11 August
Percy came by, looking dreadfully haggard and full of the awful news of how one of his favourite patients, a little boy of 5 with leukaemia, died. Doctors are not supposed to take things personally but Percy does. We walked in the park, then he came back for a cold supper. I know a little about him now. He is one of four boys and seems devoted to his parents. He is going to visit them next weekend and wonders if I would fancy a day in the country. It is not so very far, they live near Reading, and he goes by train. But if I go, it will look as though we are courting and I do not want to give that impression. Taking a girl home is a big step for Percy. Being taken is a big step for me. I have said I will think about it.
12 August
Frank drove up this evening and peeped his horn. I wish he would not do that. It makes the neighbours stare. I did not immediately fly to the door. Instead, I stood at the window and raised my hand in what I intended to be a mere acknowledgement of his presence. He had to get out of his car and come to the door, which did not please him. He said it was too lovely an evening to be indoors and that he had come to take me on the river. I was told to fetch a jacket and a scarf in case it turned cool later and I was so thrilled at the thought of going on the river that I could not conceal my childish delight, which of course gratified him. We drove to Charing Cross Pier and boarded a boat for the evening cruise to Greenwich. Frank had brought a hamper and we sat at the front and he produced champagne and smoked salmon and brown bread and lemon wedges and then strawberries and cream. I laughed and when he asked why – though he was laughing himself – I said because it was all so romantic. He looked quizzical and pretended to be grave and said romance was nothing to laugh at. But it was so very romantic, the river rippling in the sunset, and the skyline of London slowly slipping by, and the stars and moon on the way back when we sat close together because by then it was a little chilly. Frank was quiet, not at all his boisterous self, and when he did speak it was to make what I thought were very perceptive observations.
I was prepared for what came next. We drove back to Daphne’s house and he turned the engine off and looked at me in the dim light of the street lamp and said he loved me. He said it very steadily and quietly. I felt strangled with emotion and could do nothing but put my hand over his. He leaned forward, I thought to kiss me, but it was to whisper, Shall we go inside? He knew the house was empty. He knew I was living here alone. I felt that if I refused he would be angry, and that it would be ungrateful of me after he had gone to such trouble to give me such a wonderful evening. But I was afraid to say yes, knowing that if we went inside there would be far more dangerous requests. Finally I found my voice, and still holding his hand I managed to say how much I cared for him too, but that if he came in I knew what would happen and I was not ready for it to happen yet, and if I had misled him I was sorry. He drew back and sighed but didn’t seem angry. Then he asked me what I wanted, did I want a ring, was that it. I was the one then who was angry. I tried to get out of the car, but he stopped me, saying, I am serious about you, Millicent, but are you serious about me? Because if not, let’s stop this now. I said I was serious but at the same time unsure. He asked of what and I said the future, our future, what a future together would turn out to be like. He said I exasperated him but that as he loved me he would excuse me. Then he started the car engine and told me to go and enjoy my beauty sleep and he would see me on Saturday.
12 August
No sleep last night. I lay awake fretting over what to do about Frank. Do I want him to propose? No, because then I would have to decide. Do I want to make love with him? Yes. My body tells me yes and has been telling me for a long time and I am tired of ignoring it. So why do I hold back? Well, it is obvious. I am not that sort of girl. Making love with a man has to mean something more than, I hope, satisfaction and pleasure. I do not want to be dragged deeper into an affair with Frank only to find we are not really made for each other. Then there is the worry of it all. I could not bear to become pregnant. I am sure Frank knows how to guard against this but accidents can happen. I must talk to Tilda. She is the only person I can consult who knows about such things, except for Daphne and I would never ask her. She would enjoy my embarrassment too much, and plague me ever after to know what happened.
13 August
Went to see Tilda. We walked in the park with Florence and Jack, and when they were happy playing I brought up the subject of Frank. When I had finished she asked what was wrong with me that I dithered so. She pointed out, which she had no need to do, that I am 30 next year and surely must be thinking about settling down. I said she sounded like Mother and that I hadn’t confided in her for her to sound like Mother. She apologised then and said it was just that she had thought that I was happy at last and had found a man I could love. I said I was attracted strongly to him, but was that love? The children had started to fight by then and Tilda had to pull them apart and this gave me the opportunity to say that I wished I knew how to be able to prevent having a baby because then I might be able to take things further with Frank. Tilda frowned and said did I mean sleep with him without marrying him, and I said yes. She appeared shocked. I reminded her of what she had said on her wedding-day about knowing how to prevent becoming pregnant and asked her to tell me about it. She hesitated, and then said she had been fitted with a ‘cap’ which was the safest method of contraception known. She said there was a clinic now where women could go. I said I wanted to go to this clinic and asked where it was and what I should do. Tilda gave me the address very reluctantly, when we got back to her house. She said it was a poor area, near the Holloway Road, and that I should dress as dowdily as possible or I would stand out and be uncomfortable. She said I would have to pretend to be married, and added that she hoped I would not go: she did not approve.
14 August
Have bought a cheap brass ring and put it on my ring finger. I thought I would have to wait ages for an appointment at the clinic but I was told just to come along and was given directions on how to find it and the hours it is open. I felt so nervous, more nervous than I have ever been in my life. It was not hard to dress the part of a badly off young married woman. My navy teaching skirt is well worn and my shoes down-at-heel and I have a jumper with darns in the elbows and an old coat I wear when it rains and which Mother says makes me look like a tramp and not a respectable schoolteacher. The clinic is in North London, in Marlborough Road in an ordinary house. My heart thudded as I neared it, but once inside I felt calm. It is not like a clinic at all. The walls are painted white and there are blue curtains, pretty curtains, at the windows, and a big jar of roses on a wooden table as you go in. Really, it is a very surprising place, and so was the reception given to me. I was not even asked if I was married, only how long I had been. I lied and said three weeks, and then panicked because as I said this I realised that when I was examined the doctor would know I was a virgin and so I hurriedly said my husband had been obliged to go away immediately after our wedding and he was returning tomorrow – oh, the rigmarole I came out with! Lie after lie tumbled out and I knew I was blushing furiously but in a way this helped because I expect she assumed the blushes were about confessing my marriage had not been consummated. At any rate, I was then taken into another room and told to take my knickers and stockings off and climb up onto the bed and relax on my side. The doctor chatted away all the time she was examining me and I must say, uncomfortable though this was, it was not painful. She said everything was in order and that I was easy to fit. Then she produced a small rubber cap and put some ointment on it and slipped it in. Once inside me, I could not feel it. Then she made me practise how to do this, which was embarrassing. Twice the cap slipped out of my fingers and went whizzing across the room and she laughed but I did not. Eventually, I acquired the knack and she was pleased. She put the cap into a tin box and gave me a tube of the spermicide and said to come back if there were any difficulties. I left feeling exhausted but elated. I felt clever too, and proud, to be looking after m
yself, and also a little wicked.
15 August
Percy came by, to see if I have made my mind up about tomorrow. I felt so guilty saying I could not go with him because I had forgotten about a prior engagement. He took the news well, and asked how I was, and whether I would like to go to an open-air concert with him on his next night off and I said that I would love to. I never worry about Percy being alone with me in this house. He is so trustworthy and polite, and would never try to force his attentions on me. I feel so at ease with him, and I keep wondering if this is not a sign that he is far better for me than Frank, with whom I never feel at ease, I am always wary with him and suspicious and I suppose excited. Percy talked politics tonight. He explained to me that the Labour Government is not at all secure and that it will be in danger of defeat at the next election and all its plans to create a more just society will come to nothing. Frank never talks politics, and never seems to care what the government is doing. I did not tell Percy I would be with Frank tomorrow, and felt deceitful.
*
It seems very surprising that Millicent went to the Marie Stopes clinic, but she has all the details right and obviously did. There are hints throughout her diaries in the years before this that she feels she is suppressing sexual feelings which arise quite independently of any attraction to a man and that this worries and confuses her. Tom and Matthew were attracted to her but she could not respond as they wished and she has begun to think, before meeting Frank, that she will never match her desires with any man’s for her. The relief of finding herself responsive to Frank’s advances is therefore great but it is still, considering the times, and considering her upbringing, surprising that Millicent is prepared to be so daring. Clearly, it excites her, though the fact that she says she isn’t going to tell Daphne, or seek her advice about birth control, shows she is not entirely free of concern for her reputation. She mentions again and again, once she and Frank have slept together, that ‘no one guessed’ and this pleases her. She relishes knowing of her own irreproachable respectability in the eyes of the world and behind it her new passionate love life. Not much, though, is written about this love life. There are no details about the sex. Indeed, the entries for the weekend she spent with Frank at this time, at a hotel in Suffolk, are quite brief, and prim in tone. She describes the hotel as seeming like a country house and writes that it was beside a river and that the view from the bedroom was over an orchard. She also mentions having bought a peach-coloured satin nightdress which she worries is too ‘slinky’. She says she doesn’t want to write about making love because ‘it will sound sordid written down and it was not, it was simply wonderful’. What confuses her is that, in spite of her passion for Frank, she is more drawn than ever to Percy as a friend. With colossal understatement she comments that this is ‘awkward’. I have perhaps included too many of the entries to do with her agonising but she herself thought of this Frank/Percy dilemma as so crucial she could hardly stop writing about it and seemed to have no idea how it made her appear.
*
31 August
Spent the day tidying and cleaning the house thoroughly, ready to leave it tomorrow. Daphne will not even notice how immaculate it is, how different from the appalling mess in which she left it, but it pleases me to make this transformation. I resisted the temptation to list all the things I have done, from scrubbing the oven (it was thick with grease) to washing and ironing the material pretending to be curtains. Why being a political activist, which is what dear Daphne calls herself, has to mean living like a slut I do not know. Percy’s rooms are as neat as a pin and he is a hard-working doctor and just as politically active. He only has two rooms, which he showed me with some embarrassment I felt, but they are made very pleasant by lots of little touches of a type not usually associated with young men, or none of the young men I have known. He has a beautiful cloth, which he brought back from Spain, on the round table in his sitting-room and some pretty bowls of pottery on his shelves, also from Spain. He is such a gentle man as well as a gentleman. I will be sorry not to see him as often as I have been doing these last few weeks. He has had a big influence on me, making me see that I cannot go on complaining that I hate teaching and dread returning to it and yet do nothing about changing this state of affairs. Others have said the same thing but Percy is constructive about it. He has made me sit down and think, really think, about my future. Percy doesn’t laugh when I say I want to do something with my life, I want to make it mean something. He is only surprised that everyone does not feel the same need to make some kind of contribution to society. Well, Frank doesn’t, but I could hardly tell him that – Frank says life is for living and enjoying yourself while you can, and I do enjoy myself with him, but the trouble is that for me enjoyment is not enough. I am in my thirtieth year and still in a muddle.
1 September
Back to Brighton, on a beautiful day. My home most welcoming, though with the windows closed for so long the whole place felt stuffy. I am not at all sure that Grace really did come and air the place as promised but she says she did. She is becoming very pretty, prettier than Tilda or I ever were, but she is ever so pert and full of herself. Mother says she is like I was at 13 but I have no recollection of being so cheeky and would certainly never have asked any adult the kind of questions Grace asks me. She is quite disturbingly inquisitive about one’s personal life. I must ask Tilda if Grace subjects her to the inquisition to which she subjects me, but then I suppose living in Brighton I have become closer to Grace. She does not like Esther and wishes she and George and their baby lived somewhere else. I try not to pass comment though comment is exactly what Grace wants, to use as ammunition, I suspect.
2 September
Last day of freedom. Frank wanted to come down but I would not let him. I don’t want him in my home. That is a terrible thing to say but it is how I feel. I would rather meet him in London, or go with him to an hotel, as we did in Suffolk. Having Frank stay here would seem sordid to me. I don’t think Frank minds. He likes the excitement of hotels. I don’t think he has quite got over my boldness. I don’t think I have quite got over it myself. I will never tell anyone, though of course Tilda must suspect. She never asks if I went to the clinic and I never mentioned going. I look at other young women all the time now and speculate about them in the crudest fashion. I will not confide in Daphne. To her, it would seem unexceptional because she has been having affairs for so long. She would want to know the details and I have no intention of divulging them.
6 September
Today, Mr Brennan beat Tommy Dixon in front of the whole school, for spitting at Miss Watkins. He beat him so hard that his cane broke, but not before he had drawn blood, which we could all see running down Tommy’s legs. He is such a tiny, fragile little boy with hardly any flesh on him and the cane had cut straight through the seat of his threadbare pants. The child collapsed in a heap and had to be carried off the platform. Mr Brennan then threatened all the children with the same fate if they ever did anything as disgusting as Tommy had done. Miss Watkins looked pale, though she is nearly as big a bully as Mr Brennan is, but the sight of this savage punishment had affected even her. I was shaking and despised myself for not having leapt onto the platform and rescued poor Tommy. He should not have spat at Miss Watkins but she is a tyrant and no one knows what she had done to him. I am sure he was provoked beyond endurance. Nobody said anything in the staff room. We were all very quiet. I could hardly get through the rest of the day. The children in every standard were cowed and docile so it hardly mattered that I found it difficult to concentrate.
But by the end of the afternoon I had made up my mind. I went to see Mr Brennan and gave in my notice. He laughed and lolled back in his chair and told me not to be so foolish. He said I was too soft-hearted and that children like Tommy Dixon needed to be taught a lesson they would never forget. I managed to say that I would never forget it either and that it had made me sick. Mr Brennan snorted and said if I resigned he would not give me a reference and I
would never teach again. I said he had made me never want to teach again. He snatched a piece of paper from his desk then and told me to put my resignation in writing for the education authority. I said I would do that from home. I turned to go out, shaking, and he sprang up and put his hand on my shoulder to detain me and I was so alarmed I cried out but all he wanted to do was make me stand still and listen to his denunciation of my entire character. Eventually, he let me go and I took my things from the staff room and left. For ever.
7 September
It was silly to write that. I have not left that awful place ‘for ever’. I cannot leave for a whole half-term: those are the rules. I don’t know what would happen if I disobeyed them but I am not going to do so. It would not, after all, be fair to the children in my class. Leaving them at half-term will be hard enough on them and if a replacement for me is not found they may have to have Mr Brennan himself which would terrify them. He is going to make these weeks as horrible for me as he can, I can tell. My class is overcrowded as it is but today he sent extra children to join in without any explanation as to why this was necessary. They are all very unruly and disrupted my teaching with throwing pieces of chalk at the blackboard and other petty kinds of misbehaviour. I could not bring myself to send them to Mr Brennan for punishment, knowing what he would inflict upon them, as he well realised. One of these boys is nearly as tall as I am and I cannot physically handle him. He is a well-known troublemaker but one for whom Mr Brennan has some kind of peculiar fondness. At any rate, he is never beaten as little Tommy Dixon was. Tommy is not at school.
Diary of an Ordinary Woman Page 17
