A Very Private Eye: The Diaries, Letters and Notebooks of Barbara Pym

by Barbara Pym

  17 October. Starky and I went up to the Orange Grove, drank and talked a lot, danced a little and a little love and more talk and he thinks I am in love with him. Because I call him darling – ‘but you say it so many times’ – I suppose I must in a funny kind of way. Our relationship is physical and intellectual, but not, repeat not cultural. He has awful manners.

  18 October. We drove to the foot of Vesuvius. The road is very bad in parts, but improves suddenly winding up. Very pretty woods with a view down over the Bay. We got a guide and long sticks and plodded up through the ash and lava. Starky raced ahead but came through the ‘mountain’ test very well, carrying my hat and bag for me at the end. We looked into the crater and then came down hand in hand and hysterical with laughter as I kept falling down – my legs got covered with scars. The ashes are still quite hot but it is very cold on top. We drove back in the dark rather silent – I thinking the day was ending and it was our last meeting, but they came in for a drink and afterwards Starky and Mac called for me and we had more drinks. He’s funny when he’s slightly drunk. Bold and rude and rather sentimental – makes me feel very maternal! We had dinner in the Mess and then went on to a party at the flat of some Italian girls where some of the Cypher boys were. One has cold hand like a corpse. Ian Macintyre and I talked about Chaucer and Tchekov. Then we moved up to Mac’s flat and continued the party. I spoke French and even a little Italian to the girls. I enjoyed myself though I saw little of Starky who seemed rather drunk and kept ruffling my hair. It was a cold stormy evening and the balcony was not very inviting – nevertheless I had a few conversations there, one with a Russian, one with Mac, who accused me of ‘talking big’ when I said that Starky and I would soon forget each other, and one with Starky himself. We had a ridiculous goodnight outside the Wrennery at 3 a.m. – me saying ‘Thanks for a lovely volcano’ and him ‘Excuse me for kissing you goodnight with my glasses on’.

  23 October. Starky phoned quarters just as I got in from the office and suggested coming round for a drink and to say goodbye. I washed my hair, did my face and changed into blues. He came with Jack Fisher soon after 9 and we went into the blue and gold room. I didn’t like him at all – he was rather rude and silly and I got to feel more and more low, finally saying can’t we go to the Fleet Club and be madly gay or something, but it was too late. Still we did go out in the end – drove up to the Monastery in the car. It was too dark to see much, but we talked and he was much nicer and we really said goodbye. But without much hope or wish for the future. It isn’t, as we said, that one’s cynical, it’s that one knows from experience how these things peter out. I feel that it’s a good thing that he is going.

  24 October. Two years ago tonight – if Gordon hadn’t said ‘In a queer kind of way I’m in love with you’ I shouldn’t be in Naples now. Told at dinner that Starky isn’t going for four more days. Oh dear, I don’t want to see him again – and yet I do.

  26 October. I am trying not to feel low, knowing that he may still be here but not liking to find out. If only he would really be gone! Last night I went out with Jimmy and Morag and Bruce. We started at Jeni’s, continental atmosphere, a man playing a mandoline and singing Italian songs – the sort of place to go to with somebody special to talk and gaze into their eyes! Dinner at the British Officers’ Club, then to the Churchill, loud band, good dancing and many gins. Then to the Fleet Club. All through the evening I could feel the pain of missing Starky and even though I know it won’t last very long it still hurts. Tonight I don’t know whether to go to an American party with Doriel or stay in and go to bed early. Parties and drink are a bad thing when one has a little misery lurking somewhere. Better to bear it with dignity. If I’m not careful I’ll begin hating myself again. Not that it really matters but I must keep myself in hand.

  27 October. He went. In the early morning by plane.

  Absence is the negation of love.

  Joy fades, but even so fades in felicity

  and all the rest.

  31 October. This evening I’ve actually done some Italian – written

  exercises out of Hugo. If only I could go on with it – it is so

  satisfying. On Sunday I wrote a letter to Starky, quite a good one,

  which will no doubt be beyond him – he will pounce on the delicate

  sentimentallity and miss the rest – or will he?

  2 November. At 2.30 started out with Morag for our weekend in Ischia. Sat in the saloon of the ferry for about half an hour but then had to rush to the side. Spent the next hour leaning over the side being sick and trying to keep my balance as the boat rose and fell in the waves. One wave came right over me and drenched me. Also a dead body floated by but luckily I didn’t see it. Also being sick was a beautiful young man in an elaborate Italian uniform. How many of them have large melancholy eyes that gaze soulfully at you! I arrived in Ischia, my hair wet and tangled, my face green, which had been so glowing and peach-like when I started off. Early to bed but I dreamed, which I don’t in Naples, muddled dreams about Starky. And I looked at myself in a wardrobe mirror and saw I was wearing red plus fours or turkish trousers.

  3 November. We walked a little round the island – everything is so beautifully green now. Oranges and orange blossom with shining green leaves, lemons, vines, bougainvillea, mild sunny air – I wore no stockings. We walked to the ruined castle and came to a ruined chapel, the altar with plaster cherubs etc. still distinguishable, also little side chapels and arches all ruined. ‘Sentimental delight in decay’ … how happy I felt, so different from the artificail life in Naples. After tea we went down to the shops and I bought a basket in the shape of a heart, which I shall use as a workbasket.

  5 November. Smooth crossing back. Four letters awaiting me in the office. One from Starky. Iain now!

  15 November. Tea at British Officers’ Club with Jimmy. Elizabeth Ann was there with a pongo. Whole atmosphere very British.

  16 November. Party in Maclaine Clarke’s flat. Didn’t feel like going – sticky beginning but not bad afterwards with Cypher boys. Harry would keep asking me if I missed Starky and enlarging on the merits of his character. Well, it made conversation. Of course it was too cold to go out on the balcony and nobody did. Isn’t there an Italian saying about there being no greater misery than to remember past happiness when you are unhappy? Not that one could apply it exactly, but there were other parties and other people. Once upon a time. And other conversations. Harry tried to persuade me to go to the CHQ New Year’s Eve Party – said he was sure Starky would have wanted it – just as if I were Starky’s widow! Came home with a splitting headache and sat on my bed for about 10 minutes just doing nothing, with my coat on.

  17 November. Dinner at Jimmy’s Mess and 22 Club dance – in splendid form, even dancing quite well. I no longer have an ache of misery. Oh how soon one forgets…

  19 November. Drove with Jimmy all along the sea front through Posilippo down to Bagnoli – lovely view of Ischia in a golden mist. Tea at the British Officers’ Club, supper at the Mess, Jimmy, Tony, Auriol and I. The Major was there with a friend called John Baxter, a John Gielgud type, a mouth like Gordon’s but blue eyes. Madly gay at the Churchill. To the 22 Club and back to the Mess. Driving in the dark in Naples is so pleasant, especially up the roads to Posilippo, the headlights of the car pick out all sorts of exquisite things, a pair of urns set on a gateway, corners of buildings, avenues of trees, grey, deserted streets.

  20 November. Went out to dinner with Colonel Mote, who belongs to Claims and Hirings – a lovely Mess above the orange grove with a garden full of statues and a glorious view. All in the dark with twinkling lights. Had a rather queer dinner – fish after meat. A charming lot of people – a Brigadier like Charlie Chan and an amusing Scots Major in a kilt.

  A description of me – somebody said to Jimmy – ‘that very blasé Wren officer with a perpetually bored expression’ – and he said ‘Yes she was born like that. It’s rather fun!’ I told Cynthia and she gave me another description �
�� ‘the girl with the fascinating eyes’.

  21 November. Had an airgraph from Gordon, so funny and sweet it brought a sudden rush of tears to my eyes. Oh how much my own sort of person he was and is … please can’t there be somebody like that again.

  22 November. Worked very hard, did [censored] 213 letters, a lot for Naples, but how unlike the weeks before D Day. Had dinner at Jimmy’s Mess. The Major came in with lipstick on his face.

  23 November. Why doesn’t Starky write. But how quickly I forget those bright brown eyes, that sweet smile, that uncertain gauche social manner, those umbrageous remarks. But the blister from Vesuvius still throbs on my heel and I go to sickbay every day to have it treated. And look sadly at my whites packed away in my suitcase, even try on my white hat for a moment.

  24 November. Tea with Auriol, Morag and Margaret who are all going to Alex. By train to Taranto and then by sea. I rather envy them the amusement of the journey and feel almost provincial and stay at home here in Naples.

  30 November. Went back to work which was very boring as usual. Oh how I am wasting my life in some ways. In the evening we tried to go to Positano in a large American Ford V8. I like driving through the suburbs of Naples to look inside a lighted restaurant where you will see no British or Allied officers, to watch people queuing at some little cinema, to peer inside a flat, to see groups talking on street corners and to drive down the kind of places where you might get a knife in your back. Nothing is more deserted and Chirico-like than a Naples street at night – grey shuttered houses, dark, silent, mysterious, sinister.

  Out of Castellamare the car broke down so we went into the sergeants’ mess and had drinks (which went straight to my head) and cheese sandwiches. Then back to our mess where we cooked bacon and eggs and coffee.

  2 December. Positano in the evening. Drinks at the Miramar, dinner at Bucca di Bacco (soup, squid, steak, omelette). Dancing at Caterinetta. Rich, idle Italians playing cards all night and sleeping all day.

  6 December. Positano, Amalfi and Ravello, which is romantic at twilight. Cypresses, olives, an orange grove and a church which is, I believe, Byzantine. Would like to stay there sometime. I believe it has associations with Wagner and Cosima von Bülow. It is a honeymoon spot.

  20 December. Vicky’s cocktail party. Talked to B.S.O. Astley-Jones, Major Macleod, etc. Went to Robby’s party. Lovely food but oh the strain of cheesing.

  25 December. Breakfast in bed – opened my stocking from Auriol and books from home. Waited on Wrens at dinner then had our own. In the evening went to a party at Admiral Morse’s villa, quite enjoyable but I am never at my ease there, feel Jane Eyre-ish and socially unsuccessful. Danced with Flags and Astley-Jones, both doing their stuff – charm, etc. How artificial it all is. I wonder if they feel it.

  29 December. Went to Chiefs’ and P.O.’s dance at the Fleet canteen. Very enjoyable, many good dancers. Met a man who had been at Westcliff.

  31 December. CHQ dance. Cyclamen chiffon, agonising stiff neck and the magic of ‘Long Ago and Far Away’ sung by dear Edward Astley-Jones while he danced with me, oh so cheek-to-cheek.…

  24-25 March 1945. Rome. Went up by Cassino. Country lovely – brilliant green grass, yellow-green trees, blossoms, cypresses as one gets further north. Villages on hills, grey with a church spire or cupola – but ruined with sightless windows. Cassino – literally nothing standing. Out of Bounds notices in English and Polish. Little white wooden crosses mark the graves.

  Frossinone – much bigger but horrifying damage. Like the Blitz but more desolate.

  Rome itself, wide pavements – magic twilight (as I first saw Berlin in 1938). Trees coming into leaf in the streets, flower shops full of fruit blossom and other more exotic things, double anemones, carnations, freesias, violets, irises and funny orange and blue things, tall and spiky, a cross between an iris and an orchid, hardly real. A fountain in the form of a boat in the Plaza di Spagna (in the moonlight you can’t see the bits of paper and orange peel in the water).

  St Peter’s. Vast and unchurchlike. Marble in various colours. Nice Holy Water basins, white cherubs and yellow Siena marble. It was Palm Sunday and outside they were selling palms and little palm crosses and everyone carried sprigs of myrtle. All the pictures behind the altars were veiled in purple. We went up on the roof – the Tiber a yellowish brown – lovely bridges with figures. Palazzo Venezia looks good in the distance, flying statues on the corners – figures everywhere stand out against the sky. Peered into the Vatican City in the hopes of seeing carpet slippers slopping up and down the backstairs. Hens on the roof.

  Lunch at the Officers’ Club in Pincio Gardens. Tender green cypresses, brown and cream buildings. Lovely greeny fish fountain in Piazza Berberini.

  Ideas for Naples Poems or Stories

  The Major’s Arienzo girl, no longer in her first youth, waiting for him to come back off LIAF in that cluttered salon. Palms in front of the windows – the orange tree that never has any fruit. Then the mimosa. Will he ever come back?

  The Officers’ Club at Capua. The room with the little baroque birds, bad food lacking salt and half cold, the sweet spumante and too many drunken majors.

  The Royal Palace at Caserta – like a railway waiting room at one of the bigger stations. Enormous chandeliers with very little light coming from them. Huddled groups of people talking and drinking. (All very like Henry Green’s Party Going). Marble busts, rather vulgarly ostentatious. Red and gold sofas, very long. Oh, if a romance should begin here and flower!

  The Opera House on an April evening during one of the intervals. The dusty plants where we stub out our cigarettes show young green leaves and even buds of flowers. If this can happen, anything can. Upsetting, because one cannot help drawing comparisons with the heart.

  Lying awake and seeing dawn come to Naples, hearing the birds singing. One’s thoughts so limited to that narrow life that is Naples and seems to be the whole world until one thinks of a map and Naples on it.

  The suave elegant Rags and the Acting Third Officer in ill-fitting white dress talking on the terrace of an exquisite villa in the moonlight.

  The white and gold Lyons Corner House-like atmosphere of the British Officers’ Club.

  The haunted feeling of places, and objects too, in villas and houses now taken over by the military – the 22 Club for instance.

  To Henry Harvey in Upsala

  London, S.W.I.

  7 November 1945

  Dear Henry,

  It was very nice of you to write and I appreciated your letter very much – it was a very miserable time for me [her mother had died in September], but I feel much better about things now that I’m away from Oswestry.

  I am still in the WRNS waiting to be demobilised really, but in the meantime hanging about at WRNS Headquarters, doing a little, very dull work which calls for very little intelligence. I earn quite good money though, which I suppose is something, and am also in London which I wanted to be. I think I shall be a civilian again by the end of this year or early next. We have given up our house in Oswestry and my father is living in a hotel, Hilary and I have taken a flat – in Pimlico, not a very good district, but perhaps we shall raise the tone. It is on the corner of Warwick Square and really quite nice. Anyway we are so lucky to get anywhere at all, as it is practically impossible to get flats and you really can’t choose at all. It will be nice to have a place of one’s own and I think I shall be much happier then. If I can get a nice little job to earn me a bit of money I shall then settle to writing again and see if I can get a nice novel or something published. But I don’t really want to end my days in London, would prefer Oxford or the country. I suppose it is better than any other town though and as one’s nerves are a bit frazzled after six years of war life is difficult anywhere. You know, one is bad tempered and irritable, could nearly cry because a bus doesn’t stop when it’s too full, would rather go without things than queue for them, and now that the war is over one doesn’t seem able to put up with things so easily.
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  I had a letter from Jock yesterday, he seems much happier and is enjoying the sinshine – oh dear what an unsuitable mistake to make – of course I mean sunshine.

  Do write sometime or get Elsie to, and be sure and let me know if you are coming over.

  With love,

  Barbara

  108 Cambridge Street

  London S.W.I.

  9 February 1946

  My dear Henry,

  Thank you very much for your letter. It came very quickly. I had an idea that I owed you one, though that would have been rather unusual, I mean, if it had been ten years ago. Yes, I ‘did start it’, even if I was inspired by you or rather the sight of you in the English Reading Room. I even got Rosemary Topping to go and look in your books when you had left them for a moment to see what your name was. Does anybody ever do that now? I suppose not, though no doubt others are doing it at Oxford. I almost envy them – one seems to feel so little now, and life was certainly exciting then, full of splendours and miseries.

  I ought really to have started with facts. I am now a civilian once more and have a flat in Pimlico (rather nice, don’t you think?) which I share with Hilary, it is really very nice as we have a lot of things from Oswestry. My father has given up the house and is living in a hotel, where he is really very comfortable. I am going up to see him next weekend. He is very well, and though I feel it is very sad for him without my mother he is splendid about it. Luckily he has quite a lot of friends and interests there, which I haven’t.