8 March
The baby is to be named Grace Helena. Matilda came today and I was very thankful. She has come to look after Mother and not us but she has made herself generally useful and we have not quarrelled at all. She looks different but I cannot put my finger on why or how. She is happier, I think. She says the work is very hard but that it is rewarding. I think that must be it. My work in this house is very hard but it is not rewarding, it is tedious and I do not like looking after the boys and trying to cook meals and do all the things Mother has been obliged to do since all the help left. I am the wrong age for this war. I said this to Father and he was cross and said that may be true but that I was the right sex. I suppose that is true. I would not like to be George and if I were a boy and nearly 16 I should be very near the age of being called up if this war goes on. I think often about that. I am a pacifist but I do not think I could be a conscientious objector all the same. It would not seem right. I am in a muddle about it.
*
Millicent was in a muddle about lots of things throughout the summer of 1916. She agonises over religion, and what she believes, wondering if in fact she believes in anything at all but afraid to say this out loud, and she is suspicious about whether there is such a thing as true romantic love. Her teacher, Miss Bailey, is very fond of Robert Browning’s poetry and Millicent learns yards of it while doubting that any man can mean what is said. One verse in particular irritates her, beginning: The moth’s kiss, first! / Kiss me as if you made believe / You were not sure, this eve (from ‘In a Gondola’). Miss Bailey thinks it is beautiful but Millicent thinks it is silly and challenges her teacher, who gives her a disorder mark for impertinence and – this hurt more – insensitivity. Millicent collects many disorder marks, all of them, according to her, grossly unfair. She hates the school uniform (long black woollen stockings, long-sleeved, high-necked winceyette blouses whose white collar and cuffs soiled easily, black serge skirts and black beaver hats in winter or hard ‘straw-bashers’ in summer) and is always in trouble for not wearing it properly. But she is obviously, as she records without a trace of false modesty, clever, regularly having her name read out on Friday mornings in Assembly for gaining more than five stars for her written work (stars were only given for exceptionally good work and only girls with five or more had their names read out). There is a great deal about the content of lessons in the diary at this time and very little about the domestic life of the King household. Her aunt Jemima (Aunt J.), her mother’s eldest sister (aged 42), a spinster, arrived to help out the week Grace was born, to Millicent’s intense relief. Then, in July, the diary is solely concerned with George and her already noticeable taste for the dramatic is given free rein.
*
2 July
Father says a great battle has begun on the Somme and he is sure George’s regiment will be part of it, but there is no way of knowing for certain. He told me not to mention this to Mother or she will worry more than she already does. I could hardly get on with reading The Mill on the Floss for thinking about George. Half the time at school now girls are weeping because some relative has died and it has become so usual hardly any notice is taken. It is very dispiriting. What is the point of anything. Miss Bailey talked to us about School Certificate and the importance of the examination for our future, but what future is that? I tried to talk to Father about my going to college to be a teacher and he said no plans could be made in the present circumstances and I should not count on going to college. I dared to ask what these circumstances were apart from the continuation of the war and he said there was no apart, everything was to do with the war and his business being affected and money scarce. So it seems that there may be no money to pay for me to go to college. My head was spinning to hear this. I felt resentful. I burn still with resentment. I will go to college.
4 July
News has come that George is alive but wounded and we are all frantic to know the worst. It came in the post, on a Field Service postcard. I was the first to see it when I collected the letters and though it was addressed to Father and Mother I read it, being an open postcard, and so was the first to know George was wounded. I stared at what was printed on the card for a long time, not understanding why so much seemed to be crossed out. On the top it explained that nothing was to be written except the date and the soldier’s name and if anything else was, then it would be destroyed. Then underneath was printed ‘I am quite well’, ‘I have been admitted to hospital sick/wounded’, ‘I am being sent to base’, ‘I have received your letter’ and two or three other choices. George had crossed everything out except ‘I have been admitted to hospital wounded and am going on well’. His signature was very shaky and hardly looked like his. I took it in to Mother and Father and Father read it first and said, Thank God he is alive, before reading it to Mother. He laid great emphasis on ‘am going on well’. Father was right, his regiment was in the front line of the battle at the Somme which was a victory for our side but at great cost. First Mother wept with gratitude that George had survived then she wept with fear at what his injuries may be. Father has gone to see if he can find out more but I do not know where. He says we must prepare ourselves for George having lost a limb or his sight or something equally terrible. I try to imagine George without a leg. What will he do? He will not take easily to having only one leg and not any more able to play the games he loves so much. I hope if he has a limb missing it will be his left arm which would be inconvenient but better than a leg. I see him in my mind’s eye without a leg and then without an arm and I am prepared. I will try to be a good sister and help him and never complain.
6 July
George has not lost a leg or an arm and he is not blind. News came today that he was shot but that he was very lucky for the bullet missed his heart and his lungs and went into his spleen which has been removed. I do not know what a spleen is but Matilda says it can be done without and she should know. She came home just for an hour or two when she heard we were expecting news of George’s condition. George also has a broken arm from how he fell when he was shot. I cannot help wondering if my steel pen saved him from more serious injury, but I have said nothing. He will be in the field hospital for some time yet before being sent home. Mother gives thanks all the time for his safety and hopes that by the time he is recovered the war will be over and he need not go back to the slaughter. Thousands and thousands have been killed at the Somme. We are preparing a parcel to send to George.
20 July
We are not going on holiday this year. I am not sorry. Everything is dreary here but it would be more dreary in the country. The reason is that George is expected home soon and we must of course be here to look after him. He is still very weak because he lost a lot of blood and will be in bed a good deal so his room is to be moved downstairs into Father’s study. Aunt J. and I cleared Father’s books away into the dining-room and Father moved his desk into the drawing-room with the help of Mr Baty next door and they have brought George’s bed down and set it up there. We have tried to make it look as much like his old room as possible. I am going to move upstairs and have his old room which will be bliss because sharing with Aunt J. is worse than sharing with Matilda ever was. I hate to see her undress and cannot always avoid the unpleasant sight. She is so fat, her corset is huge, and she will insist on demanding my assistance to unfasten it. She says her fingers are stiff and cannot manage the tiny hooks whereas mine are nimble. She will have to get Mother to help her now. I will be too far away up another flight of stairs and she will not bother, I hope, to call me down. I am ashamed of my feelings towards Aunt J. She is so kind and cheerful and loves us all so much and will do anything for us. Mother says she was very pretty when she was my age but I cannot believe this. I search and search in her lined face for any trace of prettiness and cannot find it. Her nose is too big and can never have been small and she has no lips. Her lips cannot just have disappeared. I feel sorry for her but pity does not do away with irritation at her fussiness. I wonder if it is not
being married and not having children that has made Aunt J. so pathetic. I cannot see that she has anything in her life to make it worth living. I suppose she has her garden, and her tortoise.
5 August
George is home. Father and I collected him from the station and brought him home in a cab though we had trouble procuring one so great was the press of people also wanting one. It was a long wait for the troop train on a very crowded platform. I held Father’s hand for fear of becoming separated. When the sound of the train was heard approaching a cheer went up and my heart began to beat very fast with excitement. There were soldiers hanging out of every window as the train came to a standstill and some of them, nearly all of them in fact, had bandages on their heads or were wearing slings. Then the doors opened and the crowd grew suddenly quiet when the stretcher-bearers began bringing out the badly wounded. People began crying when they saw their loved ones lying there. One woman with a little girl of the twins’ age rushed forward to a stretcher upon which lay a man covered up to the chin with a blanket and when she kissed him and held the child up he threw back the blanket without speaking showing his two stumps where his legs had been and she screamed and screamed. There were such scenes all along the platform and I began to feel faint. The stretcher-bearers shouted ‘Clear the way, clear the way’ but people were desperate to find their relatives and would not be orderly. We began to think George was not after all on the train when, far down its length, I saw his face at a carriage window. He was just sitting there, his face pressed up against it, looking helpless. We went onto the train which was by then almost empty and at first he did not seem to know us and was startled and shrank back into his seat, cowering away from us. Then when he recognised us he began to cry, the tears rolled down his bony face and would not stop though he smiled too. We had to help him up, he was so thin and weak, and I carried his kit-bag while Father guided him off the train, half carrying him. It took a long time with many stops to get to the cab rank. George had to sit on his kit-bag while we waited and he shivered all the time although it was not in the least a cold day. I crouched down beside him and took off my cardigan and wrapped it round his neck. It was my new mauve cardigan and looked silly against his uniform but he pressed my hand and said he was glad of the warmth at his neck. He slept once he was in the cab and it seemed cruel waking him when we arrived home. Mother was standing on the steps with Baby in her arms and Michael clinging to her skirt and the twins dashing up and down the steps waving their flags. George was half asleep and overcome. When she saw him, Mother rushed down the steps and pushed Baby into my arms and embraced George and cried and cried. Michael fell trying to follow her and cut his head and bawled and the twins ran into the road in their excitement and almost went under the wheels of the departing cab. I was glad when we were all indoors. George soon went to bed and Mother sat at his side all day, sewing, and I of course had to look after the boys and Baby. There was such a strange atmosphere in the house, not at all joyful.
15 August
Today George went out for the first time. I walked with him to the park. We walked slowly and he held my arm, still being unsteady on his feet. He walks like an old man. Mother has been feeding him up but he is still so thin though he devours everything she gives him. His arm is mended but it is not entirely straight because it was not set properly in the plaster but George says it works well enough. The doctor says it is only a matter of time now and that George will soon be his old self but I cannot see that happening. He has nightmares all the time and now the whole house hears him and his screams frighten the twins and Michael. Mother goes in to him and finds him drenched in perspiration and crouching under his bed. There is no need to ask what his nightmares are about. I tried to talk to him today on our walk but he does not seem to want to talk. He has become very silent, not at all like the old George. We sat on a bench in the park, beside the duck pond, and he took some pleasure, I think, from watching children feeding the ducks. It was a lovely day and the water and sky were very blue and the children bright-faced and noisy and happy. George closed his eyes after a bit and I thought he was dozing off as he often does but when I said his name, to check, he said he was just feeling the sun on his face. We met Angela Smythe on our way home and she stopped and exclaimed at seeing George and asked how he was, very eagerly. But George almost ignored her though he used to be sweet on her and once took her to a dance and said he thought she was the prettiest girl there though I myself never thought her pretty. Poor Angela was most put out and I whispered that George was still ill and she looked very concerned. I do not know what is going to happen to him.
1 September
George had an army medical today. Father took him to the place where they give them and stayed with him. There had been little doubt that George would be declared unfit for active service but still it was a relief when this was confirmed. He had a strange outburst when he returned home. When Father was telling us that for the moment George was unfit, George started shouting, Not for the moment! For ever! For ever! I will never go back! Never! I will top myself first! Then he cried and would not stop and it was queer and embarrassing. I do not know if I am the only one embarrassed. Is it wrong to feel like that? Also, and this is dreadful to write here, I feel a little ashamed of him. He has suffered more than I can know but he is home and alive and yet he shows no appreciation or gratitude for that. Sometimes I think he is not trying to get better. We all rush to do everything for him and perhaps that is not healthy. I would like to discuss this with Matilda but I am never alone with her on her visits and they are very brief and it is too delicate a subject to bring up without being sure of privacy.
10 September
School again, and how glad I am to be there. There is a new girl in our class, Mabel Crowthorne. Her father was killed at the Somme and her mother has now moved to live with her sister, also a widow. I was asked to look after Mabel and found I liked her immediately which surprised me. She is serious, like me, and loves reading. She lives three roads away from us so we walked home part of the way and we have arranged to meet at 8.30 a.m. on the corner of the main road. I felt quite light-hearted for a change when I left her.
*
The diary for the remainder of 1916 and into 1917 is devoted almost exclusively to Millicent’s growing friendship with Mabel Crowthorne. Apart from both being serious and voracious readers, it soon emerges that the main attraction for Millicent is Mabel’s feelings of resentment at her lot in life which mirror her own. But whereas Millicent has no clear goal, Mabel does. She wants to be a lawyer. Millicent wonders in her diary if this would be fun and then chastises herself for being so frivolous. Mabel has no interest in fun. She is politically minded and has always bought The Suffragette (each Friday, price 1 d) ever since she was allowed pocket money. Millicent borrows her old copies, but finds them hard going. Secretly, she prefers the trashy, brightly coloured women’s magazines left behind by her sister. She knows that though her ambition is the equal of Mabel’s, her sense of purpose is not. Nor can she quite scorn clothes and self-adornment the way her friend does. There are some telling reflections on how spotty Mabel is, how ungainly, how unfortunately short-sighted, how badly fitting her clothes are, ‘so it is lucky’ comments Millicent ‘that she does not care how she looks and thinks the state of one’s mind more important than one’s appearance’. She does not doubt that Mabel will one day be a judge, ‘whereas what shall I be, I have no firm intent’.
*
20 April 1917
Dreadful, dreadful news. Mabel was in a great state about it, even to the point of tears and I do not blame her. Her mother says she must leave school in July because her father’s money has run out and she must go to work in an office to earn some at once. Mabel had been crying half the night, her eyes were red-raw, and I felt truly sorry for her. It is a tragedy, all her plans shattered. Miss Bailey says she has a chance of Cambridge and would be the first person our school has ever sent there if she were to be accepted. I wonder why Miss Bail
ey has never said to me that I might go to Cambridge. I know she has never liked me, but it seems queer, and unjust. But I have said nothing to Mabel. At least I know I can train to be a teacher even if I would like to aim higher, but Father would not stand for it. I was so afraid there would be no money to pay the college fees after he had said I was not to count on it that I did not dare ask if I could go to university. I know he only believes in higher education for girls if it leads to definite employment as soon as possible. I am lucky business has picked up enough to make Father less worried about money.
Diary of an Ordinary Woman Page 4