flat, one now an actress, one a civil servant, and one like me doing research, and at Cambridge we had recounted for a laugh our most intimate defeats. I started off now on the woman in green, and they began to listen with a tender interest: but I could not be bothered to tell them because as soon as I started to speak I realized that I had not taken it in, I had not got it into a state fit for anecdote, as Lydia had not arranged her miscarriage sufficiently for fiction. I did not find out what it had meant to me until after the birth of my own child: though part of it I made out sooner, as I left their flat for home. I saw that from now on I, like that woman, was going to have to ask for help, and from strangers too: I who could not even ask for love or friendship.
As I walked home, I thought seriously for the first time about what I was going to do, with a child in my arms and work to do. So averse was I to help of any kind that I could not put up with any form of domestic assistance: I could not pay anyone to do dirty work that I could do myself. I had my upbringing to thank for this attitude, though I know it is not technically good socialism, and my parents themselves were not so ludicrously obstinate about such details; but it has always been my fault to be too scrupulous. It is not virtue, it is not morality: by my scruples I was denying some woman four bob an hour for as many hours as it would have taken to rescue that large flat from the squalor into which it was forever threatening to sink. With a baby, though, I could not afford such scruples. Also, I would have to go to the library to work, and one cannot take babies to libraries. Something would have to be done, plans would have to be made. I could feel that my own personal morality was threatened: I was going to have to do things that I couldn't do. Not things that were wrong, nothing as dramatic as that, but things that were against the grain of my nature.
When I got home, I sat down with
The Times,
and started to go through the Domestic Advertisements. I was bewildered by the social connotations of phrases like Mother's Help, Au Pair girl, Nanny, Housekeeper. It seemed that I neither wanted nor could afford any of these things: I made myself look at the problem and was just concluding that the most and least I could put up with would be a child minder for so many hours per day per week, when the doorbell rang. I got up to answer it: sometimes, from the unease with which I rose to answer such unexpected calls, I would wonder if I had so thoroughly abandoned all expectation of ever seeing George again. Occasionally, even now, I would picture to myself scenes in which he would arrive on my doorstep and greet me with phrases like "Rosamund, I've tried to live without you and I can't" or "Rosamund, I've loved you ever since I set eyes on you": occasionally, with shame, I would go through the whole romantic paraphernalia of meetings at the ends of long corridors, of embraces at the top of wide staircases, of passionate encounters at Oxford Circus. I would tell myself in reproof that these images were born of fear, not love, and so they doubtless were. Anyway, when I answered the door this time it was Lydia Reynolds.
"I
am
sorry to trouble you," she said, when I let her in,
"but I've just had a series of minor disasters and the long and the short of it is that I've got to ask you if you can put me up for the night. You will say no, won't you, if it's not convenient?"
"It's perfectly convenient," I said as we went and sat down in the sitting room. "Tell me about the disasters."
"I couldn't possibly refrain from telling you about the disasters," said Lydia, and launched into them forthwith. It seemed that the girl whose flat she had been sharing had been rejoined by her husband, who had been absent for some months, and had reclaimed his right to residence: the wife had been reluctant to part with Lydia and her rent, as she placed no reliance on her husband's
As I walked home, I thought seriously for the first time about what I was going to do, with a child in my arms and work to do. So averse was I to help of any kind that I could not put up with any form of domestic assistance: I could not pay anyone to do dirty work that I could do myself. I had my upbringing to thank for this attitude, though I know it is not technically good socialism, and my parents themselves were not so ludicrously obstinate about such details; but it has always been my fault to be too scrupulous. It is not virtue, it is not morality: by my scruples I was denying some woman four bob an hour for as many hours as it would have taken to rescue that large flat from the squalor into which it was forever threatening to sink. With a baby, though, I could not afford such scruples. Also, I would have to go to the library to work, and one cannot take babies to libraries. Something would have to be done, plans would have to be made. I could feel that my own personal morality was threatened: I was going to have to do things that I couldn't do. Not things that were wrong, nothing as dramatic as that, but things that were against the grain of my nature.
When I got home, I sat down with
The Times,
and started to go through the Domestic Advertisements. I was bewildered by the social connotations of phrases like Mother's Help, Au Pair girl, Nanny, Housekeeper. It seemed that I neither wanted nor could afford any of these things: I made myself look at the problem and was just concluding that the most and least I could put up with would be a child minder for so many hours per day per week, when the doorbell rang. I got up to answer it: sometimes, from the unease with which I rose to answer such unexpected calls, I would wonder if I had so thoroughly abandoned all expectation of ever seeing George again. Occasionally, even now, I would picture to myself scenes in which he would arrive on my doorstep and greet me with phrases like "Rosamund, I've tried to live without you and I can't" or "Rosamund, I've loved you ever since I set eyes on you": occasionally, with shame, I would go through the whole romantic paraphernalia of meetings at the ends of long corridors, of embraces at the top of wide staircases, of passionate encounters at Oxford Circus. I would tell myself in reproof that these images were born of fear, not love, and so they doubtless were. Anyway, when I answered the door this time it was Lydia Reynolds.
"I
am
sorry to trouble you," she said, when I let her in,
"but I've just had a series of minor disasters and the long and the short of it is that I've got to ask you if you can put me up for the night. You will say no, won't you, if it's not convenient?"
"It's perfectly convenient," I said as we went and sat down in the sitting room. "Tell me about the disasters."
"I couldn't possibly refrain from telling you about the disasters," said Lydia, and launched into them forthwith. It seemed that the girl whose flat she had been sharing had been rejoined by her husband, who had been absent for some months, and had reclaimed his right to residence: the wife had been reluctant to part with Lydia and her rent, as she placed no reliance on her husband's
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