The Diaries of Jane Somers. Doris Lessing
twelve. When am I going to stop thinking of people first in terms of what they wear? Phyllis asked me recently, what was my sister like, and I said, She wears good jersey suits and good shoes and cashmere. Phyllis laughed exactly the sort of laugh I’d have meant her to, only a year ago.
Vera stood in front of me on the windy pavement, smiling an anxious, warm, apologetic smile. Brown friendly eyes. Pink nail varnish, but chipped. Yes, of course this says something about her: she’s overworked. Clothes down-market Jaeger, pleasant, not exciting. I knew that here she was, ‘the one’. There was not much need for all the opening moves. I said, ‘I was hoping to run into you.’ She said, ‘Yes, I would so much like to talk to you about Mrs Fowler.’ I said, ‘She’s terrified she will be forcibly rehoused.’ She said, ‘Yes, but we can stave it off a bit.’ I said, ‘Meanwhile, what would help her most is Meals on Wheels.’ She said, ‘She’s active, you see, she can get about, she’s not really entitled … but if you think …’ I said, ‘She can’t make herself cook any more, you see, she lives on bits and pieces.’
She began to laugh. She said, ‘I must tell you something really funny, it happened to me last week. I went to see one of my cases, she’s ninety-four. Deaf, arthritic, but she does everything for herself, cooks, cleans, shops. There I was, watching her prepare her lunch. A meat pie, cabbage cooked in soda, and then cream cake. I said to her, Do you ever eat any fresh stuff, fruit or salad? What? she shouted at me.’
Vera took such pleasure in telling me this, but she was anxious too, in case I wouldn’t find it funny, and she touched my arm once or twice, as if to say, Oh, I hope you’ll laugh.
‘You must eat fruit and vegetables, I shouted at her. You need vitamins. Every time I come to see you, I never see a vestige of green, or an apple or an orange. And she said, What, what, what? though I knew she could hear, and then when I repeated it, she said, And how old did you say you were, dear? And then I thought about all my aches and pains, and I’ve been eating all the right things since I was a child.’
And so we laughed, and she looked relieved.
‘I’ve got to get home to the old man,’ said she. ‘I’ll fix the Meals on Wheels. But if we could get a free moment at the same time we could have a real talk.’ And she went running along the street to a yellow VW and nipped off, smartly, into the traffic.
Maudie is so pleased about the meals coming in every midday, though they aren’t very nice. Stodgy and badly cooked.
I have realized how heavy everything is for her. Yes, I knew this before, but not really, until I saw her delight when I said she was on the list for Meals. She thanked me over and over again.
‘You see, you did it, but she wouldn’t, oh no, not she!’
‘Did you ask her?’ I said.
‘What’s the use, I’ve asked often enough, but they say I need a Home Help.’
‘And so you do.’
‘Oh well, if that’s it, then say it! I’ve looked after myself before and I can do without you.’
‘Oh, you are so difficult, Maudie. What’s the matter with a Home Help?’
‘Have you ever had one?’
At which I laughed, and then she laughed.
Now we are nearly into summer.
What has happened since I sat down last to this unfortunate diary of mine? But I don’t want to give it up.
I’ve met Vera Rogers several times, and we talk – on the pavement, once for a snatched half-hour in a cafe. We talk in shorthand, because we neither of us have time.
Once she asked how I got involved with Maudie, and when she heard, said, with a sigh, ‘I had hoped you were really a Good Neighbour, because I know someone who I think might accept a Good Neighbour. She’s difficult, but she’s lonely.’
This was a request, put delicately and with embarrassment, but I said that Maudie was enough.
‘Yes, of course she is,’ she said at once.
I told her what work I do, and then she had to be told why. As if I understood it myself! Why am I bound to this Maudie Fowler as I am? I said, ‘I like her, I really do.’
‘Oh yes, she’s wonderful, isn’t she?’ said Vera warmly. ‘And some of them, you’d like to strangle. I used to feel wicked when I started this work, I believed I had to like them all. And then, when I’d been with some difficult old cat for an hour, and I couldn’t get anywhere, I’d find myself thinking, God, I’ll hit her one of these days, I will.’
‘Well, I’ve felt that about Maudie often enough.’
‘Yes, but there’s something else.’
‘Yes, there is.’
I told Maudie how much Vera likes her, and she closed up in an angry pinched mask.
‘But why, Maudie?’
‘She didn’t lift a finger to help.’
‘But how can she if you don’t tell her what you want?’
‘All I want is to be left alone.’
‘There you are, you see.’
‘Yes, here I am alone, except for you.’
‘Vera Rogers doesn’t just have one person to visit, she has sometimes ten or more in a day, and she’s on the telephone arranging and getting things done. I see you every day, so I know what you want.’
‘They’ll have to carry me out screaming,’ said she.
‘She’s on your side, she’s trying to prevent you from being moved.’
‘That’s what she tells you. They were around here again today.’
‘Who?’
‘Do you know what he said, that Greek? You can stay in one room, and we’ll do up the other, he said. And then when we’ve finished that, you can move in. Me, here in all that dust and mess. And it’s months they take to improve a place.’
‘Then that must have been the landlord, mustn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s what I said. They are all in it together.’
At the Indian shop, I hung around until the owner, Mr Patel, said, ‘Mrs Fowler was out on the street yesterday, screaming and shouting.’
‘Oh yes, what did she say?’
‘She was screaming, None of you were around trying to get me hot water and a bath when I had a baby, none of you cared when I didn’t have food to give him. I’ve lived all my life without running hot water and a bath, and if you come back I’ll get the police.’
Mr Patel says all this slowly, his grave concerned eyes on my face, and I didn’t dare smile. He keeps his eyes on my face, reproachful and grave, and says, ‘When I was in Kenya, before we had to leave, I thought everyone in this country was rich.’
‘You know better now, then.’
But he wants to say something else, something different. I waited, picked up some biscuits, put them back, considered a tin of cat food.
At last he says, in a low voice, ‘Once, with us, we would not let one of our old people come to such a life. But now – things are changing with us.’
I feel I personally should apologize. At last I say, ‘Mr Patel, there can’t be very many like Mrs Fowler left.’
‘I have six, seven, every day in my shop. All like her, with no one to care for them. And I am only one shop.’
He sounds as if he is accusing me. He is accusing my clothes, my style. I am out of place in this little corner shop. And then, feeling as if he has wronged me, he takes a cake