The Diaries of Jane Somers

When I started work for Little Women – Joyce and I so christened that phase of the mag, a shorthand – I was so pleased and relieved at getting this glamorous job, in journalism, I wasn’t looking for anything higher. 1947, still a war atmosphere. It was a graceless production, bad paper, because of the war: full of how to use cheap cuts of meat and egg powder. How to make anything into something else – Joyce’s description of it. I, like everyone else, was sick sick sick of it all. How we all longed to throw off the aftermath of war, the rationing, the dreariness. There was a woman editor then too. I wasn’t into criticizing my superiors then, my sights went no higher than being secretary to the production manager. I just didn’t think about Nancy Westringham. They were all gods and goddesses up there. Now I see she was just right for that phase of the mag. Old-style, like my mother and my sister, competent, dutiful, nice – but I mean it, nice, kind, and my guess is never an original thought in her life. My guess it has to be: if there is one thing I regret, it is that I wasn’t awake enough during that phase to see what was going on. But of course then I hadn’t learned how to see what was going on: what is developing inside a structure, what to look for, how things work.

They were changing the mag all right, better paper, brighter features, but it wasn’t enough. There had to be a new editor, and I should have seen it, should have been watching. It wasn’t only that I didn’t know how to observe: I was too drunk on being young, attractive and successful. At school no one had ever even suggested I might have capacities, and certainly my parents never did. But in the office, I was able to turn my hand to anything. I was soon just the one person who was able to take over from anyone sick or incapable. I cannot remember any pleasure in my life to match that: the relief of it, the buoyancy, tackling a new job and knowing that I did it well. I was in love with cleverness, with myself. And this business of being good at clothes. Of course, the fifties were not exactly an exciting time for clothes, but even so I was able to interest everyone in what I wore. My style then was sexy, but cool and sexy, just a little bit over the edge into parody: in that I anticipated the sixties and the way we all slightly mocked the styles we wore.

I would give a lot now to know how it happened that Boris became editor. But it is too late now. When I ask the oldies who are still with us, they don’t know what I am asking because they don’t think like that.

At any rate, Boris became editor in 1957, and he represented ‘the new wave’. But he didn’t have it in him. I was by then in the position Phyllis is now: the bright girl everyone expects great things of. The difference is, I didn’t know it. I liked being good at everything, and I didn’t mind working all hours. I adored everything I had to do. I was already doing all kinds of work well beyond what I was paid for, beyond what I was described as being. I was a secretary in Production. By then I had begun to watch what was really happening. The immediately obvious fact was that Boris was not very effective. Amiable, affable, trendy – all that, yes. He had been appointed by the Board when Nancy resigned; was asked to leave. He had the large room that is used now by the photographers, a large desk, a secretary who had a secretary, and a PR girl. He was always in conference, on the telephone, at lunch, giving interviews on the role and function of women’s magazines. ‘Women’s Lib’ hadn’t been born, though not till I came to write this did I remember that.

What was really happening was that other people were doing his work for him, me among them. The formal structure of the office did not correspond at all with what was happening. The mag had brightened up a little, but not much, and Mr Right was implicit in everything. We did not think clearly about it, but carried on much as before, with better paper and some decent photographs.

The moment Joyce arrived, we all became conscious of exactly what we were doing, and for whom. Market Analysis, reports from experts; we certainly took notice of all that, but we had our own ideas. The backbone and foundation of the mag, what interests us most, is information. Birth control, sex, health, social problems generally. Nearly all the articles we have on these topics would have been impossible in Little Women, everything had to be wrapped up. This is the part of the mag I do. As for clothes, food, wine, decor, what has changed is the level of the photography. Not what is said, fashion is fashion is fashion, and food is food, but how it is presented. When I first began working, there were a lot of articles like ‘I Am a Widow: How I Brought Up Two Girls’, or ‘I Am Married to a Paraplegic’, or ‘Alice Is Blind But She Runs a Business School’. All those have gone: too downmarket! Lilith deliberately set out to take a step up in the world, and we made that happen.

I’ve said that when Joyce came in, mid-sixties, she changed me: she changed everything else. What interests me now is that the change took place against the apparent structure. She was Production Manager and I was her assistant. We were together in the office we have now. It was we two who ran the mag. It was obvious to us that we ran it, but Boris didn’t notice. Joyce used to say that in her last job she did all the work for her boss, who had to be allowed to think he was doing it. So nothing had changed for her. Far from resenting it all, we were worried that people would notice. And of course they did. Now we wonder why we thought that they wouldn’t. The point was, we loved the work, we loved transforming the mag. We used to go to the Board Meetings, once a fortnight, sit quietly there, on one side, with Boris at the top of the table, and the Board Reps at the other end, and we hardly opened our mouths. I used to brief Boris before meetings, about what he should say.

The actual structure during that time was Joyce and me running everything, with the photographers coming into prominence, because it was really in the sixties that they did. All the decisions were made in our office, it was always full of people. Suddenly – and Joyce had been there only a couple of years – she was made editor and given complete freedom. New format, new everything. She was clever: several mags that were too Swinging Sixties bit the dust, but the format Joyce created – that we created – survives.

Almost at once the real structure became the same as the formal, the official structure. When Boris left, his great awful dead office was turned over to the photographers, and it came to life at once; and the room Joyce and I had been using became the Editors’ Room. Then I realized how much effort and nervous strain had gone into everything when what was really happening didn’t match with the formal organization. Now, looking around at other offices, other businesses, I see how often there is a discordance.

And what has been growing up inside this structure, what is the future? Now I know it is not Joyce and me! But I wonder if it is really me and Phyllis? What is it I am not seeing because I am too involved with what is now? It seems to me that things change suddenly, overnight, or seem to: but the change has been growing up inside. I cannot see any change inside: and yet I think about it a good deal.

All I can see is that there is so much less money around for spending, and so our glossy lively even impudent format, or formula, may have to go, and something sterner and more dedicated supplant it.

Dedicated to what? Well, if I could foresee that! I do not get any feeling of pleasure or wanting to be part of it when I think that perhaps we will be into ‘making everything into something else’. Clothes to last – well, that has already begun – beef as a luxury instead of a staple, buying jewellery as an investment … the last issue but one, we printed recipes from wartime, as a joke, but to those of us who were young during the war and just after it, it wasn’t a joke. I heard the girls in the typists’ pool laughing, Phyllis making fun of stretching meat with forcemeat balls. I could do a feature on the food Maudie remembers. I expect the typists’ pool would fall about if they could hear Maudie on how, when she was a child, the mother of a family made a big batter pudding to ‘fill them up’ before the meat course, so they were satisfied with a little bit of meat, and then after the meat, batter pudding again, with jam. When I think of the war, 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.

‘I can’t stand this business of nothing being said, nothing being said.’

‘Nothing is being said here either.’

‘Are they listening at the door?’

‘Don’t you see, Mother has been captured. Back from the office.’

‘Do you mean to say they have resented it, your being so successful and all that?’

‘No, they are proud of me.’

‘But.’

‘Everything has fallen apart around them, and they haven’t known for months if they are going to have Felicity for a mum or me. Now they know it is me, security, but they are terrified. Surely you can see that?’ She sounded exactly like my dear sister Georgie, talking to the delinquent – me – and I wasn’t going to take it.