once with Mrs Privett and once with that pair of … One a real lady and then two nasty penny-pinchers, the good and the bad.
‘Yes, I know what you are thinking. It was Laurie. He’d never have let me hear the end of it if I’d gone to Paris, even if I’d gone with a regiment of guards to look after me, he’d have taken it out of me. And it was bad enough as it was, before we even married, I had bruises on my arms, and it was always: Who was it? Who looked at you? Who gave you that handkerchief? – because I used to pinch and save for proper linen hankies with real lace, I loved them, I loved pretty things. But he never knew I could have gone to Paris then. And if I had, perhaps I might have stayed, I might have married a Frenchie. I could have married a German, couldn’t I? Sometimes I look back and I see that my life had these chances, leading to something wonderful, who knows? And yet I never took them, I always said, No, no, to what was offered.
‘And yet I had such happy times, I think except for Johnnie they were the best in my life, better even than Hans and our Sundays. I like to sit here and think back to us girls, sitting around those lovely hats, oh they were so beautiful those hats, singing and larking and telling stories, and she always around, Maudie here and Maudie there, it’s always you who are the ringleader, she’d say, but I was her best and she knew it, and though she’d like to have seen the last of me, because he had his eye on me, and everyone knew it, she had to put up with me, didn’t she? And I didn’t care. I’d sing away, I’d sing – shall I sing you one of my songs? Yes, I will …’
And Maudie sits singing the old music-hall songs, some I’ve never heard of. Her voice is off pitch now, keeps cracking, but you can hear what it was like in her laugh.
A Happiness.
‘I must have got pregnant the night of our wedding. Nine months to the day, it was. And Laurie was so pleased once we knew. Would you believe it, I was so silly, I didn’t know what was wrong with me! I crept off to the doctor and said, I am sickening, I’m dying, I feel so ill, and I feel this and that. And I lay down and he felt my stomach, and he sat down behind his table and he laughed. Oh, it was a nice laugh, it didn’t make me feel bad, but I did feel silly. He said, Mrs Fowler, didn’t it occur to you that you are pregnant? What’s that? said I. You are going to have a baby, said he. Oh go on, I said, it can’t be – for I hadn’t got the expectation of it into my mind at all.
‘And then I told Laurie and he cried, he was so pleased. We were in the front room of a house in the next street to this. He painted the room beautifully, for he was a good tradesman, no one could say otherwise, he painted it a lovely shining cream, and the garlands on the ceiling he painted gold and blue, and the skirting boards and the picture rail blue. And he bought a little chest and made that blue, and kept buying little coats and hats – oh, sizes too big, Johnnie didn’t get into them for two or three years after Laurie left me. But I was so happy, I thought I was a queen for those few months. He treated me like I was a piece of crystal or a new cup. He kept buying me all sorts of fancies, for I was after pickles and chocolate and ginger and stuff, and they cost him.
‘And then the baby was born, my Johnnie. And you’ll never guess. From that moment on there was never a kind word for me. How is it a grown man behaves like a little boy? He was jealous, jealous of a baby! But I didn’t know then that was how it was going to be. I used to tease him, and then he hit me. All the good times were over. I used to sit there in my nursing chair, which he had made for me, and nurse the baby, and look at the lovely painted ceiling, and think, oh I’m so hungry, so hungry, because Johnnie was such a feeding baby, he sucked and sucked. I’d say, Laurie, get me a bit of lamb for a stew, buy me some bacon, we’ll have it with dumplings. And he’d say, What am I going to use for money? And he was in work. Well, I’ll not fill your ears with the misery of it when I understood what the future was to be, because what I like is, to look back and think of me sitting like a queen in that lovely room, in my lovely chair, with Johnnie, and thinking how when Laurie got used to it we’d all be so happy.’
A month later.
I’ve never worked as hard as this! If I keep a skeleton of this diary going, then perhaps later …
Joyce is just holding herself together, but she is not with us. I am doing all the interviewing, parties, running about, lunches, conferences. We keep her out of sight mostly. Her defences are well inside herself, not where mine are, outside in clothes, hair, etc. She looks awful, a mess. In addition, this series of articles on clothes as an expression of the mood of the seventies, sixties, fifties. They wanted more. I seem never to be able to lose it, undervaluing myself. I would not have thought of myself as able to write for a serious sociological mag, but here I am. So I get up at six to do the work for that.
And I see Maudie every evening, or if not I make sure she knows I’m not coming. I go in, exhausted, but then I shop and do a little bit of cleaning, and then I slump and listen, and listen. Sometimes she tells it well, and laughs, and knows she is pleasing me. Others, she mutters and is fierce and won’t look at me, sitting there in my lovely clothes. I have bought a whole new outfit, madly expensive, I feel it as a bulwark against chaos. She leans over and feels the silk of my shirt, none of this cheap Chinese stuff, no. She strokes my skirt, and then looks up into my face, with a sigh, for she knows how good my things are, who better? And then she will turn away her little face and put her hand up to her cheek to shield it, and stare into the fire. Shuts me out. And then she starts again, forgiving me with a little laugh: So what have you been doing today? But she doesn’t want to know, my world is too much for her, she wants to talk …
‘And then one day he left me, he said, You don’t care for me now you’ve got him, and he took up his tools and he left. I didn’t believe it. I was waiting for him to come back, for years as it turned out. But there I was, with nothing to pay the rent with. I went to the Rolovskys and asked – oh, that was hard, I’d never begged of them before. I had said I was getting married, you see, and she had given me a hard time, making me work all hours, to get as much out of me as she could before she lost me. And here I was again, after not even two years. Well, she made a favour of it. And someone else was forewoman now. And it wasn’t the same in the workroom. For one thing, I didn’t have the heart to sing and dance. I put Johnnie with a baby-minder. She wasn’t a bad woman, but it wasn’t what I wanted for him. I’d be sick worrying, has she given him his medicine, or his milk? For he was delicate, he always had a cough. But I had enough to keep us. Then the people where I was said they wanted my room. They didn’t want a baby, that was what they meant. And they did want all that lovely blue and gold for themselves. And so I came here. The woman who had the house didn’t mind a baby, but I had to keep him quiet, she said. I was on the top floor then, the little room at the back. It was cheap, and we looked out at the trees there, lovely it was. But I found it hard to pay for everything. I went to my aunt, but she could only just manage for herself. She said, Go to your father. But he had said if I married Laurie I should never darken his door. And he was right, for once … Did I tell you about my wedding?’
And Maudie sat laughing, laughing, and pulled out a drawer and showed me a photograph. A tiny woman, under an enormous flowered hat, in a neat tight dress. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘I looked a proper mess. I had been saying yes and no, yes and no, because what would happen was, I’d say, No, and then he’d start his squeezing and wanting, and I’d say, Yes, and he’d say, I suppose Harry (there was another boy who fancied me) won’t have you, so I’d say, No. But at last we got to say yes at the same time. I borrowed my cousin Flo’s best hat and her church gloves. My dress was my own. I sent a message to Father and said I was getting married on Sunday. He came over to Auntie’s and Laurie was there, and he stood in the doorway and said to me, If you marry him that is the last time you’ll see me. Well, I hadn’t seen him for nearly ten years as it was. I said, Will you come and see me married at least?
‘On that morning Laurie
