by Gail Godwin
The three of us were left to rip her to shreds & to think of things we should have said. I had a cold, dangerous feeling of enjoying it tremendously. We would go the limit, then one of us, feeling we’d reached the absolute bounds of good taste, would veer the subject off office politics. After coating ourselves afresh with respectability, someone would launch a fresh attack: “And another thing about Doreen.”
I was very shaken because of dear old security (again!). P. is leaving December 29; BH, the last of January—one month from now & two months from now. “You must get out, too” they urged. “It’s the only thing.”
“That’s easy for you to say, but I haven’t got things so well worked out.”
“Oh, but you can get another job! Go to Fleet Street, Paris, Geneva.”
“Sure, sure.”
Then in a rash of second-guessing, I thought: Perhaps I should go upstairs & settle this with her, smooth things over. Make the path easier for myself. But luckily I didn’t. “You’re like me,” P. said as we sat camaraderie-style on our coffee-bar stools. “You blow up at her and make all these vows to be absolutely businesslike, cold & unresponsive. Then she comes back to you, placid & sunny, almost humble, for God’s sake, asking you the name of your dressmaker or did you have fun with your boyfriend last night. You are flattered and almost sorry for her. After all, she is doing the coming back. But you see she wins hands down this way. It’s just her method of keeping the boiling point down for awhile. She is the one who is regulating the steam then, don’t you see? Also, she picks questions that vaunt your own idealized image of yourself. You find yourself warming as you advise her on seamstresses and dentists, or telling about that nice little supper club you discovered over the weekend. So, careful! I would say, if you’re going to stay on here for any length of time, to decide on one relationship or another. Either have it all business, cut her short on the personal drivel, or be her friend and temper your job with good-natured give & take. Frankly, I can’t see you doing the latter.”
As soon as I got out on the job, down in the city of London, with real businessmen to see, a heavy case to carry, a map to follow, my head cleared sufficiently for me to see how absolutely “poor show” this had been, how degrading for the four of us. Here I was walking down streets hundreds of years old, visiting houses of business older than my own country. I thought back over four girls, three younger, bitchy-brilliant ones & a more settled safe thirty-fiver . . . I thought of the “she saids” and it all sounded pretty ladies’ washroom–ish.
I can already recognize those farther along the way. For instance, the director at Holder Bros.—a Mr. Peter Warner. Of course, to start with, he was a good-looking, well-built Nordic type. But almost immediately our talk was on a larger scale. We eventually discussed what can USTS do for Holder Bros., and vice versa, but first was the effects of living in a land that is not your home. The intangibles missed, etc. I know I would like to talk to that man again. I would like to be the kind of woman he would like to talk to again.
What can be done now—
The facts: I am in London for at least six months more. I need the job. I have no outside resources in the world—financial or emotional. There are no more insurance policies, money from cars, care packages from rich relatives. James does not fit the big picture any longer.
What can be done: Keep the ship trim. Devote more time to your physical appearance. You have gotten sloppy! Buy some darker hose. Keep your hair in shape. Polish your shoes. Do a complete job with the agents. Try to get BH to let you do her agent visits, too.
Practice your act on every travel agent just to polish it.
Keep occupied upstairs: concerts, plays, keep active—try to begin writing something substantial, even if it is a small sketch, a perfect tile in a large mosaic.
Practice seeming self-contained: soon the VIDERE will become the ESSE, which is the N.C. motto, so that’s all right, too.245
Rest of the week:
Get up at 7: 30—eat breakfast at Embassy—buy Guardian —be at work at 9: 00, in W.C.246 by 10: 00. See as many people as possible—keep your eyes open. Come back—write report & go home as if you’re getting ready to go to a fancy dress ball with . . . No, I don’t like fancy dress balls.
NOVEMBER 28
Finished the city (except for one on Milk Street), had lunch on Fleet Street. Dinner in a dark, friendly little place in Soho called Act One, Scene One, & then—expecting nothing—to see How the West Was Won, 247 which was really spectacular & filled me with pride (having come from such a place—or can I take credit, coming from the East Coast?— yes, because some ancestor went west even if it was from Switzerland or Denmark or England). I walked home bursting at the seams.
Coming across Mayfair, I felt London. Cities are so beautiful when the people have gone. Only the lights, the magnificent silks, wines, galleries, furs to tease the eye, hints of rain in a subtle, almost balmy air, the taxis, all lit up with “For Hire”—those pompous black sentinels cruising reassuringly through the night. A look through a thin curtain into a ground floor on Berkeley Square revealed a sumptuous bar with red carpets & waiter complete with tails.
Thinking back to Miami nightclubs & bars with Marty—padding across thick carpets to twining mahogany bars, sipping our Kiss of Deaths, 248 talking big talk in whispers.
Before one can rest, one must have both.249 At least I have kept moving.
NOVEMBER 29
The Great Enlightenment looms no nearer. All I can do is keep my eyes open, never miss an opportunity to see anything offered—no matter how small, irrelevant, uncomfortable. Eugenio dined me at the Shepherd in Shepherd Market (now shadowed by the London Hilton). There was a King Charles spaniel in the pub, in spite of the “No Dogs Allowed” sign. [Eugenio] explained about the special rule made in 1640 exempting the King’s dogs from normal laws—nobody has bothered to repeal it. That was worth the whole lunch—not that it wasn’t superb. At nineteen, this boy knows how to stage an occasion from start to finish.
The mornings are so alike. A small hope comes alive through the early hours, diminishes toward late afternoon. Each day is very much like the one before. What right have I, has anybody, to demand this be different? I get all tensed by my work, a dismal challenge, riding along in the taxi, to my first call of the morning. I daydream when I am walking. Rebuffs no longer touch me. I know that every odd one will be curt, maybe one a day will pierce the barrier and make up for all the rest.
NOVEMBER 30
Tomorrow will be 1 December—so let’s hope only November was the jinxed month. I have started a new story. At least there is a framework. Las Palmas. Antonio. I am having to start from scratch, building my case. Once it is down, it will be easy to rewrite. I decided how I did not want to write after finishing K. A. Porter’s Ship of Fools.250 You can’t write like that anymore. I want to break through. If I can’t, then nothing is worth it. The headaches will probably be gone tomorrow & then I can proceed.
Antonio—he offered a solution—this is the whole point. He offered a solution, but it would have had to be followed 100 percent. I want to describe the earthy, sexy, basic feeling of those days. The new husband & wife (she already pregnant) standing outside on the mall (Paseo de Canteras) in the late afternoon.251 Damn it, I am lazy.
DECEMBER 5
It took three quarters of an hour to scrub away the vast deposits the city of London left upon my person. And Americans wear white raincoats called London Fogs. Thirty-two people have died since it [the fog] fell upon the city yesterday. Probably they died from some other cause altogether or were going to die anyway. But they were just what the headline writer at the Daily Express needed. People hulk about, scrunched deep into their coats, swathed in protective scarves & clutching their chests like advanced tuberculars. Bob Briggs took me to lunch at The Thistle & Pat & I went idol smashing after the office closed down at four. Funny how our ideas of people swing pendulum-like from one extreme to the other. We saw The Manchurian Candidate252 & then dined i
n a Chinese restaurant, where we were positive the waiters were leering at us. Of course, the topics of discussion were the favorite ones. We turn the same people over & over in our minds, examining. Now BB is no longer the pleasant fool with good Washington connections. BB is a man who laughs at it all because he is untouched by it. BB is “the only genuine man in the organization—and his wife’s nice, too.” Then the big idol fell SMASH! Tonight. Pat said, “I think Mr. Miller is nervous sometimes,” and crash, my own subterranean hunches blossomed. And poor Doreen. We have reduced her to a pulp because now, in our conversations, it is always “poor Doreen.” Pat told of her half-tipsy attempt to hold on to the youngest member of the chamber of commerce at the cocktail party. “She tried one of your favorite tricks, being kittenish, only with her, it didn’t work.” So on it went. Turning them upside down, right side up, examining them as dispassionately as naked dolls. What a pity things always come into the open too late. Pat would have been a compatible roommate, namely because she would have kept to herself. Or would I have liked her then? I remember how, at first, we made a big thing about hating each other. “I’ll certainly always tell you what I think of you,” each was fond of saying to the other.
The only hope for sanity with Miss Shining Light253 is to keep my distance. No use to confide in this meat-and-potatoes homebody. Rebels know their own kind. They can play dangerously, say insulting things, go the limit. Not with Miss Shining Light. We are still in the dormitory stage with whispers after lights-out and stuffed animals on the bed.
Pat at Zermatt and St. Moritz: “I felt repulsed everywhere I turned. The Germans didn’t like me, the English wouldn’t even look at me; the more I drew inward in my shame and self-consciousness, the more repellent I grew to them.”
This is one of those times when I cannot possibly imagine a future of any kind for myself. I don’t see a continuation of the here and now and I don’t see any great miracles occurring. For some reason I feel confident of myself, possibly because day by day it all matters less and less. What if a man, seeing me across a room, doesn’t go for my type? Why should I force anything at all?
James came and took me to 19 Mossup Place. After a drunken walk through the fog all the way to Cadogan Square. It was so depressing. I still haven’t recovered. His indecisiveness fills me with shame.
Damn it all, I am going to be very hard about it all. I shall do the repulsive little dailies, buy myself a red dress, and write away—even if the result is only a little piece of a big part. I am coming to terms with oneself—myself.
DECEMBER 7
A surfeit of cocktail parties, desperate people stalling for time. Never again. I refuse. I am tired of second-rate conversations, false hopes. Tomorrow I am going to the office at 12: 30 and place a call to B. I shall tell him the truth and if he doesn’t understand I shall break it off then and there and spend the rest of the winter keeping to myself as much as possible.
I am sick in my soul, or what is left of it. I see the stupidity of wanting to compete. There are too many others—others who appear outwardly to be the same skimmed-off neuroses as me.
DECEMBER 9
All done. I feel whitewashed. Either way, I feel qualified to continue the game—remember, it is all a game—he will say yes or no now & there will be no more delusions. Then I will go from there. Jill (the cocktail party hostess, the party at which I met Gordon) came by in controlled hysterics, looking utterly ravishing in that way only redheads can, as if they are about to burst into flame, smelling of Ma Griffe254 & in a real panic about her Frenchman. I must admit that I was flattered she chose me instead of her flighty little cronies (“I just couldn’t bear to face Sue at a time like this”). I enjoyed talking to her. I enjoy utterly selfish people who don’t need me. There is no constraint. We simply ran everyone into the ground & she left feeling much better. But her foundations are shaky.
And we see another facet of the whole picture. She: “Giles & Davis were utterly furious when James found you this summer. He had teamed up with you instead of them—especially Giles—and they hated you.”
And now it has run full circle. Said Giles Friday night, maliciously: “Are you still writing furiously?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you still writing furiously with James?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “James is not writing now.”
“He’s been ringing me furiously this past week,” said Giles. “We’re going tomorrow to look at boats for the lake next summer.”
“You have a new pet word,” I said.
I think Giles was justified in hating me.
McK.’s apartment.255 Why was it so unsettling? Because it had not one shred of taste; and yet wasn’t austere (that would have been bearable for a bachelor—ah, but he is dying to fall off his tree into the lap of some ready woman). I think it was the complete absence of any pictures, prints, etc. And those terrible heads of pretty girls for lamp bases & even one sticking out of the wall. And men’s bathrooms are always such a mess. No huge cakes of colored soap, never a roll of soft toilet paper, and never a dry towel.
The enigma of Mr. Peter W. may be partially cleared up at six this evening. Or he may torment me by not showing. Oh, for some new insights. I want so much for him to be a master at the game. Will he provide me with enough material for another five pages? Oh, just to possess the ability to make other people want is an art. Will he come shambling in wearing his rumpled raincoat and the green and white polka-dotted scarf that I “ruined” with Givenchy? (Ah, and I have a brand-new 1 oz. bottle as a weapon this time—not too much. There is nothing so disgusting as too much scent, even if it’s $21 an ounce.) Will he cast his aesthetic eye around my rooms and sneer inwardly at my abundance? Will he drop by at six and leave at seven?—this is the most likely guess. From what he says, he is always working. Or he will disappear as soon as he has sufficiently frustrated and intrigued me. I can’t really prepare myself for the actuality. This phantom man, created mostly from my supercharged imagination, will appear out of seven weeks’ silence and either smash or build higher my lovely image. Let us see.
Later:
First of all, when I say to him, “Help me to grow up,” he says, “What a funny thing for you to say.”
“I mean help me to realize and accept.”
“It won’t be easy. It won’t be according to everybody else’s solution.”
We fought like tigers and it was exhilarating. He bruised my wrists and said, “Thanks for the exercise.”
The note I sent him: He thought it had been sent by somebody else.
“Your face has two planes. The top part falls in a shadow. It is subtle and desirable.”
Percy Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man.256
DECEMBER 18
The Christmas frenzy beats faster and faster. Peter W. sent a one-page typewritten letter, full of Hamlet and DHL and a host of university quotes, all to say he didn’t want to see me again. He ended it by saying, “I do this so that you can live.” I was numb and crushed, empty and frightened. Walked all the way to Chelsea to see James, who was leaving for a date. His roommate William was there, smirking over a glass of wine, his gray hair sizzling silver under the lamplight. In exchange for my listening to several stories of his business ventures and ex-wives in Alexandria, he took Peter’s letter and read it and with a mixture of calculated snobbery and existentialist humor he had me laughing at it (“Your main concern,” wrote Peter, “should be how you’re going to fill in the time between now and your funeral”) and at PW. I was able to see that this boy had sat down on Sunday afternoon and written out an intellectual exercise to himself. This morning I thermofaxed it at the office and sent him the copy with a short letter telling him to read his own letter again in ten years. But the point is, I couldn’t have written that letter last night.
DECEMBER 19
Another cocktail party—Albany Travel Agency—walking home tonight I knew that nothing outside of me could ever hurt again. B. will stay in Asheville.2
57 The dentist’s dogs can whine next door. Peter W. will write his book and masturbate. And I will go on here. There are worse places than London. I am beginning to like it. It stays still long enough for me to move.
I was thinking about PW tonight and decided that the man I was mad about never really existed. No man I could love could write a letter like that, and the letter came and his name was signed on the bottom.
DECEMBER 26
Boxing Day, they call it. I borrowed five days, paying for it only with the flu. Here I am, inside me, as usual, surrounded by little pink Kleenex balls, a transistor playing half-baked music, “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” sniffing and breathing hard, reviewing and distilling. Again. As usual. My party was a success. At least I say it was because they, my friends and enemies of the past nine months, surrounded me and gave me a pleasant image of what they saw: me, mature, complex, surrounded by the good things. But regarding them with whimsical indifference. Not striving for effect (when I have strived for the greatest effect of all—that of appearing not to have strived for any effect).