The Diaries of Jane Somers. Doris Lessing

him quiet, she said. I was on the top floor then, the little room at the back. It was cheap, and we looked out at the trees there, lovely it was. But I found it hard to pay for everything. I went to my aunt, but she could only just manage for herself. She said, Go to your father. But he had said if I married Laurie I should never darken his door. And he was right, for once … Did I tell you about my wedding?’

      And Maudie sat laughing, laughing, and pulled out a drawer and showed me a photograph. A tiny woman, under an enormous flowered hat, in a neat tight dress. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘I looked a proper mess. I had been saying yes and no, yes and no, because what would happen was, I’d say, No, and then he’d start his squeezing and wanting, and I’d say, Yes, and he’d say, I suppose Harry (there was another boy who fancied me) won’t have you, so I’d say, No. But at last we got to say yes at the same time. I borrowed my cousin Flo’s best hat and her church gloves. My dress was my own. I sent a message to Father and said I was getting married on Sunday. He came over to Auntie’s and Laurie was there, and he stood in the doorway and said to me, If you marry him that is the last time you’ll see me. Well, I hadn’t seen him for nearly ten years as it was. I said, Will you come and see me married at least?

      ‘On that morning Laurie was worse than I’d ever seen him, fit to burst with black looks and pinches and grumbles. We walked to church with my Auntie, and we were quarrelling all the way. There was Father, all in his best striped clothes and top hat, oh what a dresser he was! And she was there too, she had got so fat, and I couldn’t help crowing secretly, she could hardly walk, all in purple and black feathers, and by then I’d come to know what was really good and what wasn’t, and I could see she was nothing, we wouldn’t have her in our workroom. But I was nothing too, that day, I could have got a hat from the workroom for the wedding to marry in, but I didn’t want a favour from the Rolovskys. And so we were married, sulking and not looking at each other. After the wedding, there was a photographer who took this, and then when Father went off towards the carriage with her, I ran after them and said, Can I come with you? But you’ve just got married, said she, really astonished she was, and I don’t blame her. And Father said, That’s right, you come home and don’t waste time on him. So I got into the carriage and left Laurie at the church …’ And at this Maudie laughs and laughs, her strong, girl’s laugh.

      ‘After I’d enjoyed myself at home for a little, and eaten my fill of everything, I thought, Well, I have a husband, and I said to them, Thanks, but I’d better be off home, and I went, Father saying, Never darken my doors. And I didn’t, for he died soon after of a stroke. And they didn’t tell me about the funeral.

      ‘But my sister was there, right enough. Suddenly she began showing herself off and buying herself clothes, and then they moved to a better house. I knew Father had left something to us both, and I went to her and said, Where is what Father left me? And she couldn’t look me in the face. What makes you think you had anything coming? she said. You never came to see us, did you? But who threw me out? I said. And we quarrelled and quarrelled and she shrieked at me. I went to my sister, willing myself to do it because she always treated me so bad, and I said, Polly, where’s my share of the money? She has got it, my sister said. You’ll have to go to a lawyer. Well, how could I do that? You need money for lawyers. I and Laurie were all lovey-dovey just then, and we both of us found it such a nice change, we didn’t want to waste any of it.

      ‘Much later, when I was so down and poor and in need of everything, I went to my sister, and she must have told her, for one day when I got back from work the landlady said a big woman in feathers and scarlet had been and left me a parcel. It was some of my mother’s clothes, that’s all, and her old purse with two gold guineas in it. And that’s all I ever had from my father. For I never saw her again.’

      Maudie’s very bad time.

      ‘I worked so hard and so hard. I used to get up so early and take Johnnie to the minder’s, and then to work, and work all day till six or seven. And then back to pick up Johnnie, and she’d be cross, often, because I was late and she wanted to be rid of him. And I’d get home and find not enough food for him and me. I was earning badly then. Mrs Rolovsky never forgave me for leaving when I married and then coming back. I wasn’t the pet any longer, and she was always taking her chance to fine me, or give me a hat that would take twice as long as the others. We were paid by what we’d got done, you see. And I never was able to scamp my work. I had to do it properly even if I was to suffer. And then we were put off. We were put off most summers. Oh, no security then, no pensions, nothing. She’d say, Pick up your cards as you go out, and leave your address, and we’ll contact you when there’s work.

      ‘That war was coming, it was nearly on us, and times were bad. I didn’t know what to do. I had a little saved, but not much. I had Johnnie home from the minder’s, that was something because I hardly ever saw him awake when I was working, but how to feed him? The landlady said, No, no credit on the rent. I kept the rent paid, but often and often I went to bed on cold water so Johnnie could have a cup of milk. It went on and on, and that was such a wonderful summer. I was wild with hunger. I’d go into the gardens and see if there was bread lying there the birds hadn’t eaten. But others had the same idea, and I’d be there first, hanging around, pretending I wasn’t watching while the people spread out the bread for the birds. Once I said to an old woman, I need that more than the birds. Then earn it, said she. I never forgot that, and I’ll never forget it. For there was no work. I tried to get a cleaning job, but they wouldn’t have me cleaning with a child hanging around. I didn’t know what I would do.

      ‘Then suddenly Laurie turns up, and finds me in bed on a Sunday afternoon, with my arms around Johnnie. I felt so faint and sick, you see. Oh, what a commotion, what a to-do! First, of course, it was all shouts, Why did you move without telling me? And then it was, You know I’d never let you go without! Then prove it, I said, and off he went and came back with groceries. I could have done with biscuits and tea and dried peas and stuff I could have kept, but no, being Laurie, it was all fancy cakes and ham. Well, I ate and Johnnie ate, and after all that he took us out for some food. I’m your Daddy, says he to Johnnie, and of course the little boy is pleased. And then, he went off. Back tomorrow, says Laurie, but I didn’t see him for months.

      ‘Meanwhile I’d hit the bottom. I went to Relief. In those days there was a Board stuffed with snobby ladies and gentlemen, and you’d stand there, and they’d say, Why don’t you sell your locket, if you’re so poor – it was my mother’s – have you got any personal belongings, we can’t keep people who have their own resources. Their own resources! You say you have a little boy, and they say, Then you must force your husband to contribute. You couldn’t explain to the likes of them about the likes of Laurie. Well, they said I could have two shillings a week. That was high summer still, and no end to it in sight. They sent a man around. I’d pawned everything, except a blanket for Johnnie, for I was sleeping under my coat. He came into our room. Bed with a mattress but no bedclothes, a wooden table – this one here, that you like. Two wooden chairs. A shelf that had on it a bit of sugar and half a loaf of bread. He stood there, in his good clothes, and looked at me and Johnnie, and then he said, Have you sold everything you can? And I had, even my mother’s locket. And he leaned forward and pointed to this …’ Maudie showed me the long dark wood stick with which she pushes back and opens the curtains. ‘What about this? he said. How am I to open and close my curtains? I said. Are you expecting me to sell my curtains as well? Shall I sell the bed and sleep on the floor, then?

      ‘He was a little ashamed then, not much, it wasn’t his job to be ashamed of what he had to do. And that was how I got my two shillings a week.’

      ‘And could you live on it?’

      ‘You would be surprised what you can live on. Johnnie and I, we ate bread, and he got some milk, and so we lived until the autumn and there was a note from the Rolovskys: they’d take me on but at less money. Because of the hard times. I would have worked for half what they gave. I slowly got back the blankets from the pawnshop, for the winter, and I got my pillows, and then … One day, when I got to the baby-minder’s, no Johnnie. Laurie had come and taken him away. I begged and screamed and begged, but she said he was the child’s father, she couldn’t refuse a child to his father – and