Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Pa is sitting downstairs in his shirt-sleeves – a Lost Soul – because my mother has gone to spend the afternoon with Peggy Davies. He feels Ill-used – Rudderless – War-weary. His state of mind is Tchekovian to a degree – and the Free French News doesn’t come on for two hours at least! Poor Pa.

  Monday 7 July Darling, Pa is a Hero! There was something about his FH when he opened the door to me yesterday evening that made me suspect that something Untoward had Occurred – and when I went into the Dining-room my mother unfolded such a tale of Gallantry as never was!

  They hired a punt at Oxford to take Dicky on the river, darling, and my mother stepped into it with one picnic basket while Pa followed with the other. Her weight tilted the nose of the punt downward and she fell forward and clutched at the tree on the bank to save herself. By doing this she pushed the punt into midstream and sploshed into the River. ‘My God,’ yelled Pa. ‘She can’t swim –’ and, tossing the picnic basket aside with Fine Abandon, he leapt into the river after her with his hat on his head & his shoes on his feet. He seized my mother under the Arms and swam her ashore – and, as he keeps saying, looking Modestly down his nose the while, he’s no swimmer – hasn’t been in a river for 32 years. Darling, this is his Big Moment. He refuses to have the Honourable Mud cleaned off his shoes. He refuses to have the limp brown cigarettes taken out of his case. He refuses to throw the damp matches out of his pocket – and the Look in my mother’s eye! I always said he was a Pearl among men, it says I always Knew. And he’s enchanted with her for being enchanted with him – and their Love has taken on its Pristine Walking-Out Bloom again. And I’m no swimmer, he says and, she wouldn’t be here now but for me, he says – and He was Wonderful, she says – and it’s all Very Beautiful. Doubtless you will hear All at the Earliest Opportunity from Pa’s own lips. He goes about with a Withdrawn Higher-Thoughts Look – He’s wondering if there’s any Medal for which he is eligible – He hopes there is.

  Monday 14 July Darling, Nurse has had a son. So much for Joan and my theory that we knew it was going to be a girl – by her shape (It All Goes to Show.)

  Monday 21 July Darling, I slept heavily and wastefully last night and I woke up as though I’d never slept at all. When I got home (at 9.30) my mother was Taking Mild Umbrage because she says she never sees me – and when Joan told me about it I snapped: ‘Well, if we were living in lodgings we shouldn’t have to spend any time with our landlady if we didn’t want to.’ I was very much ashamed, darling, and Joan was shocked and left me sitting Abashed with a mouthful of salad. Then I went into the sitting room & rebuked Ma for talking about me to Joan – and I asked her if you could spend Wednesday night with us, and she said certainly. And I told her that you were going away. Then I Took Umbrage at her having been annoyed at my coming home late and she said that wasn’t why I was crying – she added that she wasn’t born yesterday and I went to bed With Dignity. Both my parents are very pleased for your sake about Bodmin.11 My father says it shows signs that your Worth has been Recognized.

  Thursday 24 July Darling, Dan Green has been missing since the Crete evacuation. His elder brother died of pneumonia about three years ago (he was 24) and Mrs Green had a stroke soon afterwards from the shock. I expect when they tell her about this it will kill her. When people I know are killed and missing – I feel a dull sort of Sorrow – as though it were something very remote that I was seeing through the wrong end of a telescope – and then I set my teeth and exercise my will-power in respect of you, my dear love. The thane of Fife had a wife – so had Marcus Ruelf – and Dan was engaged to a very young, very pretty English Girl. Peter Grant was Walking Out – but oh! my darling, I don’t believe that any of them were loved as you are loved.

  Friday 25 July I wish I could tell you a story, darling, but I can think of none. Mrs Elliott (whose Late Lamented Spouse wrote Lovely Music about Mimosa and Rose-petals and (doubtless) Effusions to the Moon in June in Pulsating tune (I can think of another rhyming word but Far Be it From Me to Muddy my Quink with it!)) is ill. I think it’s Drink. The air about her, when she comes to work is so Charged with Alcoholic fumes, that you can almost see them Shimmering like steam from a car radiator on a hot day – But she’s the essence of Archaic Gentility – and but for that No-one would Ever Know.

  Darling, it’s late at night & I can hardly see because I’ve cried so much. I’ve had a hellish scene with Dicky. He scratched all the skin off my wrist and I tugged and tugged at his hair – hating him, darling. Oh! God, I’m not a monster really but I’m so monstrously resentful of being here that I take quite a sadistic pleasure in making things as uncomfortable as possible for my family. Darling, all the time you were near London, I hadn’t had a moments trouble with my father or Dicky – and now it’s starting all over again – because I can’t feel you near at hand – and I know you won’t be within call for much longer. Darling, I don’t think I’d ever dare to marry you – even if you wanted me to. Perhaps you’d grow to hate me for the vindictive side of my nature – Oh! God. I feel as if my brain were bursting through the bones of my skull. Please love me, darling, I think I’m nicer on the days when I’m sure that you love me.

  Thursday 7 August Last night Joan suddenly said: ‘You’re just like Dorothy Sayers.’ ‘Oh! come,’ I said querulously, with a picture of a huge white lump bulging out of a U-shaped Dip in a green chenille velvet sheath – ‘She’s like a Great White Whale’. ‘Oh! I don’t mean in appearance,’ Joan said, ‘I mean that your mind works exactly like hers. You might have written Busman’s Honeymoon, The self-conscious & academic approach to love.’ And she didn’t mean it as a compliment, darling. Oh! dear.

  I know what prompts Joan’s attitude about Us, darling. In the first place, she’s Paying Off Old Scores – and I don’t blame her. In the second, because she’s been Wary and Reserving Judgement right from the start, I have been nervous and on the defensive, and whenever I’ve talked about you it’s always been self-consciously and with embarrassment. It would have been better not to have talked about you at all, darling – but I haven’t yet learned the Golden Art of Silence.

  Friday 8 August Darling, I had a gruelling time with Joan last night. Ian’s letter was 3½ months old, and he said in it that he felt, from the tone of her letters, that she’d Thought Better of It – and she could consider herself as being under No Obligation to him – if she liked. Poor Joan didn’t like – and it made my stomach contract to see her seeing the hopelessness of trying to be convincing in a letter. She wrote to him last night and today she wired to say that she’d be much happier if they were properly engaged. (Apropos of all this, darling, I asked her if she knew the difference between a Legal and an Illegal Intended – and she said, without hesitation, – oh! yes! an Illegal Intended couldn’t sue for breach of promise! The question didn’t seem to strike her as odd in any way.) Darling, if you were sent away and you loved me enough (and only if you loved me enough) I should like to be your Intended.

  Last night Mr Crotch asked Joan & me if we ever made up quotations in exams to illustrate our points. I said, rather absent-mindedly, that I never had to – I always knew a real one – and, darling, everyone looked appalled – but it was true enough! No wonder Mr Crotch thinks I’m mightily pleased with I. It’s extraordinary how I contrive to consolidate that impression.

  Tomorrow I’m going to Margaret’s wedding. I shall (of course) Tell You All, darling.

  Saturday 9 August Darling, my mother and I had a Terrific Scene this morning before I left, and the astonishing thing was that I lost my temper completely with her because she was doing something which I should undoubtedly have done in similar circumstances. Pa said suddenly at breakfast that he ought go back to Cambridge and take the Chair of Constitutional Law – six months reading, and he’d be fully equipped. Well, darling, although he didn’t mean it seriously and I could tell that by the tone of his voice that he was being half-humourously provocative – I took up the challenge and said that I’d never heard su
ch nonsense in my life and that the greatest brains in the country spent their whole lives in research and were yet unfitted to fill the chair of Constitutional Law.

  My mother bounced with rage – that I should presume, in my immature arrogance, to suppose that anyone was better equipped intellectually for anything than her Solace. What, she Demanded Rhetorically, had ever come out of the Universities? I replied rudely that as she hadn’t read a book for 30 years she naturally wouldn’t know. She said that she’d been too busy making our lives as comfortable as possible to have time for reading (which is not strictly true, darling, because in Egypt she could have found time to read if she hadn’t been too busy with a dozen Public-Spirited activities – However that was no excuse for me) and then we stormed and ranted – but, when I saw she was really hurt, I apologized – because I could see so well what she meant. If anyone dared to imply that there was any intellectual feat of which you were incapable, darling, I’d smoulder and spark just as explosively.

  Sunday 10 August After the Parental Upheaval yesterday, I dashed to Euston, bought a ticket & a detective story and scurried on to the platform. I was walking towards the train gloomily studying my toes when a voice said ‘Hello, Eileen, I thought you might be coming’. It was Joan Pearce. Darling, she looked like a blowsy barmaid – in a powder blue coat with tired grey fur on it – a pinkish-mauve silk dress with white sprigs on it and a black straw hat with yards of veiling and enormous mauvish blue buckram hyacinths bunched on the top and dotted along the band at the back – her hair had been gathered up into a meagre and wispy bun at the back with tiers of a-symmetric curls up each side of her face. Un désastre. Nevertheless I was delighted to see her, and we babbled merrily all the way to Rugby and all the way back.

  Margaret was married by a Bishop in the most enchanting black gaiters, darling. Keith’s face was more terraced and receding than ever and he wore RA Breeches & top boots which contrived to look more like a ballet-skirt than anything else. Margaret looked beautiful – a long train and cream veil with a tiny gold edging – and a halo of her grandmother’s lace – but she shouldn’t have blossomed out into full dress, darling – It was an Anachronism.

  Instead of icing, they had a cake-cover decorated with white flowers. Oh! darling, I should like a wedding-cake decorated with real flowers – but oh! you should have heard Keith’s speech. Darling, I blushed for him. ‘I don’t want to say anything I shouldn’t,’ he said coyly, ‘But I can’t help feeling that if I’m ever able to give a future son-in-law of mine a daughter as Marvellous as Margaret, I’ll consider myself a jolly fine parent.’ Well! Pa was right, darling, when he said that it wasn’t often you heard a Fine Piece of Oratory in these days. Margaret’s pre-Cambridge tutor proposed their health. He said in a Hoarse Whisper (Laryngitis) that he felt he was responsible for It All. If Margaret had gone to Oxford she might have married an Oxford Man – He was proud to have averted a Major Disaster.

  Talking of Laryngitis, darling, I never told you the story of Joan & Peter Edgson, did I? (Peter was Keith’s Best Man.) He pursued Joan (Aubertin) with an Eye to Holy Matrimony throughout his Cambridge career – and one day he asked Ian to breakfast to have a May-the-Best-Man-Win talk with him. Ian was so intensely amused by the Man-to-Man tone of his letter of invitation that he decided to go – and when he arrived he found Peter completely inarticulate with acute Laryngitis. He whispered something inaudible – ‘That’s All Right, old Man,’ said Ian heartily, eating his way happily through four courses – punctuated by agonized whispers of ‘Joan’ and ‘talk’ from Peter. When there was nothing left on the table but an array of glistening plates and cutlery, Ian got up, wrung Peter by the hand and left. After that Peter gave up the struggle as Unequal & Joan was never bothered by him again.

  Monday 11 August Mr Crotch is a Monster, darling. He’s passionately interested in biology, and he told me today that he once wanted to find out if there was any pattern in the rise and fall of a woman’s emotional reactions – so he spent ten months seeing a girl every day and drawing a graph of her Responses. (He wasn’t Living in Sin with her.) The results were extremely interesting, he said, but he never had the courage to publish them. He was delighted with the Expression on my face as I Listened. I haven’t been so Horror-struck since Mr Gestetner told me about his microphone.

  Wednesday 13 August Darling, Joan has had a letter from Ian which has caused her much Solace. You know Joan & Ian are cast in the same mould in the matter of Cluck.

  I walked into the house today to find Jean in the sitting room – with two Broad Rings. A Flight-Officer forsooth. Oh! darling I sizzled with fury. Commissioned rank, Aubrey says is now apparently the preserve of cretins & all the intellectual powers seem to be between minelayers, & supervisors of sanitation – There, I think he Has Something – though I can’t be sure what.

  Saturday 16 August I’m tired of Mr Crotch’s Gallantries. When he talks about women I really loathe him though I like to work with him and I respect his initiative and drive. Of course, it’s my fault that he always talks to me as though we had some sort of Obscene Understanding because I have always talked to him rather as I talk to Aubrey – and he’s the sort of man to whom it’s impossible for a woman to talk, without his replying with a kind of Intellectual Mollocking.

  Don’t misunderstand me, darling, there’s no thought of Mollocking or anything like that in his mind. It’s simply his manner with all women. I didn’t mind it while you were here, because I didn’t mind anything much – but now I hate it – I hate it. Damn. Darling, I wish I weren’t so painfully restless & on edge when you’re away.

  I’ve decided, my dear love, that the only people (with a few notable exceptions) who make a success of marriage are Jews. Joan came home yesterday, in great distress, with a sordid story of the Domestic Troubles of the Assistant Principal who shares her room. It’s a queer thing, but all the really happy marriages I know (discounting those of less than 5 years standing) have Jewish blood in them – Stanley & Mary, my parents, the Bennetts, the Chesters – Horace & Estelle (on their own Peculiar Plane) & it obviously has nothing to do with the Family Tradition or anything like that because all the people I’ve mentioned, except my mother & father and Mary Levy haven’t had any very important Jewish Family Background. It must be that Jews just happen to have that particular kind of mind. Of course the Turners are happy & so were the Inverforths and the Worths seem to be – though one can’t be sure – but they’re in a minority. The Gestetners are happy too, because they laugh at his infidelities together. Henny Gestetner is an extraordinarily clever and strong-minded woman. As a matter of fact I think the root of the problem is that Jewish women think it worthwhile to sink everything in love. (All the women I’ve mentioned are Jewish, though some of the men are not.) Mrs Gestetner will never lose her husband’s love and respect – because she accepts his limitations sanely and openly and makes it her business to know exactly where she stands. She doesn’t try and change her husband – but she does make a most terrific effort to understand him. Christian women, for the most part, won’t make the effort – and so their marriages are often failures – and I say this, darling, in spite of what I’ve seen in Egypt – because I believe that there, marriages are nothing but a convenient escape from the Galling restrictions of parental authority – for most women – any man with enough money and poor enough emotional eyesight will do.

  Darling, I was All Wrong when I wrote ‘Thus, conscience doth make cowards of us All.’12 It doesn’t – Conscience gives one courage, I think. At any rate, lying is invariably the result of cowardice. Yesterday I had a cigarette before sunset and Pa came into my room & smelt the smoke & saw the stub. ‘Have you been smoking?’ he said – and I said no, darling, but I was so ashamed of myself that I admitted that I had, and then he looked so shocked that I added hastily that I’d forgotten it was Saturday. Ever since I’ve been writhing with Conscience and I shall have to Tell him All. Oh! darling, I wish I didn’t lie so often bec
ause it’s the easy way out. I do hate doing it.

  Monday 18 August Joan’s Canadians are back! They were all sent to the Northernmost point of Scotland with a view (I thought) to biting the Enemy in the rear – but No. They just went off in a Swirl of Fanfares and Regimental Balls – and within three weeks they were back. Very peculiar. Joan is delighted. She was furious when I replied to her triumphant Announcement by wondering what Strategic Significance their return might have, She said that when you came back from Bodmin it would give her great pleasure to ask me whether your return meant that the Air Ministry had decided to dismantle all the wireless stations in Great Britain – I said coldly that I didn’t regard the two situations as even faintly analogous and that if Ian came back suddenly – I should not ponder over Strategic Withdrawals and things of that sort. She retired – Worsted.

  Mr Boyle mentioned to her the other day that he’d been taking a lot of Girls to the Savoy lately – and in the next breath he asked her to lunch at Lyons Corner House. She drew herself up to her FH and asked for an explanation.

  ‘W–well,’ said Mr Boyle, ‘I–I take a Girl to the S-Savoy for w-won of three reasons: Either b-because I can’t think of anything to t-talk to her abbbout and the Savoy is s-so n-noisy that c-conversation is d-difficult, if not impossible – or b-because I d-don’t know w-what s-sort of p-place she likes, and the S-Savoy is always s-safe – or b-because she asks me to t-take her there.’ Which I think was rather clever of him, don’t you, darling?

  Mr Crotch and I got on better today – We talked exclusively of work and on that ground we’re very matey in the nicest kind of way.