In her book Appointment with Yesterday Celia Fremlin explores the position of older women in the society of the 1970s England focusing on the disintegration of one’s mind and paranoia in the domestic setting shown through the lenses of relationships, abandonment, guilt and using the institution of marriage as a currency to enter the higher social status, to seek validation of one’s self-worth from the outside world or to comply with the widely accepted social norms regardless whether there is love or not in the marriage. This is also an intense study of quiet people like the main female protagonist of the novel who do not seek attention of the crowd or the limelight. They are often being misunderstood, reduced to the simplistic assumptions and shaped by other people’s personal or social and cultural judgments, biases, and insecurities and by refusal to accept the complexity of their reality.
Published in 1972, Appointment with Yesterday tells a story of Candida Harris, a 42-year-old woman we meet when in the middle of the cold evening she is running away from her flat in South London. As the story unfolds, we learn more about Candida and the new identity she assumes as Milly Barnes.
Initially, Milly was known as a “nurse Harris” before marrying her first husband Julian Waggett, a young successful surgeon whose professional achievements were mainly due to his wife’s sacrifices of her own personal ambitions and goals. In Milly’s view, that marriage was supposed to last a lifetime; the life with a townhouse, a country house, luxury holidays, social gatherings, and frequent dinner parties. For a long time, she had been content with her position as a supportive and dutiful wife who was always there for her husband and was not allowed to have her own ambitions in terms of personal and professional development. Her thinking and attitude to life was very much a reflection of the times she lived in and societal norms and structures that were considered as appropriate at that time. Was this really Milly’s view of herself or was she conditioned by the combination of her own life circumstances and social rules commonly accepted in the 1970s England? We might not find the answer to this question. One can deduce from Fremlin’s portrayal of the main protagonist that Milly’s ambition was to create a ‘happy’ and supportive relationship and fulfilling family life – Milly genuinely believed in this being her role in life and was very much in love with her first husband without any desire for herself to be in the limelight and accepting her husband being in the centre of attention of an adoring crowd. With the passage of years, these dinner parties became larger, so did Julian’s selfish understanding of his own position in the society.
“She [Milly] has known right from the start that what Julian wanted (…) was a wife who would serve as a foil for his own brilliance (…); a woman who never, ever, in any circumstances, would draw attention away from him and on to herself. (…) Julian began to feel the need of a wife who would be a credit to him, someone elegant, sophisticated, for a man in his position. (…) And one night, he looked at his existing wife [Milly], nervously sipping her sweet sherry, boring the Finnish ambassador, and allowing her anxieties about the chestnut souffle to show on her round shiny face. He contemplated her faded ginger perm, her freckles, and her thickening figure; (…) and that had been the beginning of the end [of their marriage].”
Milly was not the only woman who was “discarded” by her husband as she aged and after she had sacrificed her own professional and personal goals for her partner during the early years of struggle. Cruelty that Julian and his new romantic interest treated Milly following the breakdown of their marriage had an impact on Millie’s emotional state of mind, her self-worth and confidence affecting how she related to other people in her life. Julian’s words to Milly very much reflected the contemporary attitudes among men as well as women who were conditioned to think in the certain way about their roles in the society and the wider world:
“a woman in her forties has little chance of starting a new life, and so she really needs money; whereas a man in his forties is still in his prime.”
The women like Milly in their middle age were treated as someone without any hope for future as if their only currency was youth and good looks. If one or both of these traits were no longer there the women were treated as if they had no worth to the society or themselves. This attitude lacked the basic shreds of humanity, and it was not only propagated by some men but also by some younger women until they also reached more mature years.
Milly wanted to “show” Julian and men like him that “a woman in her forties” was not finished and done for and she still could have a relationship. Through the prism of the commonly accepted social norms, Milly was conditioned to believe that seeking validation from other men or through another romantic relationship, her life would again have a meaning. This kind of thinking was a reflection of the times she lived in and sadly this is still thinking common in many places and cultures around the world.
During one of the archaeology classes that Milly attended she met an older man Gilbert whose dignified solitariness attracted Milly to him. He was distinguished looking and told her he was in his 60s and that he had what he referred to a ‘pleasant home’ in an upscale part of South London. But this was all lies – he lied about his age as he was much older. Gilbert’s flat was situated well below ground floor with heavy iron bars that, as per Gilbert’s explanation, protected every window from the thieves. The kitchen was dark and windowless. Furthermore, Gilbert was shutting down shutters when the sun was still shining. Despite all the lies Milly felt a mild gratitude towards him for telling her lies because it meant she did not have to lie to him about her own past. As mentioned earlier through a new relationship Milly wanted to show Julian that she still could be happy even as an older woman. At least Gilbert seemed to value Milly in his own way. He himself suffered a nervous breakdown caused by the treatment he had experienced at the hands of his first wife and later he was swindled out of his pension papers. Initially Milly saw herself as a ray of sunshine in Gilbert’s late years. They had a nearly silent wedding lunch, “both of them sunk in thoughts unmentionable to the other”. As time passed, Milly started asking herself where her life was going and if this new life was going to be worth living.
Looking at the bars on Gilbert’s flat windows from inside, Milly became anxious… she realised what she did in marrying Gilbert. She did not marry him for love but in order to stir emotion in her first husband. Her second husband became an ill-tempered old man for whom she felt nothing but a powerful revulsion. Seeking validation of her worth from another man she wasted her life. The darkness of Gilbert’s gloomy flat corresponded to the darkness of Gilbert ‘s disintegrating mind. However, throughout the book we are never sure if it is just Gilbert or also Milly who suffers from delusional paranoia. It is only Milly’s perception of Gilbert that we know of; we do not have any other accounts of his behaviour.
At some point Milly started questioning her own motives as to why she married Gilbert – she did not marry him for himself. At the beginning of their relationship Gilbert treated her well, he was liberal with money, undemanding, considerate, very affectionate towards her, often checking on her comfort, helpful with home tasks and respectful of her intimacy – something that her first husband never did – but Milly did not appreciate this. Milly never thought about Gilbert’s life story, being swindled out of his inheritance, estranged from his only brother, bullied by his first wife, deprived of his pension, lack of friends and what he had experienced earlier in his life. A few weeks after the marriage she realised that the marriage to Gilbert was due to shock and seeking validation from another man to show not only her former husband but also largely to the society that the woman in her 40s could still attract a man and get married. As per Milly’s account Gilbert’s mind was disintegrating due his advanced age and his behaviour became more paranoid “with explosive irritability about nothing” to the point when his moods started making Milly scared. He started questioning her all the time; he fixed bolts and chains on the doors and would be going through her possessions in her drawers in the middle of the night. She was angry that she allowed herself to be in this situation and felt as if she was not “longer a real, autonomous being with a real life to be lost or saved.”
Beyond the door of Gilbert’s flat there was freedom. One January night she run away thinking that she poisoned her second husband. “Numbed with shocked” and in fear, Milly left her life as Candida behind assuming the new identity of Milly Barnes catching “her own blank, middle-aged face reflected in the scurrying blackness of the window beyond”. On that faithful night, she was running through the streets of London, “the winter air searing into her lungs like gulps of fire”, with a thought “of being hunted down” but she wasn’t hunted down, she was running “gasping and panting” for the nearest Underground, with very little money in her bag, worried how to get a job and to find a room over her head.
“You are forty-two years old. You have no skills, qualifications, references. Until these last terrible months, you led a life so protected, so narrow, so luxurious, that you are soft as pulp, through and through. You probably can’t work at anything. You have no friends to turn to, no relatives, because you are Milly now, and nobody, nobody in all the wide world – must ever have the faintest inkling that you have any connection with the woman who ran all but screaming into a London street in the early hours of Monday, January the tenth.”
On her way to Euston Station in London Milly became very contemplative about her surroundings and people she saw. This is the first time we have a glimpse into her rich inner life and thinking – something that was not on display while she was married to Julian and then to Gilbert.
“Nobody (…) ever brings their real selves with them on to a tube train. We have all left our identities behind in some vast spiritual Left Luggage office (…). Places and buses [are] packed tonight with tired people. Anonymous, bored, preoccupied people, (…) blank as zombies.”
With one way ticket Milly went to Seacliffe, a small coastal town where she would find work as a Daily Help and tried to exist in her new reality, ensuring that no one was aware of her former life. Since her leaving, Milly became determined to survive. While looking for a new job and a room to live in a shared accommodation, her age was mentioned frequently. Even though she was in a different place, in a different social sphere, her age not only dictated her romantic options in life but also her professional opportunities and ability to live independently. Her age also mattered when it came to the functions of her body that became tired and aching due to the intensity of tasks she had to performed as a Daily Help. Since starting the manual work, Milly seemed to be living in a new dimension of her own physical awareness. It was the first time in her life she was in charge of her physical movement and her own decisions which felt very liberating even though it was exhausting.
Milly found a small cold room with the bare electric light bulb. It was the first time in her adult life that she experienced brief moments of confidence and hope intertwined with anxiety and panic attacks. With her observant and inquisitive mind Milly also gained a better understanding of a sense of power that some people command just because of the social status they occupy in their lives.
Finally, Milly’s life fell into a pattern. The one thing that brought Milly pleasure and joy was reading books – something that Julian never appreciated or cared for and Gilbert disliked it – but now reading books in her employer’s living room was the highlight of Milly’s day.
As Milly was getting used to her new reality, she started hearing the voices like Gilbert used to. She thought people were after her and her newly built life. When she found out that Gilbert is indeed dead, Milly did not feel guilty about his death, but she blamed herself more for marrying him as she married him without love and without desire for anything he could provide for.
“She had not married him for anything he had or was. She hadn’t married him as a person at all, but as a thing, a handy weapon, a stick with which to beat her former husband. (…) She had never thought before of how it must have seemed to him. After a bitter, lonely life of enemies and hatred, now, here, suddenly, is a woman who mysteriously seems to like him! Who actually seeks his company! Nobody has ever sought his company before (…) Can it be – can it be possibly – that something new and magical may yet be going to happen to Gilbert Soames, in this last decade of his life?”
Instead of love Milly gave Gilbert fear, instead of friendship she gave him rejection:
“just as everyone had always done… she was one of Them after all…! (…) To marry someone in the clear knowledge that nothing can be given, nothing received – that was the wickedness: and no wickedness on his side would ever cancel it out or justify it. On that August day, in the Brixton registry office she had committed a crime against Gilbert far worse than the crime of murdering him and yet one for which the Law provides no penalty at all.”
The atmosphere in Appointment with Yesterday is intense. For a long time we are not sure what exactly happened to Gilbert or whether if it was Milly and Gilbert or just one of them who suffered from paranoia. The ending might disappoint some of the readers, but we must remember that the book reflects very much the times in which it was written and published (1972). The social norms for women and also men were very different to the ones we consider as ‘typical’ in the Western world these days. This novel is probably the best exploration of the relationship without love and treating others as mere tools to validate one’s self-worth. It also provides us with a profoundly moving snapshot of the early 1970s in England and how cultural and social norms affected the lives of many women, especially those without resources and financial independence.
Appointment with Yesterday is an intense psychological piece of fiction with many layers of nuance. This novel is unlike any other I have read, and I highly recommend it. I will definitely look for more books by Celia Fremlin.
