A Notable Woman Read online

  He is typical of the age: coarse, sincere and dramatic, very sincerely dramatic, plays to the public from the pulpit and is not ashamed to admit it. Nor to take out his front tooth to show how it is attached to the plate, not to tell us of the woman who invited him to sleep with her because of divine inspiration she had received from God.

  Cheap – yes he is cheap, and appeals thereby to the poorer classes. He much prefers to turn the mangle while Mrs Jones gets on with the dinner than be entertained in the front parlour. All good in itself, certainly. He talked an awful lot of scandal in a deliciously unmalicious way.

  I am going to Jamaica. I shall see Pooh again.43

  Undated, probably early June

  Damn, Hell and Blast. Ethel cannot see that my hair looks any better after it has been done by Mr Ed of Dover Street than when I do it myself! She is so blind stiff she cannot see that the paint is cracking off her own wooden nose. God what a mood I’m in tonight.

  Monday, 5 June

  I have never known Ethel to look so charming as she did this afternoon serving tea to us in the drawing room, wrapped in a thin, pale blue dressing gown; it gave her a strange air of gracious freedom. I think I am often unfair to her. I know she resents the fact that I don’t confide in her as much as I might do.

  This morning I was again accused of being inconsiderate; it is always the one weapon she can most easily handle against me. And all the evidence is in her favour. I am selfish and inconsiderate and often strangely rude and unkind to her. Don’t I often come down to breakfast very late so that she is put to the most immense inconvenience of getting me a fresh one? Don’t I often come in very late at night and disturb her in her first sleep? She always does her best, and is working now without a maid for the sake of the family’s overdraft. And what do I ever do to show my appreciation? How many times have I compared her to a little wooden doll whose limbs will only move in certain set directions? I love my father – there is sun in him. And I had a great and dreadful thought the other night that she is one of those people who are sunless.

  Thursday, 6 July

  The more one dreams of a thing, the more it recedes from one in reality. I could have given him so much. Marriage with Gus would be hell I know, but it would have rich compensations. But he doesn’t know I have been in love with him for the past 18 months. Perhaps he never will know. Why should he?

  I think the idea of marriage with any of his most intimate friends terrifies him. He is sexually so very fastidious. How may I teach him that the thing that matters is that hard rich jewel of trust, and that is what we could have. It is as if I have seen a lame man trying to hobble along without a stick and wanting to lend him my arm, but he would rather endure his difficulty alone rather than the humiliation of support.

  I am free anyway to consider further advances, and if none come then at least I shall have had Chris and Gus and Roy and David, each for a few brief moments. I have considered marrying them all but have failed to run my dreams into reality. It is the bourgeois taint – that sickly desire, fostered by cheap novels and films, to hear a man say, ‘I have been waiting for you all my life … we were made for each other … it is fate.’ Miracles I suppose do happen – but they are rare, and there is no reason to believe they might happen to me.

  I am afraid of loneliness as everyone else. ‘Somewhere, somewhere afar, a white tremendous daybreak’ – what is it Rupert Brooke says? That is what we aim at. I will not give Gus up. I know he is not the type to grow old. He couldn’t live quietly in a cottage. He belongs to the night and the footlights and all the glamour of the city and the circus. And I belong to the soil.

  8.

  Of Her Own Accord

  Saturday, 22 July 1933 (aged twenty-three)

  Jamaica.

  It is astonishing how easily I am able to disconnect myself from the affairs and atmosphere that affect me in one place and absorb those of another. These last few days there has been a devil raging within me, and it was roused by the devil in Hugh Patrick (‘Bill’).

  He has been such marvellous fun to know even for a little while. But now I am crazy to know more of him, to search those deeps in him that I know are there. There was something in him that responded to the cry in me. Oh, if I could have him for a few hours at ease by my side, that I may say all I want to say and hear all I know he would say in return. It was not that he is in the least like Chris either – feature or figure – but he has the same latent depth and warmth of feeling, the same light in his eyes when he looked at me sometimes, the same rather stiff, amused little gestures, the same masculine magnetism, the same superficial gay recklessness that I find so irresistible. God, what a lover he might be, and how wild and impossible my ideas sometimes are.

  But he sails on Tuesday back to his wife in Truro.

  How magnificently he will work in as the character of the tragic love affair in my novel – he and Chris combined. Why do I always get my deep feelings roused by married men? It wasn’t the sea. I want to have him teasing me again, pulling my hair and being thoroughly rude, then growing suddenly quiet. Miss Neil (fortune teller) read my hand on board: ‘You will not get married until you are about 45, then it will suddenly happen.’

  And now I must not waste Pooh’s electric light any longer, it is past 1.30. The Jamaican night is raucous with the odd strange calls of its creatures. My sheet is scattered with moths and insects, fireflies glitter past the windows, mosquitoes nibble at any bare part of me they can find. It is marvellous being with Pooh again. To think I am the aunt of a most magnificent niece!44

  Monday, 31 July

  Heat, damp sticky breathless heat, mosquitoes, flies, many moths, deep banks of green fern round the verandah, black ants scurrying across these atrocious Victorian tiles, Sam watering the roses, whistling as he handles the hose.

  I never realised how hideous European clothes were until I saw them worn here. The girls adore pale pink georgette and bright shiny satins and flimsy hats. And why is our civilisation so efficient and so ugly? Everywhere one goes one finds the inevitable mark of the white conqueror’s Victorian heel. Beastly little houses, American advertisements, petrol pumps, cinemas. If someone would only put the black woman into loose brightly coloured skirts, beads and the gay head handkerchiefs many of them still wear. But as soon as she has won her freedom she must have her silk stockings and high-heeled shoes. And although they copy us so exactly and slavishly they hate us – all the black people. One can feel it everywhere. Except that everywhere the white man is feared and respected. But their deep envy and hate is there. Possibly the backwash, as Pooh suggests, of the bitterness of the slave.

  Monday, 14 August

  I am bored to the soles of my feet. Domestic bliss is all very well for the two people most closely concerned, but my God how tedious it can seem for the mere onlooker. I never realised how much older Pooh is to me until I met his wife Ivy and her friends. It is odd how the men in my family are attracted to the conventionally minded female. I feel rather mean to be criticising her while still a guest in her house, and she has admirably sterling qualities and will be loyal to her last breath. And she will look after him as he so badly needed looking after.

  I don’t think a sub-tropical climate is really good for me. On Friday I shall have been here a month, half of my precious holiday will have gone, and I have done hardly anything. And I am not going to try to be Christian-minded about it. I came out here to have a good time, and I could have had it too if there were someone just to take me about a bit. It is a great pity Pooh must be so busy just as I get here.45 I must have the most amazing powers of self-control and self-restraint that I can screw down my impatience and restlessness so that none of them seems aware of it.

  I wonder if Pooh’s awkwardness with babies is due to my mother’s distaste for them – her fear of having any and her efforts not to have Pooh. It is all rather terrible, but she was marvellous enough to us when we did arrive.

  I am tired of these correct, nice people with their stiff
and settled ideas on proper ways of living. I want London and Gus again and a little Bohemianism.

  Wednesday, 16 August

  If I have to sit on that verandah much longer I shall explode. But what with hurricanes and snapped cables and babies I am hemmed in and doomed for 8 weeks. And even if the trams did manage to get going again tomorrow, where on earth can I go? The slopes of Kingston bore me to tears, and I am frightened of exploring those backstreets on my own. Well I can go home and tell the usual lies.

  Saturday, 19 August

  Please God don’t let this go on.

  Tuesday, 22 August

  Pooh is still repairing cables.

  Monday, 28 August

  I do so badly want a home of my own, wherein I could experiment with all the exciting recipes I came across in such mags as Good Housekeeping. Varieties of sandwiches for tea; stuffed vegetables for supper or light lunches; new kinds of sweets, grated milk chocolate for instance, with mashed banana and cream.

  Now supposing I was suddenly left a million pounds, what should I do with it? Clothes of course. Learn French. I would take a room again in town. I would give the old folks a new car and chauffeur and a boiler for constant h.w. And I think I should give up architecture for the two-year Journalism course at UCL.

  And now the damned idea’s got hold of me I realise there are no practical obstacles to prevent my taking the course. Only fear has held me from considering the idea seriously. Writing is the only thing that has meant anything to me. I’ve been doing architecture for nearly six years now (three years at the office and three years at college), so I ought to know whether I’m capable of dealing with it or not. And honestly, I’m afraid I’m not.

  I am going to write books and plays and articles.

  Wednesday, 30 August

  I cannot really believe that this may be true. I am about to do the thing I have always dreamed of doing. Rain drips from the verandah, the mad Jamaican ants scurry across the tiles, and I am deciding to make a bold mad plunge into a river I don’t know. Nothing is going to shake me or make me change my mind anymore. But give me words, not bricks, to play with and I will build you palaces for kings.

  Difficulties? Millions of them! Failure? Inevitable.

  Thursday, 14 September

  The last idle hour I shall probably ever have in Jamaica. A stray breeze blows through the room that has sheltered me for so many weeks. Net curtains fixed to the lower half of all the many windows. Cream-washed cracked plaster walls. Grey paint on sills and frames and boarded ceiling. The curtain rings of the wardrobe rattling in rhythm with window sashes. The cupboard door under the table blown open. Outside bananas and bamboo fronds. Coffee berries. Lime and orange trees. Ebony, pear, Spanish oak. Mauve convolvulus creeper, hibiscus flowers. Heavy sweet scent by the waterfalls. Night coming down over the mountains. Lights of Kingston miles below.

  Tuesday, 19 September

  I am the only unmarried female aboard.

  Wednesday, 20 September

  I am hating all these lousy old men, old men who want to make love to you. I would like to wring their necks and slap their faces, but I don’t. I encourage them by holding their hands, and then offend them by not trotting off into some dark corner after dinner to be slobbered over.

  Dear God I’m getting some experience of men. But they are nearly all old, at that stage where any fairly young girl could amuse and flatter them enormously. How I hate being mauled about. Poor Billie B. (my brother’s boss in the Kingston office) – what a fool! What an undersized and boring fool! ‘You’re not afraid of me are you?’ as he tried to make me go for a drive with him. Afraid. If I had only said, ‘My dear man, I’m bored to tears with you, take me home at once,’ instead of soothing him gently by murmuring ‘Oh, I think you’re very nice …’ And how could I explain that foolishness when we danced at the Silver Slipper after eating ham and eggs, and that his touch excited in me memories of other men and other moons, and that as a man I despised him utterly, and that I compared him to some rotten, undeveloped kernel, green and mouldy in a dry and brittle shell.

  Friday, 29 September

  I don’t know whether I am more amused or angry with myself. But I do know there are a damn sight too many men on this ship, and I was very foolish to allow Neville into my cabin to say goodnight.

  I loathe myself for that, and I don’t know how I’m going to get beyond this. There’s not one of them wouldn’t make love to me (or hasn’t tried) if I encouraged them enough, from the Captain downwards. Whether they have bets on it or not I can’t guess, but I know I’ve gone just a little too far with Nev and I wish to God I hadn’t. Reason said, ‘Why not?’ and instinct said, ‘No’. And once he was in my cabin, instinct said ‘Let him stay’ and reason said, ‘Send him away at once’. And there he is now writing letters. His presence naturally disturbs me. He has just asked me if I write poetry and says he is writing a fairy story. Oh Lord, oh Lord, what have I done?

  Saturday, 30 September

  ‘But listen Jean,’ said Nev. ‘Making love on board ship means nothing.’ Which is just the crux of the whole matter. The whole bitter point of it. I want someone who will mean something to me.

  My physical needs as a normal woman are badly wanting fulfilment. I’ve got to somehow make them understand that I have no anchor; that an ordinary full-sexed woman must centre her interests on one man, otherwise she must inevitably go to pieces.

  I’ve learnt a lot from this voyage, and one thing from Nev which is forceful and important – that platonic friendships are impossible. To show my trust in my little boyfriends I left my door unbolted; although they had drunk too much, I knew I could trust them. But I’ve bolted it again.

  Undated

  Dearly beloved Pooh and family,

  Home again, and I’m wondering if it’s three months or three minutes that I’ve been away. Everything is exactly the same here. The voyage was on the whole gorgeous fun. I was the only young unmarried female on board, and what a time I had. There were twelve passengers altogether, and they were all damn decent to me and danced divinely, added to which I got off (disgusting expression) with the Captain, quite an achievement if you know the Captain, while the ship’s doctor tried to get off with me. I used to annoy him by calling him Daddy. His wife was also on board, doing the round trip as a holiday. Then there was the fat and amusing little German commission agent. When I sat curled up on one of the settees at tea-time he used to stroke my ankles and tell me what a faithful husband he was and what a bad girl I was, and once when he had drunk too much beer said that it was fortunate we had not met sooner or there might have been trouble. Piglet managed to keep her head well above water although it was a strain at times.

  Now I’m trying to concentrate on the session ahead of me. Pop has taken my decision to transfer to Journalism amazingly well. If he was at all distressed he is quite resigned to the change by now.

  Wednesday, 18 October

  I sat in the Refec drinking tea by myself feeling acutely lonely and very old.46

  How is one to get beyond oneself? To get into contact with people – easy and friendly contact. I must get to know the journalists of my year. It is not in the nature of human beings to remain solitary. One wants to feel one is popular and liked. But one wants only a few very intimate friends – people who really matter in one’s life.

  All a matter of growth – of patience and endurance and courage.

  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?