A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  She never tells her neighbours where she goes on these occasions, yet it is generally known that she visits London. The trades people find her easy to deal with and fairly prompt in paying her bills. One of the village women ‘does’ for her one morning a week and reports no scandal whatever – only that she is a writer, has many friends, is not too fussy about the house, ‘though mind you it’s never dirty.’ She has some nice pieces of furniture and pretty cushions and lots of books, pays well, is interested in what goes on in the village but is never what you might call malicious.

  Monday, 17 February (War Diary)

  Although I adore the country and have the greatest difficulty in uprooting myself from the cottage, London casts a spell upon me as soon as I reach its straggling boundaries.

  Going round the City I have realised that report and rumour exaggerate bomb damage grossly. If we are ever to have a better capital, I fear that a drastic number of more bombs must fall. There are of course many buildings and street corners in ruins – heaps of rubble and twisted, rusty girders, but life goes on as though these ruins had been there for years. Water supply, lighting, bus and train services, telephones, cafes – all are functioning again. Business continues at the Guildhall which was said to have been destroyed completely. The workers stream out for lunch at midday, passing, as usual, with dull eyes the churches Wren built. It is a lost city. A square mile of tortuous streets which the hand of trade has choked with its monstrous offices.

  Not long ago a doctor broadcast on ‘suburban neurosis’ from which many women who have worked in such offices suffer after they have married and settled down in an instalment-paid villa. After a while, he said, they found life in these cheap housing estates unbearably dreary; they had no interests beyond the meagre limits of their home; through shyness or snobbery they ‘kept themselves to themselves’. They would not go to the local pub and there were no clubs; but the war had at least opened up for them new ways of living, given them new interests, a new sense of comradeship with their previously ignored neighbours.

  Meanwhile it freezes and thaws and the sun grows warmer. Yellow crocuses are out on the rockery. The Army which had possessed our woods all the winter is now wiring them in. Huge lorries, like futuristic elephants are parked right to the edges. The air is poisoned with the smell of heavy engine oil (I realise now what make me seasick). The soft ground is torn by heavy tires. Lady Spicer who has a permit to walk her dog through the woods daily says there is no joy in it.

  We did not know how well off we were before the war.

  Monday, 24 February

  A letter came from D.F. today asking me to meet him one day this week.110 ‘Dear Miss Jean Pratt.’ I am flattered to the marrow by the unconcealed eagerness in the letter to visit the damaged churches with me. This promises to be a situation in which I must summon courage to keep my balance, and get what I hope to from it. So wildly does my imagination run.

  Tuesday, 4 March

  Yes, dear Reader, I went City ‘site’-seeing with D.F. He wore a hideous cap and his nails were filthy. But he has charming manners. His enthusiasm for the old buildings is inspiring, and he seems to be a very conscientious worker. I have no ‘feelings’ about him at all. Beyond our one mutual interest is a blank. I cannot imagine myself getting any further and don’t really want to. We are still Miss Pratt and Mr F. to each other in letters, which is painfully stiff, but in conversation we avoid calling each other by any name. My dread is that he’ll start prodding.

  Sunday, 9 March

  I have just had the most glorious idea. How ever did it originate? Perhaps partly from last week’s brooding on my past sex failures, and then from wondering what the brothels were like in foreign parts where our Services are stationed. But here it is. The brothel becomes in future a recognised institution for the instruction of the young in the arts and crafts of lovemaking! Nothing smutty or forbidden about it, but part of our educational system where female adolescents could go to learn how to make the best of themselves – attention to physical health, use of cosmetics, elements of dressing well, and full instruction on all matter of sex, including a course on the bearing and rearing of children and possibly other domestic matters.

  But the whole point being to apply this theory in practice – all its young students to be given every opportunity of meeting the opposite sex and forming alliances as they are inclined. Experimenting as much as they like, marrying if they want to or ‘living in sin’ if they want to. Competent adults – doctors, psychologists, nurses and experts of all kinds to be in control, to give guidance and advice when needed. What a healthy improvement it would be. And for those who want to lead a completely domestic life, an opportunity to learn methods of birth control and how-to-keep-one’s-husband and so forth. I think it’s a magnificent idea.

  Monday, 10 March

  Last night wrote a moving ‘last letter’ to Ethel, who, poor darling, would have the fearful task of sorting and clearing up my possessions. I was so overcome by the end of it I felt I had already died, and decided I must make a ‘last entry’ in here too. I was so fascinated by the spectacle of scenes in the cottage after my decease I could not sleep for hours. Today I feel very alive.

  Tuesday, March 18

  A growing feeling of optimism. Lady Spicer thinks it will all be over by the autumn. She was given an onion yesterday for her birthday. Her cook flavoured bread sauce with it and then used it for something else.

  Monday, 21 April

  Are we really going to lose this war? The Nazis sweep from triumph to triumph making no mistakes while we make all the mistakes.

  ‘I would rather die than live under Nazi rule,’ says Nockie. Nockie said that someone had read in her teacup that she was to be left some money through the death of a friend. Hope that’s not me. I don’t want to die at all, just as I seem to be getting a grip of living. Besides, these journals are not ready, are not finished. Death, yes, in its appointed time, but not now. God alone knows what the living will be called upon to endure these next few years. Planes overhead again tonight.

  Tuesday, 22 April

  Mental torture. 1) Will he get the letter before he leaves for work tomorrow morning and phone me in the evening? 2) Will there be a blitz on London on Thursday night and 83 be bombed? 3) Will all this torment bring on a period? 4) Shall I really be able to cope with the situation so that there are no ‘consequences’? 5) Perhaps he will be engaged on Thursday? 6) Perhaps it won’t be as tremendous as it promises to be? 7) Perhaps I’ll suffer the whale of a reaction and never want to go near him again?

  I’ve never felt less romantic about anyone in my life. It is very naughty of me. But it’s too strong for me – if it doesn’t happen this week, it will the next time we meet, so I must be ready. Leaden, leaden hours.111

  Wednesday, 23 April

  He phoned last night without having had my letter, and the fever suddenly subsided. I am a little horrified now at what I am about to do – but not much. It’s too late to retract, and I should be happy to have to, now that I have made up my mind. It’s something I cannot resist.

  Thursday, 24 April

  Again, last night, he phoned, having had my letter. He really is the nicest person. ‘Oh, this can’t be love, I feel so well!’

  I’m in a strange, golden haze of anticipation, waiting for a door long-closed to open for me.

  Monday, 28 April

  Churchill’s speech last night – well, everyone at the Canteen this morning pronounced it excellent so I suppose it was. But the division of aims among our own people and our maddening inefficiency threaten, I think, to lose us the war. There are people who want a new social order, but not Hitler’s. There are the powerful sets, apparently in control of the war and trying to preserve ‘democracy’ for their own ends. The confusion is terrible. Germany solves it at the moment by liquidating all opposition to its one ideal, ruthlessly. It is not the right way, but it is, or appears to be, the quickest.

  Sunday, 11 May

  Time
waits. The sun shines in a pale sky. Clear bird notes fall through the quiet woodland. Leaves and branches are moved by a light, cool current of air. The clock is now two hours ahead of the sun and spring is a month behind.

  A bad blitz on London again last night, much damage done and casualties feared heavy. One’s heart tightens with anxiety for friends one knows who were there. One cannot grieve any longer for all the wounded and bereaved, there are too many, inevitably.

  Tuesday, 13 May

  Rudolf Hess, Nazi Party leader and Hitler’s deputy, has flown in an ME110 from Augsburg and landed by parachute on farmland in Scotland, without arms or ammunition and is now somewhere in GB recovering from a broken ankle. If this is true, if the man is sane, if it is not part of some deep laid Nazi plot, the implications are tremendous … and the romance of it! It is the best piece of news we have been given for months.

  Shall I or shall I not record something of the incredible adventure I seemed to be facing on Sunday April 20? I have refrained, I think, purely from vanity; I wanted to wait until I could state here that I AM NO LONGER A VIRGIN. But I still am, and the situation seems to have reached a rather dreary dead-end. What is interesting is that I have no qualm of conscience about the matter. Ought I to lose my chastity by this particularly unspectacular and neurotic little man with whom I am not in love (nor is he with me)? The difficulty is that he finds more satisfaction in imagining – with great vividness and in powerful Laurentian detail – his love affairs, than in participating in them actually. For me he was my first real potential lover; I thought I was to be initiated at last. It was largely my own fault that I wasn’t, yet I know it wouldn’t have been a success that night.

  I have at least learnt more of the practical details of love making – much more. Layers of sentimentality about LUVE have peeled off. And I begin to think that so many DUVs (Dried Up Virgins) are so because they have lacked knowledge of these very practical, unromantic details (how and when to insert pessaries for example, what kind to use, whether and how to use a douche and so on), when their virtue and conventions were challenged, and having no friend they could trust for the information, as I have had in Nockie. (She has behaved magnificently, been my guide throughout the whole affair.) If I had known as much six years ago I might even be married by now, and successfully married. Now I feel: I am over 30, what the devil is the good of my chastity to me any longer? I have enough experience and resources in other spheres to pull me through any severe emotional crisis, and I want, most passionately, to have this experience. Though it seems now that I shan’t with this man. But I don’t mind. I am without shame.

  Tuesday, 27 May

  HMS Hood has been destroyed and intense fighting between British and German forces is going on in Crete. The whole Mediterranean situation seems to depend on the outcome of this battle – the destiny of Suez is being decided.

  But I am enveloped in my own affairs. My period is two days late, and although I have no cause at all for alarm, I am alarmed.

  Wednesday, 28 May

  How big little moments can sometimes seem. Ethel has just left. I saw her off at Beaconsfield and have just returned to a mournfully empty cottage. Am in a suicidal mood today. Everything seems to be going wrong and I don’t know what to do. Had better read some Graham Howe. Want to sink into a comfortable coma and emerge to find all the kinks and mountains removed. I hate the feeling of restriction when people are here with me and hate the emptiness when they are gone, as though with them have gone opportunities I didn’t use, things I never saw or understood that I should and could have understood. Like having a book in my possession that I didn’t bother to read properly.

  10 p.m. Period is now over three days late. If conception can take place without that man’s organ being inserted into the vagina and without the woman being conscious of the passage of anything between them although the organs are in contact, then nature’s ways are incredible. I don’t believe it is possible, I won’t believe it … All the same I shall not rest until I know. I have a plan of action.

  Sunday, 1 June

  False alarm, thank goodness. But I didn’t know until I had sent an express letter to Nockie on Thursday. How she will laugh. Incapacitated as I was, I am still a virgin, but unless fate interferes with our third set of arrangements, I shan’t be this time next week. Oh God, if I am to burn for this, as St Paul threatens me, then I’ll burn. For this is desire without love. I can’t help it and I don’t care. ‘Finlandier!’ said Joan at the Odeon on Saturday when Sibelius was being played. She looked at me and F. beside her – ‘Philanderess!’

  I wish I understood the situation. An irresistible, physical attraction between a hungry, passionate virgin and an oversexed, neurotic, incomprehensible man.

  We have lost the battle of Crete with very heavy losses. Clothes are to be rationed.

  Tuesday, 3 June

  For five weeks this ad has been appearing in the Architects’ Journal: ‘Vacancy exists for woman architect or architectural student on the editorial staff of an architectural publication. Candidates must be able to write easily and well. An interest in the presentation of buildings illustrated in architectural journals and general knowledge of our current events in the profession and building industry are also desirable.’ The last one appeared on May 22nd and I have to see it now. I could kill myself, am weeping wildly. I have written, but it’s too late, I know it’s too late. What a lesson for me. To think that I have had all those ruddy journals in the house and had not bothered to look at the adverts, which I did do regularly at one time. What came over me? It’s as though they were trying and trying to get hold of me. Am frantic. There’ll never be another opportunity like that. I, and I alone, am to blame.

  Sunday, 8 June

  Now I can record it – the death of an Old Maid. But whether I’ve the energy to write more at present I don’t know. The experience has been Pleasant and Unpleasant, and I am now exhausted. I don’t regret the experience one atom. But I think there is something wrong with me physically. He, obviously, wore himself out with anticipation – those long, incredibly detailed letters, that emphasis to ‘working up’ to the crisis, his anxiety that I should be properly thrilled. Have I fallen into that trap again – of wanting too much, too quickly?

  There was I, 31 and a virgin and likely to remain so unless I grabbed at the very next opportunity – which turned out most surprisingly to be F. Vanity thy name is Jean Pratt. Let things drift a bit now. He gets hugely worked up at the thought of me and when he kisses me, but fails to get me into a sufficiently responsive state for the big moment. I’ve been over-anxious too, and immodestly frank to him about my desire – gave him no reason to doubt my intentions, no thrill of pursuit.

  I am a little worried as to how much the neighbours have overheard! He has a peculiarly penetrating voice and talks about love-making with almost as much restraint as he writes of it in his letters. One story he told me I enjoyed immensely. It was written by Alec Waugh. A young girl after the first experience remarked, ‘Well, if that’s Divine Love it’s given me a pain in the stomach.’ Which is exactly how I feel.

  Monday, 9 June

  F. phoned tonight and reminded me of it. When he had played with me in the French manner (too long I think) to work me up to the Crisis, the Big Moment Passionate and so on, I left him to make my preparations and then lay back on the bed and said in a sepulchral voice, ‘Now I’m ready for the worst!’ Well, it was damned painful, though I didn’t know it was going to be.

  I have quite recovered from my pain in the stomach and am in a rare good humour, have been all day. It is such a relief to feel one is no longer completely ignorant.

  19.

  Francis

  Friday, 13 June 1941 (aged thirty-one)

  Too much lovemaking in one week, and I as cold as a fish last night, so cold I thought I was sprouting fins. Perhaps there is something wrong with me, or is it because we are in love only physically? I feel now that I shall never feel amorous again. I was fai
nt with desire not so many weeks ago, and now, unsatisfied, there is not a spasm of desire in me.

  Saturday, 14 June

  Received this morning a timely reminder from Nockie about using the word fuck. It has sunk, she says, very low in the social scale and reveals F.’s attitude to sex.

  I am now going to analyse F. ruthlessly. He is slight, about the same height as myself, no, taller, but his thinness makes him seem smaller. His face and features are long and sharp, his mouth small, vicious, his eyes and hair dark. His hair is wearing thin at the back of his head and grows thickly above his temples and is apt to stand out wildly when blown or rumpled. He has ugly hands. He has now a wizened, shrivelled appearance, but not without the suggestion of having once possessed lean good looks in a romantic, poetic fashion. He must be 40 years of age or more.

  As a companion he is exhausting, irritating. He likes to call himself highly strung but I think he is badly neurotic. (He bolts his food, rarely stops to look at anything, never sits still, never listens to one speaking for long.) He is maddeningly dogmatic about everything and morbidly absorbed with sex once you have passed the barriers of communication with him.

  I have drawn him thus darkly, as darkly as I can, deliberately. For on the other hand he has a sense of humour, some tolerance, sympathy, gentleness. His instinct for cultural values seems to be right – his interest in literature and art and music and life in general is always in the right (i.e. my) direction. But he has an unconvincing, unattractive way of expressing himself in conversation. He has failed at everything he has attempted so far and has a brother seven years younger who has been comparatively very successful. His good qualities seem to indicate a rather ‘might have been’ goodness, a goodness suffocated and dying instead of free and growing and passing out into life – a plant in decay.

  That is the man who is my first lover. Not a flattering start.

  Thursday, 19 June