12 March
Extraordinary. I don’t know quite how to record all that has happened over the past few days. Daddy’s appendix was removed in Wembley Hospital on Tuesday night at 11 o’clock. I lived through the worst half-hour of my life when Ethel phoned me on Tuesday evening. She simply said, ‘can you come home,’ and was crying so much she couldn’t go on.
I now feel, as I always do at home, that I have been here for ever and will be here for ever. The phone goes perpetually. Somebody calls every half-hour. We are calling Leslie (rather touching to feel one can be in communication like this with people the other side of the world). Ethel, outside the genuine anxiety she naturally feels, is getting a tremendous kick out of the situation. ‘What it is to be the wife of a public man!’
Saturday, 14 March
‘I should have known,’ said Nockie on Thursday, ‘that you’d been at home with your stepmother even if you hadn’t told me.’ That’s the effect it has – it muffles me and it shows. I loathe it, I loathe it. This murderous atmosphere. Am not even allowed the full hour with my father at the hospital.
Sunday, 15 March
What agony it was to sit by Daddy this afternoon while his life flickered like a guttering candle. ‘I’m being worn out,’ he said. ‘I’ve no strength left, no strength. I don’t want any food.’ One could barely hear his whisper. Ethel found me crying by his side. He turned to me and said, ‘I’m afraid I’m not much entertainment for you.’ How could I help crying?
But this evening he was better. He was being fed on Benger’s Food, which pleased him.73 He made the nurses quite hysterical by conducting the evening service over the wireless with a spoon. ‘I should like a cigarette,’ he said afterwards, ‘but I must wait until this irritation on my chest has moved.’ The coughing disturbs him dreadfully, ‘like a knife,’ he said, ‘ripping me open’.
Monday, 16 March
Uncle Len is with us (he is Ethel’s brother), and I am flirting with him outrageously.
Wednesday, 18 March
Ethel has been charming this last week with Daddy ill. But tonight, for a moment, the claw showed. She suggests the house should be made into flats, so that she should not have as much to look after. The house, she said, was too big for them – what did she and Daddy want with seven rooms? My God, I feel sick again when I think of it. And what does she imagine Daddy’s feelings are? But she doesn’t. If she thinks Leslie and I will spend our capital on altering the house into mean little flats at the expense of our father’s pride, she is mistaken. Daddy wouldn’t tolerate the idea for a second. This house is not big, and IT IS NOT HERS.
Friday, 20 March
Pop’s stitches were removed today. His progress is very satisfactory, so that on Monday I hope I shall feel free to go back to the flat. It worries me perpetually why I cannot live at home. It seems so strange to me that all my relations are so tediously unambitious – all, that is, except Mummy’s youngest brother Fred Lucey, to whom I owe my economic independence.74 I wish I could discover he didn’t die in America before the War (it was only a rumour), and that he is now alive and very wealthy. Because I feel he might have approved of this niece.
Saturday, 21 March
In this week’s Wembley News (they rang me to enquire earlier in the week):-
Favourable Progress
Mr G.P. Pratt, who, as I mentioned last week, has undergone an operation for appendicitis at Wembley Hospital, is, I hear now, progressing favourably. Mr Pratt lives at ‘Homefield’, Crawford Avenue, Wembley, and has lived at Wembley for 42 years. His enforced, but fortunately only temporary retirement from public life, is being deeply felt in many circles, particularly among the parishioners of St John’s Church, where he is vicar’s warden.
Friday, 3 April
Daddy is to be X-rayed again. They don’t know the cause of the pain about which he complains. Sister told Ethel that we must realise Daddy will not be the same again although he has come through the operation so far very satisfactorily considering his age.
Wednesday, 15 April
Daddy came home from hospital last Saturday. ‘Good,’ I thought, ‘he will not mind if I don’t go to see him now until Wednesday (today).’ But the first words with which I was greeted: ‘So you have managed to leave your friends to come to see me. I was very disappointed you didn’t come yesterday to see your poor old father.’
How to convince him that I am not playing in London, that my book is my job which gets badly neglected? He looks so thin and tired and beaten; I can’t bear it. He still complains of a pain. Daddy would like me there the whole time, but Ethel leaves no room for me, and I cannot tell him that.
Have just been trying to write a letter to Pooh, but find an explanation of the situation to him quite impossible. He would only reply, ‘Ethel be damned. If the Governor wants you at home, you jolly well go home.’ And so a truth comes to light: I do not want to go home, even to please my father.
Met Mrs Barkham in the High Street after tea. She is the wife of our squire, Titus G., who is a director or something at Express Dairies and caused a scandal some time ago by having an illegit by one of his parlour maids. He is a hunchback. Mrs Barkham said to me, ‘Been to see your father? He’s had a bad time. Touch and go. Touch and go. You nearly lost him.’ I’m damned. I think I’m the one to know that.
Monday, 20 April
I must endure this torment until – yes, let me write it – until my father dies. I admit my deep contempt for Wembley and all things suburban. Perhaps Ethel is right, and I am conceited and selfish. I try to offer my services, but my intense fear of her makes the offer appear ungracious. There is not a spark of generosity in her nature: she bristles. I shall call these disturbances at home Wrestles in the Dark with a Pygmy.
Friday, 1 May
Papa is to have another operation tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock. When will all this agony be over? Ethel would have it that it is very serious, but I shall not believe it. He is in good condition and the doctors are not in a hurry to operate. ‘He’s wonderful, isn’t he?’ Ethel said as we left him in hospital this afternoon. ‘A little abnormally cheerful perhaps, but not thinking of himself at all, only of us.’ Dramatising, dramatising the whole time. ‘The garden, so lovely, and he not here to see it …’
Saturday, 2 May
My father died this afternoon at half-past two.
I am free. But at what cost. He died in such terrible pain. We had to stand and watch him die.
Sunday, 3 May
Death is lovely. Only life is cruel. I know that now. He lies in the drawing room now, awaiting the final rites, and his face is like an exquisite wax mask of him at his very best asleep. I am so happy. All agony for him is over.
11 p.m.: I have been mean and selfish. If my love for my father had been allowed to
