberty to turn towards his own sex, a girl likewise; and how this desire ultimately develops into a new and stronger passion for one of the opposite sex. If, as sometimes happens, the homosexual stage maintains its way into adult life, we take no more notice of it than we do of the ordinary mating of men and women. There have always been natural homosexual persons; often of such high intellectual activity as to allow them an honoured place in any com­munity. There always will be such persons. But in our days homo­sexuals were created by artificial means; that is to say, by the prevailing influence of the one sex at a time when the other sex should have been dominant.

  I think it should now be more or less clear that the appalling lack of candour with which our people faced their sexual desires, led to a gross amount of secret perversions of so preposterous a nature, that I cannot attempt to describe them. I can only indicate such perver­sions by telling you that frequent attacks were made by sexually demented old men upon young girls and boys who were not even of an age to be aware of their latent sexuality.

  Here, then, very briefly, is my sexual world. For nine-tenths of us, our sexual natures were a bewildering mass of frustrated and distorted desires. We were taught by the Church that fornication was deadly sin. We were reminded harshly by the law that certain sexual activities would deprive us of our freedom and honour; we were taught to regard women as sacred mysteries incapable of emo­tions similar to and even stronger than our own. Our women—starved by men who preferred to keep their final ounce of power for the prostitute or established mistress—became neurotic and malicious; our men—starved of the complete enfolding of a woman’s love, except the dominating love of their mothers—became obtuse and arrogant. If a man was tender, he was termed effeminate; if a woman was strong and capable, she was termed unwomanly.

  In such a state of mind I began to notice young women, and to realize that they attracted me in a way I hardly dared to admit. In such a state of mind I noticed young men, and knew that what I felt for them was considered something shameful—never to be spoken of.

  *

  When I look back, I see that I and my contemporaries were con­sumed by a succession of intolerable sexual desires which the economic system forbade us to satisfy. At an age when the sexual impulse was strong in us we were forced back upon such makeshifts as literature, music, painting, and entertainments of a highly erotic nature. It may be that I exaggerate the importance of this in other people. It is sufficient to say that what I failed to capture in the various contacts I made with young men and women, I captured to some degree in literature, music, painting, and drama. With a feeling of gratitude, I remember the erotic revelations exposed to me in the pages of such writers as Shakes­peare and Swinburne. I say with gratitude because although it was a shabby enough substitute for actual expression, I derived from these writers, and others, some emetic against the poisonous Thou-shalt-nots with which my religious education had been loaded. It consoled me to discover that the greatest poets had been afflicted with those disorders which the Church so acidly re­jected as impurities. To turn to Shakespeare’s Adonis was to find somebody in sympathy with myself, particularly as that tender youth found it hard to rise to the occasion.

  It amuses me now to recollect my favourite passages in literature. The democratic trumpetings of an American poet who in un­controlled verses seemed to desire the whole world to go to bed with him; the swaggering conduct of a Scandinavian hero who ran off with three wild mountain women, declaring that he could manage the lot; the voluptuous saturnalias of Petronius Arbiter; the deflowering of Chloe by the shy, eager lad, Daphnis; the revels of Apuleius; the astounding liberalism of Plato’s Symposium; the gross and glorious ribaldries of Gargantua. These shadows loomed up the walls of my small bedroom many a night, when with a candle by my side I would read into the dawn, falling asleep to dream that I too could take three mountain women; possess myself with im­punity following the decrees of the American democrat; or make a better bed-fellow for Alcibiades than the impassionate Socrates.

  I still carried into my early manhood those shifty figures of adolescence; never quite sure what it was I wanted; never knowing how to set about obtaining it. My homosexual side played havoc with my heterosexual side. Falling between the two, I compelled myself to create a super-being with the characteristics of both sexes. I used to fall in love with a girl because she looked like a youth; with a youth, because he had the fair flushed face of a girl. Always, some­where I imagined there must be the perfect creature, sexless yet the very apotheosis of sex. Every time I professed love for anybody I fully believed it was for the last time. I was an absurdly romantic youth and must have been a great plague to my lovers. Still lingering in me were those illusions of chivalry which placed woman on a lofty pedestal from where she could never condescend to the bestial desires shared by me and my poetic figures. In our middle-class society consummation seemed impossible without marriage, which in our days was the inevitable consequence to any indiscreet coition, since it was held that a young woman who bore a child without having bound herself by stern vows to a husband, was a wanton creature, disgraced, and her child deprived of all normal social rights. Such children were called bastards, or love-children. One might surmise that the offspring of marriage were hate-children. I have a clear recollection of assuming at an early age, when I had come to some naïve understanding of the obscure phrases used by my elders, that since natural children were born of unmarried people I myself must be an unnatural child. Perhaps, indeed, I was. . . .

  Consummation without marriage was forbidden, and marriage impossible on the small amount of money I was earning, since it was always expected that a young man would “keep” his wife; that is to say, pay for the clothes she wore, the food she ate, and the roof she lived under. It is true that some women, where money was short, used to go out to work and thus bring in a double amount of money. But the arrangement was not satisfactory, since a conscientious woman would need much of her time to attend to the cares of the home.

  If marriage was impossible, there was the alternative course of sowing wild oats in the west end of London, where women of various ages waited every night to oblige me, suggesting, either by word or gesture, that they were ready to be of service to me. At such times I wal
ked on as though I had never seen them. Inside, something seemed to twist my heart.

  Curious, touching women—their faces painted so that a natural smile seemed to crack upon them as would a pasteboard mask if you attempted to twist it into any shape other than that in which it was modelled. They were like dolls. I sometimes had the feeling that they depended every night from the finger-tips of an expert marionettist who dangled them over appropriate places from long strings, drawing them up again as dawn came and the hollow ghost of love had been buried till another night.

  I remember walking round a place called Leicester Square with that same friend I mentioned earlier who used to meet me on Sunday evenings. We passed a number of these prostitutes, many of whom he hailed with impudent good-humour; for that was his nature; he was more warm-hearted, less wrapped in muddled philosophy than I was. He accepted the prostitutes as part of the social system.

  “In Heaven’s name,” I asked him, “why do they paint themselves?”

  My friend informed me that it was a form of advertisement so that men might know whom to pick; a type of professional uniform.

  “But this is no distinction,” I said impatiently. “Almost all women look the same.”

  A succession of pictures comes before me—pictures of myself as I was then in those faraway days in the ‘twenties’; pictures of myself with those whom I loved and those who, perhaps, loved me.

  The picture I see first is that of myself and a girl walking over a wide heath in the south of London. We draw towards a silent lake on a still spring evening. The girl, who is named Jennie, is quick, capable, and strong, full of impetuous practical jokes, blended with a quieter poetic impulse which makes her express herself in verses which she brings to me for my criticism. We think we are both poets. I stand with her by the lake and kiss her clumsily. Some small animal scuttles through the bracken, startling us to break away from each other. Jennie runs wildly and climbs a tree; I pursue her, laughing and shouting. Then presently, exhausted, we fall down upon a bank and kiss again. We are lovers; we will live for each other; we will write great poetry, live in the open air. Even now the memory is sweet to me because she was my first love. For weeks she is my world. Then there comes an evening when I stand, stupid with misery, on an empty underground railway platform at midnight, waiting to catch a train back to Stroud Green. We have quarrelled and parted. And I can remember now the grand despair with which I dismissed all women from my life.