Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  20 October

  Phyllis took me home with her yesterday. Her mother, it turns out, is American though she has lived in England since she married Phyllis’s father. I was surprised by their home which is not a house but an enormous flat in a block. There is no diningroom at all, the drawing-room does for everything. I cannot describe it properly except to say it is quite unlike a conventional drawing-room. It is one huge, beautiful room with big settees and tables with books on and a massive desk and it is altogether more like a stage setting. I don’t know why I am writing so much about the flat, which Phyllis’s mother calls an apartment, when the people were even more interesting and worthy of comment. Phyllis’s mother is called Carrie and is girlish. She and Phyllis could pass for sisters easily. She smokes, which my mother would find very shocking and which I did not altogether approve of myself, though Carrie (she said she would not answer to Mrs Hart) makes smoking look elegant. Mr Hart is in the navy. He is Welsh. They have a proper house too, in Wales. In civilian life he is a doctor who specialises in tropical diseases. Then there are two sons, William who is also in the navy and was just finishing at Oxford when war was declared and Tom who was just about to go there. They must be a very clever family. Carrie was very friendly and asked about my family and as usual I was embarrassed having to say I was one of seven children but she exclaimed how lovely and seemed to mean it. I said it was not at all lovely but she only laughed. Then Tom came in. Because Phyllis had told me about his arm I was prepared to find he would be like George and very morose but he was not. He seemed very cheerful, unless it was for show before a stranger. It is his left arm, which is lucky. Phyllis had told me he is to have an artificial limb fitted but that it cannot be done yet and that anyway he says he does not know if he wants one. He is bored and wishes he could return to France and the fighting which I found extraordinary but I kept quiet about George. We all sat around and had cocktails made by Carrie. Cocktails are much nicer than tea. I don’t know what was in them but they looked so pretty in delicate, wide glasses and they tasted nice, though the taste may have come from the cherries floating in them. Afterwards, Tom said he would see me to my bus and I protested there was no need but he said he wanted some air. We walked together to the stop and he stood with me chatting very amiably. I have to confess that I enjoyed standing there with a young man instead of on my own. He was wearing his army greatcoat and I was pleased about that too which I know very well tells me I wanted to be seen with a soldier.

  28 October

  There have been four successive air-raids over London and it has felt dangerous going to and from college. Mother worries if I am not home directly and so I have resisted Phyllis’s invitations to go home with her again though I would like to. I should invite her here but I cannot bear to. It is not just the thought of how trying all the children are but it is this house. It is stifling, and crowded and the rooms are so small and everything in them ordinary and mostly shabby. Phyllis would find it claustrophobic. It may be that I am a snob.

  15 November

  The newspapers are saying that peace is really in the air at last but they have said it before and it has not been true. Father says, as he is always saying, once the Americans join the action, which should be soon, the prospect of victory will be real. Tom says the same, though he does not like the impression (even if he is half American) this might give that the war cannot be won without them. I cannot understand how he is so untouched by all the horror he has been through. He says he is not untouched and that he relives terrible things he has seen all the time and he will never forget the suffering he has witnessed but that all the same he is alive and well and he has the rest of his life to live and it does no good to always be looking back and that for the sake of his friends who have been killed he thinks it his duty to be as cheerful as he can. I wish George thought like that.

  29 November

  Tom has asked me to a dance next month. I thought Father might refuse me permission to go, especially as he has never met Tom, but Mother persuaded him by saying she would ring his mother. I don’t know what Carrie will think of that. The dance is to celebrate a friend’s 21st birthday. This friend is one of those soldiers granted a whole two weeks’ leave because he has served a full year in France. I did not tell Tom I have never been to a dance in my entire life and I do not know how to dance properly. Miss Lewin taught us some dance steps at school in games lessons when it was too wet to go out but I am in a panic that I will not even remember how to waltz. Phyllis is going too and I am sure she will be an expert at quicksteps and every other sort. And I have nothing, nothing, to wear. What can I wear? Mother is as concerned as I am. It makes her tearful to think I have no dress in which I can go to a proper dance. She has looked out all her old dresses and thinks something might be done with a white silk gown she had made before the war for a club dinner she went to with Father, but I will not wear white, it is too childish. I look infantile as it is. Mother says she has never heard of anything more absurd and that white is the proper colour for young girls. I would like to wear something bright instead. Aunt J. asked why did I not have the white silk remade and wear it with a blue bolero and sash. She has a royal-blue silk jacket which she said I could give to the dressmaker to see if it would make a bolero and so I took it to Mrs Walshingham with the white silk and she laughed and said she could make ten boleros out of Aunt J.’s jacket for someone my size. So that is what I am to wear, the white silk restyled and a blue bolero and sash. I don’t know what I will look like. The only shoes possible are black and will look all wrong. It is all such a bother. I am not the right sort of girl to be going to a dance. I said to Tom it did not seem right to be going to a party when we are at war and he said that kind of attitude made him angry and that on the contrary having a jolly time was important and good for morale and that it was just a pity everyone was not afforded the opportunity.

  20 December

  The dance is over. It upset me.

  21 December

  I don’t know why I wrote that the dance upset me. I think I was just very tired and felt funny after all the unaccustomed excitement. I am not used to being among people of the type who were there, quite well-off people I now realise. They all seemed perfectly comfortable to be dancing to a band and having such rich food to eat. There was very little to tempt a vegetarian. I cannot think where the hams and chickens came from and indeed do not like to puzzle my brain over it for fear of the answer. I suppose the trouble was that I was out of place and overawed. I hate to think I may have looked it. I know I was quiet most of the night and not laughing and roaring like Phyllis and the others who all seemed to be let in on some huge joke I did not share. I managed the dancing fairly well, though. Tom is not much good at it either and was content to smooch about. Phyllis is a brilliant dancer as I knew she would be. She danced with practically every man there. She looked lovely in a silver sheath dress which had sequins all over and glittered when she moved. She said it was her mother’s dress and that it had not needed to be altered. I felt dowdy. I wanted to be the life and soul of the dance and I was not. Then afterwards, Tom and I walked all the way home, to their flat of course, because it had been agreed between our mothers that I would stay with Phyllis to avoid the bother of getting home. It was a very cold, clear night though not snowing. The air was frosty and beautiful, and the stars were gorgeous. We held hands, with gloves on, and it felt nice. I was glad to have left the dance and apologised to Tom for not being much fun there. He said he was sorry I had not enjoyed it more and I said it was as I had suspected. I was not a dancing sort of girl. He squeezed my hand. When we got to his home there was no one else yet there. His mother was out with an old friend and Phyllis still at the dance. I felt apprehensive and thought how Mother and Father would not approve. I thought I should go to Phyllis’s room and go to bed but it seemed so rude to leave Tom like that. He put on some record on the gramophone they have and asked me if I would like a drink. I said some cocoa or Bournvita would be nice if they
had any and he laughed and said he didn’t mean a nursery drink, he meant a proper drink. I said I had drunk enough at the dance where I had had champagne for the first time in my life. He came over to where I had sat myself down and said I was so sweet and would I slap his face if he kissed me. I was a coward and said nothing. He put his good arm round me and gave me a very gentle kiss and said, First dance, first champagne, first kiss, and though I liked the kiss I did not like his saying that. It made me feel like a baby. I am quite sure it was not his first kiss. Then Phyllis arrived home with a young man called Arthur who goes back to France in two days’ time. They started kissing on one of the settees, in front of us, which I did not like. I said goodnight to Tom and went to bed. It was ages before Phyllis came to bed. I pretended to be asleep.

  2 January 1918

  Aunt J. is going home tomorrow. I don’t know whether she wants to or not. She shut her little house up to answer Mother’s call and I think she may be a little worried about how she will find it though there have been no bombs anywhere in that area. She says she is tired, and no wonder, with all she has done here, and at her age. But Mother says that with my help and Dora’s, the girl Aunt J. has found, she can manage and that Aunt J. deserves a rest. I hope and pray she will not expect me to pick up where Aunt J. leaves off. I will be at college all day so cannot help then and I must study at night and cannot be expected to put Grace or Michael or the twins to bed. I feel sorry for Mother but not sorry enough to want to take on any of her burdens especially when they are of her own creation. I know that makes me seem hard but surely Mother could have limited herself to three children at the most. I will never have more than two, if I have any at all, and I have no plans to do so, quite the reverse needless to say.

  11 January

  College began again and I was glad. I have not seen or heard from Phyllis all this holiday but I know she has been away somewhere in the country. So has Tom. I did not ask her about him. I have not heard from him either. I sent him a thank-you card after the dance, thinking I should, but did not expect a reply. I worry that Phyllis seems a little distant. Maybe she is going off me. I tried to be friendly but she was abstracted and not her usual self.

  19 January

  Now I know why Phyllis was not herself! It was nothing to do with me. I can hardly credit this but it seems she let Arthur take advantage of her the night of the dance. I was so shocked I could not help giving a little scream when she confessed this. She said she had drunk too much champagne and hardly knew what was happening but I do not believe her. I would have known what was happening I am sure. I do not think much of this Arthur either, taking advantage. It puts Tom in a good light I must say. Anyway, Phyllis has her Visitor now so all is well, she says. I am surprised she thinks so. I would have thought relief that she is not carrying Arthur’s child would not be enough to set her mind at rest. What about when she marries and her husband finds she is not untouched and that she has spoiled herself. It would worry me most dreadfully but it does not worry Phyllis. Suppose, when the war is over, Arthur comes back and tells people about Phyllis. Her reputation will be ruined.

  2 February

  Tom was waiting outside college. I thought he was waiting for his sister who had not yet come out because she had an extra lecture but he was waiting for me. I am afraid I was so pleased that I blushed. He said he was sorry not to have seen me since the dance but that he had been for fittings for a false arm and hand and it was a beastly business and he had not been good company for anyone. The false arm chafes the stump of his remaining arm and hangs like a dead weight and he hates it and has persisted only because he felt he ought to. He hates to give up when things are difficult, but he is going to give this up. He never wanted a false limb in any case. He is so very frank about all this and I admire him for it.

  3 February

  Tom was waiting for me again today and again walked me to my bus stop. He said he had nothing much to do and felt restless cooped up inside with nothing better to do than read. He has studying to do before he goes to Oxford in the autumn but cannot seem to settle to it. He hopes by October that the war will be over and like Father believes it will be. He asked if I like training to be a teacher and I said I did but that given a choice I would rather have tried to go to University if Father had allowed it. He told me that Phyllis has no intention of becoming a teacher, she is just playing at it for something to do that will please their parents. I think he is right. Phyllis takes nothing seriously just as I can’t seem to take anything lightly.

  17 March

  The Americans have joined in the action at last. George has no interest. Tom and Father are jubilant. They both follow the progress of the war in great detail and read every day about what is happening. I know I should do the same but I cannot apply myself to that sort of reading and rely on them for information. I am more interested in what Matilda has to say about the state of the hospitals and the different sorts of injuries the wounded now have. When the war is over she intends to train to be a proper nurse though Mother says she thinks she has surely been trained already. It is curious the way Matilda no longer seems part of our family. She has her own life about which none of us knows much except what she tells us. If it had not been for the war this could not have happened so there has been as much good in it for her as there has been bad for George. I don’t know what would have become of George if there had been no war but I am sure he would not have ended up in a permanent state of collapse as he is now. Father takes him to the office and sometimes to the workshop hoping to make him take an interest but he reports that George just sits at a desk in the office and stares into space and cannot bear the noise in the workshop. Father gives him very simple things to do but he seems incapable of doing them. It is as though he is in a trance and this maddens Father who is convinced George is not trying. I don’t know what can be done. I have talked to Tom about it, even though it is such a personal and private matter, and he says he knows many men like George and that he needs treatment. Tom says there are doctors for the mind as well as the body and George should see one of them. I tried to tell Father this but he would not have it. What do you want, he said, your brother certified a lunatic and put away.

  *

  The diary entries for the rest of 1918 contain a great deal about the Goldsmiths’ lectures, many of which Millicent finds difficult to follow, so much so that she begins to think she should have waited another year to enrol, and a great deal about Tom, though she does not see much of him since he is now at Oxford. Very little of the events in the war that year are mentioned but there is a long account of the armistice celebrations in November when she and Phyllis are among the excited crowds in Trafalgar Square. It seems to her that now life can really begin.

  *

  2 January 1919

  Another new year, and it ought to be a happy one with the war over and peace to look forward to but it is all so disappointing. Everything seems to go on in exactly the same dreary way. Food is still short and now there are all kinds of strikes, I don’t know why. Father says business is not picking up as it should. I do not like the expression on his face when I have to give him the termly bill for my fees. He says I am the most expensive member of the family. I would like to contest that but I dare not.

  8 January

  Father is ill. He came home last night shivering and went straight to his bed and today he has stayed there in a fever and Mother has sent for Dr Robinson. I tried to buy him some grapes on my way home but they are 12s a pound! Mother says shopkeepers are Kings these days. I had such a struggle getting home. The omnibuses are crammed to bursting, with crowds waiting at every stop. Getting about is worse than before we won the war.

  9 January

  Dr Robinson says Father has the influenza. Mother said she thought the epidemic was over but Dr Robinson said that he had attended four new cases that very day. There is nothing to be done except to keep Father warm and make sure he has plenty of fluids. He has given him something for his cough. His cough
can be heard throughout the house, it is so loud and comes from deep in his chest and racks him.

  10 January

  Father has pneumonia on top of the influenza. Dr Robinson says he must be moved to hospital and put in an oxygen tent but that there is at the moment no space. Matilda, who came home as soon as she heard about Father and has stayed, says it is true, all the London hospitals are overflowing. But Dr Robinson was able to arrange for oxygen to be brought here and has fixed up a tent for Father. What a blessing it is to have Matilda here. Mother is quite frantic. I feel it is a judgement on me for complaining about how dreary everything is and now it is worse than dreary here, it is frightening and has happened so quickly.

  11 January

  Father is worse. I did not go to college of course. I sat with him, taking turns with Matilda. Mother hardly leaves his side. The children cry and shout for her but she shuts them out and ignores them and sends them away with Ivy, who has just come back, thank goodness. Father has eaten nothing for three whole days. He cannot swallow and even thin soup is too much. He takes tiny sips of water and that is all. He tries to talk but cannot manage to make sense and then his cough breaks out. It has begun to dawn on me that he may not recover. I cannot write what I really mean by that, but it is too frightening and I am frightened. Mother does not seem to realise what may happen but I am sure Matilda does though we have said nothing to each other. If the worst happens, what will become of us? I cannot help thinking about this though it is too awful to contemplate the future. The days are so long and the nights longer and we are all so exhausted. Father’s bedroom is so hot, with the fire kept up all the time and the rest of the house so cold in comparison. The ghastly atmosphere in the sickroom is not much worse than the bleakness in the rest of the house where nothing is being seen to. It is all Ivy can do to keep the children occupied. I went out today to the shops to get some necessary provisions and though it was bitterly cold and miserable it was such a relief to escape and I felt I wanted to run away which was disgraceful. I am full of such unworthy thoughts and yet I love Father dearly. Tom writes complaining that I have not answered his last two letters but I cannot.