Remembering Anna

‘Of course, she had no friends.’

I had met the two women at Anna’s funeral, and we were sharing a taxi to her house.

‘She only had time for men.’

They were dressed in black shoes, stockings, mink.

I sat quietly; a woman, Anna’s friend, unable to express to these women what it was about her that made me her friend, made my mother (another woman) her friend. I was sure, in my twenties, that she, in her sixties, would have hoards of friends – all beautiful, all brilliant, all mysterious in some ways but open as a child’s picture book in others.

Superficially, Anna and my mother were very different; Anna was elegant, soignée, obsessed by clothes and make-up. She arranged herself elegantly in the space she occupied, stretching out on the leopard print chaise longue, the Rayne shoe swinging from her small foot. My mother dressed all in Navy blue; top, skirt, rope-soled canvas shoes. She seldom sat but strode.

I was twelve when I read Asylum Piece. I knew the author to be a friend of my mother’s but that was unimportant. I still remember the image that held me – a schoolgirl looking through a metal grille, like a prison. I know I should re-read this story, but the image of the girl is enough to haunt me. Now I wonder why? Maybe it represented at the deepest, wordless level, captivity.

When I was thirteen and beginning to take an interest in clothes, I watched like a hawk for the large flat boxes that came from Anna to my mother by post, bound with string and sealing wax, tissue paper thrusting through the sides.

Anna’s letters that accompanied them were always the same – ‘I was forced to buy this. Those saleswomen! Such bullies. I can’t possibly return it, so please wear it for me.’

Anna was an intellectual, my mother was a secret. I was there, but I didn’t know what they talked about - I never asked how they met, because the second thing that drew them close was the death of a son in the war.

Anna bought a plot of land and built a house with large garage doors onto the street. The doors were false- concealing the garden flat where a friend lived. If I shut my eyes I see the house clearly, a white cube half hidden by a miniature jungle garden; spiky pineapple tops pushing through gravel – little sunshine reaching the ground through tangles of ferns and creepers.

To reach Anna’s upper floor one climbed an external staircase to a little porch and the front door.

The cube was cleverly divided to provide a living room, with a hatch through to the kitchen, a dining space, a bathroom and a bedroom with every wall a wardrobe.

When I married, we came to live in London and I saw more of Anna. I took over the task of changing her typewriter ribbon from the man who delivered her bread. She said, ‘I don’t understand why you aren’t bored with just one man. I couldn’t stick them after six months.’ (I had been married about eight years).

She was insulted by being edited and had huge rows with her publisher. I was present at the fierce argument over the use of a nude photograph on the back cover. At odd times she would pull up her skirt and inject her thigh.

Everything was strange, everything was normal.

She had, she said, tried to kill herself many times and was furious that something (a light left on and spotted during daytime?) always happened so she was discovered and carted off to St Charles hospital.

Her letter to me from the hospital:

“The new woman sharing my ward died yesterday which was a bit depressing. Of course I’m glad to be alone for the moment but the night before was pretty ghastly, being so near. Awful noises, oxygen cylinder not working, etc. Awful shame really, as she was only 33 with two young children. Why couldn’t it have been me instead? It quite upset me – I thought I was far too tough to mind a thing like that. Must be because I’ve been ill. Also visited by about twenty surgeons. Rather unnerving (to me, I mean).

“P.S. Quite incredible, the way they talked to that woman, (the nurses, I mean): ‘There’s my sweetie, my darling brave girl etc.’ If anyone called me ‘pet’ while I was dying I think I’d revive enough to bash them over the head, wouldn’t you?”

- Rose Knox Peebles

September 2025