The Golden Notebook (60 page)

delighted. The uniform was chosen by the head-mistress, whom I interviewed-an admirable old Englishwoman, scholarly, dry, intelligent. I should imagine that the woman in her died before she was twenty, she probably killed her off. It occurs to me that in sending Janet to her, I am providing Janet with a father-figure? But oddly enough, I was certainly trusting Janet to oppose her, by refusing, for instance, to wear the ugly uniform. But Janet doesn't want to oppose anything. The young girl's quality, the petulant, indulged-child's charm, which she put on like a pretty dress about a year ago, vanished the moment she put the uniform on. On the station platform she was a nice, bright little girl in a hideous uniform, among a herd of such young girls, her young breasts hidden, all charm vanquished, her manner practical. And, seeing her, I mourned for a dark, lively, dark-eyed, slight young girl, alive with new sexuality, alert with the instinctive knowledge of her power. And at the same time I noticed I had a truly cruel thought: my poor child, if you are going to grow up in a society full of Ivors and Ronnies, full of frightened men who measure out emotions like weighed groceries, then you'll do well to model yourself on Miss Street, the head-mistress. I was feeling, because that charming young girl had been put out of sight, as if something infinitely precious and vulnerable had been saved from hurt. And there was a triumphant malice in it, directed against men: All right, so you don't value us?-then we'll save ourselves against the time when you do again. I ought to have been ashamed of the spite, of the malice, but I was not, there was too much pleasure in it. The American, Mr. Green, was coming today, so I got his room ready. He telephoned to say he was invited to spend a day in the country, could he come tomorrow. Many careful apologies. Was annoyed, had made arrangements that I had to change. Later Molly telephoned to say that her friend Jane told her that she, Jane, had spent the day with Mr. Green 'showing him Soho.' I was angry. Then Molly said: 'Tommy met Mr. Green and didn't like him, he said he was unorganised, that's a mark in Mr. Green's favour, don't you think? Tommy never approves of anyone who isn't just so. Don't you think that's odd? Ever such a socialist he is, and all his friends, and they're all as respectable and petit-bourgeois as-they've only got to meet someone with a bit of life in them, and they start drawing their moral skirts aside. And of course that ghastly wife of Tommy's is worse than anybody. She complained that Mr. Green was nothing but a bum, because he doesn't have a regular job. Can you beat it? That girl'd do beautifully as the wife of a provincial businessman with slightly liberal leanings that he uses to shock his Tory friends. And she's my daughter-in-law. She's writing a great tome about the Chartists and she puts aside two pounds a week as a nest-egg against her old age. Anyway, if Tommy and that little bitch don't like Mr. Green, it means you probably will, so virtue won't have to be its own reward.' Well, I laughed at all this, and then I thought that if I could laugh I couldn't be in such a bad state as I thought. Mother Sugar once told me it had taken her six months to get a depressed patient to laugh. Yet there's no doubt that Janet's going, leaving me alone in this big fiat, has made me worse. I am listless and idle. I keep thinking of Mother Sugar, but in a new way, as if the idea of her can save me. From what? I don't want to be saved. Because Janet's going has reminded me of something else-time, how time can be, when one hasn't got pressure on one. I haven't moved, at ease, in time, since Janet was born. Having a child means being conscious of the clock, never being free of something that has to be done at a certain moment ahead. An Anna is coming to life that died when Janet was born. I was sitting on the floor this afternoon, watching the sky darken, an inhabitant of a world where one can say, the quality of light means it must be evening, instead of: in exactly an hour I must put on the vegetables, and I suddenly went back into a state of mind I'd forgotten, something from my childhood. I used at night to sit up in bed and play what I called 'the game.' First I created the room I sat in, object by object, 'naming' everything, bed, chair, curtains, till it was whole in my mind, then move out of the room, creating the house, then out of the house, slowly creating the street, then rise into the air, looking down on London, at the enormous sprawling wastes of London, but holding at the same time the room and the house and the street in my mind, and then England, the shape of England in Britain, then the little group of islands lying against the continent, then slowly, slowly, I would create the world, continent by continent, ocean by ocean (but the point of 'the game' was to create this vastness while holding the bedroom, the house, the street in their littleness in my mind at the same time), until the point was reached where I moved out into space, and watched the world, a sunlit ball in the sky, turning and rolling beneath me. Then, having reached that point, with the stars around me, and the little earth turning underneath me, I'd try to imagine at the same time, a drop of water, swarming with life, or a green leaf. Sometimes I could reach what I wanted, a simultaneous knowledge of vastness and of smallness. Or I would concentrate on a single creature, a small coloured fish in a pool, or a single flower, or a moth, and try to create, to 'name' the being of the flower, the moth, the fish, slowly creating around it the forest, or the sea-pool, or the space of blowing night air that tilted my wings. And then, out, suddenly, from the smallness into space. It was easy when I was a child. It seems to me now that I must have lived for years in a state of exhilaration, because of 'the game.' But now it is very hard. This afternoon I was exhausted after a few moments. Yet I did succeed, just for a few seconds, to watch the earth turn beneath me, while the sunlight deepened on the belly of Asia and Europe fell into darkness. Saul Green came to see the room and to leave his things. I took him straight up to the room, he gave one glance at it and said: 'Fine, fine.' This was so offhand I asked if he expected to leave again soon. He gave me a quick wary look, which I already knew to be characteristic, and began long, careful explanations, in the same tone he had used for his apologies about the day in the country. Reminded, I said: 'I believe you spent the day exploring Soho with Jane Bond.' He looked startled, then offended-but quite extraordinarily offended, as if he'd been caught out in some crime, then his face changed, it became wary and careful, and he started off on a long explanation about changed plans, etc., and the explanation was even more extraordinary, since it was clearly all untrue. Suddenly I got bored, and said that I had only asked about the room because I intended to move to another flat, so if he planned a long stay, he should look for somewhere else. He said it was Fine, it was Fine. It seemed as if he wasn't listening, and that he hadn't seen the room at all. But he came out after me, leaving his bags. Then I said my landlady's piece, about there being 'no restrictions,' making it a joke, but he didn't understand, so I had to spell it out, that if he wanted girls in his room I didn't mind. Was surprised by his laugh-loud, abrupt, offended. He said he was glad I assumed he was a normal young man; this was so American, the automatic reaction one is used to when virility is in question, so I didn't make the joke I had been going to, about the previous occupant of the room. Altogether I felt everything to be jarring, discordant, so I went down to the kitchen, leaving him to follow if he wanted. I had made coffee, and he came into the kitchen on his way out so I offered him a cup. He hesitated. He was examining me. I have never in my life been subjected to as brutal a sexual inspection as that one. There was no humour in it, no warmth, just the stockman's comparison-making. It was so frank that I said: 'I hope I pass,' but he gave his abrupt offended laugh again and said: 'Fine, fine'-in other words, he was either unconscious he had been making a list of my vital statistics, or he was too prudish to acknowledge it. So I left it, and we had coffee. I was uncomfortable with him, I didn't know why, something in his manner. And there is something upsetting about his appearance, as if one instinctively expects to find something when one looks at him that one doesn't find. He is fair, his hair is close-cut, like a fair glistening brush. He is not tall, though I kept thinking of him as tall, and then checking again and seeing he was not. It's because his clothes are all too big for him, they hang around him. One would expect him to be that fair, rather stocky, broad-shouldered American type, with the greenish-grey eyes, the square face. I kept looking, I realise now, expecting to see this man, and seeing a slight, uncoordinated man with clothes hanging loose from broad shoulders, and then being caught and held by his eyes. His eyes are cool grey-green, and never off guard. That is the most striking thing about him, he is never for one second off guard. I asked one or two questions out of the fellow-feeling of 'A socialist from America' but I gave it up, because he turned aside my questions. For something to say, I asked why he wore his clothes so big, and he looked startled, as if he were surprised I had noticed it, and then evasive, and said he had lost a lot of weight, he was normally a couple of stones heavier. I asked if he'd been ill, and again he was offended, suggesting by his manner that pressure was being put on him or that he was being spied on. For a while we sat in silence, while I wished he would go, since it seemed impossible to say anything at all that he wouldn't resent. Then I said something about Molly, whom he hadn't mentioned. I was surprised how he seemed to change. Some kind of intelligence switched on suddenly, I don't know how else to put it: his attention focused, and I was struck by how he spoke of her, extraordinarily acute about her character and situation. I realised there was no other man I had met, with the exception of Michael, capable of such quick insight into a woman. It struck me that he was 'naming' her on a level that would please her if she heard it... [From this point on in the diary, or chronicle, Anna had marked certain points in it with asterisks, and numbered the asterisks.] ... and this made me curious, envious rather, so I said something (*1) about myself and so he spoke of me. Rather, he lectured me. It was like being lectured by a fair-minded pedant, on the dangers and pitfalls and rewards of a woman living alone, etc. It occurred to me, giving me the most curious feeling of dislocation, of disbelief, that this was the same man, who ten minutes before had given me such a cold and almost hostile sexual inspection; yet in what he was saying now there was nothing of that quality, and nothing, either, of the half-veiled curiosity, the sudden moment of lip-licking expectation one is used to. On the contrary, I could not remember any other man talking with this simplicity, frankness and comradeship about the sort of life I, and women like me, live. I laughed at one point, because I was being 'named' on such a high level (*2), yet lectured as if I were a small girl, instead of being several years older than he. It struck me as odd that he did not hear my laugh, it wasn't a question of being offended by it, or waiting until I stopped laughing, or asking why I was laughing, he simply went on talking, as if he had forgotten I was there. I had the most uncomfortable feeling that I literally didn't exist for Saul any longer, and I was glad to bring the thing to an end, which I had to do because I was expecting a man from the company who wants to buy Frontiers of War. When he came I decided not to sell the rights of the novel. They do want to make the film, I think, so what is the use of standing out all these years simply to give in now, just because for the first time I'm running short of money. So I told him I wouldn't sell. He assumed I had sold it to someone else, was unable to believe that a writer existed who wouldn't sell, at a high enough price. He kept raising the price, absurdly, I kept refusing, it was all farcical, I began to laugh-it reminded me of the moment I laughed and Saul didn't hear: he didn't know why I was laughing and kept looking at me as if I, the real Anna who was laughing, didn't exist for him. And when he went off, it was with dislike on both sides. Anyway, to go back to Saul, when I told him I was expecting someone to come, I was struck by how he scrambled up, as if he were being thrown out, yes, really, as if I'd thrown him out, instead of just saying I was expecting a man on business. Then he controlled the scrambling defensive movement, and nodded, very cool and withdrawn, and went straight downstairs. When he had gone I felt bad, the whole encounter full of jarrings and discordancies, and I decided I had made a mistake about letting him come to my flat. But later I told Saul about my not wanting to sell the novel for a film, and rather defensively, because I am used to being treated as if I were foolish, and he took it for granted I was right. He said the reason he finally left his job in Hollywood was because there wasn't anybody left in it who was capable of believing that a writer would refuse money rather than have a bad film made. He talks like all these people who have worked in Hollywood-with a sort of grim, incredulous despair that anything so corrupt can actually exist. Then he said something that struck me: 'We've got to make stands all the time. Yeah, O. K., we make stands on false positions sometimes, but the point is to make the stand at all. I've the advantage over you on one point...' (I was struck, this time uncomfortably, by the sullenness of I've the advantage over you on one point, as if we were in some sort of a contest or battle) '... and that is, the pressures that have been put on me to give in have been much more direct and obvious than the pressures in this country.' I said, knowing what he meant, but wanting to hear him define it: 'Give in to what?' 'If you don't know, I can't tell you.' 'Oh, but I do know.' 'I think you do. I hope you do.' And then, with the touch of sullenness: 'Believe me, that's one thing I learned in that hell-hole-the people who aren't prepared to take a stand somewhere, and sometimes on bad issues, won't make a stand, they sell out. And don't say: Sell out to what? If it were easy to say exactly what, we wouldn't all have to make stands on bad issues sometimes. We shouldn't be afraid to be naive and foolish, that's the one thing we should none