A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  Friday, 8 October

  And as I stood in a queue this morning waiting for a bus to take me into Slough, he came down the road and I waved and he came across to me and said he was just on his way to see me. So we stood and chatted amiably on this mild, bright October morning, and when the bus came he got on it and came with me into Slough, although that had evidently not been his intention. He has promised to come and mend a light switch for me this weekend (I have had to grope around the kitchen with candles).127

  Tuesday, 19 October

  I returned through driving rain from a High Duty Alloys discussion group on ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’ (for women). There we were, nine men and four women, and the women put up a very poor show. Maggie Gray and I were the only two who spoke. Maggie became more positive and sure of herself towards the end, but I suddenly felt how pointless was the argument and relapsed feebly. Equal pay for equal work unanimously agreed, but can women contribute equal work? That was the point really – can she and does she want to? Hasn’t she other kinds of work to do which men cannot do, and why therefore should she compete with men? If she does, who is to look after the house?

  I cannot compete with men in logical argument! How apparent that was tonight. The men did all the abstracting, generalising, summing up. I felt fussy and muddled. But at least I am now saying something in public, which at one time I could never do, not even ask a simple direct question.

  Lizzie hurt and surprised me the other day. She suddenly said (and meant it) that my two cats Dinah and the Kittyhawk ‘gave her the pip.’ I must not, she went on, lose my sense of proportion, I must not forget that they were only animals. I do, I admit, talk of them foolishly, and I am foolishly fond of them – I adore them. But I never prattle about them unless invited to, never impose them on other people as The Most Wonderful Cats In The World, never demand that others should see them as I do. I had believed Lizzie understood. She doesn’t. That little, hard, rigid streak. She has all she needs as a woman to lavish her affection on (and a baby on the way), and she does not have to find substitutes. I thought she had more sympathy, more tolerance. But I shall not give up loving my cats because of her remarks. No one should be despised or reproved for loving something, however extravagantly, however unworthy the subject. ‘I say this for your own good,’ she said. God, the cruelty, the damnable cruelty of these narrow, hard women who would destroy love in another for ‘their own good’!

  T.? No, T. has not been near me. It hurts, it hurts, to see him about so much, so closely with the girlfriend, to hear everyone’s remarks and speculation on the matter (‘Almost hooked!’). I wanted so much to know him better, to share more of what I have with him.

  Saturday, 20 November (War Diary)

  We had great difficulty in obtaining permission to make 16mm copies of our Forgings film but sanction came eventually from the Ministry of Supply and we have now about half a dozen copies which are going the rounds of various aircraft firms and training centres. A film on Castings is now being made. Incidentally we make the Halifax under-carriage. It is the largest magnesium casting in the world and we are awfully proud of it.128

  The long evenings have begun. The kitchen blackout I leave up all the week (and the cottage beams on a Saturday morning when I take it down before going to work because it knows that the kitchen will have the whole day of whatever sunshine there is and that there will be a fire in the range).

  The London Symphony Orchestra was performing on Wednesday for war factory workers only. I should have been one of them but for somebody’s error – ENSA sent 2,000 vouchers which were allotted to the various factories including ours, but the hall holds only 1,000 people and at the last moment all our vouchers were recalled.129

  Wednesday, 24 November

  Am still vastly dissatisfied with my personal progress. I am 34 and shudder at the thought. I still believe in my potentialities, and that I may realise them – that I can achieve something concrete yet, make some worthwhile contribution to life. Am at the point now when I am sure many people like me feel they are failures, and that it’s no use trying any more. And they give up, shrivel, go bitter, miserable, silent.

  As a woman, before anything else I feel I should be married, happily married, with possibly a young family. I have an appalling sense of failure, inferiority and insignificance about this which cuts deeply. It seems that something must be very wrong somewhere that I have failed to attract myself the right mate. And I should be now settling into a defined career and making headway in it. I wanted to write, I still want to write, but have produced really nothing.

  Saturday, 27 November

  One fact I often forget: there are 3 million surplus women in Great Britain. But I am resentful that I have to be one of them. There’s no good reason for it, except my ‘unapproachability’. No lost, dead lover. No physical defects. No domestic inability. No lack of potential warmth! Only that first awkwardness, fear.

  I am stripping and whipping myself ruthlessly because I am so sick of this sickly sense of frustration. But however I advance in the future, and for as long as I write here, I swear to be honest – as I always have been. As honest as such a subjective approach can be.

  24.

  Good Dyed Squirrel

  Sunday, 12 December 1943

  The cottage was burgled on Friday. I came home about 6.30. It was only just after sunset, the moon was full and the evening light. One or other of the cats was around my feet as I unlocked the back door. I noticed with a start that the black-out screen at the window had been moved and the things on the windowsill pushed onto the table beneath. I couldn’t find my torch. I went into the sitting room and turned on the electric main switch. The ‘front’ door (which is never used as it is right at the back of the cottage) immediately opposite the stairs (the stairs run straight up to the first floor, dividing the cottage; as you face them, the small store room and kitchen are on your right, the sitting room on your left). The front door, as I was saying, was open.

  I was shocked and frightened and turned all the lights on. Cupboards were open. Upstairs – chaos. Every drawer in the bedroom had been opened, and the contents of several of them thrown on the floor. Boxes under the bed had been dragged out and emptied. In a recess at the top of the stairs I keep, behind a curtain, an old stand that once held my mother’s music, with boxes containing evening shoes, belts, oddments – most of these had been opened, and one evening shoe (how many times had it carried me to the theatre or a dance?) was in the bedroom. The jewel box had been ransacked but its secret drawer left undiscovered.

  The study had also been searched. All drawers open, papers scattered. I felt sick. I felt very, very angry. I rushed to my neighbours. I telephoned the police. My fur coat was gone, two clocks, the electric iron, various pieces of jewellery, including all long strings of beads, some of them quite valueless, and an old rosary which was in a box in the sitting room (but none of my earrings).

  The police (first our local Sergeant Brewer who climbed in my bedroom window twice last winter to turn out the light, then the inspector and his assistant, three enormous, uniformed men), went slowly round, making notes, discovering footprints in the flower bed outside the kitchen window, the pane cracked, my bicycle pump (which I keep indoors) by one of the sheds

  Lady Spicer offered to put me up for the night. But I thought no, I must go on, see this thing through. My cottage has been insulted, raped. I will not desert it in its hour of humiliation – my beloved cottage!

  I restored some order to the bedroom. I stayed at home the next morning, and a nice young man came and took casts of the footprints and looked for fingerprints. The police suspect a man in the neighbourhood who has done several jobs similar to this. He has a woman who gets rid of the stuff for him.

  Tuesday, 14 December

  The BBC is giving an account of Mr Eden’s speech on the Tehran Conference.130 I should be listening but I’m too happy. So rarely do I write that here. Really happy. It is only for a moment, I know. It will p
ass, it must, but I savour the moment as full as I can. I owe it to these journals to record why, although I know the danger there is of destroying it as I do so.

  He came into the office when I was alone at lunchtime, looking for a camp bed he had left in one of the cupboards. I asked him to buy a Russia Today Xmas Draw ticket. He said, with his arm around my shoulders, ‘And how’s the little girl?’

  ‘Feeling a bit neglected.’

  ‘Who’s neglecting you?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be me, would it? Would it?’

  ‘It might be …’

  And the Little Girl (yes, I’ve just realised it, he does call me that!) stirred and was dancing, dancing …

  He talked then in his usual way. I don’t remember what about. Ireland I think But it didn’t matter. He asked if there was anything he could bring us back from Ireland (he is going home for Xmas). Silk stockings?

  Warmth. That’s what mattered. The whole light on living changed. How long will it last? But while it does, let me relax in it. Heavenly, heavenly moment. Oh you crazy, foolish woman.

  Friday, 17 December

  The moment was very short-lived. At one o’clock I was alone in the office again and went down to the typists’ room and found him by the telephone. He was busy with the phone so I did not stay. I hoped he’d come up before he went off, but he didn’t. He swooped out without a sign to me. I’ve no doubt he had plenty of good reason for doing this, but it shows what a completely masculine disregard for my feeling he has. He’s a swine and he knows it, and he’ll go on behaving like that for as long as we know him. Girlfriend was around – I followed them out of the canteen. She’s always around.

  And when the Almighty asks me, ‘Well, and what besides yourself did you love on earth?’ I shall answer, ‘My cats and my cottage …’ And if He goes on, ‘And did anyone love you?’ I shall have no answer.

  Tuesday, 28 December

  One more Xmas over. Had a bad cold. Nockie was with me with a bad cold too so we sat and wheezed at each other over the fire most of the time. From all accounts everyone had quantities to eat over Xmas. I heard of one girl who had turkey for middle-day dinner on Xmas Day and goose in the evening, chicken the following middle-day and duck in the evening. I also had a rabbit which I stuffed and roasted and some pork from my butcher. I was able to get some mincemeat and made a large mince pie, the first time I had ever made pastry, and it was an enormous success.

  Mass Observation is asking its Observers to keep a Daily Feelings chart throughout January. Maximum cheerfulness is to be marked 10+, deepest depression 10-, and ‘normal’ i.e. neither cheerful or depressed, 0. I think this is going to be very difficult. How can one assess one’s feeling over a day like that? I might start 5-, rise to 7+ and sink to 1-, and, being tired, put myself down for the day as 8-.

  Friday, 31 December

  New Year’s Eve, 11 p.m. In bed. I wasn’t going to open this book tonight, but then I thought, well, wish good things at least to your family and friends. So I’ll wish nice things to my family and friends and be asleep before the New Year is in. Leslie and Ivy and Babs. Ethel. All the Pratt and Lucey relations to whom I owe good feeling. Nockie, Joan and Vahan and their family. Gus and Phyllis. Lizzie and Peter. Lugi. These and other unnamed. Now I am going to sleep, wishing you all a Happy New Year my loved ones. And to my pussies, past, present and yet to come.

  New Year’s Day, 1944

  Oh fertilise me, fertilise me, God, that thy servant may not die fruitless!

  Tuesday, 4 January (War Diary)

  Of course none of the stolen articles or the thief have been traced. The police suspect a man of 60. He goes about as a jobbing gardener asking for work, then watches the surrounding houses. Several people have said to me, ‘But if the police know him why don’t they go and arrest him?’ which in England you cannot do without evidence. They never seem able to get the evidence.

  I must admit that for a week I quaked when I returned each night, but the qualms soon wore off and I come back now as intrepid as ever – though possibly greeting the cats a shade more enthusiastically than formerly.

  I am covered by an All-In Policy but not for the wartime increase in values. The iron, for instance, cost me 15s. in 1939. Now, if you can get such a thing, they are about 30s. My coat was a good dyed squirrel, bought in 1936 and had just been cleaned and remodelled (£10. 10 had gone on that). The furrier told me it would sell like that today for £150. It cost me originally £40. The Insurance company are sending someone to see the house this week – but what I am to show him beyond a cracked window pane and a practically empty jewel box I don’t quite know.

  Saturday, 8 January

  In bed. Cough has developed vilely.

  Sunday, 9 January

  Still in bed. Shall not go to office tomorrow. In some ways it would be a great relief to be told that I had only, say, 6 more months to live. Or perhaps a little longer: just long enough for me to edit my journals and arrange for their publication, tidy up all my affairs, remake my will, and then slip out, quietly, gratefully. I am not being morbid. I am tired of struggling against what is apparently my fate – i.e. to be alone, unloved, unfertilised, unfruitful. Just tired of trying to find out why it should be so, and of trying to alter it. I wanted, needed, someone who understood me, and that person I never found …

  Thursday, 13 January

  The doctor has been and pronounced me suffering the after-effects of flu. ‘You don’t look well,’ he said, and prescribed for me all the things I want to do most – rest, rest and rest. An enormous relief, to be able to be lazy with a clear conscience and just enjoy the cottage. Delicious. And people are so kind. Ethel had offered to come earlier in the week if I needed help. Cousin Joyce would have come but I wouldn’t have wanted her, however ill I was. Lady S. has been very sympathetic since she heard yesterday – all this kindness makes me want to cry.

  I am to have sun-ray treatment and to see the doctor again next week. Extraordinary faith one has in a doctor’s word; one feels he must know everything and is as near being God as anyone can be on earth.

  Friday, 14 January

  Why have I not become a writer – why should I accept the idea that I shall never be one now? At first Gus made me conscious and ashamed that my style was suburban, not aristocratic. Then Nockie made me conscious and ashamed that my experience had been negative not positive. How could I be a writer, a good writer, with a suburban style and negative experience? Yes, I blame both Gus and N., as well as myself. So go on, if you can, from here. Do not prophesy, dream or hope. Just work.

  Monday, 17 January

  This morning a little old lady who lives nearby with her sister and with whom I have but the barest nodding acquaintance came trotting in and insisted upon doing the sitting room fire for me and getting in the coals. She has brought me some of their Bramley Seedlings and is bringing me a custard and baked apple tomorrow. She had heard from Mrs G. that I was ill and was so concerned. ‘We’ she said, referring to herself and sister, ‘can look after each other when we are ill but when you are all alone …’

  Air raid warden came round this evening to test gas mask. Have not had mine out for nearly two years. It was very dusty but apparently in good condition. He thinks that perhaps the authorities fear gas attack when our invasion does begin. It does seem now that we are going to invade Europe.

  Friday, 21 January (War Diary)

  I keep telling everyone I feel better, so I suppose I do, but I said to myself quite solemnly this morning, ‘I don’t know whether I am ill or not because I have forgotten what it feels like to be well.’ There is no bone where my spine should be, just an ache. What I want more than food or sleep is sunshine and fresh air. The air of Slough is bad. I am sure that thousands and thousands of people are suffering from this same lack of sunshine. When I go back to work I shall ask the clinic doctor if I can have sun-ray treatment there – the apparatus is provided and employees may have treatment free.r />
  At 6 p.m. went to keep my appointment for a blood test, but the doctor was not there and his secretary who does this minor operation for him is now ill so I had to trail home again feeling cold and exhausted. Coal crisis has occurred. Have used all my small stock of coal except about two scuttles of slack and a tin bath of small pieces which I sorted this morning. Am doing without kitchen fire and trying to burn anthracite in sitting room grate but it is not a success.

  Monday, 7 February

  She said: ‘This time next year you’ll either be, or be preparing to be, married. Yes, you have met him, spoken to him, and the acquaintance will develop. There’s been another man – oh, you are very well out of that!

  ‘There’s a gold wristwatch coming to you. You’ll move from where you now live. You’ll have your photo taken. Diamonds are your lucky stones, and then sapphires. Six is your lucky number. And Monday, Wednesday and Friday are your good days.’

  And when she had finished with the cards she took up the crystal. Messages came from George, William, Mary and Joe. All will be well and as you wish, they said. The future is bright, full of good news, entertainment and health.

  Thus and thus did she speak to me for nearly three-quarters of an hour. Well it all sounds delightful. I said there was not the remotest possibility of my getting married. ‘Nothing is impossible,’ she answered. I asked what he was like. ‘He is taller and older than you,’ she said. ‘With hair brushed back and a kink in it, and he smiles with his eyes. He is or has been married, but very unhappily. You will be in clover …’