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The white cushioned window sills on which Molly and Anna had so often sat to talk, with the boxes of flowers behind them, the rain or the pale sunshine on the panes, were all that remained the same in this room. It now contained a narrow tidy bed; a table with a straight chair; some conveniently placed shelves. Tommy was learning Braille. And he was teaching himself to write again with an exercise book and a child’s ruler. His writing was quite unlike what it had been: it was large, square and clear, like a child’s. When Molly knocked to come in, he would raise his black-shaded face over the Braille or his writing and say, ‘Come in,’ with the temporarily though courteously granted attention of a man behind a desk in an office.
So Molly, who had refused a part in a play so as to be able to nurse Tommy, went back to her work and acted again. Anna ceased dropping over in the evenings when Molly was out at the theatre, for Tommy said: ‘Anna, you are very kind to come and take pity on me, but I’m not at all bored. I like being alone.’ As he would have said it had he been an ordinary man who chose to prefer solitude. And Anna, who had been trying to get back to her intimacy with Tommy before the accident, and failing: (she felt as if the boy were a stranger she had never known) took him at his word. She literally could not think of anything to say to him. And besides, alone in a room with him, she kept succumbing to waves of pure panic, which she did not understand.
And now Molly rang Anna, no longer from her home, since the telephone was immediately outside Tommy’s room, but from telephone boxes or from the theatre. ‘How is Tommy?’ Anna would ask.
And Molly’s voice, loud and in command again, but with a permanent note of challenging query, of pain defied, would reply: ‘Anna, it’s all so odd I don’t know what to say or do. He just stays in that room, working away, always quiet; and when I can’t stand it another moment I go in, and he looks up and says: “Well mother, and what can I do for you?”’ ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘So naturally I say something silly, like — I thought you might like a cup of tea. Usually he says no, very politely of course, so I go out again. And now he’s learning to make his own tea and coffee. Even to cook.’ ‘He’s handling kettles and things?’ ‘Yes. I’m petrified. I have to go out of the kitchen, because he knows what I am feeling, and he says, Mother, there’s no need to be frightened, I’m not going to burn myself.’ ‘Well Molly, I don’t know what to say.’ (Here there was a silence, because of what they were both afraid to say.) Then Molly went on: ‘And people come up, oh ever so sweet and kind, you know?’ ‘Yes, indeed I do.’ ‘Your poor son, your unfortunate Tommy … I always knew everything was a jungle, but never as clearly as I do now.’ Anna understood this because mutual friends and acquaintances used her as a target for the remarks, on the surface kindly, but concealing malice, which they would have liked to direct at Molly. ‘Of course it was a pity that Molly went off and left the boy for that year.’ ‘I don’t think that had anything to do with it. Besides, she did it after careful thought.’ Or: ‘Of course, there was that broken marriage. It must have affected Tommy more than anyone guessed.’ ‘Oh quite so,’ Anna would say, smiling. ‘And there’s my broken marriage. I do so trust that Janet won’t end up the same way.’ And all the time, while Anna defended Molly, and herself, there was something else, the cause of the panic they both felt, the something they were afraid to say.
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About
The Golden Notebook is a collaboration between if:book London and Apt.
Principal funding by Arts Council England.
HarperCollins, the publisher of The Golden Notebook, digitized the book for us and generously gave permission to reproduce it here in its entirety at no cost.
Additional support from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and New York University
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Philippa Levine December 4th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
I’m still chewing on what the message of blind Tommy fully is, if that makes sense. But in the meanwhile I was struck by the way in which he becomes, with blindness, this rather sinister force who humours “difficult” women — distinct from his father who gets red in the face, or Michael who’s callous, or pretty much most of the other male characters in the book. And of course different from the seeing Tommy with his moods and his rages and his sullenness. I’d love to know how others are reading post-suicide Tommy; I’m really puzzled by him still.
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Naomi Alderman December 5th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Oh yes, Philippa, me too. I’m having such a hard time with Tommy. He started out seeming one of the more sympathetic characters, trying to balance his mother’s and father’s ideologies and wishes for him. I don’t understand, though, what his ‘crack-up’ was about, why he tried to kill himself, what the blindness is supposed to indicate, why he’s suddenly developed these creepy superhuman abilities of empathy and almost mind-reading.
A thought about how he fits into the structure of the book. Like Ivor and Ronnie, might he be an example of the ‘unmanning’ of men? A thing which Anna seems to find more disturbing and even horrific than the ‘manly’ men she’s been disliking throughout the book.
Is he a mental experiment on the part of Lessing? (And therefore perhaps ahead of her time, but also not quite being able to see the future?) Is she trying to imagine what the world would be like if men didn’t have quite their usual male power, and male roles? Ivor is great with Janet; but Anna hates him for it. Tommy is incredibly empathetic (the traditional female role) but Anna finds it creepy.
Even when giving up on old negative roles, roles which have harmed us and trapped us, even then there’s a moment of horror at the unfamiliarity of the new world. Is this what Tommy represents?
I’m reminded of a cartoon from around 1903, showing the House of Commons full of *women*. One looks at this now and thinks “great!”, but at the time the image was so disturbing that it was, without caption or comment, a piece of *anti* Suffragette propaganda. Perhaps this is what Tommy and Ivor and Ronnie are doing in this book. Acknowledging that to a reader in 1962, the idea of a woman going out to work while her gay lodger looked after her child, or of a man being more emotionally ’sensitive’ than a woman would both look very disturbing?
Having said all that, it occurs to me also that Tommy is behaving with Marion exactly as Richard did. Telling her what to think, deciding on the proper place for her. So perhaps he’s really just ‘business as usual’ in the roles of men and women.
In other words, I think I’m still as confused as you about him!
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Harriet Rubin December 9th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Tommy is a fascinating figure. He’s a conscience figure, first poking at the lies and delusions that Anna, Molly, and Richard live for. But now that he’s lost his sight, his presence alone is speaking, the wound speaks, Sphinx like. I wonder if what Lessing is describing through Tommy’s “fate” is what happens when one makes a crusade of one’s wounds. Isn’t the CP also a stigmata; it’s treated as such in these pages. Tommy now is his blindness, as Anna is her vulnerability. Art is pain, Lessing tells us. And isn’t pain a kind of auto erotica?
Public women are so different now, so much less identified with their disabilities, and so warrior like. I heard a bit of gossip the other day. Apparently when Judith Regan, the famous former book publisher, would call her boss Jane Friedman, Jane’s secretary would always ask, “Who is calling,” an unforgivably stupid kind of preening. And then to one-up the secretary and Jane, Judith would say, “It’s the King.” Then they both went about destroying each other, something strong women are able to do with increasing competence. But this is the most unusual thing about Lessing’s characters: they become their sorrows.
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