The Golden Notebook (5 page)

Anna. As for Anna she was thinking: If I join in now, in a what's-wrong-with-men session, then I won't go home, I'll stay for lunch and all afternoon, and Molly and I will feel warm and friendly, all barriers gone. And when we part, there'll be a sudden resentment, a rancour-because after all, our real loyalties are always to men, and not to women... Anna nearly sat down, ready to submerge herself. But she did not. She thought: I want to be done with it all, finished with the men vs. women business, all the complaints and the reproaches and the betrayals. Besides, it's dishonest. We've chosen to live a certain way, knowing the penalties, or if we didn't we know now, so why whine and complain... and besides, if I'm not careful, Molly and I will descend into a kind of twin old-maidhood, where we sit around saying to each other, Do you remember how that man, what-was-his-name said that insensitive thing, it must have been in 1947 'Well, let's have it,' said Molly, very brisk, to Anna, who had stood silent for some time now. 'Yes. You don't want to hear about the comrades, I take it?' 'In France and Italy the intellectuals talk day and night about the Twentieth Congress and Hungary, the perspectives of and the lessons of and mistakes to be learned from.' 'In that case, since it's the same here, though thank God people are getting bored with it, I'll skip it.' 'Good.' 'But I think I'll mention three of the comrades-oh, only in passing,' added Anna hastily, as Molly grimaced. 'Three fine sons of the working class and trade union officials.' 'Who?' 'Tom Winters, Len Colhoun, Bob Fowler.' 'I knew them, of course,' said Molly quickly. She always knew, or had known, everyone. 'Well?' 'Just before the Congress, when there was all that disquiet in our circles, what with this plot and that, and Yugoslavia, etc., it so happened that I met them, in connection with what they naturally referred to as cultural matters. With condescension. At that time I and similar types were spending a lot of time fighting inside the Party-a naive lot we were, trying to persuade people it was much better to admit that things stank in Russia than to deny it. Well. I suddenly got letters from all three of them-independently, of course, they didn't know, any of them, the others had written. Very stern, they were. Any rumours to the effect that there was any dirty work in Moscow or ever had been or that Father Stalin had ever put a foot wrong were spread by enemies of the working class.' Molly laughed, but from politeness; the nerve had been touched too often. 'No, that isn't the point. The point is, these letters were interchangeable. Discounting handwriting of course.' 'Quite a lot to discount.' 'To amuse myself, I typed out all three letters-long ones at that, and put them side by side. In phraseology, style, tone, they were identical. You couldn't possibly have said, this letter was written by Tom, or that one by Len.' Molly said resentfully: 'For that notebook or whatever it is you and Tommy have a secret about?' 'No. To find out something. But I haven't finished.' 'Oh all right, I won't press you.' 'Then came the Congress and almost instantly I got three more letters. All hysterical, self-accusatory, full of guilt, self-abasement.' 'You typed them out again?' 'Yes. And put them side by side. They might have been written by the same person. Don't you see?' 'No. What are you trying to prove?' 'Well, surely the thought follows-what stereotype am I? What anonymous whole am I part of?' 'Does it? It doesn't for me.' Molly was saying: 'If you choose to make a nonentity of yourself, do, but don't stick that label on me.' Disappointed, because this discovery and the ideas that had followed from it were what she had been most looking forward to talking over with Molly, Anna said quickly: 'Oh all right. It struck me as interesting. And that's about all- there was a period of what may be described as confusion, and some left the Party. Or everyone left the Party- meaning those whose psychological time was up. Then suddenly, and in the same week-and that's what's so extraordinary Molly...' In spite of herself, Anna was appealing to Molly again-'In the same week, I got three more letters. Purged of doubt, stern and full of purpose. It was the week after Hungary. In other words, the whip had been cracked, and the waverers jumped to heel. Those three letters were identical too-I'm not talking about the actual words, of course,' said Anna impatiently, as Molly looked deliberately sceptical. 'I mean the style, the phrases, the way words were linked together. And those intermediary letters, the hysterical self-abasing letters, might never have been written. In fact I'm sure Tom, Len and Bob have suppressed the memory that they ever wrote them.' 'But you kept them?' 'Well I'm not going to use them in a court of law, if that's what you mean.' Molly stood slowly wiping glasses on a pink and mauve striped cloth, and holding each one up to the light before setting it down. 'Well I'm so sick of it all I don't think I want ever to bother with it again.' 'But Molly, we can't do that, surely? We were communists or near-communists or whatever you like for years and years. We can't suddenly say, Oh well, I'm bored.' 'The funny thing is I'm bored. Yes I know it's odd. Two or three years ago I felt guilty if I didn't spend all my free time organising something or other. Now I don't feel at all guilty if I simply do my job and laze around for the rest. I don't care any more, Anna. I simply don't.' 'It's not a question of feeling guilty. It's a question of thinking out what it all means.' Molly did not reply, so Anna went on quickly: 'Would you like to hear about the Colony?' The Colony was the name they gave to a group of Americans, all living in London for political reasons. 'Oh God no. I'm sick of them too. No, I'd like to know what happened to Nelson, I'm fond of him.' 'He's writing the American masterpiece. He left his wife. Because she was neurotic. Got himself a girl. Very nice one. Decided she was neurotic. Went back to his wife. Decided she was neurotic. Left her. Has got himself another girl who so far hasn't become neurotic' 'And the others?' 'In one way and another, ditto, ditto, ditto.' 'Well let's skip them. I met the American colony in Rome. Bloody miserable lot they are.' 'Yes. Who else?' 'Your friend Mr. Mathlong-you know, the African?' 'Of course I know. Well he's currently in prison so I suppose by this time next year he'll be Prime Minister.' Molly laughed. 'And there's your friend de Silva.' 'He was my friend,' said Molly laughing again, but resisting Anna's already critical tone. 'Then the facts are as follows. He went back to Ceylon with his wife-if you remember she didn't want to go. He wrote to me because he had written to you and got no reply. He wrote that Ceylon is marvellous and full of poetry and that his wife was expecting another child.' 'But she didn't want another child.' Suddenly Anna and Molly both laughed; they were suddenly in harmony. 'Then he wrote to say he missed London and all its cultural freedoms.' 'Then I suppose we can expect him any moment.' 'He came back. A couple of months ago. He's abandoned his wife, apparently. She's much too good for him, he says, weeping big tears, but not too big, because after all she is stuck with two kids in Ceylon and no money, so he's safe.' 'You've seen him?' 'Yes.' But Anna found herself unable to tell Molly what had happened. What would be the use? They'd end up, as she had sworn they would not, spending the afternoon in the dry bitter exchange that came so easily to them. 'And how about you Anna?' And now, for the first time, Molly had asked in a way which Anna could reply to, and she said at once: 'Michael came to see me. About a month ago.' She had lived with Michael for five years. This affair had broken up three years ago, against her will. 'How was it?' 'Oh, in some ways, as if nothing had happened.' 'Of course, when you know each other so well.' 'But he was behaving-how shall I put it? I was a dear old friend, you know. He drove me to some place I wanted to go. He was talking about a colleague of his. He said, "Do you remember Dick?" Odd, don't you think, that he couldn't remember if I remembered Dick, since we saw a lot of him then. Dick's got a job in Ghana he said. He took his wife. His mistress wanted to go too, said Michael. Very difficult these mistresses are, said Michael, and then he laughed. Quite genuinely, you know, the debonair touch. That was what was painful. Then he looked embarrassed, because he remembered that I had been his mistress, and went red and guilty.' Molly said nothing. She watched Anna closely. 'That's all, I suppose.' 'A lot of swine they all are,' said Molly cheerfully, deliberately striking the note that would make Anna laugh. 'Molly,' said Anna painfully, in appeal. 'What? It's no good going on about it, is it?' 'Well, I've been thinking. You know, it's possible we made a mistake.' 'What? Only one?' But Anna would not laugh. 'No. It's serious. Both of us are dedicated to the proposition that we're tough-no listen, I'm serious. I mean-a marriage breaks up, well, we say, our marriage was a failure, too bad. A man ditches us-too bad we say, it's not important. We bring up kids without men- nothing to it, we say, we can cope. We spend years in the communist party and then we say, Well, well, we made a mistake, too bad.' 'What are you trying to say,' said Molly, very cautious, and at a great distance from Anna. 'Well don't you think it's at least possible, just possible that things can happen to us so bad that we don't ever get over them? Because when I really face it I don't think I've really got over Michael. I think it's done for me. Oh I know, what I am supposed to say is, Well, well, he's ditched me-what's five years after all, on with the next thing.' 'But it has to be, on with the next thing.' 'Why do our lot never admit failure? Never. It might be better for us if we did. And it's not only love and men. Why can't we say something like this-we are people, because of the accident of how we were situated in history, who were so powerfully part-but only in our imaginations, and that's the point-with the great dream, that now we have to admit that the great dream has faded and the truth is something else- that we'll never be any use. After all Molly, it's not much loss is it, a few people, a few people of a certain type, saying that they've had it, they're finished. Why not? It's almost arrogant not to be able to.' 'Oh Anna! All this is simply because of Michael. And probably he'll come in again one of these days and you'll pick up where you left off. And if he doesn't, what are you complaining of? You've got your writing.' 'Good Lord,' said Anna softly. 'Good Lord.' Then after a moment, she forced the safe tone back: 'Yes, it's all very odd... well, I must be rushing home.' 'I thought you said Janet was staying with a friend?' 'Yes, but I've got things to do.' They kissed, briskly. That they had not been able to meet each other was communicated by a small, tender, even humorous squeeze of the hand. Anna went out into the street to walk home. She lived a few minutes' walk away, in Earls Court. Before she turned into the street she lived in she automatically cut out the sight of it. She did not live in the street, or even in the building, but in the flat; and she would not let the sight return to her eyes until her front door was shut behind her. The rooms were on two floors at the top of the house, five large rooms, two down and three up. Michael had persuaded Anna, four years before, to move into her own fiat. It was bad for her, he had said, to live in Molly's house, always under the wing of the big sister. When she had complained she could not afford it, he had told her to let a room. She had moved, imagining he would share this life with her; but he had left her shortly afterwards. For a time she had continued to live in the pattern he had set for her. There were two students in one big room, her daughter in another, and her own bedroom and living-room were organised for two people-herself and Michael. One of the students left, but she did not bother to replace him. She took a revulsion against her bedroom, which had been planned for Michael to share, and moved down to the living-room, where she slept and attended to her notebooks. Upstairs still lived the student, a youth from Wales. Sometimes Anna thought that it could be said she was sharing a flat with a young man; but he was a homosexual, and there was no tension in the arrangement. They hardly saw one another. Anna attended to her own life while Janet was at school, a couple of blocks away; and when Janet was home, devoted herself to her. An old woman came in once a week to clean the place. Money trickled in irregularly from her only novel, Frontiers of War, once a best-seller, which still earned just enough for her to live on. The flat was attractive, white painted, with bright floors. The balustrades and bannisters of the stairs made white patterns against red paper. This was the framework of Anna's life. But it was only alone, in the big room, that she was herself. It was an oblong room, recessed to take a narrow bed. Around the bed were stacked books, papers, a telephone. There were three tall windows in the outer wall. At one end of the room, near the fireplace, was a desk with a typewriter, at which she dealt with letters, and the book reviews and articles she sometimes, but infrequently, wrote. At the other end was a long trestle table, painted black. A drawer held the four notebooks. The top of this table was always kept clear. The walls and ceiling of the room were white, but shabbied by the dark air of London. The floor was painted black. The bed had a black cover. The long curtains were a dull red. Anna now passed slowly from one to another of the three windows, examining the thin and discoloured sunshine that failed to reach the pavements which were the floor of the rift between high Victorian houses. She covered the windows over, listening with pleasure to the intimate sliding sound of the curtain runners in their deep grooves, and to the soft swish, swish, swish of the heavy silk meeting and folding together. She switched the light on over the trestle table, so that the glossy black shone, mirroring a red gleam from the near curtain. She laid the four notebooks out, one after another, side by side. She used an old-fashioned music stool for this occupation, and she now spun it high, almost as high as the table itself, and sat, looking down at the four notebooks as if she were a general on the top of a mountain, watching her armies deploy in the valley below.