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‘But how can I?’ she says. ‘Look at me!’
And she peers up at the sky past my head. It is so blue and nice, and she says, ‘But … but … but …’
Then suddenly she smiles. She puts on her thick black-beetle coat and her summer hat, black straw, and we go off to the Rose Garden Restaurant. I find her a table out of the way of people, with rose bushes beside her, and I pile a tray with cream cakes, and we sit there all afternoon. She ate and ate, in her slow, consuming way, which says, I’m going to get this inside me while it is here! – and then she sat, she simply sat and looked, and looked. She was smiling and delighted. Oh, the darlings, she kept crooning, the darlings … at the sparrows, at the roses, at a baby in a pram near her. I could see she was beside herself with a fierce, almost angry delight, this hot brightly coloured sunlit world was like a gorgeous present. For she had forgotten it, down in that ghastly basement, in those dreary streets.
I was worried that it would all be too much for her inside that thick black shell, and it was so hot and noisy. But she did not want to leave. She sat there until it closed.
And when I took her home she was singing dreamily to herself, and I took her to her door, and she said, ‘No, leave me, leave me, I want to sit here and think about it. Oh, what lovely things I have to think about.’
What did strike me, when I saw her out there in the full sunlight: how yellow she is. Bright blue eyes in a face that looks as if it has been painted yellow.
Three days later.
Another gorgeous afternoon. Went to Maudie, said, ‘Come to the park.’
She said irritably, ‘No, no, you go, I can’t.’
‘Oh come on,’ I said, ‘you know you like it once you get there.’
She stood holding to the door handle, distressed, angry, dishevelled. Then she said, ‘No, oh dreadful, dreadful, dreadful,’ and shut the door in my face.
I was furious. I had been thinking, as I drove to her, how she sat in the rose garden, crooning with delight. I went back to the office, furious. Worked till late. Did not go in to Maudie. Felt guilty, as I wallowed about with the hot water making me new again: kept seeing how she stood there, holding herself up, heard the mutter, Dreadful, dreadful …
A week has passed, it is dreary and chilly again. End of summer? Maudie seems to me, perhaps, really ill? … I know so little about old people! For all I know, all this is normal! I keep setting aside a time to think about her, but I am so busy, busy, busy. I rush in to her, at all hours, I say to her, I’m sorry, Maudie, I’ve got so much work. Last night I went in late and fell asleep in her chair. This morning I rang up the office and said I was not feeling well. In all my years there I think I’ve been ill twice, and I never take days off.
Phyllis said, ‘That’s all right, I’ll hold the fort!’
Maudie’s day.
She wakes inside a black smothering weight, she can’t breathe, can’t move. They’ve buried me alive, she thinks, and struggles. The weight shifts. Oh, it’s the cat, it’s my pretty, she thinks, and heaves. The weight lifts, and she hears a thud as the cat arrives on the floor. Petty? she asks, for she is not sure, it is so dark and her limbs are so stiff. She hears the cat moving about and knows she is alive. And warm … and in bed … Oh, oh, she says aloud, I must get to the toilet or I’ll wet the bed again. Panic! Have I wet the bed already? Her hand explores the bed. She mutters, Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful, dreadful, thinking how, a few days ago, she had wet the bed, and the trouble and difficulty of getting everything dry.
But it is as if her hand has disappeared, she can’t feel it. She clenches and unclenches her left hand, to know she has hands, and waits for the tingling to begin in her right. It takes a long time, and then she pulls out the half-numb right hand from under the clothes and uses the left to massage it awake. She still does not know if she has wet the bed. Almost she sinks back into the black bed, black sleep, but her bowels are moving and she smells a bad smell. Oh no, no, no, she whimpers, sitting there in the dark. No, dreadful, for she believes she might have shat in the bed. At last, with such effort and trouble, she climbs out of the bed, and stands beside it, feeling in it to see what is there. She can’t be sure. She turns, carefully, tries to find the light switch. She has a torch by the bed, but the batteries ran low, she meant to ask Janna to get new ones, and forgot. She thinks, surely Janna would think to look for herself, she knows how I need the torch! She finds the switch, and there is light … and anxiously she inspects the bed, which is dry. But she has to get to the toilet. She never uses the commode for more than a pee. She must get herself to the outside toilet. But there is a hot wet thrusting in her bowels and she gets herself to the commode, just in time. She sits there, rocking herself, keening. Dreadful, dreadful, for now she will have to take the pot out, and she feels so low and bad.
She sits there a long time, too tired to get up. She even sleeps a little. Her bottom is numb. She pulls herself up, looks for the paper. No lav paper, because she doesn’t use it in here. She cannot find anything to use … At last she struggles to the cupboard, her bottom all wet and loathsome, finds an old petticoat, rips off a piece, uses it to clean herself, and shuts down the lid on the smell – and worse, for while she does allow herself a fearful peep, she refuses to let her mind acknowledge that there is something wrong with her stool. Dreadful, she mutters, meaning the stuff her bowels seem to produce these days, and shoves the curtains back off the windows.
It is light outside. But it is summer, it could be the middle of the night still. She cannot bear to think of the difficulties of getting back into bed, and then out of it again. Her little clock has its face turned away from her, she doesn’t want to cross the room to it. She pulls around herself an old shawl, and huddles in the chair by the dead fire. No birds yet, she thinks: has the dawn chorus been and gone or am I waiting for it? She thinks of how, a child, she lay with her sisters in the bed in the cottage of the old woman in the summers, and woke to the shrill violence of the dawn chorus and slept again, thinking of the lovely hot day ahead, a day that had no end to it, all play and pleasure and plentiful tasty meals.
And so Maudie drifts off to sleep, but wakes, and sleeps and wakes for some hours, each time remembering to move her hands so that they don’t stiffen up too much. At last she wakes to the cat rubbing and purring around her legs. Which are stiff. She tests her hands. The right one gone again. With the left she caresses the cat, Pretty, petty, pretty pet, and with the right she tries to flex and unflex fingers until she is whole again.
Morning … oh, the difficulties of morning, of facing the day … each task such a weight to it … She sits there, thinking, I have to feed the cat, I have to … I have to … At last, she drags herself up, anxious, because her bowels are threatening again, and, holding on to door handles, chair backs, she gets herself into the kitchen. There is a tin of cat food, half empty. She tries to turn it on to a saucer, it won’t come out. It means she has to get a spoon. A long way off, in the sink, are her spoons and forks, she hasn’t washed up for days. She winkles out the cat food with her forefinger, her face wrinkled up – is it smelling perhaps? She lets the saucer fall from a small height on to the floor, for bending forward makes her faint. The cat sniffs at it and walks away, with a small miaow. Maudie sees that under the table are saucers, bone dry and empty. The cat needs milk, she needs water. Slowly, slowly, Maudie gets herself to the sink, pulls out of it a dirty saucer which she has not got the energy to wash, runs water into it. Finds a half bottle of milk. Has it gone off? She sniffs. No. She somehow gets the saucer on to the floor, holding on to the table and nearly falling. The cat drinks all the milk, and Maudie knows she is hungry.
Under the table not only the saucers, one, two, three, four, five, but a cat mess. This reminds Maudie she has to let the cat out. She toils to the door, lets out the cat, and stands with her back to the door, thinking. A general planning a campaign could not use more cleverness than Maudie does, as she outwits her weakness and her terrible tiredness. She is already at the back door: the toilet is five steps away; if she goes now it will save a journey later … Maudie gets herself to the toilet, uses it, remembers there is the commode full of dirt and smell in her room, somehow gets herself along the passage to her room, somehow gets the pot out from under the round top, somehow gets herself and the pot to the toilet. She splashes a bit as she empties it, and, looking, smelling, her mind has to acknowledge that there is something very wrong. But she thinks, as long as she (meaning Janna) does not see what I am making, no one will know. And they won’t put me away …
When all that is done it seems to her that a long time has passed, yet she knows that it is still early, for she cannot hear those noisy Irish brats. She needs a cup of tea very badly, all her energy has gone into the cat.
She stands by her kitchen table, holding on to it, thinking of how she will carry the cup of hot reviving tea next door. But hot tea makes you run, no, better cold milk. She gets the cold milk into the glass. That is the end of the milk. She needs: milk, toilet paper, cat food, matches, tea, and probably a lot else, if she could think of it.
Perhaps Janna will come soon and …
She looks sternly at the cat mess, which seems to her a long way down, measuring it in her mind with the need to stoop, and thinks, Janna will …
She gets herself and the milk next door. Sits down. But she is cold now, summer or not. She sits in that old chair of hers, by the cold grate, and feels the heat leaking out of her. She has to get the fire made. Should she plug in the heater? But it takes so much electricity, she is only just balancing her needs with her pension. She at last struggles up and plugs it in. The room has the warm red glow of the heater, her legs seem to loosen and become themselves. She sits there, sipping her milk, and muttering, Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.
Then she drifts off into a dream that Janna has taken her into her own home and is looking after her. She is fiercely possessive of this dream, and cuddles and cossets it, taking it out and adding to it whenever she sits there by herself, but she knows it will not happen. Cannot happen. But why not? It was impossible that Janna should fly into her life the way she did, who would ever have thought of it? And then how she comes in and out, with her jokes and her flowers and cakes and stuff, all her stories about her office, she is probably making it up, after all, how can she, a poor old woman, know better, if Janna chooses to embellish it all a little? So why, then, should not another impossible thing happen, that she should be taken into a lovely warm flat and there she would be looked after, things done for her …
Or Janna would come and live here. There is that room next door … That is what Maudie really wants. She does not want to leave here. Get yourself your own place and never let go of it: Maudie repeats this whenever she is tempted – as now – to leave here and go and live with Janna. No, no, she mutters, she will have to come here. And she sits there, sometimes dozing, thinking of how Janna is living there, looking after her, and of how, when she wakes in the night, alone and frightened that she is in the grave, she can call out, and hear Janna’s reply.
But soon her bowels force her to get up. Although she emptied the pot she did not wash it out, and it is disgusting to her. So she goes outside to the toilet, letting in the cat, who is waiting and who goes to the saucer with the smelly food in it, and disdains it, and patiently comes into the room with Maudie. Who, now she is up, decides to make a fire. It takes her over an hour, the crawling along the corridor to get the coal, the crawling back, the raking of the ashes, the lighting of the fire. She blows at it in small shallow puffs, because she gets dizzy, so it takes a long time to get going. Then she sits again, longing for a cup of tea, but refusing herself, because above all else she dreads the demands of her bladder, her bowels. She thinks, the Meals on Wheels will be here soon … it is only eleven, though. Perhaps they will be early today? She is hungry, she is so hungry she cannot now distinguish between her hunger pangs and the possibility that she must go again to the toilet. Before the cheerful young Meals on Wheels woman, who has a key, slams in and out, calling, Hello, Mrs Fowler, you all right – she has had to go out to the lavatory again.
It is early. Only half past twelve. Maudie at once takes the two small foil containers to the table and, hardly looking at what is in them, eats everything. She feels much better. She thinks, oh, if Janna would come now, and if she said. Come to the park, I’d not growl and grumble at her, I’d love to go. But she sees out of the window that it is raining. What a summer, she mutters. The cat is on the table sniffing at the empty containers, and Maudie is distressed at her greed, for she knows the cat is hungry and she should have shared.
Out she goes to the cold smelling kitchen and reaches about – yes, oh joy, there is a full unopened tin. So happy is Maudie that she even does a little dance there, clutching the tin to her chest. Oh, petty, petty, she cries, I can feed you. At last the tin is opened, though Maudie cuts her forefinger on the tin opener. The cat eats every bit. Maudie thinks, and now she should go out, to save me letting her out later … but the cat won’t go out, she takes herself back into the room with the fire, sinks to sleep on Maudie’s bed. Which has not been made. Maudie should make up her bed – she thinks, it’s not nice for Janna. She does not, but sits in the chair by the fire, and leans forward to stack it up with coal, and then sleeps like the dead for three hours. Though she does not know what time it is, five in the afternoon, when she wakes, for her clock has stopped.
The cat is still asleep, the fire is out … she builds it up again. She could do with something. She has to have a cup of tea. She makes herself a full pot, brings the biscuits, and has a little feast at her table. She feels so much better for the tea that it is easy to disregard how she has to go out to the toilet once more, twice, three times. Her bowels are like an angry enemy down there, churning and demanding. What’s wrong with you then? she cries, rubbing her hand round and round on the little mound of her belly. Why won’t you leave me alone?
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.
‘Maudie,’ she says, ‘you can’t say that!’
‘But it’s true,’ says Maudie. ‘I mean, I’m not talking about the short joyful days, like carrying my Johnnie, or a picnic here and a picnic there, but now, I know you will always come and we can be together.’
Janna has tears filling up her eyes, and she blinks them back and says, ‘For all that, Maudie …’
‘Will you remember to bring me in some batteries for my torch?’ says Maudie, in the humble but aggressive way she makes requests.
Janna says, ‘I tell you what, I’ll bring in my torch from the car, and you can have that.’
She goes out, in her usual striding way, but then comes back to say, ‘Maudie, it’s morning, the sky is alight.’
The two women stand in Maudie’s entrance and see the grey light in the streets.
Maudie does not like to say that now she will probably lie on her bed, with the curtains drawn, and stay there for some hours. She suspects Janna of intending not to sleep again that night. Well, she’s young, she can do it. She would so much like to have Janna’s torch, because after all Janna might not come in tomorrow – no, today.
But Janna kisses her, laughs, and goes rushing off down the dingy wet pavements. She has forgotten her hat.
Janna’s day.
The alarm makes me sit up in bed. Sometimes I switch it off, sink back, today not: I sit in the already bright morning, five o’clock, and look through the day ahead: I cannot believe that by the time I end it I shall have done so much. I make myself jump out of bed, I make myself coffee, I am at my typewriter ten minutes after I am awake. I should have put in: I emptied my bladder, but I am still ‘young’ and do not count that among the things that have to be done! But today I shall write down the visits to the loo, otherwise how can I compare my day with Maudie’s? The articles I wrote, so tentatively, and without confidence, last year, have become a book. It is nearly finished. I said it would be done by the end of this month. It will be. Because I said it would be. That I do what I say gives me such strength! And then, there is a project no one knows about: a historical novel. It was Maudie gave me the idea. I think of that time as quite recent, my grandmother’s; but Vera Rogers speaks of it as I might speak of, I don’t know, let’s say Waterloo. I plan a historical novel, conceived and written as one, about a milliner in London. I long to begin it.
I work hard until eight. Then I drink coffee and eat an apple, shower, am into my clothes, am off, in half an hour. I like to be there by nine, and I always am. Today, Phyllis was late. No Joyce. I collected mail for the three of us and called the secretary and it was done and out of the way by ten and the Conference. Phyllis most apologetic: she is like me, never late, never away, never ill. The Conference is as usual, lively and wonderful. It was Joyce who said it would be like a Think Tank. Everyone, from the PRs and the photographers’ assistants to Editorial, encouraged to have ideas, no matter how wild, how crazy, because you never know. As usual, Phyllis writes it all down. It was she who volunteered to do it, and both Joyce and I knew, when she did, that she was thinking, it is a key position. Phyllis does not let these ideas disappear, she lists them, she has them duplicated on all our desks through all the departments. An idea that drops out of sight might emerge again a year later. Today somebody revived one, that the ‘uniforms for women’ series should include the types of clothes worn, for instance, by female television announcers or women going out to dinners with their husbands for career reasons. That is, a certain kind of dinner gown, or style, as uniform … that makes my style a uniform! But I knew that! I wear it all the time. Even, said Freddie, in bed. I never wear anything but real silk, fine cotton, lawn, in bed … he used to joke that if I were to wear a nylon nightie, it would be the same for me as if I committed a crime.
Thinking about Freddie in the office, I surprised myself in tears, and was glad that I had said I would interview Martina, and got to Brown’s Hotel just in time. I am never late. She easy to interview, professional, competent, no time wasted, full marks. I got back at twelve thirty, asked Phyllis if she would do the Eminent Women Luncheon. She said firmly no, she could not, I must. I am a stand-in for Joyce, who is the eminent woman, but she is ill, and Phyllis is of course right, was right to look surprised: for it would not be appropriate for Phyllis to do it. Once I would not have made such a slip, but the truth is, my mind is more and more on my two books, the one nearly finished, my lovely historical novel soon to be started.
I look at myself in the washroom. I forgot this morning about the Luncheon, no marks for that, I am slipping! A button hanging on its thread, and my nails were not perfect. I did my nails in the taxi. The Luncheon agreeable, I made a speech on behalf of Joyce.
On the way back from the Luncheon I go into Debenhams and up to the top floor, and there I look for Maudie’s kind of vests, real wool, modest high petticoats, and long close-fitting knickers. I buy ten knickers, and three vests, three petticoats – because she wets her knickers now, and sometimes worse. Rush, rush, rush, but I’m back by three thirty. I phone to make an appointment with the hairdresser, another for the car. Phyllis said she felt awful. She looked it. So apologetic, such a criminal! For God’s sake, go to bed, I said, and swept all her work from her desk to mine. I did the recipes, summer food, I did Young Fashion, went off with the photographers to Kenwood for a session, came back and worked by myself in the office, no one else there, until nine. I love being by myself, no telephones, nothing, only the watchman. He went out for Indian take-away, I asked him to join me, we had a quick supper on the corner of my desk. He’s nice, George, I encouraged him to talk about his problems, won’t go into that, but we can help, he needs a loan.
I was tired by then and suddenly longing for bed. I did some more work, rang Joyce in Wales, heard from her voice that she was better, but she was noncommittal. I don’t give a damn, she said, when I asked if she were going to the States. She is saying, too, I don’t give a damn about you either. This made me think about the condition of not giving a damn. On my desk, in the ‘Too difficult’ basket, an article about stress, how enough stress can cause indifference. It is seen in war, in hard times. Suffer, suffer, emote, emote, and then suddenly, you don’t care. I wanted this published. Joyce said. No, not enough people would recognize it. Irony!
I said good night to George at nine thirty, and got a taxi to where I leave my car, and drove up towards home, thinking, no, no, I can’t go in to Maudie, I simply cannot. When I banged, I was irritable, I was tired, I was thinking, I hope she is in the lavatory and doesn’t hear. But when she opened, I could see by her face … I switched on everything I have, and made myself crash in, all gaiety and liveliness, because I am afraid of her black moods, for once she starts I can’t shift her out of them. That is why I arrived, female Father Christmas, HM the Queen Mum, all radiant, I have to stop her muttering and raging.
When I reach her back room, it is hot and smelly, the smell hits me, but I make myself smile at the fire. I see from her face what is needful, and I go into the kitchen. I was nearly sick. I whirl around the kitchen, because I know the Indian grocer is about to close, and I run across the road, saying, ‘Please, just another minute, I need stuff for Mrs Fowler.’ He is patient and kind, but he is a grey-violet colour from tiredness. Sometimes he is in here from eight until eleven at night. Often by himself. He is educating three sons and two daughters … He asks, ‘How is she?’ I say, ‘I think she isn’t well.’ He says, as always, ‘It is time her people looked after her.’
When I get back, I cut up fish for the cat. It is no good, I cannot make myself appreciate cats, though that makes me an insensitive boor. I clean up the cat’s mess, I get the brandy and glasses. I realize I have forgotten the vests and knickers in the office. Well, tomorrow will do. I take out her commode, because she is not looking at it, with a trembling pride on her face I know only too well by now. As I wash it, I think, here’s something very wrong. I shall have to tell Vera Rogers. I rinse the inside of the commode carefully and use a lot of disinfectant.
When I sit down opposite her, with brandy for her and me, I fully mean to tell her about the Luncheon, with all the famous women, she’d like that, but – that was the last I remember, until I came to myself, out of such a deep sleep I could not find myself when I woke. I was looking at a yellow little witch in a smelly hot cave, by her roaring fire, her yellow shanks showing, for she had no knickers on and her legs were apart, and on her lap she held my hat, and she was using it for some bad purpose … I was terrified, and then suddenly I remembered, I am Jane Somers, I am here, in Maudie’s back room, and I fell asleep.
She did not want me to go. She made an excuse about batteries for her torch. I went to the door into the street, and it was morning. We stood there, looking up – oh, England, dismal and drear, a grey wet dawn. It was four thirty when I got home. I had a long, long proper bath, and then to my book again.
But I cannot concentrate on it. I am thinking about Maudie’s ‘This is the best time of my life’. What I cannot stand is, that I believe she means it. My running in at the end of the day, an hour, two hours, so little, is enough to make her say that. I want to howl when I think of it. And too, I feel so trapped. She might live for years and years, people live to be a hundred these days, and I am a prisoner of her ‘This is the best time of my life’, lovely gracious Janna, running in and out, with smiles and prezzies.
I wrote Maudie’s day because I want to understand. I do understand a lot more about her, but is it true? I can only write what I have experienced myself, heard her say, observed … I sometimes wake with one hand quite numb … But what else is there I cannot know about? I think that just as I could never have imagined she would say, ‘This is the best time of my life’, and the deprivation and loneliness behind it, so I cannot know what is behind her muttered ‘It is dreadful, dreadful’, and the rages that make her blue eyes blaze and glitter.
And I see that I did not write down, in Janna’s day, about going to the loo, a quick pee here, a quick shit, washing one’s hands … All day this animal has to empty itself, you have to brush your hair, wash your hands, bathe. I dash a cup under a tap and rinse out a pair of panties, it all takes a few minutes … But that is because I am ‘young’, only forty-nine.
What makes poor Maudie labour and groan all through her day, the drudge and drag of maintenance. I was going to say, For me it is nothing; but the fact is, once I did have my real proper baths every night, once every Sunday night I maintained and polished my beautiful perfect clothes, maintained and polished me, and now I don’t, I can’t. It is too much for me.
Late summer, how I hate it, blowzy and damp, dowdy and dusty, dull green, dull skies; the sunlight, when there is any, a maggot-breeder; maggots under my dustbin, because I hadn’t touched my own home for days.
Maudie has been ill again. Again I’ve been in, twice a day, before going to work and after work. Twice a day, she has stood by the table, leaning on it, weight on her palms, naked, while I’ve poured water over her till all the shit and smelly urine has gone. The stench. Her body, a cage of bones, yellow, wrinkled, her crotch like a little girl’s, no hair, but long grey hairs in her armpits. I’ve been worn out with it. I said to her, ‘Maudie, they’d send you in a nurse to wash you,’ and she screamed at me, ‘Get out then, I didn’t ask you.’
We were both so tired and overwrought, we’ve been screeching at each other like … what? Out of literature, I say ‘fishwives’, but she’s no fishwife, a prim, respectable old body, or that’s what she’s been in disguise for three decades. I’ve seen a photograph, Maudie at sixty-five, the image of disapproving rectitude … I don’t think I would have liked her then. She had said to herself, I like children, they like me, my sister won’t let me near her now she’s not breeding, she doesn’t need my services. So Maudie put an advert in the Willesden paper, and a widower answered. He had three children, eight, nine, ten. Maudie was given the sofa in the kitchen, and her meals, in return for: cleaning the house, mending his clothes, the children’s clothes, cooking three meals a day and baking, looking after the children. He was a fishmonger. When he came in at lunchtime, if he found Maudie sitting having a rest, he said to her, Haven’t you got anything to do? He gave her two pounds a week to feed them all on, and when I said it was impossible, she said she managed. He brought home the fish for nothing, and you could buy bread and potatoes. No, he wasn’t poor, but, said Maudie, he didn’t know how to behave, that was his trouble. And Maudie stuck it, because of the children. Then he said to her, Will you come to the pictures with me? She went, and she saw the neighbours looking at them. She knew what they were thinking, and she couldn’t have that. She cleaned the whole house, top to bottom, made sure everything was mended, baked bread, put out things for tea, and left a note: I am called to my sister’s, who is ill, yours truly, Maude Fowler.
But then she took her pension, and sometimes did small jobs on the side.
The Maudie who wore herself ‘to a stick and a stone’ was this judging, critical female, with a tight cold mouth.
Maudie and I shouted at each other, as if we were family, she saying, ‘Get out then, get out, but I’m not having those Welfare women in here,’ and I shouting, ‘Maudie, you’re impossible, you’re awful, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.’
