but if you are beginning to get some sort of sense of responsibility into you at last, it might perhaps occur to you that it isn’t easy to have you just turning up with a light question or two: How about Granny dying? How was it? Did it hurt? It was all awful, Jane. Do you understand? It was dreadful. I went down there when I could, pregnant as hell or with the baby, and found Mother coping. Granny was bedridden at the end. For months. Can you imagine? No, I bet you can’t. Doctors all the time. In and out of hospital. Mother was doing it all. Father couldn’t help much, he was an invalid himself … Anyway, I’ve got to go to the station.’
And off she went.
I nearly ran after her, to ask to be put on a train home, but stuck it out. Tom and the kids filled the house with clatter and clang, the record players went on at once of course, a radio, the house vibrating with din. Tom came in and said. How are you? – and went. The kids banged into the kitchen, where I was, Jilly, Bob, Jasper, Kate. Hi, hi, hi, hi, all round. It is established that I think Georgie’s kids are awful and spoiled brats, but they might be all right when they grow up. I am the glamorous Aunt from London and the High Life. I send them presents of money at Christmas. When we meet I tell them I think they are awful and good for nothing. They tell me it is because I don’t understand them. It is a cheerful game of mutual insult. But I do think they are awful. I cannot understand how they are allowed to do as they like, have what they like, go where they like. I have never heard either Georgie or Tom say once, No, you can’t have that. Never. The whole house is crammed with their possessions, clothes, toys, gear, mostly unused or used once or twice. I keep thinking of growing up during the war and having nothing. And recently I have been thinking about the Third World having nothing. Of course, Georgie would say It is trendy to have such thoughts, but, as she would say, Better late than never.
Anyway, I sat in the kitchen and listened to the sheer din of those kids all over the house, and Georgie came back and I could see she was ready to talk, if I wanted, but suddenly I found myself saying, ‘Georgie, you are ready enough with criticism of me, but look at those children of yours.’
‘Yes, I know what you think,’ she said, her back turned to me. And I knew at once that this was a sore point.
‘Tell me,’ I said to her, ‘when have they ever done anything they didn’t want to do? Have you and Tom ever tried to teach them that the world isn’t a celestial milk bar with milk shakes and cream topping for ever there at the touch of a button?’
‘You may well be right. I’m not saying you are not,’ said she, making it humorous, ‘and now I have to get the lunch. If you want to help, stay, and if not, go and talk to Tom.’
I took her at her word, went to find Tom, but he did not want to talk to me, being busy at something. I found the decibel level in the house intolerable, pulled on my big boots and went for a walk in the snow, came back for lunch. As usual, the parents were like appendages to the scene of the four children, who did not let them finish a conversation if they had the temerity to start one, or talked across them at each other, and behaved exactly as if Georgie and Tom were useful servants they could treat as they liked.
How has it come about that this is what families are like now? In the living room, afternoon, this was the scene. Jilly, seventeen, nagging because she had wanted to visit a friend and couldn’t for some reason, so she was sulking and making the whole family pay for it. Bob, sixteen, an over-fat good-looking boy, practising the guitar as if no one else existed. Jasper, fifteen, whining and nagging at his father to go with him to some local football match. Kate, thirteen, cheeks flaming, hair wild, tarting around the room in one of Georgie’s dresses, in a sort of locked hysteria, the way teenage girls get. This was for my benefit, because she wants to come to London and ‘be a model’. Poor girl! Tom was sitting in a corner trying to read, and answering questions from his offspring in an abstracted irritable voice, and Georgie was waiting on all of them, in perfect good humour and patience; shouting to make herself heard from time to time, Yes, all right, Kate. Yes, Jilly, I’ll do it tomorrow. Yes, Jasper, it’s under the spare-room bed. And so on.
I said at last, ‘Well, this wicked Aunt is about to leave. No, don’t bother, I shall go to the station by myself.’
With what relief did I turn my back on this scene of happy contemporary family life and went out to the front door, followed by Georgie.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘don’t say it, I don’t understand what children are, and I am not entitled to say a word, because of my selfish childishness, but all I can say is …’
‘And you are probably right,’ she said, in exactly the same humorous self-denying voice she uses for the children.
I walked through the already slushy snow to the station, waited a little. I like stations, the anonymity, the freedom of being alone in a crowd. I like being alone. Period.
And here I am alone. I should go to Maudie.
I should, very soon, think all this out.
But what I do know is this. When people die, what we regret is, not having talked to them enough. I didn’t talk to Granny, I don’t know what she was like. I can hardly remember Grandpa. Ditto Mother. I don’t know what she thought about anything, except that I am selfish and silly. (Which is what I think about Georgie’s brats.) What did she think about Tom? Georgina? The grandchildren? What did it mean to her, having to nurse Granny, and her own husband, for – I am afraid it was probably four years. What was she like when she was young? I don’t know. I shall never know now. And of course, there is Freddie: I lie awake sometimes, and what I want is, not that he should be there to make love to me, though I miss that dreadfully, I want to talk to him. Why didn’t I talk to him while he was there?
I didn’t want to, that is the answer. I didn’t want to know.
Monday Night.
I woke this morning in a panic, heart pounding, eyes prickling, mouth dry. I said to myself, a bad dream, that’s all; but it stayed. On the way to work, I realized it was because of Joyce probably going to the States. Apart from missing her, everything at work will change. I shall be offered the editorship, but that isn’t the point.
As I walked through the secretaries’ room, Phyllis looked sharply at me, then came after me and asked, Are you all right? Full marks for noticing. I knew of course that she knew I am anxious about Joyce leaving. But when I sat in a heap at my table, and Phyllis brought me black coffee and said if I liked she would do the photographers’ session, I saw that she had thought it all out. She took a heap of files from my table, and I saw her look, long and cool, at Joyce’s table, Joyce’s place, and she was thinking, that will be mine.
And why not?
Because she isn’t Joyce. I mean, specifically, that she is thirty years old, a hard, clever, noticing girl, but that she isn’t – cooked. I know perfectly well I don’t like her because she makes me think of how I was. But there’s more than that. I ask myself, trying to be fair, never mind about what you need, has she got what Lilith needs?
I sat there in that office of ours, Joyce’s and mine, and decided not to think about Phyllis, I can’t cope with that yet. I was thinking about Joyce: what was it I had not seen in her that only a month ago I would have taken it for granted that she wouldn’t go to America! But I’ve been judging her marriage by mine. Of course, she has children; but no, that isn’t it. He’s a nice enough man. I don’t know him. Have never talked to him: we have a joking relationship.
I was wanting Joyce to come in early, but it was nearly lunchtime. She looked dreadful, ill, unkempt. She sat down, got up again to fetch herself coffee, came back with it, sat in
