I’m quite alright when I get going. I put a record on and clean and wipe and soak and scrub and can almost even enjoy it. I stand back (yes, I really do this, Tilde!) and admire my washing hanging on the line because it makes me feel I have accomplished something. The problem with housework, generally speaking, is that it feels so meaningless. No one notices it or praises it. And no one really cares what sort of a house we live in anyway. No one comes to see us, except Ornella. So then, for whom am I dusting and sponging and polishing? For Jo, who comes in the door at eleven, takes a cursory look at the place, and falls asleep on the bed until morning, still dressed? No. For the neighbours? The only neighbour who speaks to me is Mrs Mathers next door and she is in an old woman’s unravelling world and completely disregarding of small details like dust, mould, rubbish. Were I a better woman, I would be over at hers doing her housework as well as my own. (That is what you would do, I bet!)

Perhaps I will become the sort of woman other women mutter about, who doesn’t clean her house sufficiently and comes to the letterbox in a dirty dressing-gown. I will let my hedges grow over the footpath and won’t rake up my leaves. Furthermore, I will learn an off-putting squawk I will deliver when passersby look at me too curiously.

At least I have now the school run to keep me tidy. It is structure of a sort.

It seems this letter has become one long, unseemly lament. Well, I hope you find in it something to make you chuckle.

Think of me as you chuckle, won’t you, and write soon.

Love Veda x

† † †

13 DEC 1966

Dear Tilde,

Edith got hold of a book by an American woman, that has made a great storm in America in recent years, and looks at all the things that have been bothering me about my life. It discusses the trap that has been laid for us women who spend our days alone in our houses with only our chores and our children to keep us company. I will send you my copy if you are interested—it is much underlined and annotated in the margins, but still readable I hope. (Though I am not sure I am quite ready to give it up … it has become something like a friend.)

You will consider me on my way to becoming some kind of female chauvinist. I am no such thing. But it’s interesting to see that perhaps I am not completely mad, that other women have a similar sense of frustration and loneliness.

These are all things I would not mention to anyone else, so keep them under your hat, won’t you?

I keep thinking of my fourth form English teacher. ‘Genius!’ she wrote, on my essay about Shakespeare’s sonnets. ‘You have a gift, Veda!’