Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Thursday 28 May I enjoyed my dinner with Jean & Bernard Lewis, darling. You should have heard him on the subject of the Jewish Rabbinical School at Bletchley, darling! He said the new candidates turned up as nice pink-faced little boys in school caps – in their 10th week they were Pale and Gaunt with corkscrew curls and threadbare black coats – in their second year they had bent backs and sparse hairs on their chins – in their third year they had goodly and verminous spade beards – and some of them even survived to pursue a post-graduate course. The local inhabitants were no end puzzled, darling. They thought they were colleagues of Bernard’s!

  Darling, Joan’s Mr le M is going to America. As a Parting Shot, he rang her up last night to say that on his way home at midnight of the previous day (can you have midnight of a day, darling? I suppose so, there are, after all, 24 hours in every day in the broadest sense of the word. Anyway, I can’t keep repeating ‘night’) he walked through Hyde Park and was surprised to observe a man & a girl being Wanton on a Park Bench. Fascinated by the sheer Athletic Ingenuity of the feat, darling, he paused and stared at them in a spirit of disinterested scientific curiosity. The man looked at him coldly: ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir?’ he said. ‘I perceived,’ said Mr le M ‘that I had made a Social Error and so I Passed on into the Night.’

  Darling – Definition of RAF Intelligence overheard in Fullers – Speaker – a WAAF. A/SO addressing a F/Lt (Medical Branch) ‘I think I shall transfer to Intelligence – They tell you things and then you tell them to somebody else and you meet such nice people.’ The F/Lt Gaped in Admiration. It was obvious that he thought she was Wonderful. She added: ‘… or I might try psychology. You sit on Boards and guess what the candidates are like.’ Darling, I didn’t even need to touch up this story. It was a thing Complete and Beautiful in itself – and she said it with absolute seriousness and ponderous solemnity.

  Saturday 30 May Darling, I don’t know if I have ever told you that Mr Murray has a houseful of bombed out friends, relatives etc. who are occasionally a little tiresome to live with. This morning he said with a Harassed sigh: ‘I sometimes think that never in the World’s History, have so many lived for so little on so few.’ Mr Murray is really a very endearing character, darling.

  Sunday 31 May Joan & I went to Abbey Road to try and find someone to Do the Garden for us on his free day, (Our Gardener having left, darling, because he said that we never got any vegetables because we were all too bloody lazy to pick them – which was pretty Harsh considering that my mother spends most of her time almost blowing on the shoots to make them grow) but we saw nothing but Leering Faces all the way down the road – so we Beat a Maidenly Retreat and arrived home – without a gardener. Darling, when I think of the Soldierly & Dignified Bearing of those very same men when you and I were wont to walk down Abbey Road together!

  Sunday 7 June Darling, I’m desperately tired – It’s a terrific emotional strain to make myself talk of you with some measure of detachment. I had a long talk to Joan today about her and Ian and suddenly all the pieces fell into place & I could see exactly how her relationship with Mr Sims arose, darling. It was because she had nothing to hold on to – no core of hope and certainty of happiness as I have. If you had gone away while our relationship was at that stage, my very dear love, it would have killed me. Joan being Joan, it drove her into the arms of another man. Oh! darling, I can’t write any more – I’m so tired … so tired. Goodnight, my love.

  Thursday 11 June Mr Crotch came in this morning, darling, to see us On Business. He was looking very Brown & Hearty and oh! my dear love, I was so relieved not to be working under him any more. He asked after you with a Cynical Leer which was almost more than I could bear.

  I’m going to Drink Deep with Horace at the Savoy this evening, my love, before dinner. Dear Horace. His Golden-Voiced Secretary, about whom Pa always Speculates Significantly (But he’s quite wrong. Horace needs Illicit recreation but as we both know, darling, he gets it by keeping up an elaborate fiction that he’s really Living in Sin with his wife) rang me up and after an Important & Busy Pause I was put through to H. B. Samuel Esq. Financial Consultant.

  Friday 12 June Darling, Horace & I sipped exiguous White Ladies (really all water with a sniff of gin and a drop of lemon) in the Savoy. It always amuses me to see Red Horace accommodating himself luxuriously in the Strongholds of Capital as to the Manner Born (as indeed he is, darling.) and, on this occasion, he had to fork out the disproportionate sum of 10/- for the privilege of sipping the Thimbleful which cheers but certainly does not inebriate among spat-and-polished guardsmen and flat-chested ladies of leisure & unimpeachable virtue.

  Sunday 14 June Darling, I got home to find Joan Glowing. She says she has Laid the Ghost of Ian at last and has Fallen in Love with a Civil Servant (Temp) at the Ministry of Supply. He’s divorced, darling. His wife ran away with a Producer and he’s Partially Bald – (Joan’s Young Man, I mean, darling, not the Producer – at least he may be for all I know but it’s of No Consequence) but otherwise he sounds alright. Oh! darling, I hope this isn’t going to make her unhappy. She’s had far too much frustration and strain for her years already. For Future Reference, my love, his name is Robert Walker and I am to meet him soon. Of course you shall Know All, my darling.

  Monday 15 June Darling, I’m going to dinner tonight with Colonel and Mrs Fred Samuel. I shall enjoy that because they’re such kindly, wise and cultural people. At one time they owned some of England’s finest art treasures but now they’ve given most of them to the Victoria & Albert Museum and they have only kept one or two things which they particularly loved – Epstein’s bronze head of a Tommy with all the rough courage and humour of the Englishman-in-the-street in his eyes and mouth – a first edition of Paradise Lost – one or two exquisitely proportioned pieces of Sheraton furniture. As I think I’ve said before, my darling, I should like our home to be something like theirs.

  We had a most wonderfully restful and satisfying evening, darling. Mrs Samuel and I talked avidly of books (She’s read so much, my love, that she always makes me feel like an amateur! She’s Redcliffe Salaman’s2 sister you know) and he told us about his few remaining treasures. He’s one of those rare people, darling, who has impeccable taste and a real love of beautiful things but not a trace of possessiveness. He says he’d be prepared to give everything away provided he had a bed to sleep on and a chair to sit on – and he meant it. He gave us some bursting yellow rose-buds and three curly headed peonies, darling, and what do you think he wrapped them up in? The Soviet War News my love – He, who sets Horace’s back a-bristling because of his gentle Toryism (but such modest, broad-minded Toryism, darling, that it’s really Liberalism by another name) and he said; ‘You should get that, you know, it’s the finest propaganda out.’ Oh darling, I laughed a little to myself.

  Tuesday 16 June About Robert Walker’s father, darling. He’s a nudist, not from conviction but because he likes wandering about in the sunlight with nothing on. He met his ‘Mel’ at a Nudist Camp and immediately installed her in a London flat. This enraged his wife who had been indifferent to all his other Infidelities but refused to be Done Down by a Cross-eyed Nudist. (Mel is extremely cross-eyed, darling.) So she left him. Mr Walker also met a rather timid little girl at a camp. Because it was obvious that she’d have been much more comfortable with her clothes on, he wrote her down as a fool, and when one of his sons subsequently brought her to his house (fully clothed) and introduced her as his fiancée, he Went Up in Smoke and shipped him off to America without compunction, delay or enough money to pay his passage home. However, he returned in due course, darling, and married the girl (still wearing all her clothes – and she’s never undressed since).

  Darling, Joan’s Robert Walker is the Richest piece of copy she’s ever unearthed. No doubt a lot of his fantastic environment is enriched by Joan’s Fancy but I suspend willingly my disbelief & give myself over happily to Poetic Faith. His brothers (including Gilbert, who is a friend & Col
league of your cousin Asher) went to Oxford because at that time Mr Walker believed that Oxford was the only place which Produced Gentlemen. Later, however (no doubt owing to some chance encounter in a Nudist Camp or to Mellow Cogitation in the Sunlight) he decided that the only real Gentlemen were engineers, so he bundled the rest off to London University to read Engineering, willy nilly. (And I gather it was considerably more nilly than willy, my love.) As a matter of fact, darling, there’s an embarrass de richesse about that family’s Doings to say nothing of the vagaries of their friends – some of whom are friend’s of Victor’s too.

  Wednesday 17 June I’ve just overheard a Beautiful snatch of conversation over the telephone, darling:– Mr Murray: ‘No, I don’t think they’ll eat the aircraft. – Yes, I admit that cows will eat almost anything.’

  Friday 19 June I am going to meet Joan’s Robert Walker tonight, darling, they are taking me to the Odeon as Horace & Estelle are coming to play Bridge and Joan and I will be de trop.

  Robert Walker turned out to be rather smooth-faced and dimpled with gingery hair and a Little Tonsure – like Uncle Sam’s and yet not like Uncle Sam’s, if you see what I mean, my love. Joan said quite casually on the way home that she hoped I liked Robert as she was going to marry him. This may just be a momentary whim, of course, bit I don’t think so. Oh! darling, if she does marry him I do hope she’ll be happy.

  Saturday 20 June Oh! my darling, I wonder when I shall have news of you. I don’t like the turn the Libyan Campaign has taken, my love. I hope the fighting won’t come too close to you, wherever you are. I’m frightened, darling. It’s not that I’m afraid of death but that I feel you and I have so much to live for.

  Darling, I have spent the evening staring out of Joan’s window at rather a puffy Mae Westish Barrage Balloon that reminded me rather of one of those lecherous fish in Walt Disney. Joan was assailed with a violent attack of Decadence this afternoon and she retired to bed immediately after supper. I watched my balloon and half-listened to the cluckings of a rather Fussy bird at the end of the garden while she told me all about her and Robert. They intend to get married at the end of the summer. Darling, I think she’ll be as happy as she could be with anyone but Ian. She doesn’t love him as she loved Ian but it’s not possible to love two people in that way in a life-time but I think she is in love with him, which is another thing altogether. She finds him stimulating and attractive and amusing and she’s able to make a terrifically Good Story of him. I wish she had married Ian though darling I shall miss her dreadfully when she goes, darling, although she won’t be far away. (Mr Walker’s flat is near John Barnes’s.) She hasn’t told my mother about it yet because she’s afraid she may think she’s being rather Precipitate (so do I, my love, but I’m making the best of it – It is, after all, not my affair).

  Sunday 21 June Joan has told my mother about Robert, She Took it Well, but rather Anxiously – even when Joan, anxious to say the Right Thing, assured her that he was a Good Cook!

  Darling, mum has just been in, Billowing above her Nightie, to give me a little Homily on Smoking. ‘That you should smoke like that with your Fiancé risking his life is not only unpatriotic, it’s Disappointing.’ Talk about non-sequitur, darling! And she meant it – because whenever she comes over All Solemn she always talks about Pa as ‘Your Father’ and she’s never referred to you as ‘Your Fiancé’ before, my Solace. Oh! darling, I am smoking too much. I even smoke on Saturdays – but I really need it now. I hereby register a Solemn Oath that I shall try and give up or at least seriously cut down my smoking when we’re married. I mean it, darling, because I know how you hate having to kiss what you call ‘My Lady Nicotine’.

  The news of the fall of Tobruk is startling and terrifying, my love. The only comfort is that we and the Americans have a great host of fresh, untried men and that our production is on the upgrade while the Germans must be worn out by now and their production is on the decline. This isn’t wishful thinking, darling. According to my interpretation of the news it can’t be otherwise. If you were here, darling, I should be much more optimistic about the situation than I was when Tobruk fell to the Italians – but now the menace is a personal one and I can’t assess the situation as a clear-headed observer but only as a frightened little girl who loves you.

  Joan’s Robert came to dinner tonight, darling. He is really a most interesting man. He says I’m a Purist, my love. What do you think he means? – and, if you know what he means, do you agree with him?

  I was lying in my arm chair this evening before supper – three parts asleep, and I had an overwhelming impression that you were with me and I got into an extremely excitable state of mind. I had the sort of upward gasp inside that I get when you bend forward to kiss me, darling, or put out your hand to touch my body when I’m in an excitable mood – but you weren’t here to make me excited and then wonderfully rested, darling, with your hands still and gentle. Oh! My darling, you weren’t here.

  Monday 22 June Darling, I’m reading C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. It is a very brilliant, subtle and witty treatise on Temptation, in the form of letters from a practiced advocate of the Devil to his nephew, a pupil-tempter. I’m fascinated by it.

  I had a letter from Margaret this morning, darling, asking me to stay with her next weekend. I shall go, darling, although it will be queer and empty to take a train from the same platform as you did when you went away from me for the last time before you left England.

  Darling, I’ve offered to write and tell Ian about Joan – because she can’t bear to write herself. It will hurt me to do it, darling, because their love was something very real and valuable – something I could understand. I’m not sure that I can altogether understand this new business – though I’m probably just rather bewildered by its suddenness – but the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in themselves but in my obtuseness. Darling, I never feel so strong a sense of inadequacy and so bitter a sense of failure as when my friends are in trouble and I can’t help them. Do you remember when you and I had lunch in that Sinister Italian cafe in Soho after ‘Dear Brutus’ and you were so unhappy, my darling, and I could do nothing but cry and say that I couldn’t bear to see you unhappy? Oh! My darling, I love you and I believe that our love keeps us near to one another. Darling, there must be a God to whom I can give thanks for this great gift.

  Tuesday 23 June Darling, Robert Walker paid me a compliment – via Joan. He told her that he thought I was a very gifted conversationalist – quite an artist in fact and that the only time he felt it might not come off was if I was nervous and overdid it. I preened myself no end, my love. You know, darling, I seldom believe the nice things people say about me but I’m always enchanted to hear them and I roll them happily on my tongue and feel as though I’ve had a tonic and as though perhaps I was wrong about myself after all! When anyone is displeased with me, darling, it has exactly the opposite effect. I feel that I’ve been going about with my nose skyward thinking myself No End of a One when really all the time I was a rather ludicrous, inept creature. Darling, you’ve got a very suggestible little cluck – do you mind?

  Jean came upstairs with me, darling, and talked to me very sincerely and seriously about herself – without a trace of affectation. For the first time for longer than I can remember she shed the service manner. Darling, I’m very, very sorry for her. She’s had an extraordinarily tough time being buffeted between the Lechery of her Chiefs and the Old-World Courtliness of Square (whom she would like to marry). I’ll tell you the whole story when we meet.

  Wednesday 24 June Oh! my dear love, we’ve just had a telegram from Pa to say that you’re with him. My hand is shaking so much, my darling, that I can hardly write. I am sending a wire to your parents at once, darling. Now I shall be able to go to Rugby really happily, my love. Providence is infinitely kind, my darling. I’m going to celebrate by sending you & Pa a telegram in the lunch-hour and by taking Joan Fisher (to whom I owe a meal) out to lunch.

  Darling, Mr Cr
otch has just rung up to say that A/SO Crotch has been posted to St John’s Wood & that the Marital Breach is healed and also that Mr Corless’s daughter who was reading Classics at Girton has got a First! Isn’t that nice, my love? This is a good day for nice things to happen.

  Thursday 25 June Darling, I got your letter 2, posted on 29. 5. 42, at Sigmund’s this evening. I read it before dinner, during dinner and after dinner. Fortunately, you had recovered from your picturesque and plural attacks of seasickness before we started our cauliflower au gratin!

  Darling, I wonder if the Free French Medical Officer is the one Mrs Crews (you remember – the Don with the prettiest legs in Cambridge – according to Sidney Birkowitz) was going to marry. I don’t suppose we shall Ever Know now – but it’s a Beautiful Thought. She’s in Ankara, you know, Waiting for Him. (Her French Medical Officer, I mean, darling, not necessarily your friend.)

  Joan’s Robert says that, now that he has met me he’s going to give up the Cinema. He far prefers my version to the film, he says. It’s Uncommon Civil of him, darling, and Clever too, in a crude way. He and Joan naturally want our Goodwill and Blessing and how better can it be won than by a little of the Balm of Flattery?

  Darling, if you should see Aubrey in the near future would you please ask him if he has Cast me Out of his Life for ever? I haven’t had a letter from him for centuries – only tantalizing snippets of information from Pa and Mrs Eban. Tell him it’s a Great Sorrow to me. I’m sending your remarks about the Free French officer, who spoke so glowingly of the pro-British feeling in France before he escaped, to the Intelligence people, darling. This is the sort of information they want. I mentioned it to Mr Murray and he advised me to do this.