The Diaries of Jane Somers

‘Because of the what?’

And here she told a long story about some newspaper scare of the time, a man who strangled girls when he found them alone … It was so out of key with the rest of what she was telling me, and yet this was, is, something in Maudie, a strain of horror-shivering masochism that comes out suddenly and then goes again. At any rate, she ran quaking up through the dark, through the dark garden, with the hot breath of the Strangler on her neck, and the door was opened by the housekeeper, who said, Oh there you are, Maudie, I was worrying about you, but the mistress said, Don’t worry, I know where she’ll be … ‘You know, I’ve often and often thought about this, when it is so easy to be nice, why are people nasty? Everything in that big house was nice, all the people in it, and even the guests too, no one unkind or quick or sharp. It was because of her, Mrs Privett. So why are people unkind to each other?

‘She had kept my supper for me, and it was a lovely supper too, and she sat with me while I ate. And then up I went to bed. It was dark through the house, with the gas lights burning on the landings, but at the very top the sky was light, there were the three other girls, and oh, we did have such a good time. We lay half the night and told each other stories, ghost stories and all, and we frightened each other with the Strangler, and we ate sweets and laughed …

‘And next morning, we had to get up at six. And by the time it was breakfast I was so hungry, but she, Mrs Privett, gave us the same food the hotel guests had, and better, and she came into the kitchen while we were all eating to make sure we had it. We ate great plates of porridge and real milk, and then kippers or haddock if we liked, or eggs any way we liked, and then all the toast and marmalade and butter we could eat, and sometimes she sat with us too, and said, I like to see young things eating. You must eat well, or you can’t do your work. And that was what all the meals there were like. I’ve never eaten like that before or since. And then …’

‘And what work did you do? Was it hard?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was hard. But we knew how to work in those days. We got up by six and cleaned the grates through the house and started the fires, and we had the big dining room cleaned and shining before we took the guests their trays of tea and biscuits. And then we did the public rooms, everything just so and polished, and then we had our breakfast. And then we did all the bedrooms, right out, no skimping on the cleaning, Mrs Privett wouldn’t have it. And we did the flowers with her, or the silver or the windows. And then we had our dinners, wonderful food, everything the guests had. And then we took the mending up to the attics and while we did that we had a bit of a skylark around. She didn’t mind. She said she liked to hear us laughing, provided we got the work all done. And then we came down to do the tea, trays and trays of bread and butter and cakes and stuff, the four of us served all that while the waiting girls went off for the afternoon. And then we had some time off, and we went down to the beach for an hour or so. And then we four maids would sit with the babies and children while the parents went out to the theatre or somewhere. I loved that, I loved little children. We all loved that. And there was a big late supper, about ten at night, with cakes and ham and everything. And we all had either Sunday afternoon or Saturday afternoon off. Oh, it was wonderful. I was there three months and I got so fat and happy I couldn’t get into my clothes.’

‘And then?’

‘And then the autumn was coming, and the hotel closed. Mrs Privett came to me and said, Maudie, I want you to stay with me. In the winters I open a place on the sea, in Nice that was. France. She wanted me to go with her. But I said no, I was a milliner, that was my trade, but it broke my heart not to go with her.’

‘Why did you really not go with her?’ I asked.

‘You are sharp,’ she said. ‘You are right. It was Laurie. I went away from London to Brighton and didn’t say where I was, so he would value me, and he did. He was waiting for me when I got off the train, though how he found out I never did know. And he said, So you’re back? As you can see, I said. Tomorrow you are coming for a walk, he said. Am I? I said.

‘And so I married him. I married him instead of the German. I married the wrong man.’

I gave a grimace at this, and she said, ‘And did you marry the wrong one too?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘he married the wrong woman.’

And this tickled her so much she lay back in her chair, her brown old wrinkled hands squeezing her knees, and she laughed and laughed. She has a young fresh laugh, not an old woman’s laugh at all.

‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she cried, ‘I had never thought of that. Well, Laurie thought he married the wrong woman, but then what woman would have been right? For he never stayed with any one of us.’

That was this afternoon. I did not leave her until after six. She came with me to the outside door and said, ‘Thank you for getting the coal. You mustn’t mind me, dear, mustn’t mind my ways.’

Sunday.

I saw The White Raven. I see that I am like Maudie, the housemaids – I like being frightened. After the film I came back here for my usual Sunday evening’s occupation, making sure clothes are all prepared for the next week, grooming. I saw that I had spent all day alone and that is how I spend my weekends, usually. Solitary. I did not know I was until Freddie died. He liked us to have proper dinner parties every week or so, and we had his colleagues and their wives, and I asked girls from work, usually Joyce and her husband. My food was perfect, and Freddie did the wine. We were proud of how well we did it. And all that has been blown away, gone. I never saw his associates after the funeral. When I wondered if I would have the perfect little dinner parties, I couldn’t be bothered. At work, I am seen by everybody as this self-sufficient competent woman, with a full life. Friends, weekends, entertainment. I go each week to three or four lunches, drinks parties, receptions for the mag. I don’t like this, or dislike it, it is part of my job. I know nearly everyone, we all know each other. Then I come home after work, if I am not having supper with Joyce to discuss something, and I buy takeaway, and then – my evening begins. I go into the bathroom and stay there two, three hours. Then watch a little television. At weekends I go about by myself. How do you describe such a person? And yet I am not lonely. If anyone had said to me, before Freddie died, that I could live like this, and not want anything different … And yet I must want something different? I shall spend a weekend with Georgie. I shall try again. I did not go in to Maudie today, thinking it all too much. I am sitting here writing this, in bed, wondering if she expected me. If she was disappointed.

Monday.

Dropped in after work, with some chocolates. She seemed stand-offish. Cross because I did not go in yesterday? She said she had not gone out because it was cold, and she felt bad. After I got home I wondered if she wanted me to go and shop for her. But after all, she got along before I blew into her life – crashed into it.

Tuesday.

Joyce said she didn’t want to go to Munich for the Clothes Fair, trouble with husband, and her children playing up, would I go? I was reluctant, though I enjoy these trips: realized it was because of Maudie Fowler. This struck me as crazy, and I said I’d go.

Went in to Maudie after work. The flames were bursting out of the grate, and she was hot and angry. No, she didn’t feel well, and no, I wasn’t to trouble myself. She was so rude, but I went into the kitchen, which stank of sour food and cat food that had gone off, and saw she had very little there. I said I was going out to shop for her. I now recognize these moments when she is pleased that I will do this or that, but her pride is hurting. She lowers her sharp little chin, her lips tremble a little, and she stares in silence at the fire.

I did not ask what to get, but as I left she shouted after me about fish for the cat. I got a lot of things, put them on her kitchen table, boiled up some milk, took it to her.

‘You ought to be in bed,’ I said.

She said, ‘And the next thing, you’ll be fetching the doctor.’

‘Well, is that so terrible?’

‘He’ll send me away,’ she said.

‘Where to?’

‘Hospital, where else?’

I said to her, ‘You talk as if hospital is a sort of prison.’

She said, ‘I have my thoughts, and you keep yours.’

Meanwhile, I could see she was really ill. I had to fight with her, to help her to bed. I was looking around for a nightdress, but I understood at last she did not use one. She goes to bed in vest and drawers, with an old cardigan pinned at the throat by a nice garnet brooch.

She was suffering because I saw that her bed was not clean, and that her underclothes were soiled. The sweet stench was very strong: I know now it is urine.

I put her in, made her tea, but she said, ‘No, no, I’ll only be running.’

I looked around, found that a chair in the corner of the room was a commode and dragged it close to the bed.

‘Who’s going to empty it?’ she demanded, furious.

I went out of the kitchen to see what the lavatory was like: a little cement box, with a very old unlidded seat, and a metal chain that had broken and had string extending it. It was clean. But very cold. No wonder she has a cough. It is very cold at the moment, February – and I only feel how cold it really is when I think of her, Maudie, for everywhere I am is so well heated and protected. If she is going out to that lavatory from the hot fire …

I said to her, ‘I’ll drop in on my way to work.’

I am sitting here, in bed, having bathed and washed every scrap of me, hair too, writing this and wondering how it is I am in this position with Maudie.

Wednesday.

Booked for Munich. Went in to Maudie after work. The doctor was there. Dr Thring. An old man, fidgety and impatient, standing by the door, I knew because he was farther from the heat and smell of the place, and he was saying, to an angry, obstinate, tiny old woman, who stood in the middle of her floor as if she was in front of the firing squad, ‘I won’t go into hospital, I won’t, you can’t make me,’ ‘Then I won’t come in to look after you, you can’t make me do that.’ He was shouting. When he saw me, he said, in a different voice, relieved, desperate, ‘Tell her, if you’re a friend, she should be in hospital.’

She was looking at me quite terrified.

‘Mrs Fowler,’ I said, ‘why don’t you want to go into hospital?’

She turned her back on us both, and picked up the poker, and jabbed the flames with it.

The doctor looked at me, scarlet with anger and the heat of the place, and then shrugged. ‘You ought to be in a Home,’ he said. ‘I keep telling you so.’

‘You can’t force me.’

He exclaimed angrily and went into the passage, summoning me to follow. ‘Tell her,’ he said.

‘I think she should be in hospital,’ I said, ‘but why should she be in a Home?’

He was quite at the end of his tether with exasperation and – I could see – tiredness. ‘Look at it all,’ he said. ‘Look at it. Well, I’ll ring up the Services.’ And off he went.

When I got back, she said, ‘I suppose you’ve been arranging with him.’

I told her exactly what I said, and while I was speaking she was coughing, mouth closed, chest heaving, eyes watering, and was thumping her chest with the heel of her fist. I could see that she didn’t want to listen to what I said.

Thursday.

Went in on my way to work. She was up, dressed, in front of the fire, face glittering with fever. Her cat was yowling, unfed.

I took out her commode, full of strong stinking urine, and emptied it. I gave the cat food on a clean dish. I made her tea and some toast. She sat with her face averted from me, ashamed and sick.

‘You should have a telephone,’ I said. ‘It’s ridiculous, having no telephone. I could ring you from the office.’

She did not answer.

I went off to work. There was no social thing I had to do today, no luncheon, etc., and the photographers’ session was cancelled – the trains are on strike. I said to Joyce I’d work at home, and she said she’d stay in the office, it was all right. She let me understand home is difficult for her at the moment: her husband wants a divorce, she does not know what to do, she is seeing lawyers. But she is pleased to be in the office, though in better times she does a lot of work at home too.

I went in to Maudie on my way home, and found there Hermione Whitfield, from what she refers to as ‘Geriatrics’.

We understood each other at first glance: being alike, same style, same clothes, same image. She was sitting in the chair opposite Maudie, who was bundled up in all her black. She was leaning forward, smiling, charming, humorous.

‘But, Mrs Fowler, there are so many things we could do for you, and you won’t co- …’ But she dropped ‘co-operate’ in favour of ‘ … let us.’

‘And who are you?’ she asked me, in the same charming, almost playful style, but heard it herself, and said, in the chummy democratic mode of our kind (but I had not thought at all about these distinctions till today), ‘Are you a Good Neighbour? No one told me anything about that.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I am not a Good Neighbour, I am Mrs Fowler’s friend.’

This was quite outrageous, from about ten different viewpoints, but most of all because I was not saying it in inverted commas, and it was only then that I thought how one did not have friends with the working classes. I could be many things to Mrs Fowler, including a Good Neighbour, but not a friend.

She sat there, blinking up at me, the firelight on her hair. Masses of soft golden hair, all waves and little ringlets. I know what all that careful disorder costs. Her soft pink face, with wide blue eyes, done up with grey and blue paints and powders. Her white fluffy sweater, her grey suede trousers, her dark blue suede boots, her … I was thinking, either ‘the welfare’ get paid more than I had believed or she has a private income. It occurred to me, standing there, in that long moment of pure discordance, for what I had said did not fit, could not be taken easily, that I was examining her like a fashion editress, and for all I knew she might be quite different from her ‘image’.

Meanwhile, she had been thinking. ‘Mrs Fowler,’ said she, getting up, smiling prettily, radiating helpfulness and light, ‘very well, you won’t go into hospital. I don’t like hospital myself. But I can get a nurse in to you every morning, and I can send in a Home Help and …’

‘I don’t want any of those,’ said Maudie, her face averted, poking savagely at the flames.

‘Well, remember what there is available for you,’ she said, and gave me a look which meant I should follow her.

I was then in a position where I had to talk about Maudie behind her back, or say to Hermione, ‘No, we will talk here.’ I was weak, and followed Hermione.

‘My name is …’ etc., and so forth, giving me all her credentials, and she waited for mine.

‘My name is Janna Somers,’ I said.

‘You are perhaps a neighbour?’ she said, annoyed.

‘I have become fond of Mrs Fowler,’ I said; and at last this was right, it enabled her to let out an involuntary sigh of relief, because the categories were back in place.

‘Oh yes,’ she cried, ‘I do so agree, some of these old things, they are so lovable, so …’ But her face was saying that Maudie is far from lovable, rather a cantankerous old nuisance.

We were standing in that awful passage, with its greasy yellow walls where coal dust lay in films, the smell of cat from the coal cellar, the cracked and shaky door to the outer world. She already had her hand on the doorknob.

‘I drop in sometimes to Mrs Fowler,’ I said, ‘and I do what I can.’ I said it like this so she would understand I would not be relied upon to do her work for her.

She sighed again. ‘Well, luckily, she has to be rehoused soon.’

‘What! She doesn’t know that!’ I recognized my voice had the panic in it Maudie would feel, if she had heard.

‘Of course she knows. This place has been scheduled for years.’

‘But it belongs to some Greek or other.’

‘Oh no, it can’t do!’ she began decisively, and then I saw her rethink. Under her arm she had a file stuffed full. She hung her handbag on the doorknob, pulled out the file, opened it. A list of houses for demolition or reconstruction.

I already knew that she had made a mistake, and I wondered if she was going to admit it, or cover up. If she admitted it, I would give her full marks – for this was a contest between two professionals. We were in competition, not for Mrs Fowler – poor Maudie – but for who had authority. Although I had specifically repudiated authority.

A biro between her pretty lips, she frowned over the papers spread on her lifted knee while she stood on one leg.

‘Well, I’ll have to look into it,’ she said. And I knew that it would all be allowed to slide away. Oh, how well I know that look of hers, when someone has inwardly decided not to do anything while presenting an appearance of confident competence!

She was about to go out.

I said, ‘If I could persuade her, what Services is she entitled to?’

‘Home Help, of course. But we tried that before, and it didn’t work. A Good Neighbour, but she didn’t want one …’ She gave me a quick doubtful look, and went on. ‘She’s not entitled to Meals on Wheels, because she can manage and we are so pressed …’

‘She’s over ninety,’ I said.

‘So are many others!’

‘But you’ll arrange for the nurse to come in?’

‘But she says she doesn’t want one. We can’t force ourselves on them. They have to co-operate!’ This triumphantly, she had scored a point.

She bounded up the steps and into a red Escort, and waved to me as she went off. Pleased to be rid of me. A bright smile, and her body was saying, These amateurs, what a nuisance!

I went remorsefully back to Maudie, because she had been discussed behind her back. She sat with her face averted and was silent.

At last: ‘What have you decided, then?’

‘Mrs Fowler, I do think you ought to have some of the Services, why not?’

Her head was trembling, and her face would have done for The Wicked Witch.

‘What I want is Meals on Wheels, but they won’t give me that.’

‘No Home Help?’

‘No. They sent me one. She said, Where’s your Hoover! Too good for a carpet sweeper. And sat here drinking my tea and eating my biscuits. And when I sent her shopping, she couldn’t be bothered to take an extra step to save a penny, she’d pay anything, I could shop cheaper than she, so I told her not to come back.’

‘Well, anyway …’ And I heard there was a different note in my voice. For I had been quite ashamed, watching Hermione, seeing myself, all that pretty flattering charm, as if she had – I had! – an eye directed at the performance: how well I am doing it! How attractive and kind I am … I was fighting to keep that note out of my voice, to be direct and simple. ‘Anyway, I think you should think about taking what is available. And to start with, there’s the nurse every morning, while you don’t feel well.’

‘Why should I need a nurse?’ she inquired, her face averted.

This meant, Why, when you are coming in to me twice a day? And, too, But why should you come in, it’s not your job. And, most strongly, Please, please.

If I were with someone like Hermione, my husband, Joyce, Sister Georgie, I would say, ‘What an emotional blackmailer, you aren’t going to get away with that.’ The fine nose of our kind for advantage, taken or given.

By the time I left I had promised I would continue to go in morning and evening. And that I would ring up ‘them’ saying she did not want a nurse. And when we said goodbye she was cold and angry, frantic because of her helplessness, because she knew she should not expect so much of me, and because …

And now I am sitting here, feeling quite wild myself, trapped is what I’m feeling. And I have been all evening in the bath, thinking.

About what I really care about. My life, my real life, is in the office, is at work. Because I have been working since I was nineteen, and always for the same magazine, I’ve taken it for granted, have not seen that this is my life. I was with the magazine in its old format, have been part of three changes, and the second of these I could say was partly because of me. Joyce and I made it all happen. I have been there longer than she has: for she came in as Production Manager, mid-sixties, when I had already been there fifteen or twenty years, working my way through all the departments. If there is one person in that magazine who can be said to be Lilith, it’s me.

And yet I take it all for granted. And I am not going to jeopardize what I really care about for the sake of Maudie Fowler. I shall go to Munich, not for two days, as I said today, but for the usual four, and I shall tell her she must say yes to the nurse.

Friday – in Munich.

Went in to Maudie this morning. She in her chair, staring at a cold grate, inside a carapace of black rags. I fetched her coal, made her tea, fed the cat. She seemed to be cold, yet with the glitter of fever. She was coughing and coughing.

I said to her, ‘Mrs Fowler, I am going to Munich and I shall be away four days.’ No response at all. I said, ‘Mrs Fowler, I have to go. But I am going to ring up Hermione Whitfield and say you must have a nurse. Just till I come back.’ She went on staring into the cold grate. So I began to lay the fire – but did not know how, and she forced herself up out of her warm nest and slowly, slowly put in bits of paper, bits of wood, a fire-lighter, built up the fire. I looked around – no newspaper, no more fire-lighters, nothing.

I went out to the shop, and on the way back saw that there was a skip in the road outside her door, and there were plenty of little slats of wood, old laths from the demolished walls – she had been collecting these to start her fire. Conscious of how I must look, in all my smart gear, I filled a carrier bag with these bits of wood. While I was doing this, I chanced to glance up and saw that I was being observed from various windows. Old faces, old ladies. But I did not have time to take anything in, but rushed down with the wood and the groceries. She was again in her listless pose in front of the now roaring fire.

I did not know whether a nurse would build a fire.

I asked, ‘Will a nurse make up a fire for you?’

She did not answer. I was getting angry. And was as distressed as she. The whole situation was absurd. And yet it could not be any other way.

When I stood up to leave I said, ‘I am going to ring up and ask for a nurse and please don’t send the nurse away.’

‘I don’t want any nurse.’

I stood there, worried because I was late, and it was Conference day and I’ve never ever been late. And worried about her. And angry. And resentful. And yet she tugged at me, I wanted to take that dirty old bundle into my arms and hug her. I wanted to slap her and shake her.

‘What is all this about hospital,’ I asked, ‘what? You’d think you were being threatened with … what is so terrible about it? Have you ever been there?’

‘Yes, two winters ago. Christmas.’

‘And?’

She was sitting straight up now, her sharp chin lifted in a combative way, her eyes frightened and angry.

‘No, they were kind enough. But I don’t like it. They fill you with pills and pills and pills, you feel as if your mind has been taken from you, they treat you like a child. I don’t want it …’ And then she added, in the tone of one trying to be fair, and at this attempt leading her into more, more than she had intended. ‘ … There was one little nurse. She rubbed my back for me when I coughed …’ And she looked at me quickly, and away, and I knew she had wanted me to rub her back for her. It had not occurred to me! I do not know how!