in a singularly good mood and I congratulate myself that I chose my moment well. Before I left yesterday she heaped me with groceries and carried one of my bags to the station. My fear of her spite is grossly exaggerated.
I trailed round London for two dismal days at the beginning of this week searching for rooms. A more depressing occupation could not be found. In desperation I at last returned to Belsize Park, and they welcomed me back like the lost sheep. It is not the same room I had last year but one exactly like it at the top of the house. It is really too expensive on £3 a week, and until I can find something cheaper I must manage my finances as skilfully as I can.
Today I unpacked my belongings and arranged them to my liking. ‘Don’t you find it very lonely there?’ asked Aunt Elsie yesterday afternoon. ‘Not a bit!’ I lied glibly. ‘I’ve no time to be lonely. I’m either working or entertaining or going out.’ Wonder what she would have said if I’d answered, ‘Yes, damnably at times.’ Loneliness is the price one has to pay for freedom.
Friday, 19 January
Loneliness did I say? I’m beginning to think my answer to Aunt Elsie’s question was, after all, true. There are many minor triumphs I would like to record: little parties I have already held in this room; the gin and tonic Barrel stood me at the Duke of Wellington the other day and his apparent eagerness to accept an invitation to coffee here one evening; the invitation I have had from Marjorie Nockolds (whom I have wanted to know of all the new people I am now meeting at College) to visit her flat in Kensington; the Regent Institute’s approval of my article on Modern Architecture – I have sent it, as suggested, to the Morning Post. Life begins to assume some shape and colour.
Tuesday, 23 January
My triumph, it seems, is to be short-lived. This evening I am threatened with a very bad depression which I shall endeavour to overcome. As Arnold Bennett says somewhere in his journals, ‘It’s a good thing I don’t write here my moods and things …’
I feel rather like Elspeth Myers remarked in the cloakroom the other day, ‘I feel as though I’m due to fall in love again!’ But no one sufficiently presentable and interesting appears on the horizon. It makes one feel humiliatingly undesirable.
Thursday, 25 January
The Morning Post has just returned my article. I shall not feel justified until something of mine is in print.
I must get through those damn exams at the end of this year. So I will put on one more record, light a cigarette and perhaps eat a couple of raisins, and dive once more into Richard II. ‘For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings!’
Tuesday, 6 February
‘Happiness is an unreasonable state,’ said A.J. Cronin’s Dr Leith in Grand Canary. ‘Examine it and it disappears.’ To which Mary murmuringly replies, ‘You don’t want to examine it …’
One daren’t examine it. But I don’t want to forget today. College for a psychology lecture and returning to Belsize Park for supper with Nockolds: Lyons cold tongue and pressed veal and ham, olives, loganberries and a junket that had actually condescended to set, and ginger wine. No, I dare not boast, save that I like her enormously and am immensely proud that she has been my guest.
The room is still fragrant with the memory of her presence. Oh this I am sure is a secret of living – to develop one’s capacity for making friends with the right kind of people. In this way one may defeat that dread fear of loneliness.
I have had notice today also that it is possible to get vacation work through the college authorities in some newspaper office for at least four weeks. This is magnificent, an excellent reason for not going home.
Sunday, 4 March
I am to work this vacc on the Bath and Wilts Chronicle and Herald and am now waiting to hear from the editor.
Wednesday, 28 March
Bath.
The newspaper staff gave me the most bewildering welcome. My first job was to write up a wedding from certain notes provided. They even printed parts of it quite unaltered. It rather tickled me to write that the bride looked charming when I had not even seen a back view of the lady in her everyday clothes.
Mr Winkle (actually Wintle, one of the reporters) heard me express myself rather forcibly about the restrictions of my hostel, and has introduced me to the most comfortable and inexpensive digs. Mr Winkle is, I think, the type of young man I shall probably marry. I never realised before how exciting journalists were to know. I believe it will prove the kind of work I shall find most satisfying. It teems with interest and perpetual variety. But I must go – it never leaves one with nothing to do!
Later: To what place have I ever been where I have not sooner or later lost my head over somebody?
Good Friday, 30 March
I am sure Mr Winkle is the one who is always detailed to take visitors round. We went to Mells this afternoon, a fascinating place. I sat in the car while he went in to speak to the Rector. I respond too quickly to my environment, too eagerly adapt myself to suit the temperament of the first man who attracts me in a new place. It is ridiculous.
Saturday, 31 March
My Easter prayer: that soon, soon my body’s hunger may be satisfied! Not by many lovers, for I have had my chances at that. In the end, as Gus said, I should only hate myself. Mere satiation of physical desire would poison my mind and wound my heart beyond hope of healing. But to have no lover at all would be even worse. For then, being denied a normal woman’s experience, my mind would swell with obscene fancies and my heart would die. Those ghastly visions of the virtuous virgins – hard, bright acidular old age!
No, before I can live I must go through the crucifixion of marriage; it seems inevitably the part of Providence to find me the right man. The only suitable one I have met up to date walked away suddenly and married someone else. All I want is someone reasonably young and healthy and sufficiently in love with me to trust me a little while, and I will make him as happy as is possible. Then will my body be at peace perhaps and leave my mind in a more balanced condition.
If Mr Winkle is not what I am afraid he is, he is really eminently eligible. He is at least the most interesting member of the staff on this paper. But again I am probably jumping to the wildest conclusions. Besides, it is absurd that I should discover the solution so easily on my first expedition. Oh Hell …
Easter Monday, 2 April
Once more I stumble from the great heights of hope into the dull valley of disillusion.
Mr Winkle is evidently a young man easily discouraged, or I imagined there was more underlying his attention to me than there actually was. Why did he trouble to find me these digs? Why did he offer to show me the nearest pub? Why did he take me to Mells? I knew things had begun too well.
Unfortunate that I should write an article in which I have said in the first paragraph, ‘Were the beauty of Bath advertised, the desecrating, curious public will come in their chattering hordes … and we shall be left with nothing but a skeleton, floodlit’, when only three weeks ago it was arranged to spend £3,000 boosting the damn place. ‘Do you know,’
