Distracted Academic (and Wife)

Oxford, 1963
Joyce Brightstone ignored the alarm clock the first time it went off, and buried her head under the duvet again. However, by the third time her husband had hit snooze, seemingly without waking, she gave him a firm kick.
“Huh? S’matter, s’not even light…”
She sighed and opened the curtains with a firm yank, wishing they had enough money to buy new ones. The current, floral ones hardly kept out any light, and were starting to smell. Next door, Sebastian, their one year-old son, started to wail.
“C’mon, Mark. Up,” she ordered, and went to get Sebastian.
It couldn’t possibly be, but… It was undeniably morning. Mark had an unpleasant sensation of something hard and sharp sticking into his cheek. He felt his heart sink- a book. A collection of critical essays on Sheridan, which he was meant to be reading for his thesis. He must have fallen asleep reading it again. Rubbing the dent on his cheek, he stumbled through to the kitchen. He felt the icy linoleum Too late, he remembered he had forgotten his slippers. His feet would never warm up now.
Joyce was carefully spooning porridge into Sebastian’s mouth with her right hand, but despite he best efforts, most of it went down his front. She was trying to eat toast with her other hand, but kept having to put it down to wipe Sebastian.
“Good morning, dear,” she said without looking up. “What’ve you done to your cheek?”
“Slept on another book,” grumbled Mark.
“Really? What’s it about?” she seemed quite unruffled by this calamity.
“About getting my post grad, so I can get a decent job, and we can move out of this pokey little flat and-”
Joyce rolled her eyes at him. “I meant the book. What was it about?” she asked.
“Why would you care?” demanded Mark. Joyce said nothing, stung into silence. She thought fiercely of the scribbled manuscript in the airing cupboard. Just one more chapter, then she could make copies to send off to publishers. She could be a writer, even if she couldn’t get a place at a fancy university!
Sebastian wailed again, porridge dribbling down his chin. Wordlessly, Joyce picked him up and carried him to the bathroom to change.
Swallowing the last of his tea, Mark returned to the bedroom. He dressed himself as best he could, as he couldn’t find his socks. “Joyce! Joyce! Where’re my socks?”
“I found them in the teapot!” came the muffled reply from the bathroom.
“What were my wretched socks doing in the teapot?” he demanded grumpily.
Joyce stuck her head around the door. “You tell me,” she said, and dropped the sodden socks on the bed.
Mark groaned. “Y’mean to say you don’t normally look in the teapot before you add the hot water?”
Joyce shrugged. “I don’t normally put my socks in the teapot,” she pointed out. “You’ve got marmalade on your tie.”
He swore loudly.
“Mark, I won’t have you swearing with Sebastian in the flat. I don’t want him picking up bad habits.”
He repeated exactly what he had said. “It’s my flat,” he declared, “and I shall say what I like in it. God knows, I can’t anywhere else. There’s a point- what did Sheridan have to say about free speech…”
Joyce knew what happened when he was in this sort of mood. He’d get himself to the College Library under automatic pilot. Thank goodness for small mercies.
Joyce looked in the mirror before she started to get dressed. She winced and looked away again. She had seen an old, frumpy woman in a disintegrating polyester nightdress and worn slippers, with a battered woollen dressing gown. The radio in the kitchen began to blare the news:
…“ The time is eight o’clock on Thursday the twelfth March, and here is the news…”
The twelfth of March. Happy fourth Wedding Anniversary, Joyce thought bitterly. He’d forgotten. Again.
She sighed again, and reached for her skirt.
She had barely finished dressing when she heard a squall from the other bedroom. Sebastian. Fetching him from the other room, she took her novel out of the airing cupboard. A good place to hide it, a woman’s place, where no self-respecting man would think of looking. In her little stash, her inner sanctum, her own place in her own home, Joyce had also hidden a geriatric typewriter, about fifty years old. She had picked it up second hand. Typing made everything look so much more professional, although, since the machine was so ancient, the keys had a tendency to stick, and were hard to press down. As for any mistakes, all she could do was blot them out with “xxxxx”, which gave them a slightly censored look.
Ping! The typewriter did make a very satisfying noise as she reached the end of each line. Brring! Hold on, she hadn’t reached the end of the line… The doorbell! Joyce hurriedly hid her illicit treasures in the airing cupboard again, although she had no time to clamber up to reach the top shelf.
“Coming! I’m coming!” she called as the doorbell got more insistent. She opened it, out of breath, and sighed with relief. “Mary! I’d forgotten you were coming,” she smiled.
Mary Jasons (formerly Shoane), one of her oldest friends, stood on the doorstep, a small toddler on her waist. She had, Joyce now remembered, arranged to come over at 9.00. “Come in, come in!”
Mary winced as she set her daughter down. “Oof! You really are getting to heavy for that, Katie,” she told her.
Katie smiled. “Mama up!” she said firmly.
Mary shook her head. “No, my love. Joyce, you are so lucky Sebastian hasn’t got to this stage yet.”
Joyce bit her lip and put the kettle on. At least Katie was sleeping through the night.
Throughout the hour of stilted conversation, as they talked of children, clothes and daytime television, Joyce felt more and more as if she was speaking to a stranger. She was not part of this brainless, fluffy slipper-wearing world. What had got into Mary?
The hour passed slowly, but finally Mary left, with promises to meet up again. Joyce took out her horde again, and began to type like a woman possessed. I have to get out of here, she thought. I can’t go on.
The words flowed out of her fingers faster than her fingers could type, and it was not until she had completely exhausted her flow that she dared stop.
She felt like she had when she had given birth to Sebastian: Completely drained, but a feeling of complete euphoria at having created something so beautiful. But unlike Sebastian, this was all her own, not half Mark’s.
She lugged the heavy typewriter back to its hiding place, then reached for the housekeeping jar. She’d think of a way to get through the week without it later. She counted ten shillings and a threepenny bit, hesitated, then swept the lot into her purse. Mark could always be persuaded that he hadn’t given her this week’s housekeeping money.
Joyce got plenty of funny looks during the short walk back to the flat, with a tottering pile of copies, and, slightly less conspicuous, a dozen envelopes and a book of stamps. She packaged up the copies with trembling hands, addressed them neatly, and added a copied letter requesting publication in each. Then it was another trip to the post office, and a sense of mixed excitement and nerves. All she could do was wait. And start on the next one…
Six Months Later
There were only two of the twelve letters left open. She had had nine polite refusals, and one suggestion that she was wasting her time. One of the remainder was from a house notorious for refusing to publish forward-thinking works, into which category Joyce’s definitely fell. She picked up the other, and opened it: It suggested using a male pen name for publication, which it was willing to provide. Joyce sniffed, and ripped it up. What was the point of a novel honouring a Suffragette, if it was written by a man? She was acutely aware that she had just torn up her only hope at publication. A tear dropped on the envelope as she reached for the last letter. Dear Mrs. Brightstone, we regret to inform you…
Dear Mrs. Brightstone, we would be very interested in publishing The Way Things Have To Be…