The Golden Notebook. Doris Lessing
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the contrast between the surface of his life, which was orderly and planned, yet without any long-term objective, and an underlying motif which had reference only to the suicide, which would lead up to the suicide. His plans for his future were all vague and impossible, in contrast with the sharp practicality of his present life. The undercurrent of despair, or madness or illogicality would lead on to, or rather, refer back from, the impossible fantasies of a distant future. So the real continuity of the novel would be in the at first scarcely noticed substratum of despair, the growth of the unknown intention to commit suicide. The moment of death would also be the moment when the real continuity of his life would be understood—a continuity not of order, discipline, practicality, commonsense, but of unreality. It would be understood, at the moment of death, that the link between the dark need for death, and death itself, had been the wild, crazy fantasies of a beautiful life; and that the commonsense and the order had been (not as it had seemed earlier in the story) symptoms of sanity, but intimations of madness.
The idea for this novel had come to Ella at the moment when she found herself getting dressed to go out to dine with people after she had told herself she did not want to go out. She said to herself, rather surprised at the thought: This is precisely how I would commit suicide. I would find myself just about to jump out of an open window or turning on the gas in a small closed-in room, and I would say to myself, without any emotion, but rather with the sense of suddenly understanding something I should have understood long before: Good Lord! So that’s what I’ve been meaning to do. That’s been it all the time! And I wonder how many people commit suicide in precisely this way? It is always imagined as some desperate mood, or a moment of crisis. Yet for many it must happen just like that—they find themselves putting their papers in order, writing farewell letters, even ringing up their friends, in a cheerful, friendly way, almost with a feeling of curiosity…they must find themselves packing newspapers under the door, against window-frames, quite calmly and efficiently, remarking to themselves, quite detached: Well, well! How very interesting. How extraordinary I didn’t understand what it was all about before!
Ella found this novel difficult. Not for technical reasons. On the contrary, she could imagine the young man very clearly. She knew how he lived, what all his habits were. It was as if the story were already written somewhere inside herself, and she was transcribing it. The trouble was, she was ashamed of it. She had not told Julia about it. She knew her friend would say something like: ‘That’s a very negative subject, isn’t it?’ Or: ‘That’s not going to point the way forward…’ Or some other judgement from the current communist armoury. Ella used to laugh at Julia for these phrases, yet at the bottom of her heart it seemed that she agreed with her, for she could not see what good it would do anyone to read a novel of this kind. Yet she was writing it. And besides being surprised and ashamed of its subject, she was sometimes frightened. She had even thought: Perhaps I’ve made a secret decision to commit suicide that I know nothing about? (But she did not believe this to be true.) And she continued to write the novel, making excuses such as: ‘Well, there’s no need to get it published, I’ll just write it for myself.’ And in speaking of it to friends, she would joke: ‘But everyone I know is writing a novel.’ Which was more or less true. In fact her attitude towards this work was the same as someone with a passion for sweet-eating, indulged in solitude, or some other private pastime, like acting out scenes with an invisible alter ego, or carrying on conversations with one’s image in the looking-glass.
Ella had taken a dress out of the cupboard and set out the ironing-board, before she said: So, I’m going to the party after all, am I? I wonder at what point I decided that? While she ironed the dress, she continued to think about her novel, or rather to bring into the light a little more of what was already there, waiting, in the darkness. She had put the dress on and was looking at herself in the long glass before she finally left the young man to himself, and concentrated on what she was doing. She was dissatisfied with her appearance. She had never very much liked the dress. She had plenty of clothes in her cupboard, but did not much like any of them. And so it was with her face and hair. Her hair was not right, it never was. And yet she had everything to make her really attractive. She was small, and small-boned. Her features were good, in a small, pointed face. Julia kept saying: ‘If you did yourself up properly you’d be like one of those piquant French girls, ever so sexy, you’re that type.’ Yet Ella always failed. Her dress tonight was a simple black wool which had looked as if it ought to be ‘ever so sexy’ but it was not. At least, not on Ella. And she wore her hair tied back. She looked pale, almost severe.
But I don’t care about the people I’m going to meet, she thought, turning away from the glass. So it doesn’t matter. I’d try harder for a party I really wanted to go to.
Her son was asleep. She shouted to Julia outside the bathroom door: ‘I’m going after all.’ To which Julia replied with a calm triumphant chuckle: ‘I thought you would.’ Ella was slightly annoyed at the triumph, but said: ‘I’ll be back early.’ To which Julia did not reply directly. She said: ‘I’ll keep my bedroom door open for Michael. Goodnight.’
To reach Dr West’s house meant half an hour on the underground, changing once, and then a short trip by bus. One reason why Ella was always reluctant to drag herself out of Julia’s house, was because the city frightened her. To move, mile after mile, through the weight of ugliness that is London in its faceless peripheral wastes made her angry; then the anger ebbed out, leaving fear. At the bus-stop, waiting for her bus, she changed her mind and decided to walk, to punish herself for her cowardice. She would walk the mile to the house, and face what she hated. Ahead of her the street of grey mean little houses crawled endlessly. The grey light of a late summer’s evening lowered a damp sky. For miles in all directions, this ugliness, this meanness. This was London—endless streets of such houses. It was hard to bear, the sheer physical weight of the knowledge because—where was the force that could shift the ugliness? And in every street, she thought, people like the woman whose letter was in her handbag. These streets were ruled by fear and ignorance, and ignorance and meanness had built them. This was the city she lived in, and she was part of it, and responsible for it…Ella walked fast, alone in the street, hearing her heels ring behind her. She was watching the curtains at the windows. At this end, the street was working-class, one could tell by the curtains of lace and flowered stuffs. These were the people who wrote in the terrible unanswerable letters she had to deal with. But now things suddenly changed, because the curtains at the windows changed—here was a sheen of peacock blue. It was a painter’s house. He had moved into the cheap house and made it beautiful. And other professional people had moved in after him. Here were a small knot of people different from the others in the area. They could not communicate with the people further down the street, who could not, and probably would not, enter these houses at all. Here was Dr West’s house—he knew the first-comer, the painter, and had bought the house almost opposite. He had said: ‘Just in time, the values are rising already.’ The garden was untidy. He was a busy doctor with three children and his wife helped him with his practice. No time for gardens. (The gardens further down the street had been mostly well-tended.) From this world, thought Ella, came no letters to the oracles of the women’s magazines. The door opened in on the brisk, kindly face of Mrs West. She said: ‘So here you are at last,’ and took Ella’s coat. The hall was pretty and clean and practical—Mrs West’s world. She said: ‘My husband tells me you’ve been having another brush with him over his lunatic fringe. It’s good of you to take so much trouble over these people.’ ‘It’s my job,’ said Ella. ‘I’m paid for it.’ Mrs West smiled, with a kindly tolerance. She resented Ella. Not because she worked with her husband—no, this was too crude an emotion for Mrs West. Ella had not understood Mrs West’s resentment until one day she had used the phrase: You career girls. It was a phrase so discordant, like ‘lunatic fringe’ and ‘these people’ that Ella had been unable to reply to it. And now Mrs West had made a point of letting her know that her husband discussed his work with her, establishing wifely rights. In the past, Ella had said to herself: But she’s a nice woman, in spite of everything. Now, angry, she said: She’s not a nice woman. These people are all dead and damned, with their disinfecting phrases, lunatic fringe and career girls. I don’t like her and I’m not going to pretend I do…She followed Mrs West into the living-room, which held faces she knew. The woman for whom she worked at the magazine, for instance. She was also middle-aged,