Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Darling, Miss Bradbrook is as sick of the Civil Service as I am &, ‘Fore God, she’s thinking of joining the WRNS. Can’t you see her, my love, with a fringe of primrose knicker showing coyly below her skirt and her Wisps clinging like vine-tendrils to the band of her little sailor-hat? It’s a thought so beautiful, darling, that I was hardly able to withhold a Fat Chuckle when she told me.

  Miss Bradbrook thought that I was looking rather wan – but what can you expect with my Iron Lung in the Middle East. Oh! I do love you, darling.

  Saturday 30 January I’ve been having lunch with Miss Malyon, my dear love, & I’ve discovered that in spite of the fact that she’s a hopelessly muddled thinker & should never have read English, I really like her. She’s just got engaged by Correspondence to her ex-Principal who is now attached to the RAF Delegation in Washington. (He used to be Dean of Magdalen Oxford.) She has large, china-blue eyes, darling & she opened them very wide & said with engaging ingenuousness & not without rather touching pathos: ‘I’ve been awfully in love with a lot of other people before, do you think he’ll mind?’ I said I was sure he wouldn’t, darling, & assured her that it was quite common to be ‘awfully in love’ with a lot of people between the ages of 17 and 23 – all the Best People had been, I said. She asked me if I had, my darling, & I had to admit that I hadn’t – but that all my friends thought it was a little Peculiar of me not to have been. This seemed to reassure her, darling.

  Sunday 31 January Did I tell you, my dear love, that Mrs Crews was now working in the BBC Turkish News Service? Oh! God, I wish you could come home & do that.

  Darling, I’ve had a very quiet day. Joan came to lunch &, as my parents were out for the afternoon, she stayed with me until nearly 6. As long as we were talking impersonally, darling, & chuckling over the fantastically Enthusiastic Platitudes of Commander Campbell in Brains Trust it was as though we were back at Cambridge but then she started talking about Sheila, my love, & saying that she doesn’t think she & Allan would ever be happy together again & that she hoped they’d have the sense to realize it & get a divorce. Oh! my darling, Joan & I have travelled a long way along very different paths. I never thought I should hear her talking about Writing Off a marriage as though it were a Bad Debt. I remember Sheila’s wedding, my dear love. I remember being immensely touched by the dignity & solemnity of the Marriage Service – Allan was so terribly pale, darling, & so obviously happy. Why should Joan think that they won’t be happy when he comes back? (Rhetorical question, my darling, you can’t possibly know the answer.)

  Monday 1 February Darling, it doesn’t seem right to Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth, but when Mr Morrison of Drumnadrochit sends us a Hamper full of 4 cockerels and a drake – all alive, scrabbling & hungry, how should we Take It? The idea, my love, was that they should in due course be killed under the Auspices of the Beth Din so that Mum could eat ’em too – but what are we to do with them meanwhile? If we’re not Very Careful, my love, we’ll find ourselves Getting Fond of them & wanting to keep them as Pets. No, my love, I feel that this Gesture of Mr Morrison’s was Well-Intentioned but Unfortunate. A little Civil Service caution in this case would not, I feel, have been Misplaced, darling, because the Repercussions are going to be Somethink Orful.

  Thursday 4 February Miss Bradbrook is coming to dinner and I’m having lunch with Joyce, darling. Joyce phoned me in one of her Well-Bred Moods when she rang up and told me she wasn’t going to renew her subscription to the London Library because she was only interested in the very latest books and you couldn’t get them there until they were too old to be of interest. I’m very fond of Joyce when she’s being natural, my love, but not when she’s being the Hon. Joyce and Liking it.

  Joyce was very Trying, my love. Terribly Bored & Drawly so that everything I said clanked on to the floor like a dropped penny. Darling, I do most terribly need a letter, or better still a bundle of letters. I feel like a butterfly pinned to a board today.

  You’re probably right about Women being more Personal in their Discussions with their friends than men (in fact, darling, I know you are) although Miss Bradbrook says that the essential psychological difference between a man & a woman is that a Man has an Infinite Capacity for Absorbing News.

  I don’t think I need tell you how superabundantly, breathtakingly happy your New Year message made me – the message that said: ‘I have never, never, never felt less inclined to be unfaithful to my better half, my beloved solace.’ Darling, that is worth more than all the Emeralds in the East. It’s as though you had poured a shower of stars into my lap. Darling, Miss Bradbrook said tonight: ‘So few of us are wholly integrated now. This is a disintegrating period, and it is only through personal relationships that we can wholly fulfil ourselves.’ She’s a very profound little person, my darling.

  Saturday 6 February Darling, I forgot to tell you yesterday evening that Aunt Teddy had Rehabilitated herself and that Full Diplomatic Relations were now restored.

  Mrs Fanshawe met me at the Station with her car, darling, & we gave a lift to a Tow-Coloured Wild Oat in Mink who is a neighbour of Mrs Fanshawe’s. I told Mrs F that I’d met her brother in the 3 Vikings yesterday & she said, as one who is Exposing a Public Scandal: ‘I suppose he was with his wife as Usual?’

  I do think the Fanshawe’s Matrimonial Set-Up is Comical, darling. Mrs F’s sister-in-law who lives with her asked her yesterday evening what size her husband took in collars as she wanted to buy him some as a present. Mrs F looked at her as though she had asked her for some Fearsomely Intimate Detail of her Married Life & said crisply: ‘I’ve no idea – you’ll be asking me the size of his waist next.’ All this Icy Good-Breeding stuff between a man & his wife is No Good, my love. Don’t you agree?

  Oh! darling, you should see the General’s study. It’s full of terribly Hearty Jumping medals & presentation Union Jacks & things – not to mention an incredible clutter of Horses with the General Up – and sometimes just Horses. I don’t want to be Coarse, darling, but I found myself irresistibly wondering last night whether, before retiring to his Dressing Room for the night, the General was Wanton with Mrs Fanshawe with the sort of Elan he would put into taking one of his precious Fillies over a jump. What is so Beautiful, my love, is that she talks the Idiom of her husband’s class with a wealth of ironical inflections and overtones so that his set thinks she’s One of Them and the rest know with rich & subtle enjoyment that she is aware of every shade, every line of their fatuous Blimpery.

  Sunday 7 February This evening, my dear love, Mrs Fanshawe was Musing on Men & said that it was quite astonishing how much they would Swallow in the way of Flattery. I drew myself up to my FH and said you weren’t in the least vain & she said: ‘You tell him he’s the Sun & the Moon & the Stars & see if he doesn’t Lap it up like Cream.’ I said, nothing, my dear love, for the very good reason that you are the sun & the moon & the stars but she misunderstood my silence & said: ‘It’s no good being embarrassed about it – just try it & see.’ I still said nothing, my darling. What could I say?

  Monday 15 February Darling, I had a most terrific argument with Mum this morning while I was in my bath. She came into the bathroom & waved the newspaper account of the appalling Jewish butcheries on the Continent in my face. ‘You see,’ she said Dramatically, ‘These People are not human at all.’ I tried to explain to her, my darling, that as long as the vast body of the people of any nation were barely literate it would always be possible to lead them into excesses of vicious cruelty. I said that the French as a Nation were perhaps the most independently minded in all the world and yet they swallowed the camel of Nazi Domination. I reminded her of the hysterical adulation that was given to Chamberlain when he came back from Munich – of the Cult of the Umbrella. I said that it was possible to feel, not only of the tortured Jews but of the Germans that there but for the Grace of God go I and that therefore it was immeasurably important, for the purpose of post-war regeneration to remember that the German people, as human material
, were exactly like our people – fickle, gullible and intellectually lazy. The Germans, like ourselves, must be trained to think. They must learn to accept nothing prima facie. They must learn to ask themselves, What is Good? Mum completely misunderstood the whole drift of what I was saying, my darling, because she said: ‘You must be completely inhuman not to be revolted by what’s happening.’ After that, my dear love, it was no good going on. Mum has a lot of blind spots, darling, and because she’s such an extraordinarily sensitive & understanding person in so many ways, it’s always a shock when I stand on one of them.

  About writing you a letter-card every day, my dear love. You see, darling, each day I seem to have so much to say to you that willy-nilly it fills a whole letter-card. My only fear is that it might become burdensome to you to have to read so much. As far as I’m concerned all my creative energies, all my critical & social faculties, all my moods and thoughts and, above all, the boundless sea of my love for you go into my letters to you. Because I am all yours I must give you the whole of myself as far as possible, but, my darling, if you just haven’t time to read so much, tell me – I shall understand & I shan’t be the tiniest bit offended. I know you love me, darling, & you needn’t be afraid that I shall think you love me less because your work makes it impossible or irksome for you to read such long letters.

  Friday 19 February My darling. When I got home there was Victor waiting for me like Manna from Heaven. He’s sleeping in your room & it was with almost a physical pain in my heart that I went up the stairs to see him when I came in. He was folding up his underclothes with intense deliberation when I got in & I could hardly speak to him because I was thinking if it had been you, my darling, we should have been lying side by side on your little bed. This was in my mind, my darling, while I said hesitantly & abstractedly to Victor: ‘What cheer? I expect you’ve travelled a long way since I saw you last,’ and I added, darling, because my mind was so full of you that I couldn’t bear not to say your name: ‘I wish you had called on Gershon in your travels.’

  Sunday 21 February Darling, I haven’t had a very good day. Mrs Eban was Bent on finding out All (if there was any All – a matter which she had to admit was Open to Doubt) about Aubrey & Joyce. I Eluded her Grasp like a sliver of wet soap, darling, but in the end I thought it wise to say that (i) Aubrey had never said anything to me about what he felt or did not feel for Joyce (ii) that Joyce was Walking Out reg’lar with Another. She went on to talk about Us, darling, & said she’d never seen anyone So Much In Love as I Am outside a novel. (Non-committal & Embarrassed noises from your little Solace, my darling. I hadn’t even the self-possession to explain that it was all because there wasn’t anyone else like you in all the world, my dear love.) I’d have far preferred to stay at home & talk to Victor. I’ve seen far too little of him this weekend & he’s rejoining his ship tomorrow. He told me a Beautiful remark that the Petty Officer made the other day: ‘Marriage, my boy,’ he said (He’s been married about 40 years) ‘is a crazy business. You give away one half of your food so as to get the other half cooked.’

  Monday 22 February Oh! my darling. It’s a Bleak Horizon at the moment. Gandhi, the only Saint that this century has produced, is dying – Jews are dying in hundreds of thousands – the Beveridge Plan has been castrated – we are suffering reverses in Tunisia – something is rotten in the state of civilization, my dear love. I’m afraid, darling. In the past year so many little green shoots of hope have been springing up everywhere and I’ve been saying to myself: ‘Woho! Here’s a Brave New World for my dear love & me and our children – a world of light, clean garden cities and social justice and books for everybody.’ Everyone has been talking, my darling – but what is happening, my dear love? Darling, I was right to turn away from the news – because what can I do about it?

  Wednesday 24 February Darling, I bumped into Charles Sharpston & Pauline Bryant in the National Gallery – she was, Horrifically Enough, dressed in royal blue corduroy trousers and a very tight Puce pullover – as usual, my love, she Billowed Out of it – and behold! they are married & have been for 6 weeks. Ye Gods! Darling, if you don’t remember Pauline, you can’t conceivably imagine what she’s like. Her hair is wild and Ginger and Wirey – her clothes Scream to Heaven – her eyebrows are a thin black pencil-line perpetually arched – her Bosom has all the Ungirded Majesty of the Niagara Falls – and her voice is like plum fool richly intermingled with syrup – and the wonder of it is, my love, that Charles is bursting with my-wifery and look-what-I’ve-got (as if you could fail to see, darling, even if you weren’t looking). Oh! well, there’s no accounting for taste as Uncle Sam would say. Charles is working at MAP4 and Pauline in Fuel & Power. She and Joyce are opposite ends of the Sartorial Scale, darling. The first thing you notice about Joyce, I think, (and I can afford to be Magnanimous, can’t I, my dear love?) is her slick Grooming, whereas Pauline, apart from being the Loudest thing that ever Put Itself Across without a Megaphone, is positively Raffish. She bristles with Loose Ends, darling, like a haystack.

  Darling, I’m glad you told me about your fear of aeroplanes & I do hope you were able to fly to Palestine & that, like Pa, you now feel that it’s the only way to travel. Darling, you need never be afraid of doing anything ‘dangerous’ on my account. I couldn’t live if anything were to happen to you, darling, simply because if I did, my personality would become more and more atrophied, my mind would wrinkle up like an old, dry apple and I should become spiritually a crabbed & cantankerous woman. I shouldn’t suffer very long, my darling, because I’d simply go to a doctor and get a sleeping draught & take it all. It’s simply a matter of cold fact that I can’t live without you.

  Thursday 25 February Darling, I have been Bereft of a Suitor! Boysie Sassoon – bless every Curl of his Whiskers – has decided to take a Wife to his Bosom – none other than his mother’s secretary – a creature of such Impeccable Orthodoxy that she is fitted to call Even the Beth Din into Question. She’s the answer to the League of Jewish Womanhood’s Prayer and when she Nestles in his Beard (I almost said Nests, darling) he will have the satisfaction of knowing that every kiss is 100% unadulterated Kosher. When I Look Back on it All, darling, I can’t help feeling that perhaps it’s just as well that his Grandmother never quite got to the point of asking me to marry him – the whole situation would have been so exquisitely Farcical that I might have consented for the sheer fun of the thing!

  May I please be a little Puss about Aunt Teddy? In spite of her extreme Penuriousness which Impelled her, to her sorrow, & much against her Will, to live with us Free of Charge & to say: ‘That will be sevenpence, dear’ every time she handed over her week’s ration to Mum, she has managed to buy herself a Persian Lamb Coat for the Modest Sum of 250 Guineas, darling! Well, well, well!

  Friday 26 February My darling, I’ve had a terrifically busy day. In the train a Colonel’s Wife in Sables and a smoked Zaikon asked me the Way to God. I almost said Absent-mindedly in the words of Tinker Bell, darling (or perhaps it was not Tinker Bell – anyway it was someone in Peter Pan) ‘second on the left & straight on till morning’. I wish I had, my love, but instead I just Gaped & when I’d recovered myself Sat Up & Waited for more. It came, darling. She’d noticed that I was reading Ouspensky.5 She was much Exercised in her mind about Religion. Her British Israelite friends thought her Roman Catholic friends were Heading Straight for Hell (she begged my pardon, my love, for not Mincing Her Words). Her Roman Catholic friends thought her Spiritualist friends were Charlatans. Where, therefore, was God? And they were all so sincere, bless them. I suggested, darling, that if she wanted to find the highest common factor of all religions she’d better read some philosophy – starting with William James’s ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’ (Pause while she wrote Feverishly in a notebook what time the Colonel, who was sitting opposite, read Esquire with Terrific Abstraction.) It was all Very Beautiful, darling. She almost Wept when we parted at Cambridge Station. I trust she Finds God in due course!

 
When I got to Girton, darling, I called on Portress who received me exactly as though I’d just come out of my old room & said that she thought Miss LT was out. Darling, Portress hasn’t changed a tittle. Nothing has changed – outwardly – but oh! my darling, it’s not really the same.

  Saturday 27 February I spent most of the afternoon with Miss Lloyd Thomas, my dear love. I told her that there was, of course, a condition attached to the College Prize and that was that we insisted that it should be awarded to our daughter. She agreed that that was Very Proper, darling, & when a rather shy student called to see her she said: ‘This is Miss Alexander – she has just Presented a Prize to the College. You will probably win it. Her daughter is going to win it too.’ The student, darling, made noises of Polite Interest & then said diffidently, ‘How old is your daughter?’ I said: ‘Well. As a matter of fact she isn’t Here at All yet,’ & Miss Lloyd Thomas added hastily – making matters considerably worse: ‘There’s a little matter of a marriage ceremony to be arranged yet.’ The poor student, darling, not being able to Make Anything of my Innocent Contours was, I could see, left with a Hazy Impression that she’d wandered into a perfect Morass of Loose Living.

  Sunday 28 February Darling, Miss Lloyd Thomas has given me a pot of Honey & Mrs Turner is giving me eggs Ooh!

  Aubrey’s letter-card, my dear love, was a Gem. His best touches were ‘Latest Tel Aviv shop signs’: ‘Dressmaker. All patterns for Home Wear & Street Walking’ and Shop owned by Mr Adam moved across the road; here is the notice: ‘Adam has Transgressed Here’. (First Archaeological Evidence of Original Sin.)

  Darling, evidently Norman Bentwich has been Less Discreet in his letters than I have – about himself I mean! Ask Aubrey to tell you the story. It is, in its way, Very Beautiful.