Doris Lessing - The Diaries of Jane Somers

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.

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.