Читать книгу A Notable Woman - Jean Lucey Pratt - Страница 19

9.

The Young Girl Glider

Wednesday, 25 October 1933 (aged twenty-four)

The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither for affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail and volume.

Virginia Woolf⁴⁷

Today begins the Journal I have made so many attempts to commence since the idea first occurred to me one Saturday in the April of 1925.

The desire to express myself in words is so great. (‘From Architecture to Journalism! It’s rather a leap isn’t it?’ as David said in the Bartlett School studio this morning.) I have left the promised security of my father’s protection, and have forsaken the quiet, familiar waters which I have loved so well, to navigate my ship alone upon a stream whose course may lead me God knows where.

Was I right in changing from one thing to another so abruptly? At least these pages shall remain as a record of my endeavours and despair; that it may be known I was not without ambition and lamentably ill-defined faith in myself. So if this self-portrait fails to interest posterity, then my life will have been dull indeed, and I shall have grown into the stupid and tedious woman I have, at heart, such a horror of becoming.

Monday, 30 October

I would I could recall the intensity of my feelings as I came home in the tube tonight. I will write like Virginia Woolf or E.H. Young.⁴⁸ I will write better than either of them! I am so tired of tubes and trams and washing up, cheap clothes and a bad complexion.

It is now 1.30 a.m. and I am in bed, my hair brushed and my muscles duly stretched, but I cannot sleep. What is one to do when one seems possessed of ideas and ideals too big for one’s meagre capabilities? I can go on living this mediocre life, helping to wash up and entertain and play bridge, queue for shows, go to the pictures, dance occasionally, and read hurriedly in what little spare time I have left. Thus may I continue, placidly, manicuring my nails, patching my vests, planning next season’s outfits, and never achieving anything. On the other hand I could neglect my nails and my hair, leave my stockings undarned, sleep as long as I like, torment Ethel and make myself thoroughly unpopular – that I might have more time to read and study, more time to write and learn. Oh God, what is one to do? Remain pleasant, agreeable, and careful of trifles, stunted and underdeveloped? Or grow fat and selfish and temperamental, dropping deeply into the store of old learning and wisdom and culture, encouraging the growth of one’s intellect?

Friday, 24 November

This evening Lugi gave a farewell party for Gus and Howard who sail on Wednesday for Marseilles. Five of us were squeezed into that little room, already hazy with smoke when I arrived about 7.30. She had prepared quantities of food: grapefruit served in teacups, cold roast beef, salad and baked beans, lemonade and home-made jam tarts and cream.

I sat curled up on the divan next to Howard who waited on me hand and foot. I think he grows more charming each time I meet him. Gus disapproved strongly of the black crepe-de-chine triangle I had tied around my throat. ‘Mausie, take off that bib!’ he said suddenly. ‘It looks awful! We know you have several double chins, but you needn’t draw attention to the fact.’ But I thought the effect on my green frock rather attractive – I wouldn’t concede.

We played Slippery Anne round one of Lugi’s drawing boards that she placed over the diminutive table. Lugi asked me what I was doing for Xmas, and whether I would care to go with her for four days into the country. ‘But,’ I said, ‘I’ve never left the family for Xmas before. It may be difficult.’ ‘Then it’s high time you began,’ said Gus. ‘Do them good.’⁴⁹

It is so sad to think there will be no more evenings like this for some time to come. With Lugi and Gus I have no fear, no feeling of restraint. I want a room of my own again badly.

Friday, 8 December

Marjorie Walker sat and chatted to me over the dining room fire this evening.⁵⁰ While discussing her recent activities she related the account of a visit with The Ramblers to the new South Africa House one Saturday afternoon. I wanted to ask them who had shown them round but hadn’t the courage.

‘We had tea,’ she said, ‘in one of the rooms overlooking Trafalgar Square. All the woodwork and panelling is simply beautiful – in stinkwood. I don’t know why they call it that. We asked them but they didn’t seem to know. And in the Governor’s Room (I think she meant the High Commissioner’s) is a really gorgeous Persian carpet. They told us it cost 250 guineas!’

‘Oh, the new South Africa House,’ said Ethel coming in at that moment. ‘A beautiful building isn’t it?’ I wanted to be dramatic, to say with an exaggerated air of carelessness, ‘Yes, I was taken over part of it last year before it was completed. I knew someone who worked for the South African government, and had thought at the time how grossly they were decorating the interior.’ But I threw the stub end of my cigarette into the grate instead and answered, ‘How nice!’ wondering with an odd spasm of pain if he was still helping to control the affairs of his country in London. But his is a name I never bear mention now for fear of the embarrassment it might cause me. Adieu, mon cher vaisseau passant!

Saturday, 30 December

I have not yet broken the news of my intended departure to the family. I am strangely fearful of doing so, yet I must start room-hunting on Monday and move in next Thursday or Friday so that I shall be settled there before the term begins. It seems as though I have been trembling over this secret for months.

Friday, 5 January 1934

I informed Daddy as we waited for the Hendon Lane bus on our way to see Uncle Jack and Aunt Claire. He made no comment whatsoever. Ethel I told a little later while we were washing up. She was in a singularly good mood and I congratulate myself that I chose my moment well. Before I left yesterday she heaped me with groceries and carried one of my bags to the station. My fear of her spite is grossly exaggerated.

I trailed round London for two dismal days at the beginning of this week searching for rooms. A more depressing occupation could not be found. In desperation I at last returned to Belsize Park, and they welcomed me back like the lost sheep. It is not the same room I had last year but one exactly like it at the top of the house. It is really too expensive on £3 a week, and until I can find something cheaper I must manage my finances as skilfully as I can.

Today I unpacked my belongings and arranged them to my liking. ‘Don’t you find it very lonely there?’ asked Aunt Elsie yesterday afternoon. ‘Not a bit!’ I lied glibly. ‘I’ve no time to be lonely. I’m either working or entertaining or going out.’ Wonder what she would have said if I’d answered, ‘Yes, damnably at times.’ Loneliness is the price one has to pay for freedom.

Friday, 19 January

Loneliness did I say? I’m beginning to think my answer to Aunt Elsie’s question was, after all, true. There are many minor triumphs I would like to record: little parties I have already held in this room; the gin and tonic Barrel stood me at the Duke of Wellington the other day and his apparent eagerness to accept an invitation to coffee here one evening; the invitation I have had from Marjorie Nockolds (whom I have wanted to know of all the new people I am now meeting at College) to visit her flat in Kensington; the Regent Institute’s approval of my article on Modern Architecture – I have sent it, as suggested, to the Morning Post. Life begins to assume some shape and colour.

Tuesday, 23 January

My triumph, it seems, is to be short-lived. This evening I am threatened with a very bad depression which I shall endeavour to overcome. As Arnold Bennett says somewhere in his journals, ‘It’s a good thing I don’t write here my moods and things …’

I feel rather like Elspeth Myers remarked in the cloakroom the other day, ‘I feel as though I’m due to fall in love again!’ But no one sufficiently presentable and interesting appears on the horizon. It makes one feel humiliatingly undesirable.

Thursday, 25 January

The Morning Post has just returned my article. I shall not feel justified until something of mine is in print.

I must get through those damn exams at the end of this year. So I will put on one more record, light a cigarette and perhaps eat a couple of raisins, and dive once more into Richard II. ‘For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings!’

Tuesday, 6 February

‘Happiness is an unreasonable state,’ said A.J. Cronin’s Dr Leith in Grand Canary. ‘Examine it and it disappears.’ To which Mary murmuringly replies, ‘You don’t want to examine it …’

One daren’t examine it. But I don’t want to forget today. College for a psychology lecture and returning to Belsize Park for supper with Nockolds: Lyons cold tongue and pressed veal and ham, olives, loganberries and a junket that had actually condescended to set, and ginger wine. No, I dare not boast, save that I like her enormously and am immensely proud that she has been my guest.

The room is still fragrant with the memory of her presence. Oh this I am sure is a secret of living – to develop one’s capacity for making friends with the right kind of people. In this way one may defeat that dread fear of loneliness.

I have had notice today also that it is possible to get vacation work through the college authorities in some newspaper office for at least four weeks. This is magnificent, an excellent reason for not going home.

Sunday, 4 March

I am to work this vacc on the Bath and Wilts Chronicle and Herald and am now waiting to hear from the editor.

Wednesday, 28 March

Bath.

The newspaper staff gave me the most bewildering welcome. My first job was to write up a wedding from certain notes provided. They even printed parts of it quite unaltered. It rather tickled me to write that the bride looked charming when I had not even seen a back view of the lady in her everyday clothes.

Mr Winkle (actually Wintle, one of the reporters) heard me express myself rather forcibly about the restrictions of my hostel, and has introduced me to the most comfortable and inexpensive digs. Mr Winkle is, I think, the type of young man I shall probably marry. I never realised before how exciting journalists were to know. I believe it will prove the kind of work I shall find most satisfying. It teems with interest and perpetual variety. But I must go – it never leaves one with nothing to do!

Later: To what place have I ever been where I have not sooner or later lost my head over somebody?

Good Friday, 30 March

I am sure Mr Winkle is the one who is always detailed to take visitors round. We went to Mells this afternoon, a fascinating place. I sat in the car while he went in to speak to the Rector. I respond too quickly to my environment, too eagerly adapt myself to suit the temperament of the first man who attracts me in a new place. It is ridiculous.

Saturday, 31 March

My Easter prayer: that soon, soon my body’s hunger may be satisfied! Not by many lovers, for I have had my chances at that. In the end, as Gus said, I should only hate myself. Mere satiation of physical desire would poison my mind and wound my heart beyond hope of healing. But to have no lover at all would be even worse. For then, being denied a normal woman’s experience, my mind would swell with obscene fancies and my heart would die. Those ghastly visions of the virtuous virgins – hard, bright acidular old age!

No, before I can live I must go through the crucifixion of marriage; it seems inevitably the part of Providence to find me the right man. The only suitable one I have met up to date walked away suddenly and married someone else. All I want is someone reasonably young and healthy and sufficiently in love with me to trust me a little while, and I will make him as happy as is possible. Then will my body be at peace perhaps and leave my mind in a more balanced condition.

If Mr Winkle is not what I am afraid he is, he is really eminently eligible. He is at least the most interesting member of the staff on this paper. But again I am probably jumping to the wildest conclusions. Besides, it is absurd that I should discover the solution so easily on my first expedition. Oh Hell …

Easter Monday, 2 April

Once more I stumble from the great heights of hope into the dull valley of disillusion.

Mr Winkle is evidently a young man easily discouraged, or I imagined there was more underlying his attention to me than there actually was. Why did he trouble to find me these digs? Why did he offer to show me the nearest pub? Why did he take me to Mells? I knew things had begun too well.

Unfortunate that I should write an article in which I have said in the first paragraph, ‘Were the beauty of Bath advertised, the desecrating, curious public will come in their chattering hordes … and we shall be left with nothing but a skeleton, floodlit’, when only three weeks ago it was arranged to spend £3,000 boosting the damn place. ‘Do you know,’ said the Editor, ‘that we had 20 Welsh miners down here a little while ago and they all took off their hats when they entered the Pump Room!’ However, he’s going to print the thing as it is tomorrow, with his own beastly little footnote.⁵¹

I have today done nothing but write up weddings, weddings and yet more weddings. Dear God! What fools these mortals are! Brides in satins and suede georgettes and heavy crepe white and cream and pink and blue. Bridesmaids in chinions and silks carrying bunches of tulips and roses and lilies and pearls and ponchettes and crystal necklaces, the tawdry gifts of the groom. It’s enough to make one a spinster for life.

Tuesday, 3 April

All the sub-editors this afternoon toasted me in tea, upstanding. I was very touched, dear old things! But Mr Cox has a painful habit of making the most appalling puns. If they don’t send me out somewhere tomorrow I shall throw a fit. Mr Walker pointed out to me yesterday that I had referred to a High Street Council School teacher as a High School teacher. ‘Just the difference, you see …’ he said. Christ!

I have just returned from a visit to the Theatre Royal where the English Repertory Players are giving On the Spot this week. I can’t help admiring Edgar Wallace his gift for sensing dramatic situations.

Thursday, 5 April

It is Spring and there is no one here to make love to me: that is the trouble.

Friday, 13 April

I like the Wintle family very much indeed. Ann and her mother who run the snack bar seem delightful, and they all know how to work hard. Ann came up to me the other night and asked me how I was getting on, and if I had good digs and so on. Her interest surprised and pleased me, and left me wondering why she had taken the trouble, whether it was merely idle curiosity or anything her brother may have said, or pure kindness. Anyway, their coffee and hot dogs are excellent.

An idea for a play has been germinating. Tomorrow I am going to get a notebook from Woolworth’s in which to start gathering in the fragments as they form. Roughly, the theme is to be a young girl’s experiences on a provincial paper. Characters to be drawn from the Chronicle. And the influence she has on each individual delicately portrayed. She comes and goes leaving no tangible trace of her visit, i.e. she doesn’t marry the most eligible reporter or shatter the News Editor’s domestic tranquillity. But leaves a very distinct impression on the minds of those with whom she has worked, and with several of them unconsciously changes their outlook on life. Scene might be set throughout in the Reporters Room.⁵²

Sunday, 15 April

A suicide. Neville came to the office yesterday morning to tell me an old man had jumped into the river at Newton Bridge. I was rushed off there and then with Colin Wintle to view the scene of the crime and gather information generally.

Monday, 16 April

I must get this nonsense out of my head. Because Colin Wintle asks me what my Christian name is and if I’d go out with him on some job this evening doesn’t necessarily mean he is going to propose to me.

Tuesday, 17 April

I think I have control over this situation at last. I went with Colin Wintle after lunch to the inquest in the Newton Bridge suicide and felt perfectly at ease with him throughout the afternoon. He has started calling me Jean, which is too amusing. I suppose he’ll never know the romantic illusions he once evoked, that they are over and finished with.

Wednesday, 18 April

How soon is last night’s exaltation withered! This torturing see-saw of emotion.

Colin Wintle is a nice boy but I have no business to be thinking of him as much as I have done. I have already suspected him of being incapable of falling in love with any woman – he gets on too well with too many of them. But I found myself consumed with the most absurd form of jealousy when I heard him making a date with Molly Taylor over the phone.

Thursday, 19 April

After trying to interview Miss Meakin, the young girl glider, this morning, Colin storms into the office saying she is an unmannerly little bitch – awkward and difficult, out of which nothing could be got. ‘Well, she’s terribly young,’ I interposed. ‘Young!’ he snorted, ‘She’s older than you are. She’s 22. You’re not 22, and if you are you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ Which I am not sure is quite as complimentary as may have been intended. Lord, I must seem sweet and innocent. I think if I get the opportunity I’ll tell him I’ll be 21 in July.⁵³

Thinking it is over this afternoon, I realise it is not at all funny. I do behave like a schoolgirl when I’m with him.

Saturday, 21 April

And this time tomorrow I suppose I shall be home. It will be fun meeting my lousy crowd of friends again.

Later: It’s over, it’s over, it’s over. The drink and the dinner and the farewells. Only Colin has not said goodbye. He got up suddenly after the speeches were finished, presumably to write them up. And hasn’t been seen since. Why the hell should I care? I ought to have learnt something of men by now, but I haven’t. They all do it, the ones that have seemed to matter most – Chris and David and Bill Davies – just get up and walk out.

Wednesday, 25 April

Wembley. And the packing was done and the train was caught and I am home again. But only for a few days. The room next to Lugi’s in Dorset Square will be vacant this weekend and I am to move in on Sunday.

Now I am trying to forget how much I enjoyed myself in Bath in spite of those dull periods of depression which are inevitable wherever I go or what I do. Trying to forget, too, how much I want to go back and convince Colin that I am not a schoolgirl and behave on occasions like a normal human being. Having discussed the matter fully with Gus (oh my friend, my friend, how shall I get on without you?), I have no doubt in my mind now that Colin is homosexual. ‘I have been meaning to warn you for a long time,’ said Gus. ‘They will always be a great danger to you, because they understand women so well and are so easy to get on with. It is very hard on the woman admittedly, because they are liable to mistake their intentions.’⁵⁴

Wednesday, 2 May

A lovely room this, for summer: wide and high and cool, looking out upon the green trees of the Square. I shall be happy here, with Lugi opposite coming in every morning and evening in her cheery way, the kind of independent companion I need.

Thursday, 3 May

I would like very much to get to the bottom of homosexuality.

I cannot believe it is such a crimina carnis contra naturam as Kant makes out. The Greeks accepted it without dispute; the Romans tolerated it; it was unquestioned in England and also Europe I suppose until the end of the eighteenth century, when certain moral philosophers became terribly self-conscious about sex generally. They misunderstood it, were shocked and ashamed.

Examined by itself, it is disgusting. But a lot of our physical functions are disgusting, yet they aren’t wrong and they aren’t necessarily demoralising. Yet if one accepts homosexuality as an inevitable and natural condition in some men, then one should also accept lesbianism similarly in women, and what Kant calls onanism and sodomy. All of which are almost too sickening to contemplate. The root of it lies perhaps in the psychological side of the problem, the effect that all sexual intercourse has on the mind and the general composition of the person’s finer and more enduring qualities.