good behaviour left. Because if
she’d done what she shouldn’t have done, and made love with Jacko in the fields – then maybe she would have got pregnant, and maybe they would have been glad to let her go and
marry him and have a life of her own. Or if Jacko had refused to marry her, and they’d turned her out – at least somehow, somewhere, she’d have had a life of her own, and a baby
to love. Instead of nothing.
But I don’t think she would ever have thought it didn’t matter what she did. Or that it could have been right to grab what she wanted for herself. Did she really stay with Ellen all
that time out of filial duty?
Yes. There was no question in her mind. Not out of love. She hated Ellen. But she knew what she ought to do. And she had never been taught it was a virtue to put your own needs first. She
believed the opposite; that it was a vice, selfish.
Thur. 13
I have been lying in bed luxuriously smelling the sheets. I don’t know how she’s done it in February, but her sheets smell as if they’ve been dried outside.
They smell of sunshine.
‘Lying in bed luxuriously.’ I am outside the pale. A woman who has left her children.
My children have left me. Ruth and Vi have left me, and the twins aren’t old enough to choose.
The twins need you.
No – the twins need someone. And they are of an age, and a cuteness, to arouse that protectiveness in anyone. The last person they need is me, mother of Ruth and Vi. ‘Where’s
smother?’ One of their giggly girly jokes.
That’s enough.
Alice Clough. Trapped in that crushing routine of housework, the awful lists of tasks to be done and each day renewing them. Because we eat today doesn’t mean we don’t need to eat
tomorrow. In fact not eating today could, eventually, be the solution to tomorrow – starve ’em long enough and they’ll never eat again. (Does she make jokes, this woman who
abandons children?)
She was set against it, and it wore her out. She hated the chores: soaking, washing, wringing, hanging up to dry; removing the clothes, stiff and bent from their positions on the clothes horse;
folding, ironing, piling away. Cooking little messes of easily digestible slop, broth and scrambled eggs, and then the dishes to scour. Sweeping the floor and scrubbing the floor, disinfecting the
bedpan, cleaning the toilet. Pushing back the tide of overwhelming dirt and chaos for a day, a week –
But now her efforts are forgotten. Her windows are streaked with dirt, mice and spiders scuttle in her cupboards, the heaps of freshly laundered clothes are rags. On dusty shelves there stand a
few pots of fermenting jam. And the mouths that consumed the food are dead.
What if she’d taken pleasure in the scent of freshly laundered sheets? A woman taking pleasure in woman’s work; preparing, preserving, waiting. Penelope and Sleeping Beauty,
Cinderella, Ophelia, Snow White all waited: for rescue, for marriage, for their men to return from battles, adventures, and changing the world. Their virtues are passive: patience, chastity,
fidelity. Waiting. We all wait. But in the waiting –
Alice sits in the garden top-and-tailing gooseberries to make jam for the summer fair. The sun is shining and her bare arms are hot. She itches her nose with her arm and feels the heat and smell
of sun on skin. Her fingers touch the fat rounds of hairy gooseberry flesh. There is a heap of dark gooseberry tops like spiders and curved green tails the length of eyelashes, in the empty basket
between her knees. To her left a half-full basket of red-green gooseberries; to her right, a shiny tin colander where the prepared fruit is mounting up. The farmer’s wife comes up the lane
and calls hello to her. She leans on the wall and asks after Ellen’s health. They discuss the weather. She watches Alice and asks if she’ll be making blackcurrant this year as well?
‘That blackcurrant of yours I got last year was lovely. Too good for toast. I put a bit in a
she’d done what she shouldn’t have done, and made love with Jacko in the fields – then maybe she would have got pregnant, and maybe they would have been glad to let her go and
marry him and have a life of her own. Or if Jacko had refused to marry her, and they’d turned her out – at least somehow, somewhere, she’d have had a life of her own, and a baby
to love. Instead of nothing.
But I don’t think she would ever have thought it didn’t matter what she did. Or that it could have been right to grab what she wanted for herself. Did she really stay with Ellen all
that time out of filial duty?
Yes. There was no question in her mind. Not out of love. She hated Ellen. But she knew what she ought to do. And she had never been taught it was a virtue to put your own needs first. She
believed the opposite; that it was a vice, selfish.
Thur. 13
I have been lying in bed luxuriously smelling the sheets. I don’t know how she’s done it in February, but her sheets smell as if they’ve been dried outside.
They smell of sunshine.
‘Lying in bed luxuriously.’ I am outside the pale. A woman who has left her children.
My children have left me. Ruth and Vi have left me, and the twins aren’t old enough to choose.
The twins need you.
No – the twins need someone. And they are of an age, and a cuteness, to arouse that protectiveness in anyone. The last person they need is me, mother of Ruth and Vi. ‘Where’s
smother?’ One of their giggly girly jokes.
That’s enough.
Alice Clough. Trapped in that crushing routine of housework, the awful lists of tasks to be done and each day renewing them. Because we eat today doesn’t mean we don’t need to eat
tomorrow. In fact not eating today could, eventually, be the solution to tomorrow – starve ’em long enough and they’ll never eat again. (Does she make jokes, this woman who
abandons children?)
She was set against it, and it wore her out. She hated the chores: soaking, washing, wringing, hanging up to dry; removing the clothes, stiff and bent from their positions on the clothes horse;
folding, ironing, piling away. Cooking little messes of easily digestible slop, broth and scrambled eggs, and then the dishes to scour. Sweeping the floor and scrubbing the floor, disinfecting the
bedpan, cleaning the toilet. Pushing back the tide of overwhelming dirt and chaos for a day, a week –
But now her efforts are forgotten. Her windows are streaked with dirt, mice and spiders scuttle in her cupboards, the heaps of freshly laundered clothes are rags. On dusty shelves there stand a
few pots of fermenting jam. And the mouths that consumed the food are dead.
What if she’d taken pleasure in the scent of freshly laundered sheets? A woman taking pleasure in woman’s work; preparing, preserving, waiting. Penelope and Sleeping Beauty,
Cinderella, Ophelia, Snow White all waited: for rescue, for marriage, for their men to return from battles, adventures, and changing the world. Their virtues are passive: patience, chastity,
fidelity. Waiting. We all wait. But in the waiting –
Alice sits in the garden top-and-tailing gooseberries to make jam for the summer fair. The sun is shining and her bare arms are hot. She itches her nose with her arm and feels the heat and smell
of sun on skin. Her fingers touch the fat rounds of hairy gooseberry flesh. There is a heap of dark gooseberry tops like spiders and curved green tails the length of eyelashes, in the empty basket
between her knees. To her left a half-full basket of red-green gooseberries; to her right, a shiny tin colander where the prepared fruit is mounting up. The farmer’s wife comes up the lane
and calls hello to her. She leans on the wall and asks after Ellen’s health. They discuss the weather. She watches Alice and asks if she’ll be making blackcurrant this year as well?
‘That blackcurrant of yours I got last year was lovely. Too good for toast. I put a bit in a
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