Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Thursday 26 March Darling, Anthony Eden’s Aunt interrupted my train of thought. She’s white-haired, pink-cheeked, & unmarried. She looks a dear little thing but is in fact a Harridan. She wants to know what the RAF are doing about her house. Are they requisitioning it or not – and if not why not? I left Mr Murray Grappling Valiantly.

  Mr Murray amused me very much yesterday. He was talking about his Impending Baby & saying that when his first child was born, they miscalculated the time & had the monthly nurse in the house for a fortnight before the event, ‘ticking away like a taxi’. A Beautiful expression don’t you think, darling?

  Monday 30 March Darling, Joan & Sheila lunched together on Saturday & they ran into several Principals from the Ministry of War Transport, who took them out to have sherry – and more sherry. Sheila becomes Inspired under the Influence of Sherry, darling, and on this occasion her inspiration prompted her to make a Prophecy about Civilization. She Leaned Confidentially towards her audience: ‘One thing about Singapore,’ she said, ‘It’s finally put an end to Poonah – and Tiffin.’ She went on to say with a sigh, that the RAF was terribly Old World.

  Did I tell you, darling, that Sheila was now working in the Balloon Operations Room at Hook. She Issues Orders on the telephone such as ‘Ahoy there, bring Dulcie down five hundred feet’ – or ‘Lash to Belinda …’ or ‘Up Jenkins’ or words to that effect. Furthermore, darling, she switches on a red light every time there’s an Air Raid warning – without her the AOC3 would Never Know – so you see how important she’s become. Also, there’s an Artist in the Operations Room with whom, as she says rather wistfully, she’s on a Very High Plane. (‘He’s the Leslie Howard type, you know.’)

  Thursday 9 April You know, I’ve been saying, ever since Pan got his airgun, darling, that it was illegal to use it in London? Well, there’s a Police officer in the sitting room this very instant – all Solemn, telling them that he isn’t going to Summon them this time, not wishing to Spoil their Careers. When Dicky first heard about him, darling, he went very red and said: ‘I’d prefer to take legal advice before I speak to him.’ The Plain-Clothes man, who is Very Large, was not, however, prepared to wait for Dicky to get in touch with his Attorney – so they’re both in with him now, darling.

  Friday 10 April Darling, I read a heart-rending document today – It was a dossier put out by AI1(z) about conditions in West Africa & it consisted mainly of extracts from Airmen’s and Officer’s letters to their wives, Solaces, families & friends at home. What a horrible catalogue of drink and women & homosexuality & venereal disease, darling – all couched in the baldest and most explicit language – because, after all, the extracts were from private letters and were never meant for publication. And always the bitter cry of boredom – boredom – and no letters from home. (It is from the postal angle that we’re dealing with the problem, darling.)

  Tuesday 28 April I had a delightful lunch with David at the snack bar in Shaftesbury Ave darling. He had a long letter from Basil this morning. Basil, it would seem, is in the throes of mental anguish about the validity of orthodoxy. Perhaps, darling, you’d better know nothing about this if and when Basil and/or David mention it to you. Had you any idea Basil was Exercised in his mind about religion? I wasn’t surprised, darling, because it’s impossible to see life steadily and see it whole and still believe that the narrowing and repressive influence of orthodoxy is a good thing. I felt sure that Basil was too intelligent not to question it sooner or later – only I didn’t expect it quite as soon as this.

  1 King Lear, Act V, scene iii.

  2 Jurgen (1919) is a fantasy novel by James Branch Cabell (1879–1958).

  3 Air Officer Commanding.

  May–December 1942

  Gershon would arrive in Egypt at a fraught moment in Britain’s desert fortunes. On 21 June Tobruk and its garrison had surrendered, and by July Rommel’s men were just sixty-odd miles west of Alexandria with Egypt, it seemed, theirs for the taking.

  In Cairo, where on 1 July – ‘Ash Wednesday’ – the air was grey with the smoke of burning documents, the ‘Flap’, as it was euphemistically known, was ‘on’. At the British embassy a German speaker was designated to stay on to liaise with the enemy, and amidst rumours of a Cretan-style airborne assault and plans to whisk the ambassador and his family to safety, Cairo and Alexandria’s British communities prepared to abandon Egypt.

  While the panic proved premature – by the end of July the German advance had been fought to a standstill at a small coastal railway station called El Alamein – for the newly arrived Gershon, the real work was only beginning. In the earlier campaigns against the Italians the Cairo intelligence operation had achieved some startling successes, and with Rommel’s forces still only sixty miles away, the work of the ‘Y Service’, feeding Bletchley with encrypted enemy information from its headquarters in the old Flora and Fauna Museum at Heliopolis, would again play a crucial role in the coming battles.

  Back in England, it would be a month before Eileen had a letter from Gershon – posted from the Cape, with the date cut out by the censor – the first of over two hundred that he would write to her from Egypt. One of the first things she had done after he had left was to buy herself a binder for his carefully numbered letters, and in the same civil service spirit she now took advantage of the new ‘airgraph’ – an ingenious solution to the problem of flying tons of mail out to the forces – to supplement her regular letters with a weekly ‘digest’ of events at home.

  For anyone with Eileen’s handwriting, too, the size of the airgraph form, 11 x 8¼ inches, was a positive challenge – she could get in 350 words to Gershon’s 200 – and for the duration of his stay in Egypt it became a regular part of her literary armoury. She would send off her letters – maximum weight half an ounce – as normal, and then once a week give an abridged version on an airgraph, take it, with a 3d stamp affixed, to the post office near St Paul’s, where it would be checked by the censor, microfilmed onto a roll of film, and flown out to Cairo to be processed and delivered in an envelope as a photographic print just over 5 inches by 4 in size.

  It was not just conversations with Mr Murray on the 4th Dimension, or Joan’s flirtations and Dicky’s outrages that filled her letters, either, because with Gershon now in Egypt, there was nothing in the progress of the desert war that did not concern her. And the war, at last, was beginning to turn the Allies’ way. In August, Lieutenant General Montgomery, one of the rare successes from the Battle of France, had taken command of the Eighth Army and, on 23 October, after a prolonged build-up, launched a massive British offensive against the Axis forces at El Alamein. Twelve days later the battle was won, with Rommel’s beaten army in retreat. In terms of scale, Alamein might have been nothing compared with Stalingrad, but its psychological impact was enormous. Egypt was safe and in Britain the church bells were rung for the first time in two and a half years. At the same time, too, American and British forces successfully landed in Vichy north-west Africa and Eileen could at last dream of an end to the war in Africa. There would be no Second Front in Europe in 1942, as Stalin and the British public had wanted, but a year that had begun with a whimper was ending with a bang. ‘Now this is not the end,’ Churchill told the Lord Mayor’s Banquet audience on 10 November. ‘It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’

  9

  Limbo

  Friday 1 May 1942 Darling, you sounded never so weary, never so in woe. What you need is a course of Solace. Come to London, my love. That will cure your malaise. I agree with you, darling, that the work of a computer is not up your strasse. It demands a singularly restricted type of mind which you have not – besides, darling, all computers end up by being a little mad. There is a Wildness in their eye, an electric unruliness in their hair, an unkemptness in their person which marks the Fanatic. I would not want you to give yourself up Body and Soul to Computing – It would be reflected in your mollocking, my love. You would see
it all as a Pattern of Interesting Combinations – Horrible – I shudder to think on’t. No wonder F. L. Lucas has had such a rapid succession of wives, darling. He was always a computer at heart.

  Monday 4 May I read a nice phrase in a document today, darling. It referred to Fitters at a particular Unit. It read: ‘They were not imbued with the fighting spirit. The spanners had entered their souls.’ It was a very High-Level Document too, darling. It’s nice to know that the Great Ones have a touch of poesy in their make-up.

  Thursday 7 May Darling, my mother had 4 letters from Pa yesterday, and in the last one he told her that Gino Grassi, the son of out neighbour Mr Carlo Grassi, had been killed fighting for Italy in Libya. At first, darling, I felt nothing but irritation with Mr Grassi for being such a bloody fool. Serves you right, I thought, for strutting about like a peacock with your Fascist button-hole and your Commandatores. And then I thought, no – bigger men than you have been attracted by the glamour of power and titles – and I was just terribly sorry. Gino was a spoilt, raucous lad, he can’t have been more than 18 when he died, darling. He was their only child and had always been very delicate – and they adored him. Mme Grassi is a very beautiful Jewess, a tall, gracious figure with glossy black hair and lovely bones. Mr Grassi is like a little black bantam – rather a pathetic figure for all his Big Booming Voice and his posturing. He used to say that Mussolini wanted to make a bigger and better Italy – a splendid aim, he thought, and what did his Politics matter (!!!) provided he enriched his people and aggrandized his country? His friendship with Hitler was natural – Hitler treated him like a Gentleman, the representatives of the other powers treated him like a Dago. Poor little man. What price Fascism now?

  Had I aught to tell you? I forget. Oh! yes, Joan Pearce rang me up last night having spent her leave looking through the engagement columns of old Times (typical). She Slapped me Heartily on the Back across 60 miles of telephone wire (She’s in Middleton) and I could hear her Sam Browne Creaking Expansively. (There’s no doubt about it, darling, Joan has not got the figure for a Sam Browne. It came over me in a wave last time I saw her and it’s been Repeating ever since.) Joan spends her time being Hearty in the Mess. She never does any work. I begin to wonder, my love, whether there is any work to be done in this war-ridden world. Oh! well.

  Tuesday 12 May Mr Murray’s typist, Miss Anderton, kept me at the AM very late this evening telling me her All. She is a very intelligent woman – a cripple – rather fat and ungainly. She told me that she’d been engaged to a man in the RAF who had wanted nothing but the little money she’d been able to save, and who had lied to her consistently. She said she was an only child of very puritanical and domineering parents who had never allowed her to meet any men – and that she didn’t suppose she’d ever get married now as all the men of her age who were worth while were married already – and if they weren’t there was something wrong with them. She said she very much wanted to get married and have children, darling. Poor soul – I like her so much. She has character and brains & deserves to have what she wants.

  Sunday 17 May Darling, you have worked a miracle – You have created a core of warm serenity in my spirit, so that however far away you go and however long you stay away, I shan’t be afraid. I have been through all the preliminary & painful stages, darling; I have been strung up to a terrifying pitch of nervous excitement in the early stages of my love; I have been swamped by blind, uncontrollable fear – but now I feel comforted and rested and trusting and wonderfully secure. God bless you for it, my darling. It’s no good trying to tell you how humbly grateful I am, I can only hope that my kisses and the touch of my hands have told you what, for once, I lack the glibness to say. I feel that there’s something of the restful clarity and maturity of Shakespeare’s last plays in our love now, darling. I feel that I can say the words of Donne’s ‘Valediction’ with something more than a wish that I could rise above material circumstances as he does. I have been very near this state of mind ever since I became really certain of your love and last night I knew I had reached it – it is very like the wonderful restfulness that follows a terrifically excited mollock. I expect I shall have minor relapses after you’ve gone, darling, but the core of serenity will stay with me, my love.

  Monday 18 May I’m having lunch with my mother & Mrs Fanshawe at the Berkeley which I shall enjoy. Mrs Fanshawe is Sir Victor Harari’s daughter – and one of the most entertaining and brilliant women I’ve ever met. Mrs Fanshawe’s husband has just been made a Major-General. He’s a grandson of Sir Evelyn Wood – and is nothing but a Besotted Bland Clod. He is consistently unfaithful to his wife but he has no compunction in living in luxury on her father’s money. He can’t divorce her because he’s a Catholic & anyway it would ruin his career which neither of them want. Besides which, with the Inconsistency and Illogicality of Women, she loves him and would rather have a piece of him than nothing. She also has a mad French Cook called Mrs Shelley whom she keeps on only (I suspect) because she’s such a fruitful source of fantastic anecdote.

  Darling, I was playing rummy with my mother, Aunt Teddy, Joan & Jean when you rang up. (Anything for distraction, I thought, anything, anything.) When you said Mercredi I thought you meant Wednesday week – and then I realized – Oh! darling, I put up a very good show – I could hear my voice saying quite coolly ‘Really?’ as though it were someone else’s voice talking of something quite casual. I hope to God I shall talk to you alone tomorrow night, my darling.

  Write to me always, darling, and remember, nothing which concerns you is too trivial to interest me. Remember too that women love to be told they are loved – even though they know it already – and be damned to the censor.

  God be with you, darling. You know, I believe there must be a God, to have conceived anything so clear and serene as the happiness you have given me – if there is, my darling, I thank him for your love.

  Wednesday 20 May Darling, there are times when Providence is not unkind to me. I was walking towards the ’bus at Chalk Farm this morning (and if I say I was feeling Bloody, I shall be guilty of a gross and fantastic understatement) when Miss Carlyon tapped me on the shoulder. I went with her by tube to Leicester Square, darling. She’s working for a theatrical casting agent and, as usual she has stepped into an atmosphere of sheer fantasy – I’m never sure whether she creates her own atmosphere, darling, or whether she Divines it by means of some sort of occult instrument. Anyway, she’s working for a bawdy old Manager whose Private Secretary is a Low Church Gentlewoman, Upright and Viceless. He calls her Chubby, presumably on account of her mature contours (she is 58) although Miss Carlyon didn’t say she was plump – and he says things like: ‘Chubby, you old trollop, hurry up with that letter …’ As Chubby is rather slow-moving on account of her age, she is often rather slow in replying to a Summoning Bellow from the Inner Office – and an Apoplectic Call is often followed by a heart-rending fit of coughing and: ‘Come on Chubby, darling, if you don’t hurry I shall be dead and you won’t need to bother,’ whereat Chubby rises stiff – pointedly and unsmilingly, note-book in hand and stalks with dignity towards the voice.

  Darling, please don’t grow a moustache – even in a Spirit of Jest or Whimsy – It will probably Come over you in a Wave but, if it does, say ‘Avaunt’ and ‘Hence’ as repressively as possible and Forget About It. I don’t know why men in Tropical Climes always seem to Hanker after Moustaches, darling – I think it’s all due to a sense of being insufficiently Clad – bare knees are compensated by Wooliness on the upper lip – Nevertheless, my love, I implore you to Eschew all thoughts of it.

  Darling, the Berkeley was full of tall, lank dun-haired, concave-chested, long-footed women all too-too devastatingly languid – and even Mrs Fanshawe wasn’t on the top of her form. She says her husband hasn’t been quite the same (which is all to the good, I should have thought) since he got his CMG1 and the King said: ‘Good show, Evelyn old chap – Glad you’ve got a new job – Hope you like it,’ but she added
, ‘When he came home the other night sweating gold braid and red tabs at every pore, I said: “General or no General – you’ll have to go out and feed the pigs – and he did – but, my dear, he’s the kind of man who likes everything perfect but won’t lift a finger for anybody or anything.”’ She thought my ring was very beautiful (unprompted.)

  Friday 22 May Darling, the realization that you’ve gone is growing on me gradually. If anything happens to you darling it will kill me, so help me God. Without you I’m like a puppet whose strings have been cut off. For God’s sake be careful not to eat raw vegetables which haven’t been properly washed in permanganate of Potash – and raw fruit.

  Sunday 24 May I forgot to tell you about Mrs Fanshawe’s hens, darling. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘They’re cannibals. They eat all their eggs – They love them. It’s disgusting to watch them savouring them. When Evelyn (her husband) is at home, I make him sit in the hen-house, my dear, and seize the eggs as they emerge. I’m sorry, my dear, but there’s a war on and I just can’t afford to be Delicate and Look the other way – One can only hope that the hens understand …’ at the other end of the scale is Mrs Aubertin who keeps her chicks in Joan’s bedroom because she thinks that surroundings are so important during the Impressionable period of one’s life.

  Oh! Darling, I wonder when I shall get a letter from you. I’m being a good little girl and carrying my gas-mask everywhere – with the result that I am the Scourge of the Waitresses in restaurants (because they all trip over it) & the bane of ’bus passengers’ existence (because they invariably Graze their Rear Elevations on the corner of the case). Never mind, darling, it’s All for Love and I Take no Account of the Discomfort of others.