The Girl from Station X (31 page)

Meanwhile at work, despite the camaraderie, there was a great deal of bickering and petty jealousies, some of which sound pseudo-lesbian; perhaps this was inevitable, with so many women working
together. Mrs Swettenham, Millie’s mother, was also embroiled, confusingly, with a Mrs SW, who shared her flat. Mrs SW had a crush on Millie’s mother and consequently was very jealous
of Millie. There does sound to have been a hotbed of seething female relationships around Anne at this time.

On 28 September, Anne went to Quaglino’s with two men friends, while Millie went to her mother’s in Earls Court. However, the following night, Millie and Anne shared her bedroom at
40 Belgrave Square, and talked till 6.30 a.m., Millie confiding that she, like Anne, had had a broken engagement, having perceived that her fiancé was ‘weak’. He was then killed
in Salerno, which still made her feel guilty for not having gone ahead with the wedding. Millie also spoke of how, in one of her first WAAF jobs, she had been bullied by a group captain, because
she refused to go out with him. Anne was livid.

It really is one of the most awful stories I have ever heard, that these people should have power over people like Millie, who are terribly sensitive and highly
strung and who feel things so much. If I could restore to her, her faith in human nature, in herself and make her see all this in its true perspective, I would consider that I had done something
really worthwhile.

(Anne’s Aunt K, who did readings of people’s handwriting, had observed from Millie’s writing: ‘Rides roughshod over people.’ Perhaps she was not
as sensitive as Anne liked to think.)

On their various short leaves in London, she and Millie often met in Piccadilly Circus, under the lamp post where the statue of Eros had been. Anne, despite recording that she and Millie took
photographs of each other ‘by Eros’, never comments on the lover-like connotations of this meeting place. It was clear to me that Anne was in love with Millie. Then, in early October,
came a blow.

October 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th.

Came back to a bombshell – Millie rang me to say that she is posted overseas with Knotty.

It gave such a shock that I felt quite dazed – they don’t know where they are going – I can’t describe the hell of misery these last 2 days have been. I feel
as though the whole world has fallen to pieces around me and left me standing by myself in a world of shadows who mean nothing. I didn’t know that I was capable of caring for somebody as much
as this or of feeling this way.

Since knowing Millie so well, I had begun to love again and to feel and to be happy for a brief space – Is this love or what?

If it is not love in a physical sense, what is it then that we should care so much? Millie has been to a Scottish party to celebrate somebody’s homecoming and was asked to
bring a friend ‘so I said I was going to bring “me friend”’ and has asked me to go. The night after we heard, we drank in the mess, Paz, Knotty, Millie and I. Paz was as
depressed as I and I just felt that the bottom had fallen out of the whole world and that all I cared for had gone. I felt this before when Alan left Bicester but I feel it even more now and I
shall never forget these 2 days. It is one of the worst things I’ve been through in the whole war, though I know that is an awful thing to say when other people have suffered real loss. We
got pretty tiddly and played all the records we loved, especially ‘You’re in my Arms,’ I wish to God that I didn’t feel things so strongly, most people and things
don’t mean a lot to me, but my God when they do, it is so strong that it invades my whole life, my every thought and feeling and I could share every one with Millie and know that it would be
understood. I have never met anybody before with whom I was so much in tune, so that I feel now that a very part of me has gone – and that I again move in a meaningless world . . . We went to
bed that night and none of us slept, neither Paz (who feels I believe, as strongly as I do), Millie, Knotty nor I – we lay awake all night and I wished I were dead and no longer had the power
to feel – every time I lay down, those tunes ‘Mexican Rose’, and ‘You’re in my Arms’ and ‘San Fernando Valley’ ran endlessly through my head and I
thought I was going mad. I shall never forget that evening as long as I live, with a prospect of another which I dreaded ahead.

It is worse to keep seeing people when you know they are going and yet you
must
see them – you want to imprint their features,
their smile and their voice on your mind forever, so that it may never fade – and yet you want to run away and hide alone in your misery. I cried most of the night and had no resistance or
strength left to stop myself. One is so weak now, so strung up that everything is magnified a thousand times. It must have been obvious to all how I felt, but I was beyond caring and that life no
longer mattered . . . What is this strange love that one has for somebody? It is inexplicable and is it perverted? No – because you desire nothing from them, you wish on the other hand to
give them everything – there is nothing queer or odd about it. It is just something without price and beautiful as a Chinese Vase or whatever you love most in the world and it seems to lift
you way up to the stars. Are we – sophisticated people, always looking for the perverted side of life and trying to explain things by sexual theories, missing something greater that cannot
fit into a theory because it is so rare and elusive? It seems so. The attraction I felt for Angela Griffiths was the opposite of this, I disliked her almost and yet I was fascinated. This feeling
is a v. different one – Whenever I am with Millie, whatever we are doing, I feel like smiling with happiness and I think she feels the same way with me. All the time in Cornwall, I wanted to
restore her to happiness and I think I succeeded because there was such a sympathy between us.

I would like to talk to somebody with a knowledge of psychology and of the world, greater than mine, to explain it to me. Even now, I want her to have everything in life and I care
more that she should be happy than I myself – If it were a choice between us, I believe I would give it to her –. I must write all this because I feel so strongly that I cannot talk
about it to anyone except perhaps to Paz, who understands and feels the way I do. The world would think we were suffering from odd Freudian diseases and perhaps we are. We are certainly suffering
from lack of affection and mental agony that is undescribable, so awful is it at times, in fact most of the time when I thought I was giving something to Millie, I suddenly found that she was
giving it to me instead – Whether I have given as much to her as she to me I suppose I shall never know – but what has touched me more than anything else is that she came into my room
last night just before dinner and brought me one of the things which I know she most values in the world – the model Lanc which she always had hanging on the light in her room and which was a
real model of one of 407 Sq at Bottesford, the squadron which means the RAF to Millie, in which all her friends were and so many were killed.

I just know how much that Lanc meant to her and in giving it to me, she has given me something which I value beyond everything, it was as if she said to me ‘Au Revoir, I think
you’re “a bit of all right.” ’ She brought me too, a bunch of white heather, symbolic of what she wished me and a small brown paper hat saying ‘Wear this for me on
Christmas Day’ and then turned away hurriedly as she was crying.

A week later, on leave, Anne met Millie, again by Eros, and they spent the rest of that day and most of the evening together, first going to the cinema, to watch
Till We
Meet Again
. An American corporal put his hand on Anne’s knee, undeterred by her deliberately having placed a wet umbrella there, and then she and Millie went to some impromptu drinks
together at the Hyde Park Hotel, where Millie ‘fancied’ an officer; Anne, who knew his brother, introduced them.
After they had gone Millie said to me ‘Annie
it’s amazing how things go right when we are out together, we will have to live next to each other after the war, this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me except when I am with
you
–
I wish to goodness you were coming with me, we’d have such fun!’
Anne suddenly declared an urge for a sausage so she and Millie asked a
policeman, who escorted them to a café in a tiny street behind the Scotch House. No sausage materialised, but Anne had
an ersatz omelette
with tea, chips and
tomatoes. The policeman ate with them and told them all about his job.

When Anne returned to Bomber Command the following day, she found that her own job was at risk – she does not explain why in the diary. This news, coupled with the imminence of
Millie’s departure, sent her into a state of grief and confusion:

I am writing this after a few drinks with Andy and Paz and bridge-playing in the mess – these are my impressions – Millie coming down here to say
goodbye – talking only with Peggy, who appeared to be the only person she cared about. Hitch hiking to Uxbridge, in the pouring rain, a policeman in Wycombe stopping a lorry for me and seeing
a market stall fall just behind us, great wooden rafters, it hit him on the head, fortunately he had his helmet on & it missed me literally by inches – . I couldn’t have cared less
at that moment what happened to me – Millie writing to say she couldn’t bear to speak to any of us on the telephone, it upset her so much. A farewell letter from Knotty, to thank for
the whisky, a v nice one. The complete loyalty of all the WAAF officers’ mess here to me . . . Uncertainty all around. Margaret Bowman – my successor, telling me how to do my job before
she had been there 5 minutes – Varcoe just giving me a type written piece of paper and saying ‘Give this to the clerks with your ops pass to transfer to Flt/O Bowman, it is the only way
we shall get another one for the section.’ This hurt me perhaps more than anything else, he added ‘the sooner it is done the better’ – Wheels within wheels – not
knowing what is happening, caring less – seem to have lost all powers of feeling, am just dead mentally. Must pull myself together. Marvellous loyalty of all the sergeants through this
– Interview with Holmes who is v nice, interview with the Gp. Officer. Incessant uncertainty – beastly altogether – v rude to Varcoe.

One of the colleagues who helped Anne during this period was Andy, the ‘masculine’ WAAF whom Anne had been once attracted to, against her will, when starting at High Wycombe in the
spring of 1944. Anne’s job at Bomber Command now really was at an end; again, she does not explain why in her diary, though hints that its termination was partly due to her recurrent
ill-health. After a farewell party for her, Andy put her to bed, then gave her breakfast next morning; Anne apparently had had a sort of breakdown – or was she just drunk?

When everyone had gone, I collapsed completely and was sick, a mixture of drink and nerves, mostly nerves. Andy coped marvellously and took me home and put me to
bed, stayed with me till I went to sleep. Was completely worn out and raved in a kind of delirium, she told me, saying I could not face life etc. A Sq/Off with an Eton crop came into the mess and
was v. amusing. I’m always being told 2 things ‘That I am v. much alive & have a gt zest for life and that I am a v. sweet person.’ Don’t know why I’m writing all
this, except that I am v. sad to leave all the clots at Command and the staff too.

There was no doubt that relationships during the war were volatile; even my grandmother, still married to Chow, confided that
she
had fallen for her Communist suitor:
Mum
told me she is in love with Col. Malone but realises it is just the war. Have known it for some time. None of us are sane at the moment, so we can’t help each other out at
all
–
What a life!

After Millie had departed – Knotty had been posted with her, but no one was sure where they were going – Anne began to pull herself together. She showed again her attractive modesty,
as exemplified in the following tribute to her colleagues:

I shall mind leaving the mess and a lot of the people at B. Command v much. I have had nicer gestures in this mess and met nicer people than I have ever met in the
WAAF . . . People who have worked all their lives and have felt misery and have risen above cynicism and despair – they are those with depth, not my world (that was) that has
‘lived’ in luxury, the unpleasanter sides of the world hidden away from them . . . and we are having fun with our bridge. Andy is getting
most
enthusiastic and so am I – I adore every moment. Am just so muddled up though, that I don’t know whether I am coming or going – what a
life!

Back in London, she rallied; she went with Gig to a play, then to visit Lettice, who, with her usual insider information, was pretty sure that Millie and Knotty were in Cairo. She met yet
another ‘sweet’ American boy, then, with her characteristic curiosity about other lives, described with enthusiasm standing on a full bus from Hyde Park Corner at 6.30 a.m., crammed
with London charladies, then on to a train via the film studios at Denham.

Hyde Park looked rather lovely in the moonlight. I have certainly seen London at all hours during this war, a city is like tuning in to all a person’s moods
whom one loves . . . The moment you get in a carriage you can tell who will get out at Denham. There is just something about them, old broken down stage hands, threadbare clothes, occasionally a
bowler hat & manners of a bygone generation – fat foreign Jews who haven’t presumably got on too well – cheap little girls, determined Scotsmen with strong political and
religious views, tall men with torn trouser turnups, hollow cheeks and a look of hunger.