Sunday, 17 June (War Diary)
Catering difficulties increase rather than decrease. There is a shortage of potatoes, soap, fresh fruit and greens. Our fat, cheese and sugar rations are being cut. We have had nothing but cabbage on the menu in the canteen for weeks and weeks (I mean as a second vegetable to potato). A woman who shops in Slough was told by the managers of two big food stores recently that they expected this winter and next to be the worst we have yet known. There are now no food reserves in the country and supplies are going to Europe. She was told: ‘We are having to do it because the Americans won’t. Why should we? We’ve gone without willingly all through the war because we’ve known it’s been going to Our Boys. But why should we feed Europe? I resent the idea of helping the Germans or the French. I have a family of young children to feed and I think the essential foods should at least go to them first.’ There are some people who in all seriousness thought that as soon as the war ended the shops would be filled with pre-war goods and we should be free to buy what we liked. Have Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza out of the public library.
Yesterday Ethel and I went to see the Aluminium exhibition at Selfridges, lunched at the Bolivar and then went to see Arsenic and Old Lace, in its third year, I think. Really delightful entertainment, though it has not pleased everyone.
Tuesday, 19 June (War Diary)
Some evacuated children do not want to return to their own homes, and their foster parents don’t want to let them go. Jacky talking this morning of a young cousin: ‘My uncle’s little girl was taken at five years old, by a wealthy family in Scotland at the beginning of war. They have adopted her as companion to their own daughter and given her the same education, clothing and attention. Now she’s a proper little lady. She won’t want to go home – her people being rough and ready farmers …’
Friday, 22 June
Have been to a skin specialist about my ears (a woman). She asked me if I were worried. I replied, ‘Not excessively.’
I have made an appointment to see Dr Howe again.
Monday, 25 June (War Diary)
Some extracts from Hugh’s letters from Italy.
30 April. I’m scribbling this on my bed in the tent. I shall probably head north very soon. My batman, now snoring, said tonight, ‘The War’s nearly over – then the real one begins, xxxx it!’ Comment of one officer: ‘The next war centre is Tehran – oil interests.’
2 May. 2nd General Hospital. Now in hospital. In an hour’s time they take out my blasted appendix. Was taken ill at 3 a.m.
4 May. I am weeping weakly because I can’t stop pain in my belly and three days without food, and on top of it the emotional storm of the great victory. Let me weep. Six long years, my dear. And I end them here, in a shabby Italian barracks … But my complaints are for the wounded who cannot celebrate. Funny. I have never wanted to weep so much before and I know others are weeping silently. The radio blares victory after victory after victory.
8 May. So it’s over. Listened to Churchill’s speech. Then came, to us, the most pleasing thing – the thin clear notes of the ‘Cease Fire’. And so I snuggled down to sleep. Wonder where Hitler, Goering, Goebbels & Co. swine are. Possibly we shall hear of a Terence O’Goebbels editing the Cork Courier.
25 May. So there’s to be an election. This snap election may lose Labour much of the military vote, but it has a 2:1 chance of winning. I fear its foreign policy but welcome its internal plan for nationalisation. The pledge to the Jews in regard to Palestine is especially dangerous. May set the Arab world ablaze – and more poor British Tommies will die in a cause they profit not by.
Wednesday, 27 June
This afternoon’s meeting with G.H. was one of the most important I have yet had.
Do not try to avoid frustration, he said. Living is difficult, and frustration is part of the difficulty. See how my poor mother struggled against it. I remember one night, as a little girl, being wakened by the sound of her practicing scales joyously. I called down, ‘Mummy you woke me up … please don’t.’ The scales stopped, she left the piano and I could hear her setting the table for my father’s supper. From the way she handled the cutlery I could feel her anger, resentment and despair. It flooded up to me alone and frightened in the dark. I can imagine her mood now: ‘Even my own children! … I never wanted them … I wanted to go on with my music … I shall never play now – never, never. Why did I have to fall in love? Why did we have to be poor? This war, I suppose. No help in the house, meals to get, mending, scrubbing, cooking, incessant demands that I can’t ignore because I love my husband. When Jean grows up may she never be tied like this. May she be free of all the insatiable demands of men and family life. She will have a little money, and I will help her all I can to a career …’
Saturday, 30 June
I ran into M. this morning. Warned by his car parked in the works yard that he was somewhere about, I was not too embarrassed to come face to face with him outside the Inspection Shop. I hesitated. He mumbled, as well he might. It was difficult to hear above the noise of the works and ‘Music While You Work’. He said, ‘Are you still Publicity, still at the cottage? Can I ring you sometime?’ I said I was still on the telephone.
I want a chance to say all the things I’ve been longing to say for months. Lydia is ‘washing her hands of him’. That is the sane thing, the rational course to take. But I’m not rational about this. He had on a new light fawn tweed suit, looking smarter than I’ve ever seen him.
Monday, 2 July
Tonight I receive a letter from Hugh dated 28 June. ‘Lucille, my sweet. No mail from you. I shall parade outside your cottage with a picketing banner: “Pratt so unfair to Laming”, singing to the tune of “The Red Flag”:
A trollop is Jean Lucey Pratt
And all Slough is aware of that;
She also has a trollop cat
And 50 kittens on the mat.
Then Comrades I’m assuring you
That Lucy is unfair to Hugh.
Reactionary cat is Pratt
And bites the ear of Desert Rat.
This delights me, delights me. Could any woman fail to appreciate such flattery?
No phone call. Of course no phone call, as I told Lydia in answer to her enquiry today. All I want is a chance to be rude to that wretched little man. But he’s not going to give me the chance.
Tuesday, 3 July
M. again in Slough. His car at the filling station at the George when I passed. He was outside paying for the petrol and made a gesture which might have been ‘Lift?’, but which I soon discovered meant ‘No lift tonight’. He did look a scab this evening. Shabby blue suit, tired, flushed, as though he had been drinking heavily all day. A really shoddy little business man. Pah!
Monday, 9 July
Heart is singing again. M. phoned and came round on Friday evening. And stayed. Yes, I am his mistress now, his mistress. I do not care what others say or reason dictates. I am his mistress, and as far as I am capable of loving a man, I love him. The current between us is too strong – it is more that I can resist.
I tried to be angry, to get some explanation out of him. But all he could say was, ‘I have at least come back. You know now you are not forgotten.’ And later I asked, ‘How many girlfriends have you?’
‘Five,’ he replied promptly and coolly. ‘Three are in Sheffield.’
‘That is bad luck for you. Do you ever get there?’
‘About once a year.’
‘Just to tell them they are not forgotten, I suppose …’ Which made him laugh.
He mended the kitchen light for me. Brought a large bag of biscuits – chocolate and plain – tomatoes, cigarettes and gin. ‘What a conscience you must have,’ I remarked, but he appeared not to understand that.
I kept him at a distance until nearly half-past eleven, and when he began to make love to me I broke away crying, ‘Why do you come and do this to me once a year? It hurts, it hurts, it is so damnably casual …’
And he answered, ‘Look Jea
n, I am married with a child! I can’t help it! I know, I know just how you are feeling.’
And then I suggested that if he went home at once I would ask him for a weekend. He liked the idea of that. But he would not be tied to a promise. Why he had come this evening, he said, was because the family were away. He was to fetch them from Bognor the next day. If he arranged to come while they were at home he would have to ‘sneak out, and you wouldn’t want me to do that, would you? I have to come only when I am quite free to come …’
I do not understand his domestic situation but I imagine it must be something like this: His wife can have no more children (and he would like a large family, I found that out). She is cold. Either fears or does not want passion – his fault or hers, I do not know. They have to consider the child. He has, he says, some regard for the loyalties – he does not want to desert his wife or break up their home. But he is warm, passionate, and wants his passion returned. Close to me in bed, held tightly in my arms, he cried out with relief and deep joy ‘Oh, to be wanted, to be needed – Jean, Jean, if ever I forget to thank you for this, forgive me.’
But the body says more than words. We betray ourselves utterly in our love-making. His reactions came quickly – too quickly – and although he declared again and again how happy he was, and burst into song and quoted Shakespeare (astonishing!), it was a whipped-up sort of happiness – he was stimulated, excited, but was not satisfied. I know how a man behaves when he is satisfied. He wants to sleep, turn over and forget one. M. was wide awake and still urgent – so was I.
He went about 2 o’clock, although we did not want to part. He made no promises, no arrangements for future meetings. Some of the things he said are flames of joy within me – yet they would all have been said to other women: ‘The ties that draw us are long and strong … maybe longer and stronger than we know.’ ‘One has to go through many oysters before finding the pearl.’
What will be the end of all this? Will it be another year before he comes again? Can I stand that? ‘You are all,’ he said, ‘that I thought you would be. And I have thought of you often, believe me …’ Darling M., I do love you so. Imagination is now having a great time with lots of little Ms, and me as important, blooming, happy wife, hostess, mother. Idiot – you must not tell him that.
‘I shall dream of this, Jean,’ he said. ‘Oh, you have no idea what it is like at home!’ Come again soon my dear, please, please come again soon. Or are you, as Graham Howe suggested, the type who does not want to be loved, to be tied by the ties of love? The type described by Aldous in Eyeless in Gaza who refused, deliberately, to be loved, shutting it out? Who evaded confidences –‘confidences were dangerous, confidences were untangling – like fly paper …’ I am afraid you are, but probably for different reasons. Are you, as I have done, trying to avoid what can not be avoided? And will you find the answer, or will you go on as you are doing, developing into a successful, hot-tempered, paunchy little business man who in old age will maul and paw little blondes and be made a fool of by them?
I told Lydia that he had been round, that the situation was quite beyond my control. I dread telling Nockie. I saw her shaking with laughter: ‘He is such a funny little man! One wants to pat him on the head and take him on one’s knee …’
The things he said keep coming back. ‘When we see each other accidentally, then you will say to yourself, “There is my man,” and I shall say, “There is my woman”.’ (One of them, darling.) That is exactly what I do say to myself when I see him. A light is lit. Maybe the ties are longer and stronger than we know.
30.
No More Ghosts
Friday, 13 July 1945
I wrote and told Nockie what had happened, fearing very much her disapproval! She answered immediately. ‘That M. has these five female friends seems to suggest to me that they have ⅕th of M. each and that he would be happier giving ths of himself to somebody. I think you are that somebody …’
I so much want to believe it. At this moment I do. But I may change. ‘One has to go through many oysters before finding the pearl, and then one puts it in one’s pocket until one wants to look at it again,’ he said. But pockets can have holes, pockets may be picked, and pearls lose their lustre shut away in the dark – they must be worn and loved.
Tuesday, 17 July
In bed since yesterday with abscess in left ear. How I do love to be ill enough to stay at home with a clear conscience, but not ill enough to require nursing.
Thursday, 19 July
Entry in Barbellion’s journal for 1904, September 8, 9, 10 and 11: ‘Toothache, Toothache, Toothache and Toothache.’ Entries in mine for July 16, 17, 18, 19 (1945): ‘Earache, Earache, Earache and Earache.’ And for how many more days? Doctor seems to think it will take some time to clear up. Not an abscess but a grossly swollen drum and infected glands. I feel very peevishly petulant and sorry for myself. As soon as I move about doing things the pain exerts itself – like a thousand needles pricking the drum. I lie and think of M., wishing he would walk in, make a fuss of me, sit and talk for a little while, tuck me into bed and leave me to sleep.
Friday, 20 July
I am a drowning, drowning woman. There is no relief, no satisfaction, no joy in anything. The pain in the ear is less, but the pain of the spirit intensifies. I start at shadows, imagine footsteps on the path, listen for the phone, listen to the cars outside. I shall tonight drink a tumblerful of Epsom Salts which will increase the tension tenfold.
It is this awful, intolerable, tormenting suspense, this silence – no, not just waiting for a period which I think will come – but the isolation, the loss of contact. Not a sign, sound or sight of him for a whole fortnight. It is no good saying, ‘I will not put up with it, he must go.’ I am committed, the way is chosen – there was no choice – I cannot dismiss him. I am caught in the tide and must be swept with it, a drowning, drowning woman.
Now Jean. You are all at a tension – taut, resistant. Relax. Open your hands. Open your heart. Let this pain seep through. Let go, drowning woman, slip into this sea of anxiety, this awful gulf. Let the darkness cover you.
Sunday, 22 July
I am better. The cloud is lifting.
Have just finished Andre Maurois autobiography.148 He writes, ‘A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.’ And, ‘Happiness, like wild anemones, is a flower that must not be picked.’
Monday, 23 July
Not so good this morning. Definitely not so good.
Friday, 27 July
Three weeks and still no word. It’s not, I am sure, that he doesn’t think of me or even care quite a lot. He just wants to have his cake and eat it, without paying.
Confessed when he was with me that he liked doing things spontaneously. I do not want a ‘spontaneous’ lover. I want a man who will treat me with some confidences, who will share at least some of his life. I would honestly, at this moment, rather be married to Hugh, whom I do not and could never love as I could M. Hugh at least gives me his friendship fully and deeply. We are ‘in touch’ although he is in Italy and has a Greek wife. M. has gone from me, into the void. All his passion and his flattery is worthless. He isn’t the type to write letters, as Hugh is, but there are other means. Chris Naude once phoned me from Geneva. Birmingham is only a trunk call.
I want no more ghosts.
Tuesday, 31 July
A delightful letter from Hugh this morning. ‘You won’t clear the Lucian ears by bedding with fools, no matter how passionate. It’s easy to deal with “unwanted persistent young men”. Just say “you bore me,” or tell them that Hugh, the Terror of Turin, is on his way and would like nothing better than to complete the chaos in Lucie’s kitchen by a trifling massacre of a man who, it would seem, can’t even kill a kitten …’
And later: ‘Have just re-read your letter. Am I jumping to conclusions about “the wrong lover in my bed”? Moogful, you were and are so good to me. When I come home …’ (He has decided to leave the army and may be in Lo
ndon – with Maritza! – in October) ‘… let me stay a few days with you and tire … you with talking. I’m told my operation scar is intriguing. Knowing your cookery I can see you now getting a slice of fatted calf for Hugh and putting it in that old saucepan and boiling it from now to October …’
Sunday, 12 August
Atomic bomb and imminent end of Japanese war have filled the news these last few days.149 Office in still rather a turmoil. Firm is now a full member of Hawker Siddeley Group.150
Am trying to make myself concentrate on short stories. Always to have one on the go. I can find hundreds of excuses not to do it. But it is the only thing that keeps my thoughts off M. But it’s a real effort – I’m trying to run away now by writing this.
What has all this to do with the atomic bomb? Just this: that one is so overwhelmed by the awful potentialities of this new discovery – what on earth, one feels, can the single, ordinary person do about it? Well, I think they can begin by setting their own house in order – learn to control and guide your own life so that in the aggregate we can control and guide such powerful weapons for the good and not the destruction of mankind. Eternal vigilance and discipline. Starting with yourself.
Tuesday, 14 August
It’s not easy. You shut the thoughts you don’t want to indulge away into a packing vase and sit on it. Busy yourself externally and forget for an hour or two the contents. This must be the masculine, the extrovert way of living. So busy with matters outside, one forgets what is inside. And then fatigue relaxes your guard. And out they swarm, like the evils from Pandora’s box, worse than ever. But next day you pack them up again and go on. There seems to be no other way. You are conscious all the time of the emptiness and darkness and loneliness within. You go about hollow and unlit, tempted at unexpected moments to release the catch and lift the lid just a little – just for the artificial, imagined warmth those secrets can give.
A Notable Woman Page 34