by David Plante
Jean laughed. She said, “Dreams mean the opposite of what they say. That woman was me. You think I’m giving you something in the dream, but, deep down, you feel I’m taking something from you.”
The autobiography was coming together in a rough way. The first part, which dealt with her life in Dominica, was at least in a completed draft. The second part, her life in England and France, had big holes.
In the black file which Jean had with her were yellow scraps of earlier stories; we went through them, and some of these, because they were her life, we transferred to the second part of the autobiography. Among the scraps was an old brown-covered notebook, half the pages torn out. Jean took it out.
“I don’t know,” she said, “if this should go in. I wrote it, a kind of diary, a long time ago, when I was living in a room above a pub called the Ropemaker’s Arms in Maidstone.”
“Why were you living in a room above a pub in Maidstone?”
She made a face. “Max was in Maidstone prison. I have always been attracted, I suppose, to thieves and saints, not that they were thieves exactly, and they weren’t saints. I didn’t know, and I don’t know now, why my first and third husbands were sent to prison. I don’t know much about my husbands, and I don’t know much about my parents. Perhaps I wasn’t curious. My daughter once told me my first husband, Jean, was in the French Intelligence. I didn’t know. Max was married before, but whether he had any children or not I don’t know—perhaps a boy or girl. Men used to come to the house. I didn’t like them, especially one. I didn’t know what Max did with them. He went to prison. Enough. I’ve enough letters with the heading HM PRISON. I visited him. One prisoner said to me, ‘It’s all right for people like me, we should be here, but not for people like him.’ The warder with the one leg was nice. Max got a bit of money in prison and he saved it to buy me chocolates. The whole thing was so beastly I try not to think about it. I know the real villain, that one man I especially couldn’t stand, went free. Max never recovered.” She held the notebook out to me. “Anyway, I wrote this in my room. I called it ‘Death Before the Fact.’ Do you know that? It’s from St. Theresa. In my room were two black elephants with long curving tusks on the mantel, and from the window I saw laundry and cabbage stumps. Will you read it to me? You’ll see how long ago I wrote it, because the handwriting is clear.”
I read. Jean had put herself on trial. She saw herself, defenseless, answering the questions of a judge who condemned her to a simple fate: to be unhappy, to write, and to die.
She asked me if I would take the notebook home and type it out. I did.
On the margins of the pages torn out were words, and these I typed out too, though I decided I would not tell her I had done so.
My dear . . . I’ve just . . . worrying . . . to help . . . a little . . . to me . . . know . . . Leslie . . . called . . . Edward . . . with . . . why they . . . took such . . . will be free . . . We are supposed . . . London . . . money . . . that I . . . lives . . . for a little . . . I can’t . . . them . . . me . . . all . . . I didn’t want . . . went . . . because . . . down . . . Hell . . . I do . . . place . . . the . . . tell . . . was . . . just before Max . . . approached by . . . a radio play . . . and I would . . . from . . . I can’t . . . well . . . going . . . here . . . person . . . But I fear . . . hopeless . . . do so . . . looking . . . live . . . My Dear Edward . . . The enclosed . . . Will you . . . I have . . . you please . . . is likely . . . careful . . . but . . . I . . . you . . . allowance . . . I gave . . . worried . . . living . . . where . . . I get 36/6 a . . . Admiralty . . . from the P . . . from . . . that is . . . but . . . for the . . . 30/ . . . as . . . by . . . I . . . by . . . out . . . So I’m going to . . . I married . . . know because . . . Brenda . . . to be . . . to get . . . it . . . died I . . . sincerely wish I . . . So I’ll . . . oh how I wish . . . of waiting . . . I . . . been . . . stresses . . . to see . . . and leave . . . approve of them . . . safeguards . . . that my . . . only be . . . think . . . I’m afraid the . . . gone on . . . I . . . after . . . kind things . . . so badly . . . to feel . . . else . . . has . . . dread . . . year . . . looking . . . be fair . . . you’d paid . . . lasted . . . friendly . . . after hearing . . . still . . . Strauss . . . As for the other . . . home that . . . a looney-bin . . . that at all . . . Brenda and . . . you must . . . necessary . . . You . . . who . . . I . . . myself . . . do . . . myself . . . after . . . A . . . only . . . he . . . them . . . Did you, either of you . . .
When I came back and read the typed-out diary to her, she thought she wouldn’t include it in the autobiography. I insisted she must. She said, “All right, if you cut certain passages.” I cut them, but include here only this:
Do you wish to write about what has been happening to you?
No, not yet.
You realize that you must?
I doubt whether it is as important as all that. Still I will write it, but not today.
Softly, softly, cathee monkey.
I asked, guiltily, I suppose, as I had not only written about her in my diary, I had now stolen from her, “Do you mind people writing about you?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I know people will try to uncover everything about me after I die to write it all down.”
“Well,” I said, “you won’t know.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
•
The February days continued the January days of dark grey. Jean was not well. She didn’t know what to do. Perhaps she should return to her cottage in Devon where a nurse would take care of her, as she was utterly incapable of taking care of herself. The second part of the autobiography was still scrappy towards the end. I promised I would go down to Devon in the spring to help her; she smiled at me as she might smile distantly on all promises.
On my last visit, Jean was in bed. She had a plaster on her forehead covering a bruise she’d got from falling. She looked frail.
She said, “I want to tell you about an experience I had once.” It was as if she had been thinking of it for a long time and had finally decided to tell me.
I asked, “Do you want me to write it down?”
“No,” she said.
She said, “I’ve tried to write it, but have never been able to. It shows how inadequate words are. In Paris, some close friends suggested and paid for a holiday for me in the South of France. I went with another girl. This was in the Thirties. We went to Théoule, near Cannes. One day, alone, I had a bathe in the sea, then lunch. As I knew the bus to Cannes, where I wanted to go to shop, was leaving soon, I ate my lunch quickly, and I didn’t have any wine. But I missed the bus, and thought, oh well, I’ll walk, it isn’t a long way. At La Napoule I felt tired and left the road to sit by the sea. You could do that in those days. I can’t describe what happened. No words, no words, there are no words for it, except perhaps, in a still unknown language. I felt a certainty of joy, and terrific, terrific happiness, not only for me, but for everyone. I knew that the end would be joy. I felt, too, a part of the sea, the sun, the wind. I don’t know how long I was there, but after a while I got up, went back to the coast road, and walked to Cannes. I went to a café for coffee. There was a big tree outside the café. I sat and I looked about and I thought: Why do I hate people? They’re not hateful. When I got back to Théoule I of course said nothing to my friend, but my happiness for everyone lasted, lasted, perhaps three or four days.”
I picked up my pencil and paper.
“Are you going to write it down?” she asked.
“Only if you want me to,” I said.
“If you want to,” she said, and she repeated it again as I wrote. Afterward, she looked out of the dark window on which rain was falling, and said, “Is there anything else I have to tell you? No, I don’t think so. Anyway, none of the rest matters.”
I stared at her.
She said, suddenly, “David, I think you’ve just seen my ghost.”
I asked, “Do you believe in a life after death?”
She smiled. “Well, how can one be sure
unless one has died? But I think there must be something after. You see, we have such longings, such great longings, they can’t be for nothing.”
“But you don’t have any definite faith?”
“Oh, whatever faith I have I find expressed in man-made things, and to me the greatest expressions of faith I’ve ever seen are Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace.”
“Do you see your books as an expression of faith?”
“My books aren’t important,” she said. “Writing is. But my books aren’t.”
Before I left, she said, “Give me the file, will you, honey?”
I put it on the bed beside her and with her spectacles she looked through the few scraps of old paper left in it. She took out a sheet.
“This is what I want to give you,” she said and handed me the sheet. “It’s the outline of a novel I wanted to write called Wedding in the Carib Quarter. I won’t write it. Maybe you will.”
I asked, “Will you sign it?”
She wrote on it, in large shaky letters that looked like Arabic script: “Think about it. It is very important.” She gave it to me.
She said, “Someone once told me that. I won’t tell you who.”
3
I went to Devon in May to see her. I didn’t stay in Jean’s garden shed, but with her only close friend, a retired teacher, in the next village. The teacher’s great heroes were Karl Marx and Groucho Marx; in the past she had had arguments with Jean about politics. She said Jean was not liked in the village because, years before, she had told some little boys she would cut them into pieces, which gave her the reputation of being a witch. “But she’s suffering now from senile persecution. We can’t judge Jean from the way she’s been these past years. It’d be like judging the whole of Hardy’s life from his last years.”
In rain, I went to Jean’s cottage before noon. The cottage, behind a high hedge, had been constructed during the war for evacuees. Jean came slowly to the door. As I kissed her, she said, “I should have rung you to tell you not to come.” I said, “It doesn’t matter if we don’t work on the book. It’s lovely to see you.” “Oh, me!” she said. Then she looked down at the passage floor.
We sat in her little lounge.
She said, “It’s all gone wrong, the whole country. Rain, rain, weeping for England. How I hate this country. How I hate this cottage.”
I always wondered when she spoke like this if I should agree with her, if what she wanted from me was to agree with her; and I wondered, too, if I should try to cheer her up, if that’s what she wanted.
I said, “But it’s a pretty cottage.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, “pretty, but I want out, I want out, I want to take a pill and die.” She dropped her head against the back of the chair, her mouth open, her eyes staring, as if she suddenly had died; then she shook her head, looked about the room, and said, “Where is our lunch?”
Her nurse prepared Jean’s favourite lunch, curry and rice, which we ate at a little kitchen table. We drank very little.
Back in the lounge, Jean in a chair and I on a stool by her, I started to read straight through the autobiography, a lot of which I had memorized from so many readings.
“‘Smile, please,’ the man said, ‘not quite so serious.’”
Jean stopped me. She said, “Now tell me honestly, David. Is this worth doing? I don’t think it is. It’s no good. It’s dull. It has no life in it. And even if it did, what does it matter? Who cares?”
I said, “Jean, you told me writing is very important, and I tell myself that when I think, What does it matter?”
“I never understand you and your writing,” she said. “I mean, I cannot imagine your writing coming from you. You’re so, well, outgoing, and your writing is so, well, inward.”
I didn’t ask her to explain. I said, “Come on, let’s do some work.”
She looked at the floor for a while, then said, “Read me a little.”
I read. She asked me to cut words, sentences, paragraphs. She sighed often and quickly became tired; her head sank more and more. I left before it was dark.
The following day she couldn’t work. She raged, and in her rages she shouted, “It means nothing, it means nothing, writing, nothing, nothing!”
I stayed only a short time.
The retired schoolteacher said, “Go back to London. You really can’t do much for Jean now.”
I had been asked by a friend of Jean’s in London, who had bought and had reupholstered in yellow a chaise longue Jean had specially wanted for her sitting room, to get a cheque from Jean to pay for it; when the next day I did ask Jean for this, she shouted, “I have no money! I have none! They all want to take money from me!” I suddenly thought: She may think I have come for money. I helped her make out the cheque, worried that she might later forget what it had been for, and accuse me of asking for it for myself. I sensed, while I was with her, the small trust she had had in me turn to suspicion; and I imagined I began to act suspiciously in trying to act large-spirited.
Without drink, Jean raged. Who cared about writing? Who? And why should anyone care, because it didn’t matter.
I sat by her and said nothing.
She said, “David, you’re young. You have your life ahead of you. Don’t listen to what I say. Don’t listen to me, I’ll depress you.”
That afternoon I left her to return to London. I had an hour in Exeter before my train and I went to the cathedral. I sat in a chapel. I felt very low. I knew that in my outer bright believing heart I had been false to Jean, because in my inner dark unbelieving heart I had loved her as a writer. I thought, But she might forgive me my cheap literary curiosity, she might even condone it; she might, perhaps, tell me that my literary interest, not only in her but in the world, was the deepest possible interest. And then it came to me that Jean was dead, because she was dead as a writer.
•
A year after Jean’s death in 1979, I was at a table in a little glassed-in room in the Special Collections Department in the Library of the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, looking through a selection of her papers. She had sold them to the Library—what little she had left, as she once told me she’d thrown out piles of manuscripts and typescripts—and I looked to find what I hadn’t seen before.
In a large grey file box I found two notebooks. They were torn and smudged and covered with cigarette burns. The handwriting was round, looped, large—her early writing.
One notebook had on its back cover a stamp: Cartoleria Pistoj, Firenze. I wondered if Jean had ever been to Florence and bought it there.
I read:
you know its awful bad I just live for the time when I can have a drink & cheer myself up a bit
there’s lots to that
Well he said to me like that get out he said Get out where I said—I don’t care where he said but get out
Go on the friend said—her eyes were wandering
I looked at him I said If I was to tell you what I think of you I would blow you out of the window I said You can go to hell I said.
You cant go somewhere when you’re there already I said
There was no punctuation. It wasn’t clear who was talking. Was this, I wondered, a bit of diary or note-taking for fiction?
The second student’s notebook had a map of Britain on the inside cover. At one end were pages written in her earlier handwriting, and, the notebook turned upside down and over, at the other end were pages written in her later, feeble hand. Between the two were blank pages.
I found many bits of poems, ballads, patois from Dominica. And in both notebooks I found, over and over, the first line of what she had hoped would be her autobiography. “Smile please the man said not quite so serious.”
Then I read this, which I do not believe she used in any of her fiction:
This vision came when I was walking along in the hot sun thinking then not thinking & being intensely happy for I existed no longer. but still the trees & the soft wind that smells
of flowers & the sea & I was the wind the trees the sea the warm earth & I left behind a prison a horrible dream of prison & my happiness impossible to write of it active laughing with joy—Do you see now oh then it was just a dream of prison
& got to La Napoule
Yes of course what a fool I was worrying like that the certainty
I don’t know how long this state of bliss lasted then suddenly I was back in myself but the happiness was not quite gone & I walked into Cannes had a coffee at that café caught the bus back still happier than ever in my life though just the shadow the remembrance of the other happiness
This happened walking along the road from Théoule to Cannes one hot day in August about two to three o’clock I was quite well & I had had no wine at lunch as I was late for the bus to Cannes & hurrying up and I think I caught the one o’clock bus
. . . Only through books sometimes I can get it
SONIA
ON THE evening I was rung up by Jean’s editor and told that Jean had died in hospital in Exeter, Sonia Orwell came to dinner. When she arrived, I said, “It’ll be a sad evening,” because I imagined Sonia, who was perhaps closer to Jean than anyone else, would have been the first to hear. But she hadn’t heard, and, in the passage where we stood, she stared at me for a long while. “May I use your telephone?” she asked. She rang different people; she wanted to find out what had happened and what she could do, and there was a dry gravity in her voice.
I went with Sonia and other friends by train to Exeter for the cremation. There were few of us in the chapel. Four men in badly fitting dark suits brought in a tiny white casket, placed it on a platform, and stood back; a minister read a passage from the Bible about “death in life,” and a curtain closed about the casket.
Later, in a working men’s pub by the train station, we all talked. Sonia said, “We didn’t know what a rare bird had made its nest in our tree.”
