Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  10 July

  I am so worried about Grace. There has been no word from her since Paris was occupied last month and, though she has always been a poor correspondent, this is the longest gap there has ever been. I wish I knew what has happened to her. Charles says postal communication with London is non-existent, of course. But he thinks Grace will be perfectly safe. He has heard that about 3,000 Britons have been put into a camp at St Denis but he thinks Grace will not have been among them. He’s been told that the Germans are encouraging normal life in Paris and she will, he says, probably be working as usual, protected by her employers from harm. I wish I could be so optimistic.

  14 July

  Letter from Robert, at last, after such a long gap. If I’d allowed myself to be, I would have been frightened by his silence. I might have guessed the reason: he has been ill, with flu, but says he is perfectly well now. He says he is a rotten soldier so it’s lucky that his job, at the moment anyway, still consists mainly of admin. and not exactly front-line soldiering. He is not suffering much privation at all, and is well fed and not in as much danger, he says, as I am in, and he wishes I would leave London. The more everyone wants me to leave London, the more stubborn I become about staying.

  *

  Millicent begins to feel less stubborn once the Blitz starts at the beginning of September. Twice she is nearly killed by a bomb, once when she is walking down Oxford Street, thinking she has time, when the sirens go, to get down into the Underground but instead is caught by a bomb blast which takes the glass out of every shop window in the street; and once when she is with some children in a school and the roof falls in and two children are badly injured. From September to November, London is bombed every night – fifty-seven consecutive nights – and she is becoming almost immune to the devastation all round her. There is plenty of work for the WVS, but in October she takes the decision she’d been thinking about.

  *

  5 October

  When I asked about driving ambulances I was told to apply in writing to the HQ in Haverstock Hill, Hampstead – really, as if anyone has time to write letters with all this hell going on. But anyway, I wrote, saying I’d been driving since I was 25 and was very experienced and knew London well, not absolutely truthful, but never mind, a little fudging is permissible, surely. I have not had a reply, and so I rang up and got a very bad-tempered woman who had no knowledge of any letter from me and cared less. But she said they were very short of drivers and that I could come for a test if I thought I had a realistic chance of passing it. I asked how could I judge that and she snapped that it was a most stringent test and that the vans and cars used were often heavy vehicles with difficult gears, and I mustn’t imagine anything dinky. I was so outraged at the insinuation that I was some sort of flibbertigibbet that I lied and said I’d driven a lorry. Well, I did once, for about a hundred yards on a school outing when a lorry driver delivering something had left his cab, with the keys still in it, and the lorry needed to be moved from in front of the school gate so that our coach could get by. I remember feeling very pleased with myself. So I am going for this ‘stringent test’ tomorrow.

  6 October

  Why do people testing others have to be so very unpleasant about it? There is no excuse at all, especially in the present situation. But I think I coped well, refusing to be made nervous, and putting up with the endless criticisms of my examiner, a woman who didn’t even have the manners to tell me her name. It was ‘Get in’ and ‘Start’ and ‘Drive forward’, all of which I did, coolly, taking my time, and not for one minute betraying my dismay at the state of the vehicle I was meant to drive. The car itself was not old, maybe two or three years only, but it was in a poor state and must have been driven many miles because everything about it seemed so worn. I had no problem with the gears, but the handbrake was hellish to operate, a real sweat, and my examiner kept saying ‘Handbrake!’ whenever she ordered me to stop, as though she couldn’t see I was struggling to use it. We drove about for half an hour, and luckily I knew my way because of living around the area, and so no instruction really took me by surprise. The brakes were poor and needed the full thrust of my foot to work, which was difficult because my legs are so short, but I managed well. There was no conversation at all. At the end, I was asked to come for another test on another vehicle tomorrow but I said I couldn’t, I had work to do. So, I suppose, that is that and they won’t have me.

  11 October

  Miraculously, had a letter from the ambulance HQ telling me to report for duty next Monday. I like the way they assume that the job I’m doing now can just be dropped and I can be at their disposal. I told Miss Arkwright today, and she said she would be sorry to lose my services but she quite understood and wished me luck. I will need it. I have seen these ambulances tearing around the bomb sites and the drivers are fully tested by all the debris and have to discover ingenious ways to get round it. I’ll only be driving an ambulance, or what has to serve as one, not attending to the wounded who are going to travel in it, but all the same I am nervous. I know the drivers do help if they are needed. Nobody asked me how I would cope with gruesome sights, and I don’t know myself.

  2 November

  Rain all day and all night and one of the worst nights for bombing, though every night is bad and has been for weeks and weeks. Haven’t been home for three days. Slept a little at HQ between sorties and ate here, pretty disgusting food but after what we’d seen there wasn’t much of an appetite. As everyone says, it is seeing the dead and injured children which tears one up. I don’t really think I want to write much about it. We took three little bodies out of the rubble in Euston Road today, all covered in grey dust but with no obvious lacerations and when we got them into the ambulance Irene said, I want to wash their poor faces, and she did, so tenderly, washed the grime away until their white skin was flawless. They should never have been in London, all the children should have been got out and not allowed to return.

  9 December

  Victoria Station hit last night. Not our area but there were so many fires throughout the City and so many ambulances needed that we were ordered to go to Victoria. I thought I knew the way and headed off at full speed but then had to twist and turn because of obstructions due to bomb damage and thought I would never get there. When we did, we were instructed to take several people with horrific-looking leg injuries to Westminster Hospital and I had the same difficulty finding my way and worried terribly about how I was throwing the wounded around. I could hear their groans, and one woman was keening in a high-pitched hysterical way and I was sweating with anxiety. It was a long night. Today has been quiet. I am to have forty-eight hours off, at home.

  10 December

  The house is so cold even though I’ve lit fires in the living-room and my bedroom. It looked forlorn and neglected when I came in, but then it has been, it hasn’t been cleaned for weeks, and the blackout being left up and the windows boarded for most of the time hasn’t helped. It was like coming home to a tomb and I had to be strict with myself and repeat over and over how fortunate I am to have a house in one piece. Being truly homeless would make me wretched, I care about my house so much, too much given that it is only bricks. Again and again I’ve seen women standing outside the ruins of their homes wailing, My house, my house, and people soothing them by saying, Never mind your house, love, you’re alive and that’s all that matters, but I know how they feel. Still, not much joy in my home today. All I’ve done is sleep. When I woke up I couldn’t credit I’d slept ten whole hours without interruption, though it occurs to me that a siren may have gone off and I simply didn’t hear it.

  11 December

  Horrible night in the Underground. Left home about eight to go and visit Charles and the sirens went as I was near Goodge Street, so I went down into the Underground to shelter and got trapped there until dawn. How lucky I’ve been not to have to use Underground stations as shelters up to now. They are terrible places, stink to high heaven, and the dirt is appalling. So many p
eople were packed down there I couldn’t believe I would be able to find a square inch of space, and when a woman whose legs I’d stepped over said I could sit beside her, she’d put her bag on her knee to make room, I could hardly bring myself to squat on the filthy gap she made vacant. But I did. I closed my eyes and clutched my knees and tried to shut everything out but it was impossible. There was so much crying of one sort or another going on, and then someone tried to start up singing, there were yells of ‘Shut your face’, and every time a bomb was heard there were screams. A man near me was praying out loud, over and over, and at the end of every rendition of the Lord’s Prayer paused only to have a fag. The smoke was thick in the foul air, poisoning it further. I didn’t have a book with me, and cursed my lack of foresight, I should always keep one with me, but unless I’d also remembered a torch I wouldn’t have been able to read, with the light being so dim. Most people, I noted, were doing nothing at all, either just sitting, enduring, or sleeping. A few women were knitting, a few playing cards with their children, but mostly we all just sat.

  15 December

  Tilda wants me to go to her for Christmas. She has moved into a vacant cottage near her mother-in-law and says there is plenty of room. I think I will go. There is no Robert to leave behind, unless he gets leave, and he hasn’t mentioned that he is due any. Sometimes, images of him pop into my head and I long for him so much, but then I become so upset I’ve had to train myself to banish them the moment they appear. It is the only way I can manage. It will be good to get out of London to a place where there are no bombs, though it’s hard to credit such a place does exist.

  24 December

  Hellish journey, took nine hours and three changes of train to make such a simple journey. Tilda met me, driving her sister-in-law’s car, terrified that the little bit of petrol in the tank would run out before she got home, so the last bit was easy. She hadn’t brought any of the children because she said she wanted a few minutes alone with me. I thought at first that she meant just to enjoy the peace and catch up on what I’d been doing but it was something worse. Alfred has been killed, shot down over Hamburg ten days ago. I just sat beside her in the car trying to absorb the news. People always say this, but this sort of death is unreal. I saw Father die and, though I didn’t actually see Mother die, I saw her dead, but Alfred’s death is unbelievable. All day since I heard, even when there was so much noise, happy noise, in this pretty cottage, I have been hearing silence in my head. Alfred just seems a blank. I can’t feel grief, and certainly haven’t shed tears yet. I remember how glad I was when he left my house and how fervently I hoped never to see him again. I wonder how Albert feels. They were not close, the way twins are supposed to be, but they each used to say they could sense when the other was ill. Albert is in the navy, on a destroyer, and he may not know about his brother’s death. George, of course, will tell him, he keeps in touch with the twins. How lucky that George is too old to be in this war, or at least at the moment he is, though if things go on getting worse even he might not be safe. Tilda says that Esther and the children have left Brighton as planned and moved in with Esther’s mother, and George is to manage the farm.

  25 December

  A lovely Christmas Day, far removed from war except for the absence of some luxuries, though we did have a large chicken and an excellent Christmas pudding with real fruit in it. Charles managed to get here late last night, after the children had finally gone to bed, and so we were a very happy family. I say ‘we’, including myself, but that is what has happened, Tilda’s family has become mine. I am the maiden aunt, taken in and made one of them, and I had better get used to the role. But about one thing I am determined: after this war is over, Robert must be accepted. Even spinster aunts can have friends, special friends. When I had the accident, and Tilda was forced into meeting Robert at the hospital, he said she was perfectly civil to him and kind and that she didn’t seem at all the sort of person to be as narrow-minded as I’d said she was. Well, we will put that to the test after the war.

  29 December

  Home again, another wearying journey, and pretty dreary trundling the last few miles into the station. The train stopped and started and we all stared out at the devastation we were passing through and a sort of eerie silence settled on us all. The train was packed to capacity, with the corridors as crowded as the carriages and full of men in uniform. Women too, actually. How smart the WRNSs look, but I think if I were in the services I’d rather be in the WAAF like Daphne. The war in the air seems more important somehow and I’d feel I was helping it. I wonder if I am now too old to join up if I wanted to. I think 40 is likely to be the cut-off point and I am not yet quite 40 and certainly don’t look it. That is not vanity talking either. When I enrolled with the WVS, and again when I reported to the ambulance people, they all thought I was much younger than I’d said. So if there was any problem, I could lie quite convincingly and lop five years off. At last, some advantage to always having looked young for my age through being small and slight.

  2 January 1941

  Thick snow, almost impossible to drive down some streets, but thank God there were no emergencies last night. My house is so cold, each room a little igloo, and I sleep with two hot-water bottles (one of which is nearly perished and I will never be able to get another) and all the blankets I’ve got and then my big overcoat across the bottom of the bed. I lie there cuddled up to the bottles, thinking how the only real warmth comes from another body, and then I think of Robert, though I try not to, and wonder where he is and remember how he clasped me to him so that we fitted together like spoons, his front to my back, and that way fell asleep.

  5 February

  More snow. God, what a winter. We might as well be at the North Pole. I try to train myself to remember what sun feels like and struggle to be back in Italy all those years ago, barely able to walk in the garden for the heat. I wonder what Francesca looks like now. But thinking of Italy doesn’t work, my imagination can’t make enough effort to convince me that I am back there. We’re not supposed to have proper baths but last night when I came home so weary after a long day trundling round bomb sites, I thought to hell with this and I filled my bath to the absolute brim and used the last of the bath salts Tilda gave me for Christmas, and I soaked myself in the deliciously hot, scented water and never wanted to get out. Just as well I indulged because today the Ascot heater will not function and there is no hot water at all. Here am I, moaning about hot water and there is a war on, and I haven’t the foggiest idea what is happening. I don’t even seem to listen to the news any more. When I am not thinking about wanting hot baths I am craving fruit. There is no fruit anywhere. The last apple I had was at Tilda’s. I fantasise an orchard of apples and myself picking a Worcester and sinking my teeth into its gorgeous red skin.

  14 March

  Robert comes home tomorrow, for forty-eight hours. The telegram arrived when I was at the ambulance station and was already eight hours old so, by the time I got home and read it, I knew he would be on his way. I feel nervous more than excited. Of course I must get time off, so I rang HQ and they were not pleased and not very understanding but then they never are. It was Miss Buchanan on duty and she said if there was an emergency she hoped I wouldn’t put my own pleasure first. I was furious. Then she grudgingly added I was one of their best drivers, but I wasn’t going to be taken in by that sort of soft-soaping. I will do my shift tonight and then I am determined to claim a full forty-eight hours off. I wish I had time to have my hair cut. It has grown so long and ragged, and shampoo is so hard to get I don’t wash it as often as it needs and keeping it under my uniform cap most of the day makes it greasy too. There is a hairdresser’s still open near our HQ but I don’t think I have time to go there. No chance of finding a lipstick either.

  17 March

  Well, that’s it. He’s gone. Classic scene at the station, me clinging to him and he kissing me with a passion he certainly didn’t show over his leave. I looked at all the other couples on t
hat crowded platform and wondered if any of them would have similar tales to tell. I don’t know what went wrong. God knows, I tried to be loving and to look attractive. I dug out that blue dress he used to love me in and though it is far too cold for it I wore it and pinned up my hair and thought I looked quite beguiling and, in fact, it cheered me up to have made such an effort and find myself looking not half bad. I’d made the best meal I could, too, for his arrival. He can’t have known what a struggle it was to get the meat even if it was only brisket, and how much of an effort to find proper cheese and some celery for afterwards. He didn’t seem to appreciate anything. All he said was that he was exhausted and it is true he looked it, very gaunt and grey. On his arrival he slept for a solid twelve hours which out of forty-eight is a lot. Then he said what he most wanted was some fresh air and so we went to Kensington Gardens and walked in the park. The weather is lovely, so sunny and warm, and all the crocuses were out and I felt suddenly happy and hopeful and we had lunch in the cafeteria near the Albert Memorial, not a very good lunch, the fish was peculiar-tasting, but it felt quite festive. Afterwards we went and sat by the Round Pond where children were sailing boats just as they always have done. But Robert spoiled this tranquillity by talking about the progress of the war and the battle going on in the Atlantic, and I really didn’t want to hear about it and said so. Blinkered as ever, he said, and I snapped back that I drove an ambulance and was certainly not blinkered, but that this was a lovely afternoon and for once I wanted to forget all the horror. He apologised. But the mood was altered and when we went home he took up a book almost immediately and started reading. It was Pilgrimage, one of my books, and I know he wasn’t the least bit interested in it, but he pretended to be. And now I am in bed and he has gone and we only made love once and it was awkward and he felt strange and behaved roughly, and I felt used afterwards. I think he was ashamed. He says he is depressed and hates the army. Then, on that station platform, when it was no good at all, he suddenly kissed me how he used to, and his eyes filled with tears and he said he loved me and he was sorry to have been so useless and of course I said it didn’t matter and that I loved him too. But his gloom and lack of interest in me had mattered. It’s left me feeling resentful and wondering if in fact I spoke the truth. Do I love him?