The Diaries of Jane Somers. Doris Lessing

I washed her face, carefully, on a clean bit torn off the old towel.

      Then I asked her to sit down, found some scissors, cut the toenails, which was just like cutting through horn, got clean stockings on, her dress, her jersey. And as she was about to put on the outside clothes of black again, I said involuntarily, ‘Oh, don’t – ’ and was sorry, for she was hurt, she trembled even more, and sat silent, like a bad child. She was worn out.

      I threw out the dirty water and scalded the basin, and filled a kettle to make fresh tea. I took a look out of the back: streams of sleet, with crumbs of greyish snow, the wind blowing hard – water was coming in under the kitchen door; and as for thinking of her going out into that to reach the lavatory, that freezing box – yet she had been going out, and presumably would again.

      I kept saying to myself, She is over ninety and she has been living like this for years: she has survived it!

      I took her more tea, and some biscuits, and left her drinking them by her big fire.

      I put all the filthy outer clothes I had taken off in newspaper and folded them up and dumped them in the rubbish bin, without asking her.

      And then I made a selection among the clothes from the drawers, and stripped the filthy sheets from her bed, and the pillowcases, and went out into the rain to the launderette, leaving them with the girl there to be done.

      I made the place as neat as I could, put down food for the cat, who sat against Maudie’s leg, being stroked. I cleared everything up. All this time Maudie sat staring into the flames, not looking at me when I looked at her, but watching me as I moved around, and when she thought I didn’t know.

      ‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate it,’ she said as I laboured on, and on. I was sweeping the floor by then, with a hand brush and pan. I couldn’t find anything else. The way she said this, I couldn’t interpret it. It was flat. I thought, even hopeless: she was feeling perhaps, as I had had a glimpse of, remembering myself as a child, helpless in a new way. For, very clearly, no one had ever done this kind of thing for her before.

      I went back to the launderette. The Irish girl, a large competent girl with whom I had exchanged the brisk comradeship of equals when leaving the stuff, gave me the great bag of clean things and looked into my face and said, ‘Filth. I’ve never seen anything like it. Filth.’ She hated me.

      I said, ‘Thanks,’ did not bother to explain, and left. But I was flaming with – embarrassment! Oh, how dependent I am on being admired, liked, appreciated.

      I took the things back, through the sleet. I was cold and tired by then. I wanted to get home …

      But I cleared out the drawers of a large chest, put the clean things in, and told Maudie where I had put them.

      Then I said, ‘I’ll drop in tomorrow evening.’

      I was curious to hear what she’d say.

      ‘I’ll see you then’ was what she said.

      And now I am alone, and have bathed, but it was a brisk businesslike bath, I didn’t soak for hours. I should have tidied everything, but I haven’t. I am, simply, tired. I cannot believe that this time yesterday I was in the hotel, pampered guest, eating supper with Karl, cherished colleague. Flowers, venison, wine, cream – the lot.

      It seems to me impossible that there should be that – there; and then Maudie Fowler, here. Or is it I who am impossible? I certainly am disoriented.

      I have to think all this out. What am I to do? Who can I discuss it with? Joyce is my friend, she is my friend. She is my friend?

      Thursday.

      Joyce came in to collect work to take home. She looks awful. I said to her, ‘How goes it?’ She said, ‘He wants me to go with him to the States.’ I asked, ‘For good?’ She said, ‘For good.’ She looked at me, I looked at her. This is how we converse: in shorthand. She said, ‘I’ve got to fly. Tell John I’ve got the cover finished. I’ve done the Notes. I’ll be in all tomorrow, Janna.’ And off she went. This means: her husband has been offered a professorship, he wants to take it, he wants her to give up her job here and go with him, she doesn’t want to go, they quarrelled to the point of divorce, the children don’t want to go to the States – and this afternoon I had the feeling that Joyce would probably go to the States. And that’s the end of that.

      I went in to Maudie on the way home: her door was on the latch. Fire blazing. Cat on bed asleep. Maudie, asleep. An empty teacup on the arm of her chair. I took the cup to safety, left a note: See you tomorrow, and fled hoping she wouldn’t wake before I left.

      I am sitting here in my dressing gown by the electric fire. I should clean out this flat. I should really wash my hair.

      I am thinking of how Maudie Fowler one day could not trouble herself to clean out her front room, because there was so much junk in it, and then she left it and left it; going in sometimes, thinking, well, it’s not so bad. Meanwhile she was keeping the back room and the kitchen spotless. Even now she does her own chimney once a week, and then scrubs the grate, brushes up the dust and cinders – though less and less thoroughly. She wasn’t feeling well, and didn’t bother, once, twice – and then her room was not really cleaned, only the floor in the middle of the room sometimes, and she learned not to look around the edges or under the bed. Her kitchen was last. She scrubbed it and washed shelves, but then things began to slide. But through it all she washed herself, standing at the kitchen table, heating water in the kettles. And she kept her hair clean. She went sometimes to the public bath-houses, for she had told me she liked going there. Then she left longer and longer between washing her hair … and then she did not wash her clothes, only took out the cleanest ones there were, putting them back grubby, till they were the cleanest; and so it went on. And at last, she was upright in her thick shell of black, her knickers not entirely clean, but not so bad, her neck dirty, but she did not think about it, her scalp unwashed. When they took her to hospital, they washed her all over and washed her hair too. She sometimes thought humorously, when they cart me off back to hospital, I’ll get another proper wash! But she, Maudie Fowler, was still there, alert, very much all there, on guard inside that old witch’s appearance. She is still there, and everything has collapsed around her, it’s too difficult, too much.

      And I, Janna, am sitting here, in my clean, scented dressing gown, just out of my bath. I should do my nails again, though. I should clean my flat, or ask someone in to clean it. I was in my bath for only a few minutes tonight.

      By this time next year my whole life will have changed. I know it, though I don’t know how.

      I shall go down and visit Georgie next weekend. If I dare leave Maudie. It is ridiculous. Where is that one person?

      Friday.

      I went in on my way to work. She was better. Had been out to shop for herself. She looked quite nice and fresh – so I see her now, I no longer see the old witch. I said I was going to visit my sister Georgie. She laughed at the name. She said, ‘One of these days I’ll visit my sister, I expect.’ I already knew what that meant, and I said, ‘I’ll take you, Maudie.’ ‘Janna and Georgie,’ she said. ‘My sister and I, we were Maudie and Polly, and when we went out dressed up in our white coats and little hats, we were a picture.’ I said, ‘Georgie and I were a picture too, I expect. I remember pink dresses and berets. I’ll see you Sunday night when I come back.’ ‘If you have the time,’ she said. I noted that I could have given her a nice sharp slap, but laughed and said, ‘I’ll see you.’

      Sunday Night.

      The train was very late. Did not go in to Maudie. Now it is midnight. I have done the usual Sunday-night things, seeing my clothes are ready for the week, hair, make-up, nails.

      Well, it has been a painful weekend. When I got there Georgie was alone, because Tom and the children had gone off on some visit. Was very pleased, can’t stand those brats of hers. Tom is all right, but a married couple is a married couple. I wanted to talk to Georgie. My thought was, specifically: now I am grown up,