Doris Lessing - The Diaries of Jane Somers

‘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.