sure to be disappointed – they all are. I have got to the stage when depression falls upon me like a blanket. I am going all to pieces so I must think no more about it.
Later:
Didn’t I say it would all come to nothing? I have just had another phone message from Joyce to say that H.D. is down with ’flu. So what does it matter what I wear or what the weather is? Damn damn damn. I am fated. Oh God mayn’t I ever get to know anybody? Mayn’t I have any fun at all? Mayn’t I ever meet a few of the people I imagine are in love with me? Or is it to save me from more bitterness, more heartache? But to quote someone else, ‘To give up possible joys for the fear of possible pain is to give up everything.’ I would willingly suffer a little if I could have lovers – lots of them and a good time.
Tuesday, 27 March
1.40 a.m. Another little Hell – paved with good intentions and roofed with lost opportunities. Oh God, what a fool I was. And the only way to ease the ache is to write and write, even at half-past-one in the morning.
We have just come back from another Ladies’ Night – the Borough of Acton – and Geoffrey Roberts was there. I caught his eye in the entrance hall before we went up for the reception. He came over and was introduced as ‘Mr Roberts’. He stared hard and said, ‘Am very pleased to meet you.’ I just smiled faintly and turned away, thinking, ‘Oh, Geoffrey Roberts … he can wait.’ And it was there I made the first mistake, I know now.
Then I let slip another opportunity. After dinner, while we were waiting for the dancing to begin, Ethel and I and one or two others went up the stairs to look at the awful flash-light photos of ourselves. Having thoroughly studied and reviled same, they stood back against the wall and I leant over the bannisters looking down onto the hall below, wondering idly why I had been so cold to G.R. He was standing with the crowd. He is tall and dark, and again his eye caught mine, and almost at once he came upstairs to look at the photos beside me. Should I have spoken or given some sort of encouragement? All the torment begins again when I think of it.
I try to comfort myself with the thought that Ethel and Mrs Halter were just behind so it would have been impossible, but it wouldn’t have been. We had been introduced, and it was my place to speak. I had hoped he would have asked for a dance, but having behaved so abominably beforehand I hardly blame him for not risking getting snubbed again.
There is no sleep for me until 2, and even now I shall lie awake a long, long time. Am I really in love, or is it another one of those dreams which are always dreams?
Later: All day long my nerves have been keyed to a pitch I can hardly describe. All the time my mind has throbbed with a single thought – a suffocating desire to meet and speak with him who has haunted my thoughts since we last looked into one another’s eyes.
Sunday, 1 April
I have slipped back into the old ways of looking at life, merely as a bystander. No man turns from the stream to wait upon me, they do not come in numbers as they seem to come for Margaret. I am just amused, cynical, hating myself – dreading the thought of tomorrow and the disillusionment it may bring. ‘At 18 we are so innocently vain’ – I am quoting from Isobel. As she says, we want everyone to love us. And why not? I shall never be 18 again. And I have never been kissed. Oh damn it, and I know I ought to have been. Other people think I have.
Sunday, 15 April
The days slip by so quickly. It is nearly a year since I left PHC, and of what value has that year been to me? I know now I should have stayed on. I could have helped PHC, could have made myself useful in the library, could have got Matric and learnt more of things I was just beginning to enjoy. I have gained nothing by stealing this year from my school life.
Wednesday, 25 April
No further news of Harold Dagley.
Thursday, 3 May
I had a long, long letter from Leslie this morning. It seems so wonderful after all this time. And he writes all the news to me, treating me no longer as a baby sister, and sends all the snaps to me.
Sunday, 6 May
I mustn’t fall in love with someone at the Tennis Club. It will be so awkward, yet I can’t help thinking of him. On no account will I be made to look a fool. Oh, he wears such wonderfully creased flannels. I am going to the club tomorrow evening. I went yesterday too.
Temple Silvester has just passed, and I can’t imagine who it was with him. One of the girls in an awful red frock with the Alsatian.
Sunday, 20 May
Ethel has not meant to, but she has stolen away all possible intimacy between me and Daddy. I only see him now as a man growing old – a little eccentric, a little vulgar, irritating – the difference between our ages forming an almost unsurpassable gulf. Yet I know that I love him.
Daddy I want to win you back some day. There is work I must do for you, for myself, for our name. And perhaps I am lazy and weak-minded. Perhaps I do find the position of junior typist a very comfortable and easy one, and perhaps I am not doing as much and learning as much as I should.
I hate myself for being a coward and a cad. I eat with them, I smile and talk with them, I take all my father has to offer, and then write these sort of beastly things about them without them knowing.
Wednesday, 6 June
‘I don’t think I could take a boy of my own age seriously enough to marry him,’ I told Miss Walker some 15 minutes back as she stood by the window watching the traffic at work. At present I am not worrying myself particularly about it at all. I would like to go to the pictures with Geoffrey Roberts. Or have coffee with Barrett at Lyons. Or meet Harold Dagley. Or go for a walk with Jack Honour. Any of these to amuse me, laugh with me, tease and be teased. Except Jack: I would want him to make love to me.
‘Very small, very shy.’ Jean prepares for the battles ahead.
4.
Two Girls Who Whispered Once
Tuesday, 25 September 1928 (aged eighteen)
This ‘year’ is nearly over. I have come through fairly all right. I took Miss Walker’s place and stood the test. It was work I rather enjoyed in spite of the few long letters that got me down. It was hard work, doing the work of two at a busy time. But it gave me a sense of well-being and I gained in self-confidence.12
Tomorrow I start lessons in architecture at the Ealing Institute. Wednesday and Friday mornings at 10 to 12.30. Shall I be the only girl? And if so, shall I be an awful mug? Shall I be able to do anything?
Wednesday, 26 September
She came in some 10 or 15 minutes after the class had started. Tall, thin, dark-eyed, smiling impudently.
‘Come, come,’ said Mr Patrick, pulling out his watch. ‘First day of the term – this is dreadful.’ But there was a corresponding twinkle in his eye that I noticed afterwards always came when he spoke to her. Lazy, amusing, vibrant
