The Golden Notebook (48 page)

13th November, 1955

Ever since Stalin's death in 1953 there has been a state of affairs in the C.P. that the old hands say would have been impossible at any time before. Groups of people, ex-communists and communists together, have been meeting to discuss what is going on in the Party, in Russia and in Britain. The first meeting I was asked to attend (and I've been out of the Party for over a year now) consisted of nine members and five ex-members. And none of us, the ex-members, had the usual 'You are traitors' inflicted on us. We met as socialists, with full trust. The discussions have slowly developed and there is now a sort of vague plan-to remove the 'dead bureaucracy' at the centre of the Party, so that the C.P. should be completely changed, a genuinely British Party, without the deadly loyalty to Moscow and the obligation to tell lies, etc., a genuinely democratic Party. I again find myself among people filled with excitement and purpose- among them people who left the Party years ago. The plan can be summarised thus: (a) The Party, shorn of its 'old hands' who are incapable of thinking straight after so many years of lying and double-cross, should make a statement repudiating its past. This, first, (b) to break all ties with foreign communist parties, in the expectation that other communist parties will also be rejuvenating themselves and breaking with the past, (c) to call together the thousands and thousands of people who have been communist and who have left the Party in disgust, inviting them to join the revitalised party, (d) To... [At this point the red notebook was stuffed full of newspaper cuttings to do with the Twentieth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, letters from all kinds of people about politics, agendas for political meetings, etc. This mass of paper had been fastened together by rubber bands and clipped to the page. Then Anna's handwriting began again:]

11th August, 1956

Not for the first time in my life I realise I have spent weeks and months in frenzied political activity and have achieved absolutely nothing. More, that I might have foreseen it would achieve nothing. The Twentieth Congress has doubled and trebled the numbers of people, both in and out of the Party, who want a 'new' communist party. Last night I was at a meeting which went on till nearly morning. Towards the end a man who had not spoken before, a socialist from Austria, made a short humorous speech, something like this: 'My dear Comrades. I have been listening to you, amazed at the wells of faith in human beings! What you are saying amounts to this: that you know the leadership of the British C. P. consists of men and women totally corrupted by years of work in the Stalinist atmosphere. You know they will do anything to maintain their position. You know, because you have given a hundred examples of it here this evening, that they suppress resolutions, rig ballots, pack meetings, lie and twist. There is no way of getting them out of office by democratic means partly because they are unscrupulous, and partly because half of the Party members are too innocent to believe their leaders are capable of such trickery. But every time you reach this point in your deliberations you stop, and instead of drawing the obvious conclusions from what you have said, you go off into some day-dream and talk as if all you have to do is to appeal to the leading comrades to resign all at once because it would be in the best interests of the Party if they did. It is as if you proposed to appeal to a professional burglar to retire because his efficiency was giving his profession a bad name.' We all laughed, but continued with the discussion. The humorous note he used absolved him, as it were, from the necessity of a serious answer. Afterwards I thought about it. Long ago I decided that at a political meeting the truth usually comes out in just such a speech or a remark ignored at the time because its tone is not that of the meeting. Humorous, or satirical, or even angry or bitter-yet it's the truth, and all the long speeches and contributions are nonsense. I've just read what I wrote on the 13th November last year. I am amazed at our naivety. Yet I was really inspired by a belief in the possibility of a new honest C.P. I really did believe it was possible.

20th September, 1956

Have been to no more meetings. The idea in the air, so I'm told, is to start a new 'really British C. P. ' as an example and an alternative to the existing C. P. People are contemplating, apparently without misgivings, the existence of two rival C. P.'s. Yet it's obvious what would happen. The energies of both would be occupied by throwing insults at each other and denying each other's right to be communist at all. A recipe for farce. But it's no more stupid than the idea of 'throwing out' the old guard by democratic means and reforming the Party 'from within.' Stupid. Yet I was wrapped up in it for months, like hundreds of other normally intelligent people who have been involved in politics for years. Sometimes I think the one form of experience people are incapable of learning from is the political experience. People are reeling off from the C. P. in dozens, brokenhearted. The irony is that they are broken-hearted and cynical to the degree that they were loyal and innocent before. People like myself who had few illusions (we all had some illusions-mine was that anti-Semitism was 'impossible') remain calm and ready to start again, accepting the fact that the British C. P. will probably slowly degenerate into a tiny little sect. The new phrase in the air is 're-think the socialist position.' Today Molly rang me. Tommy is involved with the new group of young socialists. Molly said she had sat in a corner listening while they talked. She felt as if 'she had gone back a hundred years to her own youth' when she was first in the C. P. 'Anna, it was extraordinary! It was really so odd. Here they are, with no time for the C. P., and quite right too, and no time for the Labour Party, and I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't right about that, there are a few hundred of them, scattered up and down Britain, yet they all talk as if Britain will be socialist in about ten years at the latest, and through their efforts of course. You know, as if they will be running the new beautiful socialist Britain that will be born on Tuesday week. I felt as if they were mad, or as if I were mad... but the point is, Anna, it's just like us, isn't it? Well? And even using that awful jargon we've been making fun of for years and years, just as if they'd just thought it all up for themselves.' I said: 'But surely, Molly, you're pleased he's become a socialist and not some sort of career-type?' 'But, of course. Naturally. The point is, oughtn't they to be more intelligent than we were, Anna?' [The yellow notebook continued:]

The Shadow of the Third

From this point of the novel 'the third,' previously Paul's wife; then Ella's younger alter ego formed from fantasies about Paul's wife; then the memory of Paul; becomes Ella herself. As Ella cracks and disintegrates, she holds fast to the idea of Ella whole, healthy, and happy. The link between the various 'thirds' must be made very clear: the link is normality, but more than that-conventionality, attitudes or emotions proper to the 'respectable' life which in fact Ella refuses to have anything to do with. Ella moves into a new flat. Julia resentful. An area of their relationship obscured before is now exposed by Julia's attitude. Julia had dominated Ella. Ella had been prepared to be dominated, or at least been prepared to look as if she was. Julia's nature was essentially generous-kind, warm, giving. Yet now she even goes to the length of complaining to mutual friends that Ella had taken advantage of her, had made use of her. Ella, alone with her son in the big ugly dirty flat which she now has to clean and paint, thinks that in a sense what Julia complains of was true. She had been rather like a willing captive, with the captive's hidden core of independence. Leaving Julia's house was like a daughter leaving a mother. Or, she thinks wryly, remembering Paul's unfriendly jokes that she was 'married to Julia'-like the break-up of a marriage. Ella is for a while more alone than she has ever been. She thinks a great deal about her ruptured friendship with Julia. For she is closer to Julia than anyone, if being 'close' means mutual confidence and shared experience. Yet at the moment this friendship is all hatred and resentment. And she cannot stop herself thinking about Paul who left her months ago. Over a year now. Ella understands that, living with Julia, she has been protected from a certain kind of attention. She is now definitely 'a woman living alone'; and that, although she has not realised it before, is very different from 'two women sharing a house.' For instance. Three weeks after she has moved into the new fiat, Dr West telephones her. He informs her that his wife is on holiday and asks her to dinner. Ella goes, unable to believe, in spite of the too-carefully dropped information about his wife's being away, that this is not to be a dinner about some aspect of office-work. During the dinner Ella slowly understands that Dr West is offering her an affair. She remembers the unkind remarks that he so carefully passed on to her at the time that Paul left her, and thinks that he has probably pigeon-holed her in his mind for an occasion like this. She also understands, that if she, Ella, turns him down this evening he will work through a short list of three or four women, for he remarks spitefully: 'There are others, you know. You aren't condemning me to solitude.' Ella watches developments in the office, and sees, that towards the end of a week, Patricia Brent has a new manner with Dr West. The tough, efficient, professional woman's manner has become soft, almost girlish. Patricia has been the last on Dr West's short list, for he has tried and failed with two of the secretaries. Ella watches: maliciously pleased that Dr West has ended up with what, for him, was the worst choice; angry on behalf of her sex that Patricia Brent is positively grateful and flattered; terror that accepting the favours of a Dr West might be the end of her own road; angry amusement that Dr West, turned down by herself, made a point of indicating: You wouldn't have me, but you see, I don't care! And all these emotions are uncomfortably strong, rooted in a resentment that has nothing to do with Dr West. Ella dislikes feeling them, and is ashamed. She asks herself why she is not sorry for Dr West, a middle-aged, not very attractive man, married to an essentially competent and probably dull wife. Why shouldn't he try to attract some romance to himself? But it is no use. She resents and despises him. Meeting Julia at a friend's house, their relations are chilly. Ella, 'by chance,' starts telling her about Dr West. In a few moments the two women are friendly again, as if there had never been a coldness. But they are now friends on the basis of an aspect of their relationship which had always been subordinate before-criticism for men. Julia caps Ella's story about Dr West with this one: an actor at the theatre Julia was playing in brought her home one night and came up for coffee and sat complaining about his marriage. Julia: 'I was all kind and full of good advice as usual, but I was so bored at hearing it all again I wanted to scream.' Julia, at four in the morning, suggested she was tired and he should go home. 'But my dear, you'd think I'd mortally insulted him. I could see that if he didn't make me that night his ego would be all deflated, and so I went to bed.' The man was impotent, Julia good-humoured. 'In the morning, he said could he come over again that night. He said, it was the least I could do, to give him a chance to redeem himself. He's got a sense of humour at least.' And so this man spent a second night with Julia. With no better results. 'Naturally he left at four, so that the little woman could believe he had been working late. Just as he left he turned on me and said: "You're a castrating woman, I thought you were from the moment I saw you." 'Jesus,' said Ella. 'Yes,' said Julia fiercely. 'And the funny thing is, he's a nice man. I mean, I would never have expected that sort of remark from him.' 'You shouldn't have gone to bed.' 'But you know how it is-it's always that moment, when a man looks all wounded in his masculinity, one can't bear it, one needs to bolster him up.' 'Yes, but they just kick us afterwards as hard as they can, so why do we do it?' 'Yes, but I never seem to learn.' A few weeks later, Ella sees Julia, tells her: 'Four men, and I haven't even flirted with them before, have telephoned to say their wives are away, and every time they have a delightful coy note in their voices. It really is extraordinary-one knows a man, to work with, for years, then it's enough that their wives should go away for them to change their voices and they seem to think you're going to fall over yourself to get into bed. What on earth do you suppose goes through their minds?' 'Much better not think about that: Ella says to Julia, out of an impulse to placate, to charm (and she recognises it as she speaks as the same need she has to charm or placate a man: 'Well at least when I was living in your house, this didn't happen. Which is odd in itself, isn't it?' Julia shows a flash of triumph, as if she would like to say: Well, I was good for something, then... There is now a moment of discomfort: Ella lets slide, out of cowardice, the chance of saying that Julia has behaved badly about her leaving; the chance of 'getting it all out into the open.' And in the silence of this discomfort, there is the thought, which follows naturally from the 'it is odd in itself, isn't it?'-is it possible they thought us Lesbians? Ella had considered this before, with amusement. But she is thinking: No. If they had thought us Lesbian it would have attracted them, they would have been around in swarms. Every man I've ever known has spoken with relish--either openly or unconsciously, about Lesbians. It's an aspect of their incredible vanity: seeing themselves as redeemers of these lost females. Ella listens to the bitter words she is using in her mind and is shaken by them. At home she tries to analyse the bitterness which possesses her. She literally feels poisoned by it. She thinks that nothing has occurred which has not been happening all her life. Married men, temporarily wifeless, trying to have an affair with her-etc., etc., ten years ago she would not have even noticed or remarked on it. All this was taken by her as part of the hazards and chances of being a 'free woman.' But ten years ago, she realised, she had been feeling something that she had not then recognised. An emotion of satisfaction, of victory over the wives; because she, Ella, the free woman, was so much more exciting than the dull tied women. Looking back and acknowledging this emotion she is ashamed. She thinks, too, that the quality of her tone with Julia is that of a bitter spinster. Men. The enemy. They. She decides not to confide in Julia again, or at least to banish the tone of dry bitterness. Soon afterwards, the following incident. One of the subeditors at the office is working with Ella on a series of articles giving advice about emotional problems-the problems which arise most often in the letters which come in. Ella and this man spend several evenings together at the office. There are to be six articles, and each has two titles, an official one and one for jocular use by Ella and her colleague. For instance, Do you sometimes feel Bored with Your Home? is for Ella and Jack: Help! I'm going round the bend. And: The Husband who neglects his Family, becomes My Husband sleeps around. And so on. Both Ella and Jack laugh a great deal, and make fun of the over-simple style of the articles, yet they write them carefully, taking trouble with them. They both know their joking is because of the unhappiness and frustration of the letters which pour into the office, and which they do not believe their articles will do anything to alleviate. On the last evening of their collaboration Jack drives Ella home. He is married, has three children, is aged about thirty. Ella likes him very much. She offers him a drink, he goes upstairs with her. She knows the moment will soon approach when he will invite her to make love. She is thinking: But I'm not attracted to him. But I might be, if only I could shake off the shadow of Paul. How do I know I won't be attracted to him once I'm in bed? After all, I was not immediately attracted to Paul. This last thought surprises her. She sits listening, while the young man talks and entertains her, and is thinking: Paul always used to say, joking, but really serious, that I had not been in love with him at first. Now I say it myself. But I don't think it's true. I probably only say it because he said it... but no wonder I can never work up any interest in a man if I'm thinking all the time of Paul. Ella goes to bed with Jack. She classifies him as the efficient type of lover. 'The man who is not sensual, has learned love-making out of a book, probably called How to Satisfy Your Wife.' He gets his pleasure from having got a woman into bed, not from sex itself. These two are cheerful, friendly, continuing the good sense of their work together in the office. Yet Ella is fighting down a need to cry. She is familiar with this sudden depression and combats it thus: It's not my depression at all; it is guilt, but not my guilt; it is the guilt from the past, it has to do with the double standard which I repudiate. Jack, announcing the fact that he must return home, begins talking about his wife. 'She is a good girl,' he remarks, and Ella freezes at the condescension in his voice. 'I make damned sure she never suspects me when I go off the rails. Of course, she gets pretty fed up, stuck with the kids, they're a bit of a handful, but she copes.' He is putting on his tie, pulling on his shoes as he sits on Ella's bed. He is full of well-being; his face is the unmarked, open face of a boy. 'I'm pretty lucky in my old woman,' he goes on; but now there is resentment in it, against his wife; and Ella knows that this occasion, his sleeping with her, is going to be used subtly as a means to denigrate his wife. And he is jaunty with satisfaction, not because of the pleasures of love, about which he knows very little, but because he has proved something to himself. He says good-bye to Ella, remarking: 'Well, back to the grindstone. My wife's the best in the world, but she's not exactly an exhilarating conversationalist.' Ella checks herself, does not say that a woman with three small children, stuck in a house in the suburbs with a television set, has nothing much exhilarating to talk about. The depths of her resentment amaze her. She knows that his wife, the woman who is waiting for him miles away somewhere across London, will know, the moment he enters the bedroom, that he has been sleeping with another woman, from his self-satisfied jauntiness. Ella decides (a) that she will be chaste until she falls in love and (b) that she will not discuss this incident with Julia. Next day she telephones Julia, they meet for lunch and she tells Julia. She is reflecting, as she does so, that while she has always steadily refused to confide in Patricia Brent, or at least refused to be an accomplice in her sardonic criticism of men (Ella thinks that the sardonic, almost good-natured quality of Patricia's criticism of men is what her own present bitterness will mellow into and she is determined that it won't) yet she is prepared to confide in Julia whose bitterness is turning rapidly into a corroding contempt. She again decides not to indulge in these conversations with Julia, thinking that two women, friends on a basis of criticism of men, are Lesbian, psychologically if not physically. This time she keeps her promise to herself not to talk to Julia. She is isolated and lonely. Now something new happens. She begins to suffer torments of sexual desire. Ella is frightened because she cannot remember feeling sexual desire, as a thing in itself, without reference to a specific man before, or at least not since her adolescence, and then it was always in relation to a fantasy about a man. Now she cannot sleep, she masturbates, to accompaniment of fantasies of hatred about men. Paul has vanished completely: she has lost the warm strong man of her experience, and can only remember a cynical betrayer. She suffers sex desire in a vacuum. She is acutely humiliated, thinking that this means she is dependent on men for 'having sex,' for 'being serviced,' for 'being satisfied.' She uses this kind of savage phrase to humiliate herself. Then she realises she is falling into a lie about herself, and about women, and that she must hold on to this knowledge: that when she was with Paul she felt no sex hungers that were not prompted by him; that if he was apart from her for a few days, she was dormant until he returned; that her present raging sexual hunger was not for sex, but was fed by all the emotional hungers of her life. That when she loved a man again, she would return to normal: a woman, that is, whose sexuality would ebb and flow in response to his. A woman's sexuality is, so to speak, contained by a man, if he is a real man; she is, in a sense, put to sleep by him, she does not think about sex. Ella holds on fast to this knowledge, and thinks: every time in life I go through a dry time, a period of deadness, I always do this: hold on to a set of words, the phrases of a kind of knowledge, even while they are dead and meaningless, but knowing that life will come back and make them live too. But how