Читать книгу A Notable Woman - Jean Lucey Pratt - Страница 13

3.

Such a Long Way Down

Saturday, 13 August 1927

I just loathe Ethel when she begins making subtle remarks about my future prospects. I hate it. I don’t want to get married. She thinks she’ll get all the sugar when I’ve chosen a husband. She shan’t. I shall run away – anywhere. She shall have nothing to do with my babies if I ever have any. Mother had all the hard work, and Ethel will get all the ‘juicy bits’ of being a grandmother. There’ll be a bust-up one of these days, such a bust-up. They are both on the landing and Daddy tried the door just now. I am doing ‘very private work’.

Sunday, 14 August

I think I must tell you about my farewell to A.W. For the very last few days of term Miss Hawkes had been taking roll-call, but on Tuesday morning (the last day) she went with the Irish mail. I made a rapid calculation that it was 10–1 A.W. might be taking her place. When the 7.40 bell went I prayed it might be so I went to investigate. And she was there, standing just outside the Big Hall watching us drift downstairs. It was my one and only chance and I grabbed it.

‘You’ll be going directly after breakfast, won’t you Miss Wilmott,’ I said. ‘Well I don’t expect I shall see you so I’ll say goodbye now.’ She shook hands with me. There was a wonderful light in her eyes and she smiled and said goodbye and then waited … I believe she knew I might say something else. Then it was like plunging into a cold bath or stepping into the sea. ‘Miss W.,’ I went on, turning puce, ‘I’m awfully sorry I haven’t been able to get to know you better here.’ We moved a little aside out of the way of people coming downstairs. ‘Well Jean,’ she said softly, ‘there hasn’t been much time has there?’ ‘And,’ I hesitated, pulling at the banister with nervous fingers. ‘Yes?’ she said kindly. ‘I may go on writing to you, mayn’t I?’ ‘Oh yes, rather!’ she laughed. We moved towards the door, ‘Yes Jean, do write. I shall be pleased to hear …’ Then somehow it was all over. It was wonderful. I am so glad I did it. My school career ended gloriously.

I did just about what I expected in the exams. I failed in Maths, passed in History, Arithmetic, French. I only got a credit for Botany and passed in Drawing. And I got credit in English.

Sunday, 21 August

Ethel and I have talked together about the bigger things. But I cannot say what I feel, what I know. I was surprised to find out how very simple was her nature, how little she seemed to know of life. God has given me a far-seeing vision and a certain amount of understanding – I have an imagination. It is my most precious possession. And it is what Ethel lacks. Her hard practical character is redeemed by a very deep and broad sense of humour which enables her to see things from a wide point of view, but she hasn’t yet learnt to dream by day. I don’t think she ever will. She is inclined to laugh at all that I hold dear.

Tuesday, 23 August

This morning I took Daddy in Pipsqueak over to Acton and we went to Eastman’s [garage]. I came back by myself and all was going swimmingly until I tried to get into the garage. For the second time I nearly knocked down the gatepost, only it was the other one this time and the gate is unhinged. What will Daddy say? These sort of things just crush the spirit out of you. I wanted to creep away somewhere like an ashamed dog and howl. Why can’t I steer straight?¹¹

There’s no getting away from it – it is my eyes. I must see Mr Roberts this week. I called in on Harris’s on the way back about the valves and the reverse gear, the latter being mighty difficult to engage. Of course when he did it it went beautifully and he only laughed.

Sunday, 11 September

I went to Mr Roberts and I have over-strained my eyes. It was part of the price of the Schools Cert. In consequence I am not able to do any of the things I like best, i.e. reading, writing and driving. Also sewing. I shall probably be going to a specialist in the future. I don’t think I had better write any more now.

Sunday, 18 September

Do you know a month from today I shall be 18 and I shall be allowed to smoke! O glorious day.

Tuesday, 20 September

Retrospect:

Tipping up in a perambulator left in the conservatory while the others were having dinner. Green peas. Golden curls and blue ribbons. Making houses with the bedclothes before breakfast. Running about naked and thrilling with the feel of it. A white silk frock and a big blue sash and dancing slippers. Dancing lessons. The polka with Noreen. Buddy’s cousin. Swinging at the bottom of the garden. Summer days and the smell of citronella to keep away the gnats. Bare legs and the wonderful silver fountain of the hose. Daddy in a white sweater. School. Very small, very shy. The afternoon in May – taken by mother to Penrhyn. Learning how to write the letters of the alphabet. A beautiful clean exercise book and a new pencil. Miss Wade at the head of the dining room table and me at her right. Choking tears because of youth’s cruelty. Leslie as a cadet in khakis. Wartime. Air raids. Mother white-faced and fearful. Mummy and Daddy who were ‘lovers still’. Youth’s sudden fierce resentment. Lavender, Peggy, Veronica and I. The Xmas when Mummy wasn’t there. Mummy white-faced and old eyes grown tired with suffering yet dimly alight with that courage which never quite died. The sudden night-fears. The long lonely nights that ended and she was home again. Hot days when she sat in the garden. Nurse Petersson. Darkness in her bedroom. The electric fan and ice to keep it cool. Leslie suddenly brought home to see his mother for the last time. An afternoon in late July when we all came into her room and she prayed for us. Realisation that my fears were true. Tears. Tears. A dull sudden despair. Tennis and laughter. Boarding school next term at PHC! Thrills of the new life before me. Clothes. Mummy’s last kiss on my lips and my eyes dim with tears. Two shillings in my hand. Gwyneth as a new girl next to me. Bells, bells. Nights spent praying. The Tuesday morning French lesson. Boredom itself. Miss Rodger’s face round the door. ‘May Jean Pratt go to Miss Parker.’ The absurd consciousness of having on my lavender jumper. The swing doors and Miss Parker beyond. ‘Your father is in the drawing room my dear, he has something to say to you.’ The sudden knowledge of the end of all things. Daddy red-eyed and tired with open arms and only a sob to tell me everything. Tears. Tears and unbearable heartache. Home for the day. Aunt Edith outside in their car waiting for me. Workmen that stopped to stare. A silence that greeted me as I stepped inside the house. Mother was dead. A sudden fierce desire to turn round and run away. Anywhere. ‘She will be very still.’ The peace that smoothed away the suffering from her face. And her forehead so cold when I kissed it. The gold of the sunshine outside. Back to school. Feeling paralysed. Pleased with sudden elevation of position the simple tragedy had placed me in. The weekend and the flowers. White lilies that I threw after the coffin. It seemed such a long way down. We left her under the yew tree covered with flowers.

The term went by and the holidays came as all holidays will. Daddy alone. So he worked to save himself from dying of a broken heart. And so the years went by. And Ethel came. And life became what it is now.

Sunday, 9 October

I am beginning to live again – at last! But there is still something lacking – just a boy. To take me to the pictures, to be teased about, to write me letters, to dance with me, to sort of fill Leslie’s place. But I must be patient. I know it’s my glasses, always has been. Leslie said once, ‘I suppose you’ve got to wear glasses? You know, without pulling your leg, you’re a pretty girl.’

And I, fool that I was, answered ‘I know!’ I didn’t mean to leave it at that. I had meant to add that ‘my glasses don’t improve my looks,’ but somehow I couldn’t get it out, and he’s gone away thinking perhaps I’m conceited. Perhaps he’s right.

I have asked Miss Wilmott to tea! Daddy suggested it. I’ve asked her!

I love the work at the office. I am learning shorthand and typewriting at the moment.

Thursday, 20 October

The dreamed-of has happened. SHE has sat in the drawing room and drunk our tea. I have talked with her and walked with her, as I sighed for long ago. But the things we spoke about were very ordinary, everyday things. I was nervous at first and felt frightfully sick, but by tea-time I gradually calmed down. She was very sweet. Nothing embarrassing happened. Ethel is in bed with a frightful cold and Daddy couldn’t get home, so it was just she and I, a whimsical trick of fate. How extraordinary life is. And yet I’m not as thrilled as I dreamed of being. Sentimental relationships are always embarrassing.

And I’m eighteen! The time one longs for comes around at last. This evening when Daddy came in I was smoking a State Express and neither of us remarked on it.

Saturday, 22 October

It is a miserable day and Leslie has forgotten my birthday.

Thursday, 1 December

I was half awake this morning when the clock struck 8. Then Daddy came in with two letters. One he gave to me – it was only my dividend and he waited till I read it. There was something strained in his attitude. I knew before he told me that he had some sort of bad news. But I knew it couldn’t be Ethel. It was Leslie. I had to hold my hand over my heart very tightly to stop it beating before I could open the Company’s letter. He has diphtheria. A mild attack they say. He is lying ill now, now as I write this, and we cannot do anything because of the miles that separate us, the miles of this ‘small’ world. But he is in Montevideo. The Company will let us know how he gets on. But I cannot help thinking of the things that might happen.

And that brings me to the mundane fact of a dancing partner. I must have one for the 21st (Old Girls), but who in the world do I know who can dance? Only one, and he’s lying ill in Uruguay.

Sunday, 4 December

So I suppose I must ask Jack Phipps.

Tuesday, 6 December

I wrote to Jack Phipps last night and I have prayed. He will get it today, and I do hope he’ll understand and be able to come. I live in suspense waiting for his answer.

Tuesday, 27 December

I had Eric Yewlett for the Old Girls dance. He’s learning to be a parson and makes feeble jokes. I can’t bear him.

Wednesday, 14 March 1928

Tonight I am going over to Harrow with the Jolliffes to a Conservative dance.

Yesterday morning Joyce phoned through: ‘What I rang up to say was,’ she said after the usual banalities, ‘that I have got you a partner for tomorrow night.’ (For a moment my heart sank – I immediately thought of Dennis Rollin.) ‘And he,’ she went on, ‘is so thrilled with the idea that he is ready to put himself and car at your disposal. He has evidently been wanting to make your acquaintance for a long while.’

‘But how topping of him,’ I said. ‘Who is he incidentally?’

‘Mr Harold Dagley,’ said Joyce.

‘I seem to know the name.’ And so I do, but for the life of me I can’t remember anything more about him. ‘What a howl. But I say, Joyce, I’m sure he’s thinking of Margaret, not me.’

Anyway he is coming to fetch me from Wembley between six and half-past. I’m nervous, excited, it all seems so absurd. I’m sure it will be like so many of those dreams of mine – will crumble away to nothing. And tomorrow I shall still be in the same place, a looker on. He is sure to be disappointed – they all are. I have got to the stage when depression falls upon me like a blanket. I am going all to pieces so I must think no more about it.

Later:

Didn’t I say it would all come to nothing? I have just had another phone message from Joyce to say that H.D. is down with ’flu. So what does it matter what I wear or what the weather is? Damn damn damn. I am fated. Oh God mayn’t I ever get to know anybody? Mayn’t I have any fun at all? Mayn’t I ever meet a few of the people I imagine are in love with me? Or is it to save me from more bitterness, more heartache? But to quote someone else, ‘To give up possible joys for the fear of possible pain is to give up everything.’ I would willingly suffer a little if I could have lovers – lots of them and a good time.

Tuesday, 27 March

1.40 a.m. Another little Hell – paved with good intentions and roofed with lost opportunities. Oh God, what a fool I was. And the only way to ease the ache is to write and write, even at half-past-one in the morning.

We have just come back from another Ladies’ Night – the Borough of Acton – and Geoffrey Roberts was there. I caught his eye in the entrance hall before we went up for the reception. He came over and was introduced as ‘Mr Roberts’. He stared hard and said, ‘Am very pleased to meet you.’ I just smiled faintly and turned away, thinking, ‘Oh, Geoffrey Roberts … he can wait.’ And it was there I made the first mistake, I know now.

Then I let slip another opportunity. After dinner, while we were waiting for the dancing to begin, Ethel and I and one or two others went up the stairs to look at the awful flash-light photos of ourselves. Having thoroughly studied and reviled same, they stood back against the wall and I leant over the bannisters looking down onto the hall below, wondering idly why I had been so cold to G.R. He was standing with the crowd. He is tall and dark, and again his eye caught mine, and almost at once he came upstairs to look at the photos beside me. Should I have spoken or given some sort of encouragement? All the torment begins again when I think of it.

I try to comfort myself with the thought that Ethel and Mrs Halter were just behind so it would have been impossible, but it wouldn’t have been. We had been introduced, and it was my place to speak. I had hoped he would have asked for a dance, but having behaved so abominably beforehand I hardly blame him for not risking getting snubbed again.

There is no sleep for me until 2, and even now I shall lie awake a long, long time. Am I really in love, or is it another one of those dreams which are always dreams?

Later: All day long my nerves have been keyed to a pitch I can hardly describe. All the time my mind has throbbed with a single thought – a suffocating desire to meet and speak with him who has haunted my thoughts since we last looked into one another’s eyes.

Sunday, 1 April

I have slipped back into the old ways of looking at life, merely as a bystander. No man turns from the stream to wait upon me, they do not come in numbers as they seem to come for Margaret. I am just amused, cynical, hating myself – dreading the thought of tomorrow and the disillusionment it may bring. ‘At 18 we are so innocently vain’ – I am quoting from Isobel. As she says, we want everyone to love us. And why not? I shall never be 18 again. And I have never been kissed. Oh damn it, and I know I ought to have been. Other people think I have.

Sunday, 15 April

The days slip by so quickly. It is nearly a year since I left PHC, and of what value has that year been to me? I know now I should have stayed on. I could have helped PHC, could have made myself useful in the library, could have got Matric and learnt more of things I was just beginning to enjoy. I have gained nothing by stealing this year from my school life.

Wednesday, 25 April

No further news of Harold Dagley.

Thursday, 3 May

I had a long, long letter from Leslie this morning. It seems so wonderful after all this time. And he writes all the news to me, treating me no longer as a baby sister, and sends all the snaps to me.

Sunday, 6 May

I mustn’t fall in love with someone at the Tennis Club. It will be so awkward, yet I can’t help thinking of him. On no account will I be made to look a fool. Oh, he wears such wonderfully creased flannels. I am going to the club tomorrow evening. I went yesterday too.

Temple Silvester has just passed, and I can’t imagine who it was with him. One of the girls in an awful red frock with the Alsatian.

Sunday, 20 May

Ethel has not meant to, but she has stolen away all possible intimacy between me and Daddy. I only see him now as a man growing old – a little eccentric, a little vulgar, irritating – the difference between our ages forming an almost unsurpassable gulf. Yet I know that I love him.

Daddy I want to win you back some day. There is work I must do for you, for myself, for our name. And perhaps I am lazy and weak-minded. Perhaps I do find the position of junior typist a very comfortable and easy one, and perhaps I am not doing as much and learning as much as I should.

I hate myself for being a coward and a cad. I eat with them, I smile and talk with them, I take all my father has to offer, and then write these sort of beastly things about them without them knowing.

Wednesday, 6 June

‘I don’t think I could take a boy of my own age seriously enough to marry him,’ I told Miss Walker some 15 minutes back as she stood by the window watching the traffic at work. At present I am not worrying myself particularly about it at all. I would like to go to the pictures with Geoffrey Roberts. Or have coffee with Barrett at Lyons. Or meet Harold Dagley. Or go for a walk with Jack Honour. Any of these to amuse me, laugh with me, tease and be teased. Except Jack: I would want him to make love to me.

‘Very small, very shy.’ Jean prepares for the battles ahead.