I sit here, one in the morning, writing it down. My mind is so clear and sharp, whirling with thoughts. Ive just had a new thought, it is this: writing is my trade, i write all the time, notes to myself, memos, articles, and everything is to present ideas,etc., if not to myself, then to others. I do not let thoughts fly away, I note them down, I present tbem, I postulate the outside eye. And that is what I am doing now. I see that asI write this diary, I have in mind that observing,eye. Does that mean I really intend to publish this? It certinly wasnt in my mind when I began writing it. Its a funny thing, this need to write things down, as if they have no existence until they are recorded. Presented. When I listen to Maudie talk, I have this feeling, quick, catch it, dont let it all vanish, record it. As if it is not valid until in print.
I made this dry and factual, no excitement in it. I wanted to see how she would react. She listened. I watched her. Strained she was, but, trying.
"I dont think I can write an article like that."
"Yet, or not at all?"
"Yet."
"When are you sitting your exams?"
"In a few weeks. Are you still seeing Mrs... ?"
"Mrs Fowler?Yes,I am."
Suddenly her passionately rejecting face ,her real distress,which told me how threatened she felt.
The first part is a summing-up of about four years. I was not keeping a diary. I wish I had. All I know is that I see everything differently now from how I did while I was living through it.
My life until Freddie started to die was one thing, afterwards another. Until then I thought of myself as a nice person. Like everyone, just about, that I know. The people I work with,mainly. I know now that I did not ask myself what I was really like, but thought only about how other people judged me.
When Freddie began to be so ill my first idea was: this is unfair. Unfair to me, I thought secretly. I partly knew he was dying, but went on as if he wasnt. That was not kind. He must have been lonely. I was proud of myself because I went on working through it all, "kept the money comingin"—well, I had to do that, with him not working. But I was thankful I was working because I had an excuse not to be with him in that awfulness. We did not have the sort of marriage where we
talked about real things. I see that now. We were not really married. It was the marriage most people have these days, both sides trying for advantage. I always saw Freddie as one up.
The word cancer was mentioned once. The doctors said to me, cancer, and now I see my reaction meant they would not go on to talk about whether to tell him or not. I dont know if they told him. Whether he knew. I think he did. When they
took him into hospital I went every day, but I sat there with a smile, how are you feeling? He looked dreadful. Yellow. Sharp bones under yellow skin. Like a boiling fowl. He was protecting me. Now, I can see it. Because I could not take it.
Child-wife.
All that I have written up to now was a recapitulation,summing-up. Now I am going to write day by day, if I can.Today was Saturday, I did my shopping, and went home to work for a couple of hours, and then dropped in to Mrs F,No answer when I knocked, and I went back up her old steps to the street and saw her creeping along, pushing her shopping basket. Saw her as I did the first day: an old crooked witch.Quite terrifying, nose and chin nearly meeting, heavy grey brows, straggly bits of white hair under the black splodge of hat. She was breathing heavily as she came up to me. She gave her impatient shake of the head when I said hello, and went down the steps with out speaking to me. Opened the door, still without speaking, went in. I nearly Walked away. But followed her, and without being asked took myself into the room where the fire was. She came in after a long time, perhaps half an hour, while I heard her potter about. Her old yellow cat came and sat near my feet..She brought in a tray with her brown teapot and. biscuits, quite nice and smiling. And she pulled the dirty curtains over, and put on the light and put the coal on the fire. No coal left in the bucket. I took the bucket from her and to the coal cellar. A dark that had no went along the passage light in it. A smell of cat. I scraped coal into the bucket and took it back, and she held out her hand for the bucket without saying thank you.
The trouble with a summing-up afterwards, a recap, is that you leave out the grit and grind of a meeting. I could say, She was cross to begin with, then got her temper back, and we had a nice time drinking tea, and she told me about... But what about all the shifts of liking, anger, irritation--oh, so much anger, in both of us?
I was angry while I stood there on the steps and she went down past me without speaking, and she was angry, probably,thinking, this is getting.too much! And sitting in that room,with the cat, I was furious, thinking, well If that is all the thanks I get! And then all the annoyances melting into pleasure with the glow of the fire, and the rain outside. And there are always these bad moments for me, when I actually take up the greasy cup and have to put my lips to it; when I take in whiffs of that sweet sharp smell that comes from her, when I see how she looks at me, sometimes, the boiling up of some old rage...It is an up-and-down of emotion, each meeting.
I had looked forward, now I have more time, to getting my clothes up to the mark. What hard work it is, my style. I stood in front of the glass in my best suit. Honey-beige wild silk. My bag, My gloves. My shoes. There is a roughness over the seat,and no way of curing it. The edges of the revers have a slightly dulled look. Two buttons are working loose. A thread showing from the dove-grey satin lining. My shoes have creases along the fronts. My gloves are less than ideal. All my silk stockings have ladders. What is to be done? Throw the whole lot out and start again! But no, the problem is, if I have the time now for my style, I do not have the inclination. I have been remember- how lng Colettes, or Cheris, Leah greeted her old lover with the information of how she put on a suit and a good lace jabot and there she was, ready for anything and in full fig. And what hurt him (hurt Colette?) was that she no longer cared about these careful time-consuming luxuries. But I am not going to be slovenly, I will not. The trap of old age--after all, I am in my fifties, hardly time to abdicate--is a tired slovenliness. If I no longer can care about my style, which depends on time, trouble, detail, then I shall think out something intelligent, a compromise. Meanwhile, I have taken a load of stuff to the charity shop, and have asked my dressmaker to repeat certain items. I have never done that before; we have spent hours in consultation over materials, buttons, finings. She was sur-prised, rang me up on getting my letter, and what she was really asking was, Have you lost interest that you simply tell me please make the pale grey woollen suit again, and the material is in Bond Street?--Yes, my dear, it is so, I have lost interest; but after all, I did introduce Phyllis to you. And i shall ask you to make again for me the brown trouser suit, the black crepe de Chine shirt, the creamsilk dress.
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