Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Mrs Wright Fell Ill last night – so Joan & I had to get our own breakfast this morning. Darling, I have a Lot to Learn – the act of getting an egg out of the frying pan without making it look like a dirty dishrag not being the least thing. (Talking of dishrags – Dicky spilt the water last night, and after he’d wiped it up with a filthy cloth, threw it (the cloth, I mean) on to Lionel’s dinner plate, whereat Lionel picked it up in silence and with great dignity and threw it full into Dicky’s face! It sobered him up more than somewhat – That’s the only language Dicky understands. His behaviour thereafter was almost unimpeachable.) We were all Falling Over one another trying to be Helpful – Joan broke the lid of the soup-tureen – and Lionel smashed the Cona – so I thought I’d better retire upstairs and write to Aubrey! Joan and I have decided that Arm-Chair Domesticity is All Very Well in theory, but that actually it’s easier to be a Civil Servant than a good housewife. But we shall learn, my love. In time you and Ian will be able to say ‘Look What I’ve Got’ and you won’t be referring to our Academic Achievements either.

  Thursday 11 September Joan & I are lunching with Celia today, darling. Great Solace. She told Joan, dryly and without a trace of emotion that she was sex-starved & that she intended to give up teaching and go into the Forces as an Antidote. She added that this would also solve the stocking-problem. It was All Very Well, she said for people with Smooth legs to go about stockingless, but what if, like her, you happened to have Stubble Trouble? A friend of hers who had Stubble Trouble shaved her legs – but the next time she put on a pair of stockings – she laddered them with the bristles! Dear Celia.

  Dicky undoubtedly has a Perverted Sense of Humour. The other day my mother & Lionel & he spent the day with Peggy Davies, and Lionel went up into the loft. While he was there, Dicky took the step-ladder away, and Lionel, stepping blindly out of the dark, crashed to the floor. He has a scar nearly three inches long on his face. Pa was so angry with Dicky (so he said) that he refused to speak to him – and took it out of poor Lionel instead! You know the line – How could he be so careless? Why didn’t he look where he was going? As the ladder is fixed perpendicularly to the flap of the trap-door, and as you step down it backwards – Lionel couldn’t have seen it, darling – but nevertheless Lionel got a violent tongue-lashing and Dicky, basking happily in his Disgrace got nothing at all. Fantastic!

  Darling, we had a wonderful lunch with Celia. Her reaction to the news about us was ‘Excellent. Most Gratifying – Of course we’ve all been waiting for this for years.’ She asked me to give you her regards. ‘But I don’t suppose he’ll remember me – I’m Big but they never do.’ How gratifying it is, darling, to find that one’s friends don’t change at all, even after one hasn’t seen them for years.

  Tomorrow night Joan & I are dining with the Nathans, darling. Oh! woe is us or are we, whichever you happen to prefer.

  Oh! darling, I’m glad you’re pleased that I’m your Intended – and thank you for telling your parents that I’m a warm-blooded intellectual – very neat, darling – but I’m rather frightened at having to live up to what you’ve told your family about me, my dear love. What will they say when they find out that I’m only a rather negligible little cluck after all? (Don’t tell me.)

  Friday 12 September Dicky is a little beast, my love. He was having Scenes with my parents all day and in a fit of spitefulness he threw Lionel’s gun out of the window and smashed it. Then he took Lionel’s bicycle and vanished. In the evening he locked my parents in their bedroom and pushed a note under the door saying: ‘Don’t expect me back tonight – your accursed son, Dicky.’ They were terribly distraught and went all over the district looking for him. After about two hours he appeared, intensely amused, the little wretch – he’d been hiding behind the dining-room curtains all the time. He demanded Apologies all round with unparalleled insolence – I felt quite sick – My mother was exhausted with anxiety and he strutted about like a bloated cockerel and said he’d meant to teach her a lesson. He wanted her to realize with whom she was dealing and he hoped she’d be more circumspect in future. My God!!! In order to meet your wishes and not get embroiled, my love, I went upstairs and seethed in my bedroom. I detest him so much, darling, the sadistic little brute, that it makes me feel quite exhausted to think of him.

  Saturday 13 September Darling, I’ve been remembering all sorts of odd things about the time when I first knew you. I remember struggling painfully with your frayed dressing-gown cord and then buying you a new one. I remember saying in my note to you – ‘Wear this – for me’ and being very frightened that I’d been too Forward. I remember crying all night later, because you’d said that I’d bled all over another girl’s hair which was in your coat-pocket at the time of the accident. Was that true, my love? I shan’t mind now – After all, you only have one Intended, my darling, & incredibly and miraculously, it’s I. You can hang all the other girls’ hair over your desk in our house, darling, as Trophies.

  Sunday 14 September You know Aunt Teddy is doing her damndest to get herself invited here for the winter. She’s coming for a brief stay tomorrow but it’s going to take my parents all their time to Prise her Out once she Wedges herself in. You see, darling, it’s not that we’re inhospitable but Aunt Teddy drives us all mad. She infuriates my mother by Snooping round the kitchen & smelling the meat to see if it’s fresh. She also maddens all cooks by telling them how to cook in a plaintive sing-sing and at infinite length. She maddens Pa by moaning about how she wishes she were Rich, when he knows she has considerable private means and no expenses. She maddens me by ferreting about my room & reading any private letters that happen to be lying about – and she makes us all Weak and Hoarse (through no fault of her own, admittedly) because we have to shout all the time – as she refuses to waste her batteries on the family!

  What’s more, darling, Pa doesn’t see why we should house her. Her son-in-law, Malcolm, is living in a large empty house in Battersea – Gerta has a cottage at Broadway, and Jean is moving into a spacious flat in Lincoln’s Inn. Oh! My darling, if Aunt Teddy comes to live with us she’ll do her best to make our love look like a Sordid Intrigue. (But she won’t succeed.)

  Darling, Pa took Horace to meet Leslie on Friday night – and Horace got very drunk and Paced the Floor with his hands clasped behind him and swore Hideously and dropped ash all over Leslie’s priceless carpet and whenever Pa suggested coming home Horace asked him in an idiom heavily currented with obscenities whether he wasn’t old enough to have a latch-key? I gather that, one way and another, the séance was not a great success. Pa managed to get Horace away (Protesting vociferously) at 12.15. He says Leslie was quite pale with weariness at the end of it.

  Tuesday 16 September Yesterday, I had lunch alone with Joyce and she told me her All. She’s been Having Trouble with her Family. Just after she Came Down, darling, her mother went to her desk to get some visiting cards and found two letters from Gordon – which she read and Bore Off to his Lordship – who thereupon Forbade him the House and ordered Joyce to Cast him Out of her Life forthwith. How horrible for her, darling. But I can’t help feeling that she doesn’t mind very profoundly – She & Gordon now meet outside the Baronial Hall. I have a feeling that the Whole Thing was designed purely to Save Rations.

  Darling, Nelly Ionides told my mother that she’d be very happy if you and I would spend a Sunday with her and Basil at Buxted. Oh! my dear love. Let’s go on the very first whole weekend you’re in London, shall we?

  Darling, Mr Crotch has just been in to consult me about a lad who has been ‘Exposing Himself Indecently’. There is, says Mr Crotch, no Precedent for Indecent Exposure in an office – only in a park – and that Lad got let off on grounds of Ill Health. ‘Do you think this boy is suffering ill-health?’ I said. ‘Not on your life,’ said Mr Crotch and added coarsely, ‘He’s probably suffering from Rude Health.’ At this point Mr Proper came in, which rather dried up Mr Crotch’s flow of rhetoric – I can’t say I was sorry, da
rling. I am not fond of Mr Crotch in his cruder moments though I always smile politely, if a trifle frostily.

  Wednesday 17 September I spent yesterday evening trying to persuade Joan not to Cast Ian Out of her Life – with rather embarrassed support from David.

  I feel sad because of Joan’s troubles – I wish you were here to make me happy again, my dear love. I am so helpless over Joan. I often think that seeing one’s friends unhappy is almost worse than being unhappy oneself because one feels so arid and stultified. The worst time I can ever remember in my life was that weekend when you were so unhappy over me. The time we went to Dear Brutus1 and Queen’s Hall and your eyes looked so terribly tired and frustrated, my dear love. It was your sorrow that I couldn’t bear then, darling, not mine. Do you remember that café in Soho with the photographs of blowsy music-hall stars and the slatternly waitress – and the bottle of Chianti? It was there that you said, for the first time, that you loved me, darling – and you said it so sorrowfully. That weekend turned out All Right because we were suddenly able to laugh at your regrets over the Wild Oats you had not Sown. Oh! darling, I believe we shall always be able to laugh our sorrows away in the end, as long as we’re together. That will be our salvation. If one could never laugh, one would either become bored – or frenzied. Darling, I love you because I can laugh with you and cry with you and be silent with you.

  Friday 30 September Terrific Scenes with Dicky last night – I was Laying the Table for supper when he came in – rent the Blackout curtains asunder – and opened the French windows to go into the garden. ‘I shouldn’t do that,’ I said mildly. ‘We’ll have the Police on our track.’ ‘Oh! Go to Hell,’ he said in a hatefully insolent tone! ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘If you go out that way I’ll lock you out and you’ll have to come in through the kitchen.’ He went out and I locked the door. This was at 7.30. At 9 my parents were still Imploring him to come indoors – and he was swearing violently and saying he’d come in through the dining-room or not at all. I dissociated myself from the whole thing – ate my supper with Joan & Jean and later went to bed. But I understand that the Cataclysm erupted far into the night – and this morning Pa was Not Speaking to Me although Dicky is in High Favour. Darling, the injustice of my parents’ attitude over Dicky makes me unjust to him.

  Thursday 2 October Darling, I am sad today – I think it’s largely on account of Joan, who looks dreadfully ill. My parents are rather unsympathetic in their attitude. They take the view that she has Mishandled her Affairs – that she’s been very unwise over Mr Sims – that she ought to come home in the evenings and rest instead of going out and indulging in light diversion. Their view is that Ian’s attitude springs from the tone of her letters and her accounts of Frivolities with others. As usual, this is the conventional & short-sighted view, darling – and it causes me a good deal of personal anxiety and sorrow. If you were away, my love, I should not act as Joan has done – but I don’t condemn her on that account. She’s temperamentally very different from me, and I feel sure that she’s acted in the best way for her own peace of mind. Because she’s very sensitive, she’s conscious of my parents’ attitude (though I always deny it, darling, whenever she refers to it) and it’s an added anxiety for her. She is in a mood to take offence at everything – and it’s really very painful to watch her.

  Tuesday 7 October According to your mother, my love, you are a One – So you are, according to me. Darling, she says you are: ‘The dearest fellow one could possibly wish for’ – I say ‘He is a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again.’2 She says: ‘We have always placed a high regard for his intelligence and reliability.’ I say: ‘For his bounty, there is no winter in’t – an autumn ‘tis that grows the more by reaping …’3 and ‘He is likely when he is Put On, to prove most Royally …’4 and to your mother ‘Oh! wondrous tree that can put forth such fruit.’5 It’s only a matter of idiom, darling – We both mean the same thing. You needn’t worry, my love, I shan’t write to her in these terms. I don’t want your parents to start getting Suspicious about my Frontal lobe – as well as Basil! You shall see her letter, darling, when I’ve read it to my parents. Incidentally, darling, I think it’s Significant, not to say Symbolic, that her name is Gertrude, though it’s a Great Sorrow to me that she signs herself Gertie – I’m sure Hamlet’s mother never did.

  Darling, am I right in thinking that Sunday, 19th is the day on which we hope to go to Buxted?

  I’m writing provisionally to Nellie on that assumption – Oh! before I forget, you must on no account Betray your Feelings about Dogs to Nellie and Basil – or neither of us will ever be asked again – At any rate, I don’t believe even you will be able to resist the Stately Grandeur of Cliquot, and the enchanting willy-nilly of Silvo. Darling, please may we keep a miniature poodle as well as a cat when we’re married?

  Pa has had a message from Lord Bearstead about a job – but I think it will take him back to Egypt. My poor mother is in a heartly cluck.

  Wednesday 8 October Darling, Joyce’s party was an unqualified success. There were no men – only two Assistant Principals from Joyce’s Ministry and Joan & me – and one other girl whom I’ve met several times before. We talked of the Didactic Purpose of the Comic Strip – and Boys’ and Girls’ School Stories – one of them had a theory that the change in emphasis from the group or team of boys and girls who had adventures in the school stories of our youth to the single hero or heroine today showed a definite fascist trend (I couldn’t say, darling, never having read any). Then, one of the others said she’d come upon a most appalling book the other day which she’d read out of sheer curiosity – she’d never seen anything so crude and disgusting – Title: No Orchids for Miss Blandish.6 Then Joan & I said what we thought of it – and I put forward the view that Lady Chatterley’s Lover was a much more deliberately pornographic book – though I did say that I found it difficult to suspect Lawrence, whose artistic integrity seemed to me to be above reproach, of writing simply to pander to a dirty-minded public – Then Joan said something very illuminating and very clever, darling. She said she knew why I resented Lady Chatterley so much – She said I was completely detached from the animalism of the Gangsters & their women in Miss Blandish because I felt I had no connection with them – They were creatures of no education and no intellectual stature and I expected their attitude to sex to be different from mine on that account. But Lady Chatterley – ah! different – She was a cultured, sensitive and intelligent woman – and yet she found complete rest and fulfilment in a relationship with an inarticulate and untutored handy man – and I resented it, just as I resented all the relationships of all my intelligent women friends with men who were less intellectual than themselves.

  As for Pa’s return to Egypt, he has to decide today. If he goes back, darling, it will be ostensibly to look after his practice – even he will not know the real purpose of his journey until he gets there – but it is an important one. But this is absolutely secret, darling. Please don’t breathe a word of it to my parents or anyone else. You know, if he goes, I shall be quite sad. I have grown rather fond of him in the last few months – now that he’s brushed away years of accumulated resentment by the only possible means – a generous-minded attitude towards you.

  Thursday 9 October Darling, I inadvertently had tea with four Titans of the Treasury yesterday – and this is how it happened. We had a very small point to raise with Mr Gomme about some locally entered staff in West Africa – It could have been cleared up in a moment on the telephone – but owing to the Sinister Frill on all Government Telephones which say in Tall Red Letters ‘SPEECH ON THE TELEPHONE IS NOT SECRET’ I had to go and see him about it. When I arrived Mr Gomme was leaning back in his armchair with his legs crossed and a cup of tea balanced on his upper knee – and lying at full length on the Conference Table was a Lank Swarthy man of Immense Height. He had a tea cup beside him and he was absent-mindedly blowing a succession of round, fat little smoke rings. He sat up slo
wly when I came in and was introduced to me as Mr Munro, whom I knew by name as the arch-snooper-in-chief of the Treasury. Then, darling, a red-haired youth effervesced into the room as though he had just frothed out of a ginger-pop bottle – He was Mr Shilleto – a principal with whom we sometimes correspond. Mr Gomme, a tired-looking, grey man with disintegrating spectacles, gave us each a cup of tea – and then a smallish dapper man came in – the Great Crombie – The Assistant Secretary before whom we all tremble – a lot of Boyish, Undergraduate Chatter followed his entry – He sat happily on the floor and Mr Shilleto leaned negligently against a suitcase, and inveighed against the habits of inveterate First-Class travellers. Mr Gomme was reminded of Baedeker’s comment on the Beirut-Damascus railway which was ‘Ladies, accompanied or unaccompanied, must always travel First – Gentlemen, unaccompanied, may travel Second as there is a Third Class’. Nice, don’t you think, darling?

  Joan & I were woken suddenly at about six this morning by a thunderous Banging at the Back Door. Joan came into my room & said tentatively ‘Do you hear that?’ I said Dramatically ‘I Hear a Knocking at the South Entry.’7 (We thought it was the Dead Vast and Middle of the Night you see, my love) So we woke Pa & all three of us crept Cautiously down the stairs – We thought the Nazis had come – that they had Murdered Mr & Mrs Wright in their Shelter Bunks and were now Launching an Attack on Us. ‘Who’s there?’ I said timidly. ‘Oo the ’ell do you think is there?’ said Mr Wright’s querulous voice – we looked at our watches and found that it was 6 a.m. Mr & Mrs Wright had been Inadvertently locked out by Aunt Teddy – What an anti-climax, darling.

  Darling, Nurse’s baby wails incessantly and all the women cluck round him – but last night I went in to him and yelled back. He was Stunned & stopped at once. Moral: treat ’em Rough.