Doris Lessing - The Diaries of Jane Somers

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.