‘We are all going strong though still broke. Prices are still going up and up. The Egyptians, having made lots of money out of England and the British troops during the past few years, pay the most astounding sums quite cheerfully. Jay was in Cairo the other week & watched a fat old Egyptian woman in a big store buy twelve pairs of Nylon stockings at £9 a pair, a silk nightdress at £25 and various other odds and ends, the total of which came to nearly £200. She calmly opened her handbag and paid down spot cash for this little lot.’
Friday, 27 April (War Diary)
The Russians and Americas have met in Germany. In Italy the German Army is crumbling fast. Mussolini, it is reported, has been captured. Dramatic news. Much speculation as to what is happening now to the Nazi chiefs – evening papers say Goering has left the country with wife, daughter and £5,000,000. I wondered aloud coming home with Mr Ch. in what currency he could have taken it.
I think Hitler will commit suicide, and only Hitler. Mr Ch. doubted it: ‘It takes a lot of courage.’ But thinking this over, yes it takes courage for the ‘normal’ person, but suicides are never ‘normal’, and Hitler is not normal.
Tuesday, 1 May (War Diary)
Important hours, important as those days at the end of August in 1939 preceding the declaration of war. This is tension of a different kind, expectancy, preparations being made for a change in our way of living. But the tempo is slower. We wait, without anxiety, for the official announcement by Mr Churchill that is to herald two full days’ holiday and the beginning of another period of peace in Europe. We wait wondering if Hitler is dying or dead or will commit suicide or be captured and tried and shot, and what his henchman are doing and feeling.
We had ice cream in canteen for lunch today – the first for two, or is it three, years?
Wednesday, 2 May (War Diary)
One can hardly keep pace with the news. ‘Hitler Dead’ the News Chronicle informed me this morning in 12-inch type across the front page. Doenitz has either been appointed to succeed him or has seized power over Himmler’s head. We discussed the situation all through lunch, wondering how much longer the war would now continue with Doenitz in control. At the office an atmosphere of suspense but little obvious excitement.
Thursday, 3 May (War Diary)
Mr B. gave me the afternoon off. About 8 p.m. the rain turned to snow. I ate my supper watching the enormous snowflakes fall, wondering if any other country in the world could present such a scene – snow on tulips and broken lilac blossom, snow falling through bursting beeches and the sky ash, snow on shivering pansies and wan forget-me-nots. A fantastic spring.
Friday, 4 May (War Diary)
When the first newsflash came through the radio announcing the surrender of the German forces in north-west Germany, I was in bed mopping my ears. We had looked at the headlines in the Evening News in the office just before 5 p.m. and decided that the end must be near now, as the enemy was collapsing on all fronts.
I asked R.W. what she intended to do on VE day and she said that she didn’t know. Her people keep a pub in Windsor and they have not decided whether they will keep open or not. If they do (and the brewers want them to) they will not have more than their normal rationed supply and will be sold out by 9.30 p.m. Her father thinks he will invite in all his pals and keep the pub closed to the public.
No one seems very certain what they will do. There are to be some Victory parades and special services and bonfires. It looks as though I shall spend the day and days following in close, solitary seclusion. My ears are a most revolting sight and even Dr B. is baffled. He talks of sending me to a specialist but I am to treat them myself this weekend with rainwater and special ointment. I am worried and tired and do not want to go out or meet anyone. My friends are sympathetic and anxious but I feel rather a leper and imagine all strangers to be goggling at me.
I came home at 5 p.m., collected ointment from the chemist, and, while waiting for it to be made up, some new stock arrived including a small box of Wright’s coal tar soap. I have not seen any of this for a long while and the girls said they would not have any ‘for ages’ so I bought two tablets.
Girls in cloakroom were chattering excitedly this afternoon. ‘Oh, I do hope it’ll happen while we’re at work! – It won’t seem the same will it?’ The official notice asks us all to assemble in the canteen where news of victory is announced over the works broadcasting system. We are then to have the rest of the day off and the two following days. The girls began twittering about their husbands – what group for demobilisation did each belong to? I left them, feeling rather old and forlorn.
Listening now to the repeat broadcast of General Montgomery from Germany this afternoon. My emotions at this moment are indescribable: enormous pride in the fact that I am British, wonder and excitement. ‘Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. the war in Europe will be over …’ The war in Europe is over … This is a tremendous moment.
The war is over. I cry a little. I think of my dearest friends, my stepmother, my brother in Egypt, of those men in the fighting services I have known – and I wish I had taken a more active part; it is too late now. But it is not too late to take part in the new fight ahead. I am not moved to rush out tomorrow and wave a Union Jack in the village high street. I think it is a good sign that people are saying universally, ‘Our troubles are just beginning,’ because it would be idiotic to assume they are over with the end of hostilities.
We want a better world and we must fight for it. That is where we must distinguish between pessimism and optimism. I believe with the utmost optimism, faith, hope and joy that we can have our better world (and note that one says ‘a better world’ – not the perfect or even best possible world) – yes, that we can have it if we know clearly what we want and fight for it.
Midnight news now being read. The announcer sounds tired. Pockets of German resistance still remain. I have been down and turned off the radio. For once I waited to hear the whole of the National Anthem, moved suddenly again to tears by this historic, this incredible moment. I stood with my hand on the radio switch listening to the National Anthem and to the voices of a thousand, thousand ghosts. They came over the air into that unlit, silent room, I swear it.
It’s time I tried to sleep. One of the cats is outside my window waiting to be let in. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow stretch before me. Infinitely more full of promise and interest than the war years have been. I feel that new and exciting events await me. But that may be due to the influence of tonight’s news. The atmosphere is charged with a release and potentiality.
And the bottom sheet, in an exceedingly frail condition from old age and much hard wear, is now torn beyond hope and redemption. I am sick to death of patching worn linen.
From Italy, Hugh wrote on 1 May:
‘Last night German resistance on the northern Italian front ended. I was at my desk with two very young officers and my OC who was a captain with me in Greece in 1941. He said, “It’s been a long road.” We opened a bottle of Scotch and had a tot – two tots. Yet the old real Desert Rats – my old 7th Armoured Division – are still battling around Hamburg. The youngsters felt more exhilaration than we. My thoughts, strangely, were on the safari track from Bug Bug to Maddelena – two graves long since covered with sand. The end is near now and a great sense of emptiness. A new desert of emotion to be explored and fought over …’
Tuesday, 8 May VE Day
I cannot put this down in my War Diary for Mass Observation – that I feel intensely lonely and that it is somehow my fault. That feeling I have had ever since I was a little girl and was conscious of such feelings – of being left out of things and not understanding why I should be.
I want desperately for someone to ring me up and ask me to share in the day’s celebrations. If I had someone staying with me now it wouldn’t seem to matter so much. If I were in London and Joan were at home I should get drawn in there, and almost certainly have some contact with Nockie. I phone Lydia, but she had already been ‘nabbed’ by her frie
nd C., and if I had phoned earlier I might have been included – they are going to a dance tonight probably. I should dearly have loved a dance. But my intention is to cycle to see Lizzie and Peter after I have heard the PM at 3 p.m. They are almost certain to be home between 5–6 because of the baby.
So here I sit with so much to give, longing to share what I have, and knowing that I as always will have to make the first move. I would like to see the cottage (the sitting room now so bright after its spring clean) full of happy people this evening.
11.30 p.m.. I cannot, cannot confess this agony to MO. They play on the radio at this moment: ‘I’m a Little on the Lonely Side Tonight’. The dance music, the happy voices that come with it, the sound of happy people dancing – their cheers and applause only increase the agony. God, I am lonely, lonely. I want to be in all this somewhere celebrating with happy people. It was good being with Lizzie and Peter. We cycled round looking at the local flags, bunting, lights and bonfires, but they had to go home to the baby, and I came home alone. Left out. Forgotten. Not very much wanted by anyone. All my life this has gone on. I have built up pretences and found ways of escape, but here is a moment where the truth faces me and I cannot avoid it. And with it the constant feeling of guilt: you pay now at times such as this for your cowardice and selfishness, you get out of life what you put into it.
I wish Nockie had phoned. I don’t think I can endure listening to the Victory Night ball at Covent Garden much longer. I can hear people saying casually, ‘What – all alone? Doing nothing on Victory night?’
29.
A Large Bag of Biscuits – Chocolate and Plain
Monday, 14 May 1945 (aged thirty-five)
I have reached a point, a stage, where I need something to integrate my life. There are two things I feel I should possess as I possess hands and feet – a wedding ring and a publisher.
Monday, 21 May
There is, surprisingly, a lot of good common sense in some of the women’s journals. An intellectual snobbishness bars one from it. I am often drawn to them by their attractive layout and colour, and the hope of finding useful household hints. There are dozens of these journals – from the cheap weeklies like Woman to the more expensive and better class monthlies such as Good Housekeeping, and, seen on a bookstall, the temptation to buy is great because nowadays they are so seldom seen. And often when one has bought and devoured greedily one feels nauseated: it has been, or has seemed to have been, all ersatz cream.
But sometimes one finds something really solid for digestion – in the June Woman and Beauty for instance. ‘There are many women entirely ready to marry, but unable to win proposals from any man they consider eligible. As a group, they are well bred, well educated, unusually intelligent, attractive at least as the average. But they have all conducted themselves on the general principle that if a man isn’t discerning enough to recognise and appreciate their good qualities, it is just too bad – for him!’
The article goes on, ‘You should take definite, effective steps to enlarge your social circle. And if you have to move to do that – well, you’d better move.’ And then later in the article: ‘Don’t make the mistake of trying to marry a man less able than yourself. On the contrary, aim high! Recent studies show that men do not tend to marry girls more capable or better educated than themselves. That’s one of the reasons, incidentally, why so many professional women are unmarried. There are not enough really knowledgeably superior men available for them!’
When one starts to analyse these sorts of articles one finds them full of holes, but the grit in this one for me is being more positive about marriage. I am not in the professional women class nor anywhere near it, I am not an ardent careerist, but all my experience and training seem to have been preparing me to be a first-class wife. At 35 I am more attractive than I have ever been, I have more poise, I am happier and I have more to give. Now – cherchez l’homme! That is the command I recoil from. I want the l’homme to fall into my lap, out of nowhere. I don’t want to be thought a husband-chaser. I shrink from the effort required, the possible humiliations to be suffered.
The point is to admit frankly, fairly and squarely that one wants to marry, to enlarge one’s social circle – at the cost of a cottage if necessary, but I don’t think that it need be. I feel that if I am just at this moment uprooted from the cottage I shall bleed to death.
(War Diary)
Collecting milk from next door, Lady Spicer bears down on me with a triumphant, exultant gleam in her eye: ‘I have always said that our troubles would begin when the war was over – now everyone is out for himself and there is a clash of interests everywhere. Power goes to heads of these people who have not been brought up to rule.’ I agree that the future promises to be chaotic and that there will be trouble with Russia but can’t believe it will be as black as she seems to think. Spent the weekend with stepmother Ethel (Aunt Maggie also there). Listening to the report of Ellen Wilkinson’s speech on the one o’clock news I was suddenly struck by the thought of how extraordinary it was that the BBC should allow Labour propaganda such prominence.146 When I am with Conservatives I find myself agreeing with Conservative opinion, when with Liberals with Liberal, Labour with Labour, Communist with Communist. Conscience, and the fact that my politically minded friends will expect me to, will probably make me vote Labour. (The election may be held, we are told now, in July, which seems too soon, too much of a rush. But why should we have to put up with the present Government until the war with Japan is over?) There are people even now who have never used a ration book for themselves. For example, an elderly female cousin of Ethel’s and Aunt Maggie’s, of fantastic wealth, who has been living with an elderly companion in a remote part of Scotland during the war. They have not, either, heard a gun. They are now in London staying in a hotel near Welbeck Street. Two useless, parasitical old women. And what a lot of apparently useless people there are in the world living on money someone else has earned. Is it entirely their fault? I am not at all sure that unearned income is not more demoralising than dire poverty. When no effort has to be put into living the character grows fat, flabby, feeble.
Wednesday, 23 May
I’m high as a steeple. I am floating on a cloud. I am in heaven. I am tight.
Such a delectable, delicious sensation. Now the world is my oyster and I am capable of all things. Love, and this and that. Dinah sits with her back to me, shocked, disgusted.147
Nothing to eat since lunch. A bitter, bitter moment when I thought I saw M.’s car sliding out of the car park this evening just three or four or five minutes ahead of me. If it was – oh Fate why do you do these things? And if he saw me walking to the gate as he might have done – why could not he have waited … just those few minutes?
But at the bus stop I met my very old and trusty friend Dr R.L. and a colleague of his. They took me off to the Pump and we went and drank at the Duke’s Head. A Guinness. A bitter. Two gin and lime. I feel soothed and somehow compensated and defiant. Damn M. Has he any idea of what he is missing? The primus stove gives a faint high note when lit that might be the telephone bell (so does the vacuum). I thought it was, I was sure it was. But no.
A letter from Hugh awaited me. ‘Your charming VE day descriptive letter came today. I read it to an appreciative ward. Why don’t you write a novel?’ Why don’t I? Oh God, why don’t I?
I have a new short ‘utility’ Jaeger jacket. Blue. Madonna Blue, Lizzie Cecil called it. It is an enormous success. It is an incredible blue – greenish, Prussian, and goes with nearly everything I possess. It makes my eyes bluer, says Lydia.
Friday, 25 May (War Diary)
I am having help in the house again, after three years without. A woman recommended through friends came last Thursday for the first time. Certain things had been put back on their shelves and ledges with the symmetry so beloved of Mrs Mops. The bedroom floor had been polished and looked very nice, the kitchen stove blackened, the parts of the stone floor I could see washed, the stairs swept. But the ca
rpet hadn’t been touched and a mat carefully arranged and disguised the fact. A table by the bed, in a rather dark and difficult to get at corner, had not been dusted. And so on. This sort of slackness and cheating enrages me. We have to pay 2s. an hour for it and be thankful. I gave her something for one of her children, told her to make herself tea, showed her where the biscuit tin was and intend to let her have flowers as she likes. My manner to these women is always kind and sympathetic and I always hope not patronising. I feel sympathetic to them and like to hear about their families and troubles. I am probably too kind, too trusting.
Tuesday, 5 June (War Diary)
Prisoners of war returning now thick and fast. Their stories differ tremendously. An acquaintance of Jacky’s, for instance, has come home looking well, tanned and happy. Speaks well of the ordinary German soldier – the non-Nazi – who shared parcels of food with the prisoners. On the other hand, R.W. met a friend in the RAF who has been a prisoner for two years. He was so thin she would not have recognised him but for the uniform. He was in an army prison with Russians. All were fed in this camp on cabbage water soup and bread, one loaf between ten men a day. They were so hungry they would steal rotten turnip peelings as they were carted through the camp. The Russians would keep the bodies of dead comrades as long as they could and take them into roll call in order to get the extra rations. Punishment for the slightest offences were severe – R.W.’s friend had frostbite cracks between the toes from having been stood out in the winter cold for two hours at a time. Russian Cossacks liberated them. They had not sufficient food for the prisoners but allowed them to roam the town and loot what they could. Men were shooting cattle and pigs and gorging themselves on these. Some died from it. A month later he was flown to England, medically examined and given six weeks’ leave.
An extraordinary cigarette shortage since VE day. For at least the last two weeks, when I have been in London, ordinary Virginian brands have been unobtainable. They have been increasingly scarce here, locally, but so far I have managed to get at least twenty a day from the canteen kiosk (but not my favourite brand). People talking of getting their cars on the road once more.
A Notable Woman Page 33