The Golden Notebook (39 page)

girl-I was told that in the 'thirties she was 'one of the glamour girls' of the Party. Of course she frightens me: I am frightened by her the way I am frightened by John Butte-what is to stop me becoming like her? Looking at Rose, hypnotised by that dirty neck of hers, I remember I have special reasons today for worrying about my own cleanliness, and I make another visit to the washroom. When I get back to my desk the afternoon post has arrived, and there are two more manuscripts and with them, two more letters. One of the letters is from an old-age pensioner, a man of seventy-five, living alone and pinning his hopes on the belief that the publication of this book (it looks pretty bad) will 'soften my old age for me.' I decide to go and visit him before remembering that I am quitting this job. Is someone going to do this work if I don't? Probably not. Well, does it make all that difference? In this year of 'welfare work' I can't imagine that the letters I've written, the visits I've paid, the advice I've given, even the practical help has made all that difference. Perhaps a little less frustration, a little less unhappiness-but this is a dangerous way of thinking, one too natural to me, and I'm afraid of it. I go in to Jack, who is sitting alone, shirt-sleeved, his feet on the desk, smoking a pipe. His pale, intelligent face is concentrated and frowning, and he seems more than ever like a university lecturer at ease. He is thinking, I know, about his private work. His speciality is the history of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. He has written something like half a million words on the subject. But impossible to print it now, because he has written truthfully of the roles of people like Trotsky and similar people. He accumulates manuscript, notes, records of conversations. I tease Jack, saying: 'In two centuries' time the truth can be told.' He smiles calmly and says: 'Or in two decades or five.' It does not trouble him at all that this detailed work will receive no practical recognition for years, perhaps not even in his lifetime. He once said: 'I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone fortunate enough to be outside the Party publishes all this first. But on the other hand, someone outside the Party won't have the access I have to certain people and documents. So it cuts both ways.' I say: 'Jack, when I leave, will there be anyone to do something about all these people in trouble?' He says: 'Well, I can't afford to pay someone to do it. It's not many comrades who can afford to live off royalties, like you.' Then he softens and says: 'I'll see what I can do about the worst cases.' 'There's an old-age pensioner,' I say; and I sit down and we discuss what might be done. Then he says: 'I take it you're not going to give me a month's notice? I always thought you'd do this-decide to leave and then just walk out.' 'Well, if I didn't, I probably wouldn't be able to leave at all.' He nods. 'Are you going to take another job?' 'I don't know, I want to think.' 'Sort of go into retreat for a while?' 'The point is, it seems to me that my mind is a mass of totally contradictory attitudes about everything.' 'Everyone's mind is a mass of contradictory attitudes. Why should it matter?' 'It should matter to us, surely?' (Meaning, it should matter to communists.) 'But Anna, has it occurred to you that throughout history...' 'Oh Jack, don't let's talk about history, about the five centuries, it's such an evasion.' 'No, it is not an evasion. Because throughout history, there have perhaps been five, ten, fifty people, whose consciousness truly matched their times. And if our consciousness of reality doesn't fit our time, what's so terrible about that? Our children...' 'Or our great-great-great grandchildren,' I say, sounding irritable. 'All right-our great-great-great-great grandchildren will look back and it will be perfectly clear to them that the way we saw the world, the way we see the world now, was incorrect. But then their view will be, of their time. It doesn't matter.' 'But Jack, that's such nonsense...' I hear my voice shrill and stop myself. I realise my period has caught up with me; there's a moment in every month when it does, and then I get irritated, because it makes me feel helpless and out of control. Also I'm irritated because this man has spent years in university studying philosophy; and I can't say to him: I know you're wrong because I feel you are. (And besides there's something dangerously attractive in what he's saying, and I know part of the irritation comes from fighting this attraction.) Jack ignores my shrillness; and he says mildly: 'All the same, I wish you'd think about it Anna-there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.' (The word arrogant hits me; because I've convicted myself so often of being arrogant.) I say, feebly enough: 'But I think and think and think.' 'No, let me try again: In the last decade or two the scientific achievements have been revolutionary. And in every sort of field. There's probably not one scientist in the world who can comprehend the implications of all the scientific achievements, or even part of them. There's perhaps a scientist in Massachusetts who understands one thing, and another in Cambridge understanding another, and another in the Soviet Union for a third-and so on. But I doubt even that. I doubt if there's anyone alive who can really imaginatively comprehend all the implications of let's say the use of atomic energy for industry...' I am feeling that he's terribly off the point; and I stick stubbornly to mine: 'All you are saying is, we must submit to being split.' 'Split,' he said. 'Yes.' 'I'm certainly saying you're not a scientist, you haven't the scientific imagination.' I say: 'You're a humanist, that's been your education, and suddenly you throw up your hands and say you can't judge anything because you haven't been trained in physics and mathematics?' He looks uncomfortable; and he so seldom does, it makes me feel uncomfortable. I continue however with my point: 'Alienation. Being split. It's the moral side, so to speak, of the communist message. And suddenly you shrug your shoulders and say because the mechanical basis of our lives is getting complicated, we must be content to not even try to understand things as a whole?' And now I see his face has put on a stubborn closed look that reminds me of John Butte's: and he looks angry. He says: 'Not being split, it's not a question of imaginatively understanding everything that goes on. Or trying to. It means doing one's work as well as possible, and being a good person.' I feel he's a traitor to what he's supposed to be standing for. I say: 'That's treachery.' 'To what?' 'To humanism.' He thinks and says: 'The idea of humanism will change like everything else.' I say: 'Then it will become something else. But humanism stands for the whole person, the whole individual, striving to become as conscious and responsible as possible about everything in the universe. But now you sit there, quite calmly, and as a humanist you say that due to the complexity of scientific achievement the human being must never expect to be whole, he must always be fragmented.' He sits thinking. And all at once I think there is an undeveloped and incomplete look about him; and I wonder if this reaction is because I've decided to leave the Party and I'm already projecting emotions on to him; or if he is in fact not what I've been seeing him all this time. But I can't help remarking to myself that his face is that of an elderly boy; and I remember he is married to a woman who looks old enough to be his mother, and that it is very clear this is a marriage of affection. I insist: 'When you said, not being split is just going to be a question of doing one's work well, etc., well you could say that of Rose next door.' 'Well, yes, I could, and do.' I can't believe he really means it, and I even look for the gleam of humour that surely must accompany this. Then I see he does mean it; and again I wonder why it is only now, after I've said I'm leaving the Party, that these discordancies begin between us. Suddenly he takes the pipe out of his mouth and says: 'Anna, I think your soul is in danger.' 'That's more than likely. And is that so terrible?' 'You are in a very dangerous position. You are earning enough money not to have to work, due to the arbitrary rewards of our publishing system...' 'I've never pretended it was due to any special merit of mine.' (I note that my voice is shrill again, and add a smile.) 'No, you haven't. But it's possible that that nice little book of yours will go on bringing you enough money not to work for some time. And your daughter is at school and doesn't give you so much trouble. And so there's nothing to stop you sitting in a room somewhere doing nothing at all very much except brood about everything.' I laugh. (Sounding irritated.) 'Why are you laughing?' 'I used to have a school-teacher, that was during my stormy adolescence, she used to say: "Don't brood, Anna. Stop brooding and go out and do something."' 'Perhaps she was right' 'The thing is, I don't believe she was. And I don't believe you are.' 'Well, Anna, there's no more to be said.' 'And I don't believe for a moment you believe you are right.' At this he flushes slightly and he gives me a quick hostile glance. I can feel the hostile look on my face. It astounds me that there's this antagonism between us suddenly; particularly as the moment has come to part. Because at the moment of antagonism, it's not so painful tp part as I expected. Both our eyes are wet, we kiss each other on the cheek, hold each other close; but there's no doubt the last argument has changed our feeling for each other. I go into my own office quickly, take my coat and my bag and go downstairs, thankful that Rose is not around, so that there's no need for explanations. It is raining again, a small tedious drizzle. The buildings are big and dark and wet, hazed by reflected light; and the buses are scarlet and alive. I am too late to be at the school in time for Janet, even if I take a taxi. So I climb onto a bus, and sit surrounded by damp and stuffy-smelling people. I want more than anything to have a bath, quickly. My thighs are rubbing stickily together, and my armpits are wet. On the bus I collapse into emptiness; but I decide not to think about it; I have to be fresh for Janet. And it is in this way that I leave behind the Anna who goes to the office, argues interminably with Jack, reads the sad frustrated letters, dislikes Rose. When I get home the house is empty so I ring up Janet's friend's mother. Janet will be home at seven; she's finishing a game. Then I run the bath, and fill the bathroom with steam, and bathe, with pleasure, slowly. Afterwards I look at the black and white dress, and see that the collar is slightly grimy, so I can't wear it. It irritates me that I wasted that dress on the office. I dress again; this time wearing my striped gay trousers and my black velvet jacket; but I can hear Michael say: Why are you looking so boyish tonight, Anna?-so I'm careful to brush my hair so that it doesn't look boyish at all. I have all the fires on by now. I start two meals going: one for Janet. One for Michael and me. Janet at the moment has a craze for creamed spinach baked with eggs. And for baked apples. I have forgotten to buy brown sugar. I rush downstairs to the grocer's, just as the doors are closing. They let me in, good-humouredly; and I find myself playing the game they enjoy: the three serving men in their white coats joke and humour me and call me love and duck. I am dear little Anna, a dear little girl. I rush upstairs again and now Molly has come in and Tommy is with her. They are arguing loudly so I pretend not to hear and go upstairs. Janet is there. She is animated, but cut off from me; she has been in the child's world at school, and then with her little friend in a child's world, and she doesn't want to come out of it. She says: 'Can I have supper in bed?' and I say, for form's sake: 'Oh, but you're lazy!' and she says: 'Yes, but I don't care.' She goes, without being told, to the bathroom and runs her bath. I hear her and Molly laughing and talking together down three flights of stairs. Molly, without an effort, becomes a child when with children. She is telling a nonsensical tale about some animals who took over a theatre and ran it, and no one noticed they weren't people. This story absorbs me so that I go to the landing to listen; on the landing below is Tommy, also listening, but with a bad-tempered critical look on his face-his mother never irritates him more than when with Janet, or another child. Janet is laughing and sploshing the water all around the bath, and I can hear the sound of water landing on the floor. In my turn, I am irritated, because now I shall have to wipe all this water up. Janet comes up, in her white dressing-gown and white pyjamas, already sleepy. I go down and wipe up the seas of water in the bathroom. When I return, Janet is in bed, her comics all around her. I bring in the tray with the baked dish of spinach and eggs and the baked apple with the clot of crumbly cream. Janet says, tell me a story. 'There was once a little girl called Janet,' I begin, and she smiles with pleasure. I tell how this little girl went to school on a rainy day, did lessons, played with the other children, quarrelled with her friend... 'No, mummy, I didn't, that was yesterday. I love Marie for ever and ever.' So I change the story so that Janet loves Marie for ever and ever. Janet eats dreamily, conveying her spoon back and forth to her mouth, listening while I create her day, give it form. I watch her, seeing Anna watch Janet. Next door the baby is crying. Again the feeling of continuity, of gay intimacy, starts, and I finish the story: 'And then Janet had a lovely supper of spinach and eggs and apples with cream and the baby next door cried a little, and then it stopped crying and went to sleep, and Janet cleaned her teeth and went to sleep.' I take the tray and Janet says: 'Do I have to clean my teeth?' 'Of course, it's in the story.' She slides her feet over the edge of the bed, into her slippers, goes like a sleep-walker to the basin, cleans her teeth, comes back. I turn off her fire and draw the curtains. Janet has an adult way of lying in bed before sleeping: on her back, her hands behind the back of her neck, staring at the softly moving curtains. It is raining again, hard. I hear the door at the bottom of the house shut: Molly has gone to her theatre. Janet hears it and says: 'When I grow up I'm going to be an actress.' Yesterday she said, a teacher. She says sleepily: 'Sing to me.' She shuts her eyes, and mumbles: 'Tonight I'm a baby. I'm a baby.' So I sing over and over again, while Janet listens for what known change I will use, for I have all kinds of variations in the words: 'Rockabye baby, in your