Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  8 November

  Astonished to have a visit from Esther and George, completely unannounced. They just turned up on my doorstep and what was awful was that for a full minute I didn’t recognise either of them. Esther was always plump, not to say fat, and now she is quite gaunt, and George, who was always painfully thin and weedy after the war, is now so muscular looking, really strong and fit. They were in a car, a pretty clapped-out old car, but still a car, and one for which they’d got petrol somehow. They say they sent Christmas cards giving their new address to Tilda and Grace and me, but if so I never got mine and if Tilda and Grace got theirs they never mentioned them, so I am not sure I believe them. At any rate, they’d found out about what happened only last week through an old copy of The Times in which Mrs Routledge had put a death notice, a long saga about how they came across it, told in excruciatingly boring detail by Esther, and had come to say they will give the twins a home. I had to take a deep breath not to say something I would regret. I made tea, glad the twins were at school, and said they already had a home and that Tilda and Charles had appointed me their guardian and I was only too happy to be a mother to Connie and Toby. And I apologised for not trying to find them and let them know what happened. I felt guilty about that, I should have made the effort. Then Esther said she just wondered if the twins wouldn’t be better off in a proper family with two big brothers to take the place of Florence and Jack. Luckily I had my back to her when she said it, refilling the teapot, so I was able to close my eyes and count to ten, and then turn and say, More tea?, ignoring what she’d said. She might have repeated it, but George coughed and shot her a look and instead she launched into an account of her recent illness, something to do with her thyroid. The only thing George asked me was whether I was all right for money, and of course I am, that has never been a problem. They stayed about two hours, wanting to meet the twins, and came with me to the school. I must say it was of great satisfaction to me that Connie and Toby raced out and flung their arms round my legs, taking one leg each as usual so that I couldn’t move. They were shy with their aunt and uncle, but then they’ve never met them since they were babies. Esther thinks Connie looks like me and Toby like Alfred. I said I presumed they’d heard about Alfred and they said yes, and had I heard from Albert, which I haven’t, not recently, and neither had they, though they are in touch with Michael who is flying Spitfires.

  They gave me their address before they left and seemed sincere in their encouragement to visit. The twins would enjoy going to a farm so maybe we will one day. Before she left, Esther asked if I had a ‘sweetheart’ in the Forces. I nearly said no, but that I had one in Changi Jail, but I held back. I don’t want Esther feeling sorry for me, but of course my saying I had no sweetheart makes her feel even more sorry. You never had any luck with men, did you, Millicent? she said, mock-regretful. Her final remark was, You’ve got two lovely children, so you’ve turned out lucky in the end, every cloud has its silver lining. She maddens me.

  31 December

  Glad to get rid of 1942. Surely the new year cannot be so bad. Mr Waring, the old man who gardens for Joan, says the tide has turned in the war and that now the Americans are in we will win, if not next year then the year after. I hope he is right. Christmas was a strain. Not so much the difficulty of getting food, with shortages of everything worse than ever, but the sadness of the first without Tilda and Charles and Florence and Jack, but I think I felt it far more than the children who were much more taken up with their presents, and as Joan had invited us for the day itself there was enough of a crowd to make everything seem festive. It would have been too pathetic if we three had had to manage on our own. The twins don’t really remember last Christmas, thank God, though Connie did say, when Joan’s husband arrived home, Daddy came last Christmas Eve, didn’t he, in the snow. I said yes, and she nodded, and let it go. No snow this year. It was mild and wet.

  *

  The whole of 1943 passes so slowly for Millicent that she comments often that she is in a ‘dream’, a ‘haze’, a ‘stupor’ and that she carries out all her maternal and domestic duties automatically without really knowing how she does them. There is a great deal about the problems caused by rationing, which as a single woman was never a real problem for her before. The twins grow out of their clothes and she can’t find new ones to buy in spite of having the coupons and feels embarrassed at dressing them in cast-offs, which don’t fit properly, given to her by their Aunt Joan. She has never grown close to Joan, but when Joan leaves Blockley to go back to her own home (location not mentioned) she misses her and begins to wonder all over again if it would be safe for her also to return to her own house in London. A fierce raid at the beginning of October, in which 30 tons of bombs were said to have fallen on the City, dissuades her.

  In November, she hears from Esther that Albert has been killed and Michael has been reported missing believed killed. She is appalled at how she accepts this awful news, with resignation and without real, agonising grief. Daphne comes for a weekend leave just before Christmas and is full of the wild times she continues to enjoy with her Dutch airman. In the whole year there has been no letter from Robert.

  *

  1 January 1944

  What a dismal New Year. Dreary weather, the twins ill with measles, and a feeling of utter listlessness. Connie is worse than Toby who, though the spots are out, hasn’t a fever and is quite lively. Connie’s spots all run into each other and she burns with a temperature of 101º. Dr Grant came and said she was to be bathed with cold water at regular intervals and kept in bed. There is no problem about that, she just lies there, very obedient. Last night she cried for Tilda, it was heart-breaking. She has never mentioned what she calls her ‘gone’ Mummy for months but last night I would not do. She feels the difference somehow, I suppose in how I hug her and hold her, which must be different from how Tilda did. Buried in Connie’s memory must be a recollection of Tilda’s arms round her and in her fever it rises to the forefront of her brain. And of course Tilda was a nurse and expert at nursing, and I am hopeless and do not know what I should be doing beyond the obvious things. I try so hard to stifle the awful boredom which comes over me and, even worse, that edge of resentment of which I am so ashamed about being in this situation. If I have to play Snakes and Ladders with Toby one more time I shall scream.

  1 February

  The twins’ 7th birthday. What was it some Jesuit is supposed to have said, give me a child until he is seven and he is mine for life, something like that, meaning, I suppose, that the first seven years are the crucially formative ones. I look at Connie and Toby and speculate endlessly as to the effect of their parents’ and their siblings’ deaths and feel afraid of the consequences for them later. They both seem so content, both good-natured and bright, neither of them given to the sulks and tantrums I have seen other children indulge in. Their teacher said to me last week that they were a credit to me and for a moment I felt a pinprick of pride and pleasure until I caught myself preening and said to her no credit was due to me. All I’ve given them is stability, better than nothing but hardly compensation for what they have lost. This teacher, Miss Haddow, said to remember how young the twins are, and how children so young can adapt better than we realise so long as they have that very thing, stability. She asked if, after the war, we would stay in Blockley. I said no, that I had to think of myself too, and that there was too much about London that I missed, and besides I had a fiancé who would be coming home and his work was in London. She nodded and smiled, and said she was glad to hear I had a fiancé) and that he was safe. I thought, as I came home, that she is of an age to have lost some man in the First World War and wished I had talked to her longer and more openly. So many women like Miss Haddow, and I could have been one of them, a spinster schoolteacher teaching in a village school, except I could never have stood it. Well, whatever happens, whether Robert comes back or not, whether we are ever able to marry or not, I will never have Miss Haddow’s life. For some reason this cheers me
up, though, considering Miss Haddow is the very picture of a happy woman, I don’t know why.

  6 February

  I have to make Toby into a tree. He is very proud of being chosen to act the tree in a play they are to perform, written, I believe, by Miss Haddow. How I am to do this when getting hold of any kind of materials is impossible, I don’t know but I must try. Connie is to be a wood nymph – much easier.

  7 February

  Found some thick brown corrugated cardboard lying on the floor of the attic, as a sort of insulation I suppose. Dragged it down in one piece and by the time Toby had come home from school had cleaned the dust off. Wrapped it round him, making holes for arms and breathing spaces for his mouth and nose, and then wound ivy from the garden from top to bottom. He is thrilled.

  *

  Lots of entries of this kind follow, with Millicent rising to the occasion and clearly getting a great deal of fun out of this side of mothering. But there are some anxious moments too. Toby, whom she has thought of as sociable (as is Connie) and popular, writes a story, which Millicent clips into her diary: ‘Once upon a time there was a boy called Roy. He wanted a girl to live with him but she died. He wanted someone to play with him and he went out and met a boy and said will you play with me and the boy said no I have to go to Sunday School so he went on and met another boy and said will you play with me and he said no I have to go to my aunt’s so he went on and met a baby boy and said will you play with me but the baby could not speak and then he died and the boy never got anyone to play with and he was sad. THE END.’ This alarms Millicent so much that she goes to see Miss Haddow to ask if it means Toby is suffering from some kind of ostracism. The teacher reassures her but she is still worried and watches Toby carefully. This kind of intensity runs through the diary for this period – she’s always terrified she is failing the twins and is not the good mother Tilda was. She tries so hard, exerting herself to play every kind of game with them, from ludo and snakes-and-ladders inside to cricket and rounders in the garden. She takes them brambling and they all struggle to make jam (it doesn’t set); she collects wild flowers with them, teaching them the proper as well as the common names; she helps them draw and paint and does all manner of educational as well as recreational things with them. All the time she wonders what sort of father Robert will make when he returns.

  *

  20 March

  The most extraordinary thing: Doreen, Robert’s wife, is dead. A letter from Robert’s solicitor, the one who handled his attempt to get a divorce, arrived, saying he had had a communication from Mrs Rigg’s solicitor informing him that she had died and that he would be obliged if Mr Rigg could be told, in agreement with an instruction in Mrs Rigg’s will, made in 1938. That was of course the year Robert persuaded me to pretend I was pregnant. But it caused such fury to his wife that I cannot believe she arranged for him to be informed if she should die. It seems too kind and thoughtful. But maybe she imagined a child really had been born to us and this was consideration for its illegitimate state. It was the strangest feeling, elation and excitement and having no one to tell except Robert and he is so far away and no letter will reach him for weeks, if at all. He is the one who cared so much about my reputation, as he called it, and he will be thrilled to be able to marry me. If I want to marry him. Why did I write that, how shocking, of course I do, especially with the twins to think of. I sat down and wrote to him before I went to collect the children from school and posted the letter on the way.

  23 April

  There was a raid the night before last on Montmartre, the church of Sacré Coeur was damaged, and I worry about Grace, whose new apartment was near there the last time she wrote. But that was nearly four years ago. Dear God, four years.

  7 June

  The allies have landed in Normandy. I gather this really is the beginning of the end of this war. If I were in London, I expect I would be more aware of its significance, this landing I mean, but we are so remote from everything here. We hear bombers going over sometimes, on their way to the Midlands and the industrial cities, and there is an American base somewhere near, but there are no bombs dropped here, everything is still green and lovely, and if it were not for rationing and news on the wireless and in the papers, and the lack of men around, we would not know there was a terrible war being fought. Sometimes I think the people here believe the Blitz is all exaggerated and I wish I could have taken them on just one of my ambulance runs to see for themselves the horrific devastation and the fires and injured people. They are so sheltered from what I know to be the reality.

  14 June

  Reports of flying bombs hitting London. I feel so anxious, in a selfish way, about my house. These ‘doodlebugs’ are random and could fall anywhere. I count so much on my house being there for me when the war ends. I think about it all the time, wandering in my mind from room to room and feeling relieved to be back in my own place. I think about how I can alter it to accommodate the twins, how I can give them each a room and let them decorate these rooms as they want. In fact, I’ve begun talking to them about it, preparing the way. I thought they might have a faint memory of being there but no, they don’t, it was silly to think they would and brought up an unfortunate discussion about what had happened to their family home which Connie swore she did remember; and since she announced the kitchen lino was in black and white squares like a chess-board, I am bound to admit she may indeed be right. Anyway, I talk about us going back to London and both of them seem quite happy about this, though Toby worries about leaving his friends and whether he can take his rabbit.

  26 August

  Paris has been liberated. It was a shock to hear this not because of what it means about the war being closer to an end, but for what it means about Grace. I have tried so hard not to think about what has happened to her because it is too worrying and unbearable, but I have never understood how she could disappear so completely when Robert, much further away, got news to me. Where has she been? So long as Paris was occupied there was always an excuse for not having heard from her, not much of an excuse but still, but now there is none. If I don’t hear within a week or so I will have to start some kind of investigation into her whereabouts. I’ve written to her last address over and over, but not recently. I do not think she can be there or somehow she would have contacted me. She doesn’t know about Tilda, or our brothers. She doesn’t know I am here, and why. So much that is awful she doesn’t know.

  28 August

  The ban on visiting coastal towns has been lifted. In Blockley, this doesn’t mean much, since we are so far from the sea in any direction but, the moment I heard of this, I thought of Brighton and how wonderful it would be to take the twins there some day and watch them paddle and how I’d love to feel the sea breezes, even the wild winds, and how exhilarating it would be. It was reported tonight on the wireless that all the trains had been packed with families rushing to other seaside places, where the beaches are open, and I so wished we had been with them. The twins think they have never seen the sea, though they have – they just don’t remember, because they were too young – and they speculate very seriously about what it must be like and whether they will be brave enough to swim in it. But then it emerged that they can’t swim and have never even been in a swimming-pool never mind the sea. I must put that right. I will teach them myself just as soon as I can find a public bath we can go to. There are so many treats like that which we can look forward to when the war is over. It is like a fairy tale, When The War Is Over, full of magical surprises, and I love telling it to them and promising them visits to the zoo and the cinema, and telling them how we will have chocolate and bananas and oranges. Perhaps I overdo it, but it bucks me up as well as them.

  4 September

  Twins back at school. I wish someone would give us an estimate as to how long it will be before a cease-fire. Daphne says the war is won and it is just a matter of time. But how much time, that is the point. I don’t know if I should have let the twins begin a new term or not, w
as it wise when we will move to London the minute there is an official announcement? Daphne asks why I am in such a hurry, what’s wrong with staying tucked up in the country? But that’s what’s wrong: the being tucked up when I don’t want to be.

  1 October

  I DON’T KNOW that my hand is steady enough to write clearly, but I want to order my thoughts and writing calms me. Today I was in the garden, lifting the last of the rhubarb, my mind running on whether I had enough sugar to make it palatable to the twins and at the same time fretting about shoes for both of them, and other mundane things. My mind, these days, is so dull, cluttered up with trivia, no spark of intelligent thought in it. It was cold and I had two jumpers on and a scarf, and was in Tilda’s old wellington boots which are much too big for me so I slop about in them. I heard the dog next door bark, but it often barks for no reason – it’s a silly yappy terrier, and I paid no attention. Then I heard a banging and thought it might be on my door but, if so, I wondered why whoever it was hadn’t entered, because it is never locked. I listened and there was silence and I couldn’t be bothered to go and check until I’d finished collecting the rhubarb and hacking off the big leaves and putting them on the compost heap. So I carried on, and then, with several thick sticks of rhubarb in my arms, I turned to go in. There was a woman and a child standing hand-in-hand watching me. I called out, Hello, and walked down the garden towards them, puzzled as to who they were. About a couple of yards from them, while they still stood there motionless, my skin began to tingle, all over me, a sort of alarm whipping round the surface of my body, and my mouth went perfectly dry, but still the stranger said nothing and neither did I, not being able to. Then the woman smiled and I saw tears running down her cheeks, such pale cheeks, and I dropped the ridiculous rhubarb and held out my arms and she moved into them without speaking, lifting the child so that she too was embraced, so clumsily, so awkwardly. What I couldn’t understand was the absence of joy. This was a reunion, longed for, looked for, and yet all I felt was first alarm and then a funny kind of dread. It was how Grace looked that did it. It was Grace, but not her, and the difference was shocking and dreadful. She looked so wretched, not just worn and thin and desperately aged, but cowed and defeated. Then there was the child, so unexpected, and her presence added to the unreality of the whole arrival. Well, we went inside and I put the kettle on, though felt more like a strong drink, and we sat down and stared at each other, both of us with questions in our eyes which neither of us wished to give words to. I said, Grace, you’re safe, thank God, and she nodded and tried to smile, and put the child on her knee. This is my daughter Claudia, she said, she’s nearly 4. I got up and found a biscuit and gave it to Claudia and said hello to her. She is very small and fragile with black, black hair in two little bunches either side of her narrow little, solemn face. I was thinking idiot thoughts, like her father must be dark-haired and brown-eyed, because Grace is blonde and blue-eyed. I got to London yesterday, Grace said, I went to Tilda’s first. Her eyes filled with tears again, and she trembled so violently I had to put my arms round her again, and Claudia felt excluded and began to cry too and I had to pull myself together sharply before all three of us dissolved into howling. I went to Charles’s hospital, Grace gasped, they told me there, they gave me this address. I forced some tea into her, and some bread, and at that moment the twins burst in, full of beans, noisy and laughing and shoving each other and brandishing models of ships they’d made out of boxes at school. Claudia was frightened and hid her face in her mother’s coat, and they stood in front of Grace, frankly curious, waiting to be told who she was, but she stared at them, unable to speak, and I said. This is your Aunt Grace, my little sister, and your cousin Claudia, and they’ve just come from France, say hello. They said hello in unison, and waited again. Grace finally managed to find words, said how they’d grown, how big and strong they were, how lovely it was to see them, how she’d longed to see them. Things got a little easier after that, with Connie exerting herself to win over Claudia, and Toby going in search of his rabbit to amuse her.