The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

  “Yes, I see.”

  “But I told him not to lose any sleep on my account. Because I wouldn’t organise revolutions. Twenty years ago I would. But not now. Because now we know what happens to revolutionary groups—we’d be murdering each other inside five years.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  Tommy’s look at her said: You’re dishonest. He said: “I remember about two years ago, you and my mother were talking. You said to my mother, If we’d been unlucky enough to be communists in Russia or Hungary or somewhere, one of us would very likely have shot the other as a traitor. That was a joke too.”

  Anna said: “Tommy, your mother and I have both led somewhat complicated lives, and we’ve done a lot of things. You can’t expect us to be full of youthful certainties and slogans and battle-cries. We’re both of us getting on for being middle-aged.” Anna heard herself make these remarks with a certain amount of wry surprise, even dislike. She was saying to herself: I sound like a tired old liberal. She decided, however, to stand by them, and looked at Tommy to find him very critically looking at her. He said: “You mean, I’ve no right to make middle-aged remarks at my age? Well, Anna, I feel middle-aged. Now what do you have to say?” The malicious stranger had come back, and was sitting in front of her, his eyes full of spite.

  She said quickly: “Tommy, tell me something: how would you sum up your interview with your father?”

  Tommy sighed and became himself. “Whenever I go to his office I am surprised. I remember the first time—I’d always seen him in our house, and once or twice at Marion’s. Well, I’d always thought him very—ordinary, you know? Commonplace. Dull. Like you and my mother do. Well, the first time I saw him in his office I felt confused—I know you’re going to say it’s the power he has, all that money. But it was more than that. He suddenly didn’t seem ordinary and second-rate.”

  Anna sat silent, thinking: What is he getting at? What am I failing to see?

  He said: “Oh I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking Tommy is ordinary and second-rate himself.”

  Anna blushed: she had, in the past, thought that of Tommy. He saw her blush and smiled malignantly. He said: “Ordinary people aren’t necessarily stupid, Anna. I know quite well what I am. And that’s why I am confused when I’m in my father’s office, watching him being a sort of tycoon. Because I’d do that well too. But I couldn’t, ever, because I’d do it with a divided mind—because of you and my mother. The difference between my father and me is that I know I’m commonplace and he doesn’t. I know quite well that people like you and my mother are a hundred times better than he is—even though you’re such failures and in such a mess. But I’m sorry I know it. You mustn’t tell my mother this, but I’m very sorry my father didn’t bring me up—if he had I’d have been very happy to inherit his shoes.”

  Anna could not prevent herself giving him a sharp glance—she suspected he had said this so that she should in fact tell Molly what he had said, so as to hurt her. But on his face was the patient, earnest, inward-looking stare of his introspection. Anna could feel, however, a wave of hysteria rise in herself; and knew it reflected his; and searched wildly for words which could check him. She saw him turn his heavy head on the pivot of his thick short neck and look at her notebooks lying exposed on the trestle; and thought: Good Lord, I hope he hasn’t come here to talk about them? About me? She said quickly: “I think you’re making your father out to be much more simple than he is. I don’t think he has an undivided mind: he once said being a big businessman these days was like being a rather superior office boy. And you forget that in the ’thirties he had a spell of being a communist, and he was even a bit of a bohemian for a while.”

  “And his way of remembering that now is to have affairs with his secretaries—that’s his way of persuading himself he’s not just an ordinary respectable cog in the middle-class wheel.” This came out shrill and revengeful, and Anna thought: That’s what he has come to talk about. She felt relief.

  Tommy said: “After I went to my father’s office this afternoon I went down to see Marion. I just wanted to see her. I usually see her in our house. She was drunk, and those kids were pretending not to notice it. She was talking about my father and his secretary and they were pretending not to know what she was talking about.” Now he waited for her to say something, leaning forward, his eyes slitted in accusation. When she did not speak, he said: “Well, why don’t you say what you think? I know you despise my father. It’s because he’s not a good man.”

  At the word good, Anna involuntarily laughed, and saw his frown. She said: “I’m sorry, but it’s not a word I use.”

  “Why not? It’s what you mean. My father’s ruined Marion and he’s ruining those children. Well, isn’t he? Well, you’re not going to say it’s Marion’s fault?”

  “Tommy, I don’t know what to say—you come here, and I know you want me to say things that make sense. But I simply don’t know…”

  Tommy’s pale sweating face was deadly earnest, and his eyes shone with sincerity. But with something else—in them was a gleam of the spiteful satisfaction; he was convicting her of failing him; and pleased that she was failing him. Again he turned his head and looked at the notebooks. Now, thought Anna; now I must say what he wants to hear. But before she could think, he had got up and walked over to the notebooks. Anna tensed herself and sat quiet; she could not endure that anyone should see those notebooks and yet she felt that Tommy had a right to see them: but she could not have explained why. He stood with his back to her, looking down at the notebooks. Then he turned his head and said: “Why do you have four notebooks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must know.”

  “I didn’t ever say to myself: I’m going to keep four notebooks, it just happened.”

  “Why not one notebook?”

  She thought a while and said: “Perhaps because it would be such a—scramble. Such a mess.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be a mess?”

  Anna was trying for just the right words to offer him when Janet’s voice sounded from upstairs: “Mummy?”

  “Yes? I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was asleep. I’m thirsty. Who are you talking to?”

  “Tommy. Do you want him to come up and say good night?”

  “Yes. And I want some water.”

  Tommy quietly turned himself and went out; Anna heard him running water from the tap in the kitchen, and then plodding up the stairs. Meanwhile she was in an extraordinary tumult of sensations; as if every particle and cell of her body had been touched with some irritant. Tommy’s presence in the room and the necessity to think of how to face him had kept her more or less Anna, more or less herself. But now she hardly recognised herself. She wanted to laugh, to cry, even to scream; she wanted to hurt some object by taking hold of it and shaking and shaking until—this object was of course Tommy. She told herself that his state of mind had infected her; that she was being invaded by his emotions; marvelled that what appeared in his face as gleams of spite and hatred appeared in his voice briefly as shrillness or hardness—should be the outward signs of such a violent inward storm; and suddenly understood that her palms and her armpits were cold and wet. She was afraid. All her various and conflicting sensations amounted to this: she was terrified. It surely wasn’t possible that she was physically frightened of Tommy? So frightened and yet she had sent him upstairs to talk to her child? But no, she was not in the least frightened for Janet. She could hear the two voices upstairs in cheerful exchange. Then a laugh—Janet’s. Then the slow determined steps and Tommy came back. He said at once: “What do you think Janet will be when she grows up?” His face was pale and obstinate, but no more; and Anna felt easier. He stood by the trestle table, one hand on it, and Anna said: “I don’t know. She’s only eleven.”

  “Don’t you worry about it?”

  “No. Children keep changing. How do I know what she’ll want later on?”

  His mouth pouted forward in a cri
tical smile, and she said: “Why, have I said something stupid again?”

  “It’s the way you say it. Your attitude.”

  “I’m sorry.” But in spite of herself, this sounded aggrieved, certainly irritated; and Tommy very briefly smiled with satisfaction. “Do you ever think about Janet’s father?”

  This shock reached Anna’s diaphragm; she felt it tighten. She said, however: “No, hardly ever.” He stared at her; and she went on: “You want me to say what I really feel, don’t you? You sounded just then like Mother Sugar. She would say to me things like: He’s the father of your child. Or: He was your husband. But it didn’t mean anything to me. What’s troubling you—that your mother didn’t really care for Richard? Well she was much more involved with Richard than I ever was with Max Wulf.” He was standing straight, very pale, and his stare was all inwards; Anna doubted whether he saw her at all. It appeared however that he was listening, so she went on: “I understand what it means: having a child by the man you love. But I didn’t understand it until I loved a man. I wanted to have a child by Michael. But the fact is, I had a child by a man I didn’t love…” She trailed off, wondering if he were listening. His eyes were directed at the wall at a point some feet away. He turned his dark abstracted gaze towards her, and said in a tone of feeble sarcasm she had never heard from him: “Go on, Anna. It’s a great revelation to me, hearing an experienced person talk of their emotions.” His eyes, however, were deadly serious, so she swallowed the annoyance that the sarcasm had released in her, and went on: “It seems to me like this. It’s not a terrible thing—I mean, it may be terrible, but it’s not damaging, it’s not poisoning, to do without something one wants. It’s not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I’m capable of doing something bigger. Or I’m a person who needs love, and I’m doing without it. What’s terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better. It would be very bad if I said, out of guilt or something: I loved Janet’s father, when I know quite well I didn’t. Or for your mother to say: I loved Richard. Or I’m doing work I love…” Anna stopped. Tommy had nodded. She could not make out whether he was pleased with what she had said, or whether it was a thought so obvious he didn’t want to hear it said. He turned back to the notebooks, and opened the blue-covered one. Anna saw his shoulders heave in sarcastic laughter, designed to provoke her.

  “Well?”

  He read out: “March 12, 1956. Janet is suddenly aggressive and difficult. Altogether a difficult phase.”

  “Well?”

  “I remember your once saying to my mother, how’s Tommy? My mother’s voice is not exactly designed for confidences. She said in a ringing whisper: Oh, he’s in a difficult phase.”

  “Perhaps you were.”

  “A phase—it was one night when you were having supper with my mother in the kitchen. I lay in bed and listened, you were laughing and talking. I came down the stairs to get a glass of water. I was unhappy just then, worrying about everything. I couldn’t do my school-work and I was frightened at night. Of course the glass of water was just a pretence. I wanted to be in the kitchen—because of the way you two laughed. I wanted to be near the laughter. I didn’t want either of you to know I was scared. Outside the door I heard you say: How’s Tommy, and my mother said, He’s in a difficult phase.”

  “Well?” Anna was in a trough of exhaustion: she was thinking of Janet. Janet had just woken up and asked for a glass of water. Was Tommy meaning to say to her that Janet was unhappy?

  “It cancelled me out,” said Tommy sullenly. “All through my childhood I kept reaching something that seemed new and important. I kept gaining victories. That night I had won a victory—being able to come down the dark stairs pretending that nothing was wrong. I was clinging on to something, a feeling of who I really was. Then my mother says, just a phase. In other words, what I felt just then didn’t matter, it was a product of glands, or something, and it would pass.”

  Anna said nothing; she was worrying about Janet. Yet the child seemed friendly, cheerful, and she was doing well at school. She very seldom woke at night and had never said anything about being afraid of the dark.

  Tommy was saying: “I suppose you and my mother have been saying that I am in a difficult phase?”

  “I don’t think we’ve said it. But I expect we’ve implied it,” said Anna wryly.

  “What I feel now doesn’t matter at all? But at what point am I entitled to say to myself, what I am feeling now is valid? After all, Anna—” Here Tommy turned to face her: “one can’t go through one’s whole life in phases. There must be a goal somewhere.” His eyes gleamed out hatred; and it was with difficulty that Anna said: “If you’re suggesting that I’ve reached a goal, and I’m judging you from some superior point, then it’s not true.”

  “Phases,” he insisted. “Stages. Growing pains.”

  “But I think that’s how women see—people. Certainly their own children. In the first place, there’s always been nine months of not knowing whether the baby would be a girl or a boy. Sometimes I wonder what Janet would have been like if she’d been born a boy. Don’t you see? And then babies go through one stage after another, and then they are children. When a woman looks at a child she sees all the things he’s been at the same time. When I look at Janet sometimes I see her as a small baby and I feel her inside my belly and I see her at various sizes of small girl, all at the same time.” Tommy’s stare was accusing and sarcastic, but she persisted: “That’s how women see things. Everything in a sort of continuous creative stream—well, isn’t it natural we should?”

  “But we’re not individuals for you at all. We are simply temporary shapes of something. Phases.” And he laughed, angrily. Anna thought that this was the first time he had really laughed, and was encouraged. For a while they were both silent, while he fingered the notebooks, half turned away from her, and she watched him, trying to calm herself, trying to breathe deeply and remain quiet and steady. But her palms were still wet; the thought kept coming into her mind: it’s as if I were fighting something, fighting some invisible enemy. She could almost see the enemy—something evil, she was sure of it; an almost tangible shape of malice and destruction, that stood between her and Tommy, trying to destroy them both.

  She said at last: “I know what you’ve come here for. You’ve come so that I can tell you what we are alive for. But you know in advance what I’m likely to say, because you know me so well. So that means you’ve come here already knowing what I’m going to say—to confirm something.” She added in a low voice, not meaning to say it: “That’s why I’m so frightened.” It was an appeal; Tommy gave her a quick glance; it was an acknowledgement that she was right to be afraid.

  He said stubbornly: “You’re going to tell me that in a month’s time I’ll feel differently. Suppose I don’t? Well tell me Anna—what are we alive for?” Now he was shaking with silent triumphant laughter, his back turned.

  “We’re a sort of latter-day stoic,” said Anna. “Our kind of people.”

  “You’re including me in your kind of people? Thank you Anna.”

  “Perhaps your trouble is, you have too many choices.” The set of his shoulders said that he was listening, so she went on: “Through your father you can reach a half dozen different countries and almost any kind of work. Your mother and I could get you a dozen different sorts of job in the theatre or in publishing. Or you could spend five years or so pleasantly bumming about—your mother or I would pay for you, even if your father wouldn’t.”

  “A hundred things to do, but only one thing to be,” he said, obstinately. “But perhaps I don’t feel myself worthy of such a wealth of opportunity? And perhaps I’m not a stoic, Anna—have you met Reggie Gates?”

  “The milkman’s son? No, but your mother has told me.”

  “Of course she has. I can almost hear her. The point is, and I’m sure she’s made it, he hasn’t any
choice at all. He’s got a scholarship, and if he fails to make the exam, he’ll spend his life delivering milk with his father. But if he passes, and he will, he’ll be up in the middle-class with us. He hasn’t got a hundred opportunities. He’s got just one. But he really knows what he wants. He’s not suffering from paralysis of the will.”

  “You’re envying Reggie Gates for his handicaps?”

  “Yes. And do you know, he’s a Tory. He thinks that people who complain about the system are barmy. I went to a football game with him last week. I wish I were him.” Now he laughed again; but this time Anna felt chilled by the sound. He went on: “Do you remember Tony?”

  “Yes,” said Anna, remembering one of his school friends, who had surprised everyone by deciding to be a conscientious objector. He had worked in a coal mine for two years instead of going into the army, very much annoying his respectable family.

  “Tony became a socialist three weeks ago.”

  Anna laughed but Tommy said: “No, that’s the point. Do you remember when he became a conscientious objector? It was just to annoy his parents. You know that’s true Anna.”

  “Yes, but he went through with it, didn’t he?”

  “I knew Tony very well. I know it was almost—a sort of joke. He even told me once he wasn’t even sure he was right. But he wasn’t going to let his parents have the laugh on him—that was exactly what he said.”

  “All the same,” Anna insisted, “it couldn’t have been easy—two years, doing that sort of work, and he stuck it out.”

  “That’s not good enough, Anna. And that’s exactly how he became a socialist. You know that group of new socialists—mostly Oxford types? They are going to start a magazine, The Left Review, or something. Well I’ve met them. They shout slogans and behave like a lot of…”