A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

High summer came upon us without warning on Sunday. We have been hot, burst out in light and white and airy garments, the soil is dry, there is perfume in the air, dust on the roads, mosquitoes in the garden, greenfly on the roses. And my moods have been past belief – up, down and indifferent. I have been overcome with nausea, crying with D.H. Lawrence ‘From all the mental poetry of deliberate love-making, from all the false felicity of deliberately taking the body of another into mine, O God deliver me!’112

  Seeing F. as one of the rather nastier types of mosquito, sympathising with brides who are not in love with their grooms, with wives who are bored with their husbands, with wives who are ‘used’ by their husbands, with tarts who have taken to prostitution because there was no other means for them of getting a meal. Then forgetting F. altogether and feeling as though nothing at all had happened between us, then wondering when I should see him again and what I would do when I did. He phoned on Sunday evening but I was vague and indecisive and shocked him a lot I know – I have taken enough initiative in this affair, now it’s his turn. What I am really dreading is next week when my next period is due. If it is late again I shall go crazy.

  The cigarette problem is acute. Have failed to get any in Slough these last three weeks. The local man yesterday had a few Woodbines. In London last week I managed to get 100, which I am trying to make last, but with the greatest difficulty. It shocks me to find that they have such a hold on me. F. tells me it indicates a craving for sex. I would really (at the moment) rather have the cigarettes.

  Saturday, 21 June

  A letter from him this morning. I am now a very sweet and desirable person, and he wants to see me again very much but is afraid that I have been struck by qualms of conscience and am worrying and thinking about the matter too much, which I am not to do. We are to take things easily and naturally – let things develop without trying to understand the situation.

  So unreasonably reasonable of him. But I scent a clue in this sentence: ‘I did feel that in you I had found someone who was completely natural about sex.’ I may be, but I don’t think he is (or what is natural to him is not natural to me).

  Really life strikes me as so pleasant at this moment – I must say so here. After a long winter and a frozen spring the weather has swept into a train of royal summer days. Roses and lupins and foxgloves, oriental poppies, purple and yellow iris bloom in the garden. The heat is Mediterranean. At night a sheet on the bed is too much.

  Only the constant passing of airplanes reminds me of war. I have more than enough food for my needs. I have clothes enough, money in the bank, interesting work, a lover, books, papers, radio, a few very good friends and many agreeable acquaintances, two cats and kitten, a heavenly garden and cottage – what more could a woman want? (Cigarettes. This woman does. A certain 20 or even 15 a day would suffice.)

  Sunday, 22 June

  On the hottest day of the year we hear at 9 a.m. that Germany has invaded Russia and at 9 p.m. that the declared policy of the British Government is to aid all nations who are victims of Nazi aggression. We are going to help Russia! Churchill made one of the cleverest speeches of his career. (‘Any man or State who fights against Nazism will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe.’) I smoke my last cigarette to him. I think this is the most important day of the century.

  Tuesday, 24 June

  The wages of sin is/are anxiety.

  Wednesday, 25 June

  Thank you God, oh Thank you God! Now I will enjoy this day. The ways of the Lord and science are truly wonderful. The relief of knowing I haven’t to worry this month!

  Thursday, 3 July

  Have just acquired an informative little book on The Technique of Sex by Anthony Havil. It treats the subject in a healthy if rather abbreviated scientific matter. It is undoubtedly useful. It is very smug. I intend to visit F. in Hampstead again (oh heaven help me).

  Sunday, 6 July

  Gus and Phyllis have just left. They belong to a class and age I just missed being born into. That their class and age are dying doesn’t make any difference – I am filled with wistful envy. I adore them both. Why they should be so sweet to me I do not know, coming that vile journey from London on a blistering day to see me. I am very touched, very flattered. Phyllis bought me 300 cigarettes, chocolate, a jar of jam, Parmesan cheese. The privileged class. They accept the inevitable and with such good-humoured dignity: that this is a class war and that nothing they can do will stop the advent of social revolution. They belong to an age when aristocracy mattered and had real influence.

  During the last blitz on London, about 6 weeks ago, Marylebone ‘got it’. Druce’s in Baker Street has been obliterated. Gus and Phyllis’s flat is in Gloucester Place just behind. Fires raged round them all night. Their house was one of the only 4 in the block which was not burnt. A sudden change of wind favoured them. High explosives fell not far away. At one time Gus could not go into the street: the wind was blowing smoke and sparks with such intensity. They were up until 7.30 a.m. helping to quench fires. Sheets of flame blew over their roof. It was the worst night they had ever known. But they describe them, these bad nights, with great gusto. They face danger magnificently. It is a great, dramatic adventure. IF you are hit, well that is just too bad. So let’s just enjoy the drama of it while we can. I wish I could face all kinds of danger like that.

  Ginger has come into my room and is now sitting by my bed, and when I am working in the garden he and Dinah will both come and sit somewhere near. I adore being caressed as much as a cat apparently does. To be stroked! Heavenly! But to be stroked by someone who really loves you! Impossible?

  Monday, 14 July

  F. is the most difficult of persons. He is one of those men Who Won’t Be Told. He rolled up like a hedgehog on Saturday, and watched me getting crosser and crosser with delight. It was far too hot to be made love to on Friday night. Besides, I am not at all sure that I want F. to make love to me anymore. The truth is we are two damned selfish people unwilling to alter our lives one iota for the other. If I met someone who attracted me more and was more human, I should drop F. without a qualm. At least I think I would. But perhaps he’ll drop me first.

  Wednesday, 16 July

  I want to smash something but will escape here instead. Am typing out final copy of that blasted short story which I intend to send to ‘Penguin Parade’. But it’ll come back, I know it will. I want to hammer and hammer at my typewriter until its parts are scattered and destroyed.

  Just before I woke this morning I dreamt that F. was making love to me in a way I particularly dislike. I got up and ran away from him. He chased me into dark and fearful corners but I escaped at last up steep stairs and onto a cliff from where I dived into the sea with my clothes on. He stood above me threatening with a gun, but I dived underwater. On shore was the handsome young officer who comes sometimes into the canteen and I hoped he would rescue me, but I woke before that delightful event occurred.

  Friday, 25 July

  Tomorrow I join Nockie at St Bees for 10 days’ holiday in the Lakes and am now suffering a bad bout of disinclination. I want to go but do not want to undertake that frightful journey. Weather is warm again. Cannot get on with packing and arrangements here, do not want to leave the cottage and the cats, it is all too silly. Suppose I shall be up very late finishing and then have to scramble for 9.20 bus in the morning and arrive at destination exhausted. What will I do if I have to leave here to do war work? I heard yesterday that the women born 1910–1916 are to register within the next three months. The 1909s will be next. I am in a state.

  Tuesday, 12 August

  It was a good holiday. We stayed on a farm at Crossdale, near Lake Ennerdale. We fed on butter and cream and large starchy meals and became liverish. No fruit, few greens or salads. Farm people have no excuse for these sort of shortages but they were the type who do not consider greens or brown bread important. Kind people. Mrs Edmondson, ridden with arthritis, ruled the household from her chair by the kitchen sto
ve. The domestic help Maggie did all the work. There were 5 dogs, 10 cats, cows, a bull, pet lambs, chickens, ducklings – every farm animal you can think of. The weather might have been worse. We returned to London by the night train.

  [The day’s entry straddles two exercise books.]

  The satisfaction in beginning a new book! What will its pages tell? I know no more than you, dear mythical reader. No, ‘hypothetical’ reader is more accurate.

  Tonight as I write I hear planes in the night outside. Though we have had no enemy activity over this area for many months, that sound still spells a dread. My home-made black-out frames are falling to pieces.

  In October we are to be rationed to ½ pint of milk per adult per day. I can manage with this but with 3 cats it will be a watery ½ pint and there will be no milk puddings.

  Saw Greta Garbo in Ninotchka this afternoon. It seemed in rather bad taste to be laughing at the Bolsheviks now.

  Thursday, 14 August

  I want particularly to note the food I live on during this war. I still maintain that there is no need to be hungry or undernourished. For breakfast I have tea, a cereal, black treacle, (the best medicine for my innards – it has required ingenuity and forethought to keep myself supplied but have sufficient in store now for some months). Cereals are becoming very scarce. Am considering rice (still plentiful) as a substitute. For lunch nearly always I have a green or raw veg salad with cheese if I have it, or marmite on bread, and then something starchy and sweet such as brown bread and jam. Jam is a real difficulty now. I have only a very small stock of it and the ration of ½lb a month does not go far. For supper usually a hot meal with cooked veg and a pudding. Tonight I shall have egg and bacon, runner beans, cooked lettuce and potatoes and the rhubarb steamed pudding to which I have today added stewed apples I consider this a sufficiently wholesome and satisfying diet, though possibly the quality of the flour in bought products is not as good as it was and there is certainly less sugar in cakes and biscuits.

  Paper today is full of the exploits of the RAF during recent raids on Cologne and Berlin.

  Friday, 15 August

  F. phoned this evening. The war situation fades into the background.

  It amounts to this: I would not mind at all if I never see him again. If I had a good excuse I’d use it. And then my conscience flickers: I fear that I have and am treating him rather badly (‘You never sent me a postcard even.’). Then another fear: that I am running away from something of value, and that if I had the courage I might find treasure in what I thought was dross. Imagine him here for even a few days. The neighbours would know. Winnie the cleaner would know. The tradespeople would know. I could say openly that I was letting a playwright friend stay here for his holiday – no one is to know what we do at night. Yet I fear my name in the village would be mud. I haven’t the courage – not for F. If it were someone I loved, loved as much even as my cats or my cottage – but I do not love him at all.

  Monday, 18 August

  Reading I Came Out of France by Cecily Mackworth: story of a young woman’s escape last year when France capitulated. Written quietly, easily, it gives a vivid picture of the fantastic horrors the refugees went through. One can hardly believe it. People swarming from the north, from the south, over-running country towns and villages; no food, no medical attention, no petrol; wild rumours, contradictory orders; suspicion, mistrust, hunger, illness, death; civilians machine-gunned, press and radio under German control. One feels one had no business to be sleeping comfortably and eating well when the French nation was suffering so much.

  Tuesday, 19 August

  Went to Wembley today. No cigarettes or sweets anywhere. In Sudbury I tracked down some Players Weights and chocolate caramels and liquorice all-sorts. And in Beaconsfield on my way home a packet of Woodbines and 2ozs of broken block chocolate.

  The young man is very determined. He has nailed me down to next Tuesday, to meet him in town.

  Wednesday, 27 August

  Gus is doing well at the BBC repertory, enjoys the work, likes the people and Val Gielgud.113

  Met the boyfriend as arranged yesterday and spent a most successful 24 hours with him. Not completely successful, but very much more pleasant than any previous time. It made me dig out an old ring to wear on the third finger of my right hand. So silly. Slight summer madness.114

  Thursday, 28 August

  I would like him to fall in love with me so seriously that he makes me fall in love with him. To love as he has never loved before. I have vain moments when I think I could do it. He is feeling the need of companionship, of a home atmosphere to return to after work, of someone to share his experiences with. But I shall not offer to satisfy it. I must keep a little aloof and appear to be indifferent, but never jealous of his other loves or ideals. Sympathetic without cloying. Friendly, independent, and beyond his power to hurt me until he owns my power to hurt him. Do I say slight summer madness? I should have said Grave Autumnal Lunacy.

  Friday, 29 August

  I must take my cue from Graham Howe, who said in one of his lectures that one of the first problems he had to tackle with the majority of his male patients was that of disentangling them from the tentacles of half a dozen women anxious to ‘do’ things for them.

  I see F. as a forlorn and wasted individual, a heart desiring affection; and affection is stored in me, ready to be lavished on the first man who asks me for it. It would give me a gratifying feeling of power to satisfy my much-neglected maternal instinct. That is not love. But I do want him to go on making love to me – I want him now, not anyone new, which I certainly have not felt before.

  Sunday, 31 August

  Nockie has been talking a lot of sense with me. Marriage to him would be spiritual and mental suicide. Do not let him persuade you into consenting until you have had something to do with someone else first (and then, says N., you won’t want to have anything more to do with F.!)

  I shall not marry F. (always supposing he asks me). I should only consent to do so on condition that we lived together first for at least three months. I should soon get over any sentimentality roused by our physical intimacy. I think one month would be enough. How nice to have one’s meals cooked properly, he sighed; you need a housekeeper, I replied, but I am not offering to be one for you.

  Physical attraction can trick one into endless fake feelings. But what is one to do about the physical attraction? Satisfy one’s lust soullessly and then forget about it? Or wait for ‘the real thing’ – perhaps too long? How is one to know what the real thing is without some practical experience?

  Tuesday, 2 September

  The fever subsides. Curious. Three hours in the garden, cutting the grass and weeding, left me exhausted. This morning, for the first time since I dug it out last week, I did not put on the ring. By this evening I was hopeful he wouldn’t phone. But he did. I was so cool, have promised to see him Thursday evening. Really I don’t care, I wish the affair would end. It doesn’t seem worth any effort, and the scheming for and snatching of an hour seems so sordid.

  Wednesday, 3 September

  Two years ago, we are reminded by the press and the BBC, war was declared. For two years I have been lucky, living so happily here. But the time is coming when I shall have to make my sacrifice. There seems no hope of the war ending. The future appears dreary and incalculable. I cannot expect anyone to understand what it will mean to me to give up my indolent cottage lifestyle. The problem of what to do with the cats seems appalling.

  Friday, 5 September

  I have no business to feel tired so often and so much. It is wearing me out. Even my passion for gardening is not what it was. This evening I layered the carnations but at the outset it seemed a task demanding more energy than I could summon. Apart from that little job I have done nothing important beyond chores all day. Perhaps my mail this morning is responsible: the publicity department of the Ministry of Works is full. There is no vacancy on the staff of The Builder. Yesterday I tried to crash into the press depa
rtment of the British Council, but Mr Forsdick would not see me. It is incredible how a few refusals can depress one, make one feel unwanted, a meddling amateur or a tiresome pusher. I shall be pushed into uniform …

  F. is ill. He seems to me to be on the verge of cracking, in a terrible state of nerves, for which I can do nothing, though I offered to have him here for a rest. He was abominably rude and loathsome last night, very repressed and explosive, rigid with a hate of life.

  Monday, 8 September

  One is living at an intense tension. This dreary war. Endless, vindictive slaughter, drama, heroics, destruction. While a serene moon shines full upon ally and foe. What does the future hold? Will Germany defeat Russia? Canadians, Australians, all the men who have given up their lives overseas to fight with us are asking – Why is Britain one of the world’s leading powers?

  Our genius, says Priestley, is for improvisation not organisation. We need to be inspired, as we were inspired after Dunkirk. But with so many Stupids in authority, who is there to inspire us? He is too glib, is Priestley. He says, ‘We must be as fiercely democratic as the Nazis are fiercely Nazi … we should believe intensely …’ Yes, yes, yes Mr Priestley, we must, we must! But how, when the heart of us is being eaten away with disease?

  Saturday, 20 September

  I

  have

  got

  a

  job

  on

  the

  ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS.

  I don’t believe it, but there it is. I am to begin on October 2nd. Now I have so much to do in preparation and tidying up, don’t know where to begin. I do thank you, God. Please let me benefit from all my past experience – use everything I have learned to make the most of this opportunity. Please let nothing happen to spoil this chance.

  Germany claims to have taken Kiev but Russian communiqués do not confirm this. The fighting on Russian soil is terrible, terrible. We feel that our aid is tardy, we fear the weight of anti-Russian influences in power.

  I stayed in Hampstead last night. F. is such an odd and difficult creature. No one likes him. Vulgar, vain, mean. Yet just something about him attracts me to him. I cannot end it or keep away.