Sunday, 23 August
‘It is a struggle, isn’t it?’ said accountant K., for once sympathetically, as he surveyed last year’s figures with me. ‘You need a bigger shop,’ and suggested little sidelines such as tobacco, sweets and stationery. Oh God help me! I will not descend to that level.
Collins sent me, at her request, an advance copy of N.’s book, Ashanti Boy by Akosua Abbs.240 It is excellent, a limpid story of a black boy’s efforts to get himself educated. There are no love affairs, but the tale holds one’s attention.
Thursday, 31 December
We stand at the door of a new decade. It promises to be a decade of moment for me.
In August Miss Drumm, an elderly, faithful library customer, had been wanting me to see if some old books of hers were of any use to me. I have quite often had this sort of invitation, but not combined with a lunch. At the end of this pleasant meal she announced that she would like to back my business. She lost her friend and partner at the beginning of the year and was seeking new interests. I left in a haze, not quite being able to believe this offer.
At the end of the month, Florence Cottages suddenly came on the market again.241 There followed weeks of agitated thought. Miss Drumm is lending me practically the whole of the purchase money, plans have been drawn up and submitted to the Rural Council’s Planning Committee, and builder has already started work on the ground floor. Is not there, then, a wonderful new year ahead of me? Added to these plans is the now definite prospect of our selling Homefield to a developer for £6,000. It reads like a fairy tale.
I’m fighting to preserve something worthwhile. I can’t at the moment think of another word, but ‘culture’ was the one Peggy Denny used. She arrived one bright morning unexpectedly and took me out to lunch. It was one of those days when I was feeling uncertain – was I doing the right thing? ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘We must have culture – there is so much of everything else.’ Culture, yes, the things of value, or the means by which we can assess values. Not money and security which is all this age clamours for. Quality. Taste. This word was used by another new friend: ‘There is no taste in the village,’ he said. ‘You could supply it.’
Tuesday, 2 February 1960
The cottages are now definitely mine, plans passed, mortgage all arranged, the village agog with curiosity, and people besieging me for the flat that is to be made of the top two floors. But ready money is lacking and seems more unobtainable than ever. Wembley Council has been moved to refuse the Developer’s plans for Homefield – people in Crawford Ave started an agitation, disliking the idea of flats at No. 4, and have brought pressure to bear. Agent Ward is fighting mad about it. It means months and months of further delay. But for the hag – who, I understand, was responsible for the Council’s refusal – it would all be settled by now, and Pooh and I together richer than we have been for years. I really do hate that old woman at this moment and feel very sorry for myself. I have about £50 left on deposit. All of it will be needed this month to pay outstanding debts and publishers. I have therefore, you horrible Wembley bitch, as though you cared, nothing whatever of my own for all the things I’ll be needing for the new business. Meddlesome, pompous, bigoted old sow.
The enraging thing about the whole affair is the Wembley Council’s inconsistency. They have allowed similar development, flats to be erected next to Churchill’s old house, and other developments opposite Homefield. There was, I must confess, a pang at first at the thought of Pop’s home (planned and built with such pride and hope) being destroyed. But my solicitor hit me sweetly on the head about this. If we for sentimental reasons tried to prevent it, there was nothing to stop the next owner letting it go for development, so why should we not reap the benefit?
Sunday, 7 February
Babs, Roy and Sue have been home on leave since the beginning of January. They now have a flat in Putney and today we have all been celebrating Granny Ethel’s 80th birthday. Sue is a perfect sweetie. A little shy at first, but it does not last. Once she knows you and feels secure, she is enchanting. They are in fact really rather a nice little family – Babs has chosen well and I am quite proud of her. Adolescence is an abominable age. I am becoming very fond of my niece, it is a heart-warming relief.
Babs with sprout at lunch to Sue: ‘Do you want a dolly cabbage?’
‘S, please.’
Babs to me: ‘I used to call them dolly cabbages!’ And so did I. And so does a family tradition continue – from Victorian to New Elizabethan, for I think it came from my mother’s childhood days.
Thursday, 11 February
Someone said on Any Questions this week that he could relax every limb on getting into bed, block out his mind, and be asleep in five minutes.242 I long to be able to do this.
Phyllis is playing at Windsor next week for a fortnight. One of the Langton boys was in this evening and seemed quite impressed that I knew Phyllis. It is very vanity-enlarging: ‘You know Phyllis Neilson-Terry?’ (with awe).
‘Yes,’ (nonchalantly). ‘But I know her husband better.’ How could I ever explain to anyone how much? Dear old Gus. He was speaking recently on Woman’s Hour with two woman decorators in a little ‘My Worst Mistake’ item. His, apparently, was to line, at great expense, a bathroom – floor, ceiling, walls, the lot – with mirrors. When the light was turned on the effect was paralyzing – you couldn’t find the door. This Luigi would have enjoyed hugely.
The first step of the move on Monday was not as enthralling as I’d been hoping.
Sunday, 28 February
I scrape the till each day and come home sick at heart, wondering if it will be the same in two or three years’ time. And what shall I do then – slide gracefully into bankruptcy?
Saw Phyllis in the play last week. I adored it.
Thursday, 1 March
A sad interview today with a little man and his wife from Willesden. They had traced me down about Homefield – they want the house very much because of the garden. They have a son who loves gardening, the greenhouse, all the things we once cherished. He quite understood that we should accept the highest offer, but I did not tell him that I had this morning a further offer via Ward from the developer, who is willing to take a chance on the permit he wants.
I think he is genuine, this little man from Willesden, with a pale, rat-like face and a somewhat sluttish but pleasant-looking wife. There was something I liked about them, but they were not the type either my father or mother would have rejoiced to see in possession of the old home. It is all sad, sad, but Wembley is degraded … like Slough, a perfectly revolting suburb.
Wednesday, 23 March
I have sickening doubts about the future. On Monday morning at the shop I took the large amount of 6d. I left Mrs J. to carry on after lunch. She managed better and took nearly £3, selling one of the Eden memoirs which I feared were going to die on us.243 This is one of the heart-breaking hazards of bookselling which may well kill one stone dead. I was sure Eden would sell, like The Turn of the Tide and George VI and Queen Mary (I sold 6 copies of QM), but the two copies of Eden were still with us months after publication. I hesitated and flopped over Born Free. I had read all the advance publicity and was fascinated, knowing I’d adore the book myself.244 But I failed to order – could have sold 2 copies by now if I’d had them. Have ordered too late; first edition is out of print. I still have, weighing the stock down heavily, 2 copies of the last vol of Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples. We’ve had them I think nearly two years, and Cassell’s have said they won’t take any back.
Sunday, 27 March
I am being given the chance to purchase Wee. It is quite fantastically incredible. The Moneypenny has decided to sell her property and each of her tenants is being given the opportunity to buy if they wish. I shall do so somehow. With a really excellent solicitor in R.P. behind me I am sure it will be managed.
I gave up all hope of owning Wee years ago, and have never felt as desperate over my home life as I have done over the business.
I am still a protected tenant and knew that unless the law was changed I couldn’t be turned out. The feeling of freedom so floods through me now.
Thursday, 7 April
Back rooms still in chaos, but shop looking really lovely, though not enough shelving yet. We have had a very good first day, everyone very kind and extremely flattering. But how much will they buy?
Friday, 8 April
B.P., as we stood drinking coffee in the still untidy ‘cloaks’ of the new shop this morning: ‘You were introvert and are now becoming extrovert!’ Everyone, everyone comes into the new shop beaming, ecstatic with delight and wonder.
I hope B.P. is not quite right. I hope I never lose or live to regret or neglect the introvert in me. Are there not both in everyone? Isn’t it only when the introvert is over-emphasised, when the shadow in one overshadows the personality, that there is misery and frustration? ‘If a man learns to deal with his own shadow, he has done something real for the world.’245 And if that is what at last I am doing … oh, I hope it is true, just a little bit. It will mean that everything in the past was right. All the pain, the anguish of stumbling about in the dark alone. Now we emerge into the light.
Wednesday, 4 May
That damnable little Penguin rep – promising over a fortnight ago two display stands which have not yet arrived.
This evening to a Dress Show at the village hall in aid of World Refugee Year. Packed with local women, show put on by a firm from High Wycombe. I saw nothing I felt I couldn’t live without, but it has made me terribly dissatisfied with my own wardrobe. I did buy a new suit for my cocktail party, the ‘shop warmer’ I threw on the premises on Easter Monday. Smashing, as they say.
Friday, 22 July
The Homefield money has still not materialised. I begin to think of it as a myth, but my bank won’t. I don’t dare calculate my overdraft, keep putting off payments in the same old way, exactly as I have been doing for five years, gritting my teeth, telling no one.
Babs is to have another infant in January. It is pleasing to think of one’s family going on like that. The cats also multiply. Three quite adorable ginger kits disrupt the routine.
Sunday, 14 August
Shop phone was installed on Friday. Now disconnected at Wee. I may be able to have an extension in about two years’ time, but until then must do without. In a way it’s a relief to know one can’t be ‘got at’ by anyone while one is at home.
Monday, 15 August
And it was N. who, quite without intent, called first on the office line.
Oh dear, oh dear, please help me now God to be patient, generous, kind, without giving in to her, making myself into the same old doormat. She sounded quite unchanged, peeved and aggrieved because now my friends (meaning herself in particular) would not be able to get me – i.e., only all day everyday between 9 and 7, except Wednesday afternoons and Sundays. What a woman! Everyone else has accepted the conditions quite calmly and reasonably. She wants to come for the day on Wednesday and may stay the night. Of course I want to see her and for her to see the shop (my vanity, which will no doubt soon bite the dust). But I am shaken with dread. I shall be pounced on, poked and prodded and badgered with unanswerable questions, without pause for the answers, until I am in the limp state she enjoys of her victims. But about Wee I must be very non-committal. I have not breathed a word to her about the possible purchase. She will want to ‘help’.
Thursday, 18 August
Dear N. She was more tired and ‘down’ than I think I have ever known her. The mechanism I dreaded was still there and operating, but the generating force was so low I scarcely felt the effect. I hope she will take things more easily when she returns to Ghana. It is sucking her blood, though she loves the place. I do love her dearly, and hope that she will never, never have the chance to read this journal.
Monday, 19 September
[The entry is preceded by a small, pasted newspaper cutting from the Death Notices.]
PRATT – On Sept 12, 1960, Ethel Mary (nee Watson) aged 80 years, beloved sister of Maggie. Cremation Breakspear Crematorium, Ruislip, Thursday, Sept 15, at 12.30 p.m. Flowers to James Peddle, 65 High Street, Rickmansworth.
A desolate day, grey, cool, unlovely. I’m not yet over the shock of Ethel’s death. I feel I never shall be. For 35 years she was an intimately integral part of the pattern. And though we knew it was coming, it was just desolation when I heard finally.
She had been for a month in Chesham Cottage Hospital, very ill. Aunt Maggie went to see her every day, I went every Sunday. Fluid against the left lung was causing pressure on the heart. Her breathing was so painful she could not talk, and then she became gradually weaker and weaker until she lapsed into unconsciousness. I am sure she was longing to be through. The hospital complained a little that she would not cooperate. She felt herself becoming a nuisance, saw only a failing old age ahead. I would not have wanted her to live for this.
But I miss her. There was a bond between us, grown unnoticed since my father’s death, a sense of companionship, a sharing of many mutual interests, a delightful kind of communion. This is the loss, the cause of the pricking eyeball, the lump in the throat. Her flower-laden coffin slipped so smoothly away.
At this moment Babs and Roy and Sue are airborne on their way to Lagos. I took the afternoon off to see them go at London Airport, but their bus was late, so it was Hullo, Goodbye and I was alone again in the gray day, watching distant impersonal aircraft, not knowing which was theirs. Roy escorted me to Ethel’s funeral while Babs stayed at Wee with Sue. I have delicious mental pictures of Sue romping through the golden Beeches with her father, shrieking with laughter, tugging at Roy’s hand, hiding behind trees to ‘boo’ out at Mummy and Auntie as they passed.
And in the morning, climbing to my room where I was making the bed:
‘Can I have another biscuit?’
‘You must ask Mummy.’
Face falls. ‘Oh, then I can’t.’ Pause. ‘Perhaps I’ll just go and ask if I can or can’t.’
‘All right. You go do that.’
She does, and returns, shaking her head mournfully. ‘I can’t.’
Desolating news, too, about Wee. The building society to which I applied for a mortgage sent surveyors, and has turned down my application flat. Apparently the cottage is in such a bad condition that it couldn’t be improved or altered without collapse of the whole fabric.
Tuesday, 25 October
‘Everything gets killed by words sooner or later.’
From ‘A Rose by Any Other Name’ by Anthony Carson, 1960
Wednesday, 7 June 1961
October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May and now into June and not an entry made. That could mean such disaster it was beyond recording, or such absorption in living there was no overwhelming urge to find a refuge. I have no particular reason to be starting again tonight. At least I may as well note, since the economics of living have so dominated my life in recent years, that I am not bankrupt yet. I still have anxious moments and scraping of the till on occasions, but the rent from No. 1 Florence Cottages is an enormous help. The mortgage interest arranged with Miss Drumm is unusually modest for nowadays – only 3-and-a-half per cent. I have so much to thank her for.
Jung is dead. The BBC speaker tonight was not, I thought, very inspiring about him, but did sum up his significance by saying that his teaching had aimed at presenting a concept of man complete: his good and bad aspects, his inner as well as his outer life, instead of the ideal man with which we had previously been plagued and confounded.
Babs had a son at the end of January. Colin (wonder why they called him that). Now they are all in Ghana and maybe meeting N.
Have been going to art classes once a week since last autumn at the Slough College of Further Education, with Kay Faulkner and Sheila Hiron. We are none of us very good but enjoy it hugely. I ran an art competition for local children recently. It was a big success, though I went through agonies of panic beforehand. Am sudde
nly up to my neck in something that apparently calls for Initiative, Imagination and Drive.
Wednesday, 19 July
Our art teacher at Slough, Ralph L., whom I have commissioned to do a watercolour of Wee (he has a picture in this year’s Royal Academy summer show and was mentioned by a Sunday Times critic), dropped into the Little B. yesterday afternoon unexpectedly. He came into the shop with a woman and two small girls. ‘Is this your family?’ I exclaimed. He answered, ‘Good heavens no! I wish they were.’ I stood looking at him with my head on one side, thinking what a darling father he’d make, and suddenly realised from the way he was looking back at me that he might be thinking I’d make quite a good mother. I managed to pull myself out of this clinch and we discussed future possible arrangements for his coming to do this picture.
It is all at least 20 years too late for me, but he does attract me and I’m pretty sure he likes me too. The local paper says he is 28, but he has told me he was stationed at Beaconsfield during the war, which must make him quite 35. I’m nearly old enough to be his mother, and all I can hope for is a satisfying friendship with a sensitive intelligent young artist of promise, and that I don’t get too maudlin about it. Oh, let it rest.
Thursday, 20 July
For the first time ever, accountant K. met me with a beaming smile of approval. The business has much improved, I’ve done very well this year, it’s a good little business now, and so on. Perhaps this was to soften the blow that accountant’s charges will be higher. Nonetheless it was a pleasant surprise to leave his office without feeling that the best thing I could do was to drown myself.
Ralph L. never speaks of his wife. I don’t mean by this that I’m thinking or hoping he’s unhappily married. It’s been quite a battle for me to get the affair onto a realistic level – to steer clear or to ride the familiar and terrible waves of emotionalism that threatened to swamp me, to swamp both of us rather, and destroy something that may be of value if allowed to develop freely in its own way.
A Notable Woman Page 59