The Girl from Station X (30 page)

So ends September, with the Russians crossing the Dnieper . . . miners on strike all over England and at loggerheads with the T.U.C. representatives . . . In Italy,
we are in front of Naples threatening to occupy it at any moment, whilst the Germans have blown the town to smithereens. I find such things hard to believe in places that I once knew in the
peaceful somnolence of the sun . . . Sardinia and Sicily are ours . . . the Italian fleet is intact in our hands. Leros (my old friend!) and Samos are also in allied hands. King Peter has
established his govnt.

in Cairo and fighting rages all over Yugoslavia where nos. of Italians are fighting with the rebels, or have handed over their arms. What will October bring? It is the last month
perhaps that will see much before winter sets in. How far will the Russians have advanced?

A
nne was now ready for another romance. In her diaries of 1943 men came and went: that autumn she had hankered after Lieutenant Dubois, the
‘Lanny Budd’ figure met at a dinner party given by her diplomat friends Jack and Daphne Ward; Dubois, however, proved elusive, first breaking his leg in a parachute jump, then turning
out to be married. Several other men proposed, and Anne even promised the faithful John M that she would marry him after all, after the war. It was clear, though, that she had not developed any
relationships as intense as those she had had with Alan Judson in 1940, or with Angela Griffiths in 1941 and 1942.

It was not until the early autumn of 1944 that a new love affair materialised. I was fascinated to read that now it was a woman eight years younger than Anne that she gave her heart to.

In November 1943, the same month that Anne’s beloved Peruvian godmother Kata died – leaving her the silver stirrup of a Peruvian princess – Anne’s ‘outfit’
moved from Grantham to Moreton Hall, Swinderby, Lincs. In April 1944, she was transferred again, to the headquarters of Bomber Command, at High Wycombe. In the diaries she makes a fuss about
working underground, but one aspect of the job that she thoroughly enjoyed was the camaraderie with her female colleagues, most of them with archetypal WAAF nicknames of ambiguous gender: Andy,
Paz, Bunty, Knotty, Kiwi, Ronnie, Doc, Dovey and Hammy.

May 24th 1944.

I had no idea such people existed before. Hammy said to me yesterday: ‘I have never been out to dinner with a man in my life, that sort of thing doesn’t
interest me and I’m scared as to what might happen. I find it much easier to fall for a girl, in fact I find it v. easy to fall for a girl.’

Quite amazing to admit it, although I suppose when I went around with Angela I was ‘in love’ with her in a way, she certainly was with me and told me so. I was more
fascinated and interested to find out what went on than anything else. I was attracted by the sensuality and exoticness of it, but disgusted by the 2nd rateness and sordidity. I was held back too
by the thought that ‘I’ the upholder of traditions of conduct can’t do this kind of thing, had I been any little street girl perhaps I should have. It is this segregation and
sharing of rooms that brings about these situations. If they are only temporary presumably they do no harm.

I wonder what there is about me that attracts lesbians because I am not really one although at one time I was afraid that I might be, but discovered that I was not interested beyond
a certain point, yet I am certainly attracted to them. By their hypersensitive nerves and their quick brains and intelligence. The unknown has always intrigued me and one is so bored these days
that anything to relieve it is welcome. There is something in one’s unconscious that is stronger than any reason and which leads one against one’s will.

This was the first time in the diaries that Anne used the word ‘lesbian’, certainly as regards her own attraction towards other women. Previously she had employed euphemisms:
they
and
such people
and
that rotten crowd.
In this next part of this diary she is trying to be honest – at
first.

I can’t imagine why I am attracted to Andy, she is v. masculine looking, blunt, to the point of rudeness and
most
moody. I find myself repulsed and yet attracted as I did with Angela and at the same time
I look for her every time I go into the mess and am
vaguely disappointed when I don’t see her. At the same time when she sits next to me I avoid her almost rudely and talk to other people instead, in whom I am much less interested. I feel
continuously embarrassed in her presence, there was something in the way she used to look at me that made me terribly shy and for escape I tried to talk ordinarily. Now, she avoids me and when she
does talk, talks like an ordinary girl to girl. How do their minds work and what are the responses if you ‘are one too’? Do they try out a certain approach if they suspect you of their
own tendencies or do they try it on every woman whom they find attractive? I don’t know, but Angela did not give up easily, although she told me that she thought when she told me that she was
in love with me, I would be furious and never speak to her again. In point of fact, it had been obvious to me for some time but I didn’t know the form for such things. Until she left L.B. I
was still under her influence. I wish rather now, that I had spoken frankly with Andy, it would have been fairer as it is I don’t suppose she can make me out, but supposing she had had no
such ideas in her head and I had spoken. What then?

Anne then breaks into Italian in the diary, the English translation of which is:
I hope that nobody is able to read this page otherwise they would have an idea of
my unpleasantness.

She continues in English:

How strange it is that when I am depressed up to a pitch I find relief in writing, but when I am so depressed that I can’t bear to think, then I cannot face
putting my thoughts on paper, but prefer to deny them even to oneself.

When words are spoken or written they assume a concrete and a ‘you cannot go back’ capacity and it is better to leave them merely nebulous in your mind.

Anne, in escapist mode again, was, for much of the time, denying her homosexual feelings. Indeed, when, on 17 August, Knotty told Anne:

‘
Millie has a tremendous crush for you, not in a silly way, you can do nothing wrong in her eyes’
, Anne commented innocently:
I am most awfully
fond of her too as a matter of fact. She is terribly sweet and sympathetic
.

Millie agreed to come with Anne on holiday to Cornwall in September. Paris had just been liberated after four years under the Nazis and this gave Anne and, presumably, the others working with
her a surge of excitement over the prospect of the war ending in a now foreseeable future. The Allied D-Day landings in Normandy had taken place on 6 June when she was on leave at Knowle and all
this, plus her growing affection for Millie, made her much more optimistic.

On the train down to Cornwall on 8 September Millie writes the first few pages of Anne’s diary. Her forward-sloping, looping handwriting, unlike Anne’s inscrutable upright scrawl,
recounts the two women’s train journey from Paddington. Millie’s more schoolgirlish prose – indeed, she and Anne seem like two schoolgirls on that holiday – is full of slang
– ‘old boy’, ‘army clot’ – and clichéd phrases – ‘all’s fair in love and war’, ‘all shapes and sizes, colours and
creeds’ (describing the crowd at Paddington) – but is generally good-humoured and the women seem to be having a wonderful time together.

Anne soon takes up her own diary again, from their B&B, near Portreath:

Millie has written all this up to date while sitting on the floor in her bedroom with a candle nearby and a bottle of gin and orange between us – I shall
always remember these evenings sitting there discussing every subject under the sun and finding to my amazement that we agreed over most (almost all) of them and had arrived at the same conclusions
about life, although 8 years divide us in age. How strange to find someone with whom one feels so at home, it is worth everything in the world and makes one smile for sheer joy of life, at last we
can relax, be natural. All the thoughts and feelings that have been stopped for so long breathe once again like being reborn over again. I cannot express just how much this means to me, who has
lived for so long now in an uncongenial and hostile world – so that although one is with a mass of people always, one is ever more alone and cannot feel anymore. I think this sympathy between
us has its origin in our mutual love of America, of American thought and ideas, for although Millie has never been in the States, she has an American mother and was brought up in France by American
grandparents and she is more American in outlook than she is English. I have long ago given up except amongst the family, who do not count in that way, trying to reconcile my American friends to my
English. They do not seem able to meet or understand each other, so a part of me is always closed. To find someone then who understands this and can grasp both points of view is a joy that I never
hoped to meet with and I therefore prize most highly.

Anne, like many other Englishwomen, was certainly drawn to Americans at this stage of the war; first there was Lieutenant Dubois, then her cousin Mike, Peggie’s brother, then various
American soldiers met on trains, and now there was Millie. Her longing for America was also manifest in her description of the army camp of black American troops outside her and Millie’s
B&B:
Whenever a few were together chattering ten to the dozen, their soft voices sounding kind of queer in the midst of the Cornish fields, it gave me back feelings and memories of
the South that I thought I had forgotten, and I could smell the dusty roads round Baltimore and see them in their blue shirts gathering in the Indian corn in the fall.

The few days with Millie staying on the Cornish moorland, with its disused tin mines
looking like ruined castles
, sound idyllic; the women bathed, bussed or hitchhiked
to neighbouring villages, browsed in second-hand bookshops in St Ives, then drank gin and chatted into the small hours. Anne was protective, and in one long diary entry, comments on how difficult
it must have been for a young woman to have left school without having had any fun, to go straight into the forces. Indeed, my unworldly mother perceived herself as experienced compared to Millie:
We were lucky indeed to have formed our opinions already of a wider world, swept though it was from under our very feet and with all its values shattered at one blow to be replaced by
values and standards that are (thank God!) alien to our way of life and thought.
Millie’s illusions, she writes, were
shattered
by life in the WAAF, and
Anne wanted to help her become more idealistic again.

Like many of my mother’s close relationships with women, there was no physical consummation of her love for Millie, but they returned to London even closer emotionally. The first V-2
rockets – the new German weapons, soundless until just before they fell – had arrived and Anne and Millie had heard one fall just after their train pulled in at Paddington; they later
heard it had gone down as far away as Chiswick. Back in London, Anne was introduced to Millie’s American mother, Mrs Swettenham, who had just left the WAAF after four years, having lied about
her advanced age in order to enlist, which impressed Anne.

Anne’s friendship with Millie became more intense. At a party in the mess she and Millie danced together to the song ‘You’re in My Arms and a Million Miles Away’, then
went to London looking for more second-hand books. In the Charing Cross Road, Anne bought Millie
A Narrow Street
, about a particular street in Paris’s Latin Quarter – where, by
chance, I would stay with friends in a small hotel for my twenty-first birthday. Anne quoted Millie saying:
‘Bless yr. little heart, it was a sweet
gesture.’
Anne added in her diary:
I can’t say how much this friendship means to me, it has brought me back sanity and peace of mind and when I have been
talking to Millie, I feel rested & restored again.

No doubt keen to reassure herself that there is nothing untoward in the relationship, she does not mention the word ‘lesbian’ again.
It is not a disturbing friendship as
so many are, just a complete understanding, love and harmony, so rare to find. M. said yesterday ‘Men are not essential to my life, I can be quite happy without them, although I like them
about.’

However, Anne does seem to have been besotted by Millie, even praising her
original and good ideas
, which sound very
un
original:

Her ambition after the war is (a) to have plenty of money in order to be able to travel, see and experience everything (b) to have a house, not too big but with lovely grounds and
with plenty of servants so that she needn’t do any of the housework or be bothered with it, there she intends to breed all kinds of horses and exchange them for old ones that are worn out
& need to spend the rest of their lives in peace and quiet. Millie loves horses and dogs too, in fact almost prefers animals to people – when she gets excited or feels strongly about
something, she talks with quite an American accent, which she does not realise herself, but certain intonation and phraseology are so familiar to me such as ‘figure it out’ and so
on.

A few days later, Anne had her fortune told by someone at work; he observed that she had a very vivid imagination and must come down to earth more, to everyday things. She was still sometimes
getting her high temperatures, making her want to weep. She heard news from Knowle that made her furious; her stepfather had gone into her room and confiscated her copy of
Lady
Chatterley’s Lover
, saying that it would corrupt young minds. Anne was thirty and Millie and Knotty were indignant on her behalf, Knotty pronouncing that this was the sort of thing that
made people leave home.