At last she said, ‘You are such a self-sufficient one.’
This was the last thing I expected – the child-wife, child-daughter – and I said, ‘I, self-sufficient?’
And she just shook her head, oh, it’s all too much for me, and crouched holding on to the desk with both hands, looking in front of her, cigarette hanging from her lips. I saw her as an old crone, Mrs Fowler: fine sharp little face, nose and chin almost meeting. She looked ancient. Then she sighed again, pulled herself out, turned to me.
‘I can’t face being alone,’ she said, flat. ‘And that’s all there is to it.’
If I say my mind was in a whirl, that is how it was.
I wanted to say, But, Joyce – my husband died, it seems now overnight – what is it you are counting on? I could have said, Joyce, if you throw up this work and go with him, you might find yourself with nothing. I could have said … and I said nothing, because I was crying with a sort of amazed anger, at the impossibility of it, and worse than that, for I was thinking that I had not known Joyce at all! I would not have believed that she could say that, think it. More: I knew that I could not say to Joyce, Your attitude to death is stupid, wrong, you are like a child! It’s not like that, what are you afraid of? Being alone – what’s that!
For I had discovered that I had made a long journey away from Joyce, and in a short time. My husband had died, my mother had died: I had believed that I had not taken in these events, had armoured myself. And yet something had changed in me, quite profoundly. And there was Maudie Fowler, too.
It seemed to me, as I sat there, crying and trying to stop, biting on my (best-quality linen monogrammed) handkerchief, that Joyce was a child. Yes, she was a child, after all, and I could say nothing to her of what I had learned and of what I now was. That was why I was crying.
‘Don’t,’ said Joyce. ‘I didn’t mean to – open old wounds.’
‘You haven’t. That’s not it.’ But that was as near as I could come to talking. I mean by that, saying what was in my mind. For then we did talk, in a sensible dry sort of way, about all kinds of things, and it is not that I don’t value that. For we had not, or not for a long time, talked in this way. The way women communicate – in becks and nods and hints and smiles – it is very good, it is pleasurable and enjoyable and one of the best things I’ve had. But when the chips are down, I couldn’t say to Joyce why I had to cry.
She said, ‘You are different from me. I’ve been watching you and I can see that. But if he goes to the States, I’ll be alone. I’ll not marry again, I know that. And anyway, if you have been married to a man, you can’t just throw him aside and take up another – they can do that …’
‘Or think they can.’
‘Yes, or think they can, without penalties, I mean. And so I don’t see myself marrying someone else. The kids, they don’t want to go to the States, but if he went and I stayed, they’d commute and I know that pretty soon they’d be there rather than here, more opportunities, probably better for the young. I’d be alone. I don’t know how to be alone, Jan.’
And I could not say to her, Joyce, your husband is fifty-five, he’s a workaholic …
‘You are prepared to be a faculty wife?’
She grimaced at this. ‘I shan’t get anything like this job, of course not. But I expect there’d be something.’
As she left, she said, ‘No, and I haven’t even finally made up my mind. I know how I’m going to miss all this – and you, Jan. But I have no choice.’ And with that she went out, not looking at me.
And that is what I was left with, the I have no choice. For I do not know what it is, in that marriage of hers – I would never have suspected – the existence of anything that would make it inevitable she would say, I have no choice.
Joyce has been the best editor this magazine has ever had. She has never put her home and family first … and yet … I see how, when she came in, the flexibility began that everyone welcomed: working at home from the telephone, working late or early when necessary. We all said, It’s a woman’s way of dealing with things, not office hours, but going along with what was necessary. And now I am thinking that what was necessary was Joyce’s marriage, her home.
She would easily stay after work to eat supper with me, in the office, in a restaurant: working meals. And yet there were times when she had to be at home. I was what made all this possible: I have never said, No, I can’t stay in the office late as usual, I have to get home. Or only when Freddie and I did our dinner parties. I’ve never ever said, This afternoon, I have to go early, Freddie will be in early. But it seems to me that something like that has been going on with Joyce: her marriage, her children, her work. She incorporated all of it, in a marvellous flexible way. ‘Can you hold the fort this afternoon, Jan?’ In a sense, I’ve been part of her marriage, like that girl Felicity! These wholes we are part of, what really happens, how things really work … it is what has always fascinated me, what interests me most. And yet I have only just had the thought: that I have been, in a sense, part of Joyce’s marriage.
Joyce is going to America. She will give up a wonderful job. Very few women ever get a job like this one. She will give up family, friends, home. Her children are nearly grown up. She will be in a country that she will have to learn to like, alone with a man who would have been happy to go with another, younger girl. She has no choice.
Well, women’s lib, well, Phyllis, what do you have to say to that?
What, in your little manifestoes, your slamming of doors in men’s faces, your rhetoric, have you ever said that touches this? As far as I am concerned, nothing. And, believe me, Phyllis makes sure that all the propaganda is always available to me, spread on my desk.
The reason why girls these days get themselves together in flocks and herds and shoals and shut out men altogether, or as much as they can, is because they are afraid of – whatever the power men have that makes Joyce say, I have no choice.
I can live alone and like it. But then, I was never really married.
After I reached home, the telephone: Joyce, her voice breathless and small. Because she had cried herself dry, I knew that. She said, ‘Jan, we make our choices a long time before we think we do! My God, but it’s terrifying! Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know what you mean.’
And I do. And it is terrifying. What choices have I already made that I am not yet conscious of?
I have not been in to Maudie Fowler since Friday evening.
Tuesday.
Joyce not at work. Phyllis and I held the fort. After work I went in to Maudie. She took a long time to answer the door, stood looking at me for a long time, not smiling, not pleased; at last stood aside so that I could come in, went ahead of me along the passage, without a word. She sat down on her side of the fire, which was blazing, and waited for me to speak.
I was already angry, thinking, well, and so she doesn’t have a telephone, is that my fault?
I said, ‘I did not get back on Sunday night until very late, and last night I was tired.’
‘Tired,
