The Golden Notebook

‘Do we?’ said Richard.

‘Yes. Molly thinks you should offer Tommy a job in one of your things.’ Like Molly, Anna spoke with automatic contempt of Richard’s world, and he grinned in irritation.

‘One of my things? And you agree, Molly?’

‘If you’d give me a chance to say so, yes.’

‘There we are,’ said Anna. ‘No grounds even for argument.’

Richard now poured himself a whisky, looking humorously patient; and Molly waited, humorously patient.

‘So it’s all settled?’ said Richard.

‘Obviously not,’ said Anna. ‘Because Tommy has to agree.’

‘So we’re back where we started. Molly, may I know why you aren’t against your precious son being mixed up with the hosts of mammon?’

‘Because I’ve brought him up in such a way that—he’s a good person. He’s all right.’

‘So he can’t be corrupted by me?’ Richard spoke with controlled anger, smiling. ‘And may I ask where you get your extraordinary assurance about your values—they’ve taken quite a knock in the last two years, haven’t they?’

The two women exchanged glances, which said: He was bound to say it, let’s get it over with.

‘It hasn’t occurred to you that the real trouble with Tommy is that he’s been surrounded half his life with communists or so-called communists—most of the people he’s known have been mixed up in one way and another. And now they’re all leaving the Party, or have left—don’t you think it might have had some effect?’

‘Well, obviously,’ said Molly.

‘Obviously,’ said Richard, grinning in irritation. ‘Just like that—but what price your precious values—Tommy’s been brought up on the beauty and freedom of the glorious Soviet fatherland.’

‘I’m not discussing politics with you, Richard.’

‘No,’ said Anna, ‘of course you shouldn’t discuss politics.’

‘Why not, when it’s relevant?’

‘Because you don’t discuss them,’ said Molly. ‘You simply use slogans out of the newspapers.’

‘Well can I put it this way? Two years ago you and Anna were rushing out to meetings and organizing everything in sight…’

‘I wasn’t, anyhow,’ said Anna.

‘Don’t quibble. Molly certainly was. And now what? Russia’s in the doghouse and what price the comrades now? Most of them having nervous breakdowns or making a lot of money, as far as I can make out.’

‘The point is,’ said Anna, ‘that socialism is in the doldrums in this country…’

‘And everywhere else.’

‘All right. If you’re saying that one of Tommy’s troubles is that he was brought up a socialist and it’s not an easy time to be a socialist—well of course we agree.’

‘The royal we. The socialist we. Or just the we of Anna and Molly?’

‘Socialist, for the purposes of this argument,’ said Anna.

‘And yet in the last two years you’ve made an about-turn.’

‘No we haven’t. It’s a question of a way of looking at life.’

‘You want me to believe that the way you look at life, which is a sort of anarchy, as far as I can make out, is socialist?’

Anna glanced at Molly; Molly ever-so-slightly shook her head, but Richard saw it, and said, ‘No discussion in front of the children, is that it? What astounds me is your fantastic arrogance. Where do you get it from, Molly? What are you? At the moment you’ve got a part in a masterpiece called The Wings of Cupid.’

‘We minor actresses don’t choose our plays. Besides, I’ve been bumming around for a year, not earning, and I’m broke.’

‘So your assurance comes from the bumming around? It certainly can’t come from the work you do.’

‘I call a halt,’ said Anna. ‘I’m chairman—this discussion is closed. We’re talking about Tommy.’

Molly ignored Anna, and attacked. ‘What you say about me may or may not be true. But where do you get your arrogance from? I don’t want Tommy to be a businessman. You are hardly an advertisement for the life. Anyone can be a businessman, why, you’ve often said so to me. Oh come off it, Richard, how often have you dropped in to see me and sat there saying how empty and stupid your life is?’

Anna made a quick warning movement, and Molly said, shrugging, ‘All right, I’m not tactful. Why should I be? Richard says my life isn’t up to much, well I agree with him, but what’s his? Your poor Marion, treated like a housewife or a hostess, but never as a human being. Your boys, being put through the upper-class mill simply because you want it, given no choice. Your stupid little affairs. Why am I supposed to be impressed?’

‘I see that you two have after all discussed me,’ said Richard, giving Anna a look of open hostility.

‘No we haven’t,’ said Anna. ‘Or nothing we haven’t said for years. We’re discussing Tommy. He came to see me and I told him he should go and see you, Richard, and see if he couldn’t do one of those expert jobs, not business, it’s stupid to be just business, but something constructive, like the United Nations or Unesco. He could get in through you, couldn’t he?’

‘Yes, he could.’

‘What did he say, Anna?’ asked Molly.

‘He said he wanted to be left alone to think. And why not? He’s twenty. Why shouldn’t he think and experiment with life, if that’s what he wants? Why should we bully him?’

‘The trouble with Tommy is he’s never been bullied,’ said Richard.

‘Thank you,’ said Molly.

‘He’s never had any direction. Molly’s simply left him alone as if he was an adult, always. What sort of sense do you suppose it makes to a child—freedom, make-up-your-own-mind, I’m-not-going-to-put-any-pressure-on-you; and at the same time, the comrades, discipline, self-sacrifice, and kow-towing to authority…’

‘What you have to do is this,’ said Molly. ‘Find a place in one of your things that isn’t just share-pushing or promoting or money-making. See if you can’t find something constructive. Then show it to Tommy and let him decide.’

Richard, his face red with anger over his too-yellow, too-tight shirt, held a glass of whisky between two hands, turning it round and round, looking down into it. ‘Thanks,’ he said at last, ‘I will.’ He spoke with such a stubborn confidence in the quality of what he was going to offer his son, that Anna and Molly again raised their eyebrows at each other, conveying that the whole conversation had been wasted, as usual. Richard intercepted this glance, and said: ‘You two are so extraordinarily naive.’

‘About business?’ said Molly, with her loud jolly laugh.

‘About big business,’ said Anna quietly, amused, who had been surprised, during her conversations with Richard, to discover the extent of his power. This had not caused his image to enlarge, for her; rather he had seemed to shrink, against a background of international money. And she had loved Molly the more for her total lack of respect for this man who had been her husband, and who was in fact one of the financial powers of the country.

‘Ohhh,’ groaned Molly, impatient.

‘Very big business,’ said Anna laughing, trying to make Molly meet this, but the actress shrugged it off, with her characteristic big shrug of the shoulders, her white hands spreading out, palms out, until they came to rest on her knees.