* 10

A man or a woman who has, because of some mental condition lost a sense of time. A film, obviously, marvellous what one could do with it. Well I’d never have a chance to write it, so there’s no point thinking about it. But I can’t help thinking about it. A man whose ‘sense of reality’ has gone; and because of it, has a deeper sense of reality than ‘normal’ people. Today Dave said, quite casually: ‘That man of yours, Michael, the fact that he’s turning you down, you shouldn’t let it affect you. Who are you if you can be broken up by someone being fool enough not to take you on?’ He spoke as if Michael were still in the process of ‘turning me down’ instead of its being years old. And of course he was talking about himself. He was, for a moment, Michael. My sense of reality shivered and broke. But something very clear was there, all the same, a sort of illumination, though it would be hard to say what. (This sort of comment belongs to the blue notebook, not this one.)

* 11 A Short Novel

Two people together, in any kind of relationship — mother, son; father, daughter; lovers; it doesn’t matter. One of them acutely neurotic. The neurotic hands on his or her state to the other, who takes it over, leaving the sick one well, the well one sick. I remember Mother Sugar telling me a story about a patient. A young man had come to see her convinced he was in desperate psychological trouble. She could find nothing wrong with him. She asked him to send along his father to her. One by one all the family, five of them, arrived in her consulting room. She found them all normal. Then the mother came. She, apparently ‘normal’, was in fact extremely neurotic, but maintaining her balance by passing it on to her family, particularly to the youngest son. Eventually Mother Sugar treated the mother, though there was terrible trouble getting her to come for treatment. And the young man who had come in the first place, found the pressure lifting off him. I remember her saying: Yes, often it’s the most ‘normal’ member of a family or a group who is really sick, but simply because they have strong personalities, they survive, because other, weaker personalities, express their illness for them. (This sort of comment belongs to the blue notebook, I must keep them separate.)

* 12 A Short Story

A husband, unfaithful to his wife, not because he is in love with another woman, but in order to assert his independence of the married state, comes back from sleeping with the other woman, with every intention of being discreet, but ‘accidentally’ does something to give the show away. This ‘accident’, scent or lipstick or forgetting to wash off the smell of sex is in fact why he did it in the first place, though he doesn’t know it. He needed to say to his wife: ‘I’m not going to belong to you.’