Diary of an Ordinary Woman Read online

  Father said he doubts very much whether I have it in me to be a diarist. He said I have no sticking power and will soon get bored. He said Matilda is more likely to keep a diary properly. He can see her writing in it every day. She has the discipline. He said he thought even George could manage a diary, though if he did it would be awfully badly written. But Father thinks I am a flibberty gibbet (I don’t know how to spell that but I don’t care about spelling, it is my diary). Mother told him not to be so unkind but he was laughing and said he was not being at all unkind, he was merely amused and wanted to know what had put the idea of keeping a diary into my funny little head. Mother said there was nothing in the least odd or unusual about it, it is a stage girls go through. She said Matilda had probably already kept one but had been secretive about it. Diaries, she said, are for telling secrets to. She smiled herself then, and Father asked why was she looking so mysterious and had she ever kept a diary and she nodded and blushed and Father said, What secrets did you have to confess, my love, but she would not tell him. They were very merry about it and forgot about me.

  I can’t think of any secrets. My diary, this diary, is not going to be for telling secrets to. Why should I tell myself secrets when I know them already, it is silly. I don’t know yet what I want to keep a diary for. In fact, I don’t see why I have to have a reason. I want to, and I can do what I like. I don’t see why I have to write in it every day either. If I don’t feel like it, I won’t, and that is that.

  I don’t want a diary like Matilda’s. Mother is right. Matilda did used to keep a diary. I have read it. It is in her stocking drawer, inside an old pair of black woollen stockings she never wears. I know it is wicked to look through my sister’s things but I can’t help it. I don’t see why it is wicked. Matilda often calls me a sneak and I suppose she is right and I should be ashamed but I don’t care. I do no harm. I haven’t told anyone about her diary and I never will. It is very dull. She kept it the whole year, though, writing every day. She started it on 1st January 1912, when she was 13 as I am now. She wrote exactly one page every day though sometimes left a few lines empty at the bottom of the page. Every day she described the weather and what we had for dinner. There is quite a lot about me in the diary. It hurt me to read so much about what a pest I was, and a cry-baby and a nuisance who caused all the trouble in the family. I don’t know what trouble she meant and my heart beat fast thinking about it. I wanted to ask her what this trouble was but of course I could not and had to endure the pain as my punishment for reading her stupid diary.

  Matilda always wrote down what she was reading, too. It was pure swank. She tells the plots of Kipps and A Tale of Two Cities and it is very boring. I never saw her reading those proper books either. I am almost sure she never did. Sometimes I have the feeling I am going to turn out to be something queer when I grow up. Matilda is so ordinary she makes me feel special. I am not like her. I want to be different, I don’t know how. Matilda hates to be different. I am different already.

  6 December

  I hate music lessons. I never improve and Miss Bryant thinks I am a dunce, I know she does, and only keeps on for the money, I expect. Today I did scales until I thought I would go mad and then I had an idea. I asked Miss Bryant how scales were invented and she took the bottom out of the piano and showed me all the inside and explained and then there were only five minutes of the lesson left. Before she left Miss Bryant said, You think you are very clever, Millicent. I pretended I didn’t know what she meant. I am thinking about it now. Well, I do think I am clever. Everyone knows I am clever. Why should I pretend I don’t agree. But I know Miss Bryant did not mean that. She meant she knew I’d tricked her and she was cross. I don’t care. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her and it is unfortunate we have to be together. I don’t care if people I don’t like do not like me. It makes sense. I am determined to be strong about this. I cannot go through life currying favour, I have decided.

  12 December

  George is 18 today, though he behaves in such a childish way sometimes, it is impossible to believe it. Father gave him a gold watch with the date of his birth and his initials engraved upon it.

  Mother gave him a leather wallet. That had his initials on too. Matilda embroidered six linen handkerchiefs for him which I thought a very dull present and I am sure George did though he said they were topping. He asked me where my present was which I thought very rude and I said that because of his rudeness I might not give him anything. He said he didn’t care because knowing me it would not be much, he had never seen me go to any trouble for anyone. I thought I might cry and I left the room but Mother called me back and said not to spoil George’s birthday so I was forced to go back and give him the pen I had bought at very great expense. He looked at it and asked why I had given him a pen when I knew he already had two and was not fond of writing. I said it was a good pen and could go with him to the war if he went. Mother burst into tears and Matilda said, Now you really have spoiled George’s birthday and you are very horrid and mean, Millicent. They are all against me. George did not even look at his pen properly. He did not see it is made of steel and will not break even if a bullet hits it and it has a clip on it to clip on the pocket of his uniform when he gets it which his other pens do not have. If he is killed I hope it will be returned with his Special Effects. I should then keep it as a memento of him. Father took his photograph standing outside the front door. He made Ivy polish the brass knocker before he took it. I could tell Ivy was not pleased. She had already polished it that morning and doubtless thought it clean enough. And it is not really her job to polish but since Pearl left she has had to do it as well as tend to the children.

  26 December

  Christmas Day was a great disappointment to me, I must confess. I could not get in the way of it. I wished I were young again when I heard Baby shouting and the twins running in and out of Mother’s and Father’s bedroom to show what Santa Claus had brought them. They blew their toy trumpets and banged their drums and it gave me a headache. I did not enjoy dinner either. Being a vegetarian is very hard. I ate only the roast potatoes and parsnips but without gravy they were dry and I could not partake of the gravy because it was made from the juice of the turkey. I was hungry until we were given pudding. Uncle Ernest laughed at me and said next thing he would find was that I would be chaining myself to railings. I do not know what he meant. Father said he was not to put ideas into my head because it was full of too many silly ones already. I asked what were the ideas I had which are silly and everyone round the table shouted ‘vegetarianism’. I tried to explain why I am a vegetarian but Father told me to stop before I started because he was not having arguments on Christmas Day. If Mother had not given me more pudding I would have cried.

  4 January 1915

  I have been too ill to write in this diary for a whole nine days. I am not yet fully recovered which is bad news with which to begin the fateful year 1915. It is Father who declared, This will be a fateful year, mark my words, so I am marking them. My illness began with a really sore throat, so painful it was like swallowing a sword every time I swallowed, and then began a headache so bad I could not turn my head and had to lie in a darkened room. Hardly anybody came to see how I was or to ask me if I needed anything except for Mother and she was rushing and said it was the flu going about and she hoped Baby would not catch it, I must keep away from Baby. I hardly slept for three nights and could not read because I was dizzy and the print jumped about before my poor eyes. It was very pitiful. I would have thought Mother would have sent for Dr Robinson but she said she did not think it necessary and that hot drinks and keeping warm and quiet were all that mattered. I know if it had been George or Matilda she would have had Dr Robinson. George is her precious first-born and Matilda is said to be delicate, though I don’t know why. I am most unfortunately placed in this family, coming after Matilda and before the twins and Baby. I am special to nobody, and that is the truth.

  5 January

  I feel shaky o
n my feet but at least I can read again. What would I do, I wonder, if I could not read. My very existence would be unbearable. I had two books out from the library and finished them both today. One was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen which Miss Bailey said we should read in the holidays because we are going to study another of Jane Austen’s novels next term. I dread it. Pride and Prejudice I found very slow and I could not be bothered with it. Mother says I will appreciate it when I am older. She is always saying things like that. I don’t care how old I am, I will always think Jane Austen dull if Pride and Prejudice is anything to go by. The other was Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which made me cry, it is so terrible what happens to Tom. I wish Miss Bailey would let us do Uncle Tom’s Cabin instead of something by Miss Austen. There would be so much to write about and consider. I mentioned this to Father and he said Jane Austen is literature and Uncle Tom’s Cabin is something different. I do not know what he means. He said Miss Bailey will explain better than he could. I shall ask Miss Bailey.

  6 January

  I was well enough to go out today. It is not so cold and there was a little sun, but I am not going to waste ink on the weather. I walked to the library to change my books. I wish they did not have this stupid rule that only two fiction and two non-fiction can be taken out at one time. I want only novels, I have no interest in any other sort of book. I want stories. I wish I knew how to find the stories I like. I read the first page of books but I find that is not a good guide to the rest. Dickens sometimes has good first pages but then he so often goes off and becomes heavy. I wish the Brontes had written more. I have read them all. They are full of passion and I know I am a passionate person. I feel things very deeply, nobody knows how deeply. I chose The Way of an Eagle by Ethel M. Dell, but confess it was because of the cover and I do not have high hopes of it. The other is Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, but I may have made a mistake because it looks heavy and I only chose it because I liked the name. I felt gloomy coming home. There was nothing else to do except go to the library and I had done that. Mother said I should invite a friend to tea but there is no one I would like to invite and certainly not to tea. Tea in our house is dreadful. The twins shout and run about and Baby cries and throws food and it is altogether an ordeal. I could not submit a friend to it. Also, I cannot tell Mother this but there is no girl I really like. I do not have a best friend and I don’t want one. I don’t think I do. Florence Richardson used to be my best friend and I was always having to keep in with her. She cried if I walked to hockey with anyone else. I did not like her house either. It smelled and she has three cats and I hate cats. When she came to my house she annoyed me because she liked to play with the twins or hold Baby and I had not invited her for that.

  10 January

  School began again. Edna swanked about going to the theatre four times as she always does and there was lots of swanking about fathers and brothers going to give the Germans a good hiding. Iris asked me if my brother had joined up and I said no, he wanted to but Father needed him in the business. She said her brother was only 16 but he looked older and he had run away and joined up and been taken and only told them at home afterwards. Her mother hadn’t stopped crying since but her father, although angry, was quite proud and said the boy had spunk and no harm would come to him because the war would soon be over and he probably would never see battle. I do not think George has spunk. He would never run away to join up. I wonder if I would, if I were a man. I am sure I have more spunk than George. But I do not agree with war. Father sighs when I say that and he says he wishes it was as simple as that. He said sometimes war is inevitable because if someone attacks you and your country you must defend yourself, what else can be done. I said turn the other cheek as it tells us to do in the Bible. Father groaned and said unfortunately this does not always work. George laughed and said he could see me turning the other cheek, he didn’t think. He said, Milly’s temper is so bad she’d punch anyone who slapped her. Then they all laughed, as though I were a child and had said something funny. I left the table in a dignified way.

  11 January

  I wish I had a room of my own. It is insufferable to have to share with Matilda, but I suppose it must be insufferable for Matilda to have to share with me because after all she is older and even more entitled to privacy. I have thought and thought about how it could be managed and I don’t see why a wall could not be built in our room. It is a big enough room to divide into two. I have examined the wall where the door is and it would be easy, I should have thought, to knock a hole in it and make another door. There are two windows in this room so we could each have a window. It would make me so happy. I told Matilda about my idea but she was not at all responsive. She said Father would never agree because of the cost and trouble and mess and all for what, and Mother would say that she had shared her room with her two sisters and not even had her own bed and had been quite content. I suggested it to Father all the same when he was in a good mood. He laughed very hard and said, What would I think of next and why did I want a room of my own, did I hate my sister so much? I said no, I only sometimes hated her and that mostly I wanted my own room because the presence of another person unsettles me and makes me irritable. You are a funny little thing, Father said in a strange voice. I said I knew I was and had accepted it. He frowned and said he did not want to hear any more of this kind of thing. That is how it always ends with Father. I wish we were not such a big family. If it were not for the twins there would be enough bedrooms for me to have my own room. I would like to have been an only child, or at the most one of two.

  15 January

  Mother has gone to see Aunt Jemima taking Baby with her and I have been forced to look after the twins the whole long day because Ivy has left to work in a factory. Mother is horrified. She dreads Gladys leaving too. Matilda has First Aid class all day. I do not know why she needed to give her hair such attention if all she is doing is going to First Aid class. She has bought a bottle of Danderine because she has dandruff and believes it will cure it. She spent hours last night taking a moist cloth with Danderine on it through her hair, one strand at a time. It cost 1s 1d a bottle and frankly I cannot see it has made any difference, but she is convinced her dandruff has gone (it has not) and that her hair is now glossy and wavy. I am glad I am not vain. I have no dandruff either. I believe I will never have children. I do not see the point. They are so much trouble and for what? I took the twins to the park in the morning and let them feed the ducks and run around, hoping to tire them, but it did not tire them and when we came home they were noisier than ever and fighting all the time and doing damage for which I will be blamed. It is a very terrible thing to say but the twins wrecked my life. I do not see why there was any need to have them. Matilda says I am a ninny if I do not understand how babies happen and cannot be helped sometimes if people are married, but she misses the point. I do know what happens but I have heard at school that there are ways of making sure it does not happen. Edna found something in her father’s dressing-gown pocket which she said was like a balloon before it is blown up and her brother told her what it was for when she showed it to him. She was very shocked and disgusted and dropped it and could not put it back and her brother did so, saying he did not know why she was looking in her father’s dressing-gown pocket. Edna said she was looking for a cough sweet. At any rate, Edna only has one brother. She is so lucky. The twins spoil everything. When Mother told me something nice was going to happen soon I thought she meant that we were at last to have a dog, but it was twins. And then there was Baby, as if twins could not be an end to it.

  I am very tired and discontented about my fate in life.

  10 March

  Gladys has given in her notice. Mother is distraught. She says she thought Gladys, unlike Ivy and Pearl, had more sense. Now we will have nobody except Mrs Norris who comes on Fridays to scrub the floors. I don’t blame any of the maids. I would rather be anything but a maidservant, especially in a house like ours. Father says that in the pres
ent circumstances we will be unlikely to engage new maids and so we must all help in the house. I asked if he included himself and was told not to be impertinent.

  2 April

  Father has read an article about how garden patches can conquer the Germans if they are used to grow vegetables. Instead of importing food, we must grow it, Father says. He started straightaway on our garden, which is not very big. Jack Peel usually comes to do it, but he has joined up and Father has to manage himself. Mother could not believe he was going to dig up the grass and asked where would the twins play, but Father said the grass must go, it was the supreme sacrifice. He dug it all up, peeling the turf off with a spade and then breaking the soil up with a fork. Then he dug holes all over and dropped some silver sand into each hole and then he planted potatoes. Mother dared to ask if it was the right time of year and Father said it was. I could tell he was not sure. When he had finished with the potatoes he planted radishes in between the rows. Mother said had he forgotten that he himself did not care for radishes and neither did anyone else, but Father said it was no time to be faddy and that at least she could make soup. Mother said she had never heard of radish soup and she would rather he planted onions. The garden looks awful now, all muddy and black. Mother cannot let the twins out into it because they jump on the plants and get all filthy. It is altogether a disaster and Mother cannot believe any vegetables will grow.

  4 June

  I had a fight with George today. We are too old to fight, it is undignified, but George provoked me beyond endurance. He says I have no sense of humour but what he did, or rather instructed the twins to do, was not funny. What is there to laugh at when one’s plaits are tied to a chair? I was sitting reading at the dining-room table, which has not got comfortable chairs but it is the only quiet room in the house except for my bedroom, and Matilda was there tidying her drawers so noisily, and I had just got to the bit in Oliver Twist where Bill Sikes murders Nancy and I was nearly crying and did not hear the twins creep in and tie one plait each to the chair. Half an hour or so later, I am gleefully told, I stood up and dragged the chair with me as I tried to walk. George and the twins were watching and screamed and laughed. The pain in my head was intense and I had to shout and shout to be freed.