Doris Lessing - The Diaries of Jane Somers

Annie will say, as the helpers go flying in and out, ‘I think of my poor old mum, she had none of this.’

‘What happened to her, then, who looked after her?’

‘She looked after herself.’

‘Did she have her health?’

‘She had shaky hands, she dropped cups and plates a lot. She used to push a chair around as a support when she fell and broke her hip. And we took her in some food and a bit of stout sometimes.’

‘Was she alone then?’

‘She was alone – years. She lived to seventy. I’ve done better than her, haven’t I? By ten years and more!’

I know very well that what I hear from Eliza about her life is not all the truth, probably nothing like it; and I commend her, as I would the writer of a tale well-told. Those long hot summers, with never a cloud! Those outings with her husband! Those picnics in the park! Those Christmases! That group of loving chums, always meeting, never a cross word!

Occasionally there are moments when the veil is lifted, oh only for a moment. She is very condemning, poor Eliza, full of morality, cannot understand how this woman can do that, or that this. She was angry for days over a newspaper story about an elderly woman who left her husband for a young man. It’s filthy, she said, filthy. And, a few moments later, in another voice, a hurrying light dream-voice: If it’d been now I could have left, I could have left him, and been rid of …

I am very much afraid that, yet again, what it was she wanted to be rid of was sex …

Eliza has not had children. She wanted them.

Did she ever go to the doctor and ask?

‘Oh yes, I did, and he said there was nothing wrong with me, I should ask my husband to come.’

‘I suppose he wouldn’t?’

‘Oh, you couldn’t ask him a thing like that, he wouldn’t have heard of it,’ she cried. ‘Oh no, Mr Bates knew his rights, you see …’

Downstairs, Eliza, an example to us all …

Upstairs, the deplorable Annie Reeves.

Vera Rogers and I have lunch, half an hour as we fly past each other.

I say to Vera, ‘What interests me is this: when did Annie make that decision to become as she is now? For we make decisions before we know it.’

‘Oh no, it’s not like that at all. Eliza has always been like that, Annie has always been like that!’

‘What a pessimist. We don’t change, then?’

‘No! Look at Maudie Fowler! She was always like that, I expect. Recently I met a cousin after twenty years – nothing changed, not a syllable or a habit.’

‘Good God, Vera, you’re enough to make one want to jump off a cliff!’

‘I don’t see that at all. No, people are what they are all through them.’

‘Then why are you trying so hard with Annie?’

‘You’ve got me there. I don’t think she’ll change. I’ve seen it before, she’s decided to give up. But let’s try a bit longer, if you don’t mind, and then we’ll know we’ve done our best.’

Our campaign for Annie is everything that is humane and intelligent. There she is, a derelict old woman, without friends, some family somewhere but they find her condition a burden and a scandal and won’t answer her pleas; her memory going, though not for the distant past, only for what she said five minutes ago; all the habits and supports of a lifetime fraying away around her, shifting as she sets a foot down where she expected firm ground to be … and she, sitting in her chair, suddenly surrounded by well-wishing smiling faces who know exactly how to set everything to rights.

Look at Eliza Bates – everyone cries. See how she has so many friends, goes on so many trips, is always out and about … But Annie will not try to walk properly, go out, start a real life again. ‘Perhaps when summer comes,’ she says.

Because of Eliza Bates I have understood how many trips, jaunts, bazaars, parties, meetings Maudie could be enjoying, but does not. I thought it all over. I rang Vera, whose voice at once, when she knew what I was asking, became professionally tactful.

‘What are you saying?’ I asked at last. ‘You mean, there’s no point in Maudie Fowler starting anything new because she’s not likely to stay as well as she is for long?’

‘Well, it is a bit of a miracle, isn’t it? It must be getting on for a year now, she’s holding her own, but …’

I went off to Maudie one Saturday, with some cherry liqueur I brought back from Amsterdam, where I was for the spring show. Like Eliza, Maudie knows, and enjoys, the best. We sat opposite each other drinking, and the room smelled of cherry. Outside drawn curtains a thin spring rain trickled noisily from a broken gutter. She had refused to let the Greek’s workmen in to mend it.

‘Maudie, I want to ask you something without your getting cross with me.’

‘Then I suppose it’s something bad?’

‘I want to know why you didn’t ever go on these trips to country places the Council organizes? Did you ever go on one of their holidays? What about the Lunch Centre? There are all these things …’

She sat shading her little face with a hand grimed with coal dust. She had swept out her chimney that morning. Fire: she tells me she has nightmares about it. ‘I could die in my bed here,’ says she, ‘from smoke, not knowing.’

She said, ‘I’ve kept myself to myself and I see no reason to change.’

‘I can’t help wondering about all the good times you could have had.’

‘Did I tell you about the Christmas party, it was before I met you? The Police have a party. I got up on the stage and did a knees-up. I suppose they didn’t like me showing my petticoats.’

I imagined Maudie, lifting her thick black skirts to show her stained knickers, a bit tipsy, enjoying herself.

‘I don’t think it would be that,’ I said.

‘Then why haven’t they asked me again? Oh, don’t bother, I wouldn’t go now, anyway.’

‘And all these church things. You used to go to church, didn’t you?’

‘I’ve been. I went once to a tea, and then I went again because that Vicar said I wasn’t fair to them. I sat there, drinking my tea in a corner, and all of them, not so much as saying welcome, chatter chatter among themselves, I might as well have not been there.’

‘Do you know Eliza Bates?’

‘Mrs Bates? Yes, I know her.’

‘Well then?’

‘If I know her why do I have to like her? You mean, we are of an age, and that’s a reason for sitting gossiping together. I wouldn’t have liked her young, I’m sure of that, I didn’t like her married, she gave her poor man a hard time of it she did, couldn’t call his home his own, I don’t like what I’ve seen of her since, she’s never her own woman, she’s always with ten or more of them, chitter-chatter, gibble-gabble, so why should I like her now enough to spend my dinners and teatimes with her? I’ve always liked to be with one friend, not a mess of people got together because they’ve got nowhere else to go.’

‘I was only thinking you might have had an easier time of it.’

‘I’m not good enough for Eliza Bates. And I haven’t been these last twenty years. Oh, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have enjoyed a bit of an outing here or there, I sometimes go up to the church when they’ve got a bazaar on, I look out for a scarf or a good pair of boots, but I might not be there at all for all the notice those church women take of me.’

‘Why don’t you come out again to the park? Or I could take you for a trip on the river. Why not, it’s going to be summer soon?’

‘I’m happy as I am, with you coming in to sit with me. I think of that afternoon in the Rose Garden, and that’s enough.’

‘You’re stubborn, Maudie.’

‘I’ll think my own thoughts, thank you!’