The Golden Notebook

by Doris Lessing

  With which she went to the bathroom, to get ready for bed. The lights were on. She stopped at the door. Ronnie stood anxiously peering into the mirror over the shelf where she kept her cosmetics. He was patting lotion on to his cheeks with her cottonwool, and trying to smooth out the lines on his forehead.

  Anna said: “Like my lotion better than yours?”

  He turned, without surprise. She saw that he had intended her to find him there.

  “My dear,” he said, graceful and coquettish, “I was trying your lotion out. Does it do anything for you?”

  “Not much,” said Anna. She leaned at the door, watching, waiting to be enlightened.

  He was wearing an expensive silk dressing-gown in a soft hazy purple, with a reddish cravat tucked into it. He wore expensive red leather Moorish slippers, thonged with gold. He looked as if he should be in some harem, and not in this flat in the wastes of London’s student-land. Now he stood with his head on one side, patting the waves of black, faintly greying hair with a manicured hand. “I did try a rinse,” he remarked, “but the grey shows through.”

  “Distinguished, really,” said Anna. She had now understood: terrified that she might throw him out, he was appealing to her as one girl to another. She tried to tell herself she was amused. The truth was she was disgusted, and ashamed that she was.

  “But my dear Anna,” he lisped winningly, “looking distinguished is all very well, if one is—if I can put it that way—on the employing side.”

  “But Ronnie,” Anna said, succumbing despite her disgust, and playing the role she was expected to play, “you look very charming, in spite of the odd grey hair. I’m sure dozens of people must find you devastating.”

  “Not as many as before,” he said. “Alas, I must confess it. Of course I do pretty well, in spite of ups and downs, but I do have to take pretty good care of myself.”

  “Perhaps you should find a permanent rich protector very soon.”

  “Oh my dear,” he exclaimed, with a little writhing movement of the hips that was quite unconscious, “you can’t imagine that I haven’t tried?”

  “I didn’t realise that the market was so badly over-supplied,” said Anna, speaking out of her disgust, and already ashamed of doing so before the words were out. Good Lord! she thought, to be born a Ronnie! to be born like that—I complain about the difficulties of being my kind of woman, but good Lord!—I might have been born a Ronnie.

  He gave her a quick frank look full of hatred. He hesitated, an impulse was too strong for him, and he said: “I think after all that I do prefer your lotion to mine.” He had his hand on the bottle, claiming it. He smiled at her sideways, challenging her, hating her openly.

  She, smiling, put her hand out and took the bottle. “Well you’d better buy some of your own, hadn’t you?”

  And now his smile was quick, impertinent, and acknowledged that she had defeated him, that he hated her for it, that he proposed to try again soon. Then the smile faded and was succeeded by the cold haggard fear she had seen earlier. He was telling himself that his spiteful impulses were dangerous, and that he should be placating her, not challenging her.

  He excused himself quickly, in a charming placating murmur, said good night, and tripped upstairs to Ivor.

  Anna took her bath and went upstairs to see if Janet was settled for the night. The door into the young men’s room stood open. Anna was surprised, knowing that they knew she came upstairs at this time every night to see Janet. Then she realised it was open on purpose. She heard: “Fat buttocky cows…” That was Ivor’s voice, and he added an obscene noise. Then Ronnie’s voice: “Sagging sweaty breasts…” And he made the sound of vomiting.

  Anna, furious, was on the point of going forward to quarrel with them. She found herself, instead, shaken, trembling, and frightened. She crept downstairs, hoping they had not known she was there. But now they shut their door with a bang, and she heard shouts of laughter—from Ivor; and shrill graceful peals from Ronnie. She got into bed, appalled. At herself. For she saw that the obscene little play that had been prepared for her was nothing more than the night-face of Ronnie’s girlishness, Ivor’s big-dog friendliness, and that she might have deduced it all for herself without waiting to have it demonstrated. She was frightened because she was affected. She sat up in bed in the big dark room, smoking, and felt herself as vulnerable and helpless. She said again: If I cracked up then…The man on the train had shaken her; the two young men upstairs had reduced her to trembling. A week ago, coming home late from the theatre, a man had exposed himself on a dark street corner. Instead of ignoring it, she had found herself shrinking inwardly, as if it had been a personal attack on Anna—she had felt as if she, Anna, had been menaced by it. Yet, looking back only a short time, she saw Anna who walked through the hazards and ugliness of the big city unafraid and immune. Now it seemed as if the ugliness had come close and stood so near to her she might collapse, screaming.

  And when had this new frightened vulnerable Anna been born? She knew: it was when Michael had abandoned her.

  Anna, frightened and sick, nevertheless grinned at herself, smiled at the knowledge that she, the independent woman, was independent and immune to the ugliness of perverse sex, violent sex, just so long as she was loved by a man. She sat in the dark grinning, or rather, forcing herself to grin, and thinking that there was no one in the world she could share this amusement with but Molly. Only Molly was in such trouble this was no moment to talk to her. Yes—she must ring up Molly tomorrow and talk to her about Tommy.

  And now Tommy came back into the front of Anna’s mind, with her worry over Ivor and Ronnie; and it was all too much. She crept in and under the clothes, clinging on to them.

  The fact is, said Anna, trying to be calm about it, to herself: that I’m not fit to cope with anything. I stay above all this—chaos, because of this increasingly cold, critical, balancing little brain of mine. (Anna again saw her brain, like a cold little machine, ticking away in her head.)

  She lay, frightened, and again the words came into her head: the spring has gone dry. And with the words, came the image: she saw the dry well, a cracked opening into the earth that was all dust.

  Laying about her for something to hold on to, she clutched to the memory of Mother Sugar. Yes. I have to dream of water, she told herself. For what was the use of that long “experience” with Mother Sugar if now, in time of drought, she could not reach out for help. I must dream of water, I must dream of how to get back to the spring.

  Anna slept and dreamed. She was standing on the edge of a wide yellow desert at midday. The sun was darkened by the dust hanging in the air. The sun was a baleful orange colour over the yellow dusty expanse. Anna knew she had to cross the desert. Over it, on the far side, were mountains—purple and orange and grey. The colours of the dream were extraordinarily beautiful and vivid. But she was enclosed by them, enclosed by these vivid dry colours. There was no water anywhere. Anna started off to walk across the desert, so that she might reach the mountains.

  That was the dream she woke with in the morning; and she knew what it meant. The dream marked a change in Anna, in her knowledge of herself. In the desert she was alone, and there was no water, and she was a long way from the springs. She woke knowing that if she was to cross the desert she must shed burdens. She had gone to sleep confused about what to do about Ronnie and Ivor, but woke knowing what she would do. She stopped Ivor on his way out to work (Ronnie was still in bed, sleeping the just sleep of a petted mistress) and said: “Ivor, I want you to go.” This morning he was pale, apprehensive, and appealing. He could not have said more clearly, without using the words to say it: I’m sorry, I’m in love with him and I can’t help myself.

  Anna said: “Ivor, you must see that it can’t go on.”

  He said: “I’ve been meaning to say this for some time—you’ve been so good, I really would like to pay you for Ronnie’s being here.”

  “No.”

  “Whatever rent you say,” he said, and eve
n now, while he was certainly ashamed of his last-night’s personality, and above all frightened because his idyll might be shattered, he could not prevent the jeering mocking note coming back into his voice.

  “Since Ronnie’s been here weeks now, and I’ve never mentioned rent, it obviously isn’t money,” said Anna, disliking the cold critical person who stood there, using this voice.

  He hesitated again; his face the most remarkable mixture of guilt, impertinence and fear. “Look Anna, I’m terribly late for work. I’ll drop down this evening and we’ll talk it over.” He was already halfway down the stairs, he was bounding down them in desperation to get away from her, and his own impulse to jeer and provoke her.

  Anna went back into her kitchen. Janet was eating her breakfast.

  She asked: “What were you talking to Ivor about?”

  “I was suggesting he should go, or at least, that Ronnie should go.” She added quickly, for Janet was on the point of protesting: “That room is for one person, not for two. And they’re friends, they’d probably prefer to live together.”

  To Anna’s surprise Janet decided not to protest. She was quiet and thoughtful through the meal, as she had been at supper the night before. At the end of it she remarked: “Why can’t I go to school?”

  “But you are at school.” “No, I mean a real school. A boarding-school.” “Boarding-schools aren’t at all like that story Ivor was reading to you last night.” Janet seemed as if she might go on, but let the subject slip. She went off to her school as usual.

  Ronnie descended the stairs a short time later, much earlier than he usually did. He was carefully dressed, and very pale under the faint rouge on his cheeks. For the first time he offered to shop for Anna. “I’m awfully good at little jobs around the house.” When Anna refused, he sat in the kitchen chatting delightfully, and all the time his eyes pleaded with her.

  But Anna was determined, and when Ivor came to her room that evening for the interview, she remained determined. So Ivor suggested Ronnie should leave and he should stay.

  “After all, Anna, I’ve been here months and months, and we’ve never got in each other’s hair before. I agree with you, Ronnie was asking a bit much. But he’s moving out, I promise you.” Anna hesitated, and he pressed her: “And there’s Janet. I’d miss her. And I don’t think I’m saying too much if I think she’d miss me. We saw an awful lot of each other while you were so busy holding your poor friend’s hand during that awful business with her son.”

  Anna gave in. Ronnie left. He made an exhibition of leaving. It was made clear to Anna that she was a bitch for turning him out. (And she felt a bitch.) And it was made clear to Ivor that he had lost his mistress, whose minimum price was a roof over his head. Ivor resented Anna for his loss, and showed it. He sulked.

  But Ivor’s sulking meant that things returned to what they had been before Tommy’s accident. They hardly saw him. He had become again the young man who said good evening and good morning when they met on the stairs. He was out most nights. Then Anna heard that Ronnie had failed to hold his new protector, had installed himself in a small room in a nearby street, and that Ivor was keeping him.

  THE NOTEBOOKS

  [The black notebook now fulfilled its original plan, for both sides had been written on. Under the left side heading, The Source, was written:]

  11th November, 1955

  Today on the pavement a fat domestic London pigeon waddling among the boots and shoes of people hurrying for a bus. A man takes a kick at it, the pigeon lurches into the air, falls forward against a lamppost, lies with its neck stretched out, its beak open. The man stands, bewildered: he had expected the pigeon to fly off. He casts a furtive look around, so as to escape. It is too late, a red-faced virago is already approaching him. “You brute! Kicking a pigeon!” The man’s face is by now also red. He grins from embarrassment and a comical amazement. “They always fly away,” he observes, appealing for justice. The woman shouts: “You’ve killed it—kicking a poor little pigeon!” But the pigeon is not dead, it is stretching out its neck by the lamppost, trying to lift its head, and its wings strive and collapse, again and again. By now there is a small crowd including two boys of about fifteen. They have the sharp watchful faces of the freebooters of the streets, and stand watching, unmoved, chewing gum. Someone says: “Call the R.S.P.C.A.” The woman shouts: “There’d be no need for that if this bully hadn’t kicked the poor thing.” The man hangs about, sheepish, a criminal hated by the crowd. The only people not emotionally involved are the two boys. One remarks to the air: “Prison’s the place for criminals like ’im.” “Yes, yes,” shouts the woman. She is so busy hating the kicker she doesn’t look at the pigeon. “Prison,” says the second boy, “flogging, I’d say.” The woman now sharply examines the boys, and realises they are making fun of her. “Yes, and you too!” she gasps at them, her voice almost squeezed out of her by her anger. “Laughing while a poor little bird suffers.” By now the two boys are in fact grinning, though not in the same shame-faced incredulous way as the villain of the occasion. “Laughing,” she says. “Laughing. You should be flogged. Yes. It’s true.” Meanwhile an efficient frowning man bends over the pigeon, and examines it. He straightens himself and pronounces: “It’s going to die.” He is right: the bird’s eyes are filming, and blood wells from its open beak. And now the woman, forgetting her three objects of hatred, leans forward to look at the bird. Her mouth is slightly open, she has a look of unpleasant curiosity as the bird gasps, writhes its head, then goes limp.

  “It’s dead,” says the efficient man.

  The villain, recovering himself, says apologetically, but clearly determined to have no nonsense: “I’m sorry, but it was an accident. I’ve never seen a pigeon before that didn’t move out of the way.”

  We all look with disapproval at this hardened kicker of pigeons.

  “An accident!” says the woman. “An accident!”

  But now the crowd is dissolving. The efficient man picks up the dead bird, but that’s a mistake, for now he doesn’t know what to do with it. The kicker moves off, but the woman goes after him, saying: “What’s your name and address? I’m going to have you prosecuted.” The man says, annoyed: “Oh, don’t make such a mountain out of a molehill.” She says: “I suppose you call murdering a poor little bird a molehill.” “Well, it isn’t a mountain, murder isn’t a mountain,” observes one of the fifteen-year-olds, who stands grinning with his hands in his jacket pockets. His friend takes it up, sagaciously: “You’re right. Molehills is murder, but mountains isn’t.” “That’s right,” says the first, “when’s a pigeon a mountain? When it’s a molehill.” The woman turns on them, and the villain thankfully makes his escape, looking incredibly guilty, despite himself. The woman is trying to find the right words of abuse for the two boys, but now the efficient man stands holding the corpse, and looking helpless, and one of the boys asks derisively: “You going to make pigeon pie, mister?” “You cheek me and I’ll call the police,” the efficient one says promptly. The woman is delighted, and says: “That’s right, that’s right, they should have been called long ago.” One of the boys lets out a long, incredulous, jeering, admiring whistle. “That’s the ticket,” he says, “call the coppers. They’ll put you down for stealing a public pigeon, mister!” The two go off, rolling with laughter, but fast as they can without losing face, because the police have been mentioned.

  The angry woman, the efficient man, the corpse, and a few bystanders remain. The man looks around, sees a rubbish receptacle on the lamppost, and moves forward to drop the dead bird into it. But the woman intercepts him, grasps the pigeon. “Give it to me,” she says, her voice suffused with tenderness. “I’ll bury the poor little bird in my window-box.” The efficient man thankfully hurries off. She is left, looking down with disgust at the thick blood dropping from the beak of the pigeon.

  12th November

  Last night I dreamed of the pigeon. It reminded me of something, I didn’t know what. In my dream I was fighti
ng to remember. Yet when I woke up I knew what it was—an incident from the Mashopi Hotel week-ends. I haven’t thought of it for years, yet now it is clear and detailed. I am again exasperated because my brain contains so much that is locked up and unreachable, unless, by a stroke of luck, there is an incident like yesterday’s. It must have been one of the intermediate week-ends, not the climacteric last week-end, for we were still on good terms with the Boothbys. I remember Mrs Boothby coming into the dinning-room with a .22 rifle at breakfast and saying to our group: “Can anyone of you shoot?” Paul said, taking the rifle: “My expensive education has not failed to include the niceties of grouse and pheasant murder.” “Oh, nothing so fancy like that,” said Mrs Boothby. “There are grouse and pheasant about, but not too many. Mr Boothby mentioned he fancied a pigeon pie. He used to take out a gun now and then, but he’s lost the figure for it, so I thought if you could oblige…?”

  Paul was handling the weapon quizzically. He finally said: “Well, I’d never thought of shooting birds with a rifle, but if Mr Boothby can do it, so can I.”

  “It’s not hard,” said Mrs Boothby, as usual letting herself be taken in by the polite surface of Paul’s manner. “There’s a small vlei down there between the kopjes that’s full of pigeons. You let them settle and just pick them off.”

  “It’s not sporting,” said Jimmy, owlish.

  “My God, it’s not sporting!” cried Paul, playing up, clutching at his brow with one hand and holding the rifle away from him with the other.

  Mrs Boothby was not sure whether to take him seriously, but she explained: “It’s fair enough. Don’t shoot unless you’re sure of killing, and then where’s the harm?”

  “She’s right,” said Jimmy to Paul.

  “You’re right,” said Paul to Mrs Boothby. “Dead right. We’ll do it. How many pigeons for Host Boothby’s pigeon pie?”

  “There’s not much use with less than six, but if you can get enough I can make pigeon pie for you as well. It’d make a change.”