One story has been sent to Woman. Now I am wrestling with one which, if it shapes as I want it to, might go to Penguin New Writers.
Saturday, 18 August
Story progresses well. ‘Cri de Coeur’ or ‘Nuit Blanche’. Some such title. Am deeply absorbed. Think of it all the time, in buses, in queues, at the office – even writing at the office when alone. A transference of thought-energy – not suppression – into, I hope, more fruitful channels.
Attracted by my bedroom light, three hornets flew in at the window just now. Nothing terrifies me as do hornets. Three of them all at once circling above my head to the lamplight at my side, like stupid moths! I still feel weak, can hear the buzzing of a hundred more. My hell, I do believe, would be to be stung to death by hornets. Why this horror of them? I think because I was told when a little girl that one hornet’s sting can kill a man. I must find out if that is true.
I skedaddled out of the room as quickly as I dared and fetched the fly swat and succeeded, trembling like a leaf, in killing them all, and have put their corpses on the dying kitchen fire. Am sure I can hear more buzzing – that sinister, terrifying hum, worse, much worse than the hum of enemy bombers.
The thing to do, idiot, is of course to shut the window and draw the curtains until I have finished writing this. Am much too wide awake now to settle. I can hear that buzzing still, all round me, and something beating its wings in a corner.
VJ days spent pleasantly. Wednesday afternoon at the cinema with Lydia. Thursday picnicking by the river at Hurley with Lizzie and Peter. But when alone in the evening felt my loneliness.
My dear Lydia. She does say some naïve things, I must admit. At lunch one day we were discussing cats with another girl who could not bear them, was really allergic. Lydia, talking of her Rusty, said she would rather share a room at night with a cat than a human being. And appealed to me, ‘Wouldn’t you?’ I said I thought it depended who the person was.
Saturday, 25 August
In these journals a reader might well exclaim, ‘which man is it about this time?’ But I don’t even try to be objective in these journals. They are a very biased, subjective view of a growing woman. What I am conscious of in this affaire, and may not have stressed sufficiently, is the difference in the quality of my feelings for this man. The feeling is always ‘There is the male to my female.’ I have never felt that before. Never as deeply, as surely.
Leslie and I have decided to sell ‘Homefield’ if we can. This gives me a riotously secure feeling. Possibly £1,000–1,500 coming to me.
Tuesday, 4 September
With Ethel at a guest house in Hove. The weather could hardly be worse. I try to forget M. and cannot. There’s a man and his wife and two children staying at the guest house (oddly enough with the name of Pratt, and their little girl is Jean!). I liked the man at once as soon as introduced, a large, slow-moving very attractive male. Twinkle in his eye I couldn’t resist for long if it pursued me with any intent. Perhaps because we own the same name we feel drawn. His wife is a nice but foolish woman, and later when the children are grown up if she’s not careful she’ll lose her husband. He likes, I am sure, a spot of fun in moderation, but she is all angles and nerves, striving to keep to rigid principles of behaviour. Will not go into pubs – afraid of starting ‘a bad habit’. I can see she is tormented all the time by the fear of doing wrong, all tight inside herself with the effort to keep her husband ‘good’.
Thursday, 6 September
Sitting on the Esplanade watching the familiar British holiday beach scene. Am rather conscious of people looking at me as I write this. The curiosity of strangers directed upon me does upset me – I like to watch but don’t want to be watched. Am sure, if they think anything, they think seeing me with glasses, a prim expression and my shabby brief case, that I am a schoolmistress. ‘Clever, you know.’
Tomorrow I am going to have my fortune told again by one of these many hags that make their living here from withered, wishful-thinking women and foolish girls.
Friday, 7 September
Exactly how much I wonder do these old witches pick up of one’s thoughts and desires? How much was I unconsciously giving her? She was rather confused and confusing, saw several men, but I pinned her down to the one I wanted to hear about.
She saw him ‘in commerce, a very good businessman, excellent prospects, will have a big position one day – something to do with engineering? I can see plans, drawings. Is he going to open up a new factory somewhere?’ And so on. All quite possible. He will have something to do with patents. He is ‘very fond of me and is thinking about me a lot, but doesn’t at the moment quite see his way clear … But he will explain everything and make me an offer.’ I may go abroad with him. I am certainly ‘crossing water’ (they always say that).
She said I have nothing to worry about. It will all come right. Well it’s all very comforting and pleasant. At least she didn’t warn me against him, she didn’t see him as a bad man. He’s not, anyway – I know he’s not. (I do love you, Mac. I do really. You’d never regret making an effort to have me by you, with you. I am a nice person. Lots and lots of people have been reassuring me of this.)
Saturday, 8 September
Saw another hag this evening. She was much more precise. Told me more by what she didn’t say. The whole affair seems so sordid. She saw me in his car. She saw me at work too, in a very large business. I am to stay in it. Promotion on the way. She saw me in the crystal walking in Slough (no one told her I came from Slough).
Monday, 10 September (War Diary)
I spent last week in Hove and feel much better, though could do with another three weeks at least. A fortnight’s holiday in the year is absurd and no good to anyone. I would most earnestly urge for longer holidays for everyone. At the office great changes have been taking place. The firm is constricting in every direction and no one seems to know what is to happen next. We are told to ‘carry on’, which we all do in a very half-hearted way, but in every department are complaints of lack of work.
In Hove … there were no huts for dressing (I was told that on VJ night a pile of huts and chairs and other such oddments was burned by the populace gone mad). The front and gardens are wonderfully restored. All barbed wire removed and the long grass cut and flowers planted. The Hove Town Hall was reopened while I was there for dancing. It had been the Food Office during the war. Many troops still stationed there, but going gradually. The Aussies still occupy some of the big Brighton hotels. Went to two dances, crawled round many pubs and did not bathe once.
Thursday, 20 September
Apart from the Building pamphlet and our files which I am trying to set in order, I have no motive for staying at HDA. The situation gets worse and worse, and the atmosphere of discontent and uneasiness is appalling. Why should I stay on? I never see M. or am likely to (and it doesn’t make all that much difference when I do). Rapid decay seems to have set in. I am not a metallurgist or engineer and not the least bit interested in these subjects. I will break away. Rest for a few months on capital, then try something else. Go abroad maybe.
Recently I have been glancing through back [journal] entries. How restless, restless you are all the time Jean. Will you never learn to cradle anxiety and be still? When will you learn how to wait – how to wait when no hope is offered you, when what you want is never granted?
Monday, 24 September
A postcard from Hugh written last week in Milan – he expects to be in England this week and will phone.
10.30 p.m. Phone call from Hugh. Just arrived in London. Almost his first thought – to phone me. Oh Lord, this is ludicrous! Why are men and situations so diverse and twisted? Damn and damn again. I have promised to meet him for lunch on Wednesday. He has no news of Maritza – she is supposed to be in England by now.
Tuesday, 25 September
Last Sunday week Dinah had four more Walterish tabbies. They were born in the usual confinement quarters behind the curtain under the water tank at the top of the
stairs – and I found father Walter during Dinah’s labour peeping in and making curious noises in his throat of great agitation. Tonight I decided to have a look at the family and to my astonishment discovered only two. Had Dinah decided that four were too much for her and eaten two of them or dragged them away somewhere to die?
Later I heard loud squeaks and found Dinah with a kitten in her mouth – she brought it, confusingly, into the sitting room, doing something with her family I couldn’t fathom. I wondered if she had dropped the other two out of the bedroom window and went with a torch to have a look, but no. Dinah then jumped through the broken woodshed window with squealing kitten in her mouth. And at the bottom of a deep and I should have thought most uncomfortable woodbox were the lost portion of her family. What in the world has made her do this I can’t think, unless the confinement quarters were too easy an access for the other cats, or she knew that Mrs Mop and her horrid little boy would be here in a day or two.
Thursday, 27 September
With my thoughts all on one lover I go to meet another. We are delighted to meet again. We have lunch, we sit in Hyde Park, we have tea, he buys me roses and I come home again. He may be here for the weekend. But my thoughts are still with the other man.
Hugh has a chance of a job in Australia. Supposing Maritza really does vanish (I hope she won’t) and he asks me to go with him. He might. What should I do? Hugh is a pleasant and trying reality. I know him well. He is tangible, his friendship is tangible and hugely satisfying. M. has given me, promised me nothing, and from all appearances forgotten me. Surely the practical, sane move would be to go with Hugh. But I would not marry him, or only on the condition that we could each have our freedom the moment we wanted it. Haven’t hundreds and hundreds of women decided this way in similar circumstances and probably made a much better job of the relationship because they did not expect too much and gave generously and fairly of what they had to give – unhampered by false ideals and sentimental tears for the moon?
Friday, 28 September
I hate him. I hate him. I suspend decision continually because of him. I have not asked Josephine to stay with me all this summer partly because I did not want her to be here should he suddenly make up his mind to come. I suspend decision on leaving HDA because of him. His behaviour points so obviously to the fact that he just doesn’t care or think about me much. But Sentimental Heart won’t let me accept that and forget him. Please God let this torment end soon. Let me know where I am, what I should do. I want him so much. But thank you that there is Lydia whom he treats just as badly … and all the other women who call him ‘Swine!’.
I have sent M. a memo from the office – direct, signed personally, with regard to the pictures I know he is wanting. If he really wants to contact me again he has the chance. And if he doesn’t he’ll delegate the job to a subordinate and I shall crumple up.
Saturday, 29 September
Am in a rage waiting for elderberry jam to thicken. My own fault. I didn’t dry the berries after washing them. Have now added apple.
Today one of those gold and blue days – everything burnished and heavenly. I spent all the afternoon in the garden divinely happy, and would still be happy but for the jam. Am reading, for the first time, some Proust, Part 1 of The Captive, English translation. Certainly one is held. But how small he is! Where did I read a reference to him recently as ‘wallowing in his own dirty bathwater’? Not that he is smaller than most of us. Such grandiose language for such trivialities. But then life is made up very largely of such humdrum items for most people.
I have transplanted foxgloves, moved the Madonna lilies to a summer border, rooted dog violets away from dozens of young primrose plants. The elderberry jam is as solid today as the Rock of Gibraltar.
31.
The Problem of Palestine
Thursday, 18 October
The most marvellous birthday of my life. He came, he came. Out of the blue. My darling came. I’m not quite sane at this moment – haven’t much control over my pen but because I feel I owe it to these pages, to sentimental heart, to all my urgent desires, dreams and hopes. He didn’t know it was my birthday. Drove from Redditch to an empty house and phoned me at about 9.45 – took me for a drink to Beaconsfield, came back and is gone now, saying he would come again soon – and really I believe this time he means it. Means it deeply. I am sure of it at this moment.
Monday, 22 October
Hugh was here for the weekend. I am rather proud of myself, grateful again to Hugh. It would this time have been easy to slip – yes, literally almost, slip into the old intimacy. There he was in excellent health and spirit, charming, witty, attentive and willing – I am sure he was willing, but waiting for a lead from me. Sex means little more to him than satisfying an appetite. I don’t think he’d have had any feelings of conscience towards Maritza, who is waiting somewhere in the Mediterranean in a transit camp, all transport delayed by the dock strikes. He would not be unfaithful while she was with him. But during this interval which may continue for weeks he’ll take what is offered. And I did have something of a struggle not to make that offer. Chalk it up, please.
We had a delightful weekend – there is such ease between us now, so many jokes shared. But I know more definitely than ever that he is not my man and never could be. He has had dozens and dozens of women, really dozens; he has, he says, been very happy with many of them. And he does know in his superficial way how to make a woman happy. He uses his imagination skilfully, with Latin sensitivity and instinct – and he could have married any one of several of them at the time of the affaire if he had been free, and would have been sure of a certain kind of happiness. But whether he could have kept such women happy I don’t know. Maritza sounds rather different – she has a strength he lacks and will keep him so long as she wants to keep him. She seems to be very much in love with him (although he suspects that she has had her affaires in the interval too). In some of the photos I have seen she looks to me older than he is, but she has a strong face, determination and courage in chin and mouth – is vivid, sparkling. Perhaps she is older, was caught by the glamour of a British officer’s uniform, saw her chance (and maybe there weren’t so many for a no-longer-young cafe singer) of a husband, and willed him with passion into it. I am sure she is the dominating personality. She is willing to go to Australia, is building her life around him, as most women do and want to do about some man.
And M., my dear, my darling? But I am so prejudiced there I cannot write clearly of him. I think he has many points in common with Hugh. Hugh says that he can be immensely attracted to and excited by a woman, but he goes to his work, becomes absorbed in it and forgets the woman entirely. I am quite sure that happens with M. That he came on my birthday is incredible. The memo about the pictures evidently had the effect I hoped it would. He told me that his wife is going to live with her people. And that when he comes to Slough he will stay at the Crown ‘or at Egypt? May I?’ (very shyly). It will be easier, now, he said, for him to come to me sooner and more often. But I wonder – I wonder if he means this. He certainly doesn’t mean me to think that he intends anything of a permanent relationship. If he gets his house in Stratford, leaves HDA, and starts making jewellery (he talked about this more freely the other night) he may well start that new business in Birmingham, the centre of all such production, where he grew up and is known. Where would poor Jean be fitted then? In the same sort of pocket as the girlfriends in Sheffield? But maybe by then Jean will have achieved more wisdom, maybe she will know by then whether this obsession is just sick fancy or not.
I am tired now. Hugh was up at 6 this morning to be at his new job (his first day) in London by 8.30. I shall go to bed. Party on Saturday – phone call tonight from Phyllis and Gus. They can’t come, because they are touring with The Widow. It is being an immense success – much to their astonished satisfaction. I am delighted. I was so good to hear Gus’ voice again.
Thursday, 25 October
I had the day off today. My hair wa
s ‘Liberty’ cut this morning and this afternoon I went to see Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V.151 It is magnificent and I don’t agree with any of the critics. Swarms of schoolchildren have been seeing this film every morning and if they are being ‘taught’ Shakespeare imaginatively and intelligently it should help them a lot. But I had to sit through the performance with soaking wet feet. I have hardly a pair of shoes now that don’t let the water through.
At my suggestion Lydia and I wrote for ‘Detailed (12s. 6d.?) Analysis’ of our handwriting to the Institute of Graphology and Psychology. An appalling racket. One sends 25 words of anything, and signature, sex and age. I asked particularly for information concerning my creation and abilities. The reply I received is as follows:–
‘This vivid writing is of a most intelligent and mentally active person. The writer is ambitious and wants to achieve the greatest possible amount of independence. Nevertheless she finds it rather difficult to free herself from all the maladjustments which have hindered a satisfactory development so far. In spite of accumulated knowledge and the good use of inborn abilities, she is not yet completely happy. There exists, deep within her, an experience, a disappointment, a deep grudge or something of the kind, which prevents her from ever getting complete happiness or satisfaction.
‘The writer has fine abilities, such as judgement of character and excellent powers of observation, which combined will lead to the urge of expression in writing. Friendly, very helpful, the writer likes to assist others, helping them with her own manifold knowledge of life and its problems. It is this knowledge which qualifies the writer to be a real help, a person of true understanding, much initiative, and quite unselfish nature.
‘Her abilities are intellectual and should engage with some literary work, such as play-writing, journalism, art critic etc, or become a teacher. Mere routine work is not for her, as she needs the human touch to be happy and also the chance to use her brain in her job. A clever person, she is also a sceptic with much practical knowledge and experience, possessing excellent qualifications for teaching humanity in some way or another.’
A Notable Woman Page 35