Diary
What then is to be said about the single- woman condition? Most notable is that others feel one should not be in it, especially when one's children have flown the nest. 'Why don't you marry somebody? Or if you can't face that, why don't you at least live with somebody?' I do my best to explain that I now see myself as I like to imagine Edith Sitwell, allowing friends to call upon her, but equally ready to show them to the door. True, my forehead is not so high nor my nose so long as Edith Sitwell's, but nonetheless I think of her in this land of my adoption, even though in my own instance I never lived alone until seven years ago. I do not suggest that I would have chosen the road down which I started at that time. But when at last it forked and I found myself on a happier Path, I also discovered I had got used to living alone. 'But it's not good for you,' I am told. 'You're cut out to make some Man a marvellous home.' Human beings, I discover, are strangely reluctant to believe that someone who has led one sort of life might later choose to live a different way. I am enjoying my new manifestation. It has made me selfish. I used to be adept at adapting to the manifold priorities of the family. I suffered no resentment that my social life was shaped by whether my nearest and dearest would enjoy the com- pany. But as there now is no man on whom I dote, why on earth should I relinquish the side benefits of a situation forced on me? This liberty to do what I like when I like is symbolised by my South Kensington flat, much of which has been recently redeco- rated. Of course I care that old friends and new ones find it attractive, that it provides a good ambiance for people I interview for my work. But the point is that it is not designed to accommodate the sometimes conflicting interests of husband, wife, chil- dren, cat: it is designed to accommodate me. 'But you ought to have compan- ionship,' I am told. The most companion- able of friends and I, concluding a long evening of food and drink, returned to my flat where I rang for a taxi for him. When I went back into the sitting-room, he was fast asleep on the sofa. What appalled me was the fact that he had set his shoes neatly beside it and arranged two cushions com- fortably beneath his head: in short, he intended to stay. The thought of waking in the night to find a companion in my bedroom was not what freaked me out: it was the fact that when I went down the hall in the morning to make my breakfast, I was going to encounter him. I shook him until his teeth rattled and at last broke into his slumber, got him into his shoes and out the front door. Why should others' view that We should all be couples compel me in the morning to bump into somebody/some
body I do not love? And anyhow, if one has already experienced more than one's share of love, is it not simplest to avoid comparisons? An exceptionally glamorous woman friend has arrived at my station by a different route. She found little to enjoy in either of her marriages. And she quite likes promiscuity. But the principle reason she offers for rejecting a live-in partner is 'that terrible noise, my dear'. It is not the electric shaver to which she refers: it is the outbursts from the other pillow — what Britain's most distinguished socialist essayist has described as 'the wilder snores of Love'.
T do not intend to catalogue differences 'between men and women per se, though I never cease to marvel at the extraordin- ary things men say to each other — 'You look much older since we last met.' What happened to the rest of your hair?' When did you get so fat?' — things no woman would dream of saying to another. True, we have been known to say things about each other. But when a woman I know was taxed for doing just that, she replied plaintively: 'If I cannot talk about my friends behind their backs, who can I talk about?' Here I shall confine myself to a few comparisons of single men and single women who are heterosexually inclined. I generalise. A lot of widowers and divor- cés do seem to find the unmarried state pretty intolerable, e.g. the public figure currently on his own who was earlier this week quoted as saying: 'A lot of people are actually happier unhappily married than by themselves.' Presumably there is a correla- tion with the fact that — unless they're under 40 — these men have not kept house, whereas most widows and divorcees are more than familiar with housekeeping. Males often seem less self-contained in other ways, requiring company to distract their thoughts from unpleasantness like compulsory retirement and death. They have a positive fixation on the date when they must retire. Females, apart from the few who have single-mindedly pursued a career, have roles that are not curtailed peremptorily by the calendar. And though war leads some men to adapt to the idea of dying, most women start in their late teens or twenties to do this as a matter of course. T used to take a slightly dim view of Tony 1saying to his young step-daughters: 'Best thing to do about a first marriage is limit the damage as much as possible and get through the thing as fast as you can. The only successful marriages are the second ones.' Be that as it may, the fact is that almost everyone I know is still married to the same spouse. Who makes up the 331/2 per cent of Britons who, we keep reading, are divorced or will be? Even at the cocktail party they are not much in evi- dence, though I must acknowledge that my experience of cocktail parties is fairly limited. I've never liked all that standing up. Nor am I greatly gifted at cocktail party conversation. A fortnight ago I found myself vertically crushed in a kitchen among an untold number of mankind imbibing intoxicants. On entering the room I had noted whisky crates lined along a wall, and so when I, who am tall, found myself craning up at a skinny stranger who looked down from 14 inches above me, I began the conversation by asking: 'Why are you standing on one of the crates?' I'm not,' he replied. I then peered down through the two-inch cap between us and saw that his shoes were indisputably planted on the floor. Flushing with re- morse for my gaucherie to a painfully overgrown man, I prised my way out of the room and sped from the house to have a leisurely drive alone until due at my ultimate destination where I could sit down to dinner. It is, incidentally, from dinner hosts and hostesses that I have dicovered there is a name for the new me: The Spare Woman. Whether I shall always be enter- tained by this condition, I cannot say, but for now its novelty beguiles me.
Before I kiss these columns goodbye, I wish to propose a new game for Spectator readers. In your experience, what quality associated with enjoyment can in fact produce acute disenjoyment? I nominate jocularity. Sometimes it is in- tended to camouflage innate dullness, other times to cloak — or try to — meanness, cynicism, cunning. A jocular person lives opposite a house I visit in the West Country. Once upon a time this person decided that the jocular naval officer was the type to emulate, and at some point the role became the man himself, however unsuitable. Disclosure of others' frailties, imputation of motives, all are wreathed in jocularity. The stillness of an autumn afternoon is shattered by shouts like rock- ets exploding as this person spots wayfarers and rushes forth to engage them: 'Ho ho ho ho ho,' he bellows irrelevantly, head thrown back in imitation of someone en- joying himself. He directs my mind invari- ably and bleakly to Selfridge's Santa Claus, escaped from the window where it sea- sonally sits, run amok. Of all addictions unremitting jocularity is surely the most frightful. Your turn.
Susan Crosland
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