Diary of an Ordinary Woman

by Margaret Forster

  2 November

  Phone call from Daphne, whom I have not seen since our holiday, though I have called her several times and got no reply. Could I come over, she asked in her most plaintive voice, one I know well, one which makes me wary because she puts it on when she wants something – her special little-girl voice. I said it was late and dark and I really didn’t feel like driving to Frognal. Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow? She said she supposed so in such a sorrowful voice, not at all like her – usually a refusal to answer a summons results in passionate persuasion – that I weakened, while resenting her power over me. I drove to her house in a bad temper, prepared to be very cross with her, but when I saw her I must say I was taken aback. This was no pretence. She looks quite dreadful, terribly thin and her colour is alarming and her cough frightful. She was huddled in bed, her hair all lank, and looked as though she hadn’t moved from it for a week. There were plates of half-eaten sandwiches on the floor and mugs of cold tea and the room stank of stale cigarette smoke. I scolded her to hide my alarm and bustled about clearing up and then went off to her kitchen to make a hot drink. It was nine o’clock by then and too late to ring her doctor, but I decided to stay the night and do so first thing.

  A bad night, the spare bed uncomfortable and Daphne’s cough making sleep impossible. I rang her doctor at eight in the morning and, thank God, got Dr Harding, a woman. I say thank God because by then I had seen the blood Daphne was coughing up, blood and mucus mixed, quite horrible, and I was terribly afraid of its significance. I was right to be. Daphne is now in hospital and, though no diagnosis has yet been made, I think it is fairly obvious what it is going to be. I think Daphne knows too. She said nothing and I said nothing as we travelled in the ambulance but she held out her hand and I took it. I saw her into the ward, by which time she had her eyes closed and was completely withdrawn. I hope she won’t stay in this ward long. She requested a private room but there isn’t one available at the moment. I do so hate hospitals. Tilda could never understand why. Daphne hates them too. We used to agree that happiness could be defined as walking out of a hospital. She, of course, had so much of them after her accident whereas I have never been in one as a patient in my life, except that once, and it was only for such a short time it hardly counts. I don’t recall much about it at all. Daphne has put me down as next of kin on the admission form. I am not kin but I suppose I am all the kin she has. I have just rung the hospital but there is no news: she is in that cliché state, as comfortable as can be expected. Luckily, today was not a teaching day, though if it had been I would have had to take the time off, whatever chaos it caused at school.

  4 November

  Couldn’t write a word yesterday and even now I find it hard. This diary is of so little use when I most need it. Daphne has a tumour on her left lung. Look how cowardly I am, even in private. The doctor has made it plain that he expects to find it is malignant, or in other words that she has cancer and the lung will most probably need to be removed. My head was spinning with all the implications of this, but I could only frame idiotic questions of no importance and failed to ask what really needs to be asked: is her life in danger, can she survive with one lung? And crowding in on this was the other question, which I can never ask. Will she be able to live alone after this operation?

  5 November

  Daphne has been moved to the Royal Marsden in Fulham. I am not sure why, except that apparently Dr Harding has told her that the Marsden is the specialist hospital for cancer and she has the best chance of the right treatment there. But there isn’t at the moment a private room available here either and, worse than that, she is in a ward which is full of what even I can see are terminal patients because the terminal ward is being decorated. When I was there today, for the whole two hours I stayed, a woman sang Happy Birthday, Dad, over and over again, humming the tune every now and again in a low drone. Daphne says she’s called Brenda and that last night she got out of her bed, trailing drips and tubes, and danced up and down the ward singing and had to be forcefully restrained. She has a brain tumour. Well, said Daphne, brightly, my brain is fine. Before I left, Brenda had changed to singing No control, going out, no control going out. It is barbaric, how can my poor darling friend get better here? What a terrible place. I hate its long, tiled, gloomy corridors and its endless flights of stone stairs. I got lost on my way out and began to panic, I felt like a little mouse, trapped and scurrying around. This won’t do.

  6 November

  Arrived at Daphne’s bedside to find the ward quiet, thank God, but then I realised why. In the next bed to her was an old lady being given the last rites. The green curtains were drawn round the bed, and we could hear the priest reciting the doleful words. Then at the end of the ward, in a small cubicle near the nurses’ station, another man was saying prayers over the now immobile and silent Brenda. Daphne was laughing, it was just so very dreadful. I found it hard to sit beside her. She told me not to look so bloody miserable and I said, how could I not, and she said she wanted me to cheer her up and be my sensible self at which point, quite disgracefully, I burst into tears, the worst thing to do. I controlled myself quickly but the damage was done. Daphne amazed me. She was so calm, said she was prepared for the worst and felt philosophical now she was actually in hospital. It was the weeks before that had wrecked her, the worrying, the suspicions she’d had, even before we went to Greece, that was the bad part. Now she feels in good hands and has given herself up to fate. I left her feeling ashamed of my tears when she herself is so brave. I will do better tomorrow, though in fact I won’t see her tomorrow because the operation is in the afternoon and I am not allowed to, so will not have a chance to redeem myself. Poor Daphne, to be going through this ordeal and no one to cherish her except me.

  8 November

  Daphne is finally in a private room, at last. She was sitting up today, so at first glance she looked much better. Not at second glance, though. She has all sorts of tubes coming out of her, which I try not to look at. She was sleepy, even if propped up as though sitting, and only opened her eyes fully when I crept in and said hello. She did try to smile but her face hardly moved. It was so awkward, such a strain. What to say? I was lost, muttering on about the weather and the traffic and other banalities. I ran out of steam so quickly. The words ‘how are you feeling’ choked me and I could not say them. I didn’t know how long to stay. After a while, I got up and tip-toed round the little room, fiddling with the flowers, playing with the cord of the window blind, the feeling of being trapped growing and growing. I saw her hand move on the white sheet, opening and closing over and over again, and I suddenly sat down again and put my own hand into hers. It seemed such an intimate gesture, more so than a kiss. I thought she seemed to like it, and I put my other hand over our joined hands and held them tight. That was how the nurse found us. She came in to take readings of some sort or another. She looked at me so pityingly and then was gone.

  An hour I sat there and then I released her hand and it flopped back onto the sheet. She was asleep. There was no point in staying. I crept out as I had crept in and felt so weary. And now I am overwhelmed with misery, not all of it on account of Daphne. I wish I had some religious faith, I wish I was a Christian, like Mother and Tilda, but I have not and am not, and at a time like this, it is a loss. I dread going to the Marsden each day. My footsteps slow down as I reach the hospital and I experience all the symptoms of panic and have to force myself up its steps. But Daphne has no other visitors. Where are all those friends she was forever referring to? If they have shown concern, I know nothing of it, but then maybe they are unaware of what has happened. I suddenly thought today of Jimmy. I wonder if I should try to find his address and tell him, but it is so long since they were divorced and he is in America and what good would it do? I worry about what is going to happen if Daphne is discharged and I know that my real worry is for myself and my fear that I will have to look after her. Well, I will, of course I will, but it is a daunting prospect.

  11
November

  Grace came. It is so long since I have seen her. She brought little Sam and it was a pleasure to see him, such a bright, glowing, healthy boy, a smile always on his face. Grace said I looked depressed. I know she meant old. I told her about Daphne and she was all concern, genuine I am sure. When I said I was visiting every day, Grace said that was good of me but was it really necessary? Daphne isn’t family after all. She said it gently but I was angry and told her that Daphne meant more to me than some of my family. She took this to be a reference to herself, I think, and flushed, so I added rather feebly that I had known Daphne since she was 17 and we had been through a lot together and she had no one else to care for her. Grace said she was lucky to have me with my highly developed sense of duty. That’s what she called it, my highly developed sense of duty. I flared up and said duty had nothing to do with it and that if I was motivated by anything it was by affection and loyalty. Grace said she was sorry if she’d upset me, but then spoiled her apology by wondering aloud if Daphne was as reliable as a friend as I was, would she do the same for me? But, of course, she added, I had family to care for me, should I need looking after. She said that bit hurriedly. I laughed, maybe a little bitterly, and said my family need not worry, I would never call on them. I have always been independent and I always will be. That is what my life has been about, standing on my own two feet, and it is not going to change just because I am growing old. I am ashamed of that outburst now. So pompous. And Grace left soon afterwards.

  I started wondering about the truth of my fine words. What if I am ill? Can I indeed remain independent? I will try to, desperately hard. I ought to think about it carefully and try to provide against being ill and unable to manage. I wonder if I would kill myself. It is such an act of courage not cowardice and I don’t think I have that courage. My mind is full of such wretched thoughts and it is not healthy. I go to the Marsden, I sit uselessly with poor Daphne, I come home exhausted in every way, and then I sit and muse about death. What an awful stage my life seems to be at.

  *

  These kind of entries continue during the rest of 1957 and into 1958 as Millicent masterminds Daphne’s convalescence with her customary efficiency. She finds a nursing home for her friend to go into and then engages a nurse and a housekeeper for when she returns home. Since Daphne is wealthy, money is not a difficulty, but finding kindly and sympathetic people who are trustworthy is. Daphne is not an easy patient and for six months Millicent is at her beck and call trying to make the support system work. Connie, on her rare visits home, is concerned that she is wearing herself out and there is one entry in which Millicent expresses her fury that her niece has called her a martyr. But then, in March 1958, Daphne has a relapse, is readmitted to the Marsden, and on the 20th she dies. Her death is sudden in spite of the long preparation for it, and Millicent is stunned. She writes that it is as if she were a ship and all the wind has left her sails and she is becalmed. She can hardly manage to arrange for Daphne’s cremation and sees no point in a funeral, but then the absence of ceremony in turn depresses her. She finds herself sitting slumped in a chair, day after day, making no effort to do anything. It adds to her depression that Grace and her family go to live in New York, which is a shock to her. Fortunately, Connie comes home at this point for the Easter vacation and galvanises her aunt into joining her on one of the Aldermaston marches.

  *

  2 April 1958

  What a determined young woman Connie is, so full of energy and ideas, making me ashamed of my listlessness and apathy. The very air in the room seems electric when she comes into it and, though she makes me feel weak she also perks me up, something passes from her to me and I am the better for it. From the moment she arrived home she began shaking me up, asking me what on earth I thought I was doing letting myself go in the way I obviously have. Look in a mirror, for God’s sake! she shouted, and promptly marched me into the hall and pointed at my reflection in the mirror there. Who is that? she demanded. Who is that miserable-looking creature with bags under her eyes and no colour in her cheeks and chopped-off hair? Do you know her? Because I don’t. She exaggerated, but not much. I do look awful, no wonder I avoid mirrors. My hair is turning grey and has become so dry and brittle, but then I have taken no care of it. And it is too short. I don’t suit it so short. Even my skin isn’t anything to boast about any more. I sighed, and Connie started again, this time on my clothes, asking how I had come to live permanently in tired old skirts and hopelessly old-fashioned patterned blouses. This is how she carries on, hectoring and accusing by turns, and she won’t listen to my excuses and what I have been through and how useless I feel, and how there is no point in anything. Oh please! she says. I had no idea what she was talking about when she mentioned the letters CND. She asked if I was the same woman who had boasted about having gone on the women’s march only two short years ago. She wants me to go on a march with her now – a three-day affair. I don’t think I am up to it. I said this and was told by Connie not to talk such nonsense. She reminded me that I am 57 and not 97 and made me look out my walking boots and my rucksack and in general tried hard to work up some enthusiasm in me. I am not sure that she has succeeded but I did feel a little leap of hope that all is not after all doom and gloom.

  9 April

  This was nothing like the women’s march, goodness me no. For a start, there were as many men as women and some of them decidedly odd-looking characters who, I fear, were more with us for the fun than out of conviction, but really I have no right to say that. Then there was the age range, so many young people, which is a very good thing. Lots of Connies, all eager-faced and bouncing along, full of energy. There was a lot of singing too, songs I’ve never heard, and a lot of shouting, mainly of slogans which were a little hard to make out. Connie stayed with me, though I was slow, and linked arms and I didn’t feel in the least self-conscious. She was cross with Toby because he didn’t join us, and would accept no excuses from him. He wants to get a first and says he must study hard, which seems to me worthy and not at all like a feeble excuse, but Connie is disgusted with him, says he is selfish and stuck in an ivory tower and she doesn’t know what is wrong with him. She says she is not going to get a first and doesn’t want to and wants to do something worthwhile. Where have I heard those words before . . .?

  *

  At the beginning of the 1960s, a big change comes over Millicent’s life. She retires from teaching at 60 (in 1961) and immediately feels at a loss (though she takes up some voluntary work). From this point on, Connie begins to dominate in her diaries. Almost every entry for the next decade seems to relate in some way to her, even when events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis or the assassination of President Kennedy are being recorded: it is what Connie thinks about them that is important. What Connie says, what Connie hopes, what Connie is going to do – it is as though Millicent no longer has a mind of her own. Connie influences how she dresses, what she eats and what sort of car she buys. ‘She drags me into modern times’, Millicent observes, and sounds pleased. But she also worries about her niece, whom she considers rash, and though she admires Connie’s political activism (which of course she contrasts with her own passivity when young) she fears it will lead her into trouble. Her fears are justified. Connie is arrested for the first time in October 1961 when she takes part in a sit-down outside the Russian Embassy. Millicent, who has refused to join her, alleging that she doesn’t understand this protest or the point of a sit-down, even though Connie has apparently argued for its validity, is appalled. She pays Connie’s fine on that occasion, terrified she will otherwise be sent to prison (though in fact no one is imprisoned). She suspects her niece’s career will suffer if she becomes known as a trouble-maker and pleads with her to be sensible and not so flamboyant if she has to take part in these protests. Connie, who is herself a teacher by now, rejects her aunt’s advice. She is teaching in a school in Paddington, in the area where Millicent once worked in the 1930s, in a secondary modern with a large proportion of immigra
nt children whose English is poor and she has herself started extra classes for them after school. She is living with three other young women in a run-down flat on the edge of Paddington/Kensington. Millicent visits quite regularly, taking treats with her (cakes she’s baked and that sort of thing) and, though she admires Connie’s dedication, she frets that the kind of work she is doing and the kind of life she is leading are going to ruin her health. She describes Connie as frighteningly thin and looking much older than her years (she was 24 in 1961). Millicent spends a lot of diary time in the mid-sixties, wondering where Connie gets her passionate convictions from and also pondering over what she sees as the lack of both pleasure and fun in her life. She is perturbed, too, about the lack of what she calls (knowingly imitating her own mother) ‘romances’ – Connie has friends who are men but so far as Millicent can tell no love for any of them. She knows Connie is not a virgin and that she is on the Pill, which she considers a good thing (and wishes it had been available in the 1920s for herself) but she is saddened that no one Connie really cares for has come into her life.