of that contriving and making-do, the dreary dreary dreary boredom of it, oh I can’t face it all again, I can’t, I can’t … but so far no one has said that we must.
I married in 1963. It was shortly before Joyce came. I have written all that history, and only now have thought to mention that I married.
A week since the last – no, ten days.
I went in to Maudie as promised, though I was frantic with work. Did not stay long, in and out. Then, into the office: Joyce not there, no message either again. Phyllis and I coped. Everyone coped. An elegiac mood, for lost lovely times. She made Lilith, but if she doesn’t come in to work, for days at a time, the waters close over her. She is hardly mentioned. But certainly thought of, by me at least. By me, by me! I have been raging with sorrow. I was uneasy, ashamed, thinking Freddie dies, my mother dies, hardly a tear, just a frozen emptiness, but Joyce slides out of my life and I grieve. At first I thought, look at me, what a wicked woman, but then I knew that since I could allow myself to mourn for Joyce, I have admitted – mourning, have admitted grief. I have been waking in the morning soaked in tears. For Freddie, my mother, for God knows what else.
But I haven’t the time for it. I’m working like a demon. Meanwhile I rage with sorrow. I do not think this is necessarily a step forward into maturity. A good deal to be said for a frozen heart.
When I went in to Maudie next I found her angry and cold. With me? No, it came out that ‘the Irish woman’ upstairs had again been turning on the refrigerator to ‘insult’ her. Because I had just come from an atmosphere where things are dealt with, not muttered and nitpicked, I said, ‘I’m going upstairs to talk to her,’ and went, with Maudie shouting at me, ‘Why do you come here to interfere?’ I knocked upstairs, ground floor. A lanky freckled boy let me in, I found the large beautiful Irish girl with the tired blue eyes, and three more lean golden freckled children watching TV. The refrigerator is a vast machine, bought probably at the second-hand shop down the street, and it came on while I was there, a trundling grinding that shook the whole flat. I could not say, Please sell the fridge. You could see that this was poverty. I mean poverty nineteen-seventies. I have a different criterion now, knowing Maudie. Everything cheap, but of course the kids properly fed and clean clothes.
I said, Mrs Fowler seemed to me to be ill, had they seen her?
On the girl’s face came that look I seem to see everywhere now, a determined indifference, an evasion: ‘Oh well, but she’s never been one for asking, or offering, and so I’ve given up.’
All the time, she was listening – and in fact the husband came in, a thin dark explosive Irishman, and very drunk. The kids exchanged wide looks and faded away into the inner room. They were scared, and so was she. I saw that she had bruises on her forearms.
I thanked them and went off, and heard the angry voices before I had closed the door. Downstairs I sat down opposite that tiny angry old woman, with her white averted little face, and said, ‘I’ve seen the fridge. Have you never had one? It is very old and noisy.’
‘But why does she make it come on at one in the morning, or even three or four, when I’m trying to get my rest?’
Well, I sat there explaining. Reasonable. I had been thinking about Maudie. I like her. I respect her. And so I’m not going to insult her by babying her … so I had decided. But faced with her that night, as she sat in a sort of locked white tremble, I found myself softening things up.
‘Very well then, if it’s as you say, why does she have to put it just over where I sleep?’
‘But probably it has to go where there’s an electric point.’
‘And so much for my sleep, then, is that it?’
And as we sat there, the thing came on, just above us. The walls shook, the ceiling did, but it wasn’t a really unbearable noise. At least, I could have slept through it.
She was sitting there looking at me in a way part triumphant; see, you can hear it now, I’m not exaggerating! and part curious – she’s curious about me, can’t make me out.
I had determined to tell her exactly what was going on in the office, but it was hard.
‘You must be quite a queen bee there then,’ she remarked.
I said, ‘I am the assistant editor.’
It was not that she didn’t take it in, but that she had to repudiate it – me – the situation. She sat with her face averted, and then put her hand up to shield it from me.
‘Oh well, so you won’t be wanting to come in to me then, will you?’ she said at last.
I said, ‘It’s just that this week it’s very difficult. But I’ll drop in tomorrow if you’ll have me.’
She made a hard sorrowful sort of shrug. Before I left I took a look at the kitchen; supplies very low. I said, ‘I’ll bring in stuff tomorrow, what you need.’
After a long, long silence which I thought she’d never break, she said, ‘The weather’s bad, or I’d go myself. It’s the usual – food for the cat, and I’d like a bit of fish …’ That she didn’t complete the list meant that she did accept me, did trust me, somehow. But as I left I saw the wide blank stare at me, something frantic in it, as if I had betrayed her.
In the office next day not a sign of Joyce, and I rang her at home. Her son answered. Measured. Careful. No, she’s in the kitchen, I think she’s busy.
Never has Joyce been ‘busy’ before. I was so angry. I sat there thinking, I can go in to Maudie Fowler and help her, but not to Joyce, my friend. And meanwhile Phyllis was attending to the letters. Not from Joyce’s table, but at a chair at the secretaries’ table. Full marks for tact. I said to her, ‘This is crazy. I’m going to see Joyce now. Hold the fort.’ And went.
I’ve been in Joyce’s home a hundred times, always, however, invited, expected. The door opened by the son, Philip. When he saw me he began to stammer, ‘She’s – she’s – she’s …’ ‘In the kitchen,’ I said for him. He had, as it were, gone in behind his eyes: absented himself. This look again! But is it that I didn’t notice it before? A prepared surface, of one kind or another; the defences well manned.
I went into the kitchen. The son came behind me, like a jailer, or so I felt it (rightly). In the kitchen, a proper family kitchen, all pine and earthenware, the daughter, sitting at the table, drinking coffee, doing homework. Joyce standing over the sink. She looked far from an expensive gipsy, more a poor one. Her hair hadn’t been brushed, was a dowdy tangle, careless make-up, nails chipped. She presented to me empty eyes and a dead face, and I said, ‘Joyce, it’s not good enough,’ and she was startled back into herself. Tears sprang into her eyes, she gasped, turned quickly away and stood with her back to me, trembling, like Maudie. I sat at the table and said to the two children, ‘I want to talk to Joyce, please.’ They exchanged looks. You could say insolent, you could say scared. I saw that it would take very little to make me very sorry for them: for one thing, having to leave their schools and go off to the States, everything new. But I was angry, angry.
‘Give me some coffee,’ I said, and she came with a cup, and sat down opposite me.
We looked at each other, straight and long and serious.
