Doris Lessing - The Diaries of Jane Somers

She was looking at me curiously. She did not like to ask questions, because something about me at the moment warns her off. But she did say, ‘Where did you hear about these clothes?’ while I was describing the pink silk afternoon dress of a female bar owner before the First World War – who, according to Mrs Fowler, poisoned her lover’s wife and tried to poison her lover’s daughter. And the plum-coloured satin peignoir with black ostrich feathers.

‘Oh, I have a secret life,’ I said to her, and she said, ‘So it seems,’ in a careless, absent way that I am beginning to recognize.

I went back to Maudie last night. I said to her, ‘Can I call you Maudie?’ But she didn’t like that. She hates familiarity, disrespect. So I slid away from it. When I left I said, ‘Then at least call me Janna, please.’ So now she will call me Janna, but it must be Mrs Fowler, showing respect.

I asked her to describe to me all those old clothes, for the magazine: I said we would pay for her expertise. But this was a mistake, she cried out, really shocked and hurt, ‘Oh no, how can you … I love thinking about those old days.’

And so that slid away too. How many mistakes I do make, trying to do the right thing.

Nearly all my first impulses are quite wrong, like being ashamed of my bathroom, and of the mag.

I spent an hour last night describing my bathroom to her in the tiniest detail, while she sat smiling, delighted, asking questions. She is not envious. No. But sometimes there is a dark angry look, and I know I’ll hear more, obliquely, later.

She talked more about that house in St John’s Wood. I can see it! The heavy dark furniture, the comfort, the good food and the drink.

Her father owned a little house where ‘they’ wanted to put the Paddington railway line. Or something to do with it. And he got a fortune for it. Her father had had a corner shop in Bell Street, and sold hardware and kept free coal and bread for the poor people, and in the cold weather there was a cauldron of soup for the poor. ‘I used to love standing there, so proud of him, helping those poor people …’ And then came the good luck, and all at once, the big house and warmth and her father going out nearly every night, for he loved going where the toffs were, he went to supper and the theatre, and the music hall and there he met her , and Maudie’s mother broke her heart, and was poisoned.

Maudie says that she had a lovely childhood, she couldn’t wish a better to anyone, not the Queen herself. She keeps talking of a swing in a garden under apple trees, and long uncut grass. ‘I used to sit and swing myself, for hours at a time, and swing, and swing, and I sang all the songs I knew, and then poor Mother came out and called to me, and I ran in to her and she gave me fruit cake and milk and kissed me, and I ran back to the swing. Or she would dress me and my sister Polly up and we went out into the street. We had a penny and we bought a leaf of chocolate each. And I used to lick it up crumb by crumb, and I hoped I wouldn’t run into anyone so I must share it. But my sister always ate hers all at once, and then nagged at me to get some of mine.’

‘How old were you, on the swing, Mrs Fowler?’

‘Oh, I must have been five, six …’

None of it adds up. There couldn’t, surely, have been a deep grassy garden behind the hardware in Bell Street? And in St John’s Wood she would have been too old for swings and playing by herself in the grasses while the birds sang? And when her father went off to his smart suppers and the theatre, when was that? I ask, but she doesn’t like to have a progression made, her mind has bright pictures in it that she has painted for herself and has been dwelling on for all those decades.

In what house was it her father came in and said to her mother, ‘You whey-faced slop, don’t you ever do anything but snivel?’ And hit her. But never did it again, because Maudie ran at him and beat him across the legs until he began to laugh and held her up in the air, and said to his wife, ‘If you had some of her fire, you’d be something,’ and went off to his fancy-woman. And then Maudie would be sent up by her mother with a jug to the pub, to stand in the middle of the public asking for draught Guinness. ‘Yes, I had to stand there for everyone to see, so that she would be ashamed. But she wasn’t ashamed, not she, she would have me over the bar counter and into her own little back room, which was so hot our faces were beef. That was before she poisoned my mother and began to hate me, out of remorse.’

All that I have written up to now was a recapitulation, summing-up. Now I am going to write day by day, if I can. Today was Saturday, I did my shopping, and went home to work for a couple of hours, and then dropped in to Mrs F. No answer when I knocked, and I went back up her old steps to the street and saw her creeping along, pushing her shopping basket. Saw her as I did the first day: an old crooked witch. Quite terrifying, nose and chin nearly meeting, heavy grey brows, straggly bits of white hair under the black splodge of hat. She was breathing heavily as she came up to me. She gave her impatient shake of the head when I said hello, and went down the steps without speaking to me. Opened the door, still without speaking, went in. I nearly walked away. But followed her, and without being asked took myself into the room where the fire was. She came in after a long time, perhaps half an hour, while I heard her potter about. Her old yellow cat came and sat near my feet. She brought in a tray with her brown teapot and biscuits, quite nice and smiling. And she pulled the dirty curtains over, and put on the light and put the coal on the fire. No coal left in the bucket. I took the bucket from her and went along the passage to the coal cellar. A dark that had no light in it. A smell of cat. I scraped coal into the bucket and took it back, and she held out her hand for the bucket without saying thank you.

The trouble with a summing-up afterwards, a recap, is that you leave out the grit and grind of a meeting. I could say, She was cross to begin with, then got her temper back, and we had a nice time drinking tea, and she told me about … But what about all the shifts of liking, anger, irritation – oh, so much anger, in both of us?

I was angry while I stood there on the steps and she went down past me without speaking, and she was angry, probably, thinking, this is getting too much! And sitting in that room, with the cat, I was furious, thinking, well if that is all the thanks I get! And then all the annoyances melting into pleasure with the glow of the fire, and the rain outside. And there are always these bad moments for me, when I actually take up the greasy cup and have to put my lips to it; when I take in whiffs of that sweet sharp smell that comes from her, when I see how she looks at me, sometimes, the boiling up of some old rage … It is an up-and-down of emotion, each meeting.

She told me about a summer holiday.

‘Of course, we could not afford summer holidays, not the way all you girls have them now. Take them for granted, you do! They had put me off work from the millinery. I did not know when they would want me again. I felt tired and run-down, because I wasn’t eating right then, they paid us so bad. I answered an advertisement for a maid in a seaside hotel in Brighton. Select, it said. References needed. I had no references. I had never been in service. My mother would have died to think of it. I wrote a letter and I had a letter back asking me to come, my fares paid. I packed my little bag and I went. I knew it was all right, there was something about her letter. It was a big house, set back a bit from the road. I walked up the front path, thinking, well, I’m not in service here yet! And the housekeeper let me in, a real nice woman she was, and said Mrs Privett would see me at once. Well, let me say this now, she was one of the best people I have known in my life. The kindest. I often think of her. You know, when everything is as bad as it can be, and you think there’s nowhere you can turn, then there’s always that person, that one person … She looked me over, and said, Well, Maudie, you say you have no experience, and I value your honesty. But I want a good class of girl because we have a good class of people. When can you start? Now, I said, and we both laughed, and she said later she had had the same feeling about me, that when I arrived it would be all right. The housekeeper took me up to the top of the house. There was a cook, and a scullery maid, and a boy, and the housekeeper, and the two girls for waiting at the tables, and four housemaids. I was one of the housemaids. We were in one of the attics, two big beds up there, two to a bed. I wasn’t to start till the morning, and so I ran down to the beach, and took off my shoes. There was the lovely sea. I had not seen the sea since my mother died, and I sat on the beach and watched the dark sea moving up and down and I was so happy, so happy … and I ran back through the dark, scared as anything because of the Strangler …’