In Gratitude
Page 25
Mum sometimes gave me the experience of what it was like being with her own mother by blasting me with her terror and anger when my life didn’t fit with hers (getting us late for school by not finding my shoes, something like that). I was always aware, though, that she was being taken over, and that her calmer more solid self was around and loved me. We were always close. Seeing her arms around Louis and Rosie, and the loving words and tenderness she gave them towards the end when she knew she would soon not have many more opportunities, was very painful to witness. However, it also gave me an inkling of her ability to love with a great strength, and how lucky I am for having that. There was certainty in that part of her, and I think her recognition of that helped her to stay alive, and to write.
So now what is left is her books. Doris’s books. Stuff around. Like the multicoloured shawl on the chair in my study, knitted by Mum shortly before her diagnosis. There are photos there taken by Roger, my dad. One with his trainer in the corner of a grey cobbled beach, god knows where, probably in the early eighties. Another, sunnier, of Jewish graves at Kraków which Dad gave to Doris. On the shelf is a pressed leaf with the words ‘For Doris Lessing!’ and then her addition, ‘For Chloe!’ underneath. Doris and Peter’s record player, which once sat on their green living room floor, is now under a pile of photos and albums that need sorting. I don’t remember it ever being used, it must have been for parties long ago. I put on Louis Armstrong during the final year of Doris’s life. Mum and Doris both sat quietly smiling, pulled back to the 1960s for three minutes of ‘Tea for Two’ until Doris waved her hand to signal, ‘enough’, or, ‘too much’. I would have liked it to have gone on and on. I am sentimental. I have a feeling Mum agreed with Doris.
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First published in Great Britain 2016
This paperback edition first published in 2017
© Jenny Diski, 2016
Introduction copyright © Anne Enright 2017
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The material in this book was first published in the London Review of Books, to which the author and publisher are grateful for permission to reproduce it.
p. 11, p. 110: Excerpts from Three Novels by Samuel Beckett. English translation copyright © 1955 by the Estate of Patrick Bowles and the Estate of Samuel Beckett. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.
pp. 25–26, 70–71, 103–104: Excerpts from The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © 1974, Doris Lessing.
p. 141: Excerpt from ‘The Wasteland’, Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot.
Copyright © renewed 1964 by Thomas Stearns Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
p. 150: ‘I too shall cease . . .’ excerpt from The Complete Short Prose: 1929–1989 by Samuel Beckett. Copyright © 1995 by the Estate of Samuel Beckett. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
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p. 150: ‘The cradle rocks . . .’ excerpt from Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House.
p. 171: Excerpt from The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © 2001, Doris Lessing.
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