A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  My dear Josephine. I don’t think she wants help. She goes about with a proud, disdainful expression – a ‘bad smell under the nose’ expression. Everything ought to be dainty, nice and oh, ever so refined and cultured and well bred for her. I am not surprised that the reactions of some people to her are violent, sadistic. Her attitude just makes the cruel element in one’s nature want to jam stinking mud pies beneath that delicate, scornful nose.

  Saturday, 15 June

  Always the unexpected, the unthought-of, the incalculable X that happens. A picture postcard from A.M. this morning – dated May 28. He is in Canada and hopes to be in England again about middle of July. Oh God! Thank you. I am so happy, so happy, so happy! He says, ‘I love this place, know you would too!! I hope to be back in England mid-July.’ That’s all. But it’s all I need.

  Sunday, 16 June

  If I am ever to do anything outside these journals I MUST NOT re-read them. In time these journals may have value, maybe the only written work of value I have – but not yet.

  10 p.m.: Trash, trash, trash. That’s all I seem capable of producing outside these journals and I’m not sure they aren’t trash too. For serious work, I must leave them alone. I must concentrate on articles. Now, tomorrow, or as soon as I have time I am going to begin again on that Bucks survey. Write up the places nearest – High Wycombe, Beaconsfield, Amersham. Camera has been repaired and I have a film. Go out on that bike and damn the weather and take photos. Go and talk to local habitants, vicars if necessary …

  And let’s try this: let us put the journals away with this present one. (They leave a record of my life as a slug leaves its trail – slime, slime.) Let us stop writing personal confessions until, say, the end of July. You still have various preparations to make in the cottage. You will potter in the garden. You will visit London and see more friends – Gus perhaps and so on. Reserve your writing energy for the aforesaid articles and Mass Observation Diary. Put this away, right away for six weeks. Just see if you can do it, if you have any guts. Adieu, adieu dear companion.

  33.

  Howl My Heart Out

  Friday, 8 August 1946 (aged thirty-six)

  Should be getting to bed but am in writing mood. What will my first official paying guests be like? Will my cooking and accommodation suit them? Will they go out all day as I want them to?

  I have had some panic early morning dreams – trying to get breakfast, doing all the wrong things, cooking the bacon before I had heated water for their ablutions, the guests coming down before I was ready.

  Monday, 12 August

  It’s a miracle – it’s what a miracle must feel like, I mean. Thank you, God. The phone call that I have been eating out my heart for came this evening. Just to say, ‘Hullo my darling, how are you, and will you come to a flick one evening – not tonight or this week as I have to go back to the Midlands – you’re busy, too, are you, well, one evening next week? I’ll phone you again then.’

  Not once in all these two years has he done anything like this. God bless him, God bless him a lot. My guests have arrived – middle aged but seemingly very nice, homely, middle class. What a difference it makes to one’s whole way of living, thoughts and feelings when one is happy, when something promises to unfold as one feels deeply it should. Is it really true, is he really beginning to take me a little more seriously, to think of me more, to want me more? I daren’t yet believe it.

  Tuesday, 1 October

  Since I last wrote in here A. has been only once, and that was exactly four weeks ago this evening. I do not know why. He may have, impulsively, taken a much needed holiday and since been too busy on the firm’s affairs and his own business to give me a thought. He may have been sent abroad again. He may have quarrelled with the HDA people finally and left them in a hurry.

  Wednesday, 30 October

  From tributes to H.G. Wells, just broadcast: ‘His attitude was – “well, I’ve missed. May I have another shot?”’ And ‘He said to us – “Enjoy life and go out and fight for it.”’

  May I have another shot … fight for it. I need more of that way of thinking. We get the men we deserve. I am sure of that. All things come to those who know how to wait. They won’t come to those who snivel and cringe while waiting – that isn’t waiting, anyway, that is running away, avoiding the burden of waiting. Yet I seem to have spent most of this 2½ years ‘waiting’ for A. Should I go on? Is it worth it? Is he worth it? If he is a cad, then I am a fool. But I can’t and won’t believe he is as much of a cad as he seems. Am sending a letter to John Audrey of the News Chronicle ‘Personal Problems’ column, asking for his views on this type of man. I hope he prints a reply, gives it some publicity, because I am sure it is a fairly common problem type and causes many women much distress.

  Friday, 1 November

  Still no period. It is now nearly 5 days late. I don’t think it has ever been quite as late as this – it is usually a day or two early. A. has not been near me since early September and I have had two normal periods since then. All very baffling. I should be a lot more worried if he had been here this last month. I wish I had the courage to have an illegitimate child, but I haven’t, and mixed up with that is a feeling of duty to the child – if I ever had one, then I would want it to have a legitimate father, a secure and happy home background.

  I must go on with this journal. I know I must. This is the real diary. Here I feel free to write spontaneously, exactly as I feel and think – which is really what Mass Observation wants (and may in time get from me these diaries too). I must just go on writing them both. The one recording superficial activities, the other inner.

  I must pay for my sins – although I don’t think they are sins. But I must suffer the consequences of past action, right or wrong, and pay ungrudgingly. And why I don’t feel as worried as I might is, of course, because I feel fairly certain at the moment that I could raise the money for a skilled abortion. This makes me wonder if there is anything I could do to help my less fortunate sisters (sort of conscience-gift). Certain people are trying to get the abortion laws altered. What could I do of a really practical nature? Why is society so hard towards the unmarried mother? I think it takes a lot of courage to be a mother, married or unmarried. Immorality? What is it? Society fears it, persecutes it. It’s fear and lack of understanding of sex, I suppose, mainly. People are fundamentally shy of talking or thinking about it. I am. It arouses at once such complex, confusing emotions.

  Saturday, 2 November

  I changed my mind during the night. I would have the child. I saw it as a whole new set of interesting problems, concrete, manageable. All this morning I was planning what I would do as I did the housework. How I would enlist Tom’s services and advice, consult Graham Howe, break the news to Ethel, Leslie and my special friends. How I knew I could rely on them to stand by me and see me through. I should be so full of confidence and happiness myself they would be glad to help me. The more I thought of it, the more the idea of bearing A.’s child filled me with enormous happiness, even if he washed his hands of me altogether. I saw myself contacting him and saying to him at last all the things I have for so long really wanted to say, pointing out that he would be free to take just as much or as little interest in me and his child as he wished. It seemed to give my whole life depth and meaning, to knit it all together, to give me something real to work and live for.

  Sunday, 3 November

  The body had its revenge in the afternoon. One of those terrible fainting, sickness and tummy pain turns that I have not had for years. Whatever the cause the result was an hour-and-a-half of indescribable agony. I knew what was coming and just had time to drink warm gin and water, fill a hot water bottle and collect basin and rag, then passed out with face buried in cushion on sofa – don’t know how I breathed.

  Coming to after a faint – one is first conscious of blackness, a deep, comfortable blackness where one was at rest, safe, still, knowing nothing. Then comes light in grey streaks and many confused images. Then con
sciousness of auto discomfort, difficulty in breathing and frightful pain and one remembers then, and knows what one has to go through in the next hour – sickness, diarrhoea and pain. All one’s belly is cramped, distorted, wracked with pain. Warmth and a couch one must have – I have fortunately never had these attacks where it has been impossible to obtain these aids immediately. Rarely, if ever before, have I been quite alone as I was yesterday. One needs afterwards sympathetic, quiet attendance. One wants to be quite still and have hot tea or Bovril brought to me and more hot bottles and then be left to relax and sleep undisturbed for hours.

  My fancy rides freely. Some angel of doom before my birth wrote with a cold finger, ‘she shall be barren and never marry,’ and a devil added, ‘she shall not be unattractive to men and shall have womanly desires.’ And this has been my life’s burden, cross, conflict – in an age when many women are obsessed with the idea of ‘leading their own lives’ and ‘pursuing a career’, which has had its influence.

  Thursday, 7 November

  In my eagerness to find a romantic cause for last Saturday’s sickness I overlooked other possible causes. A few days before the previous period, Kathleen Moneypenny suddenly announced that she wanted to come back to Wee and would I move into Gypsy East if we could persuade the C.s to move. This was a most frightful shock and kept me awake the whole of one night. I don’t know when I have felt so upset about anything. I might have been living in sin with someone else’s husband for seven years, it could not have been more painful. But she has compromised and thinks she could manage as well with Gypsy East herself. But the threat still hangs over me: Wee is not mine although I have grown into it as though it were.

  As ever, my conscience has been nagging at me to do some writing. Out of that has emerged the idea of doing some research into the eighteenth century and writing up Peg Woffington.155 I still want to do articles, though Peg W. might become a book. Further, it might be wise for me to specialise seriously, and I think of all things I might make Interior Decoration my subject. Study period furniture – start with that. And really make it your subject, Jean. Architecture and Building is rather too technical now that I have so lost touch with that world. There’s Lydia with her new books on furniture and glass etc, and Luigi with her knowledge and contacts. There is still Vahan, the architect in touch with architects, and the RIBA library. So think on these lines. But don’t spend all your time thinking.

  Saturday, 16 November

  A letter from Hugh today. He says: ‘I often wish I could curl up beside your fire, stir the cat with a lazy foot …’

  Hugh told me some time ago that Nockie had been to see them. Then N. wrote me:

  ‘Hugh informed me that he has told you of my meeting with Maritza. Rarely have I been so attached to another woman on sight and that he should have married such a woman shows that he has a good deal in him unsuspected by me at least. She is a real person, a bound book, with a deep spiritual side. I would have liked to help you to meet her in a casual way, but like me she has an extra sense and I am sure she would guess past activities and be miserable.’

  I wrote back to emphasise that I never had wanted to meet her. I would much rather stay apart, meeting Hugh occasionally for lunch. But Madame N. continues, ‘I am wondering if it would be possible to have Hugh and Maritza to tea on Sunday with your friend Tommy Hughes, if you would like it.’

  There is something of a triumph for our dear N. in this. She refused to be Hugh’s mistress and thrust him at me and then felt ‘left out’. Now she can (and does) flaunt the fact that she is ‘the only woman Hugh has never slept with’ and can safely meet and be great friends with his wife.

  Thursday, 28 November

  It was getting almost more than I could bear, the silence, the not knowing why the neglect or what had happened, when help comes unexpectedly from my dear, faithful Lydia with news that he has changed his job and is now a Branch Manager for Langley Alloys.

  Monday, 2 December

  I shall write.

  ‘I am afraid that this letter will make you angry. But before you burn it, please read it through – just once. It’s written to appease my ridiculously offended pride and will probably flatter your own.

  ‘I have been wondering what had happened to you. Now I learn that you have a new job and will not be in this district any more. I am glad for your sake that you are free of the other place and hope that the new appointment will be a big success.

  ‘But why your long silence? What can I think? Only that you’ve decided I am not worth your time and effort to know. Perhaps you are right. I have to admit I am a coward. I fail to say things I should when I have the chance. But dear Alan – Mac – you do wriggle so. I was scared to say what I wanted to because of being misunderstood. Now it’s too late. I am not a harpy waiting to destroy you. I would never have tried to interfere with your work or home life. But when you were with me I always felt you were thinking I would. It was a barrier I couldn’t break down. I had hoped that you wanted us to be friends. I sometimes wonder if you know how to be real friends with a woman, though the fault may be in me. Perhaps, O man of promise and many promises! you are not the person I imagined you to be. I should be grateful if you would post back my 2 books, the Maugham and Meyer, when you have finished with them, please? I do not want to see you again. Don’t think that I regret anything – except my reserve, which has carried more misunderstanding in my life than I care to remember.’

  Sunday, 8 December

  ‘Bad Girls Don’t Have Babies’ heads an article on the unwanted (illegitimate) child by Dr Eustace Chesser in today’s Pictorial. Dr Chesser says: ‘Half the sex troubles of our city population today – from outright deviation to unhealthy states of mind – are due to the widespread notion that sex is secret, sinful and forbidden … Deep in the hearts of millions of men and women of the last two generations is hatred and fear of sex, which renders them incapable to give any real advice or training to their children.’

  Deep in my heart I want to know more, experience more, much more of it. I adore being made love to. I know no pleasure quite its equal – with the right person. But one must remember always it is not an end in itself but a means – a means to a better understanding, a cementing of the relationship. And my ‘reserve’ which I have so blamed, beaten and abused may perhaps have been and still be a very useful protection to me against making seriously foolish mistakes – mistakes with long, disastrous consequences. We sensitive introverts are now so ashamed of our shyness, as ashamed of our shyness as our grandparents were of sex.

  11 p.m. My decision to work at a biography seems to be a right one (at last!?) and the choice of Peg Woffington a good one. All my friends approve and are interested – including N.! What is important is that the work absorbs me and I feel hugely confident about it. Am sure now biography is my ‘line’ and I should concentrate on it. Why haven’t I discovered this sooner?

  Xmas Eve

  8 p.m. I have just had the best Xmas gift of all. A phone call from my darling in Warwick. My hand is trembling I can scarcely hold the pen – I have heard his voice … really it is true. He wanted me to know he was thinking of me at this time, he said. He wanted to try and apologise and hoped soon to come and explain. He said he knew what I must be thinking. Cards and letters were so easily written – he thought the verbal message might mean more. He had been through a bad time mentally and decided to cut right away – the only thing to do, but he wanted me to know he hadn’t forgotten me. (Dearest, dearest I do love you so, forgive me please, all my bad thoughts of you … But this is what I did not say.) It is true, Jean, he phoned, just now, he really did phone from Warwick.

  New Year’s Eve

  9 p.m. I have been trying to work but cannot. It is New Year’s Eve and I have a great craving to be among people, to be having a party. I will pretend – I will summon them all to these pages though I don’t know how they would mix in reality. Let us imagine that I have invited here tonight, and that they can all get home again
by car after midnight, Joan and Vahan, Nockie and F., Luigi, Lydia and Curly, Lizzie and Peter, Liz Cecil, Leslie and Ivy, Hugh and Maritza. No. I tire already, the contrasts are too many, too difficult. But I will think of them all – Gus and Phyllis, Josephine, Ethel and Aunt Maggie, Tom, cousin Joyce, the Devereuxs. And A. of course – all the time, but how would he mix with any of these people? I long for company, the right company. I wish I could have more of my own people popping in and out. (But of course if you will live in the country, isolated!) Wish them all a Happy New Year … Dear friends, a very Happy New Year!

  Sunday, 5 January 1947

  As I write the date I remembered it was my mother’s birthday – in the year (I think) 1869 – (she was 27 when she married in 1896).

  My thoughts have been on shyness. I can remember what torture it was to meet strangers, to have to go among strangers as at a new school. It was perhaps something I inherited from my mother and which perhaps could be traced back to her birth. It was not, in my adolescence, just men I was shy with. I was shy in any company, though women I always found easier to get on with. So I always aimed at the women and avoided the men – just as in schooldays I aimed at getting myself liked by the ‘lower levels’, the ‘scum’ – where I felt safe from opposition. I am still shy. It is still an effort and sometimes agony to meet new people or join mixed company, but I think I am a little better in my behaviour. I am not quite so often so confused and tongue-tied.