Doris Lessing - The Diaries of Jane Somers

That came to an end when Sister Georgie came to see me and said it was my turn for Mother. I felt very sorry for myself again. Now I think she might well have said something before! Husband, four children, small house – and she had had Mother since Daddy died, eight years. I had no children, and with Freddie and I both working there was no shortage of money. Yet there had never been a suggestion Mother should live with us. Or one that I can remember. But I was not the kind of person who looked after a widowed mother. Mother used to say what I spent on my face and my clothes would feed a family. True. It is no good pretending I regret that. It sometimes seems to me now it was the best thing in my life that – going into the office in the morning, knowing how I looked. Everyone took notice, what I was wearing, how. I looked forward to the moment when I opened the door and went through the typing pool and the girls smiled enviously. And then the executive offices, the girls admiring and wishing they had my taste. Well, I’ve that, if nothing else. I used to buy three, four dresses a week. I used to wear them once or twice, then into jumble. My sister took them for her good causes. So they weren’t wasted. Of course that was before Joyce took me in hand and taught me really how to dress – style, not just fashion.

It was when Mother came to live with me I knew I was a widow.

It wasn’t too bad at first. She wasn’t very well but she amused herself. I couldn’t bring a man home if I fancied him, but I secretly was quite glad. I can’t ask you in, you see I have my aged mother, poor Janna!

It was a year after she came she got sick. I said to myself, Now, this time you aren’t going to pretend it isn’t happening. I went with her to the hospital. They told her it was cancer. They talked a long time about what would happen. They were kind and sensible. The doctors could not talk to me about what was happening to my husband, but they could talk straight to my mother about what was happening to her. Because of what she was. It was the first time in my life I wanted to be like her. Before that I had always found her embarrassing, her clothes, her hair. When I was out with her I used to think, no one would believe I could be her daughter, two worlds, heavy suburban respectable – and me. As I sat there beside her and she talked about her forthcoming death with the doctors, so dignified and nice, I felt awful. But I was scared witless, because Uncle Jim died of cancer, and now her – both sides. I thought: will it be my turn next? What I felt was, it isn’t fair.

While Mother was dying I was doing my best, not like Freddie where I simply didn’t want to know. But I couldn’t do it. That is the point. I used to feel sick and panicky all the time. She went to pieces so fast. Went to pieces – that was it. I hate physical awfulness. I can’t stand it. I used to go in, before leaving for work. She was in the kitchen pottering about in her dressing gown. Her face yellow, with a sick glisten on it. The bones showing. At least I didn’t say, Are you feeling a bit better, that’s good! I sat down with her and drank coffee. I said, Can I drop into the chemist’s – because there were so many pills and medicines. And she said, Yes, pick up this or that. But I could not kiss her. Well, we aren’t exactly a physically affectionate family! I can’t remember ever giving my sister a good hug. A peck on the cheek, that’s about it. I wanted to hold Mother and perhaps rock her a little. When it got towards the end and she was being so brave and she was so awfully ill, I thought I should simply take her into my arms and hold her. I couldn’t touch her, not really. Not with kindness. The smell … and they can say it isn’t infectious, but what do they know? Not much. She used to look at me so straight and open. And I could hardly make myself meet her eyes. It wasn’t that her look asked anything. But I was so ashamed of what I was feeling, in a panic for myself. No, I wasn’t awful, as I was with Freddie. But it must have seemed to her that there was nothing much there – I mean, as if I was nothing much. A few minutes in the morning, as I rushed off to the office. I was always latish back, after supper with someone from work, Joyce usually, and by then Mother was in bed. She was not asleep, I wished she was! I went in and sat with her. She was in pain, often. I used to get her medicines ready for her. She liked that, I could see. Support. Of a kind. We talked. Then Sister Georgie took to coming up two or three afternoons in a week and being with her. Well, I couldn’t, I was working; and her children were at school. I used to come in and see them sitting together. I used to feel sick with envy because they were close. Mother and daughter.

Then when Mother went into hospital, Georgie and I took it in turns to visit. Georgie used to have to come up from Oxford. I don’t see how I could have gone more often. Every other day, two or three hours in the hospital. I hated every second. I couldn’t think of anything to say. But Georgie and Mother used to talk all the time. What about! – I used to listen, absolutely incredulous. They would talk about Georgie’s neighbours, Georgie’s neighbours’ children, their husbands, their friends’ friends. They never stopped. It was interesting. Because they were so involved with it all.

When Mother died I was pleased, of course. And so was Georgie. But I knew that it was very different, Georgie saying it, and my saying it. She had a right to say it. Because of what she was. Georgie was with Mother every minute of the day and night for a month before Mother went. I had learned by then not to hate the physical side so much, Mother almost a skeleton with yellow skin over it. But her eyes were the same. She was in pain. She did not pretend she wasn’t. She held Georgie’s hand.

The point was, Georgie’s was the right kind of hand.

Then I was alone in our flat. Once or twice one of the men came home. It wasn’t anything much. I don’t blame them at all, how could I? I had already begun to understand that I had changed. I couldn’t be bothered! How about that! Not that I didn’t need sex. Sometimes I thought I’d go mad. But there was something dreary and repetitive. And the place was full of Freddie. I could see myself becoming a monument to Freddie, having to remember him. What was the use of it? I decided to sell the flat and get something of my own. I thought that out for a long time, months. I saw even then it was a new way of thinking for me. Working on the magazine, I think differently, quick decisions, like being kept on the top of a jet of water. I am good at all that. That was why I was offered the job in the first place. Funny thing, I hadn’t expected it. Other people knew I was going to be offered assistant editor, not me. Partly, I was so involved with my image, how I projected myself. My image first was light-hearted, funny Janna with her crazy clothes, ever so clever and Girl Friday. Then, after Joyce, very expensive and perfect and smart and dependable, the person who had been there longest, with her smart trendy husband off-stage. Not that Freddie would have recognized himself in that. Then, suddenly (so it seemed) a middle-aged woman. Smart. Handsome. It was hard to take. It is still hard.

A handsome, middle-aged widow with a very good job in the magazine world.

Meanwhile I was thinking about how I ought to live. In Freddie’s and my flat I felt I was being blown about like a bit of fluff or a feather. When I went in after work, it was as if I had expected to find some sort of weight or anchor and it wasn’t there. I realized how flimsy I was, how dependent. That was painful, seeing myself as dependent. Not financially, of course, but as a person. Child-daughter, child-wife.