The Diaries of Jane Somers

I went in to Maudie on the way home: her door was on the latch. Fire blazing. Cat on bed asleep. Maudie, asleep. An empty teacup on the arm of her chair. I took the cup to safety, left a note: See you tomorrow, and fled hoping she wouldn’t wake before I left.

I am sitting here in my dressing gown by the electric fire. I should clean out this flat. I should really wash my hair.

I am thinking of how Maudie Fowler one day could not trouble herself to clean out her front room, because there was so much junk in it, and then she left it and left it; going in sometimes, thinking, well, it’s not so bad. Meanwhile she was keeping the back room and the kitchen spotless. Even now she does her own chimney once a week, and then scrubs the grate, brushes up the dust and cinders – though less and less thoroughly. She wasn’t feeling well, and didn’t bother, once, twice – and then her room was not really cleaned, only the floor in the middle of the room sometimes, and she learned not to look around the edges or under the bed. Her kitchen was last. She scrubbed it and washed shelves, but then things began to slide. But through it all she washed herself, standing at the kitchen table, heating water in the kettles. And she kept her hair clean. She went sometimes to the public bath-houses, for she had told me she liked going there. Then she left longer and longer between washing her hair … and then she did not wash her clothes, only took out the cleanest ones there were, putting them back grubby, till they were the cleanest; and so it went on. And at last, she was upright in her thick shell of black, her knickers not entirely clean, but not so bad, her neck dirty, but she did not think about it, her scalp unwashed. When they took her to hospital, they washed her all over and washed her hair too. She sometimes thought humorously, when they cart me off back to hospital, I’ll get another proper wash! But she, Maudie Fowler, was still there, alert, very much all there, on guard inside that old witch’s appearance. She is still there, and everything has collapsed around her, it’s too difficult, too much.

And I, Janna, am sitting here, in my clean, scented dressing gown, just out of my bath. I should do my nails again, though. I should clean my flat, or ask someone in to clean it. I was in my bath for only a few minutes tonight.

By this time next year my whole life will have changed. I know it, though I don’t know how.

I shall go down and visit Georgie next weekend. If I dare leave Maudie. It is ridiculous. Where is that one person?

Friday.

I went in on my way to work. She was better. Had been out to shop for herself. She looked quite nice and fresh – so I see her now, I no longer see the old witch. I said I was going to visit my sister Georgie. She laughed at the name. She said, ‘One of these days I’ll visit my sister, I expect.’ I already knew what that meant, and I said, ‘I’ll take you, Maudie.’ ‘Janna and Georgie,’ she said. ‘My sister and I, we were Maudie and Polly, and when we went out dressed up in our white coats and little hats, we were a picture.’ I said, ‘Georgie and I were a picture too, I expect. I remember pink dresses and berets. I’ll see you Sunday night when I come back.’ ‘If you have the time,’ she said. I noted that I could have given her a nice sharp slap, but laughed and said, ‘I’ll see you.’

Sunday Night.

The train was very late. Did not go in to Maudie. Now it is midnight. I have done the usual Sunday-night things, seeing my clothes are ready for the week, hair, make-up, nails.

Well, it has been a painful weekend. When I got there Georgie was alone, because Tom and the children had gone off on some visit. Was very pleased, can’t stand those brats of hers. Tom is all right, but a married couple is a married couple. I wanted to talk to Georgie. My thought was, specifically: now I am grown up, perhaps she will take me seriously? For years I used to go down, when I did go down, rather princessing it. Good old Georgie and good old Tom. She has never bothered about her clothes and things much. I used to wear my most outrageous clothes and take copies of the mag and enjoyed telling her about my life and times. She listened in her way of no-comment. Clever little sister Janna. Correction, Jane. She wasn’t going to call me Janna, Jane it was and Jane it will be, to the end. How many times I have said to her, Georgie, no one calls me Jane, no one, I want to be Janna. I can’t remember to, says she, making a point, and that’s that. She thinks Janna is a smart little name to go with a smart little job. I used to sit through those weekends, when I did go, wondering how she stuck it, but of course she was thinking the same of me. It is not that she despises me, exactly, though she certainly thinks what I do pretty peripheral, it is that she cannot imagine any sane person doing it.

When I went into the house I was very alert to everything, the way I am at the moment – contrasts. Because of Maudie Fowler. Georgie’s house is exactly the house my parents lived in always. I call it country-suburban, comfortable, conventional, conservative, all of a piece from the landscapes on the walls to the books on the bed table. My flat is, Freddie’s and mine was, both international-contemporary. On the rare occasions Georgie has stayed a night, she has made a point of saying she has enjoyed my things. They are such fun, says she.

Georgie had a cold supper for us and seemed at a loss what to do after it. We were in her living room, curtains drawn, some snow outside, not enough for my taste but more than she wanted. She says it makes work. She works hard, Georgie does, the house, the cooking, looks after husband, four children, chairwoman of this, patron of that, secretary of the local reading circle, good works. I sat one side of the fire, she on the other. I tried to talk about Mother. I need to know about her. I never talked to her, a bit more to Father. But Georgie has put me into the category of the irresponsible one who doesn’t care about family. And that’s that. I kept giving her openings, even asked once, I wonder what Mother would have thought?

At last I talked about my trip to Munich. She liked that. Your glamorous goings-on, she calls all that. She wanted to know how the hotel was, my friends, how the fashion shows are organized, how this is done and that is done. I recognize myself in all this. Not a word about the styles and the fashions, but how it all works. So we are like each other after all. Suddenly, when I was in bed, I had a thought that made me sit up again and turn on the light. It was this. Before Granny died, she was ill for about two or three years, can’t remember (which is a point in itself), and she was at home with Mother, who was looking after her. I was working like a demon then, it was the first rebirth of the mag, and I simply behaved as if Granny being ill had nothing to do with me. Not my affair! I can remember switching off from the moment I heard the news. But Mother had her at home there, and Father wasn’t too well either. Granny had diabetes, heart trouble, bad eyes with operations for cataract, kidney trouble. I used to hear news of all this, relayed in Mother’s brisk letters: and I haven’t kept the letters, and I remember not wanting to read them. Now I know what it costs, looking after the very old, the helpless. I find myself exhausted after an hour or two, and want only to run away somewhere out of it. But where did Mother run to? Who helped her? Not me! Not once, I never went near her.

Sunday morning, Georgie and I had breakfast alone together. Some snow outside. Pretty. Trees and bushes full of snow and birds feeding off stuff Georgie hangs in the branches. She said Tom was coming back with the kids, because the weather was frightful where they were. I said to her, quite desperate because I knew once they had got back, that was that, ‘Georgie, were you around much when Granny was dying?’

She gave me a surprised look at this. She said, ‘No, I didn’t get home much. I was pregnant twice while that was going on, and Kate was a baby.’ She was now looking at me in an impatient sort of way.

‘I want to know about it,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking that I did nothing to help.’

She said finally, ‘No, you didn’t,’ and she wouldn’t have said another word. I had to digest that she and Tom had attitudes about me, my behaviour, that were established and set, Jane was this and that and the other; and probably these were Mother’s attitudes too, and Father’s.

I said, ‘It has only recently occurred to me that I never lifted a finger all the time Granny was dying.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ she said, in the same shutting-you-out way.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘recently I’ve had a little to do with an old person, and I know now what Mother had to cope with.’

‘I suppose better late than never,’ said Sister Georgie.

This was much worse than I had expected. I mean, what she thought of me was so much worse that I was burning with – no, alas, not shame, but it was embarrassment. Not wanting to be so badly thought of. I said to her, ‘Can you tell me anything about it?’

‘Well, what on earth do you want to know?’ She was exasperated. Exactly as if some small child had said to her, she having hit her thumb with a hammer, Does it hurt?

‘Look, Georgie,’ I said, ‘all right, I’ve seen recently that … I could have done more than I did. All right? Do you want me to grovel? It is better late than never. I want to know more about Mother.’

‘She was in your flat for two years before she died,’ said Sister Georgie, making a great amazed incredulous astonishment out of it.

‘Yes, I know. But it was since then that I …’

Georgie said, ‘Look, Jane, I’m sorry but … you just turn up here after all that, and say, I’d like a nice little chat about Mother. Jane, it simply isn’t on,’ she said. She was literally inarticulate with anger. And I, with surprise. I realized that there were years of resentment here, criticism of little sister Jane.

I made a last try. ‘Georgie,’ I said, ‘I am sorry. I am sorry I didn’t help Mother with Granny, and I want very much to discuss it all.’

‘I suppose one of these weekends I’ll get a telephone call, when you’ve got nothing better to do, and you’ll turn up, all fine and fancy free, not a hair out of place, and you’ll say, Oh, Georgie, I was wondering what was it like having Mother here for ten years, with four kids, no help, and she becoming an invalid …’

At which point the telephone rang outside and she went to answer it. I sat there, I was numb. That was the word. Not that I hadn’t felt bad about Mother living with Georgie all that time, for after all I was working, and we did only have a small flat, Freddie and I, and … and … and. But it had never occurred to me that Georgie was not going to talk to me this weekend. If ever. She was too angry. She was, and she is, so angry and bitter about me.

When she came back, she said, ‘I’m going down to the station to get Tom and the kids.’ She said to me, ‘I’m sorry Jane, but if you are beginning to get some sort of sense of responsibility into you at last, it might perhaps occur to you that it isn’t easy to have you just turning up with a light question or two: How about Granny dying? How was it? Did it hurt? It was all awful, Jane. Do you understand? It was dreadful. I went down there when I could, pregnant as hell or with the baby, and found Mother coping. Granny was bedridden at the end. For months. Can you imagine? No, I bet you can’t. Doctors all the time. In and out of hospital. Mother was doing it all. Father couldn’t help much, he was an invalid himself … Anyway, I’ve got to go to the station.’

And off she went.

I nearly ran after her, to ask to be put on a train home, but stuck it out. Tom and the kids filled the house with clatter and clang, the record players went on at once of course, a radio, the house vibrating with din. Tom came in and said. How are you? – and went. The kids banged into the kitchen, where I was, Jilly, Bob, Jasper, Kate. Hi, hi, hi, hi, all round. It is established that I think Georgie’s kids are awful and spoiled brats, but they might be all right when they grow up. I am the glamorous Aunt from London and the High Life. I send them presents of money at Christmas. When we meet I tell them I think they are awful and good for nothing. They tell me it is because I don’t understand them. It is a cheerful game of mutual insult. But I do think they are awful. I cannot understand how they are allowed to do as they like, have what they like, go where they like. I have never heard either Georgie or Tom say once, No, you can’t have that. Never. The whole house is crammed with their possessions, clothes, toys, gear, mostly unused or used once or twice. I keep thinking of growing up during the war and having nothing. And recently I have been thinking about the Third World having nothing. Of course, Georgie would say It is trendy to have such thoughts, but, as she would say, Better late than never.

Anyway, I sat in the kitchen and listened to the sheer din of those kids all over the house, and Georgie came back and I could see she was ready to talk, if I wanted, but suddenly I found myself saying, ‘Georgie, you are ready enough with criticism of me, but look at those children of yours.’

‘Yes, I know what you think,’ she said, her back turned to me. And I knew at once that this was a sore point.

‘Tell me,’ I said to her, ‘when have they ever done anything they didn’t want to do? Have you and Tom ever tried to teach them that the world isn’t a celestial milk bar with milk shakes and cream topping for ever there at the touch of a button?’

‘You may well be right. I’m not saying you are not,’ said she, making it humorous, ‘and now I have to get the lunch. If you want to help, stay, and if not, go and talk to Tom.’

I took her at her word, went to find Tom, but he did not want to talk to me, being busy at something. I found the decibel level in the house intolerable, pulled on my big boots and went for a walk in the snow, came back for lunch. As usual, the parents were like appendages to the scene of the four children, who did not let them finish a conversation if they had the temerity to start one, or talked across them at each other, and behaved exactly as if Georgie and Tom were useful servants they could treat as they liked.

How has it come about that this is what families are like now? In the living room, afternoon, this was the scene. Jilly, seventeen, nagging because she had wanted to visit a friend and couldn’t for some reason, so she was sulking and making the whole family pay for it. Bob, sixteen, an over-fat good-looking boy, practising the guitar as if no one else existed. Jasper, fifteen, whining and nagging at his father to go with him to some local football match. Kate, thirteen, cheeks flaming, hair wild, tarting around the room in one of Georgie’s dresses, in a sort of locked hysteria, the way teenage girls get. This was for my benefit, because she wants to come to London and ‘be a model’. Poor girl! Tom was sitting in a corner trying to read, and answering questions from his offspring in an abstracted irritable voice, and Georgie was waiting on all of them, in perfect good humour and patience; shouting to make herself heard from time to time, Yes, all right, Kate. Yes, Jilly, I’ll do it tomorrow. Yes, Jasper, it’s under the spare-room bed. And so on.

I said at last, ‘Well, this wicked Aunt is about to leave. No, don’t bother, I shall go to the station by myself.’

With what relief did I turn my back on this scene of happy contemporary family life and went out to the front door, followed by Georgie.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘don’t say it, I don’t understand what children are, and I am not entitled to say a word, because of my selfish childishness, but all I can say is …’

‘And you are probably right,’ she said, in exactly the same humorous self-denying voice she uses for the children.

I walked through the already slushy snow to the station, waited a little. I like stations, the anonymity, the freedom of being alone in a crowd. I like being alone. Period.

And here I am alone. I should go to Maudie.

I should, very soon, think all this out.

But what I do know is this. When people die, what we regret is, not having talked to them enough. I didn’t talk to Granny, I don’t know what she was like. I can hardly remember Grandpa. Ditto Mother. I don’t know what she thought about anything, except that I am selfish and silly. (Which is what I think about Georgie’s brats.) What did she think about Tom? Georgina? The grandchildren? What did it mean to her, having to nurse Granny, and her own husband, for – I am afraid it was probably four years. What was she like when she was young? I don’t know. I shall never know now. And of course, there is Freddie: I lie awake sometimes, and what I want is, not that he should be there to make love to me, though I miss that dreadfully, I want to talk to him. Why didn’t I talk to him while he was there?

I didn’t want to, that is the answer. I didn’t want to know.

Monday Night.

I woke this morning in a panic, heart pounding, eyes prickling, mouth dry. I said to myself, a bad dream, that’s all; but it stayed. On the way to work, I realized it was because of Joyce probably going to the States. Apart from missing her, everything at work will change. I shall be offered the editorship, but that isn’t the point.

As I walked through the secretaries’ room, Phyllis looked sharply at me, then came after me and asked, Are you all right? Full marks for noticing. I knew of course that she knew I am anxious about Joyce leaving. But when I sat in a heap at my table, and Phyllis brought me black coffee and said if I liked she would do the photographers’ session, I saw that she had thought it all out. She took a heap of files from my table, and I saw her look, long and cool, at Joyce’s table, Joyce’s place, and she was thinking, that will be mine.

And why not?

Because she isn’t Joyce. I mean, specifically, that she is thirty years old, a hard, clever, noticing girl, but that she isn’t – cooked. I know perfectly well I don’t like her because she makes me think of how I was. But there’s more than that. I ask myself, trying to be fair, never mind about what you need, has she got what Lilith needs?

I sat there in that office of ours, Joyce’s and mine, and decided not to think about Phyllis, I can’t cope with that yet. I was thinking about Joyce: what was it I had not seen in her that only a month ago I would have taken it for granted that she wouldn’t go to America! But I’ve been judging her marriage by mine. Of course, she has children; but no, that isn’t it. He’s a nice enough man. I don’t know him. Have never talked to him: we have a joking relationship.

I was wanting Joyce to come in early, but it was nearly lunchtime. She looked dreadful, ill, unkempt. She sat down, got up again to fetch herself coffee, came back with it, sat in a sprawl, lit cigarettes and let them go out, messed with her work, watered the plants on her windowsill, did everything but let herself look at me.

Then she buzzed, in came Phyllis, Joyce said, ‘I’m not happy about Wine, I’ve made the notes, please go and see our wine expert, what’s-his-name. What is his name – and his address, where is it?’

‘Don’t worry,’ says Phyllis, ‘I know where it is.’

She takes Joyce’s notes, smiles nicely, and out she goes.

And now Joyce allows me a brief smile, a grimace really, and actually looks at me. We laugh.

We look together at Phyllis, through the door into the filing room. We are taking in her clothes, her hair, her make-up, her shoes. Habit. Then Joyce loses interest in her, goes back into her thoughts.

Phyllis hasn’t got a style yet. Not as Joyce and I have. I sat there wondering if I could help Phyllis to a style, as Joyce helped me. It is only now as I sit writing this, I think how odd that I was analysing Phyllis and how she could look, when I was wild with misery about Joyce, wanting to say, For God’s sake, talk. I knew she had made up her mind to leave, and she felt bad about me: I needed for us to talk.

Joyce is the only person I have talked to in my life. And yet for the most part we talk in smiles, silences, signals, music without words, ’nuff said.

At last I couldn’t stand it, and said, ‘Joyce, I want to know why, you must see that.’

She was half turned from me, her cheek on her hand. She made a leave-me-alone irritable gesture.

I sit here, one in the morning, writing it down. My mind is so clear and sharp, whirling with thoughts. I’ve just had a new thought, it is this: writing is my trade, I write all the time, notes to myself, memos, articles, and everything is to present ideas, etc., if not to myself, then to others. I do not let thoughts fly away, I note them down, I present them, I postulate the outside eye. And that is what I am doing now. I see that as I write this diary, I have in mind that observing eye. Does that mean I really intend to publish this? It certainly wasn’t in my mind when I began writing it. It’s a funny thing, this need to write things down, as if they have no existence until they are recorded. Presented. When I listen to Maudie talk, I have this feeling, quick, catch it, don’t let it all vanish, record it. As if it is not valid until in print.

Oh, my thoughts are whirling through me, catch them …

I was sitting there with Joyce, both of us cold and sick, miserable, and I was examining us both, out of habit, as I had Phyllis. Two women editors, first-class women’s magazine (read by a lot of men), late nineteen-seventies going on to the eighties.

When I read diaries from the past, what fascinates me is what they wore, what they ate, all the details. It isn’t difficult to work out what people were likely to be thinking – not so different from us, I believe – but how did a woman make up her bed, or lay her table, or wash her underclothes; what did she have for breakfast, in 1780, in a middle-class household, in a provincial English town? What was a day in the life of a farmer’s wife, north of England, on the date Waterloo was fought?

When Joyce came to work here she made us all conscious we were tatty! The mid-sixties – tat! And yet her style was, as she said, high-class gipsy, which looks messy easily. She is tall, thin, with a mass of black curls and waves, careful disorder, and a thin pale face. Or that is how her face looks, emerging from all that hair. Black eyes that are really small, but made up huge and dramatic. Her clothes cost the earth. Today she wore a black and rust striped skirt and waistcoat and a black silk sweater and her thick silver chain with amber lumps. Her jewellery is very good, never any oriental semi-rubbish of the kind I can afford to wear, because of my style. She is beautiful: but it is a young woman’s style. She has kept her hair black. Soon she will have to change her style, to fit being not young.

I was still in mini-dresses, beads and gauds and frips, when Joyce took me in hand. Ever since, my style has been classical-expensive. I wear silk shirts and silk stockings, not nylon, and dresses that look at first glance as if I am not trying. I found a real dressmaker, who cares about every stitch, and I look for special buttons in markets, and handmade lace, and I get jerseys and jackets knitted for me. My style is that at first people don’t notice, and then their eyes come back and they examine detail, detail, the stitching on a collar, a row of pearl buttons. I am not thin, but solid. My hair is straight, and always perfect, a silvery gold. Grey eyes, large by nature and made larger.

We couldn’t be more different, Joyce and I, except in the trouble we take. But Joyce takes less than me because of her family.

Phyllis is a slight, strong girl, attractive. Fairish. She is always in the new fashion, and therefore there’s nothing to remark. I’ve seen her watching Joyce and, rightly, discarding that style for herself. I’ve seen her observing me: how does she do it? I’ll show her if she asks, take her to the dressmaker and the knitting woman, choose her hairdresser … that is what I was thinking as I sat there with Joyce, in all that misery: I was mentally abdicating, and expressing it through clothes, through a style!

Yet I have no conscious intention of giving up.

At lunchtime we drank coffee and smoked. Then she said, ‘I must go home,’ and I cried out, ‘Joyce!’ She said, ‘Don’t you see, I can’t do it, I can’t!’ And I said, ‘Joyce, you cannot just go off home like that, I have to know.’

She sighed, and sat down, made herself come together, and actually looked at me.

‘Know?’

‘Understand. I don’t understand how you can give all this up … what for?’

She said, ‘Have you had the experience, suddenly finding out that you didn’t know yourself?’

‘Indeed I have!’

‘I thought I would agree to a divorce easily.’

‘Has he got a girl?’

‘Yes, the same one, you know. He would take her instead of me.’

‘All this time he has really been married to the two of you, then?’

‘It amounts to that. He said to me at one stage, You have your job, I’m going to have Felicity.’

I was sitting there being careful, because I didn’t want her to fly off home, and I knew she could easily do that.

I was thinking what I call women’s lib thoughts. He has a job as a matter of course, but when she does, he has to bolster himself up with a girl on the side. But I have got so bored with these thoughts, they aren’t the point; they never were the point, not for me, not for Joyce. Phyllis is into women’s lib, consciousness-raising, and she makes it clear that Joyce and I are unliberated. Joyce and I have discussed this, but not often – because it isn’t the point! Once Joyce said to Phyllis, curious rather than combative, Phyllis, I hold down a very good, well-paid job. I have a husband and two children and I run my home and my family. Would you not say I am a liberated woman, then? Isn’t that enough? And Phyllis smiled the smile of one who knows better and allowed: A step in the right direction. And afterwards Joyce and I laughed. We had one of those sudden fits of laughing, music without words, that are among the best things in this friendship of ours.

‘If you don’t go to the States, he’ll take Felicity?’

‘He will marry her.’

‘Is that what you mind?’

She shook her head. Again she was not looking at me. I was confused, didn’t know what it was she feared, in facing me. At last she said, ‘You are such a self-sufficient one.’

This was the last thing I expected – the child-wife, child-daughter – and I said, ‘I, self-sufficient?’

And she just shook her head, oh, it’s all too much for me, and crouched holding on to the desk with both hands, looking in front of her, cigarette hanging from her lips. I saw her as an old crone, Mrs Fowler: fine sharp little face, nose and chin almost meeting. She looked ancient. Then she sighed again, pulled herself out, turned to me.

‘I can’t face being alone,’ she said, flat. ‘And that’s all there is to it.’

If I say my mind was in a whirl, that is how it was.

I wanted to say, But, Joyce – my husband died, it seems now overnight – what is it you are counting on? I could have said, Joyce, if you throw up this work and go with him, you might find yourself with nothing. I could have said … and I said nothing, because I was crying with a sort of amazed anger, at the impossibility of it, and worse than that, for I was thinking that I had not known Joyce at all! I would not have believed that she could say that, think it. More: I knew that I could not say to Joyce, Your attitude to death is stupid, wrong, you are like a child! It’s not like that, what are you afraid of? Being alone – what’s that!

For I had discovered that I had made a long journey away from Joyce, and in a short time. My husband had died, my mother had died: I had believed that I had not taken in these events, had armoured myself. And yet something had changed in me, quite profoundly. And there was Maudie Fowler, too.

It seemed to me, as I sat there, crying and trying to stop, biting on my (best-quality linen monogrammed) handkerchief, that Joyce was a child. Yes, she was a child, after all, and I could say nothing to her of what I had learned and of what I now was. That was why I was crying.

‘Don’t,’ said Joyce. ‘I didn’t mean to – open old wounds.’

‘You haven’t. That’s not it.’ But that was as near as I could come to talking. I mean by that, saying what was in my mind. For then we did talk, in a sensible dry sort of way, about all kinds of things, and it is not that I don’t value that. For we had not, or not for a long time, talked in this way. The way women communicate – in becks and nods and hints and smiles – it is very good, it is pleasurable and enjoyable and one of the best things I’ve had. But when the chips are down, I couldn’t say to Joyce why I had to cry.

She said, ‘You are different from me. I’ve been watching you and I can see that. But if he goes to the States, I’ll be alone. I’ll not marry again, I know that. And anyway, if you have been married to a man, you can’t just throw him aside and take up another – they can do that …’

‘Or think they can.’

‘Yes, or think they can, without penalties, I mean. And so I don’t see myself marrying someone else. The kids, they don’t want to go to the States, but if he went and I stayed, they’d commute and I know that pretty soon they’d be there rather than here, more opportunities, probably better for the young. I’d be alone. I don’t know how to be alone, Jan.’

And I could not say to her, Joyce, your husband is fifty-five, he’s a workaholic …

‘You are prepared to be a faculty wife?’