The Golden Notebook (40 page)

warm bed, there are lovely new dreams coming into your head, you will dream, dream, all through the dark night and wake warm and safe with the morning light.' Often if Janet finds the words I've chosen don't fit her mood, she stops me and demands another variation; but tonight I've guessed right, and I sing it again and again and again, until I see she's asleep. She looks defenceless and tiny when she's asleep, and I have to check in myself a powerful impulse to protect her, to shut her away from possible harm. This evening it is more powerful than usual; but I know it is because I have my period and need to cling to somebody myself. I go out, shutting the door softly. And now the cooking for Michael. I unroll the veal that I remembered to batter out flat this morning; and I roll the pieces in the yellow egg, and the crumbs. I baked crumbs yesterday, and they still smell fresh and dry, in spite of the dampness in the air. I slice mushrooms into cream. I have a pan full of bone-jelly in the ice-box, which I melt and season. And the extra apples I cooked when doing Janet's I scoop out of the still warm crackling skin, and sieve the pulp and mix it with thin vanilla'd cream, and beat it until it goes thick; and I pile the mixture back into the apple skins and set them to brown in the oven. All the kitchen is full of good cooking smells; and all at once I am happy, so happy I can feel the warmth of it through my whole body. Then there is a cold feeling in my stomach, and I think: Being happy is a lie, it's a habit of happiness from moments like these during the last four years. And the happiness vanishes, and I am desperately tired. With the tiredness comes guilt. I know all the forms and variations of this guilt so well that they even bore me. But I have to fight them nevertheless. Perhaps I don't spend enough time with Janet-oh, nonsense, she wouldn't be so happy and easy if I wasn't doing it right. I am too egotistical, Jack is right, I should simply be concerned with some sort of work, and not bothered about my conscience- nonsense, I don't believe that. I shouldn't dislike Rose so much-well only a saint wouldn't, she's a terrible woman. I am living on unearned money, because it's only luck that book was a best-seller, and other people with more talent have to sweat and suffer-nonsense, it's not my fault. The fight with my various forms of dissatisfaction tires me; but I know this is not a personal fight. When I talk about this with other women, they tell me they have to fight all kinds of guilt they recognise as irrational, usually to do with working, or wanting time for themselves; and the guilt is a habit of the nerves from the past, just as my happiness a few moments ago was a habit of the nerves from a situation that is finished. I set a bottle of wine to warm, and go into my room, getting pleasure from the low white ceiling, the pale shadowed walls, the glow of red from the fire. I sit in the big chair, and now I'm so depressed I have to fight against tears. I think, I'm bolstering myself up: the cooking for Michael and the waiting for him-what does it mean? He already has another woman, whom he cares for more than he does for me. I know it. He'll come tonight out of habit or kindness. And then I again fight this depression by putting myself back into a mood of confidence and trust (like entering another room inside myself) and I say: He'll come quite soon, and we will eat together, and drink the wine, and he will tell me stories about the work he's done today, and then we'll have a cigarette, and he will take me in his arms. I'll tell him I have my period and as usual he'll laugh at me and say: My dear Anna, don't put your guilt feelings on to me. When I have my period I rest on the knowledge that Michael will love me, at night; it takes away the resentment against the wound inside my body which I didn't choose to have. And then we will sleep together, all night. I realise it is getting late. Molly comes back from her theatre. She says: 'Is Michael coming?' and I say: 'Yes,' but I see from her face that she doesn't think he will. She asks me how the day has been, and I say I've decided to leave the Party. She nods, and says that she's noticed that whereas she used to be on half a dozen different committees and was always busy on Party work, she's now on one committee and can't bring herself to do Party work. 'So it comes to the same thing, I suppose,' she says. But what's worrying her this evening is Tommy. She doesn't like his new girl-friend. (I didn't either.) She says: 'It's just occurred to me, his girlfriends are all of the same type-the type that are bound not to like me. Whenever they are here, they simply radiate disapproval of me all the time; and instead of seeing we don't meet, Tommy simply pushes us together. In other words, he is using his girl-friends as a kind of alter ego, to say about me what he thinks but doesn't say aloud. Does that strike you as too far-fetched?' Well it doesn't, because I think she's right, but I say it is. I am being tactful over Tommy, the way she is tactful about Michael's leaving me-we shield each other. Then she says again about being sorry that Tommy was a conscientious objector, because his two years in the coal mines have made him a sort of hero in a certain small circle, and 'I can't stand that awful self-satisfied exalted air of his.' It irritates me too, but I say that he's young and will grow out of it. 'And I said an awful thing tonight: I said, thousands of men work down the coal-mines all their lives, and think nothing of it, for God's sake don't make such a thing out of it. And of course that was unfair, because it is a big thing, a boy of his background working down the coal mines. And he did stick it out... all the same!' She lights a cigarette, and I watch her hands lying on her knees; they look limp and discouraged. Then she says: 'What frightens me is, I never seem to be able to see anything pure in what people do-do you know what I mean? Even when they do something good, I find myself getting all cynical and psychological about it-that is awful, Anna, isn't it?' I know only too well what she means, and say so, and we sit in a depressed silence until she says: 'I think Tommy is going to marry this one, I just have a hunch.' 'Well, he's bound to marry one of them.' 'And I know that this sounds just like a mother resenting her son getting married-well, there's that in it. But I swear I'd think she was awful anyway. She's so bloody middle-class. And she's ever such a socialist. You know, when I met her first I thought: Good God, who is this awful little Tory Tommy's inflicted on me? Then it turns out she's a socialist, you know, one of those academic socialists from Oxford. Studying sociology. You know, one gets into the mood where one keeps seeing the ghost of Keir Hardie. Well, that lot'd be surprised if they could see what they've spawned. Tommy's new girl'd be a real eye-opener to them. You know, you can positively see the insurance policies and the savings accounts taking shape in the air all round them while they talk about making the Labour Party fulfil its pledges. Yesterday she even told Tommy that he ought to be planning for his old age. Can you beat it?' We laugh together, but it's no good. She goes downstairs, saying good night. She says it gently (as I said good night to Janet) and I know it is because she is unhappy for me because Michael won't come. It is nearly eleven now; and I know he won't come. The telephone rings and it is Michael. 'Anna, forgive me, but I can't come tonight after all.' I say it is quite all right. He says: 'I'll ring you tomorrow-or in a couple of days. Good night Anna.' He adds, fumbling with the words: 'I'm sorry if you cooked especially for me.' The if suddenly makes me furious. Then it strikes me as odd that I should be angry over such a little thing, and I even laugh. He hears the laugh, and says: 'Ah, yes, Anna, yes...' Meaning that I am heartless and don't care for him. But I suddenly can't stand this, and say: 'Good night, Michael,' and ring off. I take all the food off the stove, carefully saving what can be used, and throwing the rest away-nearly everything. I sit and think: Well, if he rings me tomorrow... But I know he won't. I realise, at last, that this is the end. I go to see if Janet is asleep-I know she is, but I have to look. Then I know that an awful black whirling chaos is just outside me, waiting to move into me. I must go to sleep quickly, before I become that chaos. I am trembling with misery and with tiredness. I fill a tumbler full of wine and drink it, quickly. Then I get into bed. My head is swimming with the wine. Tomorrow, I think-tomorrow-I'll be responsible, face my future, and refuse to be miserable. Then I sleep, but before I am even asleep I can hear myself crying, the sleep-crying, this time all pain, no enjoyment in it at all. [The whole of the above was scored through-cancelled out and scribbled underneath: No, it didn't come off. A failure as usual. Underneath was written, in different handwriting, more neat and orderly than the long entry, which was flowing and untidy:]

15th September, 1954

A normal day. During the course of a discussion with John Butte and Jack decided to leave the Party. I must now be careful not to start hating the Party in the way we do hate stages of our life we have outgrown. Noted signs of it already: moments of disliking Jack which were quite irrational. Janet as usual, no problems. Molly worried, I think with reason, over Tommy. She has a hunch he will marry his new girl. Well, her hunches usually come off. I realised that Michael had finally decided to break it off. I must pull myself together. FREE WOMEN: Tommy adjusts himself to being blind while the older people try to help him TOMMY hovered for a week between life and death. The end of that week was marked by Molly's use of these words; her voice very far from its usual note of ringing confidence: 'Isn't it odd, Anna? He's been hovering between life and death. Now he's going to live. It seems impossible he shouldn't. But if he had died, then I suppose we'd have felt that was inevitable too?' For a week the two women had sat by Tommy's bed in the hospital; waited in side-rooms while doctors conferred, judged, operated; returned to Anna's flat to care for Janet; received letters and visits of sympathy; and called on their reserves of energy to deal with Richard, who was openly condemning them both. During this week, while time stopped, and feeling stopped (they asked themselves and each other why they felt nothing but numbing suspense, although of course tradition authorised this reaction), they talked, though briefly and in shorthand, so to speak, since the points in question were so familiar to them both, of Molly's care of Tommy, Anna's relationship with him, to pinpoint the event or the moment when they had definitely failed him. Because Molly had gone away for a year? No, she still felt that was the right thing to have done. Because of the formlessness of their own lives? But how could they have been anything different? Because of something said or not said during Tommy's last visit to Anna? Possibly, but they felt not; and how was one to know? They did not refer the catastrophe to Richard's account; but when he accused them, replied: 'Look, Richard, there's no point in abusing each other. The thing is, what to do next for him?' Tommy's optic nerve was damaged; he would be blind. The brain was undamaged, or at least, would recover. Now that he was pronounced out of danger, time established itself again, and Molly collapsed into hours of low and helpless weeping. Anna was very busy with her and with Janet, who had to be shielded from the knowledge that Tommy had tried to kill himself. She had used the phrase: '-had an accident,' but it was a stupid one, because now she could see in the child's eyes the knowledge that the possibilities of an accident terrible enough to lay one flat on one's back, permanently blinded, in hospital, lurked in the objects and habits of an every day. So Anna amended the phrase and said Tommy had accidentally wounded himself cleaning a revolver. Janet then remarked that there was no revolver in their flat; and Anna said no, and there never would be, etc.; and the child came out of her anxiety. Meanwhile Tommy, having been a silent shrouded figure in a darkened room, ministered to by the living and helpless in their hands, moved, came to life, and spoke. And that group of people, Molly, Anna, Richard, Marion, who had stood waiting, had sat waiting, had kept vigil through a timeless week, understood how far they had allowed him, in their minds, to slip beyond them into death. When he spoke it was a shock. For that quality in him, the accusing dogged obstinacy that had led him to try to put a bullet in his brain, had been obliterated in their thoughts of him as the victim lying shrouded under white sheets and bandages. The first words he said-and they were all there to hear them-were: 'You're there, aren't you? Well, I can't see you.' The way this was said kept them silent. He continued: 'I am blind, aren't I?' And again, the way this was spoken made it impossible to soften the boy's coming back to life as it was their first impulse to do. After a moment, Molly told him the truth. The four stood around the bed, looking down at the head blind under moulding white tissues, and they were all of them sick with horror and with pity, imagining the lonely and brave struggle that must be going on. And yet Tommy said nothing. He lay still. His hands, the clumsy thick hands he had from his father, were lying by his sides. He lifted them, fumbled them together, and folded them on his chest, in an attitude of endurance. But in his way of making the gesture was something that caused Molly and Anna to exchange a look in which there was more than pity. It was a kind of terror-the look was like a nod. Richard saw the two women communicate this feeling, and literally ground his teeth with rage. It was no place to say what he felt; but outside he said it. They were walking together away from the hospital, Marion a little behind-the shock of what had happened to Tommy had stopped her drinking for the time, but she still seemed to move in a slowed world of her own. Richard spoke fiercely to Molly, turning hot and angry eyes on Anna, so as to include her: 'That was a pretty bloody thing you did, wasn't it?' 'What?' said Molly, from inside Anna's supporting arm. Now they were out of the hospital, she was shaking with sobs. 'Telling him just like that, he's blind for life. What a think to do.' 'He knew it,' said Anna, seeing that Molly was too shaken to talk, and knowing also that this was not what he was accusing them of. 'He knew it, he knew it,' Richard hissed at them. 'He had just come out of being unconscious and you tell him, he's blind for life.' Anna said, answering his words but not his feeling: 'He had to know.' Molly said to Anna, ignoring Richard, continuing the dialogue with Anna which had been begun in that silent confirming horrified glance over the hospital bed: 'Anna, I believe he had been conscious for some time. He was waiting for us all to be there-it's as if he were pleased about it. Isn't it awful, Anna?' Now she broke into hysterical weeping, and Anna said to Richard: 'Don't take it out on Molly now.' Richard let out a disgusted inarticulate exclamation, wheeled back to Marion, who was vaguely following the three of them, impatiently took her arm, and went off with her across the vivid green hospital lawn that was systematically dotted with bright flower-beds. He drove off with Marion, not looking back, leaving them to find a taxi for themselves. There never was a moment at which Tommy broke down. He gave no evidence of a collapse into unhappiness or self-pity. From the first moment, from his first words, he was patient, calm, co-operated pleasantly with the nurses and doctors, and discussed with Anna and Molly, and even with Richard, plans for his future. He was, as the nurses kept repeating-not without a touch of that uneasiness which Anna and Molly felt so strongly-'A model patient.' They had never known anyone, they said, and kept saying, let alone a poor young lad of twenty, faced with such an awful fate, take it so bravely. It was suggested that Tommy should spend some time in a training hospital for the newly blind, but he insisted on returning home. And he had made such good use of his weeks in hospital that he was already handling his food, could wash and care for himself, could move slowly around his room. Anna and Molly would sit and watch him: normal again, apparently the same as he was before, save for the black shield over sightless eyes, moving with dogged patience from bed to chair, from chair to wall, his lips pursed in concentration, the effort of his will behind every small movement. 'No thank you nurse, I can manage.' 'No, mother, please don't help me.' 'No, Anna, I don't need help.' And he didn't. It was decided that Molly's living-room on the first floor must be turned over to Tommy-there would be fewer stairs for him to manage. This adaptation he was prepared to accept, but he insisted that her life and his should continue as before. 'There's no need to make any changes, mother, I don't want anything to be different.' His voice had gone back to what they knew: the hysteria, the immanent giggle, the shrillness that had been in it on that evening he had visited Anna, had gone entirely. His voice, like his movements, was slow, ful H, and controlled, every word authorised by a methodical brain. But when he said: 'There's no need to make changes,' the two women looked at each other, which it was safe to do now that he couldn't see them (although they could not rid themselves of the suspicion that he knew it all the same) and they both felt the same dulled panic. For he used the words as if there had been no change, as if the fact that he was now blind was almost incidental, and that if his mother was unhappy about it it was because she chose to be, or was being fussy or nagging, like a woman becoming irritated by untidiness or a bad habit. He humoured them like a man humouring difficult women. The two watched him, looked, appalled, at each other, looked away again, watched helplessly while the boy made his tedious but apparently unpainful adjustment to the dark world which was now his. The white cushioned window sills on which Molly and Anna had so often sat to talk, with the boxes of flowers behind them, the rain or the pale sunshine on the panes, were all that remained the same in this room. It now contained a narrow tidy bed; a table with a straight chair; some conveniently placed shelves. Tommy was learning Braille. And he was teaching himself to write again with an exercise book and a child's ruler. His writing was quite unlike what it had been: it was large, square and clear, like a child's. When Molly knocked to come in, he would raise his black-shaded face over the Braille or his writing and say 'Come in,' with the temporarily though courteously granted attention of a man behind a desk in an office. So Molly, who had refused a part in a play so as to be able to nurse Tommy, went back to her work and acted again. Anna ceased dropping over in the evenings when Molly was out at the theatre, for Tommy said: 'Anna, you are very kind to come and take pity on me, but I'm not at all bored. I like being alone.' As he would have said it had he been an ordinary man who chose to prefer solitude. And Anna, who had been trying to get back to her intimacy with Tommy before the accident, and failing (she felt as if the boy were a stranger she had never known), took him at his word. She literally could not think of anything to say to him. And besides, alone in a room with him, she kept succumbing to waves of pure panic, which she did not understand. And now Molly rang Anna, no longer from her home, since the telephone was immediately outside Tommy's room, but from telephone boxes or from the theatre. 'How is Tommy?' Anna would ask. And Molly's voice, loud and in command again, but with a permanent note of challenging query, of pain defied, would reply: 'Anna, it's all so odd I don't know what to say or do. He just stays in that room, working away, always quiet; and when I can't stand it another moment I go in, and he looks up and says: "Well mother, and what can I do for you?"' 'Yes, I know.' 'So naturally I say something silly, like-I thought you might like a cup of tea. Usually he says no, very politely of course, so I go out again. And now he's learning to make his own tea and coffee. Even to cook.' 'He's handling kettles and things?' 'Yes. I'm petrified. I have to go out of the kitchen, because he knows what I am feeling, and he says, Mother, there's no need to be frightened, I'm not going to burn myself.' 'Well Molly I don't know what to say.' (Here there was a silence, because of what they were both afraid to say.) Then Molly went on: 'And people come up, oh ever so sweet and kind, you know!' 'Yes, indeed I do.' 'Your poor son, your unfortunate Tommy... I always knew everything was a jungle, but never as clearly as I do now.' Anna understood this because mutual friends and acquaintances used her as a target for the remarks, on the surface kindly, but concealing malice, which they would have liked to direct at Molly. 'Of course it was a pity that Molly went off and left the boy for that year.' 'I don't think that had anything to do with it. Besides, she did it after careful thought.' Or: 'Of course, there was that broken marriage. It must have affected Tommy more than anyone guessed.' 'Oh quite so,' Anna would say, smiling. 'And there's my broken marriage. I do so trust that Janet won't end up the same way.' And all the time, while Anna defended Molly, and herself, there was something else, the cause of the panic they both felt, the something they were afraid to say. It was expressed by the single fact that whereas not six months before she, Anna, rang Molly's home to chat with Molly, sending messages to Tommy; visited Molly, and perhaps dropped into Tommy's room for a chat; went to Molly's parties at which Tommy was a guest, among others; was a participant in Molly's life, her adventures with men, her need, and her failure to marry-now all this, the years' long, slow growth of intimacy was checked and broken. Anna never telephoned Molly except for the most practical reasons, because even if the telephone had not been outside Tommy's door, he was able to intuit what was said by people apparently through a new sixth sense. For instance, once Richard, who was still aggressively accusing, telephoned Molly saying: 'Answer yes or no, that's all that's necessary: I want to send Tommy off on a holiday with a trained blind-nurse. Will he go?' And before Molly could even reply, Tommy raised his voice from the room inside with: 'Tell my father that I'm quite all right. Thank him and say I'll telephone him tomorrow.' No longer did Anna visit Molly casually and lightly for an evening, or drop in when going past. She rang the door-bell after a preparatory telephone call, heard it vibrate upstairs, and was convinced that Tommy already knew who it was. The door opened on Molly's shrewd, painful, still forcibly gay smile. They went up to the kitchen, speaking of neutral matters, conscious of the boy through the wall. The tea or the coffee would be made; and a cup offered to Tommy. He always refused. The two women went up to the room that had been Molly's bedroom, and was now a sort of bed-sitting-room. There they sat, thinking in spite of themselves of the mutilated boy just below them, who was now the centre of the house, dominating it, conscious of everything that went on in it, a blind but all-conscious presence. Molly would chatter a little, offer theatre gossip, from habit. Then she fell silent, her mouth twisted in anxiety, her eyes reddened with checked tears. She had now the tendency to burst suddenly and without warning into tears-on a word, in the middle of a sentence, helpless and