January 1943. Bristol. Having time to kill I walked down Park Street and turned off by a notice which said To St George’s Church. I went in by the back way. Surprisingly it was not locked. It was almost dark inside so that I could hardly see what it was like but I said a prayer there and then walked round the churchyard. This consists of a few overgrown slabs, sadly neglected, which merge suddenly into an allotment with cabbages etc. Solemn and rather horrifying thought, what may be nourishing this soil. ‘When my grave is broke up again…’ And at the end of it all a kind of cement mixer (I think). An unusual churchyard. My walk brought me round to the front with an eighteenth century façade with heavy columns. I couldn’t see much inside, except the glint of stained glass in the dusk. I am suddenly thinking of that other little church in Marylebone, St Luke’s, was it, into which I walked at Harvest Festival and the vicar’s wife made me go round and admire the decorations. The vicar had just returned from Italy and gave a curious pagan sermon – about the decorations hiding the vileness of the church, as far as I remember.
I went into the Public Library. It is open till seven and was now full of rains of humanity, come into the reading room for learning. And on my blotting paper I write ‘A Testing Time’ in Red Pencil – to remind me.
Gordon said he would die about the time when the evenings began to lengthen and birds sang. I had the first taste of it today. I had imagined it, little knowing that it would be this, not death but parting. That eternal dustbin in the dawn, with fines of Donne (?) floating above it.
The Day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that thou and I must part.
Thursday 21 January. I’m firewatching – for the first time since Gordon and I parted. I’m sleeping downstairs in my favourite room, with the plaque of Ernest Wyman Savory on the wall, where I so often wrote letters to my darling. I have been dreading this occasion and now here it is – and it is as if I had taken some soothing drug which gives me a sort of remoteness and detachment from my pain, so that I know it is there but do not feel it. Only calmness and love and certainty, almost. As if the happy atmosphere of this room still lingered and was lapping me round.
It is a wicked thing to want time to pass and not to try to enjoy one’s days. Now I try to make things to look forward to, however small. At lunch yesterday I read this in Trivia –
So I never lose a sense of the whimsical and perilous charm of daily life, with its meetings and words and accidents. Why, today, perhaps, or next week, I may hear a voice and, packing up my Gladstone bag, follow it to the ends of the world.
Well, of course, following voices to the ends of the world isn’t possible now, but there’s still the whimsical and perilous charm perhaps. I don’t want to lose that.
I hope I shall sleep tonight.
Friday 22 January. It wasn’t so bad at all, but I didn’t sleep very well, mainly because as usual, it was very hot and there were various strange noises, loud voices outside and howling cats. (But no yaffling woodpeckers in the cypresses.) I dreamed of Gordon a little, but mostly of Jay. (Darling Jay, mein Kleines, this is half your book. Imagine after my death two old men wrangling over it. One a dried-up politician, the other a burnt-out old ruin, the most waspish member of the Savage Club. Both so unpleasant that it is difficult to imagine how either of them could possibly have been loved by such a delightful person as the present writer obviously is!) I woke up at a quarter to six, dreadful sentimental time. (In continental trains, seeing the faces of strange Germans, the young airman who sat opposite me during that night journey back from Germany – Dresden – in May 1938). I suddenly decided to cycle home for breakfast which I did in ‘the darkness which precedes the dawn’ (who said this?). Julian, coming out of the gate, greeted me with the news that Daddy had sent him some liquorice allsorts. Rush of ridiculous emotion, of course! Plenty of intolerable birds. A green Christmas means a full churchyard… We haven’t really had any winter yet.
When I came in at tea-time today the Coppice seemed gay and amusing – Viennese waltzes in the kitchen and the chickens madly eating the beans and the cabbage.
How satisfying is a phrase in music when it goes where you want it to go – you anticipate its ending confidently and fulfilment satisfies.
I have got to realise that it is no longer anything to do with me what Gordon does. Although it is a month since I saw him, there are an endless number of months to be got through – a long dreary stretch until it doesn’t matter any more. And heaven knows how many that will be.
Oh what a clever book this is! Really I haven’t got a beautiful character at all. I suppose I should have been delighted if Gordon had said he was miserable. I ought to be glad that he is getting on all right.
Wednesday 27 January. Every time I go past the big windows leading on to the balcony I stand for a moment and look out over the stone lions, towards the Victoria Rooms and the 18 bus stop. Lately I have begun to realise that I do this and I ask myself sardonically – ‘Well, and what do you expect to see?’ What I do see is sometimes sunshine and crowds of people, other times the rain glancing off the lions and few people. Always a rather dreary prospect. Well, that is what things are likely to be at the moment, a rather dreary prospect. It is impossible that I shall be really happy for some time to come.
Monday–Tuesday, 1–2 February. I am reading Robert Graves’s novel Wife to Mr Milton. He has in it a phrase, ‘I had my enemy the spring to contend with.’ Enemy because of the cold winds etc. Oh yes, I have the rheumatics in my back and neck and arms, but it is the intolerable birds that are the enemies, and the primroses bravely pushing up in the tangled Coppice garden. And yet not enemies really – they never were before. Winter would surely be much more of an enemy.
Today on my way home I discovered a beautiful pre-Raphaelite tomb. I had got to the top of the hill into Victoria Square when I was suddenly filled with a desire to go along the paved stone alley leading to St Andrew’s Church. So I walked into it with my bicycle and discovered on either side of me tombstones in a rather well-kept grassy churchyard, with trees, palms (which seemed odd) and a forsythia coming into flower. And towards the end of this alley on the right hand side is the pre-Raphaelite tomb. A square, box-like affair supported by angels at the corners, and the angels are beautifully Rossetti with flowing hair parted in the middle. I can’t remember who is buried there. I must notice next time I visit it, for I feel sure there will be a next time. At the end of the alley one comes upon the church, a dramatically empty shell, blitz, of course.
Thursday 11 February. This evening there was a pre-Raphaelite sky. Bright blue with orange clouds like Thermogene wool. And a monkey puzzle dark against it, and none of us getting any younger.
I am reading Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, but not really getting very much from it as I do not understand many of the theological terms and arguments. And how reasoned and logical is his account of his conversion – I am still waiting for the miraculous act of faith, that finally sent him over. The sort of dramatic thing Gordon or I would expect. But somehow I don’t think it’s going to be like that. He says – ‘From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion: religion as a mere sentiment is to me a dream and a mockery.’ No Abbotsleigh or pre-Raphaelite tombs there.
I like the account of how ‘Lead, kindly Light’ came to be written. It was in 1833, when he was 32, I had imagined it much later. After a tour of Italy and Sicily, during which he was ill with a fever, he waited for a ship home at Palermo for three weeks. ‘At last I got off in an orange boat bound for Marseilles. We were becalmed a whole week in the Straits of Bonifacio. Then it was that I wrote the lines "Lead, kindly Light…".’
Today I took Saroyan with me and read it at lunch. I like the picture of myself dipping alternately into Newman and Saroyan.
Friday 19 February. Avonmouth again and a pleasant ride back in the top front seat of a 99 bus, feeling very sentimental and quite pleasantly melancholy as today Julian was going up to London to spend his half term with Gordon.
Wednesday 10 March. Last Friday I joined the Wrens. It is done – inevitable now, I suppose, though I can still withdraw if I want to. I am calm and happy about it and sometimes excited – all settled. Like Going over to Rome. And Cardinal Newman has gone, and I’m still reading The Daisy Chain.
In Shirehampton Vicarage garden there is a chestnut tree with green uncurled leaves – and almond trees galore, daffodils a few, and an afternoon alone at Avonmouth. Working hard, answering the telephone, making tea, and finally, looking out the window with silly tears in my eyes, because I suddenly remembered Gordon with his hair smoothed down sitting opposite me at breakfast in the Coppice kitchen on a Monday morning.
Oh, a bad day. Beware of complacency, and you must fight all the time and have the same struggles. Tears on top of the bus going to Avonmouth, up into Sea Mills, down into Shirehampton and Johnny Doughboy in the park. And at lunchtime when I was alone, I howled… At teatime I went to the office in Bristol, feeling very Rip Van Winkle, to find people away and on the point of leaving and the blackout stuck halfway across the skylight of our room, casting a gloom, quite a gloom as they say, over the place.
Later, ironing and humming the Warsaw Concerto, and later still listening to a Brandenburg Concerto and Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and reading The Daisy Chain, which is so well written, very Compton-Burnett and very sad, and then eating eggs and bacon for supper. Then Hilary came in wearing a pretty little hat and I cheered up. And now – after midnight – I’m glad to say I feel better. But that bat hovers around (rather like a squander bug) so I won’t say any more. Dusty old creature, to think I’ve still got you, after ten weeks.
Thursday 11 March. My own darling raving dilettante, what is ‘a leaf-nosed bat’? (see Introducing this week). It sounds a gentler creature than the thing you left with me. (Gordon’s broadcasting tomorrow and I’m firewatching – so…)
Sunday 14 March. Well, on Friday, she came back from Avonmouth, loitered a little at the Academy and then, with a sudden wave of inspiration, went and had some tea in the Berkeley. Ludicrous place with palms and minors, but no orchestra now. It was the end of the day and she felt rather a ludicrous object sitting there drinking tea, eating bread and butter and smoking a cigarette. There ought to have been an orchestra and she ought to have been at a table rather too near it, with two curious women – but of course things never happen quite like this. At 5.35 I left and thought of Gordon just beginning and wondered if he was feeling nervous. Then home, very tired, drained of all emotion.
Firewatching was quite peaceful. There is a curious timelessness about it, as if one were really in one’s marble vault … but Now therefore while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew … and … Spring will not wait. Anyway it might have been one of those times before Christmas instead of After Christmas. After Christmas … that’s the title of this part of this book.
Saturday 20 March. Watching Honor writing a great long letter to George this evening, I thought, the greatest luxury now would be to be allowed to write a great, long silly letter to Gordon. As it is I suppose I must go on drearily in this book. My clever book. I seem to write in it only when I am depressed, like praying only when one is really in despair – on the whole I’ve been fairly happy this week though. Tonight rather low. But after all that is to be expected. Low and dull.
Tuesday 23 March. Firewatching. West wind and small rain and I thought all the usual things coasting down through the dark on my bicycle – riding or walking in the dark, especially to firewatching, is surely the most detached and lonely time. One cannot feel really sad because one seems to be outside oneself. It’s the state I once described to Gordon – it gets on very well, like ‘Social Success’, until suddenly it’s ‘Oh God, it’s awful, I wish I were dead.’ And now I’m sitting in this uncosy high-roofed room with no sound but the ticking of my common little clock and the click of my companions’ knitting needles.
The other day I thought ‘And now it’s Spring’ and decided that this would be quite a good tide for a novel. Well, why don’t you write it? Ah, but is it Spring? I know that the air is warm and sunny, birds sing at dawn and twilight and the daffodils are out in the Coppice garden, and violets blue and white, sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes – I know, but what about the dusty heart? Not much spring there – yet. Turning out of Manilla Road this evening I heard the sound of dance music in the dark. And the tune was ‘My Devotion’ – is oh such a dreary emotion.… Very suitable.
I often pass the pre-Raphaelite tomb, or rather the path leading to it, but I have never been there again. But I will go one day. You (reader) may say, Why do you make such a thing of it all? To which I will snap (like Trivia) Well, what about your own life? Is it so full of large, big wonderful things that you don’t need tombs and daffodils and your own special intolerable bird, with an old armchair or two and occasional readings from Matthew Arnold and Coventry Patmore?
On Sunday we [Barbara, Hilary, Honor and the children] went to Weston – it was a gloriously sunny day and we were lucky getting taxis. It is a large bright Betjeman place – surely he must have written something about it – with many hotels and boarding houses. We walked into the middle of a very serious invasion exercise and were twice turned back for unexploded bombs. After that we walked along the beach to the pier, eating sweets and gathering little pink, yellow and white shells. At the pier the sun was very hot. We looked at the naughty peepshows and Hilary and I went on the figure of eight and the Racing Speedway clinging together and shrieking! What a place to come to when one is lonely and miserable, as Honor did in the autumn when George first went and she wasn’t hearing from him.
Saturday 27 March. In the afternoon Honor and I made sandwiches and cut bread and butter for Julian’s birthday party. We had the Yehudi Menuhin concert on. He played the old Mendelssohn and of course I wept a little over the slow movement, alone in the back kitchen, my hands immersed in the washing-up water, need I say. It was a very successful party. After tea I gathered fresh flowers for my room. Once there was a Saturday when all I could find was two November roses, rather browned off at the edges.
As dusk fell I grew melancholy. I am ashamed to say that I am sometimes just plain jealous when I think of other people who can be with Gordon. It is sometimes intolerable to be a woman and have no second bests or spares or anything. I struggled with this feeling – I hope I have got the better of it, for now, at any rate. It only makes me more miserable when I feel angry and resentful. Testing Time… Well certainly I am being tested. I cannot answer for him. Does the road wind uphill all the way? I asked myself, waiting for kettles to boil tonight. Yes, to the very end. And remember, one step enough for me. Sunday tomorrow and plenty to do. One step…
Sunday 28 March. Afternoon we sat in the sun and listened to the Messiah. I wrote home, went to the post, pumped up my bicycle, put cotton over the peas. And then lay on a mattress with my face close to the ground, thinking about that poem by Robert Graves, the man seeking lost love, who has become so sensitive he can hear wormtalk and moths chumbling cloth etc. Hilary and Sandy went at 5.30.
After supper Honor and I Baldwinned our legs – she was delighted, never having used a Baldwin before. We listened to a Stephen Potter poetry programme, where, curiously enough, that Robert Graves poem was read – then Scott Goddard’s Theme and Variations programme. Very nice. Brahms-Handel (I like the 1st) and Strauss Don Quixote.
Monday 29 March. Better today. When I got back to the Academy the first thing I saw was a new examiner sitting at a table, wearing earrings, gaiters and a hat. By teatime she had removed the hat, as if (somebody said) she had really decided to stay.
There was much talk and agitation about a circular which had appeared that morning, dealing with the release of Examiners [in the Censors Office, making them liable for call-up] under 41. Thirty-five yesterday but forty-two today. Anyway I felt a little smug having already volunteered, but it unsettled a good many people.
Honor had had two letters from George – written not much more than a fortnight ago. It brings things nearer if we can recall what we were doing when he wrote, so I have decided to put down the events of each day anyway. And of course the usual dreary reflections when I am miserable. Oh mumbling, chumbling moths, talking worms and my own intolerable bird give me one tiny ray of hope for the future and I will keep on wanting to be alive. Yes, you will be alive, it will not be the same, nothing will be quite as good, there will be no intense joy but small compensations, spinsterish delights and as the years go on and they are no longer painful, memories. Too many like the curate’s too heavy eiderdown which he flung off him in the night.
Or it may not be like this at all. You don’t know. Nobody does.
Tuesday 30 March. This morning I had a notice from the WRNS asking me to go for my medical on Thursday – unless I’m having a period, which I will be. So I was almost inclined to write as in Crews Mail letters – ‘Well, I might be seeing something, you know what I mean’.
At tea Honor read from a letter from Pen. She wrote about Gordon – that of course he wasn’t happy, but that it might be a good thing for him to have to work things out for himself. I’m so glad he is with nice, sympathetic people like David and Pen. Pen says they don’t allow him to dramatise himself, which is of course a very good thing! But oh I hate to think of him being unhappy and me not being able to do anything for him. Well, we are neither of us happy and nobody can help us but ourselves. One day, perhaps.…
Wednesday 31 March. Quite a good uninterrupted working day. Blustery weather. I bought 2 pairs of fine utility stockings. After tea fitting a dress on Prue and doing a little sewing.
Thursday 1 April. Well, the beginning of the fourth month and a donkey, then two donkeys eating the cabbages in the garden. (April Fool.) Felt very weary and aching all over. At 6 o’clock Honor and I went to the concert at the Colston Hall. We had supper in the [BBC] canteen, caught the last 89 home and walked the rest of the way. Windy coming over the bridge. That walk at night is still painful to me – I can’t help remembering. The place where we first kissed and such sentimentalities!
Monday 5 April. Had my day off and lay in bed till 9.30. It was a glorious, unnaturally hot day with sun shining all the time. I went without stockings. Hilary and I had lunch at the Buttery and afterwards did some shopping. Quite like pre-war – it was the kind of day for spending and wending and squanderbugs, but we didn’t buy much. I had my hair cut and styled – quite nicely and read a novel all about Censors – then did more shopping and arrived back at about five. In the evening Yehudi Menuhin broadcast – he played the Brahms Concerto. We also listened to a prodigiously long play by Val Gielgud. After tea Prue walked down to the Bridge by herself and we were all feverishly looking for her.
There are certain notes on the violin (or is it a certain way of playing) that gives me the same lovely, out in the cold feeling as walking or riding down to firewatching in the dark. Why, this is strange, I don’t know the reason, probably just some chance association.
Tuesday 6 April. Today I had another summons for my WRNS medical – I am to go on Thursday. I do hope everything goes all right – then I can start Part II of After Christmas. I’ve never before felt so conscious of ‘making a life for myself’ – I suppose the continuous effort is good for me, some people probably have to do it all the time.
I got home in time to have some of Elizabeth’s birthday tea – Mary had made some lovely things. Julian had a good report – Honor said ‘Gordon will be pleased’. Yes, I know. How could I bear not to have as much of him as she has had and still has in the children. No, I couldn’t. Julian is going to see him next weekend. And I am going to stay with Rupert and Helen Gleadow in Chelsea.
Honor and I have groats last thing at night – Lovely!
Wednesday 7 April. I got back to the Coppice in time to share in yet another birthday party. Honor seemed rather depressed – she hasn’t heard from George for over a week. She told me Julian is going to Gordon next weekend and not this – they will be at Arkesden. She also said that Gordon has now ‘supplied the evidence’. This news flung me into a turmoil of emotion so that I spent a most miserable evening. Now why was I so miserable? Well, for one reason – I couldn’t help thinking how joyous I might have been at this stage being reached. Whereas now I have no reason to hope – I don’t even know if Gordon ever thinks of me and nobody can reassure me on that point. So I went round in miserable circles – to know what one wants and see no prospects of getting it – what pain, sometimes I feel I must talk about it, and let go for a minute (yes, there were some tears privately) – then I can start again being drearily splendid. I also had the idea Honor might know definite things – future plans of his that didn’t include me – oh – I can’t write about this futile wretchedness. There it was – and I didn’t go to sleep till comparatively late. Darling Honor made me groats.
Friday 8 April. A cold day. I washed very carefully, having also had a bath the night before. For today was my WRNS medical. I felt very weak at the knees and found it difficult to work – I left at twelve, had lunch at the Buttery where I fortified myself with roast pork. By this time it was sunny, so I walked down to the army Recruiting Centre where the medical is held. It was one o’clock by this time. There were several other girls there. We were put into a waiting room decorated with ATS posters and a ‘No Smoking’ notice. I read my novel, Table Two by Marjorie Wilenski (obviously about the Censorship) and talked a bit to the others – various types and ages. First of all we filled in a medical form – then went upstairs and undressed, except for shoes, knickers and coat – then produced a ‘specimen’ into a kind of enamel potty with a long handle like a saucepan – of which I was quite glad. Next came examination of eyes, ears etc., weighing and measuring by an elderly doctor, then heart, lungs etc., by a woman. All quite quick. After that I dressed again and had an interview with an extremely charming WRNS 1st officer – she had my London forms and correspondence but couldn’t really tell me much, except that my application was marked ‘urgent’ and that they probably had something in mind for me. And I mustn’t be too impatient. Oh, but I do hope I get in now. My heart is set on it. The whole thing took over two hours and I felt terribly tired, really exhausted after it. A thorough emotional upheaval, what with everything.
When I got home I lay on Honor’s bed. She was upset at having told me about Gordon and the ‘evidence’ last night. I told her what it really was that upset me and we talked about it. Really there is no reason to feel more depressed than usual – nothing has changed and Honor has no inside information about Gordon’s plans. But she thinks Gordon may not be the right person for me – and that I am probably brooding over an idea. Oh, I don’t know. It may be – but oh it was good wasn’t it – Surely I didn’t see what wasn’t there? Patience and Courage still – And struggle on. Lead, kindly light and one step enough for me.
Friday 9 April. And what exactly, may Posterity ask, was all this ‘struggle’ about? Why this need for Patience and Courage? And the bewildered English spinster, now rather gaunt and toothy, but with a mild, sweet expression, may hardly know herself. Really, if I ever have any children I think I must call them Patience and Courage. Twins – rather dreary stolid little girls.
For the first time I had lunch in the British Restaurant. Very good hot food, rather too many potatoes, but a lovely steamed pudding. Masses of dockers etc. And this spinster with T chekov’s My Life on the table, but not reading it.
I got home to find the kitchen very tidy and silent. It reminded me of the last day I saw Gordon (December 28th). But then it was dusk and I walked through the house crying.
Saturday 10 April. Today I went to London to stay with Rupert and Helen Gleadow. I travelled on the 1.45 train, in a carriage full of silent people who insisted on having the windows too wide open. I went straight to Chelsea and found 22 Cheyne Walk just on the corner, opposite the bridge and looking over the river – I rang a likely bell and in a minute the door was opened – ‘Are you Helen?’ – ‘You must be Barbara.’ I’ve done this before, in the summer of 1938 when I met Elsie for the first time in 86 Banbury Road. Helen has fair curly hair and very blue eyes, is vivacious and sweet – we were able to have a good gossip before Rupert arrived. I saw him out of the window on his bicycle. He was wearing blue corduroy trousers and looks so nice without a beard – quite his old self. We had cowslip wine and beer and a nice dinner and much pleasant amusing talk. I was conscious of feeling happier than I have done for a long time. We went to bed fairly early. I noticed in the bookshelf in my room Francis Stuart’s Try the Sky which Gordon had once spoken of – I glanced at it but deliberately didn’t read it!
Sunday 11 April. Rupert and Helen went to Morley College to ‘pursue the arts’ leaving me with a lovely tray of breakfast and Tristram Shandy of which I read a little. It seems a nice inconsequential sort of book – the sort of book one would like to have written – or might even one day write. I got up about eleven and had a delicious bright green bath with pine essence and bright pink Spanish geranium soap. Rupert and Helen came back about half-past one and we had lunch – they opened a tin of apricots for me and we had a flan. Also some olives. Afterwards we went for a walk in Battersea Park – all the flowering trees were out – lilacs nearly, double cherry and magnolia. There is a nice pond (or lake) – also deer and wallabies (?).
I was back in Bristol about nine – I was like a drowned rat when I got home. But Honor was there with a lovely supper, so I undressed and ate.
I really feel it did me good going away and being with Rupert and Helen, who are so blissfully happy together they hardly seem to be real. Oh, but it can be done! They said my eyes had far too much sparkle for one who had been crossed in love. Honor had to send £25 to the solicitors yesterday.
Monday 12 April. I changed from one unglamorous pair of stockings to another. I worked quite hard all day. Honor had been speaking to Gordon on the phone. And he had sent a message for me – asking when I was going to the WRNS and that he would be thinking of me. This made me feel absolutely terrific – how it helps, just a word like this.
And cigarettes have gone up to 2/ 4 or 2/ 6 for 20 – so life’s consolations grow less and less – and soon it will be just Matthew Arnold and memories. Or the future and the whimsical and perilous charm?
Tuesday 13 April. I went into Blight’s and looked vaguely at materials – red spotted chiffon for a spinsterish nightdress. Hilary and I are going to have our rooms spring-cleaned tomorrow so we moved all the books and things – now my room is bare and dusty and echoing. We began playing and singing hymns – and I remembered some things I’d forgotten, favourite bits and lines – ‘the angels’ armour and the saints’ reward’ – ‘the drift of pinions, would we hearken, beats at our own clay-shuttered doors’ – and of course my dear old favourite ‘God moves in a mysterious way’. But of course
‘His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour,
The bud may have a bitter taste
But sweet will be the flower…’
Wednesday 14 April. I made a potato and leek soup for supper – then went firewatching. It was a beautiful evening. On the bridge I saw a girl warden (rather plain) being kissed by a Doughboy (a hidey-ho, a sweet and lo, a come and go boy). Lucky pigs I thought. The atmosphere reminded me of those summer evenings when Gordon and Honor and George and Hilary and I used to walk down to The Rocks and The Commercial and the Club. But in those days G. and I, though arm in arm, would talk only of British Israelites and other general subjects.
Thursday 15 April. Had breakfast at the Copper Kettle after a hot, restless night. My bed had a rock in the mattress and I couldn’t avoid it. We were served by the usual inefficient waitress, who is like ‘Can I do you now, Sir’ in ITMA.
I went to Woolworth’s in the lunch hour and bought various beauty aids – also looked longingly at ginghams and cherry-red linen in Jolly’s window. Oh, but the sun was shining, and in the afternoon a bird sang so that it could be heard even among the censors.
When I got home I found everyone in the garden, so I washed my hair and dried it in the sun lying on a red blanket on the rockery, of all places. Masses of birds singing – I wish I knew what they were. Gordon would know, Honor said, and I remembered one summer afternoon last year when we were sitting under the beechtree and he told me to look at a spotted flycatcher on the telephone wires. All these things one discovers about people, how nice they are.
Hilary made a salad for supper and we had it with pilchards and then some rhubarb. We listened to ITMA and then had a long technical conversation about Tampax!
Earlier in the evening one star came out in the twilight.
Julian is going to spend the weekend with Gordon – so I must be good and sensible. My stolid little girls Courage and Patience are on either side of me – I will cut out my blue satin nightdress (which was nearly black chiffon) and I am going to embroider it with little sprays of flowers and sentimental bows.
Weekend 16–17–18 April. Gloriously and unnaturally hot weather. On Friday I went to Avonmouth and sat in the Park during my lunch hour enjoying the sun and reading T chekov. What attitudes we strike!
I had ironed my dirndl on Friday night, very hopefully, and by Saturday lunchtime it was hot enough to change into it. Hilary and I gardened fiercely – digging buttercups out of the front rockery – so much so that Hilary threatened to make a salad of the leaves, and we dreamed of digging them.
On Sunday it was again hot – I spent most of the morning scrubbing potatoes and making salad, but I enjoyed it. Surely my spiritual home is in the Coppice back kitchen? After lunch lay in the sun. Honor seemed rather miserable and when I came up with the tea I found her crying. We talked and decided that the burden and continual strain of being ‘splendid’ was sometimes unbearable – sometimes something snaps. Honor said she thought I’d been very good never to have written a word to Gordon. Funnily enough it had never occurred to me that I could – and now of course I’m glad I haven’t. Of course I’ve wanted to – not so much long miserable letters as small darling jokes and funny things. Then Honor told me that a week or two ago Gordon said he had nearly taken a train to Bristol and gone to Mrs Weedy’s in the hope that we might be there. And he had seemed surprised when Honor said we never went there. Oh, darling, how peculiarly insensitive your sex is! Anyway, as far as I was concerned it wasn’t such a bad weekend as I had feared – you wait, says the bat. All right, I know I’m ready. As ready as I can be. What a lot one learns about the technique of misery! We ate an enormous supper, soup, omelette and potatoes, and then to bed. Prue was an adorable film child all the weekend.
Wednesday 21 April. Felt not exactly low but well damped down all day. Julian came back – I thought Honor looked depressed at tea – perhaps G. has been tearing her to pieces or it may be just not getting a letter from George – one doesn’t like to ask all the time. Anyway after lighting a fire and having soup we felt better. The weather seems colder but all the lilac is out and the chestnuts.
Thursday 22 April. Up in the Morning Early [a radio keep-fit programme] certainly helps to dispel that feeling of lowness with which one usually starts the day. One gets instead an agonising stiffness in the backs of the legs, so that one feels trembling and doddery.
Quite a tolerable morning at Avonmouth. I was back in Bristol at lunchtime and bought a utility brassière which makes me look a very fine shape, not at all like ‘this English lady’. The afternoon seemed long. When I got back we had a large late tea – Honor has received a letter from the solicitor to say that G. refuses to divulge the name of the woman or rather the address – Joan Leslie Glover – I shall always think of rows of spring onion seedlings in Honor’s patch when I hear that name, as it was there she told me the name – sometime last week.
In the evening we listened to Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast – a fine dramatic work. (Remarkably fine, as dear Henry would have said or might still say!)
If G. isn’t the best and the real thing, well, I will get it with somebody else. But it’s got to be pretty good, to be better than ‘Sweeney Todd’ and that November afternoon in Christmas Steps and our conversations in the Rocks [Hotel]. No words will describe this wonderful nebulous lover that may one day materialise.
Friday 23 April. Up in the Morning Early, but still stiff. Honor said how Gordon would laugh at us, and oh dear I could just see him laughing! I was working in Bristol all day and it seemed long and tiring.
Hilary has gone to the cottage this weekend – so Honor and I are by ourselves. We talked about things – the folly of day-dreaming amongst others. She thinks I ought to have a really good affaire. I quite agree, but OH DEAR.
Saturday 24 April. Today is an anniversary – I mean six months since my poor darling declared his ill-fated love and started me on this great chunk of misery.
After breakfast Honor and I went shopping in Clifton and came back with our string bags bulging – treacle and Shredded Wheat and cakes and buns. We discussed the technique of misery on the way back, then had tea in the kitchen. In the afternoon I washed my hair and parted it in the middle again.
Tuesday 27 April. Went to Avonmouth. The day started brightly but afterwards rained. I had my half day, but Bristol was only half alive with some shops still closed so I came home and did some sewing and gave myself a little concert of Dohnanyi, Brahms and the Classical Symphony. The latter is quite spoilt so I may well count it a dead loss. The nicest lover I never had, and the rest of it and A ring is round but not round enough and The sea’s deep but not deep enough and I will fight for what I want and if I can’t have it, then I will have nothing, but NOTHING!
The beech trees are out in tender green leaves – the spinster feels like going rushing into the garden and embracing them, crying Thank you, thank you! you at least do what is expected of you and never fail.
How happy is he born and taught
That seeketh not another’s will,
Whose armour is his honest thought
And simple truth his utmost skill.
Why that now, I don’t know. I must have many bats (all with broken wings) flying around in my head.
Wednesday 28 April. Had a most miserable cold day at the office and also had toothache. At 5.30 I went to the dentist and had 2 teeth out – he did it very nicely, but now my jaw is aching. I have a great bloody gap and feel rather pathetic. I got home about 7 to find poor darling Honor very low, though she didn’t say anything, and worried about George. Oh God, if there were something… At the moment the only thing that seems to matter is that he should be all right. She has so much to bear and can’t even have Gordon to comfort her. Tomorrow she goes up to London to sign the petition and ‘discretion’ statement – oh it’s all so beastly, if only it were over.
Thursday 29 April. Slept until ten and woke with blood on my pillow which very much intrigued Prue. Mary came in bringing a cup of tea and the news that there was a letter for Honor, but of course she had left before the post came. We discussed how we could let her know and eventually Mary sent a telegram to Hilary, as they were meeting for lunch. After tea I did some washing for Honor – this dreary spinster pounced on it joyously – here at last was something! Honor got back about 10 – Hilary hadn’t had the message, so the joy of getting the letter was all new. It was written only a week ago – probably while we were listening to Belshazzar’s Feast – the quickest yet. The visit to the solicitor went off very well – he seems very pleased with everything, but thinks the case won’t come on till October – so that means perhaps a year before it is all through. Oh, what a long time I would have had to wait. I have got a much more calm and sensible state about the whole thing – I can now, after all this time, understand exactly Gordon’s feelings about the affair and why he acted as he did, and how he could hardly have done anything else. This is surely an advance because though I could see it in a way I never really felt it.
Sunday 2 May. (Much colder). Busy morning making salad, scrubbing potatoes etc. Drank tea with Honor and listened to Hubert Foss talking about and playing records of Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony. Honor crouched on the floor, pounding potatoes in a saucepan. We talked about Gordon’s play. Honor says she is afraid that it is the one he wrote about his breaking off with Anna. One night, in the early stages of their affair, they were at a concert at the Queen’s Hall. Gordon said that the last time he had been there was with Mollie and that if she were to come back again he wouldn’t feel a thing about her. And Anna burst into tears – And he couldn’t understand why. Thought she ought to have been pleased. What a haunting scene for a novel – it could have also taken place in a churchyard where he has been with someone he once loved. And she, the new one, sees it happening again and again. (Oh, of course you would make it all happen in a churchyard – wouldn’t you?) Gordon, if you ever take any other woman to Abbotsleigh, may you never rest peacefully in your grave with the marble chips on top.
Monday 3 May. I am afraid one of our elderly censors will think me not such a beautiful natured girl after all. This afternoon I was washing, or waiting to wash my hands when I said, ‘I wish people wouldn’t clutter up this basin with flowers.’ And of course they were hers and, worse, she was taking them to an invalid. Oh dear, and perhaps she was a pathetic old governess or a decayed gentlewoman. Now I can never make amends, though I did feebly apologise.
At teatime Honor and I had one of our long, thorough talks about Gordon and their marriage. And she showed me the petition and it has to be resworn as they left out one of Honor’s names. It is rather a horrifying document, but perhaps faintly comic. Really we have discussed Gordon so much, that one would hardly think there was anything left to love. I seem to know everything bad about him, there surely can’t be much more.
Tuesday 4 May. Lovely vigorous up in the morning early exercises. A bright cold morning. It got very hot at teatime and I went out on the balcony. Today (or yesterday) I went and put my arms round the broken unicorn who knows everything, all my joy and misery and is always the same.
Thursday 6 May. Will the tune ‘Dearly Beloved’ always remind me of dreary rides to Avonmouth, and the bus stop at Shirehampton? The cuckoo has started now and it is real Matthew Arnold weather.
Friday 7 May. Had a rather dreary day at work. Saw a dilapidated pigeon on the balcony with ruffled feathers. In the evening felt very elated, dangerously so. For no special reason. Good News – we are in the suburbs of Tunis. Very loud cuckoo outside and the beech tree so green.
Saturday 8 May. Heard on 8 o’clock that we have got Tunis and Bizerta. After six months. A wild and stormy day. Icy wind and driving rain – we all got soaked coming back to lunch. I made curry for supper. Late in the evening, cutting dreary sandwiches for work tomorrow, I let myself go for perhaps half an hour. But one always has to pick oneself up again and go on being drearily splendid.
Sunday 9 May. Worked – a cold miserable day. Shivering and watching the pigeon die, while I ate my sandwiches. Work was intolerably boring. How delightful to come back to tea and a boiled egg and warmth. Listened into various things – high spot was a Stephen Potter poetry programme ending with Latin gender rhymes to a background of Dohnanyi, Variations on a Nursery Tune. Honor said she was going to write to Gordon – I envied her and she said I could write to him if I wanted to. But oh no, I can’t yet. Not till six months at the earliest – unless the giddy heavens fall.
Monday 10 May. A filthy day, very wet and stormy. But I wore my fur-lined boots and took an extra jersey. Now I can see how people get eccentric. Came home, had tea, ironed etc. Listened to a lovely Louis MacNeice programme The Death of Byron. Today is the tenth anniversary of my first evening with Henry. Wistaria and the Trout. Every detail is imprinted on my mind. How small a part of time.…
To Henry Harvey in Stockholm
Bristol
11 May 1943
My Dear Henry,
Of course I should really have written to you yesterday as May 10th is the anniversary of the first time I ever spent an evening with you! What’s more it is the tenth anniversary, a solemn thought! Yes, it was in 1933 and we went to the Trout and played pingpong and ate mixed grill and the wistaria was out.
Well I will start to tell you my news. The biggest thing is that I have volunteered for the WRNS. I decided that I had been long enough in my present job and that a change would do me good – also practically all young (sic) women, especially single ones are liable to be conscripted now – so I thought I’d rather choose what I went into. The uniform is very becoming but of course this dreary spinster wouldn’t be influenced by considerations like that. But those little hats – You can have no conception what England is like now with so many women in uniform. And elderly women are flocking into Government offices and becoming ‘Temporary Civil Servants’. Our new recruits get older and older. And more and more peculiar. The other day one of them came into the tea room wearing a turban and carrying an umbrella. Well Miss Pym and what about yourself? Were you not seen only yesterday, wearing fur-lined boots in May wrapped in a rug and your head tied up in a scarf? It is the cold and the Government ban on Central Heating that does it. We had a glorious heatwave in April but that has now gone. Still all the lilacs have been out and I can imagine the dear old Banbury Road with the lilacs – no the laburnums and red hawthorn all out. It is a long time since I was in Oxford. It would be almost unbearably nostalgic now. Hilary goes there more often as her husband is stationed quite near there. She says you can still eat at the George and it has the best drink. Which is all one cares about, but all. And now, after that, what an unpleasant person I shall make myself out to be. The Censor [this letter would have been read by a Censor] (probably a woman, too) will not realise that the writer is a woman who will be thirty next month, who reads Coventry Patmore and often lunches off Welsh rarebit in a teashop, run by ladies, called Nell Gwynn – who patches her underwear in the evenings, wears lisle stockings (except for special occasions) and weeps when she hears the old B Minor Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto. And lots of other things. But she (the Censor) will no doubt wonder at the relationship between writer and addressee. ‘Old friends, simply that,’ said Miss Pym, giving the words their full meaning. By the way how nice it would be if this letter could arrive in time for your birthday, which is on May 31st. And you will be thirty two, won’t you?
I can’t exactly remember what I did tell you in my last letter. Did I tell you that I was in love and that it was all hopeless? I expect so – well if I did you may be interested (and relieved?) to hear that we parted at Christmas and haven’t seen or written to each other since then – a really dramatic Victorian renunciation – the sort of thing I adore in novels, but find extremely painful in real life. Of course we may come together again in the future – time alone will tell (sorry!) but in the meantime he thought it better I should try and find somebody else who can marry me, which he won’t be able to for at least a year – we neither of us wanted any other kind of relationship so a complete break was the only thing. Luckily we both are rather comic people so it isn’t as bad as it sounds. It has been hell being away from him, as he understood so well and we had all the same ridiculous jokes and things together. I haven’t told Jock but I believe you do know something of these things, even if you have never been in a similar situation. My parents didn’t know either – though everyone here did of course. I am quite resigned to it now and can even visualise the possibility of marrying a dashing naval officer – what – at nearly thirty, with lisle stockings and patched underwear?
Dear Henry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this – but I have a feeling that as we have known each other so long and you were once so much to me that it doesn’t matter. Like some comfortable chair and everything turned to mild, kindly looks and spectacles. I once wrote something of the kind in a novel which I never finished. I’m afraid I haven’t written anything for ages, though I fully intend to when I have time. And I expect it will be better than any of my early work.
I was tidying a drawer this evening and came across a photo of poor Anton Fendrich! I wonder where he is now – also my dear Friedbert. I don’t suppose you ever hear any news of Anton, do you? I imagine that you would be able to write to him, being in a neutral country, though perhaps you hardly could being English. They might think you were a spy. I cannot send any messages through you either, as it is not allowed and, I, even with the lisle stockings and welsh rarebit lunch, might also be a spy.
Oh dear why did I write all this – most unnecessary and melodramatic. Probably they are dead in Russia – one cannot know and does not like to think. Or taken prisoner by my cousin in Tunisia.
I have made no comment on the war news, but things do seem to be going well for us at last. It hardly seems three years since Dunkirk. I’m afraid it will be a long time yet though. But you wait till I am in the WRNS.
Of course this letter is meant for my dear sister Elsie as well as you. I am sure there is nothing in it I would not wish her to see. I hope we shall be meeting again sometime before we are too old to be helping each other into our graves. I’ve chosen a churchyard here or rather my love has – I am going to have marble chips put on top of his grave which he much dislikes.
Much love to you and Elsie and the child –
Barbara
Tuesday 18 May. Got my release form signed so that I can really join the WRNS – also the Admiralty have written to the Censors asking for my character!
Wednesday 19 May. Rose early and did the exercises – we are now stiff in the waist muscles! Gloriously hot weather. I am firewatching in a cotton dress and in the light. Well, summer’s here now. Spring has not waited…
Thursday 20 May. Bought my Radio Times which contains a photo of my Gordon at the darts board and the announcement of his play Farewell Helen to be broadcast on Wednesday next. Spent a pleasant, almost happy evening feeling generally at peace with everything. Drank beer. Listened to a very funny ITMA and The Armchair Detective.
Friday 21 May. Everyone much shaken over the call-up – only I in calm of mind all passion spent!
Saturday 22 May. I went down to the hall to look for the afternoon post and would have given anything to be able to produce a letter from George for Honor. But I couldn’t.
Oh Love hath he done this to thee
What shall (alas) become of me –
At tea we talked all about Gordon’s relations and discussed various things – we also read to each other little extracts from White’s Natural History of Selborne. A nice book but one is continually reminded of the Agony of Not Knowing Latin. As Gordon said at Arkesden when we were reading Ezra Pound or Eliot.
Sunday 23 May. Honor, Julian, Prue and I went to Weston. We had a taxi to the station and there were crowds travelling. To think, as we said to each other, that most of these people could have stayed at home if they’d wanted to!
It was chaos on the station at Weston. Prue started to grizzle a little and Honor said, ‘All right – we’ll go straight back to Bristol!’ Idle, grown-up threat. We managed to slip away for a pint at a rather gimcrack pub with a great many red leather and chromium chairs. Lunch at Rozel [BBC Hostel]. Afterwards the beach, where we lay on my mackintosh. And then the pier with its grinding noise and everything going round and round. We put Prue on the children’s roundabout and stood watching her. In the centre there is a pillar which revolves, made of mirrors (rather distorting) some of them painted with birds and butterflies in bright colours. As I looked at this I thought out a scene for a novel or short story – the governess with the children – in the same unhappy state of mind as Honor was before Christmas and I after. Behind was the Hoop-La and the only object at all nice was a white china swan, hollow in the middle. She plays for it and a Commando seeing that she wants it wins it and gives it to her. There were a lot of Commandos there, incidentally. It was an exhausting day and we had to come home by bus which meant a lot of walking and waiting. Still there was beer and cold beef and chips at the end of it, then a bath and bed.
Monday 24 May. A very wet day. On such a day what is more depressing than the cloakroom at the Censorship – cold and vault-like anyway, but hung with dripping mackintoshes, stockings trying to get dry on the cold radiators etc. Honor had cooked a lovely supper, shepherd’s pie and rhubarb with sponge on the top. Mr Slope proposing to Eleanor Bold in Barchester Towers [BBC radio] was very nice.
Tuesday 25 May. Worked drearily hard. Honor seemed low at teatime – it is time she heard from George – that he is all right after the fighting. It is the one thing I want at the moment – that she should have a letter. It’s so awful not being able to comfort a person you love – all I could do was vain words, half a bottle of Drene and a large sheet of blotting paper I had got from the office. Hilary came back and later we were all quite merry and had a large supper of omelette (very good, made by me) and chips. I washed my hair. We listened to V. S. Pritchett’s programme about Dostoevsky and Turgenev (Stephen Potter produced) – an excellent programme. Good to listen to something really exciting that one couldn’t possibly have written oneself. There was a phrase about nobody having a business to turn away from things in life – one must feel things to the marrow of one’s bones. (I wish I could put it better). Anyway it was good. Gordon’s play tomorrow. We rather dread it.
Wednesday 26 May. Honor had a letter from George, so he is all right. With that worry off my mind I sunk low in myself and spent rather a gloomy day – being rather depressed and yet sharp with myself writing snappy comments on my blotting paper like ‘Snap out of it’ and ‘Testing Time’ – all the time. At tea time I wept rather decorously in my room. Then entered the kitchen full of people – consciously bracing myself, eyes all bathed in cold water. Sally had a child to tea. I had some remains, scones and brandy snaps and cherries with an impossible number of stones.
I prepared a cold supper – asparagus, hardboiled egg, potato salad etc. Honor and I were rather tense and nervous about Gordon’s play. I knitted feverishly – the sleeves of my black jumper. The time came. It was exciting and funny and clever and rather embarrassing. None of it really applicable to me. The bit of La Rochefoucauld he once quoted to me in a letter came in – how little the beginning of love is in our power, therefore you shouldn’t blame your lover or mistress when it ends and all that. I was very excited and yet depressed after it and couldn’t get to sleep for quite a long time. I began thinking of a play I would write.
Thursday 27 May. Received from the WRNS a summons to a selection board on Monday next – so that may mean that I’m being considered for a commission in Censorship. Very excited and agitated and still brooding over the play.
After supper I went to have coffee with Mrs Green and Inky Woodward – in Inky’s flat at the Paragon. I wore the blue-green dress with a full skirt that I made specially for Christmas and haven’t worn since – and rode, down Sion Hill by the Rocks and the Portcullis – where he said ‘My bright and shining Ba’ and the bridge was lovely in the twilight and horrid people sat in the window of the Rocks and I was filled with indescribable nostalgia and love for him. Our Sunday morning drinks and talks about food and Roman Catholicism and Oxford and Cambridge and the September evening when we discussed the Barbellion passage [Journal of a Disappointed Man] we both like – about the dead haunting the places where they have been happy.…
It was fun at Inky’s. She told me all about the WRNS. I tried on her uniform and look Divine in it!
Saturday 29 May. Lovely hot day. In the afternoon Honor and I scrubbed her carpet and floor (good practice for me). It looked wonderful, when we had finished we could talk of nothing else. We were very tired at the end of it and scrubbed in our dreams.
Monday 31 May. Went to London for my Selection Board. Had lunch with dreary people – myself no less dreary than any of them.
The journey was uneventful and went quite quickly. Two impressions – sheets of ox-eye daisies growing by the railway and a patch of ground full of bird-baths and dainty garden statues. Yes, that dwarf with the broken head, that solid unfluffy stone rabbit might well have been among them.
London was bright and pleasant – streets crowded and shops full of nice things. It makes me intolerably sad to go there – although I have now been three times since Gordon and I parted. We took a taxi to WRNS Headquarters and had a long gossip with Betty Rankin. I was then shown into a room where about seven or eight girls – all Wrens – were waiting for the Selection Board. It was most nerve-racking as I was last of all and although my interview was for 5.10 I didn’t get in till about 5.50. It was a real War of Nerves atmosphere – we sat round in a bare dingy room with nothing to read and the windows half blacked out. Each candidate knew whether she had passed or not as she came out. When they were ready for the next victim they rang a piercing bell which made everyone jump. I felt nervous and quite erschöpft and was conscious that my face had got beyond powdering and needed re-doing from the beginning. I thought for a moment – all this is quite fantastic, I’ve no need to be afraid. But then it occurred to me that everyone else was taking it seriously therefore I must too, as I was aiming to be part of it.
My turn came. There were three Wren officers sitting at a table – one grey-haired and soignée, another motherly and wearing a hairnet, and the third dark and massive and ominously silent. I saw her writing something on a piece of paper at the end. They asked me various general questions – why I wanted to join the WRNS – whether I liked Censorship etc. and were very nice. But at the end of it I wasn’t very much the wiser. They said they would let me know in a day or two which rather flattened me, as I had hoped I might know straight away. So now more waiting – I almost felt I would rather be in the ranks as the lowest of the low, though to fail in anything is rather humiliating and I’ve had enough failures lately. After it was all over I felt exhausted and depressed and would have given the rest of my life for the comfort of Gordon and a drink with him. As it was I staggered unthinking into the first train I saw at St James’s Park and then realised that I wasn’t really sure how to get to Gunnersbury. So at Victoria I got out and sat on a seat and meditated and smoked and finally asked an official.
And finally I arrived [at Kew] – Sybil was there, then Rosemary and they were kind and sweet. It was bliss to relax and drink beer and eat and flop into the green sheets – wearing my new blue satin nightdress – my body spread-eagled like a corpse. It was a very hot night – at about 2 a.m. the sirens went and there was gunfire in the distance. I lay awake thinking of Gordon, wondering where he was and if he was awake and longing hopelessly for him and panic came over me at what I had done and the life that was before me. But I thought – well this is the worst time to think of things. Everything seems gloomy and dark when you’re lying awake in the middle of the night. One day, perhaps quite soon – it will be better.