so just about tea-time they packed up and went. We left a lot of them eating mussels at the Gull Rock Hut.
This morning directly after breakfast Geoff and I flew down to the Cove to see what was happening. They had started – at least the hero and heroine were practising a most touching love scene and a sad farewell. So we got some sob stuff gratis. But just as they were getting the cameras ready the sun went in and presently it began to rain, so they all packed up again!
Directly after lunch the sun came out. They went through the caves onto the beach and started rigging up palm trees. They didn’t do much on the beach – only just rigged up the palm trees and took them down again. The producer and his wife bathed, and presently they started packing up.
Saturday, 8 January 1927
Last night I didn’t get to bed till past midnight. Leslie and I sat up talking, and he mentioned the fact that perhaps after his next leave (I shall be 21 then) it is possible I might go back with him and ‘keep house’, provided of course he didn’t get married in the meantime. He said, ‘I don’t think I shall ever get married – of course you never know your luck.’
The idea thrills me to the core: to get away from here, from Wembley, just for a little while, to see different places and people. I know that I shall be in love a hundred times before I find the right man. I don’t want to get married – not at least to the struggling domesticated life which seems to belong to every man I know. I want someone just overpowering, who can dance divinely with me, who likes much the same things as I do, who isn’t too punctilious or particular, yet dresses well and looks well and is well, who doesn’t mind spending money. I don’t think I want him to be too rich, but just well enough off so that we can live comfortably, enjoy life and help others, those who really need it. He’ll have to be taller than me of course, quite good-looking, not too much so though, he must be extremely witty and popular, a hard worker without showing it, reasonable and sympathetic, dark, and he must be endowed with much the same gifts and ideas as Leslie. He must be English too. In fact he’ll be a man very difficult to find, and when I do find him I’ll think myself unworthy.
I am so lonely, yet who am I to complain? You are tired Jean. But stand up to these pinpricks, grit your teeth, grin and go on, so that when the blows come with God’s help you won’t go under. Poor little lonely soul. If I could give you back your mother I would. But hold up your head and never let the world know. It doesn’t want to know. You are of no consequence to it, so why should it bother?
Monday, 17 January
On Thursday I go back to the work and the weariness and the routine, the fun and the laughter and the dread of failure. Exams! That will prove if my last term’s victory was worthwhile, was sincere. It will seem just impossible to think that someday there will be no returning, that I shall have to say farewell to the place which has played the biggest part in my life so far. And after that? The office with Daddy to see what architecture tastes like, and then perhaps more work and exams and a career … when my soul cries out for dancing and film work. I think that after a while you would grow very tired of dancing, and as to films it means very hard work and a lot of pushing.
Yet again if I did take up architecture for a career – and I should never dare to do so unless I was sure I could make a success of it, for Daddy’s sake – there’ll come a time when I’ll have to toss up between that and a home and babies. It’ll be mighty difficult, but time and these pages will see.
The smell of eucalyptus, the fluttering of the fire, the ticking of the clock, the occasional rustle of the paper as Ethel turns to read it, her spasmodic conversation, sometimes the dog asleep beneath the table – home and nothing to do. Life would be awful like that.
Monday, 7 February
I have come to the conclusion that I am rapidly ‘growing out’ of school. This routine, these petty little rules, this kind captivity. But as H.P. pointed out yesterday it is like climbing a hill. You are dying to get to the top but there’s still a long way to go. The only thing is to climb – so one climbs.
Sunday, 27 March
Sometimes I hate everyone, everything. Last night I loathed the thought of the life I’ve got to live: inconspicuous, complacent. I want to do great things, to be great. I can’t bear to think of that office, to pass my years insignificantly as an unsuccessful architect. Why won’t Daddy see these things? I want to do everything people think me incapable of.
Saturday, 9 April
I am home again. This term’s report is a simply amazing one. Miss Harris said to me when I was going, ‘Hope you have very jolly holidays Jean – you deserve them.’ My English has developed amazingly – that essay on ‘Night’ was rather a hit. I wonder if I could get Matric?7 It would be such a splendid triumph.
Last night at half past ten Leslie took me for an hour’s run in Pipsqueak.8 Somewhere out Edgware way. As we sped along some straight wide road Leslie murmured, ‘The road is a river of moonlight/Over the dusky moor.’
It was rather like that – all the flat uninteresting country on either side hidden by a misty darkness, only the moon and the white stars in a clear hard sky. The thrill of the hour, of speeding through places made totally unfamiliar by the night, passing alone with my brother at midnight. Such things are stored in gold in my memory.
Tuesday, 24 May
I said goodbye to Leslie over a week ago. We all got up very early, and Daddy and I went to see him off at Euston. I put on my holiday clothes to see him off. I wonder if he saw the tears in my eyes when I kissed him goodbye. He was standing at the back of the carriage in the shadow – silent – and the train slowly, heartlessly, took him away. All those golden weeks were over. Three whole years, and the most terrible time in front of me.
Saturday, 28 May
We played Luckley this afternoon – cricket 2nd XI. Theirs was more or less an A team. Anyway they won 80–74. I made 9 runs, caught one person out, and took one wicket.
Saturday, 11 June
Today I went home. There were cherries, strawberries, tall blue lupins, white foxgloves, geraniums, early roses. There was the newly painted kitchen, but Leslie’s room was empty and silent and a white dust sheet covered the bed. Things he had left behind – magazines, ashtrays, the fencing foils, an old coat – were scattered about my room waiting to be cleared away.
Then I came back to school again, and the Junior party was simply wonderful. They acted Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, then we made handkerchief animals, each form competing. Then we had light refreshments! There were scenes from Wind in the Willows, then hide and seek.
There is only one more week before the exams. French oral is on Weds.
Sunday, 12 June
I am in a most amusing and entertaining position at the moment. I think I may safely say that I have no attachments to particular people to consider. I stand a little apart, alone yet never really lonely. There are always plenty of people who are quite pleased to have me if I want to come: Laura, Phyllis Yeld, Rosemary G., Doreen Grove, Phyllis Stephenson and Betty Andrews. The latter I like most of all, yet I don’t feel pledged to her in any way.
Then there is Gwyneth and Dorothy. There is only one way to deal with
