took off their hats when they entered the Pump Room!’ However, he’s going to print the thing as it is tomorrow, with his own beastly little footnote.51
I have today done nothing but write up weddings, weddings and yet more weddings. Dear God! What fools these mortals are! Brides in satins and suede georgettes and heavy crepe white and cream and pink and blue. Bridesmaids in chinions and silks carrying bunches of tulips and roses and lilies and pearls and ponchettes and crystal necklaces, the tawdry gifts of the groom. It’s enough to make one a spinster for life.
Tuesday, 3 April
All the sub-editors this afternoon toasted me in tea, upstanding. I was very touched, dear old things! But Mr Cox has a painful habit of making the most appalling puns. If they don’t send me out somewhere tomorrow I shall throw a fit. Mr Walker pointed out to me yesterday that I had referred to a High Street Council School teacher as a High School teacher. ‘Just the difference, you see …’ he said. Christ!
I have just returned from a visit to the Theatre Royal where the English Repertory Players are giving On the Spot this week. I can’t help admiring Edgar Wallace his gift for sensing dramatic situations.
Thursday, 5 April
It is Spring and there is no one here to make love to me: that is the trouble.
Friday, 13 April
I like the Wintle family very much indeed. Ann and her mother who run the snack bar seem delightful, and they all know how to work hard. Ann came up to me the other night and asked me how I was getting on, and if I had good digs and so on. Her interest surprised and pleased me, and left me wondering why she had taken the trouble, whether it was merely idle curiosity or anything her brother may have said, or pure kindness. Anyway, their coffee and hot dogs are excellent.
An idea for a play has been germinating. Tomorrow I am going to get a notebook from Woolworth’s in which to start gathering in the fragments as they form. Roughly, the theme is to be a young girl’s experiences on a provincial paper. Characters to be drawn from the Chronicle. And the influence she has on each individual delicately portrayed. She comes and goes leaving no tangible trace of her visit, i.e. she doesn’t marry the most eligible reporter or shatter the News Editor’s domestic tranquillity. But leaves a very distinct impression on the minds of those with whom she has worked, and with several of them unconsciously changes their outlook on life. Scene might be set throughout in the Reporters Room.52
Sunday, 15 April
A suicide. Neville came to the office yesterday morning to tell me an old man had jumped into the river at Newton Bridge. I was rushed off there and then with Colin Wintle to view the scene of the crime and gather information generally.
Monday, 16 April
I must get this nonsense out of my head. Because Colin Wintle asks me what my Christian name is and if I’d go out with him on some job this evening doesn’t necessarily mean he is going to propose to me.
Tuesday, 17 April
I think I have control over this situation at last. I went with Colin Wintle after lunch to the inquest in the Newton Bridge suicide and felt perfectly at ease with him throughout the afternoon. He has started calling me Jean, which is too amusing. I suppose he’ll never know the romantic illusions he once evoked, that they are over and finished with.
Wednesday, 18 April
How soon is last night’s exaltation withered! This torturing see-saw of emotion.
Colin Wintle is a nice boy but I have no business to be thinking of him as much as I have done. I have already suspected him of being incapable of falling in love with any woman – he gets on too well with too many of them. But I found myself consumed with the most absurd form of jealousy when I heard him making a date with Molly Taylor over the phone.
Thursday, 19 April
After trying to interview Miss Meakin, the young girl glider, this morning, Colin storms into the office saying she is an unmannerly little bitch – awkward and difficult, out of which nothing could be got. ‘Well, she’s terribly young,’ I interposed. ‘Young!’ he snorted, ‘She’s older than you are. She’s 22. You’re not 22, and if you are you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ Which I am not sure is quite as complimentary as may have been intended. Lord, I must seem sweet and innocent. I think if I get the opportunity I’ll tell him I’ll be 21 in July.53
Thinking it is over this afternoon, I realise it is not at all funny. I do behave like a schoolgirl when I’m with him.
Saturday, 21 April
And this time tomorrow I suppose I shall be home. It will be fun meeting my lousy crowd of friends again.
Later: It’s over, it’s over, it’s over. The drink and the dinner and the farewells. Only Colin has not said goodbye. He got up suddenly after the speeches were finished, presumably to write them up. And hasn’t been seen since. Why the hell should I care? I ought to have learnt something of men by now, but I haven’t. They all do it, the ones that have seemed to matter most – Chris and David and Bill Davies – just get up and walk out.
Wednesday, 25 April
Wembley. And the packing was done and the train was caught and I am home again. But only for a few days. The room next to Lugi’s in Dorset Square will be vacant this weekend and I am to move in on Sunday.
Now I am trying to forget how much I enjoyed myself in Bath in spite of those dull periods of depression which are inevitable wherever I go or what I do. Trying to forget, too, how much I want to go back and convince Colin that I am not a schoolgirl and behave on occasions like a normal human being. Having discussed the matter fully with Gus (oh my friend, my friend, how shall I get on without you?), I have no doubt in my mind now that Colin is homosexual. ‘I have been meaning to warn you for a long time,’ said Gus. ‘They will always be a great danger to you, because they understand women so well and are so easy to get on with. It is very hard on the woman admittedly, because they are liable to mistake their intentions.’54
Wednesday, 2 May
A lovely room this, for summer: wide and high and cool, looking out upon the green trees of the Square. I shall be happy here, with Lugi opposite coming in every morning and evening in her cheery way, the kind of independent companion I need.
Thursday, 3 May
I would like very much to get to the bottom of homosexuality.
I cannot believe it is such a crimina carnis contra naturam as Kant makes out. The Greeks accepted it without dispute; the Romans tolerated it; it was unquestioned in England and also Europe I suppose until the end of the eighteenth century, when certain moral philosophers became terribly self-conscious about sex generally. They misunderstood it, were shocked and ashamed.
Examined by itself, it is disgusting. But a lot of our physical functions are disgusting, yet they aren’t wrong and they aren’t necessarily demoralising. Yet if one accepts homosexuality as an inevitable and natural condition in some men, then one should also accept lesbianism similarly in women, and what Kant calls onanism and sodomy.
