Doris Lessing
OUR FRIEND JUDITH
I stopped inviting Judith to meet people when a
Canadian woman remarked, with the satisfied fervor of one
who has at last pinned a label on a rare specimen: "She is,
of course, one of your typical English spinsters."
This was a few weeks after an American sociologist,
having elicited from Judith the facts that she was forty-ish,
unmarried, and living alone, had inquired of me: "I suppose
she has given up?" "Given up what?" I asked; and the sub–
sequent discussion was unrewarding.
Judith did not easily come to parties. She would come
after pressure, not so much--one felt-to do one a favor, but
in order to correct what she believed to
be
a defect in her
character. "I really ought to enjoy meeting new people more
than I do," she said once. We reverted to an earlier pattern of
our friendship: odd evenings together, an occasional visit to
the cinema, or she would telephone to say: "I'm on my way
past you to the British Museum. Would you care for a cup of
coffee with me? I have twenty minutes to spare."
It
is characteristic of Judith that the word spinster, used
of her, provoked fascinated speculation about other people.
There are my aunts, for instance: aged seventy-odd, both
unmarried, one an ex-missionary from China, one a retired
matron of a famous London hospital. These two old ladies
live together under the shadow of the Cathedral in a country
town. They devote much time to the Church, to
good
causes,
to letter writing with friends all over the world, to the grand-
