The Diaries of Jane Somers

‘But how can I?’ she says. ‘Look at me!’

And she peers up at the sky past my head. It is so blue and nice, and she says, ‘But … but … but …’

Then suddenly she smiles. She puts on her thick black-beetle coat and her summer hat, black straw, and we go off to the Rose Garden Restaurant. I find her a table out of the way of people, with rose bushes beside her, and I pile a tray with cream cakes, and we sit there all afternoon. She ate and ate, in her slow, consuming way, which says, I’m going to get this inside me while it is here! – and then she sat, she simply sat and looked, and looked. She was smiling and delighted. Oh, the darlings, she kept crooning, the darlings … at the sparrows, at the roses, at a baby in a pram near her. I could see she was beside herself with a fierce, almost angry delight, this hot brightly coloured sunlit world was like a gorgeous present. For she had forgotten it, down in that ghastly basement, in those dreary streets.

I was worried that it would all be too much for her inside that thick black shell, and it was so hot and noisy. But she did not want to leave. She sat there until it closed.

And when I took her home she was singing dreamily to herself, and I took her to her door, and she said, ‘No, leave me, leave me, I want to sit here and think about it. Oh, what lovely things I have to think about.’

What did strike me, when I saw her out there in the full sunlight: how yellow she is. Bright blue eyes in a face that looks as if it has been painted yellow.

Three days later.

Another gorgeous afternoon. Went to Maudie, said, ‘Come to the park.’

She said irritably, ‘No, no, you go, I can’t.’

‘Oh come on,’ I said, ‘you know you like it once you get there.’

She stood holding to the door handle, distressed, angry, dishevelled. Then she said, ‘No, oh dreadful, dreadful, dreadful,’ and shut the door in my face.

I was furious. I had been thinking, as I drove to her, how she sat in the rose garden, crooning with delight. I went back to the office, furious. Worked till late. Did not go in to Maudie. Felt guilty, as I wallowed about with the hot water making me new again: kept seeing how she stood there, holding herself up, heard the mutter, Dreadful, dreadful …

A week has passed, it is dreary and chilly again. End of summer? Maudie seems to me, perhaps, really ill? … I know so little about old people! For all I know, all this is normal! I keep setting aside a time to think about her, but I am so busy, busy, busy. I rush in to her, at all hours, I say to her, I’m sorry, Maudie, I’ve got so much work. Last night I went in late and fell asleep in her chair. This morning I rang up the office and said I was not feeling well. In all my years there I think I’ve been ill twice, and I never take days off.

Phyllis said, ‘That’s all right, I’ll hold the fort!’

Maudie’s day.

She wakes inside a black smothering weight, she can’t breathe, can’t move. They’ve buried me alive, she thinks, and struggles. The weight shifts. Oh, it’s the cat, it’s my pretty, she thinks, and heaves. The weight lifts, and she hears a thud as the cat arrives on the floor. Petty? she asks, for she is not sure, it is so dark and her limbs are so stiff. She hears the cat moving about and knows she is alive. And warm … and in bed … Oh, oh, she says aloud, I must get to the toilet or I’ll wet the bed again. Panic! Have I wet the bed already? Her hand explores the bed. She mutters, Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful, dreadful, thinking how, a few days ago, she had wet the bed, and the trouble and difficulty of getting everything dry.

But it is as if her hand has disappeared, she can’t feel it. She clenches and unclenches her left hand, to know she has hands, and waits for the tingling to begin in her right. It takes a long time, and then she pulls out the half-numb right hand from under the clothes and uses the left to massage it awake. She still does not know if she has wet the bed. Almost she sinks back into the black bed, black sleep, but her bowels are moving and she smells a bad smell. Oh no, no, no, she whimpers, sitting there in the dark. No, dreadful, for she believes she might have shat in the bed. At last, with such effort and trouble, she climbs out of the bed, and stands beside it, feeling in it to see what is there. She can’t be sure. She turns, carefully, tries to find the light switch. She has a torch by the bed, but the batteries ran low, she meant to ask Janna to get new ones, and forgot. She thinks, surely Janna would think to look for herself, she knows how I need the torch! She finds the switch, and there is light … and anxiously she inspects the bed, which is dry. But she has to get to the toilet. She never uses the commode for more than a pee. She must get herself to the outside toilet. But there is a hot wet thrusting in her bowels and she gets herself to the commode, just in time. She sits there, rocking herself, keening. Dreadful, dreadful, for now she will have to take the pot out, and she feels so low and bad.

She sits there a long time, too tired to get up. She even sleeps a little. Her bottom is numb. She pulls herself up, looks for the paper. No lav paper, because she doesn’t use it in here. She cannot find anything to use … At last she struggles to the cupboard, her bottom all wet and loathsome, finds an old petticoat, rips off a piece, uses it to clean herself, and shuts down the lid on the smell – and worse, for while she does allow herself a fearful peep, she refuses to let her mind acknowledge that there is something wrong with her stool. Dreadful, she mutters, meaning the stuff her bowels seem to produce these days, and shoves the curtains back off the windows.

It is light outside. But it is summer, it could be the middle of the night still. She cannot bear to think of the difficulties of getting back into bed, and then out of it again. Her little clock has its face turned away from her, she doesn’t want to cross the room to it. She pulls around herself an old shawl, and huddles in the chair by the dead fire. No birds yet, she thinks: has the dawn chorus been and gone or am I waiting for it? She thinks of how, a child, she lay with her sisters in the bed in the cottage of the old woman in the summers, and woke to the shrill violence of the dawn chorus and slept again, thinking of the lovely hot day ahead, a day that had no end to it, all play and pleasure and plentiful tasty meals.

And so Maudie drifts off to sleep, but wakes, and sleeps and wakes for some hours, each time remembering to move her hands so that they don’t stiffen up too much. At last she wakes to the cat rubbing and purring around her legs. Which are stiff. She tests her hands. The right one gone again. With the left she caresses the cat, Pretty, petty, pretty pet, and with the right she tries to flex and unflex fingers until she is whole again.

Morning … oh, the difficulties of morning, of facing the day … each task such a weight to it … She sits there, thinking, I have to feed the cat, I have to … I have to … At last, she drags herself up, anxious, because her bowels are threatening again, and, holding on to door handles, chair backs, she gets herself into the kitchen. There is a tin of cat food, half empty. She tries to turn it on to a saucer, it won’t come out. It means she has to get a spoon. A long way off, in the sink, are her spoons and forks, she hasn’t washed up for days. She winkles out the cat food with her forefinger, her face wrinkled up – is it smelling perhaps? She lets the saucer fall from a small height on to the floor, for bending forward makes her faint. The cat sniffs at it and walks away, with a small miaow. Maudie sees that under the table are saucers, bone dry and empty. The cat needs milk, she needs water. Slowly, slowly, Maudie gets herself to the sink, pulls out of it a dirty saucer which she has not got the energy to wash, runs water into it. Finds a half bottle of milk. Has it gone off? She sniffs. No. She somehow gets the saucer on to the floor, holding on to the table and nearly falling. The cat drinks all the milk, and Maudie knows she is hungry.

Under the table not only the saucers, one, two, three, four, five, but a cat mess. This reminds Maudie she has to let the cat out. She toils to the door, lets out the cat, and stands with her back to the door, thinking. A general planning a campaign could not use more cleverness than Maudie does, as she outwits her weakness and her terrible tiredness. She is already at the back door: the toilet is five steps away; if she goes now it will save a journey later … Maudie gets herself to the toilet, uses it, remembers there is the commode full of dirt and smell in her room, somehow gets herself along the passage to her room, somehow gets the pot out from under the round top, somehow gets herself and the pot to the toilet. She splashes a bit as she empties it, and, looking, smelling, her mind has to acknowledge that there is something very wrong. But she thinks, as long as she (meaning Janna) does not see what I am making, no one will know. And they won’t put me away …

When all that is done it seems to her that a long time has passed, yet she knows that it is still early, for she cannot hear those noisy Irish brats. She needs a cup of tea very badly, all her energy has gone into the cat.

She stands by her kitchen table, holding on to it, thinking of how she will carry the cup of hot reviving tea next door. But hot tea makes you run, no, better cold milk. She gets the cold milk into the glass. That is the end of the milk. She needs: milk, toilet paper, cat food, matches, tea, and probably a lot else, if she could think of it.

Perhaps Janna will come soon and …

She looks sternly at the cat mess, which seems to her a long way down, measuring it in her mind with the need to stoop, and thinks, Janna will …

She gets herself and the milk next door. Sits down. But she is cold now, summer or not. She sits in that old chair of hers, by the cold grate, and feels the heat leaking out of her. She has to get the fire made. Should she plug in the heater? But it takes so much electricity, she is only just balancing her needs with her pension. She at last struggles up and plugs it in. The room has the warm red glow of the heater, her legs seem to loosen and become themselves. She sits there, sipping her milk, and muttering, Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.

Then she drifts off into a dream that Janna has taken her into her own home and is looking after her. She is fiercely possessive of this dream, and cuddles and cossets it, taking it out and adding to it whenever she sits there by herself, but she knows it will not happen. Cannot happen. But why not? It was impossible that Janna should fly into her life the way she did, who would ever have thought of it? And then how she comes in and out, with her jokes and her flowers and cakes and stuff, all her stories about her office, she is probably making it up, after all, how can she, a poor old woman, know better, if Janna chooses to embellish it all a little? So why, then, should not another impossible thing happen, that she should be taken into a lovely warm flat and there she would be looked after, things done for her …

Or Janna would come and live here. There is that room next door … That is what Maudie really wants. She does not want to leave here. Get yourself your own place and never let go of it: Maudie repeats this whenever she is tempted – as now – to leave here and go and live with Janna. No, no, she mutters, she will have to come here. And she sits there, sometimes dozing, thinking of how Janna is living there, looking after her, and of how, when she wakes in the night, alone and frightened that she is in the grave, she can call out, and hear Janna’s reply.

But soon her bowels force her to get up. Although she emptied the pot she did not wash it out, and it is disgusting to her. So she goes outside to the toilet, letting in the cat, who is waiting and who goes to the saucer with the smelly food in it, and disdains it, and patiently comes into the room with Maudie. Who, now she is up, decides to make a fire. It takes her over an hour, the crawling along the corridor to get the coal, the crawling back, the raking of the ashes, the lighting of the fire. She blows at it in small shallow puffs, because she gets dizzy, so it takes a long time to get going. Then she sits again, longing for a cup of tea, but refusing herself, because above all else she dreads the demands of her bladder, her bowels. She thinks, the Meals on Wheels will be here soon … it is only eleven, though. Perhaps they will be early today? She is hungry, she is so hungry she cannot now distinguish between her hunger pangs and the possibility that she must go again to the toilet. Before the cheerful young Meals on Wheels woman, who has a key, slams in and out, calling, Hello, Mrs Fowler, you all right – she has had to go out to the lavatory again.

It is early. Only half past twelve. Maudie at once takes the two small foil containers to the table and, hardly looking at what is in them, eats everything. She feels much better. She thinks, oh, if Janna would come now, and if she said. Come to the park, I’d not growl and grumble at her, I’d love to go. But she sees out of the window that it is raining. What a summer, she mutters. The cat is on the table sniffing at the empty containers, and Maudie is distressed at her greed, for she knows the cat is hungry and she should have shared.

Out she goes to the cold smelling kitchen and reaches about – yes, oh joy, there is a full unopened tin. So happy is Maudie that she even does a little dance there, clutching the tin to her chest. Oh, petty, petty, she cries, I can feed you. At last the tin is opened, though Maudie cuts her forefinger on the tin opener. The cat eats every bit. Maudie thinks, and now she should go out, to save me letting her out later … but the cat won’t go out, she takes herself back into the room with the fire, sinks to sleep on Maudie’s bed. Which has not been made. Maudie should make up her bed – she thinks, it’s not nice for Janna. She does not, but sits in the chair by the fire, and leans forward to stack it up with coal, and then sleeps like the dead for three hours. Though she does not know what time it is, five in the afternoon, when she wakes, for her clock has stopped.

The cat is still asleep, the fire is out … she builds it up again. She could do with something. She has to have a cup of tea. She makes herself a full pot, brings the biscuits, and has a little feast at her table. She feels so much better for the tea that it is easy to disregard how she has to go out to the toilet once more, twice, three times. Her bowels are like an angry enemy down there, churning and demanding. What’s wrong with you then? she cries, rubbing her hand round and round on the little mound of her belly. Why won’t you leave me alone?

She ought to have a wash … she ought … she ought … but Janna will come, Janna will …

But Maudie sits there, waiting, and Janna does not come, and Maudie gets up to let out the insistent cat, and Maudie fetches the coal, and Maudie attends to the fire, and Maudie searches about to see if there is a little brandy, for suddenly she feels bad, she feels trembly, she could fall to the ground and lie there, she is so empty and tired … No brandy. Nothing.

She can go out to the off-licence? No, no, she could not possibly get herself up the steps. Janna has not come and it is getting dark. That means it must be getting on for ten. Janna is not coming … and there is no milk, no tea, no food for poor petty, nothing.

And Maudie sits by her roaring furious fire thinking bitterly of Janna, who does not care, wicked unkind cruel Janna … In the middle of all this, loud knocks at the door, and Maudie’s relief explodes into a raucous shout: Oh, all right, I’m coming. And scrambles along the passage, crabwise, to the door, afraid Janna might fly off before she gets there. Terrible, terrible, she mutters, and her face, as she opens the door, is fierce and accusing.

‘Oh my God, Maudie,’ cries Janna, ‘let me in, I’m dead. What a day.’

Oh then, if she’s tired I can’t ask her … thinks Maudie, and stands aside as Janna comes crashing in, all energy and smiles.

In the room, Maudie sees Janna smile as she sees the wonderful fire, and sees, too, a wrinkling of her nose, which is at once suppressed.

Janna says, ‘I said to the Indian man, Don’t close, because he was closing, wait, I must get Mrs Fowler some things.’

‘Oh, I don’t need anything,’ says Maudie, at once reacting to the news that she has to be beholden to the Indian man, with whom she quarrels nearly every time she goes in … he overcharges, he is cheating her over her change …

Janna, thank goodness, has taken no notice, but is whirling around in the kitchen, to see what is missing, and out she rushes with a basket, before poor Maudie can remember the batteries. In such a hurry, she always is! And they are all like that, rushing in, rushing out, before I have time to turn myself round.

In no time Janna comes crashing back, slam the outside door, slam-bang this door, with a basket full of stuff which Maudie checks, with such relief and thankfulness. Everything is here, nice fresh fish for the cat and a tin of Ovaltine. Janna has thought of everything.

Has she noticed the cat mess, the unwashed stuff in the sink … ?

Maudie goes quietly to sit by the fire, on a smile from Janna which says, It is all right. Janna cleans up the cat mess, does the washing-up, puts away the crockery, and does not think, because she is young and so healthy, to leave out on the kitchen table some saucers and a spoon and the tin opener so that Maudie won’t have to bend and peer and rummage about.

Maudie sits listening to Janna working away, looking after me – and thinks, oh, if she doesn’t remember about the commode …

But when Janna comes in, she brings a small bottle of brandy and two glasses, and, having handed Maudie her brandy, she says, ‘I’ll just …’ and whisks out the dirty pot and takes it away.

I hope there is nothing left in it for her to notice, Maudie worries, but when Janna brings back the scoured pot, smelling nicely of pine forests, she says nothing.

Janna lets herself crash down into the chair near the fire, smiles at Maudie, picks up her glass of brandy, swallows it in a mouthful, says: ‘Oh, Maudie, what a day, let me tell you …’ And she sighs, yawns – and is asleep. Maudie sees it, can’t believe it, knows it is so, and is in a rage, in a fury. For she has been waiting to talk, to listen, to have a friend and some ordinary decent communication, perhaps a cup of tea in a minute, never mind about her bowels, and her bladder … And here is Janna, fast asleep.