Diary
Why don't you write about being a single woman?' said my younger daughter; 'everybody's interested in that.' Too obvious at the outset,' I said; 'perhaps I'll write about in my third diary.' Perhaps. Meanwhile, to celebrate my paramount achievement thus far in 1984, I use the selfsame words as Mr Roy Hattersley who, on learning of his first appointment to a Labour government some 17 years ago, rushed out of his front door to greet dinner guests with the cry 'I'm in, I'm in.' After five years' correspondence with British Telecom, I'm in A-D. On the whole I regard ex-directory as an irritating club whose members' vanity requires them to inconvenience others in the interest of Projecting an image of being widely sought. Nonetheless, I joined the club seven years ago when I withdrew from .the world. Two years later when I resumed earning a living, I tried to get out of ex-directory. That's how I discovered that 13ritish Telecom punishes you for presum- ing in the first place to leave its published Pages. However many the written assur- ances that I would re-enter A-D, A-Ds came and went with nary a mention of my name. However often I was told that Operators would now divulge my number, Ito one could wrest it from 142. Ex- directory I had been, and ex-directory I must stay — until the recent A-D: when I turn to the CROs, I shout aloud in triumph 'I'm in, I'm in.'
Despite my return five years ago to earning a living, only in the last 18 months have I returned to the actual land Of the living. I still wake with astonishment to the fact of being curious about the day that lies ahead, and happy. Presumably in reaction to the long absorption in a single subject, I commit myself to as little as Possible, preferring several seven-day holi- days to a single long one. The first such week, late in August, was spent in Balti- more, Maryland, where I was born and bred. Native Britons return from their sojourns in the United States genuinely informed about diverse aspects of that continent (their abiding ignorance of how to pronounce Chicago and Houston not- withstanding). I know little of contempor- ary American sociology. Raised as I was in an extended family, my visits are confined to members of that family.
Day One was in the house of the great-aunt who impressed on my Childhood her distaste for Darwin: whenever she was compelled to accompany me to the zoo, where I invariably made for the monkeys, she would sit bolt upright on the bench outside the monkey house, white-gloved hands folded, dignified in her
sense of insult. This summer she was engaged in moving from a long lived-in house, following on the death of her husband. He was born in New England, and despite decade upon decade of living in the South — for Maryland is the top of Dixieland — the Civil War remained a sore point between him and his southern wife. I found my great-aunt directing two ancient black women in the division of books from her husband's library. Those intended for her new and smaller establishment were heaped in the hall; onto the dining room floor went those to be given away. Atop the former were the volumes on General Robert E. Lee, Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, Stonewall Jackson. Conspicuous among the rejects were Sandburg's Lincoln, Liddell-Hart's Sherman, Benet's John Brown, et al. I chose the best of the Union lepers and stacked them in the pantry to take back to England with me. When I returned from swimming they were gone. 'Why, child,' my great-aunt said, 'I had no idea you wanted those old books on northerners. I thought they were in the pantry by mistake. I had Corabelle put them back on the dining room floor. The charity truck took them away only an hour ago. What a shame.' That night she and I had our one moment of open tension. She scorns air-conditioners. So after I turned out my bedroom lights, I opened the curtains to allow whatever breath of air might stir through Baltimore's atrocious humid heat. With uncanny perception my great-aunt appeared, made her way to the offending window and pulled my curtains tightly shut. 'I must have some air or I shall perish,' I said sharply. 'All right,' she replied, flinging the curtains open again, 'but if a niggra gets in here and rapes both of us, it'll be your fault.' What I find most remarkable is not the 80-odd years of indomitable conviction that her home is encircled by male `niggras' waiting to be incited, but that should the dread act transpire, she would be concerned whose fault it was.
The château in Lot where I spent Week Two is graced by an expatriate English intellectual and his French wife who have skilfully resolved the question of whether guests be permitted to spoil their palates. As we allegedly live in a free society, I react badly to those hosts — like King's College, Cambridge — who decree that I shall not touch alcohol before dinner lest it diminish my sensitivity to the wines brought up from their cellars. I regard my palate as my own affair. In Lot my host offered a pre-prandial dry martini cocktail, the gin already chilled in the fridge so that no ice need dilute it. The bumps on one's tongue stood up with pleasure. But the glasses that he filled once only, offering a further soupcon, were the tiny aperitif vessels one remembers from childhood, and we drank our dry martinis on the hoof in five minutes flat before sitting down to the epicurean's meal. As Epicurus took into account pleasures other than those of the palate, I regard my Lot host as a proper disciple. Less than justice was done to his philosophy, however, on my final night in Lot. For reasons of logistics, I moved from the principal guest room into a single one under the dovecote. I woke to the dark and the sound of untold numbers of feet thundering past my bed. Struggling to grasp whose they might be, I then heard scrabblings in the attic above me, silence for a moment, more mad scrabbling. Bleakly I sussed out that the silence de- noted sharp-toothed jaws occupied with the grain that falls from the dovecote. The horrid racing back and forth commenced anew, then turned into plump thumps bounding down the stairs, slowing down at the large crack under my door, then the rush full tilt past my bed and up the chimney. When a few minutes later the army of feet charged back down my chim- ney and the routine began afresh. I accepted that a sleepless night lay ahead unless I could deal with my squeamishness. Too terrified to put foot on floor, I climbed from my bed to one chair, then another, until I reached the table where my toilet case stood. Though I have broken five years' dependence on sleeping pills, I still carry a couple for contingencies. Maraud- ing rats I place in that category. My final week's holiday (sic) was at the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool. From my bedroom in the Imperial Hotel I watched tram-lights twinkle and waves roll in, and, readers of the Spectator will be glad to learn, my nights' sleep was relatively undis- turbed.
ut all these little jaunts are now behind me, and the new work year begins. Yesterday I had a telephone call from a person who identified himself as the VAT- man. He made an appointment to visit me at my principal place of work, ie, my flat in South Kensington. How long, I asked, would he want to stay? 'Half a day.' And what, I asked, was his name? `Mr Fright.'
Susan Crosland
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