Chapter 10. Free Women 5

Molly Gets Married and Anna Has an Affair

When Janet first asked her mother if she could go to boarding-school, Anna was reluctant. She hated everything boarding-schools stood for. Having made enquiries about various ‘progressive’ schools, she talked to Janet again; but meanwhile the little girl had brought home a friend of hers, already at a conventional boarding-school, to help persuade her mother. The two children, bright-eyed and apprehensive that Anna might refuse, chattered about uniforms, dormitories, school outings and so on; and Anna understood that a ‘progressive’ school was just what Janet did not want. She was saying, in fact, ‘I want to be ordinary, I don’t want to be like you.’ She had taken a look at the world of disorder, experiment, where people lived from day to day, like balls perpetually jigging on the top of jets of prancing water; keeping themselves open for any new feeling or adventure, and had decided it was not for her. Anna said: ‘Janet, do you realize how different it will be from anything you’ve ever known? It means going for walks in crocodiles, like soldiers, and looking like everyone else, and doing things regularly at certain times. If you’re not careful you’re going to come out of it like a processed pea, just like everyone else.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ said the thirteen-year-old, smiling. The smile said: I know you hate all that, but why should I? ‘It will be a conflict for you.’ ‘I don’t think it will,’ said Janet, suddenly sullen, reacting away from the idea that she could ever accept her mother’s way of life enough to be in conflict over it.

Anna understood, when Janet had gone to school, how much she had depended on the discipline which having a child had enforced on her - getting up at a certain time in the morning, going to bed soon enough not to be tired because of having to get up early, arranging regular meals, organizing her moods so as not to upset the child.

She was alone in the enormous flat. She should move to a smaller one. She did not want to let rooms again, the idea of another experience like the one with Ronnie and Ivor frightened her. And it frightened her that it frightened her - what was happening to her, that she shrank from the complications of people, shrank from being involved? It was a betrayal of what she felt she ought to be. She compromised: she would stay in the flat another year; she would let a room; she would look around for a suitable job.