Dolly (28 page)

Dolly was not domesticated; she could not cook. But she could learn. ‘I’ll never be a proud housewife’, I remember her saying—and not without some complacency—to my mother. She had never become an ordinary woman, had never intended to; her eagerness had persisted throughout her life, as if she were eternally in search of the next pleasure, the next diversion. But some evil genius, from one of my fairy stories, perhaps, had seen to it that pleasure would be her downfall, that it would be pleasure, to use another fairy-tale locution, that would eventually stab her to the heart. The barb thus released, Harry’s barb, would turn her overnight into an old woman. He had taught her a truth so unbearable
that many women cannot face it, simply that a man does not care to be friends with a woman after their affair is over, that he will in future treat her to a vague smile of reminiscence, or a hasty wave of the hand if they meet, but that he will never, at the onset of a lonely evening, telephone to see whether she is all right, whether she needs anything, whether he might drop by. This callousness, which is in fact a complete emotional ineptitude, brings curious results: shame is felt not by the man but by the woman, who feels newly conspicuous, becomes fearful of public occasions, and avoids even the company of her friends. ‘Harry left me,’ Dolly had said, and the pain of separation was multiplied a thousandfold by the fact that she knew it, and that therefore everyone else must know it.

I had been brooding over this at my desk, and got up feeling physically cramped and mentally troubled. What troubled me most of all was the fact that I felt myself to be in some way inferior to Dolly. This was obscure, but uncomfortable. It seemed to me that for all her humiliation she had acquired a dimension that I still lacked. What I had hastily and no doubt superficially dismissed as a tragedy was not that at all, or rather to accept it as such would be to miss the point. What Dolly had lost was all too obvious: what she had gained was dignity. If Harry were to encounter her now he would be appalled at her appearance, but he would also instinctively mind his manners. It might even occur to him that her opinion of him had changed: it might even be that this was the case, though I doubted it. I suspected that she would love him for ever, or else consign the loving heart she had so lately discovered herself to possess, to a metaphorical
grave. She would thus learn to live with a death that would come daily nearer, and in that way fulfill her earthly span.

I knew all this: somehow I knew it. What I had not learned before I learned now. I looked at the clock and saw with a start that it was half-past eleven. I had spent the entire evening brooding, but perhaps to some purpose. I bestirred myself to answer a few letters and to write others. With what I could arrange on paper Dolly’s affair was cut and dried: the bank would raise no objections. I sent a birthday card to Miss Lawlor, whose present I would take round to her on an evening later in the week. I turned down an invitation to read a paper on Sleeping Beauty to a feminist seminar at a college for further education. I was not ready, perhaps for reasons which had to do with myself as much as with Dolly, to bring light to bear on this subject. Perhaps I never would be. Perhaps I would choose to remain asleep rather than be woken like Beauty. (And yet, I told myself, Beauty had only awoken because her prince had tried so hard to reach her; difficult to ignore the evidence of this. And she had been wounded in the first place by a spindle, the symbolism of which was easy to discern. Were we dealing here with a highly moral tale, which was in more ways than one an allegory of true love and a warning against mere physical curiosity? I promised myself that I would examine this matter further, when I was not so fearful of its implications.) Then I took another pen and began what was to be my second book, my second success. It was much harsher than the first, but I did not think that this mattered. Children need harsh lessons sometimes, if they are learned in an atmosphere of affection. What they learn then may save them from being duped in later life.

O
n my last visit to America, where I gave my talk on Sleeping Beauty and other related topics to two women’s colleges, I was interested to note the variety of female responses. The older members of the faculty regarded it politely as a feminist entertainment, while the younger ones debated it fervently. I found to my surprise that I was more impressed by the former than by the latter. These placid dignified women, mostly in their fifties, mostly long divorced or else widowed, pursued a life of study in an all female atmosphere as if they were nuns in a mediaeval abbey. All had children or stepchildren, all taught a full syllabus, all had made their homes in the charming small towns and suburbs of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They were all extremely gracious, in the American fashion, and manifested none of the recklessness, the combative vivacity of their younger counterparts.

Walking with one of these older women through the idyllic streets surrounding the campus I was not questioned on
whether I had endured much sexual harassment in England but was shown the garden, invited to admire the dogwood, or indeed ‘Janet’s copper beech. I confess to a little envy: I haven’t one of my own. But I can always look at hers. We have tea together at her house, when it’s at its best, in October. Have you noticed that when the leaves fall they turn a dark ox-blood red? I dare say you have a fine garden at home.’

In the face of such magnificence I hardly care to tell her that I live in a small flat and that when I look out of the window all I see is the dirty river and the distant dull green of the park, no longer familiar to me. These days my walks no longer take me to the park, but only along streets increasingly choked with traffic. For this reason I am always glad, when I am on campus, to accept an invitation to walk round the lake from one of the younger women, perhaps a full professor at the age of thirty-two. They are so convivial that it would be churlish to refuse. But I find them exhausting, these women of goodwill, with their agenda of wrongs to be righted, of injustices to be eliminated. I want to stand still in the dusk and contemplate the lake, seeing only mist, hearing only a brief ripple where the wing of a bird disturbs the surface of the water, but I must respond intelligently, employ a certain kind of feminised argument, feel myself to be the victim of a monstrous wrong which has been passed down to me from generation to generation.

I am invited to share my experience in the workplace, and, remembering ABC Enterprises, reply truthfully that I was never happier. This seems to disappoint them, until I tell them that my colleagues were all women, when their faces
clear. Then in all conscience I describe to them the later months, when the business was run by James Hemmings and his friends, and they become alert again. Any discrimination? I am demanded. Only being taken out to dinner by the boss, I reply, by which time I am regarded with the purest suspicion.

I am then questioned much more closely, and almost as a hostile witness, on my views on the position of women today. This is a key question, the answer to which will furnish material for seminar after seminar of feminist studies. These young women are painfully preoccupied with questions of gender. Yet most of them are married or in a relationship with some man. I have been introduced to one or two of the husbands and partners. They seemed nice enough, perhaps a little too conscious of sharing, as they put it. And yet their small children, where they exist, seem oddly anxious, as if this sharing were an alien concept, fit only for emancipated adults, who could discuss the matter until late into the night.

What the children want is not clear: perhaps they want a formal or even a traditional childhood, the kind they no longer read about in their politically correct story-books or encounter at their politically correct playgroups. Their parents reason with them, and the children know instinctively that they have not yet reached the age of reason. Besides, the reason they are being offered exists somewhere in the region of exasperation, and this they reject absolutely. And are right to do so.

As I stand on the edge of the lake, in the evening mist, urgent words are being poured into my ears to which I must
respond. Although I am still young I want to assure my interlocutor that she will not be sexually harassed in perpetuity, that when her hair becomes less abundant and her skin loses its colour and its firmness she will be able to pursue a peaceful career studying something non-sexist like physics, or better still agronomy. I do not do this because I want to remain a polite guest, and also because I do not want to fall into my old position of class enemy. ‘What is that bird?’ I ask, in an effort to divert this so well-meaning young woman. ‘Look! The new moon!’ These observations are regarded as frivolous, for there is work to be done, there are categories to be redefined, laws to be changed. And underneath it all I sense a bewilderment which I in fact share. Will we be loved, will we be saved? And if so, by what or by whom?

Self-sufficient as I am I too feel a longing which I am reluctant to ascribe to the feminine condition alone. I try to steer the conversation towards love and marriage, the substance of my talk. Is it, should it be a quest, I ask, as it is in the story? Or is that a trap, I wonder, designed to keep women passive and expectant? If they take matters into their own hands and emancipate themselves from their ancestral longings will they be disappointed? ‘They will be living in the real world, assuming personhood,’ declares my friend. ‘I consider myself a person, not a wife or mother. Those things are important to me, but I keep them in perspective. Bob and I share everything.’ But her voice is flat, as if she has made this statement many times. A critic might say that it has an obstinate sound, as if in keeping with the agenda. But I am not a critic, although it is becoming extremely difficult to convince these feminists that I am any kind of a woman.

I do not know what credentials I am supposed to present. I earn my own living: that is a point in my favour. I travel, I do creative work, I occasionally teach: good marks for all of these things. But do I have a relationship? This apparently is the one sign of personhood I have so singularly failed to come up with. In the renewed interest they are prepared to show in my unpartnered state, in the faintest hint of commiseration in their voices, they reveal themselves to be women of the most unreconstructed variety. It is not that they would necessarily want me to find love and marriage, in the sense of a happy ending. But if I were sharing household chores with some cheerful fellow in jeans and a shirt ironed by himself they could understand me better. How then to disappoint them by telling them that I prefer the fairy-tale version, and will prefer it until I die, even though I may be destined to die alone? To do so would be to ignore the laws of hospitality, of ordinary courtesy. They are intrigued by me, by my appearance: I am in danger of becoming—for the space of two weeks—a cult figure. And so I have been designated, entirely against my will. It is enough to make me turn my back on the lake, now fitfully gleaming under the new moon, and long for home.

When it is time for me to journey on I pack my bag with a sigh, for I have enjoyed the company of these women and am now not as anxious as I was to regain my solitude. I do not tell them that my views have perhaps been influenced by the most unreconstructed woman I have ever known, for although this is true I now see that Dolly belongs to another epoch, another world, a world in which the support of women could not be taken for granted. Her solitude and
mine are totally opposed; that is perhaps why she is so uninterested in my life, which is, at any rate, uninteresting to her. As far as Dolly is concerned I am protected, as she herself has never been protected; she has even leapt to the conclusion that I am protected by John Pickering, whom she regards as a sort of godfather, not only to myself, but to herself as well, for he continues to manage her affairs, and as she is indifferent to him she has decided that he might do very well for me, might even be seen as an advantageous match, and indeed the only reason why his continued presence might be justified. For in her heart she thinks of him as a servant, and therefore doubly appropriate.

A woman of Dolly’s type might marry a man like Pickering for security, but would never deceive herself into thinking that he might be loved. Whereas I try my utmost to love John Pickering as he should be loved, because I see him as lonely and often sad, remembering his absconding wife, and looking wistfully at my relative youth as if it were something forbidden to him to share. Sometimes I succeed in loving him, when I see him at the barrier at Heathrow and he lifts his hand in a contained gesture to greet me, or when he assures me that he has booked a table in my favourite restaurant for my first night at home.

One of these days I shall have to bring him down to my level, if we are to have any sort of life together. Dolly, of course, would have done this long ago, and perhaps rewarded him more than I could ever do. For I mind my manners with John; he is not a person I would ever wish to offend. And perhaps he longs for something more, as I do. The image he has of me suits him, but above all suits his conscience.
I would not wish to hustle him into what I must call a relationship, for that, although gratifying, would obscurely disappoint him. Although his presence in my life is important I know that one day I may journey on, yet again: the thought occurs to me as I pack my bag, in this pretty room, with its white coverlet on the bed and the prints of Redouté roses on the walls. And I can see, as if it had already happened, that he will accept this, will approve of it, and might almost prefer it to a situation in which he would be obliged to lose his dignity.