How afraid we are of age: how we avert our eyes! ‘No,’ she said, still rather vague, with an abstracted air, as if she were doing justice to an immensely difficult subject to which she had given infinite thought. ‘No, on the whole not, but perhaps we’ll do a feature on Elderly Relations later. I’ll make a note.’ And then she flashed me a smile, a most complex smile it was: guilt, relief, and – it was there still – surprise. Somewhere she was wondering, what has got into Janna? And there was in it a plea: don’t threaten me, don’t! And, though she had been meaning to sit down and join me in a cup of tea while we discussed the issue after next, she said, Must fly. And flew.
Something interesting has just occurred to me.
Joyce is the innovator, the iconoclast, the one who will throw an issue we’ve just got set up into the wastepaper basket, and start again, working all night, to get it down just so; Joyce presents herself – she is – this impulsive, dashing, daring soul, nothing sacred.
I, Janna, am classical and cautious, conservative and careful – this is my appearance, and how I think of myself.
Yet there are so often these moments between us, there always have been. Joyce says, ‘We can’t do that, our readers won’t like it.’
Me, I have always believed our readers – and everybody else’s readers for that matter – would take much more than they are offered.
I say, ‘Joyce, can we try it?’
But more often than not, whatever it is lands in the file I have labelled Too Difficult and which I leave out on my desk so that Joyce will see it and – so I hope, but most often in vain – be prompted to have another think.
The Images. (a) A girl of twelve or thirteen, and she gave us the most trouble. We discarded a hundred photographs, and finally got Michael to photograph Joyce’s niece, aged fifteen actually but rather childish. We got a frank healthy sensuality, not Lolita at all, we were careful to avoid that. Miss Promise. (b) A girl about seventeen, emphasizing independence and confidence. Still at home but you are ready to leave the nest. (c) Leading your own life. Mid-twenties. Since in our experience women living their own lives, sharing flats, keeping down jobs, feel as if they are walking a tightrope, we chose something pretty and vulnerable. Needing Mr Right but able to do without. (d) Young married woman, with a child. Emphasizing the child. (e) Married woman with part-time job, two children, running home and husband.
And that was that.
Before a few weeks ago, I did not see old people at all. My eyes were pulled towards, and I saw, the young, the attractive, the well-dressed and handsome. And now it is as if a transparency has been drawn across that former picture and there, all at once, are the old, the infirm.
I nearly said to Joyce, ‘But one day we will be old,’ but it is a cliché so obvious, so boring! I can hear her say, ‘Oh, Janna, do we have to be so boring, so obvious, they don’t buy us for that kind of thing.’ She always says, They buy us, we must make them want to buy us. One day I went into a filling station and I was tired after a long drive and I said, ‘Please fill me up.’ And the garage man said, ‘I’ll be only too happy to fill your car up, madam.’
When Mrs Fowler went into the kitchen to get some biscuits, I went with her and watched her pull up a stool to stand on so she could put on the ceiling light. I examined the frayed flexes, the damp walls.
Later I said to her, ‘I’m going to ask my electrician to come in here, otherwise you are going to kill yourself.’
She sat quite still for a few minutes, then she raised her eyes, looked at me, and sighed. I knew this was a moment of importance. I had said something she had dreamed of someone saying: but now this was a burden on her, and she wished the moment, and me, away.
She said, ‘I’ve managed well enough.’ This was timid, and an appeal, and sullen.
I said, ‘It’s a disgrace that you should have to be in these conditions. Your electricity, it’s a death-trap.’
She gave a snort of laughter at this. ‘A death-trap, is it?’ And we laughed. But I was full of panic, inside me something struggled to run, to flee, out of the situation.
I felt trapped. I am trapped. Because I have made a promise to her. Silently. But it is a promise.
I went home and, as I opened my door, the door opposite crept open: Mrs Penny, on the watch. ‘Excuse me,’ she cried, ‘but I have been waiting for you to come home. I simply must ask a favour of you.’
I said ungraciously, ‘What is it?’
‘I forgot to buy butter when I went out and …’
‘I’ll bring it,’ I said, and in a surge of energy went into my flat, got half a pound of butter, thrust it into her hands, said, ‘Don’t mention it,’ and ran back into my own place with a bang of the door. The bang was deliberate. She had butter, I knew that. What I was thinking was, she has a son and daughter, and if they don’t look after her, tant pis. It’s not my responsibility.
I was in a frenzy of irritation, a need to shake something off – Mrs Fowler. I filled the bath. I put every stitch of clothing I had worn that day ready for the launderette. I could feel the smelly air of Mrs Fowler’s place on my skin and hair.
My bathroom, I realized that evening, is where I live. Probably even my home. When I moved here I copied the bathroom I had made in the old flat, to the last detail. But I did not do anything particular with the living room and bedroom, the study. Freddie joked that his rival was my bathroom.
I had the paint mixed especially, ivory with a tone of pink. I had Spanish tiles, very delicate and light, coral, turquoise, and ochre, and the blinds were painted to match the tiles. The bath is a grey-blue. Sometimes a room is perfect – nothing can be added and nothing changed. When Joyce saw it she wanted it photographed for the mag. I said no: it would be like being photographed nude. I bath every morning, every night. I lie in the bath and soak for hours. I read in the bath, with my head and knees floating on waterproof pillows. I have two shelves full of salts and bath bubbles. That evening I lay in the bath, adding hot water as it chilled, and I looked at my body. It is a solid firm white body. No fat on it. God forbid! But solid. It doesn’t sag or droop yet. Well, no children. There was never time for children, and when I said to Freddie, Yes, I’ll fit one in now, I did not get pregnant. He was cheerful and nice about it. I don’t know how deeply he felt it. I know he wanted children, but not how much. I was careful not to find out, I suppose.
I came out of the bath and stood in the doorway wrapped in my bath sheet and looked at the bathroom and thought about Mrs Fowler. She has never had hot water. Has lived in that filthy hole, with cold water, since before the First World War.
I wished I had not responded to her, and I was wondering all evening how to escape.
In the morning I woke up and it was as if I was facing some terrible fate. Because I knew I was going to look after Mrs Fowler. To an extent, anyway.
I rang up the electrician. I explained everything to him. I went to work depressed and even frightened.
That night the electrician rang: Mrs Fowler had screamed at him, What do you want? And he had gone away.
I said I would meet him there next evening.
He was there at six, and I saw his face as she opened the door and the smell and the squalor hit him. Then he said to her, in
