Doris Lessing - The Diaries of Jane Somers

She ought to have a wash … she ought … she ought … but Janna will come, Janna will …

But Maudie sits there, waiting, and Janna does not come, and Maudie gets up to let out the insistent cat, and Maudie fetches the coal, and Maudie attends to the fire, and Maudie searches about to see if there is a little brandy, for suddenly she feels bad, she feels trembly, she could fall to the ground and lie there, she is so empty and tired … No brandy. Nothing.

She can go out to the off-licence? No, no, she could not possibly get herself up the steps. Janna has not come and it is getting dark. That means it must be getting on for ten. Janna is not coming … and there is no milk, no tea, no food for poor petty, nothing.

And Maudie sits by her roaring furious fire thinking bitterly of Janna, who does not care, wicked unkind cruel Janna … In the middle of all this, loud knocks at the door, and Maudie’s relief explodes into a raucous shout: Oh, all right, I’m coming. And scrambles along the passage, crabwise, to the door, afraid Janna might fly off before she gets there. Terrible, terrible, she mutters, and her face, as she opens the door, is fierce and accusing.

‘Oh my God, Maudie,’ cries Janna, ‘let me in, I’m dead. What a day.’

Oh then, if she’s tired I can’t ask her … thinks Maudie, and stands aside as Janna comes crashing in, all energy and smiles.

In the room, Maudie sees Janna smile as she sees the wonderful fire, and sees, too, a wrinkling of her nose, which is at once suppressed.

Janna says, ‘I said to the Indian man, Don’t close, because he was closing, wait, I must get Mrs Fowler some things.’

‘Oh, I don’t need anything,’ says Maudie, at once reacting to the news that she has to be beholden to the Indian man, with whom she quarrels nearly every time she goes in … he overcharges, he is cheating her over her change …

Janna, thank goodness, has taken no notice, but is whirling around in the kitchen, to see what is missing, and out she rushes with a basket, before poor Maudie can remember the batteries. In such a hurry, she always is! And they are all like that, rushing in, rushing out, before I have time to turn myself round.

In no time Janna comes crashing back, slam the outside door, slam-bang this door, with a basket full of stuff which Maudie checks, with such relief and thankfulness. Everything is here, nice fresh fish for the cat and a tin of Ovaltine. Janna has thought of everything.

Has she noticed the cat mess, the unwashed stuff in the sink … ?

Maudie goes quietly to sit by the fire, on a smile from Janna which says, It is all right. Janna cleans up the cat mess, does the washing-up, puts away the crockery, and does not think, because she is young and so healthy, to leave out on the kitchen table some saucers and a spoon and the tin opener so that Maudie won’t have to bend and peer and rummage about.

Maudie sits listening to Janna working away, looking after me – and thinks, oh, if she doesn’t remember about the commode …

But when Janna comes in, she brings a small bottle of brandy and two glasses, and, having handed Maudie her brandy, she says, ‘I’ll just …’ and whisks out the dirty pot and takes it away.

I hope there is nothing left in it for her to notice, Maudie worries, but when Janna brings back the scoured pot, smelling nicely of pine forests, she says nothing.

Janna lets herself crash down into the chair near the fire, smiles at Maudie, picks up her glass of brandy, swallows it in a mouthful, says: ‘Oh, Maudie, what a day, let me tell you …’ And she sighs, yawns – and is asleep. Maudie sees it, can’t believe it, knows it is so, and is in a rage, in a fury. For she has been waiting to talk, to listen, to have a friend and some ordinary decent communication, perhaps a cup of tea in a minute, never mind about her bowels, and her bladder … And here is Janna, fast asleep.

It is so dark outside. Maudie pulls the curtains over. Maudie goes out to the back door and sees that all the dirty saucers are gone from under the table, and the cat mess gone, and there is a smell of disinfectant. She lets in the cat, and takes the opportunity for a quick visit to the lavatory. She comes back, and pokes up the fire, and sits down opposite Janna, who is sleeping like … the dead.

Maudie has not had this opportunity before, of being able to stare and look and examine openly, to pore over the evidence, and she sits leaning forward, looking as long as she needs into the face of Janna, which is so nicely available there.

It’s an agreeable face, thinks Maudie, but there’s something … Well, of course, she’s young, that’s the trouble, she doesn’t understand yet. But look at her neck there, folded up, you can see the age there, and her hands, for all they are so clean and painted, they aren’t young hands.

Her clothes, oh her lovely clothes, look at that silk there, peeping out, that’s real silk, oh I know what it’s worth, what it is. And her pretty shoes … No rubbish on her, ever. And she didn’t get any change out of what she paid for that hat of hers! Look at it, she flings it down on the bed, that lovely hat, the cat is nearly on top of it.

Look at those little white quills there … the Rolovskys used to say that they never had anyone to touch me for making those little quills. I could do them now, it is all here still, the skill of it in my fingers … I wonder if …

Maudie carefully gets up, goes to the bed, picks up the lovely hat, goes back to her chair with it. She looks at the satin that lines the hat, the way the lining is stitched in – blown in, rather; oh yes, the one who did this hat knew her work all right! And the little white quills …

Maudie dozes off, and wakes. It is because the fridge upstairs is rumbling and crashing. But almost at once it stops – that means it has been on for a long time, because it runs for an hour or more. Janna is still asleep. She hasn’t moved. She is breathing so lightly that Maudie is afraid, and peers to make sure …

Janna is smiling in her sleep? Or is it the way she is lying? Oh, she’s going to have a stiff neck all right … is she going to stay here all night then? Well, what am I expected to do? Sit up here while the night goes? That’s just like them, they think of nobody but themselves, they don’t think of me …

Rage boils in Maudie Fowler, as she sits caressing the lovely hat, looking at sleeping Janna.

Maudie sees Janna’s eyes are open. She thinks, oh my Gawd , has she died? No, she is blinking. She hasn’t moved anything else, but she is lying there in the chair, eyes open, looking past Maudie at the window that has hours ago shut out the wet and blowy night with old greasy yellow curtains.

Maudie thinks, she is taking a long time to come to herself, surely? And then Janna’s eyes move to her face, Maudie’s: Janna looks, suddenly, terrified, as if she will get up and run – and for a moment all her limbs gather together in a spring, as if she will be off. And then the horrible moment is past, and Janna says, ‘Oh, Maudie, I have been asleep, why didn’t you wake me?’

‘I have been looking at this gorgeous hat,’ says Maudie, stroking it delicately with her thick clumsy fingers.

Janna laughs.

Maudie says, ‘You could stay the night next door, if you like.’

Janna says, ‘But I have to be home to let in a man to do the electricity.’

Maudie knows this is a lie, but does not care.

She thinks, Janna has been asleep here half the night, as if this is her place!

She says, ‘I have been thinking, this is the best time of my life.’

Janna sits straight up in her chair, because, being young, her limbs don’t stiffen up, and she leans forward and looks into Maudie’s face, serious, even shocked.