by Gail Godwin
“How long have you known [Christine]?”
“Six months.”
“How often have you seen her?”
“About once a week.”
“Does she have a lot of other boyfriends?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. She’s so elusive.”
“Well, I don’t want to discourage you, Steve, but I truly believe that if something doesn’t happen in three months, it’s not going to happen at all.”
“Maybe you’re right. Sometimes I grab Christine so that she’s only a quarter of an inch away and I say: ‘Listen to me. We’re not communicating.’ Then it’s all right, for a minute.”
“But is that enough? Listen, do you sometimes spend a whole day with someone waiting for that Moment, which never comes?”
“Yes! Yes I do.”
Also he said, “I’ll tell you something: I’ve never been attracted to Andy’s girls. But I find you exciting.”
What were “Andy’s girls” like? Were they like Margaret—an obviously “old friend”—her brother was A.’s best friend at Oxford. Why did I not like her? Her fiancé, a thin-lipped boy, who lisped and restored houses and wore slim-fitting Chelsea boots and had been to Dartmouth, obviously liked me. The minute she came up to us, talking through her teeth, undulating her stomach, I hated her. Why? She was pretty. She had a good face, which she knew how to arrange, and excellent legs, which she exposed to her own advantage, sometimes showing halfway up the thigh. She was feminine and asked questions about Andy. Yet I knew she was thinking: I am a success. Her perfume was good, so was her dress, and I just can’t see why she’s marrying Christopher. He got quite high and was sitting opposite me with his face flushed. “What will you do when you leave here?” he said. “Go back to the States.” “And what will you do there?” “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” “Well, it all sounds damn dilettantish to me,” he said. I was surprised at such frankness. No doubt the U.S. was good for him. “What do you mean by that?” I asked. “I meant sort of easygoing.” “Thank you,” I said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.” “I didn’t mean it either way. Just as a fact.” Then he said, “What are you looking for?” “What does every woman look for?” “I’m asking you.” “Well,” I said, “ask Margaret.” “Margaret?” he said. “Well”—she recrossed her legs on the Greek divan and looked prettily puzzled—“I don’t know. Why, I guess, a home, security, children.” “And what are you looking for?” he demanded of me. I said, “Oh, a good man, I suppose.” “Ah! I was waiting for you to say that!” “Okay. I’ve said it.”
At one time, sitting at Andy’s feet by the fire, watching the small female terrier repulse the advances of a male collie, listening to Margaret’s fragrant, refreshing, Andy-captivating conversation, I actually fought down the impulse to run from the room, to taxi back to Old Church Street, bury my head in the pillows, and cry, saying, “Enough, enough. I am not loved, but at least I am alone in my shame.” But I sat by the fire, the pasted social smile intact. Later I told Andy about the smile. Why? “Sometimes I just want to be in someone’s arms and be myself but instead I paste on the smile and sit erect.”
“That’s not my problem,” he said. “Mine is simply learning to do the things most people take for granted: going into a shop and ordering something. I freeze. I feel like a mouse.”
That’s because he never developed a persona, as Jung would say. Anyway, he began looking at his watch and saying, “It’s about time we were making a move.” Then I became angry and said, “Well, let’s leave this very minute and take you home. I wouldn’t want you to be anywhere you didn’t want to be.” Then he took off his watch and began winding it and it almost drove me crazy, the steady persistent sound of it. Then I said, “Well, tell Steve and let’s go,” and he said, “No, I don’t like to force Steve’s hand. I certainly wouldn’t want him to come up to me when I was engrossed with someone and say: ‘Let’s go.’ ” So then we sat together on the low divan and I said, suddenly seized with a little tenderness: “You’re very tired, aren’t you? You work hard during the week, not so much physically, but just sustaining a monotonous mental frame of mind. It’s a drag, isn’t it? And then when the weekend comes you have to recover.” I don’t know what I said, really, but he put his arm around me and said, “How very intuitive of you to see that. Something I didn’t see myself.” And then I said, “I enjoyed watching you play today. I love watching you.” And he said, “I’m so glad.” In the car coming home, I sat in the front with Steve and Andy, and some boy sat in the back of the van. Nobody talked much. I thought: Well, the day is over, all days are over eventually, and I’m glad to have had it. The first time I felt this sadness was the day and night in Greenville when Kathleen and I went down on the train18—I must remember these things for my children. I’ll spend my Sunday reading, sleeping, something, and will see Andy next weekend since his mother invited me down in front of him. (She likes me. Why?) When they stopped at the door, I said, “Please don’t anybody get out, as the weather is too awful for politeness.” Then Andy said from the back in the extra-loud voice he uses when he gets nervous, “Listen, are you doing anything tomorrow evening? I mean, if you aren’t, perhaps you could come around for dinner.” “I thought you were going to do your correspondence course,” I said. “Well, I am,” he said, “but I like to have something to look forward to.”
JANUARY 13 • Monday, 11:05 p.m.
Laughed myself sick in a Peter Sellers movie only to have the evening shattered by a look in the bathroom mirror. What kind of truth is this? I think it said. You can’t trade in your youth anymore. So, what now? I swear to God, I’ll sit up all night until I come to a decision. It’s one life, my life, and one-third used up. Is it me who wanted to write books? Do I still? Am I escaping a commitment by saying, “Oh, I wasn’t good enough.” Do I really want to make a man happy, raise children? Or am I simply frantically chasing around to collect the bits and pieces to put together an acceptable background for my middle age? Do all twenty-six-and-a-half-year-old divorced women go through this? Studying themselves in the mirror, building up false hopes one day, being overly critical the next? The days are going by and I spoil two-thirds of them by fearing that things that have not happened will probably not happen. If I am not meant to marry and have the shared joy that was in last night’s walk down the river path, then all the working toward it in the world won’t help.
JANUARY 14
Culinary Festival w. Peter Perry19 and Doreen. When I got home there was a message to call Putney before 11:30. Andy wanted to know if I could see Billy Budd20 on Monday evening.
JANUARY 22
Thus after the second gentle weekend in Oxfordshire, I began constructing my barricade so that Andy could not hurt me. There are ways to do this: Faults are always easy to find. By the time I returned home from work tonight, I had decided that I could live without him. And there on the desk in the hall was a letter in his handwriting. It was a thick letter and I knew it was a Dear John, saying that I would not do. But no, it was a newspaper clipping of a review of Billy Budd, Benjamin Britten’s opera, which we had seen on Monday night. Then there was a short note saying simply: Here is a review of what we saw; I’ll get this in the post now. He also added he had only had to walk two miles the previous night. He didn’t know that I followed him up Old Church Street and saw him just after he’d boarded the bus. His face was pink and he sat on one of the side seats. Apparently the no. 11 bus only took him to the bridge.
I want so much to get down the impressions of the weekend. Very much like the last. The high point being when Steve and I met Andy coming back from his squash game and I watched him run on ahead in the mist in his white shorts and Oxford Cambridge shirt.
And yet I had begun plans to hurt him, knowing how much rugby means to Andy, by making sure he knew that I knew that Robin was selected for Southern Counties.
My friend Peter Perry gave me good advice tonight upon my request. He said: You’re delightful company and damnably attractive an
d a joy to be with—but you could be a little more thoughtful. Then I said: How can I practice? Whereupon he drew a cat on the back page of a book and said, “What will you think of when you see this cat in six months?” “Why, our discussion on thoughtfulness, of course,” I said. “All right, then,” said Peter.
MR. HURST SAYING, “How about a spot of sherry” or “Have you ever read anything by a man called Marmaduke Pickthall?”21 Mrs. H. in the kitchen telling me the story of her marriage. It was not a case of love but, as she says, it has worked out well.
JANUARY 24
I was just thinking as I rode no. 19 to work how glad I was for the experience of Gordon. Nobody could have been more indifferent. Thus I’m surprised when someone shows a real thoughtfulness. (Andy saying at Billy Budd, “Well, Gail, the first time I saw you, you were wearing what you have on now.”)
At work today I saw over a hundred people, talked to them, was either loved, agitated, or faintly amused by them, but when I went back into the stockroom to fish out a dusty brochure on Mississippi, I suddenly thought I should no more be doing this job than raising skunks. (Though that, I think, might be more interesting.) However, most people manage at some time or other to get into a job that is totally unsuited for them for at least a while (Andy selling Hoover vacuum cleaners, D. H. Lawrence teaching, etc.).
The only justification for writing in these journals is putting in the details. We ate with Steve’s unrequited love, Christine, and her shrill roommate. Andy thinks I drink too much. (“You’re a very capable young lady, but I’m worried about your tummy.”)
We had ham, baked potato and salad, cheese and apples, and cider or beer to drink. From the way Christine acts—completely casual, pulling up her tight sweater-dress to expose her knees, scratching a shapely leg with her fingernails absentmindedly—she doesn’t have anything to lose with Steve. Also, on the bookshelf by her bunk bed (top deck) she has a small framed picture of a really superb-looking brown-suede-shoes-and-cable-knit-sweater type.
Have been rereading “Gull Key.”22
BACK ALONE AFTER West Side Story (with Robin in his white raincoat). I love excellence. Excellent writing, dancing, talking. The fog was so thick that I had to walk slowly down Old Church Street, and when I looked back I couldn’t see the lamppost behind. This scene will stay behind like a dream and linger with me the rest of my life. Two couples were dining at L’Aiglon. A policeman was standing alone outside no. 21. When I approached, he looked at his watch.
JANUARY 26 • Sunday
Surely there must be some use in trying to convey such a Sunday. I used to be ashamed of journals and think: I ought to be sitting at that typewriter churning out something “worthwhile.”
GORDON CAME BY last night and entertained Mrs. West with stories of a Russian friend he had and how they went out to dinner together out of reach of the MI5. I listened to the story with interest. Mrs. W. said: It is always so good to see him; we like him so much. And I was able to answer: Yes, so do I. He’s living in Rugby with a cousin.
MRS. HURST TOLD me how she’d said to Mr. Hurst about me: “She’s not going back! I’m determined that one of them will have her.”
BIG USTS AD IN the color section of The Times—silhouette of the Unisphere against a fiery red N.Y. skyline.23 The office will go haywire tomorrow. I will give the Greyhound addresses a hundred times—tell a hundred people that we are all out of the “FLY All the Way” folder. Interspersed will be trips to the bathroom, varied by use of the stairs vs. the lift. Then there will be lunchtime, prowling about Hatchards24 for something to save my soul, assuage my guilt, make me better, etc. The inexorable creeping toward 5:30—the same bus trip home, meal, and then finding some way to spend three hours until it’s time to go to sleep. Then Tuesday—Wednesday—Thursday—Friday.
Am I in a temporary trough? Should I get out of this airy-fairy land and go back to the land of the living? Is it the land of the living or the land of the live-it-uppers? Will I regret leaving England? Probably yes. But then, is it right to stay here doing the same thing for much longer? I don’t think I can stand this job more than three more months. If it weren’t for Andy and something to do after work, I couldn’t stand it. Let’s just hope some dear old subconscious signal comes through.
Andy and I had dinner with a Jewish South African architect named Zackie Blacker and his soft-spoken, very natural English wife. What I like about certain English hospitality is its very simplicity. People converse while unraveling old sweaters and use the yarn for reknitting.
JANUARY 30
Tonight I had gone into the ladies’ room of the pub next door, and just as I was shutting the bathroom door, it came to me. I cannot remember what the voice said, but I remember a feeling of well-being, of everything being all right; of a promise, of faith in myself.
Other flashes come and go. I must keep these journals to preserve what little integrity I have. It is a razor’s edge. So much of what can be learned I am finding in Jung’s books. There’s a case. A man is besieged by his own “otherness,” yet by describing it in symbolic language he contributes to mankind rather than just sorting himself out. He was an exception.
How much of this present relationship with A. belongs on these pages? I want to describe something about it. He is very different from me. We went to an Italian restaurant for lunch and he told me about his difficulty in doing the things most ordinary mortals do—picking up a telephone, etc. Later, that evening, he said he had worried that he had been a “moaner.”
Deadly dinner with Andy’s law firm, but he doesn’t like them either. Tomorrow we go up to Oxford and I’m going to relax and not worry about anything. I can’t do any more than be myself and be courteous.
FEBRUARY 3
Andrew Baker25 came by to bring his beautifully mounted photo of Justice Walk26 for me to send to Stella. It was shades of old times as we sat in his shed in the garden of no. 21—now inhabited by Neil, the Oxford graduate from Tregunter Road who barely makes a living and has both whips and crucifixes hanging on his wall. Neil is a good man. I am slowly learning to recognize genuine people. The conversation leapt. We kept up with each other—one took up where another left off. I came away both laughing and wiser, suddenly comparing something (what?) about the evening with echoes of Andy and his mother talking. I can hear Andy’s word patterns: “Well, I mean, crikey, if she didn’t want …” His mother: “Quite!”
This weekend was my third at Oxfordshire with the Hursts. I like the bed and hot water bottles and the church part. I like to take Communion in that Norman church, and I liked going to the Cotswolds with Andy and walking beside the Windrush [River] and having him say “I’ve got to take care of you.” And I liked the old ruins of Minster Lovell—Andy’s arm still encircling me—and the sunlight on the mossy gravestones and the pub afterward, and then a home-cooked dinner. But is this enough? Do I have communion with this man? And how much communion can one expect?
Mrs. Hurst gave me several very good books—one the Letters of Direction of the Abbé de Tourville.27 I like her. But she’s no Kathleen. Oh no. She’s not Kathleen. There’s a whole dimension left out—
FEBRUARY 4
More and more I understand what Father Webbe means when he says we are living in eternity. Tonight, as I walked down Old Church Street at ten, I thought: How silly for me to think moving away will make me any better off than I am.
The clear night, the Embassy and Grosvenor Square, where, less than three months ago, a crowd of shocked Americans stood waiting to hear more news from a portable radio held high over one man’s head. London is my city whether I leave it or not.
FEBRUARY 5
Monie28 had a heart attack. I must try and give her something of myself. She must be told once again that I love her.
Mrs. Hurst wrote again. I think I read the last page of her letter over about fifty times. “I hope whatever happens that you will be very happy and I hope that happiness will be with our family …”
FEBRUARY 10