After the Stroke (12 page)

When the house was built Rene had the oak trees cut down, so now there are only a few tall indigenous pitch pines with their Japanese look, but lots of bushes have grown up and her great success this year was a plot of wild flower mixed seeds, which make delightful tiny bunches.

I rested and rested, watched the news, read the papers, free of the mail which took me nearly three hours to read yesterday when I got home.

Sunday, September 7

Dinner at dockside yesterday with Mary Tozer, whom I have not seen for more than a year, and a Lutheran deaconess friend of hers who was delightful—such a peaceful time in the evening light. But I feel very tired and last night had again the dull pain in my heart which does not interest the cardiologists. My voice is somehow diminished now and I suppose I am in a panic about the poetry readings. For a time I really did feel a source of creative energy flowing back, but now everything I do feels immensely exhausting—even arranging two vases of flowers this morning.

In a recent card Jean Anderson sent me, Compton MacKenzie is quoted as saying, “the only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domestic animal.” Hear, hear!

Shall I cut off dead heads in the garden this afternoon or come up here and struggle? By struggle I mean try to get the reading “Ordeals and Epiphanies” put together.

Monday, September 8

In the middle of the night, thinking about an intelligent but damning review of
The Magnificent Spinster
which has just come out in England, I thought out quite happily what I myself ask of a novel—the depth, complexity and reality of life
as it is lived on the page.
Not the “real life” but the author's vision of life which has been turned into art.

I have come to see that
The Magnificent Spinster
is a flawed novel, and not my best, though it is not a total failure. Of course the big hurdle was to write about Anne Thorp—Jane Reid in the novel—without probing in a way that could offend relatives and friends. [For that reason I decided that she must be seen from outside not from inside, and also that I would imagine as little as possible, and base everything, every episode in the novel on actuality, the actuality I learned through what she had herself told me or what I knew myself through our long years of friendship from the time I was her pupil in the seventh grade at Shady Hill School until she died in her eighties. But I created Cam and her friend, Cam to be the point of view from which the whole novel is told. Cam, not May Sarton, is thus the writer of the novel and this has confused some readers. The time came when I feared Cam was taking the novel over and it was then I made a decisive mistake to eliminate her as a character in the final part on the island, which should have been a land of apotheosis of Jane Reid seen through Cam's eyes.

There is also, I am aware, a temporary dimming out when Jane Reid goes to Germany after World War II. I simply did not know enough about it, and finally used a few of Anne Thorp's own letters from that period of her life.

The reviewers blame me for a “goody goody” character who is not believable. And they blame me because she is apparently asexual. But surely I did suggest that she could be passionately if not sexually involved. Reader, that is possible, notably with the character called Marian Chase. And selfless, loving and exuberant Anne Thorp was. I did not invent the goodness.

I am not sorry I wrote this novel, the last big novel I imagine I shall manage to write. It was very hard work indeed and twice I nearly gave it up. But I am rather detached from it now and look forward to trying a novel not based on a real person and to give my imagination free rein.]

There is too much on my plate these days and I feel rather shaky, but I did go out yesterday and cut dead heads, so that at least is done for the moment. It is very dry out there so I did a little watering, especially of the miniature roses inside the terrace wall which have done very well this year, unlike most things. Perhaps the wet June was what they needed.

Pierrot abandoned me last night and I missed him, but he arrived full of love at five and immediately lay on his back in the crook of my arm purring very loudly. That got me up at six, as I must try to do now every day, but even then time oozes away like water in sand. I changed the cat pan in my room, watered the plant window, had my breakfast with Tamas as usual, got dressed, made the bed and by then it was nearly eight.

I have nearly finished Jean Harris's book. At first I disliked something about it. She is persuasive about the trial itself, where witnesses perjured themselves, changed their evidence overnight, but somehow I felt she had chosen unwisely never to show feeling, to keep the cold, slightly superior “front” which the prosecuting attorney took full advantage of—and which must have entered the jury's decision: “guilty.” The part about the Bedford jail and what jail is like is terrifying and very well done. The guards untrained and too young, some only eighteen, are insensitive and brutal, but so are many of the women. Harris's plea that something be done about the babies born to women in prison—some follow-up, some care be shown about them, is the most moving thing in the book. Here for once her compassion and true feeling as a woman with children is allowed through.

Wednesday, September 10

Where did yesterday go? Mostly in going to banks to take money out of savings for the income taxes due on the fourteenth, then deposit it at Ocean National, then make out checks. All this induces panic in me, as all money matters do. With my father it was pure poison. At the very word money his face grew red! After that depletion of taxes paid, I called Norton to ask what the half-yearly royalties would be. Not quite as much as I hoped, but the first half, which included sales on
Spinster
, were more than I have ever received and certainly kept panic at bay during nine months of not earning.

In the afternoon I flung aside everything I
should
have done and went out into the glorious autumnal light and air. But the garden is bone dry so I first put a revolving hose on the terrace, and while it refreshed the right side I cut back the Japanese iris in their charming recess—it had been a fountain's basin—on the other side. Pierrot was fascinated by the arc of water being sprinkled about but only after a while rushed through to where I was. Then he looked darling with the long green swords of iris crossing his whiteness. He watched me with his intent blue eyes, only now and then put out a soft paw to play, but luckily did not attack as the shears were dangerous. Then, suddenly, he bolted across the lawn, such a white bundle of lightning speed, leaped over the wall, rushed back across the terrace, and that was that.

At just before six Pat Keen called to say that
Nicholas Nickleby
would close September twenty-eighth instead of November sixteenth. They were to have opened in Washington, after that in Philadelphia and perhaps Boston, so it is a blow. [For the actors it is a bitter end to an exhausting tour. Every actor in it plays more than one part except Nicholas who is on stage the whole time. The constant changing, often with no time to go back to a dressing room, and the perilous construction of the staging itself, innumerable stairs to go up and down made it a physically as well as mentally demanding show. The only good thing about this abrupt closing is that the cast may have been close to breakdown from sheer exhaustion.

I have always said that the theater is an angel with its feet tied to a bag of gold, and in New York the bag of gold gets heavier and heavier. It was poignant to read Frank Rich in the
New York Times
on the last night:

As there are few more uncomfortable experiences, in life or the theater, than being asked for love by someone you don't love, so there are few sadder ones, again in either venue, than the abrupt end of a love affair that only just began. That was the particular melancholy lurking in the shadows of the premature closing performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company's latest “Nicholas Nickleby.” Though this revival had opened on Broadway to enthusiastic reviews, it expired a month before the scheduled end of its limited run.

Exactly why the show's producers had opened the marathon piece in the dog days of August—a time when no one wants to spend eight hours watching anything, let alone at $100 a ticket—is a mystery. That decision guaranteed failure by ensuring sparse houses during the make-or-break opening weeks. On the final Sunday, though, the theater was packed—in spite of the fact that, with typical haplessness, the closing coincided with Yom Kippur as well as with playoff games in both baseball leagues.

It was about 11:15 at night when the prevailing party atmosphere gave way to intimate farewells. When Newman Noggs, the beneficent alcoholic clerk, had his final reunion with Nicholas, he choked up on the line, “Nick, you don't know what I feel today.” To which Michael Siberry, an incomparably openhearted Nicholas, replied almost inaudibly, “I think I do.”

When the positively last “Nicholas Nickleby” ended, the audience pelted the stage with flowers. The company, disbanding after a year on the road, cried profusely.

If ever there was an audience eager to hug a cast, it was the one at the Broadhurst this late Sunday night. But the actors were to have their own private party. As the theatergoers filed out for home, a table laden with plastic champagne glasses appeared on the empty stage that only minutes earlier had been, as the stage-struck orphan Smike put it, “ablaze with light and finery.” A more lonely looking table I've never seen.]

Thursday, September 11

Yesterday was a brilliant day but I never did get out to the garden. Once a year Polly Tompkins, who is writing the biography of the great South African white dissenter, Helen Joseph, and her friend Mollie Shannon come and take me out to lunch. I suggested we have a glass of champagne here first and a quiet talk, and then go to the York Harbor Inn, to sit on the enclosed porch looking out to sea. We have met once a year for five years at least. How I love these traditions! They give a long sweep to life somehow, an extended rhythm. Of course we talked about South Africa—and also about the problems of being a biographer—while Polly and I ate mussels Provencal and Mollie a seafood sandwich and a cup of soup. It all felt comfortable and fun.

But I had had to do the errands, get the mail, etc. before they came, so the morning fled away and I had about a half hour's rest and then made the
carbonnade Flamande
I have not made for months. When I came down from my rest I found a headless tiny baby rabbit and an agonized dead mouse which had been laid on Tamas's outdoor bed—an offering from Pierrot perhaps? I buried them under pine needles back of the garage where garden refuse piles up to make compost. It was hard and sad.

After I had the
carbonnade
simmering on the stove I went down cellar with garbage—Diane will get it tomorrow—and lo and behold, there was water on the cement floor. I finally found the source, which seemed to be a small tap over the hot water heater, but it was too stiff for me to turn off. I called Fabrizio and he promised to send someone. Two men came today a little after I had taken Tamas to be washed. Meanwhile Raymond had come chugging out to the field on his ancient machine to cut the weeds. Mary-Leigh's machine is too big to attack them as they are on a rocky knoll. I was awfully happy to see him and asked him to come in after he was through and turn the water off. He did it although the water still dripped from the joint just above the tap. So; no hot water till it's fixed. Finally when I went to bed the light in my dressing room went out and it is too high for me to reach!

What did not get done was watering the terrace border and I must do it this afternoon.

Life in the country seemed rather agitated yesterday!

I took Tamas down to the Blue Ribbon at eight this morning and brought the mail home. One very moving letter and two
tomes
, pages and pages which I wonder whether I have the energy to read. Royalties on the half year from Russell and Volkening. Of the paperback novels
The Small Room
seems to be doing best.

Friday, September 12

The disorder around me is frightful—two big boxes of letters, two or three hundred that should be answered but never will be, things piled up to be sorted out—a state of total confusion and inadequacy on my part. Yet I live with it because the alternative might be worse, a compulsive “keeping things in order” that would shut out life—and what is life now?

Yesterday I was watering the parched annuals—what a satisfaction! Then, the little border inside the terrace where white impatiens, lobelia and the miniature roses have done very well this year. Next to planting bulbs, I love watering—giving a plant a drink is surely one of life's best moments.

Life now is also lying in bed last night after a hot windy day, with the door open on the porch as well as one window—and air streaming through almost as though it were water, in constant cooling motion.

And life now is taking Tamas to be washed, feeding the ravenous Pierrot. It is writing to the few people I really want to write to—and shutting out the rest. So the disorder is all right, better than getting sunk and overwhelmed. These are good days because I am succeeding in quelling the compulsive responder in me. I say that and know that in a moment I shall be answering a twenty-page letter of self-revelation from a seventy-year-old woman whom I do not know. Ah yes, but the disorder is also the order, the natural order of making choices that are meaningful. So I can say that I'm a bad housekeeper but I think a good friend.

Saturday, September 13

Poor Tamas fell on his way upstairs for breakfast at six-thirty this morning and I had to half carry and half push him to the top which was scary. So I guess the days when we can have that intimate time are numbered. It makes me awfully sad.

But it is a glorious morning after two heavy rainstorms yesterday—very much needed. Now the air feels washed, dry and clear, and the ocean that dark autumnal blue. Perhaps I can garden this afternoon.