last one,’ I said. I set down the glass, and looked at it You know,’ I told her, `I can’t help feeling there’s something wrong about this. As I said before, Piffs aren’t unusual with little girls, but I don’t remember hearing of an elevenyear-old boy inventing one… It seems out of order, somehow… I must ask someone about it…’
Mary nodded agreement.
`Yes,’ she said, `but what strikes me as even odder is – did you notice? – he doesn’t seem to be clear in his own mind whether his Chocky is a him or a her. Children are usually very positive about that. They feel it’s important…’
`I wouldn’t say the feeling of importance is entirely restricted to children,’ I told her, but I see what you mean, and you’re perfectly right, of course. It is odd… The whole thing’s odd…’
Matthew’s temperature was down the next morning. He picked up quickly. In a few days he was fully recovered. So too, apparently, was his invisible friend, undiscouraged by the temporary banishment.
Now that Chocky’s existence was out of the bag (*) – and largely, I was inclined to think, because neither Mary nor I had displayed incredulity – Matthew gained enough confidence to talk a little more freely about him/her.
To begin with, at any rate, he/she seemed a considerable improvement on the original Piff. There was none of that business of hi m/her invisibly occupying one’s chair, or feeling sick in teashops to which Piff had been so prone. Indeed, Chocky quite markedly lacked physical attributes. He/she appeared to be scarcely more than a presence, having perhaps something in common with Wordsworth’s cuckoo, (*) but with the added limitation that his/her wandering voice was audible to Matthew alone. There were days when Matthew seemed to forget him/her altogether. Unlike Piff, he/she was not prone to appearing any – and everywhere, nor did he/she show any of Piff’s talent for embarrassment such as a determined insistence on being taken to the lavatory in the middle of the sermon. On the whole, if one had to choose between the two, my preference was decided1y in favour of Chocky.
Mary was less certain.
`Are we,’ she suddenly demanded one evening, staring into the loops of her knitting with a slight squint, `are we I wonder, doing the right thing in playing up to this nonsense? I know you shouldn’t crush a child’s imagination, and all that, but what nobody tells you is how far is enough. There comes a stage when it begins to get a bit like conspiracy. I mean, if everyone goes around pretending to believe in things that aren’t there, how on earth is a child going to learn to distinguish what really is, from what really isn’t.’
‘Careful, darling,’ I told her. ‘You’re steering close to dangerous waters. (*) It chiefly depends on who, and how many, believe what isn’t really is.’
She nodded. Then she went on:
`It’d be a most unfortunate thing if we found out on that we’re helping to stabilize a fantasy-system that we ought to be trying to dispel. Hadn’t we better consult a psychiatrist about it? He could at least tell us whether it’s one of the expectable things, or not.’
`I’m rather against making too much fuss about it,’ I told her. `More inclined to leave it for a bit. After all we managed to lose Piff in the end, and no harm done.’
`I didn’t mean send him to a psychiatrist. I thought just an enquiry on general lines to find out whether it is unusual, or simply nothing to bother about. I’d feel easier if we knew.’
`I’ll ask around if you like,’ I said. `I don’t think it is serious. It seems to me a bit like fiction – we read our kind of fiction, children often make up their own, and live it. The thing that does trouble me a bit about it is that th is Chocky seems to have entered the wrong age-group. I think we’ll find it will fade away after a bit. If it doesn’t we can consult someone about it.’
I wasn’t, I admit, being quite honest when I said that. Some of Matthew’s questions were puzzling me considerably – not only by their un-Matthew-like character but because, now that Chocky’s existence was acknowledged, Matthew did not always present the questions as his own. Quite frequently he would preface them with: `Chocky says he doesn’t see how … or `Chocky wants to ,know … or `Chocky says she doesn’t understand why…
One thing I felt could be cleared up.
`Look here,’ I told him, `I get all confused with this he-and-she business. On grounds of grammar alone it would be easier if I knew which Chocky is.’
Matthew quite agreed.
`Yes, it would,’ he said. `I thought so, too. So I asked. But Chocky doesn’t seem to know.’
`Oh,’ I said. `That’s rather unusual. I mean, it’s one of those things people are generally pretty sure about.’
Matthew agreed about that, too. .
`But Chocky’s sort of (*) different,’ he told me earnestly.
I explained all the differences between hims and hers, but she couldn’t seem to get it, somehow. That’s funny because he’s really frightfully clever I think, but all he said was that it sounded a pretty silly arrangement, and wanted to know why it’s like that.’
I recalled that Mary had encountered a question along those lines. Matthew went on:
`I couldn’t tell her why. And nobody I’ve asked has been much help. Do you know why, ,Daddy.?’
`Well – er – not exactly why, I confessed. `It’s just – um – how it is. One of Nature’s ways of managing things.’
Matthew nodded.
`That’s what I tried to tell Chocky – well, sort of. But I don’t think I can have been very good at it because she said that even if I had got it right, and it was as silly as it sounded, there still had to be a why behind it.’ He paused reflectively, and then added, with a nice blend of pique and regret: `Chocky keeps on finding such a lot of things, quite ordinary things, silly. It gets a bit boring.’
We talked on for a while. I was interested and showed it, but from what I learned, however, I found myself feeling a little less kindly towards Chocky. He/she gave an impression of being quite aggressive. Afterwards when I recollected the entirely serious nature of our conversation I felt some increase in uneasiness. Going back over it I realized that not once in the course of it had Matthew even hinted by a single word, or slip, that Chocky was not just as real a person as ourselves, and I began to wonder whether Mary had not been right about consulting a psychiatrist
However, we did get one thing more or less tidied up: the him/her question. Matthew explained:
`Chocky does talk rather like a boy, but a lot of the time it’s not about the sort of thing boys talk about – if you see what I mean. And sometimes there is a bit of – well, you know the sort of snooty way chaps’ older sisters often get …?’
I said I did, and after we had discussed these and a few other characteristics we decided that Chocky’s balance did on the whole lean more to the F than the M, (*) and agreed that in future it would be convenient to class Chocky as feminine.
Mary gave me a thoughtful look when I reported to her that, at least, was settled. .
`The point it is gives more personification if Chocky is one or the other – not just an it,, I explained. `Puts a sort of picture in the mind which must be easier for him to cope with than just a vague, undifferentiated, disembodied something. And as Matthew feels there,is not much similarity to any of the boys he knows …
`You decide she’s feminine because you fee it will help you and Matthew to attack her, , Mary declared. She spent then a few moments in reflective silence, and emerged from it to say, a little wistfully.
`I do think being a parent must have been a lot more fun before Freud was invented. (*) As it is, if this fantasy ga me doesn’t clear up in a week or two we shall feel a moral, social, and medical obligation to do something about it … And it’s such nonsense really I sometimes wonder if we aren’t all of us a bit morbid about children nowadays I’m sure there are more delinquents than there used to be…’
`I’m for keeping him clear of psychiatrists and suchlike if we can, I told her. `Once you let a child get the idea he’s an interesting case, you turn loose a whole new boxful of troubles.’ (*)
She was silent for some seconds. Running over in her mind, I guessed, a number of the children we knew. Then she nodded.