18 July
The school holidays begin in a week or so and I have not yet made any plans. I must go to Brighton of course and spend some time with Mother and the children but I would like to have something different to look forward to. I fancy a cycling holiday, staying in B & Bs or hostels along the way, but I have not yet decided on any route. It might be a little gruelling too. Then there’s Matilda’s wedding. I feel I hardly know Matilda now, we are certainly not close, but she has asked me to be a maid of honour. I have not even met her fiancé yet, which is rather shocking considering they have been engaged all this long time. Mother is so happy about this wedding, especially because she approves of Charles and thinks Matilda has made a great catch. I shall reserve judgement till I meet him. I refuse to be swayed by the fact that he is the youngest paediatric consultant at his hospital. Still, I must give him a chance.
10 August
I was too exhausted to write about the wedding yesterday, though it was not the exhaustion of having danced my feet off or anything like that but of talking to so many people I did not know and of shepherding elderly relatives around. I did not know we had so many relatives. Where have they been since Father’s funeral? I must say, Matilda enjoyed her own wedding. She was not a bashful bride but was confident and beaming. Harold gave her away which surprised me. I thought that in spite of his problems George would manage it. Mother cried, predictably, but was soon over her tears. I noticed that Charles is very attentive to her. He seems intelligent, a good man, but a trifle overbearing. He takes command of any situation instantly. Matilda and Mother like this in a man but I find it irritating. The twins worship him. They looked rather fine in sailor suits and are growing into such big boys. Albert is taller and heavier than Alfred so it is easy now to tell them apart. Grace was adorable as a flower girl in the prettiest of dresses which Mother had made for her. I had an interesting conversation with Matilda when I was helping her get ready. I said something about wondering if she would have as many children as Mother and she said, firmly, that she would not. When I asked how she could be sure, she said there were ways . . . things, that Mother never knew. Haven’t you heard of Marie Stopes, she said. Well, of course I have. Matilda did not go into further detail, though. I must say that anyone looking at Mother yesterday surrounded by all of us for one of the photographs would have judged her the proudest and happiest of women to be so blessed. Perhaps she is.
17 August
I have made my mind up to visit Paris the first week in September. After the wedding, it did not seem so enticing to go off cycling after all. I have never been abroad and suddenly I feel adventurous again. Sometimes now I feel bewildered at how settled and placid my life seems to be. I never thought it would be. I don’t know what I thought I would do or how I would live. I think I had dreams of things just happening but when they did happen they were not what I dreamed of, not happy things.
2 September
Yesterday I took the boat train to Paris via Calais – oh, how my heart was bumping. Just going to the station and boarding the train was thrilling. It wasn’t like getting on a train to Brighton. The other passengers were so interesting, many of them beautifully and expensively dressed, and with mountains of luggage. I sat beside a French woman returning home and practised my poor French on her. She was very kind and patient, and when I got my guide book and map out showed me how to get to the hotel I had booked in Montmartre. I felt much more confident after her directions but all the same I was terribly nervous when we arrived at the Gare du Nord and I had to leave my new friend and make my own way. I felt quite triumphant when I reached the little hotel. It is a strange place, not at all what I imagined. They serve no food, and the bathroom at the end of the corridor is hardly what I would call a proper bathroom. It is just a lavatory, and a very peculiar one, with a tap beside it. But my room is clean and has pretty blue painted shutters which, when I opened them, looked onto a courtyard full of earthenware pots of flowers. I went out straightaway and walked all the way to the banks of the Seine and across the bridge to Notre Dame and I felt elated. The weather is perfect, sunny but not too hot, and it was a joy just to sit on benches and watch and listen. I keep trying to decide why Paris looks different from London. I think it is all to do with colour. London, or the London I know, is greyer; there are no pavement cafés or bright umbrellas and nothing like so many flower pots everywhere. I was exhausted when I got back to the hotel, and hungry and thirsty. I thought about stopping at a café and dining but did not quite have the courage. It is a bother, being a young woman on her own, I should feel self-conscious. So I bought some bread and cheese, enjoying the simple transaction, and some fruit and also a bottle of vin rouge which made me feel wicked. I had a picnic in my room, with the window open, looking out onto the courtyard, and didn’t feel lonely at all.
5 September
I ate in a café today and managed well. I chose it with care. It was one I had passed and repassed and had noted the clientele included quite a few women, some with children, and I felt I would be comfortable if I sat at a table beside such a group. I also bought a copy of Le Figaro so that if necessary I could hide behind it but I never needed to. I had fish soup, quite delicious, with crusty bread, and then a kind of onion tart with a salad and a glass of white wine. No one paid me the least attention and the waiter was matter-of-fact, and altogether I felt sophisticated and confident. I liked hearing French all round me, too. My understanding increases rapidly though I am still hesitant about speaking. I went on a bateau-mouche on the Seine afterwards and tomorrow I am taking a train to Versailles. I sent postcards to Mother and the children, and to Matilda and Charles, and also to Tom. I wrote them while I was lunching at the café and had trouble with Tom’s, finally settling on mocking myself a little but I hope making it clear I really was having an exciting time.
15 September
It won’t do. Paris has had a disturbing effect. I feel discontented, with the school and my rooms, and oh with everything, whereas before I was happy, or thought I was. Suddenly I see that this town is dreary and the school old-fashioned and my room nothing special and that I am not so glad after all to be independent if it means I have no stimulating contacts. I can’t stay here for the rest of my life. I think I must give in my notice and move, but that is a step of such daring, it takes my breath away. I cannot leave one job without having another to go to and somewhere to live. It would be folly.
20 September
I went to stay with Matilda and Charles for the weekend. Their house is small but nice, near enough to Regent’s Park to walk there. It was fun. They are such an unusual couple, I know no other like them, and I suppose I envy them. There is something so free and easy about how they live, quite differently from how we were brought up. Their little house is so informal it almost feels foreign to me, and a constant stream of friends passes through it. They both work hard but this does not seem to make them tired or hold them back from being hospitable. They seem to drink and smoke an awful lot. All their friends do. They have a piano and there is always someone tootling around on it. Mother would declare it was bedlam. I was complimented on my singing, though all I sang was ‘Alice Blue Gown’, my party piece. Everyone joined in, and then they all began ‘April Showers’, except for me because I did not know the words. Perhaps I have misjudged Matilda, who has now become Tilda, if you please. Father would never let her be called Tilda, and she never was, any more than he liked my name being shortened to Milly. At any rate, Tilda was very friendly and took a real interest in my dilemma and gave good advice. She thought I should not get stuck in a rut and that I should be more ambitious, as once I was. She asked why did I not go to university and study English Literature, since I am always reading. I am only 22 and not too old to consider it. But I don’t think that is the answer. It is not study I want – though I plan this year to attend a course of lectures I have heard about – it is action. Tilda says I can stay in their guest room any time. She is not a housewife of Mother’s variety b
ut then she has a career too. Everything is not immaculate or just so but she doesn’t seem to care. I wonder what Mother thinks. She would be horrified at the state of the house, but then she is horrified anyway that Tilda continues to work. She is surprised the nursing home allows it and even goes so far as to wonder if Tilda has told them she is married. I asked Tilda that, and she smiled, and said good nurses were always in demand and there were ways of getting round rules. I don’t know what that means.
*
Events conspire to prevent Millicent from ever making a move to another school. At the end of 1923, when she has begun to apply for several new posts, her stepfather Harold dies suddenly of a heart attack. She goes at once to her mother in Brighton, dreading that yet again she, as the unmarried daughter, will be called upon to support her siblings and keep her devastated mother company. She writes in her diary that Harold’s death ‘seemed like another judgement’ because she had dared to feel discontented and restless. But it quickly becomes obvious that the situation in Brighton is not at all as it had been when her own father died. Constance inherits the house, on which there is no mortgage, together with a substantial income from Dr Marshall’s investments. Financially, she has no worries. Then there is the changed nature of George, who had benefited both from the psychiatric treatment Harold had arranged for him and also from Harold’s own support. He is ready to assume responsibility for the younger children and for his mother. So instead of being obliged to move to Brighton and once more be sucked into family life, which she had always found so burdensome, Millicent finds herself under no such obligation. She goes back to school but starts attending a weekly course of WEA lectures in London.
*
4 April 1924
Last lecture tonight. I have enjoyed them very much and feel I have learned a great deal, enough to think again about whether I could go on somehow to study for a degree in English Literature after all. I was thinking about it when Matthew Taylor caught up with me and insisted on accompanying me to Tilda’s. I wish I had never told him of my yearning to go to university and even more do I regret mentioning my foolish literary ambitions. I cannot imagine what I was thinking of because of course he has pestered me ever since to show him something I have written. I will never do that, never. I could send stories to strangers but would never show them to someone I knew. Matthew says he admires my critical faculties. though all he means is that he has heard me giving my opinion in class, and asked if I had ever considered journalism. I said no Mother would die if I took up journalism. This did not stop him urging me to leave teaching and become a journalist. I was sharp with him then, pointing out that I have trained to be a teacher, at considerable effort and expense, and it would be wicked to waste my training. And besides, I told him, teaching is fulfilling and worthwhile. I sounded priggish even to myself. He said ‘and boring’. I denied this hotly, but he keeps on and on. He sneers at Surrey too, saying London is the only place to be. I don’t know why I put up with him. He is like a terrier, never letting go. He is very energetic, and I suppose quite good-looking, though I don’t care for his moustache. Well, after tonight I will have no reason to see him again and he will not be able to find me. He has asked for my home address but I have avoided giving it. He has asked to see me, too, but I have said I am too busy. He never seems offended by my rebuffs, I must say.
6 April
It’s unfortunate that I am staying at Tilda’s for most of this Easter holiday. It means I am a sitting duck for Matthew Taylor’s attentions. Tilda doesn’t know why I am so unkind to him: she thinks him amusing and lively, and worth getting to know. Since she has only met him on the doorstep I fail to see how she has formed this opinion. She thinks he has a lovely smile. She doesn’t understand, either, why I am resisting further acquaintance with him, but then that’s not surprising because I hardly understand myself. I have felt as though he is trying to capture me ever since first he came into my life three months ago. I know it is odd, but the reason I didn’t write his name in this diary until a couple of days ago is because I am superstitious. It is absurd to have to admit this to myself. I wrote about Tom and now it makes me embarrassed to remember that I did and I would really wish to go back over my diaries and erase whatever it was that I wrote, and yet that cannot have been anything very revealing because we were never intimate friends. I felt if I described Matthew when I first got to know him, much the same thing would happen, which is nothing, and then I would have begun on a pathetic course of listing men who meant nothing. There was also the odd thing that I don’t know when I did first see him. It was not like being taken to Phyllis’s home and being introduced to Tom. I suppose I saw him several times before I noticed him and certainly before we ever spoke. Matthew is not very noticeable, unlike Tom. Among a group of people there is nothing to single him out, which is strange because his character is forceful even if his appearance is not. He says he noticed me at once. I am not sure if that is flattering, or intended to be flattering. There were twenty of us in the class, thirteen women, and he may have noticed me because I was the only woman who asked a question, and the lecturer was not best pleased. Or because of my red hair. Matthew says I looked very striking, standing there in my green dress, ‘so slight and fragile’ as he put it, but with this challenging question. I don’t recall what it was and neither does he which shows it can’t have been very challenging. But from then on he haunted me and contrived to sit beside me, even once asking another man to move because he claimed to have something he wished to tell me. He never stops talking. Half of what he says I don’t catch because he jumbles his words and speaks so hurriedly. It’s extraordinary that he is not put off by my reserve. I have hardly told him a thing about myself, not that there is much to tell, but he has told me so much about himself that there cannot be much left to tell. He trained as a pilot in the war but it ended before he saw any action and afterwards he went straight onto his local newspaper and from there he has somehow come to be the editor of a small magazine. He told me the name of it but I’ve now forgotten it. He lives in a room above the office in which he runs this magazine. It is in Soho somewhere, which sounds rather louche and glamorous, but I think he is quite poor. His clothes are well-worn and he makes frequent references to the cost of things.
10 April
I supposed it must be a coincidence, but I was suspicious. I set off to Brighton today to see Mother and who should leap onto the train and sit beside me but Matthew Taylor. I could not help wondering if he had followed me from Tilda’s house, and almost accused him of doing so. It’s lucky I didn’t because the true coincidence is that his mother lives in Hove and he was going to visit her. I felt ashamed of my suspicions and tried to be more friendly and we ended up having an interesting conversation about The Forsyte Saga. Matthew is thinking about writing something on Galsworthy’s earlier works which I have never heard of. We passed a pleasant half hour talking about writers. We’ve both been impressed by Katherine Mansfield’s stories. He admires Aldous Huxley but I have not read him. By the time we arrived in Brighton I had decided I do like Matthew, after all. He asked me when I planned to return to London and I told him. I hope I won’t regret it. He’s bound to get the same train.
18 April
Term starts on Monday so I must go home tomorrow. I am struggling with the dismal feeling that I don’t really want to. It’s alarming to confess the reason and to know it is not to do with leaving London and returning to Surrey and the monotony of the school day so much as leaving Matthew. I would not like him to know. He has made no secret of his desire for me to stay in London. Ridiculously, he even suggested I should work for him, or rather his magazine. This was my own fault because I criticised some of the book reviews it has carried and even dared to correct some of the grammar and punctuation. I thought it would annoy him but he only laughed and said a school marm’s expertise was just what he needed. It has become a joke that I take a red pen and go through each issue. I still haven’t told him, though, that I have sent a coup
le of stories to other magazines like his of which there seem to be dozens. My stories are always returned, without comment.
24 April
It has felt so strange this week being back at school. I felt I was spying on myself and wondering who this young woman was. I could not get into my own head. I saw myself making a sandwich and wrapping it in greaseproof paper and putting it into my bag and I wondered where the sandwich was going and who would eat it. More confusing and dangerous was seeing myself mount my bicycle and ride away and I could not work out which road I would take, but luckily the bike knew. This is how I have felt all day, every day. I feel so detached and yet seem to function adequately. I stand in front of the children calmly and write on the blackboard and ask and answer questions, but I’m in a trance. The other teachers say nothing. We are a quiet bunch, of course, none of us except Muriel Gill given to chattering. I watch her fat, animated face but don’t hear a word. How peculiar we must look, all four of us sitting in that dismal little room, each of us like Jack Horner, clinging to our respective corners and munching away at our sandwiches, or in Alan’s case his carrots. It’s all he ever brings with him and we suffer acutely from the crunching noise he makes. Usually I am irritated by it, and by Muriel’s droning, but not this week.
Diary of an Ordinary Woman Page 9