Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  He stopped walking and closed his eyes and gripped my arm tightly. I wished I had said nothing. It was the strangest feeling, an overwhelming feeling of shame that I had told him at all. I felt that by telling him I had made something intensely personal into something public. I disliked his distress too. It irritated me. It seemed so melodramatic. Then, when I saw he was weeping, I was appalled and furious and wanted to get away and never see this stranger again. I said I must be getting back and he said he was sorry, he’d been overcome, he’d thought about Changi every single day since he’d left it and, when I’d told him about Robert, he had been right back in the hell of it in a moment.

  I was obliged to walk back with him since he still clutched my arm like an ancient mariner, and I hated being with him. He asked for more details but I said I couldn’t talk about it and he said he quite understood, but I don’t think he did. How could he understand something I don’t understand myself? He then talked about his own life after Changi, which was preferable, but I took none of it in, except that he is a widower with three grown-up children who are good to him. He asked if I had married and I felt the familiar resentment when I said no. Then a truly humiliating thing happened. We were entering the block where we both have our rooms and Chris Downey, one of the tutors, was coming out. Oh, she said, beaming, you two have got together, how nice. I was mortified – the assumption! I tried to have a sense of humour about it and said something about how ridiculous people are, but then Bob said shall we go to the bar and have a drink, and I realised he was not mortified but rather pleased. I said I was sorry, I was tired and must go to bed. I bade him a very formal goodnight.

  12 August

  There was a note slipped under my door some time last night. The moment I saw it, a white folded sheet of paper lying very obviously on the wooden floor, I knew who it would be from and what it would say. I ignored it for a while. I washed and dressed, and then finally, when I was ready to go for breakfast, reluctantly picked it up and read it. I admit I was agreeably surprised at how Bob expressed himself. Very simply, very straightforward in tone. He said he realised he had upset me and he was sorry for it and he had been a blundering fool and had been unable to control his own emotion which he had inflicted upon me. He would not behave so crassly again, and hoped I would share another walk with him before the week ended but would quite understand if I did not feel so inclined. I was, am, impressed that he took blame upon himself when of course he had nothing to blame himself for. I didn’t want to accompany him on another walk but on the other hand I felt I had been unkind and had seemed cold and uncaring and I was sorry too. I thought, I must not be schoolgirlish about this. I must act as becomes my age. So I made a point at breakfast of joining Bob at his table and being pleasant. There were others there, and I wasn’t going to mention his note or his invitation in front of them, but as the group broke up and we all began to make our way to our respective classrooms I said quietly that it would be a pleasure to walk along the river this evening, but perhaps rather earlier. I even managed to make a joke about what Chris Downey would be bound to think if she saw us. We arranged to meet straight after supper.

  I rather dreaded the whole idea, but in fact I enjoyed the walk and his company. He is a very intelligent man. I’d been aware of this in our tutorials, the way he spoke, showing a keen mind, but I was even more struck by it in our conversation. Whereas I tend to speak before I think and so am constantly having to qualify what I say, Bob takes time to consider his own thoughts before sharing them. This makes him a slow talker but once I’d got used to the delays I adapted to his manner and it had a good effect on my own. It turns out that he is an engineer, recently retired. He is studying for an OU degree because once he’d left work he was bored and wanted to fill in the gaps in his education. He admitted he found the course easy, not particularly challenging, and like me felt this residential school was mostly about socialising. Nothing wrong with that, he said. I said I was rather anti-social, and he said, a little pompously, I thought, that I shouldn’t be, socialising was important, not just for the individual but for the community and for the future of the world at large. I said did he mean no man was an island, that argument, and he said not exactly and we had an interesting discussion about what he did mean. The time flew. It wasn’t such a beautiful evening, the sun went behind clouds around seven o’clock, and there was a stiff breeze. But it was invigorating, the walk, the talk, everything.

  15 August

  Last day of this school. Most people seem very sorry it is over, which makes me wonder what dullness they are going back to. A great deal of swapping addresses and telephone numbers went on but I wasn’t asked for mine, I am relieved to say. I had worried that Bob might request it and suggest that we should, as they all put it, ‘keep in touch’, but, thankfully, he didn’t, correctly gauging, I should think, what my response would have been. Instead, he wished me luck with my studies and said he knew I would get a degree with no difficulty at all.

  16 August

  Home. Thought all the way back of Bob and his parting words. He looked so distinguished, dressed to return to his home, wearing a suit, unlike the other men. He, too, had driven here and we walked to where our cars were parked together. He insisted on carrying my suitcase which I did not want him to do because of his limp and because he had a bag of his own. I’m old-fashioned, he said, I carry ladies’ cases. I told him my niece would say that I was a woman and not a lady and entertained him briefly (I hope) with Connie’s rules about vocabulary in this new feminist age. When we’d each opened up our cars, he put my suitcase in the boot, closed it firmly, and then held out his hand. I shook it. He said it had been a very great pleasure meeting me and that he was sorry it hadn’t been for longer than a week. Was that a hint? Possibly, but if so, one to which I did not respond. He stood for a moment looking at me rather searchingly, I thought, and then asked if he might be permitted to say he thought I was courageous and he admired me. Well, it was an absurd thing to say, and quite inexplicable. I felt it was somehow patronising, because of course it is he who is courageous, with his war experience. I suppose I must have shown my annoyance, because as I said goodbye and got into my car he came to the window and said very quietly that what he’d meant was that it was rare to find a woman perfectly happy to stand on her own two feet and at peace with herself. That, he ended, took a certain kind of courage. Does it? I can’t see how it does. It isn’t as though I chose to, as he referred to it, stand on my own two feet. But he undoubtedly intended it as a compliment, so I must try to take it as such, I suppose. It certainly couldn’t have been merely flattery because flatterers always have a motive and since Bob will never see me again he can’t have had one. He wasn’t the sort of man I expected to find attending a summer school, since he is already well educated. I could see that a couple of women there, in their mid-fifties, I think, were eyeing him as a good catch. I find myself speculating now as to what his dead wife was like and what his own life is like now. His surname is unusual, double-barrelled and odd. I looked in the phone book for it and found it easily. The only one there. Mine is so common, there are scores of Kings.

  25 August

  Connie came to ask how the summer school had gone and I found myself telling her about Bob. I thought she would tease me, and laugh, and was prepared for it, but she didn’t. She sighed and looked at me as though I am an exasperating child and said I was impossible and should have been given a good shaking years ago. Oh, and why pray? I asked, and she said I knew perfectly well. I liked Bob and was interested in him and I was simply incapable of making the effort I was obviously longing to make, and it is all to do with my foolish pride. I asked what effort and she said the effort of friendship, of making the running, of developing a relationship. She alleged that I knew I wanted to see Bob again but, for reasons she failed to understand, but reasons which she suspected had always been the same, I refused to admit it. Nonsense, of course. I tried to explain that though I was interested in Bob, which was why I’d
told her about him, and though I had thought about him since, that didn’t mean I wanted to see him again. If someone were to come and tell me all about him, and if I could be a fly on the wall of his house, then I would enjoy learning more about him, but I did not, definitely do not, want a relationship of any kind and that is the truth. Relationships are a bother, I said, new ones, I mean. I have enough in my life as it is, I don’t want any more, thank you. And you criticise Toby, Connie said. You say that about relationships, and yet you are the one appalled and worried because Toby is so emotionally isolated. Then she said a shocking thing: maybe he got it from you, she said. Maybe you brought him up to think relationships are too much bother. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I stared at her, incredulous, thinking that any minute she would burst out laughing and say, oh, for heaven’s sake, she was joking. But she didn’t. She just sat there, meeting my stare. Finally, I managed to pull myself together and tell her I thought she was being both silly and cruel. On the contrary, she said, she was following my example by being honest. She’d thought this for a long time, that the way I’d always been so solitary, almost glorying in my independence, almost boasting that I had no need of a partner, and having virtually no friends, except for Daphne, and certainly no male friends, had probably sent out messages to the growing Toby. But what about you, I protested, if it didn’t send out messages to you, why did it send them to Toby, not that this whole theory isn’t ridiculous. She said my intense reserve had sent messages to her too. Why did I imagine she was now 34 and had never had a successful relationship? I was angry by then. Is this about blame? I asked. She said no, of course not, it is about how patterns of behaviour are perpetuated. We looked up to you, Toby and I, we thought of you as a saint and we wanted to copy you – I stopped her there. I got up and said this was clap-trap and I’d had enough of it. It is all this American influence she is under, these stupid books she reads, in which what happens to you is always someone else’s fault. I turned my back on her, and heard her flounce out without saying goodbye.

  But she did ring, as soon as she got home, to apologise, though it was rather a half-hearted apology, I must say. I accepted it, a little coldly. Love you, she muttered before she put the receiver down. She is always saying that, at the end of every phone conversation. I think I am supposed to say the same back but I never do, I won’t have love reduced to a banal pleasantry. Really, Connie is a very upsetting girl, I don’t know what will become of her. She gets these strange notions in her head and nothing will shift them. I always have the feeling that though she is strong she could be led by someone stronger. She has so much passion in her, and rage, and it has never quite found the right direction. She’s looking for it, a cause I suppose, and then she’ll give her all to it.

  *

  Millicent’s comments were more prescient than she could possibly, in 1971, have realised. The next decade sees Connie becoming more and more involved in feminist political activity. Whenever she comes to see her aunt, she brings magazines with her which completely baffle Millicent, who records her astonishment at the front cover of The Red Rag (price 10p) which read ‘A magazine of Women’s Liberation – Inside: Unions, Orgasms and More’. Spare Rib she finds easier to cope with. By this time, of course, Millicent is an old woman and the tone of her diaries has changed.

  The entries from 1971 onwards become rather stilted, with only rare expressions of emotion – for example, when Mrs Thatcher becomes Prime Minister in May 1979. Millicent, though not a Tory, is impressed and rather thrilled to think a woman has risen to this eminence – ‘she must have such determination’ she writes, and contrasts it with what she sees as her own lack of it. Otherwise she herself is discontented on the whole with what she records and goes through one of her phases of wondering why she is carries on with her diary at all, coming up with a new reason: because she wants to ‘get to the end’, still writing it. Other people, in these years (1971–1981) ‘get to the end’. She records their deaths formally. George dies in 1973, Esther in 1975, and Stephen (their eldest son) is killed in a car crash in 1979. She writes to her nephew Harry, telling him he will always be welcome in her home, but by then he has married and has his own home. Rather surprisingly, she does not go on to gain an Open University degree, discontinuing her studies after she has completed four full units, and with only two more to go. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but may have been partly due to difficulties with writing because of arthritis in her hands. She doesn’t, though, see this as a failure and emphasises that she has thoroughly enjoyed studying and that a degree would have meant little to her. With no descriptions of her studies to write about – and she has written about them in often tedious detail – her diaries once more falter and the content reverts to notes about her garden, her house and very little else.

  But then, when the Walk for Life march to Greenham Common from Cardiff took place in the summer of 1981, Millicent’s diary takes on a new lease of life. Connie goes on the march. She is one of the hard core of supporters who sets off on Thursday, 27 August, from outside the City Hall to walk the 120 miles to Greenham, the site of the proposed American Cruise Missile base. Once there, she stays, one of the founders of the peace camp which is to become so famous. Millicent was beside herself with worry, sure that Connie is getting caught up in something that will lead her into real trouble.

  3 September 1981

  THERE IS NOTHING in my newspaper about Connie’s march, and nothing is shown on the television news. I cannot decide if that means it has fizzled out or not. If it has, Connie will be furious and start ranting about the male-dominated media, but at least it will mean none of my fears will be realised. I said to her that she seemed to think she was some kind of suffragette, fighting for a worthwhile feminist cause, and she said she was fighting against the use of nuclear weapons and that this was a far greater cause. But throwing up a comparison with suffragettes was a mistake – I shudder to think that it may have put into her head ideas of chaining herself to railings somewhere. It wouldn’t do her, or her protest, any good, but it might land her in prison and that would be the end of her career. I think her career may be over anyway. Term starts tomorrow, and where is she?

  5 September

  Four women have chained themselves to the perimeter fence of the base at Greenham. My heart missed a beat when I heard it given out on the wireless. Is Connie one of them? No names were given. There are other women there making a dreadful keening noise. The place is swarming with police. They say a letter is being delivered to the base’s commander. Connie will doubtless be in the thick of it. I ought to admire her and all the others for doing what I have never done, but somehow I can’t, I find this kind of display embarrassing. I couldn’t do it, exposing myself to ridicule and contempt.

  6 September

  Television coverage at last of the Greenham women, and thank God, Connie was not one of those chained to the fence. One of the women was quite old, in her seventies I would say. It looked a lovely day and the common very green and attractive. Part of the letter delivered to the commandant was read out, a bit about the women protestors representing thousands of ordinary people who are opposed to nuclear weapons. Here we go again. Well, I am one of them and I should be grateful, as Connie is always telling me, that such action is being taken on my behalf. But does it do any good? What I have to face is the shaming fact that, even if it could be proved that it does, I could not go and chain myself to a fence somewhere in Berkshire. ‘What does that say about me? I’m afraid I know only too well.

  9 September

  Connie is back, but only to announce that she is returning to stay there, to live in a tent on Greenham Common. I asked about her job, and she said she had already given in her notice. But you will be letting the children down, I said: you are supposed to give at least half a term’s notice. She just waved her hands about and said it couldn’t be helped, what she was doing was far more important for children all over the world. I think it is disgraceful, to leave her schoo
l in the lurch like that, but she is oblivious to such responsibilities. She is, I suppose, inspired, her eyes blazing with excitement and conviction, her cheeks flushed and her body bristling with energy as she described the camp to me. She declares she has never known such wonderful women, all of them feeling as strongly as she does, all of them quite ordinary and prepared to sacrifice the comforts of their normal lives to make this protest. I felt she was looking at me accusingly when she said there was one woman there who was over 8o, enduring the pain of arthritis but determined to join in. I said how brave. Then I asked what everyone was going to do for supplies, and what about lavatories and washing facilities – the camp would not be very pleasant, it would be rife with disease, if this was not thought about. She laughed and said it was all being organised, I needn’t worry. She is quite prepared to go to prison. I accused her of actually wanting to, of hankering after martyrdom. Oh, I didn’t want us to argue but that was what we were doing. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. Before she left, to get ready to go to the camp for heaven knows how long, I managed to persuade her to promise to ring me once a week. I pleaded. I said I would not be able to sleep for worrying about her. I said she could make it a reverse charge call. Very reluctantly, she agreed to try to ring regularly, but wouldn’t commit herself to once a week. I have to be content with that.