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‘Hasn’t she a family?’
‘I think so, but they don’t care.’
‘It is a terrible thing,’ he said to me, meaning me to understand that his people would not neglect an old woman like this.
‘Yes, it is a terrible thing, and you are right,’ I said.
When I got back, again I thought of death. She sat there, eyes closed, and so still, I thought not breathing.
But then, her blue eyes were open and she was looking at the fire.
‘Drink your tea,’ I said. ‘And I’ll grill you a bit of fish. Can you eat it?’
‘Yes, I will.’
In the kitchen I tried to find anything that wasn’t greasy, and gave up. I put the fish on the grill, and opened the door briefly to get in some clean air. Sleet notwithstanding.
I took her the fish, and she sat herself up and ate it all, slowly, and her hands trembled, but she finished it and I saw she had been hungry.
I said, ‘I’ve been in Munich. To see all the clothes for the autumn. I’ve been seeing all the new styles.’
‘I’ve never been out of England.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you all about it when you are a bit better.’
To this she did not respond. But at last, just when I thought I would go, she remarked, ‘I’ve a need for some clean clothes.’
I did not know how to interpret this. I did see – I have become sensitive enough for that – at least that this was not at all a simple request.
She wanted me to buy her clothes?
I looked at her. She made herself look at me, and said, ‘Next door, you’ll find things.’
‘What?’
She gave a trembling, discouraged sort of shrug.
‘Vest. Knickers. Petticoat. Don’t you wear underclothes, that you are asking?’
Again, the automatic anger, as if a button had been pushed. I went next door into the room I knew she didn’t like me in.
The bed that has the good eiderdown, the wardrobe, the dressing table with little china trinkets, the good bookcases. But everywhere piles and heaps of – rubbish. I could not believe it. Newspapers dating back fifty years, crumbling away; awful scraps of material, stained and yellow, bits of lace, dirty handkerchiefs, shreds of ribbon – I’ve never seen anything like it. She had never thrown anything away, I think. In the drawers, disorder, and they were crammed with – but it would take pages to describe. I wished I had the photographer there – reflex thought! Petticoats, camisoles, knickers, stays, vests, old dresses or bits of them, blouses … and nothing less than twenty years old, and some of them going back to World War One. The difference between clothes now and then: these were all ‘real’ materials, cottons, silks, woollens. Not a man-made fibre there. But everything torn, or stained, or dirty. I pulled out bundles of things, and every one I examined, first for interest, and then to see if there was anything wearable, or clean. I found at last a wool vest, and long wool drawers, and a rather nice pink silk petticoat, and then a woollen dress, blue, and a cardigan. They were clean, or nearly. I worked away in there, shivering with cold, and thinking of how I had loved myself all these last days, how much I do love myself, for being in control, on top; and thought that the nearest I could get to poor Maudie’s helplessness was remembering what it had been like to be a child, hoping that you won’t wet your pants before you get to the lavatory.
I took the clothes into the other room, which was very hot now, the flames roaring up. I said to her, ‘Do you want me to help you change?’ The sideways, irritable movement of the head, which I knew now meant I was being stupid.
But I did not know why.
So I sat down opposite her, and said, ‘I’ll finish my tea before it’s freezing.’ I noted that I was drinking it without feeling sick: I have become used to drinking out of grimy cups, I noted that with interest. Once Maudie had been like me, perpetually washing herself, washing cups, plates, dusting, washing her hair.
She was talking, at random I thought, about when she had been in hospital. I half listened, wishing that doctors and nurses could hear how their hospitals are experienced by someone like Maudie. Prisons. Reformatories. But then I realized she was telling me about how, because she had not been well enough to be put in the bath, two nurses had washed her in her bed, and I understood.
‘I’ll put on the kettles,’ I said. ‘And you must tell me what to do.’
I put on two kettles, found an enamel basin, which I examined with interest, for I have not seen any but plastic ones for a long time, and searched for soap and a flannel. They were in a hole in the wall above the sink: a brick taken out and the cavity painted.
I took the basin, kettles, soap, flannel, a jug of cold water, next door. Maudie was struggling out of her top layer of clothes. I helped her, and realized I had not co-ordinated this at all. I rushed about, found newspapers, cleared the table, spread thick papers all over it, arranged basin, kettles, jug, washing things. No towel. I rushed into the kitchen, found a damp dirty towel, rushed into the front room and scrabbled about, seeming to myself to be taking all day. But it was really only a few moments. I was bothered about Maudie standing there, half naked, and ill, and coughing. At last I found a cleanish towel. She was standing by the basin, her top half nude. There is nothing of her. A fragile rib cage under creased yellow skin, her shoulder bones like a skeleton’s, and at the end of thin stick arms, strong working hands. Long thin breasts hanging down.
She was clumsily rubbing soap on to the flannel, which, needless to say, was slimy. I should have washed it out first. I ran next door again, tore a bit off an old clean towel and took it back. I knew she wanted to tick me off for tearing the towel; she would have done if she had not been saving her breath.
I slowly washed her top half, in plenty of soap and hot water, but the grime on her neck was thick, and to get that off would have meant rubbing at it, and it was too much. She was trembling with weakness. I was comparing this frail old body with my mother’s: but I had only caught glimpses of her sick body. She had washed herself – and only now was I wondering at what cost – till she went into hospital. And when Georgie came, she gave her a wash. But not her child-daughter, not me. Now I washed Maudie Fowler, and thought of Freddie, how his bones had seemed to sort of flatten and go thin under flesh that clung to them. Maudie might be only skin and bones but her body doesn’t have that beaten-down look, as if the flesh is sinking into the bones. She was chilly, she was sick, she was weak – but I could feel the vitality beating there: life. How strong it is, life. I had never thought that before, never felt life in that way, as I did then, washing Maudie Fowler, a fierce angry old woman. Oh, how angry: it occurred to me that all her vitality is in her anger, I must not, must not resent it or want to hit back.
Then there was the problem of her lower half, and I was waiting for guidance.
I slipped the ‘clean’ vest on over her head, and wrapped the ‘clean’ cardigan round her, and then saw she was sliding down the thick bunches of skirt. And then it hit me, the stench. Oh, it is no good, I can’t not care. Because she had been too weak or too tired to move, she had shat her pants, shat everything.
Knickers, filthy … Well, I am not going on, not even to let off steam, it makes me feel sick. But I was looking at the vest and petticoats she had taken off, and they were brown and yellow with shit. Anyway. She stood there, her bottom half naked. I slid newspapers under her, so she was standing on thick wads of them. I washed and washed her, all her lower half. She had her big hands down on the table for support. When it came to her bottom she thrust it out, as a child might, and I washed all of it, creases too. Then I threw away all that water, refilled the basin, quickly put the kettles on again. I washed her private parts, and thought about that phrase for the first time: for she was suffering most terribly because this stranger was invading her privateness. And I did all her legs again, again, since the dirt had run down her legs. And I made her stand in the basin and washed her feet, yellow gnarled old feet. The water was hot again over the flaring gas, and I helped her pull on the ‘clean’ bloomers. By then, having seen what was possible, they were clean to me, being just a bit dusty. And then the nice pink petticoat.
‘Your face,’ I said. For we had not done that. ‘How about your hair?’ The white wisps and strands lay over the yellow dirty scalp.
‘It will wait,’ she said.
So I washed her face, carefully, on a clean bit torn off the old towel.
Then I asked her to sit down, found some scissors, cut the toenails, which was just like cutting through horn, got clean stockings on, her dress, her jersey. And as she was about to put on the outside clothes of black again, I said involuntarily, ‘Oh, don’t – ’ and was sorry, for she was hurt, she trembled even more, and sat silent, like a bad child. She was worn out.
I threw out the dirty water and scalded the basin, and filled a kettle to make fresh tea. I took a look out of the back: streams of sleet, with crumbs of greyish snow, the wind blowing hard – water was coming in under the kitchen door; and as for thinking of her going out into that to reach the lavatory, that freezing box – yet she had been going out, and presumably would again.
I kept saying to myself, She is over ninety and she has been living like this for years: she has survived it!
I took her more tea, and some biscuits, and left her drinking them by her big fire.
I put all the filthy outer clothes I had taken off in newspaper and folded them up and dumped them in the rubbish bin, without asking her.
And then I made a selection among the clothes from the drawers, and stripped the filthy sheets from her bed, and the pillowcases, and went out into the rain to the launderette, leaving them with the girl there to be done.
I made the place as neat as I could, put down food for the cat, who sat against Maudie’s leg, being stroked. I cleared everything up. All this time Maudie sat staring into the flames, not looking at me when I looked at her, but watching me as I moved around, and when she thought I didn’t know.
‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate it,’ she said as I laboured on, and on. I was sweeping the floor by then, with a hand brush and pan. I couldn’t find anything else. The way she said this, I couldn’t interpret it. It was flat. I thought, even hopeless: she was feeling perhaps, as I had had a glimpse of, remembering myself as a child, helpless in a new way. For, very clearly, no one had ever done this kind of thing for her before.
I went back to the launderette. The Irish girl, a large competent girl with whom I had exchanged the brisk comradeship of equals when leaving the stuff, gave me the great bag of clean things and looked into my face and said, ‘Filth. I’ve never seen anything like it. Filth.’ She hated me.
I said, ‘Thanks,’ did not bother to explain, and left. But I was flaming with – embarrassment! Oh, how dependent I am on being admired, liked, appreciated.
I took the things back, through the sleet. I was cold and tired by then. I wanted to get home …
But I cleared out the drawers of a large chest, put the clean things in, and told Maudie where I had put them.
Then I said, ‘I’ll drop in tomorrow evening.’
I was curious to hear what she’d say.
‘I’ll see you then’ was what she said.
And now I am alone, and have bathed, but it was a brisk businesslike bath, I didn’t soak for hours. I should have tidied everything, but I haven’t. I am, simply, tired. I cannot believe that this time yesterday I was in the hotel, pampered guest, eating supper with Karl, cherished colleague. Flowers, venison, wine, cream – the lot.
It seems to me impossible that there should be that – there; and then Maudie Fowler, here. Or is it I who am impossible? I certainly am disoriented.
I have to think all this out. What am I to do? Who can I discuss it with? Joyce is my friend, she is my friend. She is my friend?
Thursday.
Joyce came in to collect work to take home. She looks awful. I said to her, ‘How goes it?’ She said, ‘He wants me to go with him to the States.’ I asked, ‘For good?’ She said, ‘For good.’ She looked at me, I looked at her. This is how we converse: in shorthand. She said, ‘I’ve got to fly. Tell John I’ve got the cover finished. I’ve done the Notes. I’ll be in all tomorrow, Janna.’ And off she went. This means: her husband has been offered a professorship, he wants to take it, he wants her to give up her job here and go with him, she doesn’t want to go, they quarrelled to the point of divorce, the children don’t want to go to the States – and this afternoon I had the feeling that Joyce would probably go to the States. And that’s the end of that.
I went in to Maudie on the way home: her door was on the latch. Fire blazing. Cat on bed asleep. Maudie, asleep. An empty teacup on the arm of her chair. I took the cup to safety, left a note: See you tomorrow, and fled hoping she wouldn’t wake before I left.
I am sitting here in my dressing gown by the electric fire. I should clean out this flat. I should really wash my hair.
I am thinking of how Maudie Fowler one day could not trouble herself to clean out her front room, because there was so much junk in it, and then she left it and left it; going in sometimes, thinking, well, it’s not so bad. Meanwhile she was keeping the back room and the kitchen spotless. Even now she does her own chimney once a week, and then scrubs the grate, brushes up the dust and cinders – though less and less thoroughly. She wasn’t feeling well, and didn’t bother, once, twice – and then her room was not really cleaned, only the floor in the middle of the room sometimes, and she learned not to look around the edges or under the bed. Her kitchen was last. She scrubbed it and washed shelves, but then things began to slide. But through it all she washed herself, standing at the kitchen table, heating water in the kettles. And she kept her hair clean. She went sometimes to the public bath-houses, for she had told me she liked going there. Then she left longer and longer between washing her hair … and then she did not wash her clothes, only took out the cleanest ones there were, putting them back grubby, till they were the cleanest; and so it went on. And at last, she was upright in her thick shell of black, her knickers not entirely clean, but not so bad, her neck dirty, but she did not think about it, her scalp unwashed. When they took her to hospital, they washed her all over and washed her hair too. She sometimes thought humorously, when they cart me off back to hospital, I’ll get another proper wash! But she, Maudie Fowler, was still there, alert, very much all there, on guard inside that old witch’s appearance. She is still there, and everything has collapsed around her, it’s too difficult, too much.
And I, Janna, am sitting here, in my clean, scented dressing gown, just out of my bath. I should do my nails again, though. I should clean my flat, or ask someone in to clean it. I was in my bath for only a few minutes tonight.
By this time next year my whole life will have changed. I know it, though I don’t know how.
I shall go down and visit Georgie next weekend. If I dare leave Maudie. It is ridiculous. Where is that one person?
Friday.
I went in on my way to work. She was better. Had been out to shop for herself. She looked quite nice and fresh – so I see her now, I no longer see the old witch. I said I was going to visit my sister Georgie. She laughed at the name. She said, ‘One of these days I’ll visit my sister, I expect.’ I already knew what that meant, and I said, ‘I’ll take you, Maudie.’ ‘Janna and Georgie,’ she said. ‘My sister and I, we were Maudie and Polly, and when we went out dressed up in our white coats and little hats, we were a picture.’ I said, ‘Georgie and I were a picture too, I expect. I remember pink dresses and berets. I’ll see you Sunday night when I come back.’ ‘If you have the time,’ she said. I noted that I could have given her a nice sharp slap, but laughed and said, ‘I’ll see you.’
Sunday Night.
The train was very late. Did not go in to Maudie. Now it is midnight. I have done the usual Sunday-night things, seeing my clothes are ready for the week, hair, make-up, nails.
Well, it has been a painful weekend. When I got there Georgie was alone, because Tom and the children had gone off on some visit. Was very pleased, can’t stand those brats of hers. Tom is all right, but a married couple is a married couple. I wanted to talk to Georgie. My thought was, specifically: now I am grown up, perhaps she will take me seriously? For years I used to go down, when I did go down, rather princessing it. Good old Georgie and good old Tom. She has never bothered about her clothes and things much. I used to wear my most outrageous clothes and take copies of the mag and enjoyed telling her about my life and times. She listened in her way of no-comment. Clever little sister Janna. Correction, Jane. She wasn’t going to call me Janna, Jane it was and Jane it will be, to the end. How many times I have said to her, Georgie, no one calls me Jane, no one, I want to be Janna. I can’t remember to, says she, making a point, and that’s that. She thinks Janna is a smart little name to go with a smart little job. I used to sit through those weekends, when I did go, wondering how she stuck it, but of course she was thinking the same of me. It is not that she despises me, exactly, though she certainly thinks what I do pretty peripheral, it is that she cannot imagine any sane person doing it.
When I went into the house I was very alert to everything, the way I am at the moment – contrasts. Because of Maudie Fowler. Georgie’s house is exactly the house my parents lived in always. I call it country-suburban, comfortable, conventional, conservative, all of a piece from the landscapes on the walls to the books on the bed table. My flat is, Freddie’s and mine was, both international-contemporary. On the rare occasions Georgie has stayed a night, she has made a point of saying she has enjoyed my things. They are such fun, says she.
Georgie had a cold supper for us and seemed at a loss what to do after it. We were in her living room, curtains drawn, some snow outside, not enough for my taste but more than she wanted. She says it makes work. She works hard, Georgie does, the house, the cooking, looks after husband, four children, chairwoman of this, patron of that, secretary of the local reading circle, good works. I sat one side of the fire, she on the other. I tried to talk about Mother. I need to know about her. I never talked to her, a bit more to Father. But Georgie has put me into the category of the irresponsible one who doesn’t care about family. And that’s that. I kept giving her openings, even asked once, I wonder what Mother would have thought?
At last I talked about my trip to Munich. She liked that. Your glamorous goings-on, she calls all that. She wanted to know how the hotel was, my friends, how the fashion shows are organized, how this is done and that is done. I recognize myself in all this. Not a word about the styles and the fashions, but how it all works. So we are like each other after all. Suddenly, when I was in bed, I had a thought that made me sit up again and turn on the light. It was this. Before Granny died, she was ill for about two or three years, can’t remember (which is a point in itself), and she was at home with Mother, who was looking after her. I was working like a demon then, it was the first rebirth of the mag, and I simply behaved as if Granny being ill had nothing to do with me. Not my affair! I can remember switching off from the moment I heard the news. But Mother had her at home there, and Father wasn’t too well either. Granny had diabetes, heart trouble, bad eyes with operations for cataract, kidney trouble. I used to hear news of all this, relayed in Mother’s brisk letters: and I haven’t kept the letters, and I remember not wanting to read them. Now I know what it costs, looking after the very old, the helpless. I find myself exhausted after an hour or two, and want only to run away somewhere out of it. But where did Mother run to? Who helped her? Not me! Not once, I never went near her.
Sunday morning, Georgie and I had breakfast alone together. Some snow outside. Pretty. Trees and bushes full of snow and birds feeding off stuff Georgie hangs in the branches. She said Tom was coming back with the kids, because the weather was frightful where they were. I said to her, quite desperate because I knew once they had got back, that was that, ‘Georgie, were you around much when Granny was dying?’
She gave me a surprised look at this. She said, ‘No, I didn’t get home much. I was pregnant twice while that was going on, and Kate was a baby.’ She was now looking at me in an impatient sort of way.
‘I want to know about it,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking that I did nothing to help.’
She said finally, ‘No, you didn’t,’ and she wouldn’t have said another word. I had to digest that she and Tom had attitudes about me, my behaviour, that were established and set, Jane was this and that and the other; and probably these were Mother’s attitudes too, and Father’s.
I said, ‘It has only recently occurred to me that I never lifted a finger all the time Granny was dying.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ she said, in the same shutting-you-out way.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘recently I’ve had a little to do with an old person, and I know now what Mother had to cope with.’
‘I suppose better late than never,’ said Sister Georgie.
This was much worse than I had expected. I mean, what she thought of me was so much worse that I was burning with – no, alas, not shame, but it was embarrassment. Not wanting to be so badly thought of. I said to her, ‘Can you tell me anything about it?’
‘Well, what on earth do you want to know?’ She was exasperated. Exactly as if some small child had said to her, she having hit her thumb with a hammer, Does it hurt?
‘Look, Georgie,’ I said, ‘all right, I’ve seen recently that … I could have done more than I did. All right? Do you want me to grovel? It is better late than never. I want to know more about Mother.’
‘She was in your flat for two years before she died,’ said Sister Georgie, making a great amazed incredulous astonishment out of it.
‘Yes, I know. But it was since then that I …’
Georgie said, ‘Look, Jane, I’m sorry but … you just turn up here after all that, and say, I’d like a nice little chat about Mother. Jane, it simply isn’t on,’ she said. She was literally inarticulate with anger. And I, with surprise. I realized that there were years of resentment here, criticism of little sister Jane.
I made a last try. ‘Georgie,’ I said, ‘I am sorry. I am sorry I didn’t help Mother with Granny, and I want very much to discuss it all.’
‘I suppose one of these weekends I’ll get a telephone call, when you’ve got nothing better to do, and you’ll turn up, all fine and fancy free, not a hair out of place, and you’ll say, Oh, Georgie, I was wondering what was it like having Mother here for ten years, with four kids, no help, and she becoming an invalid …’
At which point the telephone rang outside and she went to answer it. I sat there, I was numb. That was the word. Not that I hadn’t felt bad about Mother living with Georgie all that time, for after all I was working, and we did only have a small flat, Freddie and I, and … and … and. But it had never occurred to me that Georgie was not going to talk to me this weekend. If ever. She was too angry. She was, and she is, so angry and bitter about me.
When she came back, she said, ‘I’m going down to the station to get Tom and the kids.’ She said to me, ‘I’m sorry Jane, but if you are beginning to get some sort of sense of responsibility into you at last, it might perhaps occur to you that it isn’t easy to have you just turning up with a light question or two: How about Granny dying? How was it? Did it hurt? It was all awful, Jane. Do you understand? It was dreadful. I went down there when I could, pregnant as hell or with the baby, and found Mother coping. Granny was bedridden at the end. For months. Can you imagine? No, I bet you can’t. Doctors all the time. In and out of hospital. Mother was doing it all. Father couldn’t help much, he was an invalid himself … Anyway, I’ve got to go to the station.’
And off she went.
I nearly ran after her, to ask to be put on a train home, but stuck it out. Tom and the kids filled the house with clatter and clang, the record players went on at once of course, a radio, the house vibrating with din. Tom came in and said. How are you? – and went. The kids banged into the kitchen, where I was, Jilly, Bob, Jasper, Kate. Hi, hi, hi, hi, all round. It is established that I think Georgie’s kids are awful and spoiled brats, but they might be all right when they grow up. I am the glamorous Aunt from London and the High Life. I send them presents of money at Christmas. When we meet I tell them I think they are awful and good for nothing. They tell me it is because I don’t understand them. It is a cheerful game of mutual insult. But I do think they are awful. I cannot understand how they are allowed to do as they like, have what they like, go where they like. I have never heard either Georgie or Tom say once, No, you can’t have that. Never. The whole house is crammed with their possessions, clothes, toys, gear, mostly unused or used once or twice. I keep thinking of growing up during the war and having nothing. And recently I have been thinking about the Third World having nothing. Of course, Georgie would say It is trendy to have such thoughts, but, as she would say, Better late than never.
Anyway, I sat in the kitchen and listened to the sheer din of those kids all over the house, and Georgie came back and I could see she was ready to talk, if I wanted, but suddenly I found myself saying, ‘Georgie, you are ready enough with criticism of me, but look at those children of yours.’
‘Yes, I know what you think,’ she said, her back turned to me. And I knew at once that this was a sore point.
‘Tell me,’ I said to her, ‘when have they ever done anything they didn’t want to do? Have you and Tom ever tried to teach them that the world isn’t a celestial milk bar with milk shakes and cream topping for ever there at the touch of a button?’
‘You may well be right. I’m not saying you are not,’ said she, making it humorous, ‘and now I have to get the lunch. If you want to help, stay, and if not, go and talk to Tom.’
I took her at her word, went to find Tom, but he did not want to talk to me, being busy at something. I found the decibel level in the house intolerable, pulled on my big boots and went for a walk in the snow, came back for lunch. As usual, the parents were like appendages to the scene of the four children, who did not let them finish a conversation if they had the temerity to start one, or talked across them at each other, and behaved exactly as if Georgie and Tom were useful servants they could treat as they liked.
How has it come about that this is what families are like now? In the living room, afternoon, this was the scene. Jilly, seventeen, nagging because she had wanted to visit a friend and couldn’t for some reason, so she was sulking and making the whole family pay for it. Bob, sixteen, an over-fat good-looking boy, practising the guitar as if no one else existed. Jasper, fifteen, whining and nagging at his father to go with him to some local football match. Kate, thirteen, cheeks flaming, hair wild, tarting around the room in one of Georgie’s dresses, in a sort of locked hysteria, the way teenage girls get. This was for my benefit, because she wants to come to London and ‘be a model’. Poor girl! Tom was sitting in a corner trying to read, and answering questions from his offspring in an abstracted irritable voice, and Georgie was waiting on all of them, in perfect good humour and patience; shouting to make herself heard from time to time, Yes, all right, Kate. Yes, Jilly, I’ll do it tomorrow. Yes, Jasper, it’s under the spare-room bed. And so on.
I said at last, ‘Well, this wicked Aunt is about to leave. No, don’t bother, I shall go to the station by myself.’
With what relief did I turn my back on this scene of happy contemporary family life and went out to the front door, followed by Georgie.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘don’t say it, I don’t understand what children are, and I am not entitled to say a word, because of my selfish childishness, but all I can say is …’
