Tuesday, 13 April
The strength of the Old School Tie – Jean Macfarlane to the rescue again. I twice left light on in bedroom recently when I departed in morning, and as I did not return on each occasion until long after Black Out, the light shone brilliantly into the darkness and was reported by military. Local policeman had to climb in window and turn out offending illumination.125 I didn’t go to court for first summons, and was fined 30 shillings. Last night I received second summons and a charge for wasting fuel. The office sent me dizzy today, telling me that second fine likely to be very heavy, that I must attend court in person this time, that I should certainly obtain legal advice. I phoned Jean when I got home and I am to see her father tomorrow evening. Am deeply touched.
Thursday, 15 April
An elderly, precise, big-hearted, hard-headed Scotsman – Jean M.’s father. They are such kind people. They live in a large, pleasant neo-Georgian house, and their garden is spacious but rather desolate. There are daffodils in abundance under trees, but the lawn needs cutting and there is no colour in the flower beds. If, said Mr Macf, the case had been at Slough court he might have been able to get it withdrawn for me, but as it is at Burnham where he has no influence he can do nothing. Jean, however, is going to bring her influence to bear on the Inspector who has brought the charges (through a Farnham Common Red Cross commandant). If he can be persuaded to be lenient, the Bench will possibly be kind to me. But I must plead my own case on Monday – I am guilty! No lawyer could say anything in my defence that I could not say myself. What would my darling Papa say? Much banter about me being a hardened criminal.
Wednesday, 21 April
I attended the Court as bidden on this last Monday morning, quaking. I was expecting to have to pay out £5. I pleaded guilty, accepted the policeman’s evidence and explained in a small voice that I worked from 8.30–6 every day, was alone in the cottage, had no domestic help and had to get myself up and off in the morning by 8 o’clock, had not been well and was that week losing sleep because of troublesome cough and that therefore in the early morning rush it was easy to forget the light. The Bench went into a huddle and then I heard the Chairman say ‘£1 for each charge.’ £2 in all! Which I paid promptly. What wires Jean and her father have been pulling I don’t yet know but I have them to thank for this I am sure. Everyone at the office as astonished as myself and think me very fortunate. But Heaven help me if I do it again.
Tuesday, 5 May
I saw my first X-ray diagnosis last night: everything as it should be except for some ‘scattered opacities in the right lung which suggest tubercular infection.’ The second X-ray was taken this afternoon and I am in a most mournful mood. I don’t want to be ill, to be subjected to some monstrous treatment and be shut away from the world. I wept this evening. What, I asked myself, have I to live for? Why should I fight for a life that seems aimless and vapid? What have I given that the world should want me?
Darker and darker grow the shadows in the garden. From here, in the sitting room with the light on, the sky is a theatrical dull green-blue, the trees and shadows ultramarine and black. An orange glimmer from a neighbour’s window.
Thursday, 6 May
I dread to hear the doctor’s verdict.
Sunday, 9 May
A little girl demands that I record this confession. She knows him to be a vain, unreliable, deceiving scoundrel. She is often shocked and chilled by his behaviour, his aloofness, his lack of real sympathy. Yet she would give him the earth if she could. She dances with joy when she hears him coming. She thinks of him day and night, and although he has proved his worthlessness again and again, although he is never there when he is wanted, she likes to be with him, likes to know he is around. She will believe anything he tells her. She would stand by him through any misfortune. She weeps at her own foolishness. She knows that the other girl in the laboratory is much more of a friend to him than she can ever be. And yet and yet … the dream and the hope go on. Her heart floods with bitter happiness at the thought of him.
The second X-ray has shown that there are no changes in those disturbing ‘opacities’, and the doctors have come to the conclusion that they are therefore inactive. Nothing to worry about. Do not smoke too much and do not neglect colds. It was like being released from long-term imprisonment.
Monday, 24 May
Thomas Hughes has been moved to the labs.
Sunday, 30 May
Feeling as chill and mouldy as a tomb. Your will to love gets pressed down and blacked out. If that pressure grows heavy and black enough there’s no other way out of the problem – you’re weighted down, wedged, suffocated. All paths but one seemed blocked to you. I am nowhere near that state but I can see how it can begin. It is a terrible mood: to feel useless, unwanted, unloved.
Tuesday, 15 June (War Diary)
This last Whit weekend I spent at Hove. The Brighton shore is mined and guarded with barbed wire, many of the huge hotels along the front have been taken over for the Services, and The Lanes, where the fashionable strolled on summer evenings after dinner, have gone to sea-dried seed. The appearance of the front is very depressing but holiday crowds (90 per cent of which seem to be Jews) still promenade when the sun shines. The doors of the Norfolk Hotel, The Metropole, The Queens, the Old Ship and a host of others still swing open to visitors. The antique shops in The Lanes appear well stocked and thriving.
The front has not suffered much from bomb damage, only those parts of the town near the station, the viaduct and the gasworks. Many shops thereabouts are boarded up or to let and many houses empty. When raids are bad the population begins to leave.
On the whole I think the war has improved Brighton. The glare and publicity to attract the cheap holiday trade has subsided. Now the Georgian era can be seen – faded but enchanting.
Wednesday, 16 June (War Diary)
Our Wings for Victory Target was £15,000. On Friday it had reached £7,000. Today the total was announced as something over £15,400. Was told that the management would not allow our total to be less than the target at any cost.
Sally who works in wages and was responsible for the Savings receipts said that one man last year brought in £150 in £1 notes – she told him to bring it the next year in £10 notes, and he did.
Tuesday, 29 June (War Diary)
Our film Forgings in Hiduminium Aluminium Alloys is now making its debut. We saw it last week. I didn’t have anything to do with it so I can say freely that it is really an excellent technical film. It has had one or two special showings and has been very favourably received.
Blitz First Aid lectures and a Prisoners of War Fete held last Saturday at which I helped at the coconut shies. No real coconuts, only wooden dummies. Anyone who knocked one off received 3d. or another turn. Lemon, grapefruit and orange drinks. An Auction: silk shawl that went for £10, a necklace for £27, lemons and peaches for 20s. or 30s. each, a live rabbit for 10s. Goods included champagne, port, dolls, a patchwork quilt made by an old lady of 82, Maltese lace, a tea cosy and a statuette for which no one would give a bid, not even for Prisoners of War.
Wednesday, 30 June
What I am seeking is poise. That has really been the essential motive of all my wanderings. More than writing, more than lovers – I want to feel sure of myself as a full-growing balanced person, meeting defeat, pain, humiliation without losing that balance. A person of wisdom and quality.
Saturday, 10 July
Cats have had 5 kittens between them. The foundation of life is in young creatures. Their curiosity, courage and joyousness seems inexhaustible – I could watch them without tiring for hours.
To be loved – not merely made love to – that’s what I want. It is comparatively easy to find someone willing to make love to you. But to be loved – that lies beyond your conscious power to control. All you can do about it consciously is to become worthy of being loved.
Monday, 2 August
Here I am, with Elsie D. as companion, at the Fabian Summer School in
Dartington. We have been here since Saturday evening, and by tonight should have got to know at least one or two males sufficiently well to be asked for, say, a couple of dances each. I came away deliberately from the dance hall to write this, leaving Elsie alone there: I think she stands more chance of being asked if she is on her own. I hope she’ll stay for a little while and chance her luck.
I’m not here for any spectacular romance or to find a husband, but I had hoped we should fall in with a pleasant group and mix fairly freely. But people seem to have ignored us as if we had the plague or weren’t there. I’m not sure whose fault this is: E. is more retiring than I am and really rather a bore. We have isolated ourselves too much and E. doesn’t help matters. I think we sit around in corners too much looking superior.
It’s not being a success, this holiday. This question of lonely people: there should be here a sympathetic hostess and I would like to be it: just to keep my eye open for the solitary members of the party, find out if they are so by choice or mischance, and tactfully get the lonely people together. It would be so easy for me at this stage to fall into a bitter, sour-grapish criticism of the Fabians. They have a power for good, but they won’t succeed unless they explore thoroughly all the potentialities of their members. If you leave it too much to the individual’s initiative, the work will be grabbed by the exhibitionists, the people who crave limelight and power.
Midnight: E. has returned. She has danced with a certain Czech.
Tuesday, 3 August
Midnight: All, all is changed! Another familiar situation: to have met someone you’re attracted to, who is attracted to you, and wanting the obvious climax to that attraction yet not knowing at all what to do about it. Reason, upbringing and fear all preaching caution, and then impulse and instinct urging you violently to take the plunge. When one is hungry for something and sees food one doesn’t stop to consider the principles of eating. Tomorrow evening – oh, let’s go to bed now and wait till that time comes.
Sunday, 8 August
I must go right back. About 11.30 p.m. on the evening before my holiday at Dartington the phone rang. To my astonishment it was Tommy. He had asked me at the office about the chances of getting a room at Dartington (his idea, not mine). As usual he had made no plans for his holidays. On the phone he said he had been unable to get accommodation there, but might come to Devon with his bicycle, stay somewhere near and look in. This pleased me enormously. I have in no way for a very long time made any effort to pursue that young man. Since March the fever subsided and all sentimental hopes and desires died. If he approached I welcomed him, easily and frankly, but set no ‘nets’.
We returned from Dartington yesterday and I am still in bed. The villagers consider us all lunatics – our reputation for immorality is terrific. Both accusations are to some extent justified. I don’t think I want to go again. One lives at a very fast pace, crowding as much as possible into a very short space of time: two lectures a day, endless discussions, walks, dancing, tennis, activities of all kinds to suit every inclination. Everyone is greedy for the maximum amount of enjoyment. People grab at pleasure, and the timid and diffident get left out. We seemed to have an unusually unmeldable collection that week. A top group, formed of brilliant, scintillating young people who mixed easily with Fabian notables. Only their own pleasure was considered. People who could not live at their pace or come up to their standards were ignored. I am thinking of a young woman called Barbara Betts, and a young Jew called John Lewis – the intolerant type that thrive on competition and make my type shrivel.126
Things began to improve for myself and Elsie on Wednesday during a long walk. We got to know people, and the awful rain was a great help. I began to fall quite seriously for a Czech (not the one E. danced with) called Otto. He was large, rather like Charles Laughton, his manner a little conceited and ludicrous, but I think it was due to loneliness and shyness. I spent quite a lot of the day with him.
I think my agitation and misery at the beginning of the week was largely aggravated by the thought of Tommy’s possible appearance. I did not want him to come and find me left out of everything in the humiliating position of wallflower. On Wednesday evening Otto made very definite advances, which pleased me, but I was undecided as to what course I should take. Thursday was a disappointing day until the afternoon – E. and I tried to go to Paignton but spent all the afternoon queuing for buses in the rain. When we eventually abandoned the idea and returned, I found a note in my room from Tommy. He came to the lecture that evening.
Well, in this extraordinary, feverish atmosphere of young passion, wit, ideas and so on, the climax for Tommy and me was obvious. There was only one obvious course for me to take that night, although not with the person I had been considering the night before. I spent Thursday and Friday night with Tommy and I am not at all ashamed to admit it. Why be ashamed of sex?
We learnt a lot about each other. I think we may be able to help each other a lot too. He has lived with the girlfriend who works in the laboratory (just as I have always expected) for years – I suppose he still does. I don’t feel at all jealous: I am not in the romantic sense at all in love with Tommy. I like him. I feel this morning quite calm, happy, ready for whatever may lie ahead. I leave our next meeting to him or to chance. One just doesn’t make plans where Tommy is concerned.
Monday, 16 August
The sort of day when marvellous things should happen but rarely do. Left office early to have my hair done – new hag at the hairdressers had booked me for next Monday in error. She looks an awful old witch and I’d like to get fixed up elsewhere, but hairdressers so fully booked these days. Cottage for once tidy, cool and delightful, but Dinah missing. She has been missing since last week and am distraught. No letters, not even a bill. And not a word from that young man. As far as I can discreetly find out, he has not yet returned to the office from his holiday and I have seen nothing of the girlfriend either. This is so typical of him. But I went through too much agony last year over this sort of strange vanishing to worry more now. Am of course eaten up by curiosity and a little anxious lest something may have happened to him.
Sunday, 22 August
Tommy came back to the office on Tuesday. Dinah limped home with a badly damaged paw on Wednesday to my great joy. Ethel is here and the cottage begins to glisten again, thanks to her. But if the period due at the end of this week doesn’t come then my future will be hard and complicated. The thought doesn’t scare me at the moment but I don’t want to have to go through difficulties and complications of that kind – I don’t know that I would have the necessary amount of ‘guts’ – and I mean either way, to have a child or get rid of it. I think I would want T. to share the decision with me, but I’d never ask him or get him to marry me as a way out – I would rather die. And if the decision was to get rid of it, I’d go to my own friends, not his. He just makes me feel that way.
To him I am just an adventure in the Beeches. In fact to all the men I have ever had much to do with I’ve been just an adventure, an entertaining interlude. I am getting tired of it. What is exasperating, humiliating, is that I am sure if T. really wanted to be different he could be. I enjoy being with him, oh, enormously really! But the Irish – yes, they do scare me. That Irish background of his, the circle of friends I never meet, only hear of. I couldn’t cope with them. And besides, in that circle, the girlfriend is accepted more or less as his ‘wife’. It is that quicksilver quality of theirs that is so bewildering to the stable English.
Monday, 30 August
I want so badly now a lover interested in me positively, dynamically – but I guess all men are too selfish and much too egotistical. And I too bitter, independent and elusive.
Waiting for the kettle to boil in the kitchen just now I was suddenly overtaken by the humour of the situation. I stood there and laughed and laughed as the cats regarded me with solemn horror. That impossible young man. There the girlfriend and I sit in the canteen, knowing a whole lot about each other and the young ma
n – the shared young man. Oh she can have him, he’s much too much a coward for me!
Friday, 3 September
Four years of war. And now we are invading Italy.
Our new boss Mr Botterell has arrived at the office. He knows nothing of Publicity or Advertising.
Thursday, 9 September
I am feeling so awfully pleased with myself. The position at the office has now been clarified and I appear to have come out with flying colours. I am Mr B.’s assistant definitely – I have been doing a good job of work and didn’t know it. I am always so surprised when I receive a pat on the back. When it’s a big pat it affects my balance even more than a kick in the tummy does. But think of it: I have established myself in the eyes of management as one intelligent, competent young woman!
I wish I could be half as successful in my affaire with Tommy. I have not even seen him for a week. N. thinks, as I do, that the girlfriend is an even greater tie than she would be as his wife. Why doesn’t he marry her? All the men I’ve ever cared about have done that – married someone else.
Friday, 17 September
He came into our office this week and talked to me for half an hour. Otherwise – nothing. One could say he’s had all he wanted, his curiosity is satisfied and now you’re finished with, dropped, discarded. He is about with the girlfriend a lot these days, and there is no avoiding that they do seem a pair. It’s that that I’m jealous of – she is his woman whatever extraneous adventures he may indulge in, and she knows it. I can understand the desire of a woman to break up a happy relationship; when one is hungry and alone it is a damnedly provocative situation.
Friday, 1 October
His behaviour is both insulting and humiliating, though I don’t think he intends it to be. Not a word, not a sign – perhaps I should write ‘Finis’ to this episode and let go.
I keep hoping that if I accept this humiliation, endure the emptiness, the desire unfulfilled for a man’s steady affection and companionship – that God will be pleased and reward me with what I want. But I have got to accept these facts: that I am a hungry, haunted woman now, reward in the future or no. That is much harder to face and bear than T.’s actual neglect. I am one of the Adamless brigade, have always been, may always be. It is, however, much more difficult to live successfully without that means of letting one’s love flow. The easiest way to be happy and to give out one’s happiness is when one has a successful sex life, isn’t it? Some people would say No, its the economic life that counts.
A Notable Woman Page 27