Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  1 March

  Daphne came, looking mischievous. She said she’d had a drink with Frank last night and he told her he’d met me. I was furious to find myself blushing. Daphne loved that. She enjoyed telling me that he’d said I was as lovely as ever, a lie of course. I said nothing and busied myself with making tea. Daphne wouldn’t leave the subject alone, insisted on telling me that Frank was not very happy with his wife, as if I would be interested in such news. Daphne went on teasing me, saying she hadn’t known until ages after it ended that I had had an affair with Frank, how sly I’d been, how daring when I always looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in my prim little mouth. Then she said I’d made a wise choice, that Frank was good in bed, she’d enjoyed her fling with him. Well, if she thinks I care that he was her lover too she is mistaken. She says he is going to ring me, so I pointed out that I hadn’t given him my number, but she laughed and said he’d got it from her. I was so upset I couldn’t hide my distress and then she stopped tormenting me, and said she was sorry. She grew quiet and thoughtful, and went on to say how she worried about me and how wrong she thought I was to shut myself away with the twins and have no friends of my own age with whom I could enjoy some social life. She refuses to believe I am quite content. I cannot confide in Daphne, I never could.

  6 March

  I must do something. Spring in the air, I suppose, making me agitated, wanting to be off somewhere. Daphne said the other day that she wondered why I didn’t get someone to be here for the twins so that I could go back to my job. She says there are loads of women, refugees from Germany and other countries, who would jump at the chance and not cost much to employ. She’s right. I could engage someone to clean the house and shop and be here when the twins got home and stay with them till I arrived back. But I hesitate, and not just because I worry that it would not be good for the children, which is silly, since they are 9 and very mature for their age, and it is more likely it would be good rather than bad for them. No, it’s the thought of asking for my old job back, and whether I want it. I could write to the department but I don’t know who is in charge now and there is probably no one of the old team still there. Doris, maybe, but none of the others, I suspect. It will all have changed anyway, the whole organisation. I need Robert to talk it over with but I haven’t got him and must make do with myself. I think the trouble is that, though I do yearn to be something other than housewife and proxy mother, I don’t particularly want to be a social worker. The alternative, I suppose, is to go back to teaching. The government is said to be looking for more teachers and encouraging those who have left the profession to return to it.

  7 March

  Discussed returning to teaching with the twins. Very amusing. They were both amazed that I had ever been a teacher, which was a bit insulting. I asked them what they thought I had done and they said help the aeroplanes find their way, which I suppose is how Tilda described my valiant early days in the WAAF. When I pointed out that was in the war and I’d had a job before that they looked blank. To them, there is no ‘before the war’. Their memories start with the war, except for a few vague, hazy recollections. So I gave them a little résumé of my life up to 1939 and they were incredulous. What, I had lived in Italy, I had been a teacher in Brighton, I had been a social worker? (Though that took some explaining.) They were doubtful that all this was true, to say the least. To them I am just an aunt who appeared from nowhere to take the place of their mother and do what mothers do. Then Connie said, Were you married, Aunt Millicent, before you came to us? She seemed disappointed when I said no. She is too young for me to launch into an account of my personal life but one day I will tell her about Robert, though maybe not about Frank. Did no one ever propose to you? Connie went on, her little face already settling into an expression of the greatest pity and sympathy. Oh, I was asked, I said, I was proposed to by three men at different times. She loved that, and begged me to tell her who they were and why I refused their offers of marriage, but I shook my head and said I’d tell her when she’s old enough to understand. But then we got back to the main business in hand: did they think I should go back to teaching? Not in our school, said Toby. Apart from that proviso they both thought I should, but were not keen on having a stranger here when they got home to make their tea. Connie thinks they are old enough to let themselves in and look after themselves. She even recited off a whole list of classmates who do that. But I said I couldn’t allow that, not yet.

  15 March

  Have finally sent off an application to the education authority, or rather a letter inquiring if my services as a teacher might be of use. We will see. No harm in taking that first step and it makes me feel I am trying. I’ve kept all my Goldsmiths’ lecture notes and my lesson plans which surprises me, that I didn’t throw them out, I mean. I looked through them today and thought they seemed quite good, but then I remembered the difference between planning the lessons and delivering them. How tough that Brighton school was: Lord, how I hated it. Surely any other school would be better. The twins’ is excellent, it seems to me, though the classes are very big, and the Blockley school was a model of its kind.

  1 April

  Daphne has decided to marry her American and is in the process of trying to get a passage. It seems it is very difficult, with all the ships overbooked. The American, Jimmy, is doing what he can from his end, in Panama City, where he is a radio operator working for a Radio Telegraph company. As usual, Daphne flaunts his letters, laughing over them, though they are not in the least funny. She read out a passage – I refused to read it for myself – in which this Jimmy tells her he thinks she will be his perfect lifetime partner. I wonder if he knows her at all. Then another letter had her in stitches as he told her his idea of what a wife should be. It was rather fine, I thought, full of quite noble sentiments about a wife as an enthusiastic partner and not some kind of excess baggage, and ending with the firmly expressed conviction that they will be very happy together because they are not going into marriage with any ‘head-in-the-clouds’ idea or because of what he called ‘infatuation or impulsiveness’. Daphne thinks he’s ‘a hoot’, but I don’t think so at all. Really, how can he not have realised that she is the most impulsive woman in the world, her head always in the clouds? I can’t help predicting disaster.

  2 April

  Letter from Grace, saying she is expecting us at the end of the week, ‘as agreed at Christmas’. Don’t recall actually fixing a date. Trouble is, the twins don’t want to go, especially Toby, even though Christmas was such a success. He doesn’t give reasons, just says he hates the country, which is not true, and I had to point out all the things he’d loved about being in Blockley and how when he first came back to London he was forever wishing himself back in our cottage there. He says he’s changed and now he doesn’t want to leave London: he’d be bored and miss his friends and Saturday morning cinema and the zoo, and a whole host of other hastily cobbled together reasons. Connie is more reflective. She says she’s afraid of how she will feel, because of ‘you know’. No amount of encouragement would get her to enlarge on this ‘you know’, but I presume it is memories of Tilda there. Not exactly logical, but then feelings don’t have to be, indeed rarely are. I feel I should respect their reluctance, but on the other hand what about Grace? She has feelings too, and needs us, needs her family. Very carefully, I tried to explain this to the children, reminding them of Grace’s distress when she arrived and how she got better but still needed support. It was all a bit over their heads, a bit wasted on them. Connie looked concerned, and said couldn’t Grace and Claudia come again to us, but agreed that taking turns mattered. I said we must go, but not for long, only a weekend. Toby grudgingly agreed that might be bearable. Now I have to concoct an excuse for Grace, a reason why we can’t stay the whole week which is what she wants. Interviews, I think. It will have to be that I am to be interviewed for a teaching post. True, but not next week. Must make sure the twins don’t realise I’m lying. Very bad example.

  1
0 April

  The weekend was a strain. Difficult to decide why. Maybe if it hadn’t rained so hard all the time everything would’ve been different, but cooped up in that cottage – I’d forgotten quite how small it is, how cramped the rooms – or else plodding through the rain on endless walks was not enjoyable. Don’t think Grace enjoyed having us either, though nothing was said. Toby behaved badly, refusing to put wellingtons on and ruining his precious school shoes, and complaining frequently there was no one to play with. He tried to find his old friends but none of them were at home. Grace got near to saying he needs a man’s hand, as if I wasn’t aware of that. There is no man in his life at all, not just no father but no grandfather or brother, and the uncles he has are mere names to him. I worry about this, though God knows it must be a worry shared by thousands of women now, managing to bring up boys without any masculine influence. Grace said she was glad Claudia was a girl, it made everything bearable, she never stops giving thanks for it. I took the opportunity to ask if Claudia’s father was dead, and regretted it. Grace flushed crimson, and her whole face tightened and she didn’t reply. Now that Grace is better, I would have thought she could confide in me a little. After all, this is a question others, including Claudia, are going to ask her in the future and she will have to come up with some sort of answer. Still, we parted friends, each blaming the weather for a less than rapturous weekend, and made plans for her to come to us again. On now to George’s.

  15 April

  Couldn’t actually write anything at George’s. Thought we’d never find his farm in spite of Esther’s detailed directions. So many signposts still are not replaced, and those that were point in wrong directions. We got there eventually and it was a pleasant surprise: lovely farmhouse, all on its own in beautiful rolling countryside. We were given a great welcome too, both Esther and George seeming really pleased to see us, and it made me feel warm towards Esther for the first time. But best of all was that Toby had Harry to look up to and went off with him at once to be shown all the animals and especially the horses. Harry is the dead spit of Father, same eyes, same chin, same build. I have photographs of Father at 13, Harry’s age now, which I’ve promised to look out and send Esther. Stephen, the older one, was not there, but Esther says he takes after her side. We ate an enormous meal, no signs of rationing, and Toby tucked into the roast beef as though he had never tasted it before – well, he hardly ever has, and he’s certainly never seen a roast such as that one. The weather was as good as it had been bad at Grace’s, and since Toby was out with Harry from dawn to dusk, everything was peaceful. Connie loved the kittens and wasn’t at a loose end at all, seeming quite happy to wander about feeding the chickens and doing other jobs Esther gave her. Who would have thought that Esther would become such a good farmer’s wife, or George a farmer, and yet they seem so happy in this new life. Esther says leaving Brighton was the best thing they ever did and that they have the war to thank for that. We sat, the three of us, drinking port of all things, talking until after midnight, mostly reminiscing about old times, and going over the tragedies that have hit the family. It was odd to feel so companionable with this brother of mine, and with my sister-in-law, when I have never felt we had a single thing in common. Only the blood tie has bound me to George until now. Mother used to say ‘You always have your family’, to console me if I was friendless, but somehow it never comforted me as much as she thought it should do. Of course, I don’t know George at all, I don’t know what he thinks, what he likes. To me, he’s been the brother wrecked by the first war and this older man is a stranger to me. He made Esther laugh, remembering my wildness as a very young girl, giving examples of my rages, but I don’t recall them at all. He said Mother despaired of me, and Esther backed him up, saying she had heard Mother say so. But look at you now, George said, look at how you’ve taken the twins on and become dependable and sensible. He meant it, I know, as a compliment but it depressed me to hear it said. Dependable and sensible instead of wild. Oh dear. Esther cautioned George, saying I might still have a wild side. She was teasing, but I chose to take her seriously and said yes, I thought I had, I hoped I had, and one day it might surface again, when the twins are grown up. Esther said, Don’t let them hold you back, we would always take them. It was kind of her. Toby would love it here, and maybe would’ve been better off, but it is too late now, and Tilda and Charles made me their guardian. The strange thing is what a start of alarm I felt inside me at the mere thought of not having Toby and Connie with me. They have become my life, dangerously so. I don’t say that in any spirit of martyrdom either. Oh, I may have begun by feeling sorry that this burden was thrust on me by fate, by the war, but that passed very quickly.

  Esther asked me, before we went to bed, if I had never wanted to marry and have children. Normally, I would have been furious at her insensitivity, I’d have seen it as smugness but, whether because of the port or the good food, or simply the company of other adults to which I am not used, I didn’t resent her inquiry. I told them about Robert, the whole story. I hope I don’t regret it.

  *

  Once back in London, Millicent goes for an interview for a teaching job. She hadn’t really expected to be offered one, because of her limited experience and her long absence from teaching, but in this immediate postwar period there was an urgent need for qualified people and her qualifications were undoubtedly good. She accepts a part-time post in a primary school in Primrose Hill (though not the one the twins go to). She works four mornings a week, teaching a class of forty children (7-year-olds). At first, she finds this a strain, nearly as exhausting as her Brighton experience, and wonders if she can continue, but gradually she adjusts and even begins to enjoy the teaching. Her main problem becomes not so much the constant struggle to impose discipline – she admits she is now good at this – as her failure to fit in with the rest of the staff. As a part-time teacher, she doesn’t spend much time in the staff room, but when she is there, having her tea during break, she feels out of place. No new friends are made, and she never progresses beyond the exchange of pleasantries.

  This disappoints her, and she has to make an effort to disguise her feelings of slight depression from the twins, especially from Connie. What adds to her depression is that she is going through what she thinks of as an unfairly early menopause (which begins when she is 46). It is not, she writes, that she ever expected to have children of her own now – she has had no relationship with a man since Robert left for the war – but nevertheless she hates to have this proved impossible. She is very much alone during these years, starved of adult company in her leisure time, with Daphne, her only real friend, in America (and a poor correspondent), Tilda dead, and Grace (till 1950) still in the country. She does an enormous amount of reading and her most regular outing is to The Times Book Club and circulating library in Wigmore Street. She is what was called a ‘guaranteed’ customer, paying £3 7s 6d a year for the privilege of being able to take out a book the day it is published. Millicent is often there first thing on the day she doesn’t teach, eager to get a novel she has seen reviewed in The Sunday Times, and returning home quite triumphant with it. (Two such triumphs she mentions are C. P. Snow’s The Masters and Anthony Powell’s A Question of Upbringing, both published in 1951.) She regards the library subscription as her one luxury and treasures it. Her other great pleasure, gardening, also absorbs her, though the modest size of her garden doesn’t give her much scope. She develops a passion for climbing roses, especially Albertine, which she successfully trains to cover the back wall of her house. She feels that she is marking time and, though she knows she doesn’t look middle-aged – she is always, of course, proud of looking much younger than her years – she feels it. What adds to her despondency is a new worry, about money. She has lived all this time on the income from the investments left to her by her mother and on her savings and has managed very well by being frugal. But the twins are growing alarmingly and by 1950, when they are on the brink of adolescence, she is having a struggle to
keep pace with what they need. She can’t afford extras such as hockey sticks, and dance shoes (and lessons), and football boots, as well as essential clothes, for the twins. In the end, she accepts the offer to release money from their trust fund which the solicitor had made years before. This makes her feel guilty and inadequate, though her sister Grace (who returns to London in 1950, to the Bond Street couturier’s she had worked for before the war) tells her she has no need to be – quite the opposite.