Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  10 March

  George and Esther’s wedding day. I sent a telegram, managing to travel into Rome and do it myself which made me feel proud. It is no easy thing dealing with the post office here. I found myself not quite as relieved not to be at the wedding as I had thought I would be. I am not in the least homesick but on the other hand family gatherings are not so plentiful that I want to miss them. It still seems extraordinary that George has managed to marry at all. I think more and more that I shall never marry. Mother asked in her last letter if I had made any friends of my own age. I know she means men friends. Of course, I haven’t. I see no one but the people in this house. She sees me as next in line for marriage and waits for news of a romance. Unless I run off with Giorgio, I can’t think where it could come from, though Mother may fantasise about Kenneth, which makes me shudder. It is impossible to convince her that I am perfectly happy single. Well, I ask myself if this is really true, or if I protest too much, and I am sure that it is true – for the moment.

  19 March

  Long letters from Mother and from Tilda about the wedding – and something much more exciting: Tilda is expecting a baby in early September! Mother is practically hysterical with joy. Tilda wants reassurance that I will be home for the birth and wonders if I could come for a week or so after the birth to look after her. She says Mother wants to, but she has Grace and Michael and the twins to think of, and she does not know the house and the area as I do. I feel quite flattered to be asked, though also a little wary. I’m not sure that I want to move into the role of unmarried sister called on to be nursemaid. That’s a mean thing to think, and uncalled for. Tilda has been kind to me, and generous, and I will be the same to her.

  20 March

  Spent most of the day writing letters home. Already Mother wants to know what I am going to do next, after I return from here. I wish she, and others, were not forever wanting to know that. I am not so obsessed with the future that I have to look months ahead all the time. It is so irritating when people expect me to.

  *

  And yet the diary for the following two months suggests that Millicent was indeed thinking about her immediate future and not relishing the prospect of a return to England with no job in prospect. Stuck in the diary for this year is a cutting from the Times Educational Supplement with teaching vacancies marked with crosses and ticks. It is unlikely that this paper was on sale in Rome in 1925, which means she must have subscribed to it and had it sent out. Then, in June, shortly before her situation is to come to an end, her employer makes a suggestion.

  *

  19 June

  Mr Russo, who has been away from home for over a week, asked to see me this morning. He asked me first how I was getting on with Francesca now. I said that I thought she was warming a little towards me and that we were beginning to be friends as well as teacher and pupil. He nodded. Then he told me that he had now arranged the move to America, which was to be in August, after my contract ended. He said he would be glad to leave Italy, that it was no longer a country in which someone half-American by birth could feel comfortable. He has bought a house on somewhere called Long Island, and has already engaged a housekeeper and found a school for Francesca where he hopes she will be happy. He said he thought I had prepared her well for schoolwork and she was ready for it. I did not interrupt, but firstly wondered how he could know this and secondly I doubted he was right. Francesca has had no companionship of her own age, and is still very withdrawn, and I am sure will find going to school in a strange country completely bewildering. Then he amazed me by suggesting I should travel with Francesca to America and see her settled in. I blurted out immediately that I had to be in London in September for the birth of my sister’s baby, and that I had promised to look after her. He accepted the news graciously but was obviously disappointed.

  I like Mr Russo. I haven’t got to know him at all, but I like him. There is something sad and something brave about his oddness. I like him better than his daughter, though I spoke the truth when I said I was becoming more friendly with her. They are both somehow fragile. They move about this villa and its gardens as though in a dream, and it is not, I think, a pleasant dream. Sometimes, each of them can look at me, directly into my eyes, and there is nothing there, they look vacant, and then with what I feel is a great effort consciousness returns. But partly this may be due to the atmosphere here – so sleepy, so slow, the very air enclosing us, making all action an effort. It is what Kenneth hates about the place. He says he feels drugged, half-dead.

  25 June

  It has been so hot today, fiercely so. Francesca and I sat inside this morning with the shutters half closed against the brilliance of the light. The stones on the terrace burned my feet even through the soles of my sandals and there was not the slightest breeze. Mr Russo and Kenneth rode off very early and the house seems heavily quiet. Francesca does not like it. She gave me odd little anxious looks and asked would there be a storm and would her papa be back before it. I was reading to her but barely had the energy to continue. Sofia brought us iced water with lemon in it and Francesca took out the ice cubes and laid them one on each cheek. Mama did that, she said, she put ice on her face and ice down the front of her dress and ice in her armpits, when it was hot like this. I hardly dared to breathe. She has never mentioned her mother to me before. She went on, Mama said it was too, too hot and the only thing to do was sleep till the storm came, and she sent me for the tablets to help her sleep, and we slept. What could I say, what was fitting to say? I did not believe it would be right to question her and yet longed to take the opportunity. There was a clap of thunder then and a great rumbling, and Francesca sat up straight, the water from the ice cubes running down her face like tears, and said the storm had come; but it hadn’t, not then, and we waited an hour or so for the thunder to come nearer and the blessed rain to begin to fall. Mr Russo and Kenneth arrived back soaked to the skin soon afterwards.

  26 June

  Kenneth did not go with Mr Russo today. He stayed and hung about and was in general a nuisance. After lunch, when Francesca had gone for a siesta and I was hoping to follow suit, he kept me on the terrace talking, constantly begging me not to leave him or he’d go mad with boredom. I do not care at all about his boredom, and despise him for being bored, but he grabbed my arm and pushed me back into my chair, in front of Sofia who was clearing the table. He is an odd cove, Kenneth said, don’t you think so. I did not inquire who he meant. My father says he always was a bit crackers, Kenneth went on, though I had given him no encouragement. He likes you, I can see. Do you like him? He’s a very eligible widower though of course much older than you, but still . . . I was outraged and tried to get out of my chair in order to leave Kenneth’s odious company but he stood in front of me, one hand on each arm of the chair, and I could not get out. You are blushing, he said, oh you are blushing, well, well, do you have hopes of being the second Mrs Russo? I spat in his face. I know that was a very vulgar thing to do, and that it might even convince Kenneth he was right to suspect that I had designs on Mr Russo, but there was nothing else I could do. And at least it succeeded in releasing me. He put his hands up to wipe his face telling me I was a little bitch, so I called him a repulsive little worm, and ran back into the house. I boil with resentment. Mr Russo has been nothing but good and kind to Kenneth and this is the thanks he gets. Why is it that young men like Kenneth cannot see a girl like me without believing her head must be filled with thoughts of ensnaring every man around. Next he’ll be imagining I plan to trap him. What a revolting thought.

  15 July

  My birthday. I told no one until the late evening. Such a hot, still day, hotter than ever, too hot by eleven in the morning to continue teaching. I longed to be beside water, beside the sea at Brighton however cold and grey, but we are miles even from a river or lake. Mrs Harris who goes home tomorrow lay all day in a hammock under the trees in the lower garden and Francesca sat with her feet in the pond reading The Secret Garden. I went to the summer h
ouse on the far side of the garden, the shadiest spot, and read Gone to Earth, which Mother has sent me. Mother has read it with much enjoyment, but I found it somehow absurd and laughable. I couldn’t believe in Hazel, the heroine, who is supposed to be wild and shy as a wood nymph. She does not behave like my idea of a wood nymph and does silly things. I knew from the beginning what would happen. I do wonder if Mother sent me this novel as a warning, in case I became like Hazel, seduced, pregnant and ruined. It made me laugh to think of it. After I’d finished the book, I lay daydreaming. I lay full length on the cushions and looked down through half-closed eyelids on the surrounding countryside, all golden and shimmering in the heat-haze. I felt drunk, though since I had never been drunk, just a little tipsy at that dance with Tom, I wasn’t sure what that would feel like. I told myself I should be thinking of my life and what I should do with it, but found I could not think of anything but the heat, and surrendered to it happily. We ate dinner on the back terrace, where there is no trellis and where, if there is the faintest breeze, it catches the cool air. There were fireflies everywhere. Kenneth looked quite desperate with boredom. I ignore him completely now, never so much as glancing in his direction. I couldn’t resist telling everyone that it was my birthday. Mr Russo immediately sent Fernando to his cellar for champagne and made a great fuss about chilled glasses. After two glasses, I really did know what it is like to be truly drunk. I floated to my room and fell asleep, still dressed.

  16 July

  Terrible headache all day. Mrs Harris who left directly after breakfast was surprised, saying good champagne such as we drank last night does not normally cause headaches and that she, prone to headaches, did not have one. It is extraordinary to me that I can have lived with this woman in the same house for nearly six months and yet feel she is a total stranger. She has no interest in me, or indeed in anyone. It is as though this house were an hotel and we are all guests (or in my case a servant) who have nothing to do with each other. She has no curiosity and, as I learned very early, if people are curious about her, she is offended. Mr Russo does not seem to mind but I mind, and on his behalf as well as my own. I think she does not deserve his hospitality. Kenneth is tiresome but at least does not sit like a fat sphinx, as she has done.

  17 July

  Mr Russo and I ate alone tonight. Kenneth was away in Rome for the night. Though I like Mr Russo, I rather dreaded dinner, feeling self-conscious, but I enjoyed it. He talked about his father, who was Italian and moved to New York when he was a young man, and about his American mother who never really liked Italy and would not agree to live here when his father had made his fortune and wished to return. Mr Russo said his father was pleased when he himself married an Italian girl. He said this so easily that I felt I could, at long last, venture to ask the question I had longed to ask from the beginning, which of course was what exactly had happened to his wife, how she had come to die. I asked hesitantly, ready to apologise if I could sense he felt it an intrusion, but he answered readily enough, speaking very quietly. It was dark, and the candles had burned low, and I could not see his expression. He told me that his wife had been ill for some time after the birth of Francesca, and that, though she had seemed to recover, ever after she had spells of profound depression which completely incapacitated her. These were made worse by two miscarriages she suffered later. One day, when he was away from home and the nanny who cared for Francesca was away for the day, his wife took an overdose of sleeping pills. He said he was certain she simply miscalculated the dose and did not intend to kill herself but that she had done so. Francesca was asleep beside her when she did it, but woke soon after and stayed beside her mother trying to rouse her. It was four hours before the nanny returned.

  So now I know, and I wish I did not.

  18 July

  I hardly slept last night for thinking about Mr Russo’s wife. All these tragedies people have in their lives, hidden from the eye, and time rolls on over them leaving no visible trace whatever of the hurt and wounds inside. How could she do it, with her child beside her, but then all she may have longed to do was sleep, not die. I cannot believe she did it on purpose; it would have been too cruel. I wonder why she was so depressed. She had everything, surely. I think and think about her, and am ashamed of how much I long to know. There are no photographs of her in this villa and I want to see what she looked like, though her appearance has no relevance to anything. It seems so strange to go in and out of people’s lives as I seem destined to do, part of their history for such a brief time and never becoming intimate in any way. They will hardly remember me, but I will always remember them.

  19 July

  Felt so unsettled today, disturbed even. Francesca went riding with her instructor after her siesta. It is not nearly so hot, though I am told this is a brief respite and the fierce heat will return at the weekend. I started to walk, following the dirt track which leads from this house to the old road, but it was so dusty, the track, and even walking slowly I threw up little clouds which coated my legs and felt uncomfortable. How still it was as I rested where the track meets the road. I stood motionless, gazing at the rolling land, so green when I arrived and now burned and yellow. There is a cypress tree, just one, far down the road to the west, and in the distance, to the east, a group of these trees are huddled together as though in a meeting. No houses, no people. Mr Russo says his house is very old and that he merely renovated it. It was never part of a village but was once fortified with a wall round it and outside the wall were two or three small, primitive dwellings in such bad condition he had them knocked down. I wonder what effect this had on his poor wife, living here, without any company, and no other houses to walk to. It is a very strange place for a man like Mr Russo to choose to live, going as he does most days to Rome. But it will surely be a safe place if, as Mr Russo predicts, civil war breaks out. It is only in Rome that there is any sense of violence. Here, it is so peaceful and calm. I hope Mr Russo is wrong. I hope there will be no war of any kind.

  21 July

  Went to Rome, with Kenneth and Mr Russo, feeling I ought to, since I have so little time left and have hardly been at all. Giorgio drove because Mr Russo has a mild eye infection. On the outskirts, we passed a long line of ragged-looking men digging up the road. Giorgio said something and I asked Mr Russo to translate. Giorgio apparently had said there had been nothing wrong with the road. I was puzzled and asked why in that case it was being dug up. To employ as many men as possible, said Mr Russo, it is il Duce’s policy. He smiled oddly when he said this. The city was crowded and noisy, quite vile I thought, and I could hardly cope with the crowds and heat and became bad-tempered and wished myself back in the isolation of Mr Russo’s house. I sought the cool of a church, the Santa Maria Maggiore, which was mercifully mostly empty of sightseers. The mosaics either side of the nave, showing scenes of the Old Testament, are beautiful. I thought of trying to climb the bell tower but it is forbidden. It calmed me, being there, and I managed better when I came out but I was glad to meet Mr Russo and Kenneth as arranged and return home at sunset. Mr Russo looked worried. I asked if his eyes were worse, but he said no, he was merely tired, and concerned about someone he knew, a lawyer, who had disappeared. Giorgio said something then and I understood the gist, which was that people, good people, were disappearing all the time now. I don’t know what he means.

  Kenneth had a headache and retired early, thank goodness. Mr Russo has sensed the enmity between us and is, I think, amused. He asked tonight if I had any brothers and I told him about George and the twins and Michael. He was interested in what I told him about George and said that one of the reasons he had bought this house was that living here made the whole idea of war seem absurd. I asked him if he would feel the same in America and he said alas, no, and sighed. I marked particularly what he said next. In America, he said, I will rejoin life, just as you will back in England. Rejoin life, I echoed, and I thought of A Tale of Two Cities, but did not say so. Yes, he said, we are withdrawn from people here and
the chance of relationships is very small. If we stay withdrawn, we stultify. It was dark and I could not see his face, only the glow of his cigarette. Don’t think me impertinent, he went on, but I feel you have not yet been in love? His voice did go up at the end, the questioning tone was unmistakenly there. I said no, I had not, that I had only felt a fleeting attraction for a time to a man who had soon gone out of my life. Well, said Mr Russo, all that is to come, for the first time for you and, God willing, again for me. But it won’t come here. We sat a while longer on the terrace. I felt I wanted to say something without knowing what. I wanted to tell him how I admired him and liked him but thought it would sound unctuous. Do I mean unctuous? Yes, I think so. We stood up together soon after and wished each other goodnight. I suspect I will never sleep. I feel alert even though an hour or so ago I was so very tired.

  28 July

  My last day here. Farewells to Mr Russo and the obnoxious Kenneth have already been made because they are staying in Rome for the next few days. Mr Russo has arranged all the details of my departure and I have nothing to worry about. I thanked him effusively for his kindnesses to me and his generosity and he said that on the contrary he was in my debt because I had done so much for his daughter, and he only wished he could have persuaded me to accompany her to America. I did not tell him how tempted I have been to do just that, tempted and tormented also, by the thought that I may be making another wrong choice and turning aside from an opportunity which I will not get again. Will I look back in future years and wish I had gone to America? It would be too terrible. But there is Mother to think of, and Tilda’s need, and America is a very long way away and going there quite different from coming here. Well, the die is cast.