The Golden Notebook

But Anna was small, thin, dark, brittle, with large black always-on-guard eyes, and a fluffy haircut. She was, on the whole, satisfied with herself, but she was always the same. She envied Molly’s capacity to project her own changes of mood. Anna wore neat, delicate clothes, which tended to be either prim, or perhaps a little odd; and relied upon her delicate white hands, and her small, pointed white face to make an impression. But she was shy, unable to assert herself, and, she was convinced, easily overlooked.

When the two women went out together, Anna deliberately effaced herself and played to the dramatic Molly. When they were alone, she tended to take the lead. But this had by no means been true at the beginning of their friendship. Molly, abrupt, straightforward, tactless, had frankly domineered Anna. Slowly, and the offices of Mother Sugar had had a good deal to do with it, Anna learned to stand up for herself. Even now there were moments when she should challenge Molly when she did not. She admitted to herself she was a coward; she would always give in rather than have fights or scenes. A quarrel would lay Anna low for days, whereas Molly thrived on them. She would burst into exuberant tears, say unforgivable things, and have forgotten all about it half a day later. Meanwhile Anna would be limply recovering in her flat.

That they were both ‘insecure’ and ‘unrooted’, words which dated from the era of Mother Sugar, they both freely acknowledged. But Anna had recently been learning to use these words in a different way, not as something to be apologized for, but as flags or banners for an attitude that amounted to a different philosophy. She had enjoyed fantasies of saying to Molly: We’ve had the wrong attitude to the whole thing, and it’s Mother Sugar’s fault—what is this security and balance that’s supposed to be so good? What’s wrong with living emotionally from hand-to-mouth in a world that’s changing as fast as it is?

But now, sitting with Molly talking, as they had so many hundreds of times before, Anna was saying to herself: Why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do? It’s childish, why should they? What it amounts to is that I’m scared of being alone in what I feel.

The room they sat in was on the first floor, overlooking a narrow side street, whose windows had flower boxes and painted shutters, and whose pavements were decorated with three basking cats, a pekinese and the milk-cart, late because it was Sunday. The milkman had white shirt-sleeves, rolled up; and his son, a boy of sixteen, was sliding the gleaming white bottles from a wire basket on to the doorsteps. When he reached under their window, the man looked up and nodded. Molly said: ‘Yesterday he came in for coffee. Full of triumph, he was. His son’s got a scholarship and Mr Gates wanted me to know it. I said to him, getting in before he could, “My son’s had all these advantages, and all that education, and look at him, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. And yours hasn’t had a penny spent on him and he’s got a scholarship.” “That’s right,” he said, “that’s the way of it.” Then I thought, well I’m damned if I’ll sit here, taking it, so I said: “Mr Gates, your son’s up into the middle-class now, with us lot, and you won’t be speaking the same language. You know that, don’t you?” “It’s the way of the world,” he says. I said, “It’s not the way of the world at all, it’s the way of this damned class-ridden country.” He’s one of those bloody working-class Tories, Mr Gates is, and he said: “It’s the way of the world, Miss Jacobs, you say your son doesn’t see his way forward? That’s a sad thing.” And off he went on his milk-round, and I went upstairs and there was Tommy sitting on his bed, just sitting. He’s probably sitting there now, if he’s in. The Gates boy, he’s all of a piece, he’s going out for what he wants. But Tommy—since I came back three days ago, that’s all he’s done, sat on his bed and thought.’

‘Oh, Molly, don’t worry so much. He’ll turn out all right.’ They were leaning over the sill, watching Mr Gates and his son. A short, brisk, tough little man; and his son was tall, tough and good-looking. The women watched how the boy, returning with an empty basket, swung out a filled one from the back of the milk-cart, receiving instructions from his father with a smile and a nod. There was perfect understanding there; and the two women, both of them bringing up children without men, exchanged a grimacing envious smile.

‘The point is,’ said Anna, ‘neither of us was prepared to get married simply to give our children fathers. So now we must take the consequences. If there are any. Why should there be?’

‘It’s very well for you,’ said Molly, sour; ‘you never worry about anything, you just let things slide.’

Anna braced herself—almost did not reply, and then with an effort said: ‘I don’t agree, we try to have things both ways. We’ve always refused to live by the book and the rule; but then why start worrying because the world doesn’t treat us by rule? That’s what it amounts to.’

‘There you are,’ said Molly, antagonistic; ‘but I’m not a theoretical type. You always do that—faced with something, you start making up theories. I’m simply worried about Tommy.’

Now Anna could not reply: her friend’s tone was too strong. She returned to her survey of the street. Mr Gates and his boy were turning the corner out of sight, pulling the red milk-cart behind them. At the opposite end of the street was a new interest: a man pushing a hand-cart. ‘Fresh country strawberries,’ he was shouting. ‘Picked fresh this morning, morning-picked country strawberries…’

Molly glanced at Anna, who nodded, grinning like a small girl. (She was disagreeably conscious that the little-girl smile was designed to soften Molly’s criticism of her.) ‘I’ll get some for Richard too,’ said Molly, and ran out of the room, picking up her handbag from a chair.

Anna continued to lean over the sill, in a warm space of sunlight, watching Molly, who was already in energetic conversation with the strawberry seller. Molly was laughing and gesticulating, and the man shook his head and disagreed, while he poured the heavy red fruit on to his scales.

‘Well you’ve no overhead costs,’ Anna heard, ‘so why should we pay just what we would in the shops?’

‘They don’t sell morning-fresh strawberries in the shops, miss, not like these.’

‘Oh go on,’ said Molly, as she disappeared with her white bowl of red fruit. ‘Sharks, that’s what you are!’

The strawberry man, young, yellow, lean and deprived, lifted a snarling face to the window where Molly had already inserted herself. Seeing the two women together he said, as he fumbled with his glittering scales, ‘Overhead costs, what do you know about it?’

‘Then come up and have some coffee and tell us,’ said Molly, her face vivid with challenge.

At which he lowered his face and said to the street floor: ‘Some people have to work, if others haven’t.’

‘Oh go on,’ said Molly, ‘don’t be such a sourpuss. Come up and eat some of your strawberries. On me.’

He didn’t know how to take her. He stood, frowning, his young face uncertain under an over-long slope of greasy fairish hair. ‘I’m not that sort, if you are,’ he remarked, at last, offstage, as it were.

‘So much the worse for you,’ said Molly, leaving the window, laughing at Anna in a way which refused to be guilty.

But Anna leaned out, confirmed her view of what had happened by a look at the man’s dogged, resentful shoulders, and said in a low voice: ‘You hurt his feelings.’

‘Oh hell,’ said Molly, shrugging. ‘It’s coming back to England again—everybody so shut up, taking offence, I feel like breaking out and shouting and screaming whenever I set foot on this frozen soil. I feel locked up, the moment I breathe our sacred air.’

‘All the same,’ said Anna, ‘he thinks you were laughing at him.’

Another customer had slopped out of the opposite house; a woman in Sunday comfort, slacks, loose shirt and a yellow scarf around her head. The strawberry man served her, non-committal. Before he lifted the handles to propel the cart onwards, he looked up again at the window, and seeing only Anna, her small sharp chin buried in her forearm, her black eyes fixed on him, smiling, he said with grudging good-humour: ‘Overhead costs, she says…’ and snorted lightly with disgust. He had forgiven them.

He moved off up the street behind the mounds of softly-red, sunglistening fruit, shouting: ‘Morning-fresh strawberries. Picked this morning!’ Then his voice was absorbed into the din of traffic from the big street a couple of hundred yards down.

Anna turned and found Molly setting bowls of the fruit, loaded with cream, on the sill. ‘I’ve decided not to waste any on Richard,’ said Molly, ‘he never enjoys anything anyway. More beer?’

‘With strawberries, wine, obviously,’ said Anna greedily; and moved the spoon about among the fruit, feeling its soft sliding resistance, and the slipperiness of the cream under a gritty crust of sugar. Molly swiftly filled glasses with wine and set them on the white sill. The sunlight crystallized beside each glass on the white paint in quivering lozenges of crimson and yellow light, and the two women sat in the sunlight, sighing with pleasure and stretching their legs in the thin warmth, looking at the colours of the fruit in the bright bowls and at the red wine.

But now the door-bell rang, and both instinctively gathered themselves into more tidy postures. Molly leaned out of the window again, shouted: ‘Mind your head!’ and threw down the door-key, wrapped in an old scarf.

They watched Richard lean down to pick up the key, without even a glance upwards, though he must know that at least Molly was there. ‘He hates me doing that, ’she said, isn’t it odd? After all these years? And his way of showing it is simply to pretend it didn’t happen.’

Richard came into the room. He looked younger than his middle age, being well-tanned after an early summer holiday in Italy. He wore a tight yellow sports shirt, and new light trousers: every Sunday of his year, summer or winter, Richard Portmain wore clothes that claimed him for the open air. He was a member of various suitable golf and tennis clubs, but never played unless for business reasons. He had had a cottage in the country for years; but sent his family to it alone, unless it was advisable to entertain business friends for a week-end. He was by every instinct urban. He spent his week-ends dropping from one club, one pub, one bar, to the next. He was a shortish, dark, compact man, almost fleshy. His round face, attractive when he smiled, was obstinate to the point of sullenness when he was not smiling. His whole solid person—head poked out forward, eyes unblinking, had this look of dogged determination. He now impatiently handed Molly the key, that was loosely bundled inside her scarlet scarf. She took it and began trickling the soft material through her solid white fingers, remarking: ‘Just off for a healthy day in the country, Richard?’

Having braced himself for just such a jibe, he now stiffly smiled, and peered into the dazzle of sunlight around the white window. When he distinguished Anna, he involuntarily frowned, nodded stiffly, and sat down hastily across the room from both of them, saying: ‘I didn’t know you had a visitor, Molly.’

‘Anna isn’t a visitor,’ said Molly.

She deliberately waited until Richard had had the full benefit of the sight of them, indolently displayed in the sunshine, heads turned towards him in benevolent enquiry, and offered: ‘Wine, Richard? Beer? Coffee? Or a nice cup of tea perhaps?’

‘If you’ve got a Scotch, I wouldn’t mind.’

‘Beside you,’ said Molly.

But having made what he clearly felt to be a masculine point, he didn’t move. ‘I came to discuss Tommy.’ He glanced at Anna, who was licking up the last of her strawberries.

‘But you’ve already discussed all this with Anna, so I hear, so now we can all three discuss it.’

‘So Anna’s told you…’

‘Nothing,’ said Molly. ‘This is the first time we’ve had a chance to see each other.’

‘So I’m interrupting your first heart to heart,’ said Richard, with a genuine effort towards jovial tolerance. He sounded pompous, however, and both women looked amusedly uncomfortable, in response to it.

Richard abruptly got up.

‘Going already?’ enquired Molly.

‘I’m going to call Tommy.’ He had already filled his lungs to let out the peremptory yell they both expected, when Molly interrupted with: ‘Richard, don’t shout at him. He’s not a little boy any longer. Besides I don’t think he’s in.’

‘Of course he’s in.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he’s looking out of the window upstairs. I’m surprised you don’t even know whether your son is in or not.’

‘Why? I don’t keep a tab on him.’

‘That’s all very well, but where has that got you?’