45

The day I tried to kill myself was a Friday.

In the morning I was feeling reasonable and fairly cheerful. I went to the city centre and stepped about and admired my reflection in shop windows. But when I got back I suddenly felt tired. I felt heavy and I wanted to close my eyes. I went to bed and slept.

When I awoke I felt refreshed. I got up and dressed myself. While I was dressing I thought, ‘There is no purpose in being alive, but it is interesting to be alive and it is pleasant to be putting on these clothes.’

It was late afternoon. For some reason I went downstairs.

In the hallway I found Philip. He was wearing his overcoat. He was standing like a man who has gone to fetch something and forgotten what it is he intended to fetch.

He said, ‘Marguerite isn’t here. She wasn’t there when I went to pick her up. She’s been back here and taken her things. She’s left me a note.’ He took a folded sheet of notepaper from his pocket and handed it to me to give proof. It was only when I noticed the blank look on his face that had re­placed the usual smugness that I realised that he was telling me that Marguerite had left him.

I unfolded the notepaper.

Dear Philip, I have left you and I am not coming back. I am going away with Frank Cracknell. There is nothing to be said. Marguerite

‘It’s very short,’ I said.

He took the piece of paper out of my hand and put it back in his pocket—perhaps he wanted it to show to his mother. He went down the hallway and out of the front door.

I stood in the hallway. I did not seem able to think.

Then I went and tried the door to the Stephensons’ living-room. It was open. I went through into the kitchen. The clothes horse was leaning against the wall, but there were no clothes on it. I went back into the living-room and started searching the drawers and cupboards. In the top drawer of the sideboard I found a pair of stockings. They were an old pair. There was a large hole in one of them. I got out of my shoes and unfastened the stockings I was wearing and took them off. I put on Marguerite’s stockings. They were short for me. I had to lengthen my suspenders. The hole was at the side of the right calf. I went on searching, hoping to find other clothes that she had left behind, but I could not find anything else in the living-room.

I went up the hallway in stocking feet. The door to the Stephensons’ bedroom was locked. I went back to the living-room and got the poker.

The bedroom door resisted me. I lost my temper. I kept splintering the wood but not doing anything to unfasten the lock. In the end I managed to get the poker between the door and the frame and lever on it. The lock broke. I went in. The wardrobe doors were open and the drawers of the dressing table were pulled out. She had not left any cosmetics behind on the dressing table top. I looked in the drawers. There were no clothes. But at the bottom of one of the drawers I found some rose petals. I gathered them up with my fingers. I put them into my hair.

Lying at the bottom of the wardrobe was an old dress of blue worsted. I took it out and held it up. The zip at the side had been taken out. There were loops for a belt, but the belt was missing. I took off the skirt and sweater I was wearing. I got the blue dress over my head and struggled into it. When I had it on I found that one of the sleeves was torn. They were three-quarter sleeves and the one on the left was ripped along the seam. It hung off my arm. I remembered seeing a safety-pin at the bottom of one of the dressing-table drawers. I found the safety-pin and pinned the sleeve together.

The dress did not fit me very well. It was too short, so that my slip showed all the way round. And the side gaped open where the zip had been.

I went back to the living-room and picked up one of the stockings I had taken off. I tied it round my waist as a belt. Then I got into my shoes.

I stood facing the books in the bookcase.

‘Now children, I am your new teacher. My name is Mrs Cracknell. Do you like my dress? You can tell that I am Mrs Cracknell because this is Mrs Cracknell’s dress. I always wear women’s clothes, because I am a woman. Always remember, children, that it is wrong and wicked not to wear the right clothes. You can get shot for not wearing the right clothes. There are boys’ clothes for boys and girls’ clothes for girls. That is how it should be: two of everything. Everything is divided into two—down the middle. Consider the black horse and the white. I’m the girl who rides round the circus ring with a foot on each, and for that one needs two legs. I remember that Nero used to go to the circus with his wife Sabina. A man who had studied philosophy remarked that it would have been well if Nero’s father had had such a wife. Sabina was married in a pink wedding dress. I would prefer white. I do not know whether Sabina’s father was invited to the wedding. Actually, Mr Cracknell is not at all like the Emperor Nero. Nero was like Humpty-Dumpty. Impene­trability—and it looks as though I’ll have to stop here all the rest of my life. But today I am not like Alice. Today I want to travel at great speed through the sky. I want to stream over all the land like a great empty angel. And the people would look up and cry out of a great wonder. And the joke would be that I would be an empty angel; an empty white angel, meaning nothing, an emptiness in the sky, my long hair stream­ing and my great white wings beating, all meaning nothing. Men work hard all the day to make meaning out of nonsense, but nonsense is the truth. How can they think their way to being women? How can they think their way to existence? It is impossible. One can only exist by loving and being loved. Without love one cannot understand. One’s head gets split in two. I cannot understand how men can live and women can go mad. A woman should not go mad; she has her clothes. The black horse and the white are galloping at full speed in opposite directions. It is difficult to keep a foot on each. Do you wonder I gave it up and became a schoolteacher? Actually, I’m really too pretty to be a schoolteacher, but it was either this or dragging myself about on a stage. I chose school-teaching. At least you don’t have to be showing people your knickers. Knickers must be kept secret, or else they lose their power to hold things together. My father, the Emperor Charlemagne, who rules over both France and Germany, would not approve of my showing people my knickers. It is by no means private to show people your knickers. I like being private. The grave’s a fine and private place. I think that I would like to be in a grave—like Juliet—shut in with the door locked. Putting a shilling in a gas meter is like putting a penny in a lavatory door. You get in and shut the door after you and then you’re private. My mother’s dead. She’s been dead all my life. She makes quite a fetish of being dead. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt—a penny to get into the ladies’ lavatory. We did Macbeth at school. I wanted to be Lady Macbeth, but I didn’t tell anybody. Lady Macbeth doesn’t have to show her knickers. But, if I’d been Lady Macbeth, I wouldn’t have been allowed to wear any knickers. They hadn’t got to Method acting at the grammar school. I wouldn’t have felt I was a woman without knickers. I’d rather be Juliet than Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is all heavy curtain material and no knickers. . . .’

I could hear myself talking. It went on and on. It was not easy to stop it. When I did manage to stop it I said to myself, ‘It’s happened. You’ve gone round the bend. Look at the mess you’ve made in here!’

I started putting things back in the drawers and cupboards.

When I had put everything back and made the room tidy I took off Marguerite’s stockings and rolled them up and put them back in the drawer where I had found them. I untied my own stocking from around my waist, but then I could not find the other one. It had been lying on the floor where I had taken it off. I thought that I must have put it away in one of the drawers. It did not matter.

I went back to the bedroom and took off the blue dress and put on my skirt and sweater. Without stockings my suspenders were dangling.

I inspected the door. There was nothing I could do to repair the damage I had made with the poker.

The poker was lying on the floor near the dressing table. I went across to pick it up and remembered putting the rose petals in my hair. I brushed them out with my hand. I picked up the poker and took it back to the living-room.

I went upstairs to my room and locked the door behind me.

I did not like the feeling of my suspenders dangling. I found a pair of stockings and put them on.

Now I was going to gas myself.

It was Friday. June would have gone home to Scarborough.

The room would have to be sealed as well as possible.

One of the top windows was open a few inches. I pulled it shut. I took the mat that was by my bed and laid it against the bottom of the door.

I felt behind the gas meter where I kept a pile of shillings.

There were no shillings.

I did not want to go out to the shops.

Aspirins.

I had a bottle of aspirins. I found it. It was half full.

I shook the tablets out into my hand and set them on the table to count them. I set them in rows of five. When I had them all out there were nine rows of five and a row of three. That was forty-eight tablets.

I went and turned the gas fire on but did not light it. I came back to the table and held a cupped hand at the edge and pushed the tablets into it with the other hand. I went to the sink and put the tablets on the draining board. The gas was hissing from the gas fire. I found a glass and filled it with water. Then I began swallowing the tablets, one and then the next and then the next. I thought it was a humourless way to kill oneself. It took some time. Before I had swallowed the last tablet there was a poisonous smell of gas.

I went to the bed. I sat on the bed and took my shoes off. I got into bed and pulled the covers up. I had to do some tugging and pulling at my skirt to make myself comfortable. I closed my eyes.

I was glad that I had not left a note. It did not matter that they would find out about me. It did not matter what they thought. All the clothes I was wearing were clean.

It might be a long time before they broke into the room and found me dead. My eyes would be open. It did not matter.

There would be an inquest.

‘Suicide while of unsound sex.’

I would be dead. Mine had not been in any way an impor­tant life.

‘A white slip with a six-panelled skirt with matching panties; a white mini-slip with matching briefs for wearing under suits; a white bra with contour cups in satin-covered forma with wired undercups and wide-set shoulder straps; a suspender belt in white taffeta; a white waist-length girdle with a front panel of lace and satin; a white half-slip trimmed with slotted lace. . . .’

I became unconscious.