A Notable Woman

by Jean Lucey Pratt

  This is how we can all live, if we will. What a formidable array of talented women writers the post-war years have thrown up.

  Monday, 14 April

  Two months have frittered by. Have just turned off radio Monday play Now She Laughs, Now She Cries by Jill Hyem. I just cannot stomach this sort of thing. I am sorry for them – the lesbians and homos, but don’t ask me to sympathise or join in.262 And don’t say to me that this attitude only proves that I have similar latent tendencies. If anything I am a frustrated nymphomaniac but perversion for me could go no further. I loathe the very idea of the other, but do not at all loathe the idea of being a successful courtesan. Am still tormented sometimes by erotic fantasies on these lines. Men. Lovely men …

  I did not have this in mind to record – it was that stupid play that provoked it (now am being unfair – I think it is probably a good play. I should have heard it to see whether in the end she is left crying …)

  Tuesday, 6 May

  I am only finding the words, put by someone else, that express or explain part of the great feeling of desolation and despair that is enveloping me. The hounds of hell perpetually at my heels. I don’t know what to do, where to go, what is worth doing. Truly this despair has pursued me, and no drugs, no props, no escape in any form rid me of it or change the mood. I wake each morning full of dread when I should be shouting with joy.

  There is too much ghastliness on the news to be borne, it goes on and on, IRA atrocities, Vietnam disaster upon disaster, famine and starvation in the Third World, perpetual cruelties to animals, perpetual greed and aggression all round one, brainless and juvenile violence. How can one not be aware and influenced, and threatened by destruction with all this bombarding one daily? And all the time one’s own little life continues, fretted with the same old anxieties about money and one’s eye defects, making long journeys alone by car; and then insurance of one’s rotting property problems, and the nagging of the well-meaning male, intent on boosting his own ego, exploiting the fears of small people. I took the Surmontil for only about five nights. But dreams are ugly – confused and bewildering.

  Later: What I have to do is to ‘stand fast in my surroundings’. In old-fashioned and out-of-date terminology I must ‘pull myself together’ and ‘not give in to these moods’. Can’t you hear all the nannies down the ages chanting this? Now. Concentrate on the nice things that happen each day, and at risk of being an excruciating bore, record them here. After all, why do you always suppose that someone, in fact many people, are in the years ahead going to read these pages, or have the least interest in doing so? Maybe they’ll just rot away, unread.

  Wednesday, 7 May

  A strong NE wind was whirling last year’s dead leaves like a dust storm through the woods. Someone I knew but could not name as I walked down road smiled and said ‘Windy, isn’t it?’ This was the first warm lift for me in an otherwise bitter and frustrating morning.

  Another little warming incident: one of the village bods preparing for an afternoon function at the Hall grinned at me cheerfully: ‘Hallo Miss Pratt! How’s your pretty garden? I passed it the other day …’ So people do notice.

  Sunday, 22 June

  Years ago, Gus said to me: ‘You will never be happy – you want too much.’ I see this now as meaning that I want more than I am capable of achieving. You are a poor, mean little thing really. You want to be so wise and strong and admirable, but you are not. You want to be astute, clever, to be able to answer back smartly, to make clever quips, to contribute solidly to conversation. To be a much-loved, warming person – and you are not. You don’t have people turning to you for advice and comfort, you are empty, alone, unwanted. You can appear to be busy and popular. You can crowd your life with social activities and contacts, but your inner life is vacant, a cold cavern where no one comes for shelter.

  Monday, 30 June

  I am still a member of Parish Council and am on three committees. I record all this so that it may be understood (why?) that I am no recluse, and have not yet withdrawn entirely, as so often in the black moods I long to do.

  Thursday, 3 July

  Yesterday a good day. I spent p.m. at local wholesalers gathering more stock for the school prizes and felt I achieved a good selection.

  Tonight tired and deflated. Parents will tell me what a lot of such beautiful books they have at home, though I cannot remember ever seeing them in my shop before … the child with the delicate cough wanting impossible history books, and other children wandering about with pale, bored faces – oh, they’ve read that, that’s in the library. I loathe the whole boiling lot. (‘Oh no, I saw Black Beauty on TV …’)

  Monday, 8 September

  I feel so much better, dare hardly mention it. Evidently the holiday was what was needed, just to get away from the daily nagging of petty affairs into a refreshing atmosphere with old friends.263

  Monday, 2 March 1976

  And what do I do all day, each day? For a year now, shop opens 10–5 on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. On Saturday morning I now have 14 year-old Jane Kerr, a delightful and conscientious Scots lassie who manages very well indeed. On Monday I try to do all the chores at the cottage. On Wednesday during ‘the term’ I take a sandwich lunch to eat with artist friends who spend the day together at the village hall. On Sunday I am monstrously idle, except when I can get myself into the garden. Weekday evenings, unless there is a meeting to attend, are spent at home by myself. I like to get in, relax, have a drink, start preparing a substantial meal, a little washing or mending perhaps, usually much too tired to do anything but the washing up and feed cats. That is the slow pattern of my days, but each day is pretty crowded.

  Have acquired another car. A Morris Mini Traveller, G registration, advertised in local PO. It is a joy, so much easier to handle than that elephant Singer which I must sell but think it is going to be a problem.

  Wednesday, 26 May

  Ivy went down with a stroke at the beginning of March, and brother Pooh was in for a tough time. Babs helped for the first days until her mother could be got into hospital. I went over two weekends to help. Ivy is much better and is coming home this weekend ‘on trial’.

  Sunday, 1 August

  The heatwave of heatwaves. Never do we remember it so hot – all the news media has been full of it. At times almost unbearable.264

  Dear little MaryAnne …

  Sunday, 8 August

  P.D. is wanting me to go again to Newquay with her in October. Poor, dear P.D. I am sometimes so filled with revulsion. When away with her before I found her overwhelmingly gross, greedy and sentimental. But she has a large heart, and is also a heavily brilliant Oxford graduate. This one is never allowed to forget. I feel so mean, and treat her cruelly. I doubt whether she has ever had the remotest sort of love affair in her life. She is in her 50s, and all one ever hears of her past is Oxford and ‘Mummy and Daddy’, to whom she was very devoted.

  A long, long letter from N. last week. She is now in Norwich and seems happy enough. Though still hinting that she may return for her last days to Ghana.

  Collected Suzie Min (the Mini Traveller) last Wednesday. Her radiator collapsed on the M4 on way to the Cat Show.

  Tuesday, 31 August

  My week with family in Holt Forest, Dorset nearly over. Still scorchingly hot. I arrived soaked through. Roy’s big Triumph was much cooler than the Mini. Visited Thomas Hardy’s cottage, collected Colin from a day’s fishing on the Stour, greeted Sue from her first holiday job in Paris – very tired but still shining with Parisian sparkle, full of confidence and conversation, her parents bubbling with pride. I am lodged in what I call the Royal Suite, a large twin-bedded room with its own shower basin and loo adjoining, all very splendid. Spacious cupboards.

  Jottings from scraps of paper:

  In April I read Miss Seeton Sings (Heron Carvic – my old friend Gus).265

  Barbara Cartland on Woman’s Hour: ‘People are frightened – so frightened of the future and present they drug
themselves stupid to escape it.’

  ‘There is a brief time for sex, and a long time when sex is out of place. But when it is out of place as an activity there still should be the large and quiet space in the consciousness where it lives quiescent. Old people can have a lovely quiescent sort of sex … leaving the young quite free for their sort.’ (D.H. Lawrence to Lady Ottoline, 28.12.28.)

  Authors I can stomach: Mary Hocking, Elisabeth Taylor, Lettice Cooper, Frank Swinnerton. Not, oh please not Edna O’Brien and her ilk! What a waste of talent – like all such modern younger writers, each trying to be cleverer and more perceptive and dirtier than the last. All with such immense talent, skill and feeling wasted, wasted.

  Sunday, 3 October

  I feel extremely well – depression niggles away in the depths, but doesn’t overwhelm.

  Thursday, 11 January 1979266

  And now laid low with bronchitis. Woke Wednesday after a bad night with chest afire and coughing a lot and painfully. Thick phlegm threatening to choke me. Thank goodness phone is working. Summoned doctor, a new one, nice young woman, who confirmed congestion: ‘Your chest is full of gunge.’

  Saturday, 20 January

  The first drug did no good. Another drug prescribed which has worked and I now feel better. Longing for the old days when Home Nursing was a skill and an art practised assiduously. I must not grouse. My new neighbour, whom I have treated shamefully, brought me two huge bunches of daffodils.

  Monday, 29 January

  Yesterday Enid tempted me to view with her a TV programme on a local Surrey dog show.267 I was home again by 5.30 to prepare a delicious piece of stuffed rolled breast of lamb. I larded and put it into a Roastabag with cut-up onion, leek, parsnip, potato and mushrooms. It promised to be absolutely delectable. I then went off to write to N., neglecting to turn down my vicious little oven. When I came to it again, veg were burnt black and meat encased in shrivelled skin. Not a happy ending to the day.

  Friday, 7 September

  Coming home at night, 6–7 p.m., is the bliss of the day. I return to warm welcome, I can potter in greenhouse and garden, a comforting drink (or two) of sherry or vermouth, and then to prepare supper listening to The Archers. Tweezle had one eye alarmingly bloodshot and filmed over. Was able to rush her to vet and have been given pills and drops. Of course she resists tooth and claw.

  Wednesday, 12 September

  I never mentioned the Olympia Cat Show. It was a spectacular success. After traumatic difficulties (my regular driver collapsed a few weeks before the event with a severe heart attack) we got there and Rolf Harris came to sign his super Picture Book of Cats and I have never had a more successful signing party. He had only to appear by our stall and the public flocked round us. It was Enid’s idea, from her watching TV, but of course she thought I could not possibly draw such a personality into our humble orbit. However I am quite used to approaching publishers on such issues, and his were remarkably keen and co-operative and one of the executives came in person to feed us with sufficient stock in the afternoon, which we did need.

  Sunday, 27 April 1980

  Business has been very good. In fact I have nearly £1,000 in credit, so that I have promised to pay back £500 to Joan of the loan.

  Did not stand again for Parish Council. I have joined the Women’s Institute – new experience and pleasant.

  In the new Cats and Catdom Annual Alison Ashford refers to me as the ‘Fairy Godmother’ of the Cat Fancy, for obtaining and stocking cat books. She has always been very generous to me.

  In the middle of Friday morning Ralph L. suddenly appeared. I was so amazed and delighted to see him I rushed into his arms and kissed him. But he did not stay and would not make a definite promise to come again or visit the group on Wednesday.

  A decision at last reached and discussed with colleague Peter B. It is time I ‘retired’ if it can be contrived. He is willing to take on the front shop for his second-hand business in September, and I will withdraw into back office, keeping on with mail order and cat book business.

  Wednesday, 11 February 1981 (aged seventy-one)

  The periods of intense tiredness, of pushing myself into doing things, of getting breathless, of rages in getting the housework done, and feeling exhausted when completed – these conditions continued and increased, so that I went at last to the doctor. He diagnosed a tired heart and advised a general slow-down and rest.

  This I was trying to do when I caught a chest infection. I have had wonderful help from neighbours and friends. The boiler tended, meals brought in, flowers, sweets, fruit, magazines – oh, spoiled old woman I am!

  This is, I think, a warning. I have no desire or intention of dying yet. I still have a great deal to clear up, and it wouldn’t be fair to leave all that to my family. I must remake my will.

  Saturday, 21 February

  This morning I woke to brilliant white frost, and knew I would do more today than I have done for nearly three weeks. It is well to remember how ill I felt, a rubber band around my diaphragm allowing me breath only in gasps. ‘Are you all right?’ I was asked. It was torture to get up in the morning.

  How lucky I am with friends and neighbours. I hope I shall in some way be able to repay their kindness, their concern for me.

  Anne Coote has returned as a part-time employee, and brings the mail from the shop. She has packed and posted parcels, took me to see specialist at Wexham Hospital and then last Monday to Hammersmith where my thyroid region was ‘scanned’. Such a nice girl operated this fearful-looking machine. So far the doctors have decided I have thyrotoxicosis. Glands are doing something they shouldn’t, and putting pressure on the heart. We await the report of the recent scan.

  Tuesday, 24 February

  On the eve of the announcement of Prince Charles’s engagement to Lady Diana, I hear on radio from astrologist Sheila Geddes that most doctors agree that 80 per cent of illnesses are psychosomatic. I can go along with that. I am certain that this one of mine has made me stop when I couldn’t make myself. Now the thyroid has taken over. I am in bed and have time to pause and replan.

  Sunday, 11 October 1981

  It is nearly a year since Taffy S. gave the retirement party for me as reported in news cutting I have just pasted into beginning of this book.

  [The cutting, from the Slough Observer, was headlined ‘Now Jean has more time for her feline hobby’.]

  After 25 years of running Farnham Common’s well-known Little Bookshop, Miss Jean Pratt has gone into semi-retirement to concentrate on her lifelong interest – books about cats.

  Every year she sends a thousand parcels of books about our feline friends to animal lovers the world over. To mark her semi-retirement, a good friend, Mrs Spence Sanders, threw a lunch party on Sunday268 where Miss Pratt was given a pretty posy with pink ribbons …

  Born in Wembley, Miss Pratt did a journalism course at London University and some freelance work for architectural magazines. ‘I always wanted to be a writer and I’m a great reader,’ she said. Her wide knowledge of cats and the many books about them came during two years of research at the British Museum, working on a novel about a cat and her kittens which she never got round to writing. In 1955 she took over the Pets Corner shop in the Broadway for six shillings a week rent, selling and lending books. In that time she wrote a biography of Peg Wolfington [sic], the famous 18th Century Irish actress.

  Moving to the present site five years later, she ordered books for the old Farnham Common primary school and had many book-signing sessions, most recently with local TV presenter Johnny Ball, who does the BBC’s ‘Think of a Number’ show. Customers from as far afield as South Africa and Japan have dropped into the shop and she said: ‘It’s fascinating, you never know who’ll turn up next.’

  It was such an event for me and I was so moved by all the interest and attention. I kept a list of the guests: Catherine Altham and her mother (she presented the sherry). Taffy’s son dictated that she have a caterer to provide the food (it was all super!). D
avid and Sheila Milward (David made a touching little speech – I was nearly in tears!). David Gladwell (why I don’t know, except that he likes to be in on all Taffy’s parties). Muriel and Peter James (M. always a good customer, and Peter on the Council all the time I was there). Mr and Mrs Ripley. Mary Bassett, Peggy D., Lilian Gawthorpe (WI, is a very good customer). Nellie Bishop, my architect’s widow. Irene Chinnery, Lesley Furness, Tom Steel the current parson, and me and Taffy. It was altogether a famous occasion.

  Thursday, 31 December

  Have tonight been listening to a repeat of BBC broadcast of part of the Royal Wedding, which enchanted us all last July. I watched it with E. on her colour TV.

  I am better thank God, but still have to go to Wexham Hospital for thyroid check-ups.

  I have managed to replace the old Mini Traveller for an ordinary Mini. Was really falling apart with rust.

  Friday, 1 January 1982

  Have just been listening to BBC Radio ‘diary’ item. It makes me wonder how many thousands and thousands of other people have this urge, therapeutic as it may be. And makes me wonder how I have the nerve to continue in competition with people like Antonia Fraser, Hugh Casson, Mary Whitehouse, Peter Barkworth … Was it Hugh Casson who said it was the detail that interested him? Quoting Proust’s ‘tell me the colour of the blotting paper’. I think these are important things too, not ‘the future of Northern Ireland’ or who will win the next election – even the local politics of Farnham Common. I hear now a tap dripping, a clock ticking. Always there has been a clock ticking in the background of my life.

  Went to a lovely mid-day party today of near neighbours. I’ve lived in Egypt now for over 40 years and find I know so many people. It is very warming. And flattering to have one’s host kiss one on arrival and twice on leaving. Expect he just thinks, ‘Poor elderly spinster … I’ll cheer her up.’