The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing
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through the Friday, and met in the big room. When Willi and I arrived Johnnie was already at the piano with his red-faced blonde beside him; Stanley was dancing with Mrs Lattimore, and George was talking to Maryrose. Willi went straight over and ousted George, and Paul came over to claim me. Our relationship had remained the same, tender and half-mocking and full of promise. Outside observers might have, and probably did, think the link-up was Willi and Maryrose, Paul and myself. Though at moments they might have thought it was George and myself and Paul and Maryrose. Of course the reason why these romantic, adolescent relationships were possible was because of my relationship with Willi which was, as I’ve said, almost a-sexual. If there is a couple in the centre of a group with a real full sexual relationship it acts like a catalyst for the others, and often, indeed, destroys the group altogether. I’ve seen many such groups since, political and unpolitical, and one can always judge the relationship of the central couple (because there is always a central couple) by the relationships of the couples around them.
On that Friday there was trouble within an hour of our arrival. June Boothby came up to the big room to ask Paul and myself to come to the hotel kitchen and help her with food for the dinner that evening, because Jackson was busy with the party food for tomorrow. June had by then become engaged to her young man and had been released from her trance. Paul and I went with her, Jackson was mixing fruit and cream for an ice-pudding, and Paul at once began talking to him. They were discussing England, to Jackson such a remote and magical place that he would listen for hours to the simplest details about it—the underground system, for instance, or the buses, or Parliament. June and I stood together and made salads for the hotel evening meal. She was impatient to be free for her young man, who was expected at any moment. Mrs Boothby came in, looked at Paul and Jackson, and said: ‘I thought I told you I wouldn’t have you in the kitchen?’
‘Oh, Mom,’ said June impatiently, ‘I asked them, why don’t you get another cook, it’s too much work for Jackson.’
‘Jackson’s been doing the work for fifteen years, and there’s never been trouble till now.’
‘Oh, Mom, there’s no trouble. But since the war and all the airforce boys all the time, there’s more work. I don’t mind helping out, and neither does Paul and Anna.’
‘You’ll do as I tell you, June,’ said her mother.
‘Oh, Mom,’ said June, annoyed but still good-natured. She grimmaced at me: Don’t take any notice. Mrs Boothby saw her, and said: ‘You’re getting above yourself, my girl. Since when have you given orders in the kitchen?’
June lost her temper and walked straight out of the room.
Mrs Boothby, breathing heavily, her plain, always high-coloured face even redder than usual, looked in distress at Paul. If Paul had made some gentle remark, done anything at all to mollify her, she would have collapsed into her real good-nature at once. But he did as he had done before: nodded at me to go with him, and went calmly out of the back door saying to Jackson: ‘I’ll see you later when you’ve finished work. If you ever do finish work.’ I said to Mrs Boothby: ‘We wouldn’t have come if June hadn’t asked us.’ But she wasn’t interested in appeals from me and made no reply. So I went back to the big room and danced with Paul.
All this time we had been making jokes that Mrs Boothby was in love with Paul. Perhaps she was, a little. But she was a very simple woman and a hard-working one. Very hard-working since the war, and the hotel which had once been a place for travellers to stop the night had become a week-end resort. It must have been a strain for her. And then there was June who had been transformed in the last few weeks from a sulking adolescent into a young woman with a future. Looking back I think it was June’s marriage that was at the bottom of her mother’s unhappiness. June must have been her only emotional outlet. Mr Boothby was always behind the bar counter, and he was the kind of drinker that is hardest of all to live with. Men who drink heavily in bouts are nothing compared to the men who ‘carry their drink well’—who carry a load of drink every day, every week, year in and year out. These steady hard-drinkers are very bad for their wives. Mrs Boothby had lost June, who was going to live three hundred miles away. Nothing: no distance for the Colony, but she had lost her for all that. And perhaps she had been affected by the wartime restlessness. A woman who must have resigned herself, years ago, to not being a woman at all, she had watched for weeks now, Mrs Lattimore who was the same age as herself, being courted by Stanley Lett. Perhaps she did have secret dreams about Paul. I don’t know. But looking back I see Mrs Boothby as a lonely pathetic figure. But I didn’t think so then. I saw her as a stupid ‘aborigine’. Oh, Lord, it’s painful thinking of the people one has been cruel to. And she would have been made happy by so little—if we had invited her to come and drink with us sometimes, or talked to her. But we were locked in our group and we made stupid jokes and laughed at her. I can remember her face as Paul and I left the kitchen. She was gazing after Paul—hurt, bewildered; her eyes seemed frantic with incomprehension. And her sharp high voice to Jackson: ‘You’re getting very cheeky, Jackson. Why are you getting so cheeky?’
It was the rule that Jackson should have three to five off every afternoon, but like a good feudal servant, when things were busy, he waived this right. This afternoon it was not until about five that we saw him leave the kitchen and walk slowly towards his house. Paul said: ‘Anna dear, I would not love you so much if I didn’t love Jackson more. And by now it’s a question of principle…’ And he left me and walked down to meet Jackson. The two stood talking together by the fence, and Mrs Boothby watched them from her kitchen window. George had joined me when Paul left. George looked at Jackson and said: ‘The father of my child.’
‘Oh, stop it,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t do any good.’
‘Do you realize, Anna, what a farce it all is? I can’t even give that child of mine money? Do you realize how utterly bloodily bizarre—Jackson earns five quid a month. Admittedly, burdened down by children and the senile as I am, five quid a month is a lot to me—but if I gave Marie five pounds, just to get that poor kid some decent clothes, it would be so much money for them that…she told me, food for the Jackson family costs ten shillings a week. They live on pumpkin and mealiemeal and scraps from the kitchen.’
‘Doesn’t Jackson even suspect?’
‘Marie thinks not. I asked her. Do you know what she said: “He’s a good husband to me,” she said. “He’s kind to me and all my children”…do you know, Anna, when she said that, I’ve never in all my life felt such a sod.’
‘You’re still sleeping with her?’
‘Yes. Do you know, Anna, I love that woman, I love that woman so much that…’
After a while we saw Mrs Boothby come out of the kitchen and walk towards Paul and Jackson. Jackson went into his shack, and Mrs Boothby, rigid with lonely anger, went to her house. Paul came in to us and told us she had said to Jackson: ‘I don’t give you time off to talk cheeky with white men who ought to know better.’ Paul was too angry to be flippant. He said: ‘My God, Anna, my God. My God.’ Then, slowly recovering, he swung me off to dance again and said: ‘What really interests me is that there are people, like you for instance, who genuinely believe that the world can be changed.’
We spent the evening dancing and drinking. We all went to bed very late. Willi and I went to bed in a bad temper with each other. He was angry because George had been pouring out his troubles again and he was bored with George. He said to me: ‘You and Paul seem to be getting on very well.’ He could have said that any time during the last six months. I replied: ‘And it’s equally true that you and Maryrose are.’ We were already in our twin beds on either side of the room. He had some book on the development of early German socialism in his hand. He sat there, all his intelligence concentrated behind his gleaming spectacles, wondering if it was worth while to quarrel. I think he decided it would only turn into our familiar argument about George…‘sloppy sentimentality’ vs ‘dogmatic bureaucracy’. Or perhaps—for he was a man incredibly ignorant about his motives—he believed that he resented my relationship with Paul. And perhaps he did. Challenged then, I replied: ‘Maryrose.’ Challenged now, I would say that every woman believes