Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  13 January

  Father passed away in the early hours of this morning. May he rest in peace.

  21 January

  I have not been able to write in this diary and it has not seemed right to do so. This has been the most dreadful week in my life, in all our lives, and I feel I will never truly recover. Father was only 45. He was not ready to be taken. So many men have been killed in the war but who could have expected to die of influenza. Mother is in a state of paralysis. She does not seem to know what to do and looks bewildered and sits with Grace on her knee and Michael clinging to her and does not reply when spoken to. If Aunt J. had not come and arranged the funeral I do not know what we would have done. I am sure there would have been no funeral which I cannot help thinking would have been a mercy but I suppose there had to be a funeral. Aunt J. said it had to be done and so we were measured, even Grace, and now we are all dressed in black. My dress is frightful but I am quite glad to look so wretched for I feel it. We had six black cars to take us to the church and then to the cemetery. It all passed in a blur. The tea afterwards was painful with so many people pressing in and saying they were sorry and I did not know half of them and cared nothing for their sympathy. Yet when they had all departed it was worse. We did not know what to do. I had never thought to welcome the noise the twins make but for once I did, and did not try to restrain them. Matilda slept with Mother. I could not have done so.

  22 January

  Mother has come out of her becalmed state and is in a frenzy over what will happen to us. She is worried about money. Then there is the business. It must continue to be run but by whom. George should take over but he is incapable. Matilda went down to the workshop today and Mr Riggles assured her he would keep things going until some arrangement was made. Meanwhile Aunt J. compelled George to go with her to the bank to inquire how much money Father has left. She came back white-faced and George looked terrified. It seems Father has left no more than a few hundred pounds in total in a deposit account and a mere £80 in his current account. All of this has to go through probate before Mother can draw on it, but the bank manager advanced £50 as a loan. I do not understand how this can be a loan when it is now Mother’s money but that is what Aunt J. called it. She has searched the house and discovered another £40 in pockets and drawers and Father’s brief-case. I do not know how she brought herself to go through all his clothes and belongings but she said it had to be done.

  23 January

  Another shock. I had thought at least we have a house, even if it is not a very grand house, and so we have no worries about having a roof over our heads but now it turns out that Father remortgaged it during the war and money must be found to make the mortgage repayments or the house can be reclaimed. I do not understand it all, and neither I am sure does Mother, but I know this is bad news. It hardly needed Aunt J. to point out that there will be no money for my college fees. I hated myself for realising this even while Father was dying. I will have to find employment immediately and so will George. Matilda will continue to live in nurses’ quarters. There is some special scheme to which she has applied to cover her maintenance fees and she has been told the authority administering it will look favourably on her application. But I cannot claim the same benefit. I know of no scheme to which I could apply and even if I did I could not avail myself of it because someone must bring some money in and it would not be fair to Matilda to make her give up nursing when she is so far on and will soon qualify and be earning a wage. If only George was earning. Mother seems to imagine he will run the business but Aunt J. can see this is foolishness and that George far from taking charge will be a burden as he has been since he was injured. I could shake him.

  24 January

  Aunt J. is going to sell her house and move in with us. How good she is. I wish I had never had unkind thoughts about her and will try to make up for it. Also, she has some savings and is prepared to use those for us to survive on until Mother can get Father’s money and pay her back. I flung my arms round her and kissed her when she told me and I am afraid I wept with relief. She wishes she had the means to keep me at training college but it is impossible, as I quite understand. I am resigned to never becoming a teacher but having instead to accept some menial employment as poor Mabel had to do.

  *

  There follows a miserable period when Millicent searches for a job. To her disbelief, she cannot find one in an office, as she had expected. Unlike Mabel, she cannot type, and finds that men back from the war are in any case filling office vacancies.

  *

  14 March

  I begin work tomorrow at John Lewis in Oxford Street, and lucky to get the situation. It makes me bitter to have to acknowledge that, for I do not feel lucky in the least, but after all these weeks of trudging around applying for jobs for which I am overqualified, or rather not qualified at all, I know I am indeed fortunate to be able at last to be in a position to earn money. It is not much money. My salary is to work out at 8 shillings a week when fares are deducted. Mabel was getting that years ago. I must provide my own frock, black, but this is not an expense because my mourning frock is perfect. I start work at 8.35 a.m. and continue until 6 p.m. six days a week, except for Saturday when I finish at 1 p.m. The journey there will take about 45 minutes, buses permitting, either way. There is half an hour given for lunch. The worst thing was having to pretend to be grateful that I had been taken on, and indeed I was, for a moment, grateful, or rather relieved in a mortifying sort of way. I have been told I was not suitable on so many occasions, and sneered at in the telling, that to be appointed to any situation seemed miraculous. But it was not a miracle which lasted long. I soon saw how I had learned to disguise my education and through omitting to mention what I had been doing since I left school therefore made myself appear suitable to serve in a shop. I learned not to look people in the eye, too, and not to hold my head up, or risk any but the most minimal and humble response to any question. All that was important was to look clean – my hands were carefully inspected and I was glad I had just cut my nails – and docile, and to be able to add up correctly. My maths have never been good but at least I can add up. How low I have sunk. I have not yet written to Tom. He says it is immaterial to him what work I am compelled by my changed circumstances to do, but I do not believe him.

  6 May

  I don’t know which part of the day I hate most because there is reason to hate every dratted minute. I hate the very entry into the shop. The air smells stale, after it’s been shut up all night and there is something so deadly about the racks of clothes, and the way we shop girls trudge carefully between them as though they might harm us. I long to sweep them all off in one vicious movement and imagine myself stamping on them and tearing the fabrics with my teeth. I hate the next hour, when it is too early for any shoppers yet we have to pretend to be busy and are told to look alert and welcoming. I practised smiling excessively in front of a mirror, to amuse myself, and Mr Anderson caught me and asked if I wished to keep my job because if so I must learn that working in a prestigious store like John Lewis was not a pantomime. He said if Mr Spedan Lewis had caught me grimacing I would have been dismissed on the spot. I hate serving customers, the stupid, stupid women who have no intention of buying anything yet make me bring half the shop to them in the changing-room and never once thank me. I long for the lunch hour but hate it when it comes. We sit at two tables in the basement and grace has to be said before we eat and the silence while we wait for the food makes me want to scream. I scream in my head all the long afternoon. My legs ache but we are not allowed to sit even for a minute. The boredom is dreadful. I hate most of all the ache the boredom gives me, an ache right through my bones to the very tip of my toes.

  20 May

  There was a victory march through London today. It was brilliantly sunny and the crowds were delirious with excitement. We were allowed to stand outside the shop, taking it in turn, while the main part of the procession passed along. I found myself in tears but not, as my
two companions thought, either through happiness or memories of men lost in the war. No, it was for myself. I am forced to admit that during all these scenes of jubilation I snivelled in an orgy of self-pity. I will never get out of this hateful existence. Even if I were to be offered it, I do not want promotion within the shop. It would make everything worse to become a supervisor and I would be more obliged than ever to act as though this employment was of some importance. At least as a mere assistant in the dress department I am invisible and can keep myself remote and so protect my own dignity. The words, Can I help you, madam? come out of my mouth automatically and I select and hand over frocks to be tried on in a manner that is respectful but distant. The others dislike me for what is seen as my aloofness, of course. I come and go without making friends, though I am always polite. I let them think I lost my father in the war and also my young man, and they leave me alone.

  21 May

  Sundays are somehow worse than weekdays and yet should afford some sense of liberation. I hate to be at home with no privacy whatsoever. Aunt J. and Mother are glad to have me around but I am not glad to be there. The only hour in the day when there is some respite is when they take the twins and Michael to church and this mercifully coincides with Grace’s nap. Today I sat in the garden in the sun, with my eyes closed so that I would not be compelled to survey the mess before me. Poor Father, with his attempt at a vegetable patch. I wish the grass would grow again. George is supposed to have sown seeds but if he did there is no evidence of any growth. Mother likes to refer to him these days as a gardener but of course he is no such thing, he is only a labourer who needs direction at every turn and he was only taken on out of pity for what he had suffered and because Mrs Baty feels sorry for Mother. But he is quite content digging, and pulling out weeds, and doing what he is told, so that is something. I wish I were content. I have not accepted my lot in life and never will. I do not want to meet Phyllis or anyone else from my old life. I have declined all invitations.

  11 June

  Tom turned up in the shop today. I was so furious, even though I confess my heart leapt when first I saw him. How dare he! My humiliation was agonising, to the point of almost fainting. I hissed at him to leave immediately but he would not. He persisted in playing the part of someone wishing to buy a frock for his fiancée and I was obliged to go along with it because Mr Anderson was hovering near, alert to the chances of a lucrative sale, and the shopwalker was doing his rounds. Tom whispered that I should meet him when I finished work, at the main entrance, or he threatened to come in every day. I was nearly in tears but had to agree. The moment I stepped out of the shop after finishing work and saw him, I was at last at liberty to tell him what I thought of his outrageous behaviour. I said I never wanted to see him again, though this was of course a lie. He walked along with me and when I had finished he asked me what I had expected him to do when I would not reply to any of his letters. I said he knew perfectly well someone at Oxford could not have a shop girl as a friend and he positively shouted at me, Don’t be so silly! People passing turned to look and my face burned. Tom grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into Lyons Corner House and almost pushed me into a seat. He leaned right across the table and said with real feeling that he hadn’t fought in the war to come home and find a world in which one’s occupation dictated whether one could be friends or not. It excited me to see him so passionate, and I blushed as I said I was sorry, but breaking off our friendship had seemed to me the right thing to do. Tom sat back then and said, Well, it wasn’t and isn’t, and unless you agree to spending the day with me next Sunday I shall haunt you and tell you so every day. I hope the weather holds. There has been no rain for six whole weeks.

  17 June

  This is the first happy day I have passed since Father died. Tom took me to Oxford. We went by train and when we got there he showed me his college which is Magdalen and I was dazzled by it and all the colleges and the whole place. It must be like being in heaven to be here. I said so to Tom, and he sighed and said yes, that is how it must seem, and that when he was in France among all the filth and squalor of the trenches he had imagined himself here and yearned for that day but that now this had come to pass something was lacking. I asked what, and he hesitated and said studying seemed irrelevant in view of what had gone before and he was finding it difficult to concentrate. He was not enjoying himself. He was tense and hostile to those who had not fought, and that was no good. We talked like this all day. Tom took me to an area through which the river runs which is called Port Meadow where we followed a tow path to an inn and sat outside and drank cider and ate sandwiches. Tom held my hand on the way back. There were some trees near a little bridge towards the end and we stopped in the shade and he kissed me. It was not like after the dance. This was sincere and I felt myself trembling and though I was half afraid of this feeling I wanted it to continue. But some people came past and we went on walking and nothing was said. Tom came back with me to London, the long vacation having begun, and wished to take me home but I would not let him, knowing Mother and Aunt J. would get ideas.

  2 July

  Tom waits for me every day but not outside the shop. I could not bear it. We have found a teashop which is very quiet and he waits there and reads his newspaper until I arrive. This shop stops serving tea at 6 p.m. and it is after 6 before I get there but Tom is there just in time and orders tea and crumpets and it is very welcoming. He is going climbing next week, with his cousin, to Wales. He asked about my holidays and I said I was not entitled to any paid holiday until I have worked a year so I would not be having one. I tried to say this in a matter-of-fact way and to smile and not be self-pitying. Tom hates self-pitying people. He told me that Phyllis was to come to Wales while he and his cousin were there, staying in their family home. She would probably only stand it for a weekend. I said I hadn’t seen Phyllis since I was obliged to give up college and wouldn’t feel comfortable with her now even if we did meet. He seemed despondent at this. I do like Tom. I more than like him. I am afraid to think how much more. I no longer dare breathe a word of why, but of course it is because I know I must not set my heart on him when there is such a gulf between us, whatever he says. Even if Father had lived and things been otherwise I would have felt this and it is no good Tom being angry about it.

  1 August

  The days are so hot. It is stifling to be confined in the shop in such heat and to have no opportunity to take advantage of this good weather. The thick carpet on our floor makes the heat worse and ladies trying on clothes make perspiration marks under the arms which ruins them. I had to consult Mr Anderson as to what should be done about this which was very embarrassing but I do not want afterwards to be blamed for letting expensive frocks get in this state. Some of the new frocks are made of such delicate materials and show even the faintest mark really glaringly. I tried one on myself this afternoon. I was so very hot in my black frock, and there was no one at all in the department and Mr Anderson had gone off early so I took a frock which my last customer had tried on and tried it on myself. It is such a beautiful garment, in the new shape, hanging loose and straight from the shoulders and the new length, mid-calf. It did not look right on me, though it fitted well enough. I could not at first think why, and then decided it was because of my hair. The customer who had selected it had had her hair cropped. The frock needs a boyish figure, which I have got but it also needs cropped hair. I wonder if I dare cut my hair off.

  2 August

  The more I think about it, the more tempted I am to get rid of my hair. On the bus today I counted four girls with cropped hair and very cool and smart they looked. I have so much hair and it has always been a bother to braid it and pin it up. Mother, of course, would not approve if I cut it off. She is of the old-fashioned opinion that it is a woman’s crowning glory. I do not think Tom would approve either. He has paid me several compliments about my hair.

  6 August

  A postcard from Tom. He wishes I were in Wales with him. He says the weather i
s marvellous, as it is everywhere, and that they all drove to the coast and swam yesterday. I can picture the scene, and thought about it all the long, close day. I wonder if I will ever live anywhere but London. It is so long since I saw the sea. I daydreamed about it all the way home.