The Diaries of Jane Somers

She was about to go out.

I said, ‘If I could persuade her, what Services is she entitled to?’

‘Home Help, of course. But we tried that before, and it didn’t work. A Good Neighbour, but she didn’t want one …’ She gave me a quick doubtful look, and went on. ‘She’s not entitled to Meals on Wheels, because she can manage and we are so pressed …’

‘She’s over ninety,’ I said.

‘So are many others!’

‘But you’ll arrange for the nurse to come in?’

‘But she says she doesn’t want one. We can’t force ourselves on them. They have to co-operate!’ This triumphantly, she had scored a point.

She bounded up the steps and into a red Escort, and waved to me as she went off. Pleased to be rid of me. A bright smile, and her body was saying, These amateurs, what a nuisance!

I went remorsefully back to Maudie, because she had been discussed behind her back. She sat with her face averted and was silent.

At last: ‘What have you decided, then?’

‘Mrs Fowler, I do think you ought to have some of the Services, why not?’

Her head was trembling, and her face would have done for The Wicked Witch.

‘What I want is Meals on Wheels, but they won’t give me that.’

‘No Home Help?’

‘No. They sent me one. She said, Where’s your Hoover! Too good for a carpet sweeper. And sat here drinking my tea and eating my biscuits. And when I sent her shopping, she couldn’t be bothered to take an extra step to save a penny, she’d pay anything, I could shop cheaper than she, so I told her not to come back.’

‘Well, anyway …’ And I heard there was a different note in my voice. For I had been quite ashamed, watching Hermione, seeing myself, all that pretty flattering charm, as if she had – I had! – an eye directed at the performance: how well I am doing it! How attractive and kind I am … I was fighting to keep that note out of my voice, to be direct and simple. ‘Anyway, I think you should think about taking what is available. And to start with, there’s the nurse every morning, while you don’t feel well.’

‘Why should I need a nurse?’ she inquired, her face averted.

This meant, Why, when you are coming in to me twice a day? And, too, But why should you come in, it’s not your job. And, most strongly, Please, please.

If I were with someone like Hermione, my husband, Joyce, Sister Georgie, I would say, ‘What an emotional blackmailer, you aren’t going to get away with that.’ The fine nose of our kind for advantage, taken or given.

By the time I left I had promised I would continue to go in morning and evening. And that I would ring up ‘them’ saying she did not want a nurse. And when we said goodbye she was cold and angry, frantic because of her helplessness, because she knew she should not expect so much of me, and because …

And now I am sitting here, feeling quite wild myself, trapped is what I’m feeling. And I have been all evening in the bath, thinking.

About what I really care about. My life, my real life, is in the office, is at work. Because I have been working since I was nineteen, and always for the same magazine, I’ve taken it for granted, have not seen that this is my life. I was with the magazine in its old format, have been part of three changes, and the second of these I could say was partly because of me. Joyce and I made it all happen. I have been there longer than she has: for she came in as Production Manager, mid-sixties, when I had already been there fifteen or twenty years, working my way through all the departments. If there is one person in that magazine who can be said to be Lilith, it’s me.

And yet I take it all for granted. And I am not going to jeopardize what I really care about for the sake of Maudie Fowler. I shall go to Munich, not for two days, as I said today, but for the usual four, and I shall tell her she must say yes to the nurse.

Friday – in Munich.

Went in to Maudie this morning. She in her chair, staring at a cold grate, inside a carapace of black rags. I fetched her coal, made her tea, fed the cat. She seemed to be cold, yet with the glitter of fever. She was coughing and coughing.

I said to her, ‘Mrs Fowler, I am going to Munich and I shall be away four days.’ No response at all. I said, ‘Mrs Fowler, I have to go. But I am going to ring up Hermione Whitfield and say you must have a nurse. Just till I come back.’ She went on staring into the cold grate. So I began to lay the fire – but did not know how, and she forced herself up out of her warm nest and slowly, slowly put in bits of paper, bits of wood, a fire-lighter, built up the fire. I looked around – no newspaper, no more fire-lighters, nothing.

I went out to the shop, and on the way back saw that there was a skip in the road outside her door, and there were plenty of little slats of wood, old laths from the demolished walls – she had been collecting these to start her fire. Conscious of how I must look, in all my smart gear, I filled a carrier bag with these bits of wood. While I was doing this, I chanced to glance up and saw that I was being observed from various windows. Old faces, old ladies. But I did not have time to take anything in, but rushed down with the wood and the groceries. She was again in her listless pose in front of the now roaring fire.

I did not know whether a nurse would build a fire.

I asked, ‘Will a nurse make up a fire for you?’

She did not answer. I was getting angry. And was as distressed as she. The whole situation was absurd. And yet it could not be any other way.

When I stood up to leave I said, ‘I am going to ring up and ask for a nurse and please don’t send the nurse away.’

‘I don’t want any nurse.’

I stood there, worried because I was late, and it was Conference day and I’ve never ever been late. And worried about her. And angry. And resentful. And yet she tugged at me, I wanted to take that dirty old bundle into my arms and hug her. I wanted to slap her and shake her.

‘What is all this about hospital,’ I asked, ‘what? You’d think you were being threatened with … what is so terrible about it? Have you ever been there?’

‘Yes, two winters ago. Christmas.’

‘And?’

She was sitting straight up now, her sharp chin lifted in a combative way, her eyes frightened and angry.

‘No, they were kind enough. But I don’t like it. They fill you with pills and pills and pills, you feel as if your mind has been taken from you, they treat you like a child. I don’t want it …’ And then she added, in the tone of one trying to be fair, and at this attempt leading her into more, more than she had intended. ‘ … There was one little nurse. She rubbed my back for me when I coughed …’ And she looked at me quickly, and away, and I knew she had wanted me to rub her back for her. It had not occurred to me! I do not know how!

‘Well,’ I said, ‘no one is going to force you to hospital.’

She said, ‘If they’d take me in after last time.’ And suddenly she was laughing and alert, her enjoying self.

‘What did you do?’ I said, pleased to be able to laugh with her.

‘I walked out!’ And she chuckled. ‘Yes, I had had enough. And I was constipated with all that good eating, because I am not saying they don’t feed you, and I was feeling farther and farther from myself every minute with the pills. I said, Where are my clothes? They said, You can’t go home in this weather, Mrs Fowler, you’ll die of it. For there was snow. I said, You bring me my clothes or I’ll walk out in your hospital nightdress. And so they brought them. They would not look at me or speak to me, they were so angry. I walked down into the hall and said to the porter, Call me a taxi. My bits of money had been stolen in the hospital ward. But I was going to tell the driver and ask him to bring me home for the love of God. If God is anyone they know these days. But there was a woman there in reception and she said, I’ll take you, love. And brought me home. I think of her. I think of them who do me good, I do.’ And she gave me the most marvellous merry smile, her girl’s smile.

‘For all that, I have to go to Munich. I’ll be away for four days, and you know very well you can’t manage. I want to hear you say, in so many words, you don’t want a nurse. I’m treating you seriously, not treating you like a child! If you say no nurse, I’ll do no more. But I think you should let me. A nurse isn’t going to be the end of the world.’

‘And how about all the pills then?’

‘All right. But say it, you don’t want me to ring a nurse.’ And I added, really desperate, ‘For God’s sake, Maudie, have some sense.’ I realized I had called her by her Christian name, but she was not put out.

She shrugged. ‘I have no choice, I suppose.’

I went over to her, bent down to kiss her, and she put out her cheek, and I kissed it.

I went off, waving from the door, I hope not a ‘charming’ wave.

I was late for the Conference.

First time. This Conference is in my view what gives the mag its life. It was my idea. Later I’ll write down an analysis, it would help me clear my thoughts, for I see they need clearing, about the office, work, everything. This afternoon I was alone: Joyce at home because she’s going to be in the office all the time I’m in Germany. I was trying to get information about the Services. I have all the leaflets as dished out to the consumers, Your Pension Rights and that kind of stuff. No, I want to find out how it all really works. After a while I knew what I had to do. I have to find That One Person. If this is a law for our kind of work, then it probably is everywhere. (Maudie talks about there always being the one person, though she means it in a different sense.) Joyce and I use it all the time. Long ago, we discovered that if you want to make things work, you have to look for The One Person in a department or an office who is in fact running it, or who knows about it, or is – in some way or another – real. Well, Hermione is certainly not that. No. You have to have people like Hermione, if only because there aren’t enough of the others: it’s not that they don’t do any work, or are useless, but they are peripheral. To find out how to get Maudie what she really needs, and what could help her, I can’t use Hermione. But I rang her this afternoon – she was out – and left a message that Mrs Fowler will need a nurse for five days. And then something warned me, and I told my secretary to ring Hermione, and then Joyce’s secretary too. She can’t be left with no one, for four days.

Wednesday.

First, my state of mind before I went in to Maudie. I flew back from Munich midday, went straight to the office recharged, all systems go. I adore these trips. What I adore is my efficiency. I like making things work, knowing how to do it. I like them knowing me, giving me my room, remembering my tastes. Saw friends through weekend. Rather, ‘friends’, work contacts, then Monday and Tuesday, the Fair. What I like is being in control. I am so full of energy, I eat exactly what I should, don’t drink a mouthful too much, hardly sleep, rush around all day. I know exactly how to present myself, and how to use it. I saw myself, coming into the Show, Monday morning, sitting down, people smiling and greeting: and at the same time I was back fifteen years, seeing myself through those eyes, the way I saw, at thirty, the established women who had been doing it for years. I admired them, wished to be one of them, and while I examined them, minutely, every little detail, I was looking for what they overlooked, signs of processes that would lead to their being replaced by others, me among them. Of those women whom I examined then, one remains, though some still are in the field in other ways. I have spent four days wondering what is at work in me which will lead me to be thrown out, or to remain in the office at some less taxing job, while – who? – goes off on these trips. I cannot see what it is. Simply ageing? Nothing to do with it! That I will get bored with it all? I cannot believe that, yet.

When I got into the office Joyce was waiting for me so she could go home: without ever formally arranging it, we make sure one of us is always there. She looked tired. She said she had had a dreadful time since I left, with her husband, she’d tell me, but not now, and off she went. There was a message from Hermione Whitfield that she had not got my message about the nurse till Monday, and that then Mrs Fowler refused to let the nurse in. This brought me back with a bump to my London self. I have worked all afternoon, mostly on the telephone, and then the photographers for tomorrow. But I was thinking at the same time about Joyce. I have understood that this business with her husband means the end of our working together, or at any rate, a change. I am sure of it. This made me depressed and anxious, before I even left the office. Another thing I have understood in a way I didn’t before: Joyce is my only real friend. I mean, friend. I have a relationship with her I’ve had with no one, ever. Certainly not Freddie.

I was coming straight home, because I was suddenly tired. But made the taxi put me off at Maudie Fowler’s. I stood there knocking and banging on the door. Freezing. Not a sound. I got into a panic – was she dead? – and noted, not without interest, that one of my reactions was relief. At last, an agitation of the curtains at the window of her ‘front room’, which she seems never to use. I waited. Nothing happened. I banged and banged, absolutely furious by then. I was ready to strangle her. Then the door opened inwards, sticking and scraping, and there she was, a tiny little bundle of black, with her white face sticking up out of it. And the smell. It is no good my telling myself I shouldn’t care about such details. I care terribly. The smell … awful, a sour, sweet-sharp reek. But I could see she was only just able to stand there.

There was nothing ‘charming’ about me, I was so angry.

‘Why do you keep me out in the cold?’ I said, and went in, past her, making her move aside. She then went on ahead of me down the passage, a hand on a wall to steady her.

In the back room, a heap of dead cinders in the grate. There was an electric fire, though; one bar, and it was making noises which meant it was unsafe. The place was cold, dirty, smelly, and the cat came and wound itself around my legs miaowing. Maudie let herself slide into her chair and sat staring at the grate.

‘Well, why didn’t you let the nurse in?’ I shouted at her.

‘The nurse,’ she said bitterly. ‘What nurse?’

‘I know she came.’

‘Not till Monday. All the weekend I was here by myself, no one.’

I was about to scream at her, ‘Why didn’t you let her in when she came on Monday?’ but saw there was no point.

I was full of energy again – anger.

‘Maudie,’ I said, ‘you are the limit, the end, you make things worse for yourself. Well, I’ll put the kettle on.’

I did. I fetched coal. I found the commode full of urine, but no worse, thank goodness. Thank goodness was what I thought then, but I see one gets used to anything. I then went out into the street with a carrier bag. A grey sleety rain. There I was, in all my smart things from Munich, scrabbling about in the skip for bits of wood. And again, faces at the windows, watching me.

Inside, I scraped out the grate, clouds of dust flying about, and laid the fire. With a fire-lighter. Wood and coal. Soon it was burning.

I made tea for both of us, having scalded the filthy cups. I must stop being so petty about it. Does it matter, dirty cups? Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes.

She had not moved, but sat looking at the flames.

‘The cat,’ she said.

‘I’ve given her some food.’

‘Then let her out for a bit.’

‘There’s sleet and rain.’

‘She won’t mind.’

I opened the back door. A wave of cold rain came straight in at me, and the fat yellow cat, who had been pressing to get to the door, miaowed and ran back again, to the coal cellar.

‘She’s gone to the coal cellar,’ I said.

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to put my hand in it,’ she said.

This made me so angry! I was a seethe of emotions. As usual, I wanted to hit her or shake her and, as usual, to put my arms around her.

But my mind luckily was in control, and I did everything I should, without, thank God, being ‘humorous’ or charming or gracious.

‘Have you been eating at all?’

No response.

I went out again to shop. Not a soul in the corner shop. The Indian sitting there at the cash desk looked grey and chilled, as well he might, poor soul.

I said I was buying food for Mrs Fowler, wanting to know if she had been in.

He said, ‘Oh, the old lady, I hope she is not ill?’

‘She is,’ I said.

‘Why doesn’t she go into a Home?’

‘She doesn’t want to.’

‘Hasn’t she a family?’

‘I think so, but they don’t care.’

‘It is a terrible thing,’ he said to me, meaning me to understand that his people would not neglect an old woman like this.

‘Yes, it is a terrible thing, and you are right,’ I said.

When I got back, again I thought of death. She sat there, eyes closed, and so still, I thought not breathing.

But then, her blue eyes were open and she was looking at the fire.

‘Drink your tea,’ I said. ‘And I’ll grill you a bit of fish. Can you eat it?’

‘Yes, I will.’

In the kitchen I tried to find anything that wasn’t greasy, and gave up. I put the fish on the grill, and opened the door briefly to get in some clean air. Sleet notwithstanding.

I took her the fish, and she sat herself up and ate it all, slowly, and her hands trembled, but she finished it and I saw she had been hungry.

I said, ‘I’ve been in Munich. To see all the clothes for the autumn. I’ve been seeing all the new styles.’

‘I’ve never been out of England.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you all about it when you are a bit better.’

To this she did not respond. But at last, just when I thought I would go, she remarked, ‘I’ve a need for some clean clothes.’

I did not know how to interpret this. I did see – I have become sensitive enough for that – at least that this was not at all a simple request.

She wanted me to buy her clothes?

I looked at her. She made herself look at me, and said, ‘Next door, you’ll find things.’

‘What?’

She gave a trembling, discouraged sort of shrug.

‘Vest. Knickers. Petticoat. Don’t you wear underclothes, that you are asking?’

Again, the automatic anger, as if a button had been pushed. I went next door into the room I knew she didn’t like me in.

The bed that has the good eiderdown, the wardrobe, the dressing table with little china trinkets, the good bookcases. But everywhere piles and heaps of – rubbish. I could not believe it. Newspapers dating back fifty years, crumbling away; awful scraps of material, stained and yellow, bits of lace, dirty handkerchiefs, shreds of ribbon – I’ve never seen anything like it. She had never thrown anything away, I think. In the drawers, disorder, and they were crammed with – but it would take pages to describe. I wished I had the photographer there – reflex thought! Petticoats, camisoles, knickers, stays, vests, old dresses or bits of them, blouses … and nothing less than twenty years old, and some of them going back to World War One. The difference between clothes now and then: these were all ‘real’ materials, cottons, silks, woollens. Not a man-made fibre there. But everything torn, or stained, or dirty. I pulled out bundles of things, and every one I examined, first for interest, and then to see if there was anything wearable, or clean. I found at last a wool vest, and long wool drawers, and a rather nice pink silk petticoat, and then a woollen dress, blue, and a cardigan. They were clean, or nearly. I worked away in there, shivering with cold, and thinking of how I had loved myself all these last days, how much I do love myself, for being in control, on top; and thought that the nearest I could get to poor Maudie’s helplessness was remembering what it had been like to be a child, hoping that you won’t wet your pants before you get to the lavatory.

I took the clothes into the other room, which was very hot now, the flames roaring up. I said to her, ‘Do you want me to help you change?’ The sideways, irritable movement of the head, which I knew now meant I was being stupid.

But I did not know why.

So I sat down opposite her, and said, ‘I’ll finish my tea before it’s freezing.’ I noted that I was drinking it without feeling sick: I have become used to drinking out of grimy cups, I noted that with interest. Once Maudie had been like me, perpetually washing herself, washing cups, plates, dusting, washing her hair.

She was talking, at random I thought, about when she had been in hospital. I half listened, wishing that doctors and nurses could hear how their hospitals are experienced by someone like Maudie. Prisons. Reformatories. But then I realized she was telling me about how, because she had not been well enough to be put in the bath, two nurses had washed her in her bed, and I understood.

‘I’ll put on the kettles,’ I said. ‘And you must tell me what to do.’

I put on two kettles, found an enamel basin, which I examined with interest, for I have not seen any but plastic ones for a long time, and searched for soap and a flannel. They were in a hole in the wall above the sink: a brick taken out and the cavity painted.

I took the basin, kettles, soap, flannel, a jug of cold water, next door. Maudie was struggling out of her top layer of clothes. I helped her, and realized I had not co-ordinated this at all. I rushed about, found newspapers, cleared the table, spread thick papers all over it, arranged basin, kettles, jug, washing things. No towel. I rushed into the kitchen, found a damp dirty towel, rushed into the front room and scrabbled about, seeming to myself to be taking all day. But it was really only a few moments. I was bothered about Maudie standing there, half naked, and ill, and coughing. At last I found a cleanish towel. She was standing by the basin, her top half nude. There is nothing of her. A fragile rib cage under creased yellow skin, her shoulder bones like a skeleton’s, and at the end of thin stick arms, strong working hands. Long thin breasts hanging down.

She was clumsily rubbing soap on to the flannel, which, needless to say, was slimy. I should have washed it out first. I ran next door again, tore a bit off an old clean towel and took it back. I knew she wanted to tick me off for tearing the towel; she would have done if she had not been saving her breath.

I slowly washed her top half, in plenty of soap and hot water, but the grime on her neck was thick, and to get that off would have meant rubbing at it, and it was too much. She was trembling with weakness. I was comparing this frail old body with my mother’s: but I had only caught glimpses of her sick body. She had washed herself – and only now was I wondering at what cost – till she went into hospital. And when Georgie came, she gave her a wash. But not her child-daughter, not me. Now I washed Maudie Fowler, and thought of Freddie, how his bones had seemed to sort of flatten and go thin under flesh that clung to them. Maudie might be only skin and bones but her body doesn’t have that beaten-down look, as if the flesh is sinking into the bones. She was chilly, she was sick, she was weak – but I could feel the vitality beating there: life. How strong it is, life. I had never thought that before, never felt life in that way, as I did then, washing Maudie Fowler, a fierce angry old woman. Oh, how angry: it occurred to me that all her vitality is in her anger, I must not, must not resent it or want to hit back.

Then there was the problem of her lower half, and I was waiting for guidance.

I slipped the ‘clean’ vest on over her head, and wrapped the ‘clean’ cardigan round her, and then saw she was sliding down the thick bunches of skirt. And then it hit me, the stench. Oh, it is no good, I can’t not care. Because she had been too weak or too tired to move, she had shat her pants, shat everything.

Knickers, filthy … Well, I am not going on, not even to let off steam, it makes me feel sick. But I was looking at the vest and petticoats she had taken off, and they were brown and yellow with shit. Anyway. She stood there, her bottom half naked. I slid newspapers under her, so she was standing on thick wads of them. I washed and washed her, all her lower half. She had her big hands down on the table for support. When it came to her bottom she thrust it out, as a child might, and I washed all of it, creases too. Then I threw away all that water, refilled the basin, quickly put the kettles on again. I washed her private parts, and thought about that phrase for the first time: for she was suffering most terribly because this stranger was invading her privateness. And I did all her legs again, again, since the dirt had run down her legs. And I made her stand in the basin and washed her feet, yellow gnarled old feet. The water was hot again over the flaring gas, and I helped her pull on the ‘clean’ bloomers. By then, having seen what was possible, they were clean to me, being just a bit dusty. And then the nice pink petticoat.

‘Your face,’ I said. For we had not done that. ‘How about your hair?’ The white wisps and strands lay over the yellow dirty scalp.

‘It will wait,’ she said.

So I washed her face, carefully, on a clean bit torn off the old towel.

Then I asked her to sit down, found some scissors, cut the toenails, which was just like cutting through horn, got clean stockings on, her dress, her jersey. And as she was about to put on the outside clothes of black again, I said involuntarily, ‘Oh, don’t – ’ and was sorry, for she was hurt, she trembled even more, and sat silent, like a bad child. She was worn out.

I threw out the dirty water and scalded the basin, and filled a kettle to make fresh tea. I took a look out of the back: streams of sleet, with crumbs of greyish snow, the wind blowing hard – water was coming in under the kitchen door; and as for thinking of her going out into that to reach the lavatory, that freezing box – yet she had been going out, and presumably would again.

I kept saying to myself, She is over ninety and she has been living like this for years: she has survived it!

I took her more tea, and some biscuits, and left her drinking them by her big fire.

I put all the filthy outer clothes I had taken off in newspaper and folded them up and dumped them in the rubbish bin, without asking her.

And then I made a selection among the clothes from the drawers, and stripped the filthy sheets from her bed, and the pillowcases, and went out into the rain to the launderette, leaving them with the girl there to be done.

I made the place as neat as I could, put down food for the cat, who sat against Maudie’s leg, being stroked. I cleared everything up. All this time Maudie sat staring into the flames, not looking at me when I looked at her, but watching me as I moved around, and when she thought I didn’t know.

‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate it,’ she said as I laboured on, and on. I was sweeping the floor by then, with a hand brush and pan. I couldn’t find anything else. The way she said this, I couldn’t interpret it. It was flat. I thought, even hopeless: she was feeling perhaps, as I had had a glimpse of, remembering myself as a child, helpless in a new way. For, very clearly, no one had ever done this kind of thing for her before.

I went back to the launderette. The Irish girl, a large competent girl with whom I had exchanged the brisk comradeship of equals when leaving the stuff, gave me the great bag of clean things and looked into my face and said, ‘Filth. I’ve never seen anything like it. Filth.’ She hated me.

I said, ‘Thanks,’ did not bother to explain, and left. But I was flaming with – embarrassment! Oh, how dependent I am on being admired, liked, appreciated.

I took the things back, through the sleet. I was cold and tired by then. I wanted to get home …

But I cleared out the drawers of a large chest, put the clean things in, and told Maudie where I had put them.

Then I said, ‘I’ll drop in tomorrow evening.’

I was curious to hear what she’d say.

‘I’ll see you then’ was what she said.

And now I am alone, and have bathed, but it was a brisk businesslike bath, I didn’t soak for hours. I should have tidied everything, but I haven’t. I am, simply, tired. I cannot believe that this time yesterday I was in the hotel, pampered guest, eating supper with Karl, cherished colleague. Flowers, venison, wine, cream – the lot.

It seems to me impossible that there should be that – there; and then Maudie Fowler, here. Or is it I who am impossible? I certainly am disoriented.

I have to think all this out. What am I to do? Who can I discuss it with? Joyce is my friend, she is my friend. She is my friend?

Thursday.

Joyce came in to collect work to take home. She looks awful. I said to her, ‘How goes it?’ She said, ‘He wants me to go with him to the States.’ I asked, ‘For good?’ She said, ‘For good.’ She looked at me, I looked at her. This is how we converse: in shorthand. She said, ‘I’ve got to fly. Tell John I’ve got the cover finished. I’ve done the Notes. I’ll be in all tomorrow, Janna.’ And off she went. This means: her husband has been offered a professorship, he wants to take it, he wants her to give up her job here and go with him, she doesn’t want to go, they quarrelled to the point of divorce, the children don’t want to go to the States – and this afternoon I had the feeling that Joyce would probably go to the States. And that’s the end of that.