Friendship

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Welcome to Between The Stools on 8^th May 2022. This day is Julian of Norwich day, for on this day in 1373, she had her visions, and this is the third time (in three possible Mays of Between The Stools existing) that we have met then. Although she may be along later, and is likely to feature in 2023, as it’s the 650^th anniversary, this year, I am thinking of another topic. How does one follow a themed Lent season and the build up towards a long gestated book launch? Truly, the time since April 10^th – the 110^th anniversary of Titanic’s sailing day – and Easter, the Sunday following, has felt fallow; it seems that at least two seasons have come to completion; and although spring has truly arrived, that in another sense, I – and the world – and perhaps you – still await vernal signs.

Today, we are thinking about friendship – something which has long been important to me.

I had touched on this in recent services and posts: that of Anne of Green Gables and one of my Lent pieces on the Titanic. Friendship is the basic building block of connection. It is what makes a neighbour or colleague or community member become more than association by juxtaposition. It is at the heart of good family and romantic partnerships. It is also something we may preclude in our professional relationships: I have had advisors tell me that I am not their friend, and can’t be; and yet I have seen church ministers sign off ‘your friend and pastor’. Friendship is the opposite of being distant and clinical; it breaks down barriers.

Some of us might be listening to/reading this feeling an absence of friends. I was aware when I chose this for a topic – hopefully with some divine guidance – that it could feel ironic and painful. I wondered if I might have friendship challenges this weekend. Like mothers’ and fathers’ day, we can feel acutely aware of all that can go wrong with that relationship, and perhaps enumerating those issues, from loneliness and fall outs, to bereavement and worry about the welfare of our friends, can not feel helpful.

So I want to take this moment to pause and to pray. If you can hear nature where you are, and better yet, see it, enjoy the sounds. I find it to be wonderfully stilling. If you can hear birds where you are, let their song soothe you. I understand that its sound frequency is healing to humans. If you can reach out to an animal, do. If you can’t do those things, imagine them. Hear a gentle breeze in your mind; see the colours of verdant spring (or autumn, if you’re the other side of the world), the joy of young creatures exploring.

PRAYER …Be with us if we feel lonesome or hurt by friends, or worried about a friend, if we feel we’re bad at being a friend. Help us to know that You are our friend, and that we are loved and not alone. Help this service to be comforting and helpful…

*Also know you can reach out to me, Elspeth; and I hope that we can become a community here of real friends. My email is at the end.*

Tonight is just talking – I can think of no music about friends – can you?

My thoughts have been scattered – I know I am not alone in that; and rather than focus on interpersonal relations, I have found myself, in the run up to preparing this, thinking about history and architecture – the opposite of friends. Yet even there I can see a connection.

Firstly, we might wish to define friendship. Can our friends be beings other than people? Of course, as every one of you who just reached to an animal can tell you. I will keep the subject of animals for another time, but their friendship is a special one, and can be a mirror of the divine. They have less of the complexities of human fickleness and caprice; it is not they who abuse us. The loving gaze of a dog can be very cathartic, as is the purr of a cat on your weary lap.

But can we be friends with things? Can nature be our friend? Ask Anne of Green Gables – of course. Nature is also a healer and a listener.

So, do we define friendship by that which gives us balm? What about the mutual exchange? Do we assist trees and flowers? I know that studies have been done – surely verified by plant lovers – that kindly tending to plants and talking to them helps them grow and even changes their cells.

What of non-living things? We might argue that personified things – a toy person or animal – becomes a friend because we treat them anthropomorphically; we breathe a life into them via our interaction with them. It is our imagination which ignites, although it is only a living thing in the imaginal. Is that any less real, though?

I am running up to asking if we can have friendships with buildings and cities. I kind of think so: they certainly give me succour, and I interact with them. I have often spoken of a place with personal grammar: “Norwich is a place who…”. Is it the people I meet within it that colour that? Yes, to an extent, but I have made relationships with a place where I either had barely any human interaction, or where my feelings for that city were despite the human ones. Buildings can be a thing to interact with when we are heartbroken and feel incapable of doing people. We may have other interests, or project fantasy ones. However, I am not judging or belittling that. I think that we learn through those, and that is true of the music and books and films or plays we partake in.

Yes, I also believe that we can have a valid relationship with a text… and I include the visual in that, but I will leave that thought and stay with buildings. For what I wanted to say was that as I considered Roman Britain – about which I’ve written a new post – I wondered if that race and era knew real friendship. It seems that the ancient Romans were about the antithesis of real friendship. Everything – as far as I understand – was based on commodity and usefulness. Abuse was at the heart of the society that easily used slaves, who saw wives as property, and who were interested in conquest and expansion. They brought hierarchy and inequality. They committed much sexual abuse. They discarded unwanted children brought into the world from their frequent fornication. In many relationships, people were things and thus there was no relationship.

And this era has been hugely influential here in Britain and the many other countries which were under Roman occupation.

It has occurred to me that the word ‘civilised’ is a misnomer. To be civilised for a Roman was to come under the civic, the organised urban settlement system that they created. Yet what they did often comes under that about which we might use the opposite word – barbaric: their violent punishments, including literally ‘the perversion of justice’; that ownership became the essence of society, and those who were owned had no power or status. I have read a catalogue of Roman misbehaviour, especially by some of its rulers. It was a deeply sick society, and I am tired of the word ‘civilised’, for it means quite the opposite of decency.

I have also heard that Romans were a hard people, distanced from emotions. Thus friendship is far from the Roman way, and a useful negative comparison to help us define what friendship is.

Friendship is about equality and mutuality. Friendship is about trust and choice. It is a voluntary association across any barrier and type. Friendship involves feelings, and being able to express them. A healthy friendship doesn’t use the other and commodify them; there is a genuine connection.

And unlike many other relationships, there’s no paperwork in friendship. By that, I don’t mean that you don’t write – for correspondence is a major part of friendship – but that there’s no formality to enter nor end a friendship. You may swap bracelets, and there are blood bondings, perhaps more rarely, but we don’t have friendship ceremonies. You don’t have a membership card or sign any contract, as you might to have entered a workplace or place or worship or gym to make the friend, although the relationship you have is not needing any written consent or formal approval. (Of course, we may encounter informal and very powerful disapproval of our friends).

Thus I think that friendship has to go deeper than merely neighbour, colleague or comrade; a real friend is someone who gets you and supports you and who you can be yourself with.

We might characterise friends as those who have seen you as you are, even at your ‘worst’ – what does that mean? – and are still your friend. I have heard a definition that a real friend is one you can be blunt with; Proverbs even speaks of punching our true friends.

It was tempting to assemble friendship quotes… ‘the elixir of life’; ‘few have praised its heights as few have plumbed the depths’ are two quotes from antiquity (Greek not Roman, I believe) that began an Elaine Storkey book I had some years ago. I long since parted with that book, particular for its gay views, but I was inspired by those quotes and they have stayed with me over two decades.

Yet we may chafe against such quotes if we’ve not had that experience of friendship, or are currently wounded by its absence.

I want to turn to the more challenging side of friendship, in the hope that it is of some comfort.

I mentioned that no formal ending is required, and I also mentioned what is not healthy. I am glad that this basic block of interaction often features in fiction and in advice; those friendship quotes are abundant. But they aren’t just about what’s wonderful in friendships; much online advice is about when to break off a friendship and when one isn’t good for you.

I took on tough love a couple of years ago, but I will say again here that despite some people’s opinion, I don’t think that saying ‘what’s hard to hear’ or ‘what you don’t want to hear’ makes someone a truth sayer, or a good friend. Why harshness, often as much about the speaker’s needs as the hearer’s, is considered useful and necessary is something to be very wary of. Perhaps we need building up and validating. I do think that honesty is an important value in friendship.

But if someone’s honesty is that they don’t like what you do, or really appreciate what’s important to you, does that make them too different to continue a friendship?

I am alarmed by the frequency of the application of the title of ‘toxicity’ to friendships. It has become a trendy word, oft used as a reason to cut someone out of your life.

I both have something to say about friendship endings, and a different perspective; and then two more (brief) points.

I believe that we have soul agreements and that the people who come into our lives are here to help us grow in particular ways, which on some level – that of our higher selves – we have chosen. I am wary because I know those who have suffered might feel this not comforting, and is callous if not dangerous. It does not excuse abusive behaviour. It does not take away freedom of choice, but it might explain the presence of others in our lives and help us to have a higher perspective before we apply the toxic label and end a relationship.

I think of so-called toxicity in people like that in our bodies. Modern medicine tells us to cut out straight away, for it’s dangerous, and perhaps that we have no other option. But I’ve been reading much about medicine over the last couple of years, and I’m intrigued by a different mindset – that of seeing viruses and even cancer as cleaning up imbalance. Rather than enemies to destroy, they are the scavengers of our own bodies, flushing out and bagging up impurities for disposal. They are not the impurities themselves, but a means of showing them and dealing with them.

I see ‘toxic relationships’ in the same way. These are our alarm bells to invite us to change.

As I write, I wonder if I want to publish this, let alone speak it out loud. For those who have suffered with a serious virus, or cancer, or watched someone else suffer, you might wonder how I can say so, as you might if you’ve been really hurt in friendship. I don’t say so glibly or without personal knowledge of these things.

What I am questioning is the slash and burn culture that doesn’t ask why they are here and what other responses might be. There is a quote from Maryam Hasnaa about challenging relationships, to the essence of:

‘If we cut off before the opportunity’s complete, it robs us of that lesson’. It can leave with more of the wounds which we are trying to heal from. Perhaps cutting off is exactly what we are meant not to do?

But this is a personal decision and you might find that a relationship has completed. I have oft heard that many of us are completing our soul agreements at this time and seeing several hitherto important relationships fall away. That statement might resonate and feel comforting to you, but I don’t like every questionable friendship to be swept into that category, and let them go without wondering if there isn’t more to come, or something to fight for. Shelley Young channelled a quote from an angel which said that if we entirely cut off energetically from someone that we miss the opportunity to be enriched by them again in the future.

I also think that cutting off is a way of saying: I don’t know how to handle this.

It can be onesided, us telling the other all the boundaries we set and therefore laying out our terms as non-negotiable. Thus it isn’t equitable and it’s unsurprising if the other person isn’t willing to simply acquiesce without adding any provisos of their own, which leads to an ending.

I also comment that to walk out of a job without resigning is seen as bad form; it probably is from a community, especially where you’ve been regular and hold a position; and to end a romantic relationship by silence is seen as very poor. But we often terminate our friendships that way, and perhaps I’ve heard some say that formal endings are too intense and unnecessary. Again, I am not going to tell you how to handle your friendships, and a missive or call telling you that it is over might feel too much; but I think that heading into oblivion, leaving the other party to gradually draw a conclusion is not authentic communication. Perhaps we don’t make a conscious decision; we withdraw after an argument, or we keep deciding not to contact the other. But note that each ‘I won’t today; I shan’t just yet’ is also a decision, and if we keep opting for that then we have de facto caused a rift which may be hard to mend.

For some, we have friends we hear from after long gaps and it can be joyful for someone to just pop up after many months or even years, and even be able to restart where you left off. But that is also not fair to assume, especially if the long gap followed a fall out or cutting off. It might be necessary in those circumstances – and I would certainly feel this – to apologise and make up for the past before being able to breeze into a newsy present.

I have two final shorter points:

To those that think that they can’t do friendships… I want to say that I suspect few of us have never suffered a waver in confidence about our friends. We might assume that everyone else can do this relationship, and seems to have more and better than us. Friendships can seem superficial in our social media age, but it’s not about a sassy gaggle to be seen about town with. I think that it’s OK to need to practice at friendships, and being a better one is a lifelong study. It’s also OK to state what you need and to ask the same of another; it’s OK to admit to being imperfect, to lacking in confidence, and out of the habit.

Thanks to the covid era – and I believe this to be deliberate – most of us will have gotten unused to mingling and perhaps feel rusty and even frightened at the thought of going out into the world. In one way, we can see that as a leveller; and I suspect all of us at one time have felt the need to branch out after a long relationship, caring for someone, or another change in circumstance, and perhaps wondered if only you would be the shy newcomer. Not at all – there will always be the surprise of someone else like you, and even if you bond over the unsuitability of the event you’re at, don’t lose heart. I’ve made friends at things we both thought: help – let’s hide.

I also urge real-ness, revealing at a pace you and the other feel comfortable at. Be yourself and don’t let prescriptive 3rd parties tell you how to behave.

If you have been badly hurt by friends, or just often let down, or not felt able to connect – don’t lose heart. I’m shortly going to pray about that.

Lastly: The Bible and friendships. You might have expected quotes from the Wisdom literature and the stories of Ruth, David, and Jesus and his bosom leaning disciple. But I was aware that I was using scripture to twist to what I wanted to say; and I also think that those three examples are possibly about romantic love, or at least, romantic friendship. I’m very interested in this and have written books about it. I like relationships which don’t fit our narrow categories and I repeat the quote from Cassady Cayne about being here to expand the expressions of love. For now, I want to flag up the possibility of passionate friendship, and that not all deep relationships have to be sexual.

I want to summarise that friendships are important, are spiritual, multi faceted, and can be as deep and long lasting as marriages – they can outlast them. We might have different levels of friendship and they change over time, and it is fine to ‘lose touch’ – interesting phrase – or let go, but I exhort people to be mindful about how they do that, and to not assume to do so because it’s sort of fashionable to cut off or assume that a challenge or a silence is meant to lead to permanent severance. Check for the learning and be willing to listen and not make all the demands. I want to encourage people to be real friends, to seek real friends, and that they are capable of being one.

Again, I remind that – perhaps surprisingly – God is our friend. Julian, whose anniversary it is today saw this; Neale Donald Walsch saw it – he even entitled a book that.

Brian Thorne said in a lecture on this occasion nine years ago that we are infinitely beloved, belovable and capable of beloving. He meant our relationship with God, but also one another.

PRAYER …If we have been hurt; heal us; give us courage, wisdom, forebearance, compassion, understanding, and show us ways to meet enriching friendships; help us make them here; be open to friends in many forms, and thank you for them and all who listen, and for my friends. Help us to be open to forgiving and seeking forgiveness; and thank you for this relationship and being with us. Help us to know better ones hereon. Be with us until next time. Amen

Do reach out and introduce yourselves, and I’m working on a way for us to be able to interact.

I’m Elspeth and my email is betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk.

Next month’s meeting is on Sunday June 5th and the theme is Jubilee

July’s service will be on Diana for Magdalene Sunday

If you are interested in meeting live please let me know in advance

 

Titanic for Lent 3

17^th March

On Sunday, it may seem as if I took a long detour from this theme with my service on Anne of Green Gables. Yet she is not so far: Canada – which has been on my mind due to world events recently – is the nearest land to where Titanic sank; most bodies are buried there. There were several Canadians and those bound for Canada on board. Titanic and Anne Shirley are pretty contemporary: Anne began in 1908: the same year as the Olympic sisters; Titanic was started the following year. Thus they are both considered Edwardian inventions of the British Commonwealth. And both have a Canadian who attaches his name to the topic: Cameron and Sullivan.

But aren’t their stories utterly different, you might ask: one is bucolic and gay, where nothing really nasty happens: it’s very much for universal or general viewing; nothing to offend or be shaken by in these fantasies of a bygone age. Titanic is intrinsically about horror and tension and a sad end, one might say; but such a commentator isn’t really familiar with Anne or Titanic stories.

Like other comparable tales – Lark Rise To Candleford, for example – the Anne saga includes plenty of real life drama; life’s sorrows and tragedies as well as its joys and jocular moments. There is abuse, abandonment, heartache, bereavement, poverty, illness and accident in these turn of the century series. And in at least some of the Titanic stories, there is also humour, love, forgiveness, silliness, kindness and friendship.

It’s something of the last which I wish to speak of today. Titanic based dramas are a vehicle to show us clear character arcs. This is not only good writing, or something interesting for actors; I believe that it’s something we can see in our own lives. I appreciated those stories where characters on the Titanic learned something. It was not just a horrible tragedy to have endured; in some cases, it even brought better things. I understood why Kate Winslet’s character dreaded the voyage that ended her liberty, because she felt compelled to marry someone and enter a life she did not thrive in. But often, Titanic tales begin with joy and hope: a new life, a special holiday; something to celebrate. And then as Wednesday turns to Sunday, we know that the joy is about to end and that all the relationships we’ve been growing to love are about to be ripped apart.

My own story, The Jury In My Mind, is very much about a relationship which develops on the voyage, but I allow the development to continue after docking at New York. Tragedy strikes in the middle: it is not the end, but the catalyst. I realised that we rarely get a clean wrap: don’t people later reoccur, especially in our minds? One of the things I appreciated in Jim Cameron’s movie is that 84 years on, Rose revisits that event; and it’s not just seeing the ship via an underwater camera; it’s about remembering the man she met who gave her life.

I hesitate to make this week’s segue with that comment, because I don’t see Jack Dawson in any way as Jesus, but I am aware that those who met Jesus, sometimes even briefly, were changed by the encounter profoundly. It caused them to do new things; to give up the old and live life to the full. As Old Rose falls into slumber at the end of the movie, and I believe, into the next world, we see the photographs of a full existence, which she completes on that journey. Other than my book, this is the only Titanic story I know of where a passenger goes back to the events. Rose doesn’t do any analysing; I don’t think she has new insights, although her listeners do.

I think we are coming into a new time when we will seek more depth in our stories. We will seek greater maturity and character development; plot and thrills and laughs will not be enough to drive the story and satisfy. I think we will look for new perspectives, for a bird’s eye view, or a view from a tower – remembering that Magdalene means tower. Or you call it a crow’s nest view; a storyboard of arcs and themes and motifs; a view high above even the ship, where the dark deep ocean which envelops it becomes translucent.

I will post each week of Lent between Weds-Fri

On April 10^th – Palm Sunday – I launch my book with a special service at 8PM GMT

On 14-15^th April, 1140pm-220am GMT, I’ll be having a watch night service, which is the night the Titanic sank, and also Maundy Thursday

There will be a sundown sermon on Fri 15th – time TBA (7pm ish)

and a short written reflection on Easter Eve

Easter is 17^th April, when we will also gather.

There will be online opportunities and possibly in person ones throughout the year.

There will be other Titanic related posts beyond that, including 31^st May, and other important dates

Notes on a Scandal

Scroll to read my take on Sheba’s view

One could see certain parallels between this book, and my own.

It is also English and by year of setting, almost exactly contemporary – but I had finished my first draft before Heller published and I didn’t read the book until my sequel was written.

It is also a first person diary led piece, with the subject of the writing close by. It is about an illicit romance within an institution, and also involving close female friends and that world between friendship and romance, asking questions about what is socially acceptable. They are both studies of singleness and loneliness.

However, we part sharply there.

I have wrangled with this book and the resultant film for fourteen years. It is frustrating that such an articulate book should be so hard to write about. I have found that all my attempts to review or discuss it do not come out right. That last clause is most unsatisfactory in the light of the huge vocabulary and precise observation used by author Zoe Heller.

But my biggest frustration of all is that the writer and director of the 2006 film do not understand the source material. It is clear not only from the script itself and its introduction but from the DVD extras and other interviews.

It also frightens me how many readers and professional reviewers see this as a creepy tale of the Sapphic delusional obsession of  an unpleasant woman. It frightens me because it shows how incapable they are of understanding someone different, of feeling sympathy, or subtlety. In short, their response is a flashback to Victorian attitudes to deviance leading to incarceration and labelling that resulted in ostracisation, belittlement, and torture (what else can you call some of those ‘medical treatments’ for the insane?) for what is a masked form of homophobia.

I have always felt strongly about mental illness, and see today’s drugs as a form of control being akin to the electric shock treatments of the 1950s and its straitjackets, and even to witchburning. It is today’s way of silencing and invalidating those who don’t fit with those who grab the power to define respectability and normality.

The narrator of Notes on A Scandal soon propounds her thoughts on the pupil/teacher affair she relates. Society makes deviant anything that does not fit its narrow socially accepted models. Although Barbara speaks of her friend’s dalliance with a minor, her words are true of Barbara and Sheba’s friendship. Personalities as well as relationships are true of Barbara’s treatise, and both apply to herself.

Barbara is something we are bad at respecting: an older unmarried woman, who reveals no prior lovers or direct sexual feelings. In a world revolving round couples and the family, Barbara’s need for connection is met in a cycle of carefully chosen deep friendships with other women. Many leap to the conclusion that Barbara is a frustrated lesbian, running after unattainable women out of her league.

It is a step from this to asserting that gay people are mentally unbalanced and creepy. This isn’t the first book where same sex desire has been made the object of obsession, often with unsettling and even criminal results: Enduring Love (dismissed elsewhere) and The Talented Mr Ripley involved men who attempt murder, and the unsuccessful one spends his life in an asylum. Following on from this is that idea that most people are straight and that the attentions of a same sex person are unwanted, embarrassing and ridiculous; why can’t gay people aim their desires at one of their own kind?

I am not saying that this is what author means to say or herself believes. But the underlying suggestion in a novel can be harmful to gay or single people, and is exacerbated by the public reaction to the story.

Cate Blanchett summed up the story acutely with the phrase ‘it’s a study of loneliness.’ She and Judi Dench do justice to the main characters but the film their fine performances are confined within do not.

Notes does not only depict what it is to approach retirement as a spinster with little family and perhaps only one friend who has two lovers and two children. It is equally eloquent on what it is to be forty, long married and a mother, and still unsatisfied. Barbara often protests that Sheba cannot understand singleness and it’s easy to diminish its pain and inconvenience if its lot has not been yours. But Sheba expounds on how children and marriage can be an excuse to cover one’s lack of meaning and productivity. She splits apart ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ – children give you something to do and think about, but they are not your immortality and do not help with your existential questions. Sheba has her own foibles and one may argue that her own lack and restlessness leaves her to be open to the titular unwise and illegal liaison.

Director Richard Eyre says that Barbara is a ‘gloriously unreliable’ narrator: he is wrong. Barbara is well placed to tell the story. She is involved personally in many of the scenes. And Sheba fills in the details of the ones where Barbara is not present. Many people do share their interactions with lovers with close friends. It is clear that Sheba’s personality is such that she is one of those sharers. Barbara says that Sheba never prefaced her confessions with ‘can I be honest?’ or any exhortation to brace oneself; they just popped out. Sheba goes over the Steven affair constantly to Barbara. There is nothing that Barbara says in the book which strikes me as something that Sheba would not have told her; whether it be around the physical side of being with Steven, or observations about his or her own home. It is why Sheba’s final outburst of the book which gives rise to Eyre’s statement strikes me as odd. All that can be said is that Barbara narrates the scenes she was not present at in the same tone as when she is.

If Barbara were such a calculated liar, then she would not have told her readers that she found lewd photos of Sheba and Steven by going through Sheba’s handbag; she would have found a more legitimate reason for their discovery. Barbara prefaces her most damning account of herself with embarrassment. Again, this could have been omitted or smoothed over if Barbara was dishonest or deluded.

The discrepancy comes in what Sheba plies Barbara with. Our account is what Barbara has pieced together, refracted through her perspective, but it is what has been fed to her by her friend. When Barbara recounts Hampstead trysts, she is paraphrasing Sheba’s words. Sheba is likely to have designed her narrative of those events for her friend’s ears as much – more – than what Barbara is depicting for her readers.

Is Barbara a Nelly Dean, telling a terrible tale as a third party?

The book’s blurb ends with ‘friendship can be as treacherous as any lover’. It implies it is Sheba who learns of that treachery, but it is a two way discovery. Sheba sees she has a devoted friend with few other contacts. Barbara’s analysis of her lifelong regular confessor status is a sad one – that she is seen as so unimportant and outside of the throes of passion that she is a safe confidant. Sheba lies to Barbara about Steven for some months, although Barbara defends Sheba by telling us that she believes Sheba meant to confess and lost her nerve, thus softening our view of Sheba and saving Barbara’s own feelings. Barbara’s delineation of her friend convinces some readers too well, for in fooling herself about the harder edges of Sheba’s schemes, Barbara has cast herself as villain.

Barbara tells us that Sheba’s feyness does not lend herself to the duplicitous planning involved in my analysis of her relations with Barbara. Barbara conveys to us that Sheba is as diaphanous as her skirts – diaphanous, not transparent  – she lets you think you see all. But Sheba knows she is sexy and that this can be advantageous; she sees her apparent transparency and floatiness is a persona to cultivate, an asset. Perhaps she and Barbara are better suited than some believe – and that kindred connection claimed by Barbara is indeed real.

But I don’t mean to suggest that there was no fondness between these women or that their friendship was manufactured on either side, or that either party crafted affections and situations or were as in control of their own feelings and destiny as the above. But Sheba does come off rather well from her friendship with Barbara. Barbara negotiates with Sheba’s fearsome mother for money and to stop her being made homeless. Barbara cooks for her broken companion when no one else will be near her. Barbara listens to hours of recollection which must seem tedious and painful – the book she writes makes these inevitables bearable. Barbara looses her job – the one thing that had occupied her days for 30 years – due to Sheba. Barbara’s own reputation is tarnished as she becomes the guardian and spokeswomen of a famous miscreant. I do not recall Sheba thanking Barbara for any of this, nor apologising. She does not apologise for her insensitivity over the death of Barbara’s cat which caused the Connolly cat to be let out of the bag. In doing so, Barbara had not so much betrayed Sheba as fulfilled an overdue moral and legal duty.

The film changes that episode, as if a screenwriting by numbers tutor had insisted on cranking up the drama. I know that half an hour is missing from the released film, and I suspect it is needed. Sheba’s homelife had seemed quite calm, but suddenly it erupts without warning or building up. In the book, the pivotal point is reached as Sheba leaves a bereaved Barbara for Steven; in the film, it is a family outing for a play.

The ending is changed – again seeming that film convention demands a showdown, as if this were the hero Transformer and chief baddie fighting instead of two complex women. Sheba’s outburst at Barbara and then the press was out of character. Sheba finds Barbara’s scrapbook and derides her restaurant receipts, as if this is a sign of craziness, like finding a shrine of photos in someone’s basement. I like that the lesbian element is unspoken by Sheba in the book, but Marber the screenwriter has Sheba screech this notion with ridicule before pushing Barbara across the room and storming out on her forever and back to her husband. Barbara’s compensation is to find a new victim on her favourite Parliament Hill bench. Barbara’s not allowed to learn anything from her time with Sheba – but is set to repeat the pattern with younger prey. If this storm is meant to show a developmental arc in Sheba, it fails woefully. It is also the same kind of arc that ends shallow films – bust ’em up and leave them, never any reconciliation and growth.

At this point it is worth observing that Barbara is as much older than Sheba than Sheba is than Connolly. Barbara comments that the end of childhood is marked by a legally enforced arbitrary age, when the narrative makes clear that Steven is not a victim and not a child. Barbara often remarks on how the gender of differently aged lovers makes a difference. In Barbara’s case, the gender are the same but the ages, once a decade or two later, no longer matter. Richard is also a generation older, and he was Sheba’s tutor too. So in her midlife crisis, Sheba has reversed the age and pupil dynamic with Connolly. At 20, you can marry your lecturer; at 15, even 16, you are put in prison for it.

It’s been suggested to me that Barbara’s draw to Sheba is maternal and there is some sense in that. Sheba’s relationship with her mum is a prickly one, and she is physically distant from her daughter. But Barbara is near, and she gives the ‘only child’ treatment to Sheba.

I think that Barbara’s feelings for Sheba are more like a romantic friendship as described in The Ladies Of Llangollen. Barbara does make a hint or two that lust is not unknown to her, but her feelings for Sheba do not appear sexual. Sheba makes the distinction between sensual and sensuous – far removed from sexual. When Barbara asks to stroke Sheba’s arms, it’s not about being sex starved as Sheba unkindly remarks, it is a simple act of bonding without desire. It upsets me that that moment is found to be disturbing by many.

What does disturb me is how Heller goes all Patricia Highsmith in her last few pages. But I wonder if there is another layer – and that we are not to take Sheba’s outburst as the truth. How can Sheba call Barbara crazy and manipulative after her own behaviour? The novel doesn’t end as I hoped on many levels.

As well as a better understanding of singleness and homosexuality, this story to me craves a better understanding of those passionate non sexual relationships; and also that there may be people whose deepest relationships are not physical ones. Perhaps our society needs to learn to accept asexual as much as gay, bi and trans.

It also needs to better deal with loneliness and need. When asked in an interview if he had met a Barbara in life, Eyre says he had and her loneliness kept people away like a bad smell. Our trend is to keep away from anyone that seems hard work, holding them away and compounding their pain. Really, this is weakness on the behalf of those who cannot and will not find the strength to grow and the courage to engage with someone else.

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Sheba’s story:                                                                                (characters are Zoe Heller’s – no official connection)

It’s been a while since I started at St George’s. Time to finally go back into the public world of work after so many years as a mum and housewife, putting off my passion for pottery – which truly is far cooler than all my protestations.

I know that people warm to me, but I am circumspect as to whom I become friendly with. All I need is to get along with my colleagues, to ask their help and to not feel uncomfortable in the staff room. My circle is broad, of my husband’s friends, and I have a secure marriage and two children – one with down’s syndrome – to fill my life outside of school. It’s not like I’ve just moved into the area either.

I feel the men size me up and some find me attractive. I am not as oblivious to that as I give off. It sounds vain, but I know that people find me appealing and want to do things for me. In that way, my social targets were met on day one. The women seemed a little colder, as if my prettiness made me an enemy, or at least, suspect.

Barbara seemed studied in her attempts to ignore or upbraid me, but I allowed my floaty air to carry me thorough those moments as if I had not seen them. In truth, I had – a little, though some of the floatiness is real and I am not exactly a sensitive person.

But floatiness is a gift – or the perception of it. I take what is true and exaggerate. I’m sure we all do. We all build our persona and we learn to use what assumptions people make about us into our armour – or our vehicle – mine often literally as I do not drive and often need to call in the favour of a lift.

My first bosom pal at school was Sue. I liked that Sue was, like me, quite bohemian in her approach to life and genuinely cared about the children. Yet I felt Barbara size me up and I sensed in her a kindredness. it isn’t that Barbara is exactly a soulmate; but that we share an outlook deep down that many would find surprising.

I needed a confidant. No – earlier – I needed a rescuer. My discipline in the classroom was… well, I didn’t have any. I’m not used to these kinds of teenagers – although I do have a daughter, despite her ‘privileged’ schooling – who is as bad as any of those I teach. Barbara clearly knows how to handle any child and could do so without alerting my lack of control to my superiors. My gratitude for her assistance that day we first properly spoke was real. Yet she did not know what really was taking place, and that the culprit shifting outside my homework club class was actually in the process of becoming my lover.

I did kind of admire Barbara’s discipline that day, although her manner did show her superior authority in front of pupils which was not entirely helpful or kind.

I overlooked that, for I saw in Barbara something that I could not get from Sue.

Sue announced her baby and I could see that maternal leave loomed. No point in latching onto someone that may never come back and whose hands would be full with a newborn for a while.

I could also see that Sue’s need for a female companion would dwindle. I had on some level an acute need of one for – despite my circle – my friends were , actually, Richard’s. Giving my attentions to my specially abled son, I had not ventured out and found my own companions. An only child with a distant and domineering mother, I had not those intimate females that one needs. At forty, the midlife questions were kicking in. Had I wasted my career potential? Had I married too young? What might be too late for me to do now? I was aware that I could no longer call myself a youth; and that I had little contact with old school and college friends or fellow mums when my children were born. If I didn’t make the effort at this second bout of working, I would next be forging friendships over senior citizen’s lunches… I realised that at one level, that era was chillingly not so far off, but it was still far enough to remind me that I would have a lot of years to fill if I awaited for that time to come round and could not longer hide in motherhood as a cushion from the world.

So that really is to explain why I felt I needed to make a friend. The other aspect of my middle aged crisis was already forming, and as it did, I knew I could not handle my relations with Steven without sharing them.

Obviously, I could tell no-one at home; as I say, my friends are Richard’s –  not appropriate to share adultery with. School seemed a sillier place on one level – because it would add professional, even legal obligations on the person I divulged too.

Alas, this is where Barbara fitted my needs. Who could be at the end of their career and least affected by any fall out? You might think that Sue, who may choose motherhood over teaching permanently, might have also been suited. But Sue had a family too, and I didn’t want to shadow Sue’s imminent joy with guilt by association.

Saying that, I don’t foresee that my secret will out. Occasionally I see a policeman and gulp, wondering if I’ll have to be escorted by one into a dock. I also don’t see myself leaving Richard and marrying Connelly when he comes of age. I don’t know how this will end or when.

I thought I had been considerate in thinking how a colleague’s life might be affected by my revelation. Barbara seems so tired of teaching; so jaded and so keen to start drawing her pension that her risk of her job does not seem so unkind. But the real risk is mine; it’s me having the affair.

Although Barbara began to pursue me, I had encouraged it. I felt a little alarmed sometimes that I had encouraged more than I had reckoned for. I got to hear rumours of past friendships, such as Jennifer Dodd. I heard that Jennifer put a restraining order on Barbra but I do not know why – that seems extreme. I take care that Barbara comes round only with invitation, and I used the long summer break to cool things a little, by not calling her during it.

I will say that I enjoy Barbara’s company. It’s nice to have a friend again. I love to be doted on, and as well as my own family (whose doting has morphed over the years into assumed ease) – I have two people now bright eyed at the sight of me: Steven, and  a female friend. It was nice to make a lonely person’s weekend brighter, but also nice to retreat into my pottery and discuss girly matters. In one sense, it’s a shame that Barbara can’t share my child and husband moans first hand; but it was also nice to share them with someone to whom these things are a novelty.

But I will be honest, that I knew that Barbara needed me, perhaps more than I did her – although this is not all true. In terms of a confidante, I needed her badly; but to the outside world, the married mum has a full life, and Barbara’s consists of little else but me, work, and the occasional sisterly visit. If I could enjoy the times spent with her and cope with her barrages of unkindness and her intensity, I would reap my reward.

I never feel that Barbara actually wanted to do anything to me, physically. I don’t think she loves me in a romantic sense. And feeling safe in that, sometimes I quite relish her attentions as much as I did from a male admirer. I have got quite good at leading on, or perhaps I had forgotten that art and wished to reactivate it, along with my pots. Even as a straight married woman, one can manipulate both sexes. I had got back into how to mould clay and I realised that the craft of people – letting them spin on their own momentum but gently holding and melding them into the way I wanted – was actually easy and quite fun.

Barbara is meant to be my alibi. I know that I will need one, as much as I need a confessor. I need to be able to say that on a particular date, I had shared my concerns over a pupil. I felt sure Barbara has a precise memory and would record this in the detail I gave it; she seemed (rightly) to be the diary keeping sort. Then I could have her word to tally with mine should I get caught out with Steven  and say ‘he had a crush; I tried to hold him back and told him it wouldn’t do.’

I had wondered about telling Barbara more that first night I had her into the pottery. But it wasn’t fear that stopped me. I wanted to test Barbara out further. Could I trust her? That was reasonable. She could be unkind and I didn’t want that turned against me. I also wanted to experiment with how much appeasement I could gain from a pseudo confession – quite a bit.

Yet my conscience nagged on. I found myself being swept into the affair romantically and I felt more daring but less rational. I wanted to skirt the issue with Barbara and yet not reveal. I liked my secret but I liked knowing how near she was to it too.

I didn’t plan it to slip that Firework night, but I was relieved that she worked it out. Perhaps unconsciously, I had her present so that she might. The evening presented an opportunity to slip away with Steven, but I dare not do so with only my family there. I needed someone familiar but outside of it to back me up, to cover for me, to see what they did – and more.

Now it is out, and I must be open to that ‘more’. I talk to Barbara – I have to – for I know her loyalty, her need to help, will compel her to allow me to let out what must be expressed. I can have no plans, or hopes. I know that prison is a very real possibility. I am also aware that it could be said that I am in one already. Just as my actions with Steven may reap me the HMP variety, I suppose this too, is a banishment from my family with a keeper, who feeds me and forces me to take regular ablutions. I have a short leash here, but excursions to Eastbourne and even afternoons with my son are less likely once I am convicted. What a word… I cannot think about that stage. I don’t even know if I think I deserve it. Most of me is just tired and broken, and wants to see, to speak to Steven. I want my children – Ben especially. I do not know what I can hope regarding Richard. I suppose I should feel some gratitude that I am not alone, that I have a friend, for I could manage little without her. I am childlike, almost Ben-like, in what I need done for me. Do I resign? In what way? I resigned myself to a life with Richard 20 years ago. I resigned myself to being a life long mother, including of a child who will need extra care all his life. I resigned myself to not being an artist – not a great, professional one. I resigned myself to having a certain amount of my life, my identity, designated in relation to others close to me, and the choices I made. I chose Steven, I chose Barbara, and this is where it has left me. Fate again will show me how I live out the rest of my days. I resign my will.

Kate Winslet 2: family, friends and lovers

Apart from noting that she’s played characters with the same name a few times, I also started to browse for themes among the relationships of the roles Kate Winslet plays. In the last post on her, I looked at whether she goes mad and dies in all her films. In this one I’m wondering: is she a mother often, a lover, a sister/daughter or a friend?

I note that the relationship that appears in nearly all her films is lover; only in small parts (such as Divergent/Insurgent and the Extras episode) does she not have romance – with the exception of The Life of David Gale, where the principal relationship is between her as journalist to condemned campaigner. In Steve Jobs, her relationship is again to the titular man in a professional sense and her own family is unmentioned. In Contagion she barely has a relationship at all, but is part of a much wider cast.

Kate has often played a mum, talking about this at great (and I have to say) cloying length in interviews. She was first a mum in 1998’s Hideous Kinky, when she was yet to be one herself. She spends her promotional material for Little Children saying what a bad mum her character Sarah is, unlike her, and how she found the scatty adventure loving mum roles hard. Kate’s very keen we know she’s not like that to her own children, dropping in anecdotes of how close and involved they are.

But as for being part of a family in her films, this is a rare scenario. The few times we see Kate’s character’s parents, it’s often dysfunctional – an easy word to slap on most of us – but Juliet of Heavenly Creatures is unhappy in the love triangled, emigrating Hulme family; in Holy Smoke, although there’s a strong link with her mum, she’s betrayed by her whole kooky family into being captured to be deprogrammed by an arrogant stranger. Rose’s so desperate to escape her snakily controlling mum that she allows her to think Rose is dead after Titanic sinks. In Quills, Madeleine bed shares with her mum whom she works with, and is one of her happiest mother daughter roles, putting a protective arm round her blind mum when they’re interrogated. I note she’s often got an absent father –  in Sense and Sensibility and Quills; and he leaves the family for an affair in Holy Smoke. The only time sisters are important is Sense and Sensibility and we see brothers in All the Kings Men and The Holiday. Quite often, her own birth family’s not mentioned.

Even rarer is friendship. Other than her debut film, where the friendship is seen by some as psychopathic and unhealthy, Kate is not really with any significant friends in her films. I’d like to make clear that I don’t consider the possibly gay or homo-romantic relationship in Heavenly Creatures as unhealthy, mad or anything to do with the crime they commit, except for the bigotry and paranoia which led to the attempt to separate them. But it’s notable that Kate’s never had much onscreen companionship since. Ruth’s got Prue in Holy Smoke, who tells on her, and there’s a girly posse who arrive and warmly greet her on her return from India. In Hideous Kinky, there’s the small part of Eva who appears as the veiled fellow Sufi-chaser, but little mention of friends at home; I’m not quite sure that the rich house Julia stays in could be called friends. Adele has only one friend by default in Labor Day (the neighbour with the disabled son Barrie). In other films, she’s got people round her – often workmates, such as Quills, or other mums she meets at the playground and her walking/book group older friend in Little Children, but she’s not really close or always happy. There’s friendship with other couples in Iris (although secondary to her lovers, which many of them also were) and Revolutionary Road. In The Holiday, she makes a friend with an older man, returned screenwriter.

Kate’s characters don’t always have a wide circle. Writers often have to choose a small bunch of characters round our protagonist that is not representative of the breadth of interactions we’d have in life. But Kate’s often working with one or two others (in Contagion and The Reader she seems mostly isolated), and sometimes it’s implied she doesn’t have unseen other friends. Did Rose have friends mentioned in Titanic, did Hester in Enigma seem to know anyone but house sharing Claire, on whom she has a crush? Clem in Eternal Sunshine has a pair of friends who are mutual with her ex.

The ten year anniversary of that film in Britain will be marked with a special post.

I’d like to come full circle and suggest that Kate’s characters’ repeating madness and demise (the topic of my previous post) is often because of her romantic relationships. It is almost ubiquitous in her 20 year career. I’ll explain more in another post.

I’d like to end with sharing my disappointment that Kate takes so few roles which embody strong friendships, and for all the many articles I’ve read about her, I have not heard her extol friendship in an interview either.

More thoughts on Ms Winslet anon.