Читать книгу A Notable Woman - Jean Lucey Pratt - Страница 22

12.

Like a Knife, He Said

Sunday, 19 January 1936 (aged twenty-six)

I have a small room in Howland Street and am moving in on Monday with folding chair and table, books and pen etc. Next week I hope to begin work in earnest.

Ethel took us to see On Wings of Song this evening. Daddy touches the heartstrings: ‘I once was ambitious to sing,’ he said, ‘but I found I wasn’t good enough.’ Shall I be saying that in 50 years’ time? ‘I once wanted to write …’

Monday, 27 January

I have an odd conviction that these journals will have a value, perhaps scientifically. Every time I go through them, they pull at me. I cannot throw them away. They seem to be demanding recognition, acknowledgement in their own right, as they stand, so I will let them have their way.

I am in more danger of being submerged by Gus than I have admitted. It is a difficult fight: every day something happens to draw me deeper into service for him. Day by day my affection grows. I stay up late at night, I linger over meals, I help him entertain his friends.

Marriage with him looms in my mind significantly. But I cannot imagine him in love with me. And I do not honestly want to marry him – socially I doubt if I could rise to the demands of such a position. But vanity urges me to bring about desire in him if it is possible.

Monday, 3 February

Gus blinds with gold-dust. He feeds the vanity of others in order that they may feed his. And I am blinded with the rest. ‘Your view of the young man,’ said Nockie, ‘seems at the bottom to be proprietary. He gives you excitement which you do not get at home.’ I want to believe I can give him what no other woman can.

I am thinking of Gus’s room. It is essentially theatrical – too theatrical. One piece of furniture out of place, or a cushion crumpled, spoils the effect. There is no place in it for anyone but Gus, a room of mirrors.

Tuesday, 11 February

Gus and Zoe may be going to join a repertory company at Amersham next week. They have tried for so many other jobs at various places that I can’t believe this one will materialise.

Friday, 21 February

I am 26, still feel myself neglected, still wanting to be in demand, surrounded by admiration and attention, I want the homage of men and the respect of women – but peace, peace – I don’t really want these things. They are but abstract symbols. It is time I stopped chasing these shadows. What I want is quality – quality in everything I do and possess. I want to be elegant, graceful and elegant without being snobbish; I want to be sophisticated and accomplished without being metallic; I want to be smart without being cheap or theatrical, dignified without being cold or stiff, honest without being dull. Kind without being stupid, be generous without being complacent, steady and reliable without being obstinate and narrow. I want wit without rottenness or meanness, excitement without lust. I am sick of mediocrity, the kindness of cows, the beaming kindness of uncultured women.

Gus and Zoe are playing at Amersham. I went to see their first night performance – a cruel journey, a dreadful little theatre, and an odd, under-rehearsed, barely organised company. The man who is running it seems quite inexperienced and has no money. Consequently Gus and Zoe are given huge parts they cannot manage. It is strange that whenever I see Gus on the stage I can get no grip of the character he is playing at all. I still believe he has great ability, but he is years of hard work away from its full development.

Sunday, 23 February

I have been troubled by the effort involved in living. Why, if I like being lazy, staying in bed, reading easy literature, going to a film or play, drifting around from friend to friend and adventure to adventure – why should I not live like that? I have the economic means, I do not have to support anyone but myself. Why should I bother to write a book? Why must I always be making the effort to improve, to progress?

It would be easy to quieten my conscience by finding a job – in the provinces as a journalist, as a freelance architectural correspondent, or teaching English to a French family. I could even go back to Daddy’s office. It is the continual nagging inside me somewhere that will not let me rest, will not let me laze or relax. One must grow and develop. One must exercise one’s faculties, or without exercise everything atrophies, physical or mental. So I must get my book written. My reading I shall reduce to the New Statesman, the Sunday Times, a few good fiction books, some poetry, and a book or two on style, construction and criticism. But I will do it. I will do it.

Monday, 24 February

Mrs Harris (mother of Gus) came in just now. She sat down on the arm of Zoe’s chair and asked me what I was doing now. ‘Writing a book? A novel? But how interesting.’ And she has promised to give me some introductions for placing it when it is down. And then Pansy Leigh Smith phoned: ‘I know a man in Cassell’s and a publisher in New York.’ And Vahan knows a reader at Macmillan. Seems as though there’ll be a fight among the placers.

Thursday, 12 March

Extraordinary. I don’t know quite how to record all that has happened over the past few days. Daddy’s appendix was removed in Wembley Hospital on Tuesday night at 11 o’clock. I lived through the worst half-hour of my life when Ethel phoned me on Tuesday evening. She simply said, ‘can you come home,’ and was crying so much she couldn’t go on.

I now feel, as I always do at home, that I have been here for ever and will be here for ever. The phone goes perpetually. Somebody calls every half-hour. We are calling Leslie (rather touching to feel one can be in communication like this with people the other side of the world). Ethel, outside the genuine anxiety she naturally feels, is getting a tremendous kick out of the situation. ‘What it is to be the wife of a public man!’

Saturday, 14 March

‘I should have known,’ said Nockie on Thursday, ‘that you’d been at home with your stepmother even if you hadn’t told me.’ That’s the effect it has – it muffles me and it shows. I loathe it, I loathe it. This murderous atmosphere. Am not even allowed the full hour with my father at the hospital.

Sunday, 15 March

What agony it was to sit by Daddy this afternoon while his life flickered like a guttering candle. ‘I’m being worn out,’ he said. ‘I’ve no strength left, no strength. I don’t want any food.’ One could barely hear his whisper. Ethel found me crying by his side. He turned to me and said, ‘I’m afraid I’m not much entertainment for you.’ How could I help crying?

But this evening he was better. He was being fed on Benger’s Food, which pleased him.⁷³ He made the nurses quite hysterical by conducting the evening service over the wireless with a spoon. ‘I should like a cigarette,’ he said afterwards, ‘but I must wait until this irritation on my chest has moved.’ The coughing disturbs him dreadfully, ‘like a knife,’ he said, ‘ripping me open’.

Monday, 16 March

Uncle Len is with us (he is Ethel’s brother), and I am flirting with him outrageously.

Wednesday, 18 March

Ethel has been charming this last week with Daddy ill. But tonight, for a moment, the claw showed. She suggests the house should be made into flats, so that she should not have as much to look after. The house, she said, was too big for them – what did she and Daddy want with seven rooms? My God, I feel sick again when I think of it. And what does she imagine Daddy’s feelings are? But she doesn’t. If she thinks Leslie and I will spend our capital on altering the house into mean little flats at the expense of our father’s pride, she is mistaken. Daddy wouldn’t tolerate the idea for a second. This house is not big, and IT IS NOT HERS.

Friday, 20 March

Pop’s stitches were removed today. His progress is very satisfactory, so that on Monday I hope I shall feel free to go back to the flat. It worries me perpetually why I cannot live at home. It seems so strange to me that all my relations are so tediously unambitious – all, that is, except Mummy’s youngest brother Fred Lucey, to whom I owe my economic independence.⁷⁴ I wish I could discover he didn’t die in America before the War (it was only a rumour), and that he is now alive and very wealthy. Because I feel he might have approved of this niece.

Saturday, 21 March

In this week’s Wembley News (they rang me to enquire earlier in the week):-

Favourable Progress

Mr G.P. Pratt, who, as I mentioned last week, has undergone an operation for appendicitis at Wembley Hospital, is, I hear now, progressing favourably. Mr Pratt lives at ‘Homefield’, Crawford Avenue, Wembley, and has lived at Wembley for 42 years. His enforced, but fortunately only temporary retirement from public life, is being deeply felt in many circles, particularly among the parishioners of St John’s Church, where he is vicar’s warden.

Friday, 3 April

Daddy is to be X-rayed again. They don’t know the cause of the pain about which he complains. Sister told Ethel that we must realise Daddy will not be the same again although he has come through the operation so far very satisfactorily considering his age.

Wednesday, 15 April

Daddy came home from hospital last Saturday. ‘Good,’ I thought, ‘he will not mind if I don’t go to see him now until Wednesday (today).’ But the first words with which I was greeted: ‘So you have managed to leave your friends to come to see me. I was very disappointed you didn’t come yesterday to see your poor old father.’

How to convince him that I am not playing in London, that my book is my job which gets badly neglected? He looks so thin and tired and beaten; I can’t bear it. He still complains of a pain. Daddy would like me there the whole time, but Ethel leaves no room for me, and I cannot tell him that.

Have just been trying to write a letter to Pooh, but find an explanation of the situation to him quite impossible. He would only reply, ‘Ethel be damned. If the Governor wants you at home, you jolly well go home.’ And so a truth comes to light: I do not want to go home, even to please my father.

Met Mrs Barkham in the High Street after tea. She is the wife of our squire, Titus G., who is a director or something at Express Dairies and caused a scandal some time ago by having an illegit by one of his parlour maids. He is a hunchback. Mrs Barkham said to me, ‘Been to see your father? He’s had a bad time. Touch and go. Touch and go. You nearly lost him.’ I’m damned. I think I’m the one to know that.

Monday, 20 April

I must endure this torment until – yes, let me write it – until my father dies. I admit my deep contempt for Wembley and all things suburban. Perhaps Ethel is right, and I am conceited and selfish. I try to offer my services, but my intense fear of her makes the offer appear ungracious. There is not a spark of generosity in her nature: she bristles. I shall call these disturbances at home Wrestles in the Dark with a Pygmy.

Friday, 1 May

Papa is to have another operation tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock. When will all this agony be over? Ethel would have it that it is very serious, but I shall not believe it. He is in good condition and the doctors are not in a hurry to operate. ‘He’s wonderful, isn’t he?’ Ethel said as we left him in hospital this afternoon. ‘A little abnormally cheerful perhaps, but not thinking of himself at all, only of us.’ Dramatising, dramatising the whole time. ‘The garden, so lovely, and he not here to see it …’

Saturday, 2 May

My father died this afternoon at half-past two.

I am free. But at what cost. He died in such terrible pain. We had to stand and watch him die.

Sunday, 3 May

Death is lovely. Only life is cruel. I know that now. He lies in the drawing room now, awaiting the final rites, and his face is like an exquisite wax mask of him at his very best asleep. I am so happy. All agony for him is over.

11 p.m.: I have been mean and selfish. If my love for my father had been allowed to grow as I know it was capable of growing, Ethel’s threats and tantrums wouldn’t have mattered. I let my subjective fear of them stifle my love’s development. Love when it is strong enough defeats such miserable obstacles with ease. If I had loved my father as I should, I should have known how much he must have suffered. I was too impatient and cruel.

Tuesday, 5 May

4 a.m.: Death is a great healer. All animosity between myself and Ethel has shrunk to nothing now that the object of our love and jealousy has gone.

I cannot sleep. I would like to marry some well-armed and powerful fighter of disease that I might help to make living and dying easier. My mother suffered dreadfully for years, and Daddy must have suffered much more than anyone ever realised. I had wanted to believe he would live to see my book published, but perhaps it is well he didn’t; he might have found my ideas difficult and hurtful.

Birds are beginning to sing. We shall be leaving his home and garden. How that would grieve him, but neither I nor Ethel have any wish to remain here without him. I have the power to create the same loveliness elsewhere; I hope I may even be able to improve upon it, although I shall be told I expect that nothing my father did could be bettered. There is a great deal of sentimentalism one has to fight, but the feelings he inspired are genuine. He was very greatly loved.

The doctors spoke of his operation as a simple affair: just another three weeks in hospital. That was the way in which I was seeing it. It was so cruel that it had to be so unexpectedly terrible. He was like a child with the pain: it must have been awful.

When love is real and big enough, the ability to see things in their right proportion cannot lessen it. There have been things about him at which I was irritated and impatient, but what makes me go on my knees to him now, as it always did, was the natural unconscious sun of his spirit. It is that sun in the heart of men that makes them great. We were all warmed by it, so that only the brightest memories remain.

Thursday, 7 May

There will be no more green springs for us in this garden, no more summer hay or night-blue grapes at autumn. The blossom-starred branches nod in the evening wind, but his step is not on the stairs, he locks his doors no longer and sings no more in the morning, for his long trick is over, his quiet sleep and sweet dream found.

Oh God that he should have died before I could show him how much I love him! But I shall take my love away. I shall take it with me all over the world and plant his roses everywhere.

Friday, 8 May, Wembley Observer and Gazette

Death of Mr G.P. Pratt

Vicar Warden at St John’s

One of Wembley’s Oldest Residents

It is with deep regret that we record the death, which occurred at the Wembley Hospital on Saturday, of Mr George Percy Pratt, of Homefield, Crawford Avenue, Wembley, at the age of 70 years. Mr Pratt, who was taken ill in March, went into hospital to undergo an operation for appendicitis. He had been a resident of Wembley for 42 years. His life was an extraordinarily active and varied one and his interests were numerous. By profession he was a chartered architect and surveyor … he was chairman of the Acton Bench of magistrates up till his death … a prominent freemason, a member of many lodges. His principal hobby was gardening, and for many years he was a prominent member of the Royal Horticultural Society. He grew roses mainly.

Mr Pratt leaves two children, a son, Leslie, who is in the cable business, at present stationed in British West Indies, and a daughter, Jean, both by his first wife, who died in 1923. In August 1925 Mr Pratt remarried, his bride being Miss Ethel Watson of Sudbury, daughter of the late Mr Dewar Watson, who owned the old Sudbury Brewery.

Saturday, 6 June

I am battling with house agents, expiring and antiquated insurances, solicitors, removals and warehousing plans, bills, relations. If I were the great artist I want to believe I am I would sweep all these things aside and allow nothing to come between me and my creative urge. But I have been left with half a house to look after and all the furniture: responsibilities increase daily, and each new difficulty proves my immaturity. I have never felt so tired and worried and alone, yet everyone tells me how well I look.

Monday, 8 June

The thing that looms largest on the horizon now is our move from Wembley and my move into a new flat in Hampstead. Vahan and Joan are converting a house in South Hill Park: they are to have the ground floor, and I am having (I hope) the attic.

Monday, 27 July

I’m here, at 83, South Hill Park, Hampstead. I have signed an agreement for 3 years. I have been here a fortnight, and my lodger (Vahan’s younger brother) arrives on Thursday. ‘Homefield’ is empty, its garden rich with rain, flowers and maturing fruit, and everywhere are rumours and threats of war. How can one feel settled?

Cecil Lewis has written in Sagittarius Rising: ‘World state, world currency, world language … would demand new allegiances, new deals. Possibly two or three more world wars would be necessary to break down the innate hostility to such changes … It is a fight between intellect and appetite, international ideals and armaments. The latter will probably win the first two or three rounds; but if civilisation is to survive, the ideal must win in the end. Meanwhile, if a few million people have to die violent deaths, that cannot be helped. Nature is exceedingly wasteful.’⁷⁵

It will not matter: war and death and the spoliation of one’s loved possessions. Whether we live violently and die damnably, or long and die in peace, we die. We die and our loved possessions must become possessed of another’s love or crumble away unloved. Only the love we can give out in passing matters; it is the only thing that lingers after a person dies.

I wish brother Pooh was in England. Homefield is a big responsibility for me alone. Ethel went away on July 1st, and I had to undertake the move and warehousing quite by myself. Lonely? No, I haven’t felt lonely yet, there has been too much to do. War? Then let there be war, I can do nothing to stop the mass foolishness of barbarians. My room here fills me with delight. But if I could send a message to Heaven, I would ask an angel to tell my father that I love him, that I love him.

Tuesday, 18 August

I have acquired a kitten. Its curiosity is insatiable. Writing is difficult with Cheeta walking over the page.

Friday, 21 August

Next Friday I start with cousin Martin and his girlfriend Dorothy on our motor tour in Europe (he has an Alvis). Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, N. Italy, Nice. And then I may take up ballroom dancing with Joan Silvester at the Empress Rooms in October. I am also getting involved with a Communist movement in Hampstead. I even typed some cards for them yesterday. What will the Conservative relatives say …

Tuesday, 25 August

The movement is not specifically Communist, but a movement to establish a Popular Front in England involving all parties, sects, religions and classes. A good thing and an urgent one I feel.

Nockie was full of scorn at first at the ballroom dancing idea, but the more I think of it the more I approve. I need hardening, smartening: if I dance I shall have to care for my hair, nails, clothes, and I think it should give me the confidence among the sophisticated that I lack. Clothes, or rather one’s physical appearance, is the symbol of character. A really smart woman must be intelligent. The tragedy is that not all intelligent women are smart.

Thursday, 27 August

I add my name (humbly) to the list that appears at the end of the letter in the Statesman this week on Britain and the Spanish War. ‘It was almost universally held that the noblest contribution of the British to European civilisation has been our theory and practice of political liberty and parliamentary democracy … It has taken over 300 years of our history to establish and consolidate this characteristically British freedom and we have had to defend it against our own kings, aristocracy, army leaders and … Spanish, French, German monarchs, dictators, conquerors … At present in Spain a constitutional government, elected by the people, is being attacked by a junta of generals who have declared their intention of destroying parliamentary democracy in that country … We who sign this letter agree in retaining belief in the British ideals of political freedom and democracy.’

Everyone at present is afraid that Socialism and Communism means an attack on their property; the idea is fostered by a capitalistically controlled Press. But I don’t see why the confiscation of individual property must be necessary to bring about the reforms needed. Everyone is so smug: so scared for their own safety. But there is evidence of immense wealth in this country, and I am sure it is only a matter of readjustment and intelligent control of the situation. Not by Fascism or military despotism – that is death, not life to the people. The individual’s material needs are limited: after a certain point luxury becomes a vice, and possessions superfluous. The trouble is, I suppose, that the surplus millions are controlled by a small set of powerful persons who have so strangled themselves spiritually that they can only kill and corrupt life.

I am all for the Vogue way of living: elegance, grace, culture. I consider it necessary to fine living, and know it to be a difficult achievement. But my sense of justice demands that everyone is given a fair chance to achieve that social height. The finest intelligence and most artistic nature should be at the top, but not bolstered there by immoral economic support. Give every man and woman sufficient means to feed and clothe and house themselves, and let the intelligent and artistic rise as they should by the natural development of their capabilities. Let us be snobbish about ugliness and meanness and lies, and let us encourage kindness and cultivate manners and good taste.

Friday, 28 August

On the eve of this long-planned motor trip in Europe it has occurred to me that I have made no will. I have been told repeatedly I should make one, but it is such a complicated business I have shirked it. But supposing something happened, who on earth would settle my affairs?

In The Event of My Sudden Death during coming fortnight, I appoint (or request) my friends Marjorie Nockolds and Joan Bulbulian executrices.

My share of the property at Wembley and all invested and current monies I leave to my brother Leslie Vernon Pratt (c/o Pacific Cable Board, Barbados, BWI), with the exception of the War Loan Stock, which I should like transferred to my friend Marjorie Nockolds, and £100 to my friend Constance Oliver.

I should like Constance Oliver also to choose whatever furniture she cares to have from the lots stored with John Sanders of Ealing Broadway, with the exception of the grandfather clock, which I leave to my cousin Margaret Royan, and the piano, which I leave to my cousin Joyce Joliffe.

And furniture for which Constance cannot find a use I should like my stepmother Ethel Mary Pratt to have in the hope that she may buy her cottage soon.

All MSS, Notebooks, Diaries etc to be burnt please without being read.

My new fur coat (purchased this week and being stored with John Lewis of Oxford St) I leave to my friend Mrs Valerie Honour. My other clothes to my friend Zoe Randall (109 Charlotte St), and also to her my sewing machine.

My jewellery I leave to my sister in law, Ivy Pratt. My typewriter to John Rickman. My best deep-blue tea service to Gus (Geoffrey Harris). My plants and kitten to Joan Bulbulian, and my good wishes to everyone I haven’t mentioned.

Thank you all,

Jean Lucey Pratt

‘Only the brightest memories remain.’ Jean’s parents, George and Sarah.