The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

  “Ah, but that’s the point,” said Dr West. He said it briskly. He was an altogether brisk, competent man. He added, teasing Ella: “Unless the whole system’s changed of course. Our Ella’s a revolutionary without knowing it.” “I imagined,” said Ella, “that we all wanted the system changed.” But that was altogether the wrong note. Dr West involuntarily frowned, then smiled. “But of course we do,” he said. “And the sooner the better.” The Wests voted for the Labour Party. That Dr West was “Labour” was a matter of pride to Patricia Brent, who was a Tory. Her tolerance was thus proved. Ella had no politics, but she was also important to Patricia, for the ironical reason that she made no secret of the contempt she felt for the magazine. She shared an office with Patricia. The atmosphere of this office, and all the others connected with the magazine, had the same atmosphere, the atmosphere of the magazine—coy, little-womanish, snobbish. And all the women working there seemed to acquire the same tone, despite themselves, even Patricia herself, who was not at all like this. For Patricia was kind, hearty, direct, full of a battling self-respect. Yet in the office she would say things quite out of character, and Ella, afraid for herself, criticised her for it. Then she went on to say that while they were both in a position where they had to earn their livings, they didn’t have to lie to themselves about what they had to do. She had expected, even half-wished, that Patricia would tell her to leave. Instead she had been taken out to an expensive lunch where Patricia defended herself. It turned out that for her this job was a defeat. She had been fashion editress of one of the big smart woman’s magazines, but apparently had not been considered up to it. It was a magazine with a fashionable cultural gloss, and it was necessary to have an editress with a nose for what was fashionable in the arts. Patricia had no feeling at all for the cultural band-waggon, which, as far as Ella was concerned, was a point in her favour, but the proprietor of this particular group of woman’s magazines had shifted Patricia over to Women at Home, which was angled towards working-class women, and had not even a pretence of cultural tone. Patricia was now well-suited for her work, and it was this which secretly chagrined her. She had wistfully enjoyed the atmosphere of the other magazine which had fashionable authors and artists associated with it. She was the daughter of a county family, rich but philistine; her childhood had been well supported by servants, and it was this, an early contact with “the lower-classes”—she referred to them as such, inside the office, coyly; outside, unself-consciously—that gave her her shrewd direct understanding of what to serve her readers.

  Far from giving Ella the sack, she had developed the same wistful respect for her that she had for the glossy magazine she had had to leave. She would casually remark that she had working for her someone who was a “highbrow”—someone whose stories had been published in the “highbrow papers.”

  And she had a far warmer, more human understanding of the letters which came into the office than Dr West.

  She now protected Ella by saying: “I agree with Ella. Whenever I take a look at her weekly dose of misery, I don’t know how she does it. It depresses me so I can’t even eat. And believe me, when my appetite goes, things are serious.”

  Now everybody laughed, and Ella smiled gratefully at Patricia who nodded, as if to say: “It’s all right, we weren’t criticising you.”

  Now the talk began again and Ella was free to look around her. The living-room was large. A wall had been broken down. In the other, identical little houses of the street, two minute ground-floor rooms served as kitchen—full of people and used to live in, and parlour, used for company. This room was the entire ground-floor of the house, and a staircase led up to the bedrooms. It was bright, with a good many different colours—sharp blocks of contrasting colour, dark green, and bright pink and yellow. Mrs West had no taste, and the room didn’t come off. In five years’ time, Ella thought, the houses down the street will have walls in solid bright colours, and curtains and cushions in tune. We are pushing this phase of taste on them—in Women at Home, for instance. And this room will be—what? Whatever is the next thing, I suppose…but I ought to be more sociable, this is a party, after all…

  Looking around again she saw it was not a party, but an association of people who were there because the Wests had said: “It’s time we asked some people around,” and they had come saying: “I suppose we’ve got to go over to the Wests.”

  I wish I hadn’t come, Ella thought, and there’s all that long way back again. At this point a man left his seat across the room and came to sit by her. Her first impression was of a lean young man’s face, and a keen, nervously critical smile which, as he talked, introducing himself (his name was Paul Tanner and he was a doctor) had moments of sweetness, as if it were against his will, or without his knowledge. She realised she was smiling back, acknowledging these moments of warmth, and so she looked more closely at him. Of course, she had been mistaken, he was not as young as she had thought. His rather rough black hair was thinning at the crown, and his very white, slightly freckled skin was incised sharply around his eyes. These were blue, deep, rather beautiful; eyes both combative and serious, with a gleam in them of uncertainty. A nerve-hung face, she decided, and saw that his body was tensed as he talked, which he did well, but in a self-watchful way. His self-consciousness had her reacting away from him, whereas only a moment ago she had been responding to the unconscious warmth of his smile.

  These were her first reactions to the man she was later to love so deeply. Afterwards he would complain, half-bitter, half-humorous: “you didn’t love me at all, to begin with. You should have loved me at first sight. If just once in my life a woman would take one look at me and fall in love, but they never do.” Later still, he would develop the theme, consciously humorous now, because of the emotional language: “The face is the soul. How can a man trust a woman who falls in love with him only after they have made love? You did not love me at all.” And he would maintain a bitter, humorous laugh, while Ella exclaimed: “How can you separate love-making off from everything else? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Her attention was going away from him. She was aware she was beginning to fidget, and that he knew it. Also that he minded: he was attracted to her. His face was too intent on keeping her; she felt that somewhere in all this was pride, a sexual pride which would be offended if she did not respond, and this made her feel a sudden desire to escape. This complex of emotions, all much too sudden and violent for comfort, made Ella think of her husband George. She had married George almost out of exhaustion, after he had courted her violently for a year. She had known she shouldn’t marry him. Yet she did; she did not have the will to break with him. Shortly after the marriage she had become sexually repelled by him, a feeling she was unable to control or hide. This redoubled his craving for her, which made her dislike him the more—he even seemed to get some thrill or satisfaction out of her repulsion for him. They were apparently in some hopeless psychological deadlock. Then, to pique her, he had slept with another woman and told her about it. Belatedly she had found the courage to break with him that she lacked before: she took her stand, dishonestly, in desperation, on the fact he had broken faith with her. This was not her moral code, and the fact she was using conventional arguments, repeating endlessly because she was a coward, that he had been unfaithful to her, made her despise herself. The last few weeks with George were a nightmare of self-contempt and hysteria, until at last she left his house, to put an end to it, to put a distance between herself and the man who suffocated her, imprisoned her, apparently took away her will. He then married the woman he had made use of to bring Ella back to him. Much to Ella’s relief.

  She was in the habit, when depressed, to worry interminably over her behaviour during this marriage. She made many sophisticated psychological remarks about it; she denigrated both herself and him; felt wearied and soiled by the whole experience, and worse, secretly feared that she might be doomed, by some flaw in herself, to some unavoidable repetition of the experience with another man.
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  But after she had been with Paul Tanner for only a short time, she would say, with the utmost simplicity: “Of course, I never loved George.” As if there were nothing more to be said about it. And as far as she was concerned, there was nothing more to be said. Nor did it worry her at all that all the complicated psychological attitudes were hardly on the same level as: “Of course I never loved him,” with its corollary that: “I love Paul.”

  Meanwhile she was restless to get away from him and felt trapped—not by him, by the possibilities of her past resurrecting itself in him.

  He said: “What was the case that sparked off your argument with West?” He was trying to keep her. She said: “Oh, you’re a doctor too, they’re all cases, of course.” She had sounded shrill and aggressive, and now she made herself smile and said: “I’m sorry. But the work worries me more than it should, I suppose.” “I know,” he said. Dr West would never have said: “I know,” and instantly Ella warmed to him. The frigidity of her manner, which she was unconscious of, and which she could never lose except with people she knew well, melted away at once. She fished in her handbag for the letter, and saw him smile quizzically at the disorder she revealed. He took the letter, smiling. He sat with it in his hand, unopened, looking at her with appreciation, as if welcoming her, her real self, now open to him. Then he read the letter and again sat holding it, this time opened out. “What could poor West do? Did you want him to prescribe ointments?” “No, no, of course not.” “She’s probably been pestering her own doctor three times a week ever since—” he consulted the letter, “—the 9th of March, 1950. The poor man’s been prescribing every ointment he can think of.” “Yes, I know,” she said. “I’ve got to answer it tomorrow morning. And about a hundred more.” She held out her hand for the letter. “What are you going to say to her?” “What can I say? The thing is, there are thousands and thousands, probably millions of them.” The word millions sounded childish, and she looked intently at him, trying to convey her vision of a sagging, dark weight of ignorance and misery. He handed her the letter and said: “But what are you going to say?” “I can’t say anything she really needs. Because what she wanted, of course, was for Dr Allsop himself to descend on her, and rescue her, like a knight on a white horse.” “Of course.” “That’s the trouble. I can’t say, Dear Mrs Brown, you haven’t got rheumatism, you’re lonely and neglected, and you’re inventing symptoms to make a claim on the world so that someone will pay attention to you. Well, can I?” “You can say all that, tactfully. She probably knows it herself. You could tell her to make an effort to meet people, join some organisation, something like that.” “It’s arrogant, me telling her what to do.” “She’s written for help, so it’s arrogant not to.” “Some organisation, you say! But that’s not what she wants. She doesn’t want something impersonal. She’s been married for years and now she feels as if half of herself’s torn away.”

  At this he regarded her gravely for some moments, and she did not know what he was thinking. At last he said: “Well, I expect you’re right. But you could suggest she write to a marriage bureau.” He laughed at the look of distaste that showed on her face, and went on: “Yes, but you’d be surprised how many good marriages I’ve organised myself, through marriage bureaux.”

  “You sound like—a sort of psychiatric social worker,” she said, and as soon as the words were out, she knew what the reply would be. Dr West, the sound general practitioner, with no patience for “frills,” made jokes about his colleague, “the witch-doctor,” to whom he sent patients in serious mental trouble. This, then, was “the witch-doctor.”

  Paul Tanner was saying, with reluctance: “That’s what I am, in a sense.” She knew the reluctance was because he did not want from her the obvious response. What the response was she knew because she had felt a leap inside herself of relief and interest, an uneasy interest because he was a witch-doctor, possessed of all sorts of knowledge about her. She said quickly: “Oh, I’m not going to tell you my troubles.” After a pause during which, she knew, he was looking for the words which would discourage her from doing so, he said: “And I never give advice at parties.”

  “Except to widow Brown,” she said.

  He smiled, and remarked: “You’re middle-class, aren’t you?” It was definitely a judgement. Ella was hurt. “By origin,” she said. He said: “I’m working-class, so perhaps I know rather more about widow Brown than you do.”

  At this point Patricia Brent came over, and took him away to talk to some member of her staff. Ella realised that they had made an absorbed couple, in a party not designed for couples. Patricia’s manner had said that they had drawn attention. So Ella was rather annoyed. Paul did not want to go. He gave her a look that was urgent, and appealing, yet also hard. Yes, thought Ella, a hard look, like a nod of command that she should stay where she was until he was free to come back to her. And she reacted away from him again.

  It was time to go home. She had only been at the Wests an hour, but she wanted to get away. Paul Tanner was now sitting between Patricia and a young woman. Ella could not hear what was being said but both the women wore expressions of half-excited, half-furtive interest, which meant they were talking, obliquely or directly, about Dr Tanner’s profession, and as it illuminated themselves, while he maintained a courteous but stiff smile. He’s not going to get free of them for hours, Ella thought; and she got up and made her excuses to Mrs West, who was annoyed with her for leaving so soon. She nodded at Dr West, whom she would meet tomorrow over a pile of letters, and smiled at Paul, whose blue eyes swung up, very blue and startled, at the news that she was leaving. She went into the hall to put on her coat, and he came out, hurriedly, behind her, offering to take her home. His manner was now off-hand, almost rude, because he had not wanted to be forced into such a public pursuit. Ella said: “It’s probably out of your way.” He said: “Where do you live?” and when she told him, said firmly it was not out of his way at all. He had a small English car. He drove it fast and well. The London of the car-owner and taxi-user is a very different city from that of the tube and bus-user. Ella was thinking that the miles of grey squalor she had travelled through were now a hazy and luminous city blossoming with lights; and that it had no power to frighten her. Meanwhile, Paul Tanner darted at her sharp enquiring glances and asked brief practical questions about her life. She told him, meaning to challenge his pigeon-holing of her, that she had served throughout the war in a canteen for factory women, and had lived in the same hostel. That after the war she had contracted tuberculosis, but not badly, and had spent six months on her back in a sanatorium. This was the experience that had changed her life, changed her much more deeply than the war years with the factory women. Her mother had died when she was very young, and her father, a silent, hard-bitten man, an ex-army officer from India, had brought her up. “If you could call it a bringing-up—I was left to myself, and I’m grateful for it,” she said, laughing. And she had been married, briefly and unhappily. To each of these bits of information, Paul Tanner nodded; and Ella saw him sitting behind a desk, nodding at the replies to a patient’s answers to questions. “They say you write novels,” he said, as he slid the car to a standstill outside Julia’s house. “I don’t write novels,” she said, annoyed as at an invasion of privacy, and immediately got out of the car. He quickly got out of his side and reached the door at the same time she did. They hesitated. But she wanted to go inside, away from the intentness of his pursuit of her. He said brusquely: “Will you come for a drive with me tomorrow afternoon?” As an afterthought, he gave a hasty glance at the sky, which was heavily clouded, and said: “It looks as if it will be fine.” At this she laughed, and out of the good feeling engendered by the laugh, said she would. His face cleared into relief—more, triumph. He’s won a kind of victory, she thought, rather chilled. Then, after another hesitation, he shook hands with her, nodded, and went off to his car, saying he would pick her up at two o’clock. She went indoors through the dark hall, up dark stairs, through the s
ilent house. A light showed under Julia’s door. It was very early, after all. She called: “I’m back, Julia,” and Julia’s full clear voice said: “Come in and talk.” Julia had a large comfortable bedroom, and she lay on massed pillows in a large double bed, reading. She wore pyjamas, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. She looked good-natured, shrewd and very inquisitive. “Well, how was it?” “Boring,” said Ella, making this a criticism of Julia for forcing her to go—by her invisible strength of will. “I was brought home by a psychiatrist,” she added, using the word deliberately, to see appear on Julia’s face the look she had felt on her own, and seen on the faces of Patricia and the young woman. When she saw it, she felt ashamed and sorry she had said it—as if she had deliberately committed an act of aggression towards Julia. Which I have, she thought. “And I don’t think I like him,” she added, relapsing into childishness, playing with the scent bottles on Julia’s dressing-table. She rubbed scent into the flesh of her wrists, watching Julia’s face in the looking-glass, which was now again sceptical, patient and shrewd. She thought: Well, of course Julia’s a sort of mother-image, but do I have to play up to it all the time?—And besides, most of the time I feel maternal towards Julia, I have a need to protect her, though I don’t know from what. “Why don’t you like him?” enquired Julia. This was serious, and Ella would now have to think seriously. Instead she said: “Thanks for looking after Michael,” and went upstairs to bed, giving Julia a small, apologetic smile as she went.