“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 to 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 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, 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 bestseller, 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 girl-friends 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 get
ting 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.