The Golden Notebook

  “Of course I had a good time, why shouldn’t I?”

  Richard laughed, loudly and unpleasantly, and Molly said, impatient, “Oh for God’s sake, of course I was glad to be free for the first time since I had a baby. Why not? And what about you—you have Marion, the good little woman, tied hand and foot to the boys while you do as you like—and there’s another thing. I keep trying to explain and you never listen. I don’t want him to grow up one of these damned mother-ridden Englishmen. I wanted him to break free of me. Yes, don’t laugh, but it wasn’t good, the two of us together in this house, always so close and knowing everything the other one did.”

  Richard grimaced with annoyance and said, “Yes, I know your little theories on this point.”

  At which Anna came in with: “It’s not only Molly—all the women I know—I mean, the real women, worry that their sons are going to grow up like…they’ve got good reason to worry.”

  At this Richard turned hostile eyes on Anna; and Molly watched the two of them sharply.

  “Like what, Anna?”

  “I would say,” said Anna, deliberately sweet, “just a trifle unhappy about their sex lives? Or would you say that’s putting it too strongly, hmmmm?”

  Richard flushed, a dark ugly flush, and turned back to Molly saying to her: “All right, I’m not saying you deliberately did something you shouldn’t.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But what the hell’s wrong with the boy? He never passed an exam decently, he wouldn’t go to Oxford, and now he sits around, brooding and…”

  Both Anna and Molly laughed out at the word brooding.

  “The boy worries me,” said Richard. “He really does.”

  “He worries me,” said Molly reasonably. “And that’s what we’re going to discuss, isn’t it?”

  “I keep offering him things. I invite him to all kinds of things where he’d meet people who’d do him good.”

  Molly laughed again.

  “All right, laugh and sneer. But things being as they are, we can’t afford to laugh.”

  “When you said, do him good, I imagined good emotionally. I always forget you’re such a pompous little snob.”

  “Words don’t hurt anyone,” said Richard, with unexpected dignity. “Call me names if you like. You’ve lived one way, I’ve lived another. All I’m saying is, I’m in a position to offer that boy—well anything he liked. And he’s simply not interested. If he were doing anything constructive with your lot, it’d be different.”

  “You always talk as if I try to put Tommy against you.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “If you mean, that I’ve always said what I thought about the way you live, your values, your success game, that sort of thing, of course I have. Why should I be expected to shut up about everything I believe in? But I’ve always said, there’s your father, you must get to know that world, it exists, after all.”

  “Big of you.”

  “Molly’s always urging him to see more of you,” said Anna. “I know she has. And so have I.”

  Richard nodded impatiently, suggesting that what they said was unimportant.

  “You’re so stupid about children, Richard. They don’t like being split,” said Molly. “Look at the people he knows with me—artists, writers, actors and so on.”

  “And politicians. Don’t forget the comrades.”

  “Well why not? He’ll grow up knowing something about the world he lives in, which is more than you can say about your three—Eton and Oxford, it’s going to be, for all of them. Tommy knows all kinds. He won’t see the world in terms of the little fishpond of the upper class.”

  Anna said: “You’re not going to get anywhere if you two go on like this.” She sounded angry; she tried to right it with a joke: “What it amounts to is, you two should never have married, but you did, or at least you shouldn’t have had a child, but you did—” Her voice sounded angry again, and again she softened it, saying, “Do you realise you two have been saying the same things over and over for years? Why don’t you accept that you’ll never agree about anything and be done with it?”

  “How can we be done with it when there’s Tommy to consider,” said Richard, irritably, very loud.

  “Do you have to shout?” said Anna. “How do you know he hasn’t heard every word? That’s probably what’s wrong with him. He must feel such a bone of contention.”

  Molly promptly went to the door, opened it, listened. “Nonsense, I can hear him typing upstairs.” She came back saying “Anna you make me tired when you get English and tight-lipped.”

  “I hate loud voices.”

  “Well I’m Jewish and I like them.”

  Richard again visibly suffered. “Yes—and you call yourself Miss Jacobs. Miss. In the interests of your right to independence and your own identity—whatever that might mean. But Tommy has Miss Jacobs for a mother.”

  “It’s not the miss you object to,” said Molly cheerfully. “It’s the Jacobs. Yes it is. You always were anti-Semitic.”

  “Oh hell,” said Richard, impatient.

  “Tell me, how many Jews do you number among your personal friends?”

  “According to you I don’t have personal friends, I only have business friends.”

  “Except your girl-friends of course. I’ve noticed with interest that three of your women since me have been Jewish.”

  “For God’s sake,” said Anna. “I’m going home.” And she actually got off the window-sill. Molly laughed, got up and pushed her down again. “You’ve got to stay. Be chairman, we obviously need one.”

  “Very well,” said Anna, determined. “I will. So stop wrangling. What’s it all about, anyway? The fact is, we all agree, we all give the same advice, don’t we?”

  “Do we?” said Richard.

  “Yes. Molly thinks you should offer Tommy a job in one of your things.” Like Molly, Anna spoke with automatic contempt of Richard’s world, and he grinned in irritation.

  “One of my things? And you agree, Molly?”

  “If you’d give me a chance to say so, yes.”

  “There we are,” said Anna. “No grounds even for argument.”

  Richard now poured himself a whisky, looking humorously patient; and Molly waited, humorously patient.

  “So it’s all settled?” said Richard.

  “Obviously not,” said Anna. “Because Tommy has to agree.”

  “So we’re back where we started. Molly, may I know why you aren’t against your precious son being mixed up with the hosts of mammon?”

  “Because I’ve brought him up in such a way that—he’s a good person. He’s all right.”

  “So he can’t be corrupted by me?” Richard spoke with controlled anger, smiling. “And may I ask where you get your extraordinary assurance about your values—they’ve taken quite a knock in the last two years, haven’t they?”

  The two women exchanged glances, which said: He was bound to say it, let’s get it over with.

  “It hasn’t occurred to you that the real trouble with Tommy is that he’s been surrounded half his life with communists or so-called communists—most of the people he’s known have been mixed up in one way and another. And now they’re all leaving the party, or have left—don’t you think it might have had some effect?”

  “Well, obviously,” said Molly.

  “Obviously,” said Richard, grinning in irritation. “Just like that—but what price your precious values—Tommy’s been brought up on the beauty and freedom of the glorious Soviet fatherland.”

  “I’m not discussing politics with you, Richard.”

  “No,” said Anna, “of course you shouldn’t discuss politics.”

  “Why not, when it’s relevant?”

  “Because you don’t discuss them,” said Molly. “You simply use slogans out of the newspapers.”

  “Well can I put it this way? Two years ago you and Anna were rushing out at meetings and organising everything in sight…”

  “I wasn’t, anyhow
,” said Anna.

  “Don’t quibble. Molly certainly was. And now what? Russia’s in the doghouse and what price the comrades now? Most of them having nervous breakdowns or making a lot of money, as far as I can make out.”

  “The point is,” said Anna, “that socialism is in the doldrums in this country…”

  “And everywhere else.”

  “All right. If you’re saying that one of Tommy’s troubles is that he was brought up a socialist and it’s not an easy time to be a socialist—well of course we agree.”

  “The royal we. The socialist we. Or just the we of Anna and Molly?”

  “Socialist, for the purposes of this argument,” said Anna.

  “And yet in the last two years you’ve made an about-turn.”

  “No we haven’t. It’s a question of a way of looking at life.”

  “You want me to believe that the way you look at life, which is a sort of anarchy, as far as I can make out, is socialist?”

  Anna glanced at Molly; Molly ever-so-slightly shook her head, but Richard saw it, and said, “No discussion in front of the children, is that it? What astounds me is your fantastic arrogance. Where do you get it from, Molly? What are you? At the moment you’ve got a part in a masterpiece called The Wings of Cupid.”

  “We minor actresses don’t choose our plays. Besides, I’ve been bumming around for a year, not earning, and I’m broke.”

  “So your assurance comes from the bumming round? It certainly can’t come from the work you do.”

  “I call a halt,” said Anna. “I’m chairman—this discussion is closed. We’re talking about Tommy.”

  Molly ignored Anna, and attacked. “What you say about me may or may not be true. But where do you get your arrogance from? I don’t want Tommy to be a businessman. You are hardly an advertisement for the life. Anyone can be a businessman, why, you’ve often said so to me. Oh come off it Richard, how often have you dropped in to see me and sat there saying how empty and stupid your life is?”

  Anna made a quick warning movement, and Molly said, shrugging, “All right, I’m not tactful. Why should I be? Richard says my life isn’t up to much, well I agree with him, but what’s his? Your poor Marion, treated like a housewife or a hostess, but never as a human being. Your boys, being put through the upper-class mill simply because you want it, given no choice. Your stupid little affairs. Why am I supposed to be impressed?”

  “I see that you two have after all discussed me,” said Richard, giving Anna a look of open hostility.

  “No we haven’t,” said Anna. “Or nothing we haven’t said for years. We’re discussing Tommy. He came to see me and I told him he should go and see you, Richard, and see if he couldn’t do one of those expert jobs, not business, it’s stupid to be just business, but something constructive, like the United Nations or Unesco. He could get in through you, couldn’t he?”

  “Yes, he could.”

  “What did he say, Anna?” asked Molly.

  “He said he wanted to be left alone to think. And why not? He’s twenty. Why shouldn’t he think and experiment with life, if that’s what he wants? Why should we bully him?”

  “The trouble with Tommy is he’s never been bullied,” said Richard.

  “Thank you,” said Molly.

  “He’s never had any direction. Molly’s simply left him alone as if he was an adult, always. What sort of sense do you suppose it makes to a child—freedom, make-up-your-own-mind, I’m-not-going-to-put-any-pressure-on-you; and at the same time, the comrades, discipline, self-sacrifice, and kow-towing to authority…”

  “What you have to do is this,” said Molly. “Find a place in one of your things that isn’t just share-pushing or promoting or money-making. See if you can’t find something constructive. Then show it to Tommy and let him decide.”

  Richard, his face red with anger over his too-yellow, too-tight shirt, held a glass of whisky between two hands, turning it round and round, looking down into it. “Thanks,” he said at last, “I will.” He spoke with such a stubborn confidence in the quality of what he was going to offer his son, that Anna and Molly again raised their eyebrows at each other, conveying that the whole conversation had been wasted, as usual. Richard intercepted this glance, and said: “You two are so extraordinarily naïve.”

  “About business?” said Molly, with her loud jolly laugh.

  “About big business,” said Anna quietly, amused, who had been surprised, during her conversations with Richard, to discover the extent of his power. This had not caused his image to enlarge, for her; rather he had seemed to shrink, against a background of international money. And she had loved Molly the more for her total lack of respect for this man who had been her husband, and who was in fact one of the financial powers of the country.

  “Ohhh,” groaned Molly, impatient.

  “Very big business,” said Anna laughing, trying to make Molly meet this, but the actress shrugged it off, with her characteristic big shrug of the shoulders, her white hands spreading out, palms out, until they came to rest on her knees.

  “I’ll impress her with it later,” said Anna to Richard. “Or at least try to.”

  “What is all this?” asked Molly.

  “It’s no good,” said Richard, sarcastic, grudging, resentful. “Do you know that in all these years she’s never been interested enough even to ask?”

  “You’ve paid Tommy’s school fees, and that’s all I ever wanted from you.”

  “You’ve been putting Richard across to everyone for years as a sort of—well an enterprising little businessman, like a jumped-up grocer,” said Anna. “And it turns out that all the time he’s a tycoon. But really. A big shot. One of the people we have to hate—on principle,” Anna added laughing.

  “Really?” said Molly, interested, regarding her former husband with mild surprise that this ordinary and—as far as she was concerned—not very intelligent man could be anything at all.

  Anna recognised the look—it was what she felt—and laughed.

  “Good God,” said Richard, “talking to you two, it’s like talking to a couple of savages.”

  “Why?” said Molly. “Should we be impressed? You aren’t even self-made. You just inherited it.”

  “What does it matter? It’s the thing that matters. It may be a bad system, I’m not even going to argue—not that I could with either of you, you are both as ignorant as monkeys about economics, but it’s what runs this country.”

  “Well of course,” said Molly. Her hands still lay, palms upward, on her knees. She now brought them together in her lap, in an unconscious mimicry of the gesture of a child waiting for a lesson.

  “But why despise it?” Richard, who had obviously been meaning to go on, stopped, looking at those meekly mocking hands. “Oh Jesus!” he said, giving up.

  “But we don’t. It’s too—anonymous—to despise. We despise…” Molly cut off the word you, and as if in guilt at a lapse in manners, let her hands lose their pose of silent impertinence. She put them quickly out of sight behind her. Anna, watching, thought amusedly: If I said to Molly, you stopped Richard talking simply by making fun of him with your hands, she wouldn’t know what I meant. How wonderful to be able to do that, how lucky she is…

  “Yes I know you despise me, but why? You’re a half-successful actress, and Anna once wrote a book?”

  Molly’s hands instinctively lifted themselves from beside her, and fingers touching, negligent, on Molly’s knee, said: Oh what a bore you are Richard. Richard looked at them, and frowned.

  “That’s got nothing to do with it,” said Molly.

  “Indeed.”

  “It’s because we haven’t given in,” said Molly, seriously.

  “To what?”

  “If you don’t know we can’t tell you.”

  Richard was on the point of exploding out of his chair—Anna could see his thigh muscles tense and quiver. To prevent a row she said quickly, drawing his fire: “That’s the point, you talk and talk, but you’re so far
away from—what’s real, you never understand anything.”

  She succeeded. Richard turned his body towards her, leaning forward so that she was confronted with his warm smooth brown arms, lightly covered with golden hair, his exposed brown neck, his brownish-red hot face. She shrank back slightly with an unconscious look of distaste, as he said: “Well Anna, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know you better than I did before, and I can’t say you impress me with knowing what you want, what you think or how you should go about things.”

  Anna, conscious that she was colouring, met his eyes with an effort, and drawled deliberately: “Or perhaps what it is you don’t like is that I do know what I want, have always been prepared to experiment, never pretend to myself the second rate is more than it is, and know when to refuse. Hmmmm?”

  Molly, looking quickly from one to the other, let out her breath, made an exclamation with her hands, by dropping them apart, emphatically, on to her knees, and unconsciously nodded—partly because she had confirmed a suspicion and partly because she approved of Anna’s rudeness. She said, “Hey, what is this?” drawling it out arrogantly, so that Richard turned from Anna to her. “If you’re attacking us for the way we live again, all I can say is, the less you say the better, what with your private life the way it is.”

  “I preserve the forms,” said Richard, with such a readiness to conform to what they both expected of him, that they both, at the same moment, let out peals of laughter.

  “Yes darling, we know you do,” said Molly. “Well, how’s Marion? I’d love to know.”

  For the third time Richard said, “I see you’ve discussed it,” and Anna said: “I told Molly you had been to see me. I told her what I didn’t tell you—that Marion had been to see me.”

  “Well, let’s have it,” said Molly.

  “Why,” said Anna, as if Richard were not present, “Richard is worried because Marion is such a problem to him.”

  “That’s nothing new,” said Molly, in the same tone.

  Richard sat still, looking at the women in turn. They waited; ready to leave it, ready for him to get up and go, ready for him to justify himself. But he said nothing. He seemed fascinated by the spectacle of these two, flashingly hostile to him, a laughing unit of condemnation. He even nodded, as if to say: Well, go on.