The Diaries of Jane Somers

But when I went in, taking six milk stouts and some new glasses, and I cried out from the door, ‘Hello, I’m here, let me in, look what I’ve got!’ and I strode in down that awful passage while she stood to one side, her face was a spiteful little fist. She wanted to punish me for her new electricity and her new comfort, but I wasn’t going to let her. I went striding and slamming about, and poured out stout and showed her the glasses, and by the time I sat down, she did too, and she was lively and smiling.

‘Have you seen my new boots?’ I asked her, thrusting them forward. She bent to peer at them, her mouth trembling with laughter, with mischief.

‘Oh,’ she half whispered, ‘I do like the things you wear, I do think they are lovely.’

So we spent the evening, me showing her every stitch I had. I took off my sweater and stood still so she could walk round me, laughing. I had on my new camisole, crêpe de Chine. I pulled up my skirts so she could see the lace in it. I took off my boots so she could handle them.

She laughed and enjoyed herself.

She told me about clothes she had worn when she was young.

There was a dress that was a favourite, of grey poplin with pink flowers on it. She wore it to visit her auntie. It had been the dress of her father’s fancy-woman, and it was too big for her, but she took it in.

‘Before my poor mother died, nothing was too good for me, but then, I got the cast-offs. But this was so lovely, so lovely, and I did love myself in it.’

We talked about the dresses and knickers and petticoats and camisoles and slippers and boas and corsets of fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. Mrs Fowler is over ninety.

And she talked most about her father’s woman, who owned her own pub. When Mrs Fowler’s mother died … ‘She was poisoned, dear! She poisoned her – oh yes, I know what you are thinking, I can see your face, but she poisoned her, just as she nearly did for me. She came to live in our house. That was in St John’s Wood. I was a skivvy for the whole house, I slaved day and night, and before they went to bed I’d take up some thin porridge with some whisky and cream stirred in. She would be on one side of the fire, in her fancy red feathered bed jacket, and my father on the other side, in his silk dressing jacket. She’d say to me, Maudie, you feeling strong tonight? And she’d throw off all that feathered stuff and stand there in her corsets. They don’t make corsets like that now. She was a big handsome woman, full of flesh, and my father was sitting there in his armchair smiling and pulling at his whiskers. I had to loosen those corset strings. What a job! But it was better than hauling and tugging her into her corsets when she was dressing to go out. And they never said to me, Maudie, would you fancy a spoonful of porridge yourself? No, they ate and drank like kings, they wanted for nothing. If she felt like a crab or a sole or a lobster, he’d send out for it. But it was never Maudie, would you like a bit? But she got fatter and fatter and then it was: Do you want my old blue silk, Maudie? I wanted it right enough! One of her dresses’d make a dress and a blouse for me, and sometimes a scarf. But I never liked wearing her things, not really. I felt as if they had been stolen from my poor mother.’

I did not get home till late, and I lay in the bath wondering if we could do a feature on those old clothes. I mentioned it to Joyce and she seemed quite interested.

She was looking at me curiously. She did not like to ask questions, because something about me at the moment warns her off. But she did say, ‘Where did you hear about these clothes?’ while I was describing the pink silk afternoon dress of a female bar owner before the First World War – who, according to Mrs Fowler, poisoned her lover’s wife and tried to poison her lover’s daughter. And the plum-coloured satin peignoir with black ostrich feathers.

‘Oh, I have a secret life,’ I said to her, and she said, ‘So it seems,’ in a careless, absent way that I am beginning to recognize.

I went back to Maudie last night. I said to her, ‘Can I call you Maudie?’ But she didn’t like that. She hates familiarity, disrespect. So I slid away from it. When I left I said, ‘Then at least call me Janna, please.’ So now she will call me Janna, but it must be Mrs Fowler, showing respect.

I asked her to describe to me all those old clothes, for the magazine: I said we would pay for her expertise. But this was a mistake, she cried out, really shocked and hurt, ‘Oh no, how can you … I love thinking about those old days.’

And so that slid away too. How many mistakes I do make, trying to do the right thing.

Nearly all my first impulses are quite wrong, like being ashamed of my bathroom, and of the mag.

I spent an hour last night describing my bathroom to her in the tiniest detail, while she sat smiling, delighted, asking questions. She is not envious. No. But sometimes there is a dark angry look, and I know I’ll hear more, obliquely, later.

She talked more about that house in St John’s Wood. I can see it! The heavy dark furniture, the comfort, the good food and the drink.

Her father owned a little house where ‘they’ wanted to put the Paddington railway line. Or something to do with it. And he got a fortune for it. Her father had had a corner shop in Bell Street, and sold hardware and kept free coal and bread for the poor people, and in the cold weather there was a cauldron of soup for the poor. ‘I used to love standing there, so proud of him, helping those poor people …’ And then came the good luck, and all at once, the big house and warmth and her father going out nearly every night, for he loved going where the toffs were, he went to supper and the theatre, and the music hall and there he met her, and Maudie’s mother broke her heart, and was poisoned.

Maudie says that she had a lovely childhood, she couldn’t wish a better to anyone, not the Queen herself. She keeps talking of a swing in a garden under apple trees, and long uncut grass. ‘I used to sit and swing myself, for hours at a time, and swing, and swing, and I sang all the songs I knew, and then poor Mother came out and called to me, and I ran in to her and she gave me fruit cake and milk and kissed me, and I ran back to the swing. Or she would dress me and my sister Polly up and we went out into the street. We had a penny and we bought a leaf of chocolate each. And I used to lick it up crumb by crumb, and I hoped I wouldn’t run into anyone so I must share it. But my sister always ate hers all at once, and then nagged at me to get some of mine.’

‘How old were you, on the swing, Mrs Fowler?’

‘Oh, I must have been five, six …’

None of it adds up. There couldn’t, surely, have been a deep grassy garden behind the hardware in Bell Street? And in St John’s Wood she would have been too old for swings and playing by herself in the grasses while the birds sang? And when her father went off to his smart suppers and the theatre, when was that? I ask, but she doesn’t like to have a progression made, her mind has bright pictures in it that she has painted for herself and has been dwelling on for all those decades.

In what house was it her father came in and said to her mother, ‘You whey-faced slop, don’t you ever do anything but snivel?’ And hit her. But never did it again, because Maudie ran at him and beat him across the legs until he began to laugh and held her up in the air, and said to his wife, ‘If you had some of her fire, you’d be something,’ and went off to his fancy-woman. And then Maudie would be sent up by her mother with a jug to the pub, to stand in the middle of the public asking for draught Guinness. ‘Yes, I had to stand there for everyone to see, so that she would be ashamed. But she wasn’t ashamed, not she, she would have me over the bar counter and into her own little back room, which was so hot our faces were beef. That was before she poisoned my mother and began to hate me, out of remorse.’

All that I have written up to now was a recapitulation, summing-up. Now I am going to write day by day, if I can. Today was Saturday, I did my shopping, and went home to work for a couple of hours, and then dropped in to Mrs F. No answer when I knocked, and I went back up her old steps to the street and saw her creeping along, pushing her shopping basket. Saw her as I did the first day: an old crooked witch. Quite terrifying, nose and chin nearly meeting, heavy grey brows, straggly bits of white hair under the black splodge of hat. She was breathing heavily as she came up to me. She gave her impatient shake of the head when I said hello, and went down the steps without speaking to me. Opened the door, still without speaking, went in. I nearly walked away. But followed her, and without being asked took myself into the room where the fire was. She came in after a long time, perhaps half an hour, while I heard her potter about. Her old yellow cat came and sat near my feet. She brought in a tray with her brown teapot and biscuits, quite nice and smiling. And she pulled the dirty curtains over, and put on the light and put the coal on the fire. No coal left in the bucket. I took the bucket from her and went along the passage to the coal cellar. A dark that had no light in it. A smell of cat. I scraped coal into the bucket and took it back, and she held out her hand for the bucket without saying thank you.

The trouble with a summing-up afterwards, a recap, is that you leave out the grit and grind of a meeting. I could say, She was cross to begin with, then got her temper back, and we had a nice time drinking tea, and she told me about … But what about all the shifts of liking, anger, irritation – oh, so much anger, in both of us?

I was angry while I stood there on the steps and she went down past me without speaking, and she was angry, probably, thinking, this is getting too much! And sitting in that room, with the cat, I was furious, thinking, well if that is all the thanks I get! And then all the annoyances melting into pleasure with the glow of the fire, and the rain outside. And there are always these bad moments for me, when I actually take up the greasy cup and have to put my lips to it; when I take in whiffs of that sweet sharp smell that comes from her, when I see how she looks at me, sometimes, the boiling up of some old rage … It is an up-and-down of emotion, each meeting.

She told me about a summer holiday.

‘Of course, we could not afford summer holidays, not the way all you girls have them now. Take them for granted, you do! They had put me off work from the millinery. I did not know when they would want me again. I felt tired and run-down, because I wasn’t eating right then, they paid us so bad. I answered an advertisement for a maid in a seaside hotel in Brighton. Select, it said. References needed. I had no references. I had never been in service. My mother would have died to think of it. I wrote a letter and I had a letter back asking me to come, my fares paid. I packed my little bag and I went. I knew it was all right, there was something about her letter. It was a big house, set back a bit from the road. I walked up the front path, thinking, well, I’m not in service here yet! And the housekeeper let me in, a real nice woman she was, and said Mrs Privett would see me at once. Well, let me say this now, she was one of the best people I have known in my life. The kindest. I often think of her. You know, when everything is as bad as it can be, and you think there’s nowhere you can turn, then there’s always that person, that one person … She looked me over, and said, Well, Maudie, you say you have no experience, and I value your honesty. But I want a good class of girl because we have a good class of people. When can you start? Now, I said, and we both laughed, and she said later she had had the same feeling about me, that when I arrived it would be all right. The housekeeper took me up to the top of the house. There was a cook, and a scullery maid, and a boy, and the housekeeper, and the two girls for waiting at the tables, and four housemaids. I was one of the housemaids. We were in one of the attics, two big beds up there, two to a bed. I wasn’t to start till the morning, and so I ran down to the beach, and took off my shoes. There was the lovely sea. I had not seen the sea since my mother died, and I sat on the beach and watched the dark sea moving up and down and I was so happy, so happy … and I ran back through the dark, scared as anything because of the Strangler …’

‘Because of the what?’

And here she told a long story about some newspaper scare of the time, a man who strangled girls when he found them alone … It was so out of key with the rest of what she was telling me, and yet this was, is, something in Maudie, a strain of horror-shivering masochism that comes out suddenly and then goes again. At any rate, she ran quaking up through the dark, through the dark garden, with the hot breath of the Strangler on her neck, and the door was opened by the housekeeper, who said, Oh there you are, Maudie, I was worrying about you, but the mistress said, Don’t worry, I know where she’ll be … ‘You know, I’ve often and often thought about this, when it is so easy to be nice, why are people nasty? Everything in that big house was nice, all the people in it, and even the guests too, no one unkind or quick or sharp. It was because of her, Mrs Privett. So why are people unkind to each other?

‘She had kept my supper for me, and it was a lovely supper too, and she sat with me while I ate. And then up I went to bed. It was dark through the house, with the gas lights burning on the landings, but at the very top the sky was light, there were the three other girls, and oh, we did have such a good time. We lay half the night and told each other stories, ghost stories and all, and we frightened each other with the Strangler, and we ate sweets and laughed …

‘And next morning, we had to get up at six. And by the time it was breakfast I was so hungry, but she, Mrs Privett, gave us the same food the hotel guests had, and better, and she came into the kitchen while we were all eating to make sure we had it. We ate great plates of porridge and real milk, and then kippers or haddock if we liked, or eggs any way we liked, and then all the toast and marmalade and butter we could eat, and sometimes she sat with us too, and said, I like to see young things eating. You must eat well, or you can’t do your work. And that was what all the meals there were like. I’ve never eaten like that before or since. And then …’

‘And what work did you do? Was it hard?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was hard. But we knew how to work in those days. We got up by six and cleaned the grates through the house and started the fires, and we had the big dining room cleaned and shining before we took the guests their trays of tea and biscuits. And then we did the public rooms, everything just so and polished, and then we had our breakfast. And then we did all the bedrooms, right out, no skimping on the cleaning, Mrs Privett wouldn’t have it. And we did the flowers with her, or the silver or the windows. And then we had our dinners, wonderful food, everything the guests had. And then we took the mending up to the attics and while we did that we had a bit of a skylark around. She didn’t mind. She said she liked to hear us laughing, provided we got the work all done. And then we came down to do the tea, trays and trays of bread and butter and cakes and stuff, the four of us served all that while the waiting girls went off for the afternoon. And then we had some time off, and we went down to the beach for an hour or so. And then we four maids would sit with the babies and children while the parents went out to the theatre or somewhere. I loved that, I loved little children. We all loved that. And there was a big late supper, about ten at night, with cakes and ham and everything. And we all had either Sunday afternoon or Saturday afternoon off. Oh, it was wonderful. I was there three months and I got so fat and happy I couldn’t get into my clothes.’

‘And then?’

‘And then the autumn was coming, and the hotel closed. Mrs Privett came to me and said, Maudie, I want you to stay with me. In the winters I open a place on the sea, in Nice that was. France. She wanted me to go with her. But I said no, I was a milliner, that was my trade, but it broke my heart not to go with her.’

‘Why did you really not go with her?’ I asked.

‘You are sharp,’ she said. ‘You are right. It was Laurie. I went away from London to Brighton and didn’t say where I was, so he would value me, and he did. He was waiting for me when I got off the train, though how he found out I never did know. And he said, So you’re back? As you can see, I said. Tomorrow you are coming for a walk, he said. Am I? I said.

‘And so I married him. I married him instead of the German. I married the wrong man.’

I gave a grimace at this, and she said, ‘And did you marry the wrong one too?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘he married the wrong woman.’

And this tickled her so much she lay back in her chair, her brown old wrinkled hands squeezing her knees, and she laughed and laughed. She has a young fresh laugh, not an old woman’s laugh at all.

‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she cried, ‘I had never thought of that. Well, Laurie thought he married the wrong woman, but then what woman would have been right? For he never stayed with any one of us.’

That was this afternoon. I did not leave her until after six. She came with me to the outside door and said, ‘Thank you for getting the coal. You mustn’t mind me, dear, mustn’t mind my ways.’

Sunday.

I saw The White Raven. I see that I am like Maudie, the housemaids – I like being frightened. After the film I came back here for my usual Sunday evening’s occupation, making sure clothes are all prepared for the next week, grooming. I saw that I had spent all day alone and that is how I spend my weekends, usually. Solitary. I did not know I was until Freddie died. He liked us to have proper dinner parties every week or so, and we had his colleagues and their wives, and I asked girls from work, usually Joyce and her husband. My food was perfect, and Freddie did the wine. We were proud of how well we did it. And all that has been blown away, gone. I never saw his associates after the funeral. When I wondered if I would have the perfect little dinner parties, I couldn’t be bothered. At work, I am seen by everybody as this self-sufficient competent woman, with a full life. Friends, weekends, entertainment. I go each week to three or four lunches, drinks parties, receptions for the mag. I don’t like this, or dislike it, it is part of my job. I know nearly everyone, we all know each other. Then I come home after work, if I am not having supper with Joyce to discuss something, and I buy takeaway, and then – my evening begins. I go into the bathroom and stay there two, three hours. Then watch a little television. At weekends I go about by myself. How do you describe such a person? And yet I am not lonely. If anyone had said to me, before Freddie died, that I could live like this, and not want anything different … And yet I must want something different? I shall spend a weekend with Georgie. I shall try again. I did not go in to Maudie today, thinking it all too much. I am sitting here writing this, in bed, wondering if she expected me. If she was disappointed.

Monday.

Dropped in after work, with some chocolates. She seemed stand-offish. Cross because I did not go in yesterday? She said she had not gone out because it was cold, and she felt bad. After I got home I wondered if she wanted me to go and shop for her. But after all, she got along before I blew into her life – crashed into it.