Monday 4 October I am back at my desk, my darling. Nothing has changed. My darling letters 175 and 178 were on the Hall table when I got home and they were the greatest comfort in the world.
I don’t remember in the least what I said in my letter of congratulations to Lorna, my dear love, except that I remarked that the first time I met Brig. Wingate I got the impression that he would either be thrown out of the army on his Ear or become a Field Marshal & that I was glad to see that he was going to be a Field Marshal.
Darling, Parental Pressure is no excuse for Joyce. My parents combined Cubic Volume exceeds the Nathans’ and if it had been exerted for 20 years to try & make me marry a man I didn’t love or for that matter not marry the man I did love it would have got them precisely nowhere. I didn’t say I liked Bernard, darling, I only said I almost liked him & the volte face was due to the fact that for the first time I saw him in the guise of real humility. One of the things I’ve disliked about him for years, darling, ever since he was a fourteen-year-old Dartmouth Cadet, was his overweening self importance but, vis-a-vis Joyce this simply doesn’t exist. He’s obviously humbly bewildered & quite pitifully grateful that such a creature as Joyce could deign to bestow her favours upon him – and there’s no doubt, my love, that his new found humility becomes him.
Wednesday 6 October Joyce telephoned today, darling, to ask me to her engagement party on Friday week.
Darling, Mum found a Gloomy story in the Daily Mirror this morning about a woman who was Gagged & Bound by Thieves while they quietly removed her safe, leaving a jagged hole in the wall. As a result of this, my love, Mum is almost inclined to write a letter of thanks to our Burglars for being so Forbearing.
The size I have to write in order to get at least some of what I have to say onto an air letter form, my love, is getting me into Bad Habits. Yesterday poor Mr Murray had to Beg for Mercy because the drafts I had sent into him were writ so small and packed so tight with writing. I pointed out, my darling, that it would be in the National Interest to bring you home & spare his eyes & he agreed & said he wished he could do something about it. Oh! God. My dearest love, I wish he could. I wish I need never see an Official Paper in all my life again. I loathe the Civil Service.
After breakfast, darling, I found Mum in a State of terrific excitement because she’d just seen a Piece in the Paper about young Soldiers being sent home to marry their Solaces. I glanced laconically at the paragraph in question, my love, & found, as I’d expected, that it referred only to Prospective unmarried fathers. When I pointed this out to Mum, darling, she said Eagerly: ‘Well, couldn’t Gershon say he was about to become a Father?’ Then she added Anxiously: ‘Your name wouldn’t appear, would it?’ I explained gently, my love, that it would & that anyway you’d be hard put to it to persuade the authorities that you were Responsible for the future birth of a baby in England when you’ve been away for 17 months! It’s a pity, darling, that no one ever bothered to explain the Facts of Life to Mum. There are times when she must find it a handicap. Afterwards, darling, I Rebuked her for making a suggestion which would involve the Sullying of your Good Name while Protecting Mine but she said Airily that once you were home everyone would know it wasn’t true. Darling, for an Intelligent Woman, there are times when the workings of my mother’s mind are Distinctly Quare.
Sunday 10 October Darling, Victor came to lunch, bringing with him Ram Nahum’s younger brother, who’s in the same Branch of the Navy as he is. Danny Nahum is a highly intelligent lad, darling & an amazing linguist. He asked me how well I knew his brother, my dear love, & went on to talk about him & Winifred Vickers quite uninhibitedly in spite of the fact that I had told him that I hardly knew Nahum the Elder at all. ‘Winifred was in love with my brother,’ he said bluntly, darling, & then he asked me about Mouse Vickers, whom I have never met. He seemed surprised, my love, to hear that he was still alive & he said: ‘Winifred didn’t like him at all. Can’t think why she married him.’ It seems, darling, that she has artificial legs and moves about with amazing agility, cheerfulness & undiminished vigour. That’s an extraordinary story, my dear love, & I’m inclined to be very harsh in my judgement over the whole thing but I might see it differently, I suppose, if I knew all the facts.
Monday 11 October I had an Air Letter from Aubrey this evening, my love, which was opened by the Censor. He (the Censor) must have enjoyed these extracts, my love: ‘WSC18 Resuscitated the “Spenser” in order to avoid the Duncanier association of his signature on Memoranda. When he signed plain WC zealous secretaries took it not as an intimation of assent but as a Suggestion for Disposal …’ and ‘Wingate once told me that he never did up certain vital buttons because of the time it wasted during a busy day …’ I note with relief and approval, darling, that he has put his Wistful hankering for Joyce behind him once & for all. He says magnanimously: ‘I received an Advance Notice in a pleasant note from Joyce, which I liked & showed a nice feeling, for whatever that is worth – & on second thoughts it is worth a good deal.’
Wednesday 13 October There was an impassioned Leader in last night’s Standard, darling, drawing attention to King Christian’s19 pronouncement that he & all his family would henceforth wear the yellow star as ‘a sign of the highest distinction’. The Standard (in the person of Michael Foot I suppose, my love) urges the world to show their appreciation of the Jewish contribution to world culture in even more concrete form. An impressive Leader, darling, & written with very deep conviction.
Sometimes, my darling, I’m so old that it terrifies me. I’m like one of those proverbial old men who die of inanition in Club arm chairs because they can’t be bothered to prise themselves out of them and do something about it, yet, darling, yesterday I realized, not for the first time that in spite of all these static months of waiting and waiting I am, by virtue of our love, more alive than most people. There was Mrs Booker, idiotically wearing paste jewellery – copies of her own jewellery – even down to the ersatz square diamond engagement ring – moved by some obscure impulse to protect the diamonds which she could not enjoy – all her guests talking of nothing – thinking of nothing – with empty faces – the same empty faces that you see in every expensive hotel or restaurant in the country – deprived of the synthetic pleasures of peacetime and unable to turn to the rich cultural resources of the world which are still available for all who want them. I heard one woman say, darling: ‘After the war I shall have my hair set twice a day and go abroad and sit in the sun in the most expensive bathing suit I can find …’ and another: ‘This Sinister tendency to Russianise us – I want to be free again.’ Free for what, darling? I doubt if the speaker could answer that question. My darling, is it that money corrupts us or that mostly it’s the wrong people who have the money? It saddened me, darling, to see how much like the other faces at the party Joyce’s face had become. In the room the women come & go – only they don’t talk about Michaelangelo but about Elizabeth Arden & Coty which are the Cultural Monuments of our age.
Oh! darling, thank God, thank God for your love. Thank God for an anchor in this drifting world.
Friday 15 October My darling, Prince Lotfallah is after any throne that may be Going. He & his Brothers Sunk a lot of money in King Faisal’s dynasty & were promised a throne which Never Came to Anything. This particular Scion of the family, darling, wants one of two things – either to get his money back from the British Government to whose advantage he says it is to have the Faisal lot on the throne of Iraq or to have the throne for which he has paid so liberally. (He feels particularly Bitter about King Zog of Albania, my love; he often spends the weekend with him but it’s obvious that he hopes it Chokes Him.)
Darling, Joyce’s party consisted in half a dozen dry rusks with a diaphanous layer of Potted Meat on top & some ersatz orange juice nominally enlivened with gin. I was talking to Pierette Wack who was a contemporary of Joyce’s at Girton & who is at the Board of Trade & I asked her if she knew anything of Susan Wyatt. She told me, my love,
that Susan had a baby recently but that she couldn’t marry its father because neither Woodrow nor his wife would agree to a Divorce. It’s at times like these, my darling, that I wish I didn’t know about Life. It makes me terribly sad to see so many of my friends holding their marriage ties in such small esteem. I can’t help regarding unfaithfulness as a terrible act of Sacrilege, my dearest love. I do try to be tolerant but I can’t, I can’t.
Monday 18 October My darling, I found letter 182 waiting for me when I got home. I hope it was not irreverent of me, my dear love, but when I realized that you & I had both spent the morning of the day of Atonement in bed my immediate reaction was: ‘Oh! God, if only we could have spent it in bed together.’
I’m afraid I shan’t be able to make a Jew of you, my darling, & the reason why I shan’t is inherent in what you say about the Pentateuch and the prophets. The Pentateuch is interesting as a historical document & it’s admirable, darling, and extremely advanced for its day as an account of the growth of a number of very important legal principles designed to breed good citizenship – but it is no more than that – but the prophets, darling, with their superb imagery, their mysticism, their burning faith in the absolute good – they are of the very stuff of religion – they rank with the teachings of Christ & at times they tower over him. As a matter of fact, darling, I’m not condemning Orthodox Judaism in particular but highly organized religion generally. Spiritual faith is something which doesn’t come from superstitions or traditional observances after all but from the process of living and through the isolated vision of a few supremely great men like Plato & Dante & Shakespeare & Isaiah & Christ & Job. Organized religion, darling, lays the emphasis on the Wrong Things. It is more important to know the Gospels than the Catechism – it is more important to read Job than Genesis – Plato is far more important than Rabbi Ben Ezra but what Priest or Rabbi will you find who will acknowledge that it is so?
I’m glad you have seen Om Kalsoum20 (provided, of course, that she didn’t affect you as Garrick’s players affected Dr Johnson who said: ‘I will come no more behind your scenes, David. The silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities.’) I have never seen her in the flesh – only on the films.
Thursday 21 October This morning, darling, Mrs Wright stalked in with my coffee in a Fine Rage. ‘Not a single enemy plane shot down last night,’ she announced with Withering Scorn. ‘A friend of mine,’ she added, ‘was watching the gun-fire the other night and it got nowhere near the planes which were very neatly caught in the searchlights. It’s all because of this Nonsense of putting the Home Guard on to the Anti-Aircraft Guns. What, pray, should the Home Guard know about Anti-aircraft guns?’ I explained gently, darling, that neither I personally nor the Air Ministry as a Corporate Body was responsible for Anti-Aircraft and urged her to transfer her Displeasure from me to the War Office which she did in no Uncertain Terms.
I had a letter from Joan Pearce this morning, darling. It was a sad letter, coming from such a sunny & imperturbable person. I think I told you, my love, that last time I saw her she was a-glow at the prospective return from West Africa after 3 years of the rather dull young man to whom she was sincerely if unaccountably attached. She says in her letter, my dear love, that he got back at Easter & is still in this country but that she hasn’t seen him since May. She doesn’t offer any explanation or go into any detail but the tone of her letter is hurt & lonely. I’m so sorry, darling. I should not have said that Joan was a person of any great emotional depth & yet she has been, without being engaged or committed in any way, genuinely faithful to this young man during his three years of absence & this is the result.
Darling, shall I have to relinquish my faith in the perfectibility of human nature as a whole in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary or shall I be able to cling to it – as one ought to cling to a faith in spite of the pull of any reason? I don’t know – please tell me, darling. There’s Susan Wyatt tossing her marriage overboard without having given it a fair trial. (She & Woodrow have, after all, never been together for more than a week at a time.) There’s Joan Walker, glibly preaching one set of standards & practising another – there’s Winifred Vickers, my darling, who lived with another man while her husband was a prisoner of war in Germany – there’s Miss Anderton who (for all that in most things her standards are higher than those of many of my highly educated friends) would rather be married to a man she can’t trust than not be married at all. These things make me terribly unhappy, my darling.
Darling, tonight Mum started on the old, old story of calling Pa ‘Pa’. She made a Major Issue of it, my darling & said she’d Never Speak to me Again unless I stopped it. This struck me as so dam’ silly, darling, that I just laughed derisively & that made her more Martyred than ever. Pa said he thought she objected to the name because it was current in the Pubs to which I replied in my Grandest Mock Heroick Style that I was proud to hear that I was affecting the idiom of the Public House, the Club-Room of the Proletariat. Mum squeezed out a few tears & said that I always did what you asked me to which I replied that (i) You’d never ask me anything so idiotic & (ii) That the relationship between husband & wife was different from the relationship between mother & daughter. That Tore it, darling! My matey ‘Goodnight’ was greeted with Stony Silence, but I’m not letting it worry me, my very dear love. I think the whole thing is the veriest Balderdash. I shall go on calling Pa ‘Pa’, because it is le mot juste & I will not allow my sense of Artistic Fitness to be overridden.
Friday 22 October I must, for your entertainment, quote Quinton Hogg on Pa’s College friend, Sir James Grigg. ‘This man,’ he says, ‘was conceived & born in a pigeon hole, swaddled in red tape & educated in the Treasury. Finally he came to Manhood in the War Office and when he leaves us for Another Place there will be inscribed on his Tombstone not an epitaph but a Treasury minute which will read: Passed to you for consideration and Comment.’
I’ve just heard Mum in the bathroom Inciting Pa not to talk to me. Woho! Pa is trying to Reason with her, darling! He’s not getting anywhere but it’s nice of him to try.
Sunday 24 October Darling, Carmel Eban, let out of the Wrennery for the afternoon, phoned. Floor scrubbing, she said, my love, was wearing her nerves very thin & she had telephoned, she went on, to be Steadied because I (yes, darling, she meant your little Solace) was the Calmest person she knew!!!!! (Darling, let’s Get to the Bottom of this. Why do I always strike people who don’t know me as being a marble effigy of Placidity?) Having implored Carmel to repeat that remark to my parents (who are there to tea, darling) I was transferred willy nilly to Mrs Eban who asked me Anxiously for an analysis of Aubrey’s mood in his latest letter. I gather, darling, that he sounded very depressed & she wanted to know whether it was (i) War weariness (ii) Political Disillusionment or (iii) Something Personal. I assured her, my love, with as much conviction as I could Muster, that I was certain that it was a combination of (i) & (ii) with no element of (iii) in it. She Clasped her hands to her bosom (Of course I couldn’t actually see her, darling, but I know she did) & said: ‘Darling, you’re so necessary,’ (I hate being called ‘darling’ by anyone but you) ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ At this point, my love, I Faked a very convincing Acking Coff and she said she mustn’t keep me and rang off.
Tuesday 26 October Report has it, my love, that Mum (whom I have not set eyes on for two days) spends most of her time Wailing & Wringing her Hands – but that may be a Fabrication on the part of Pa – designed to Melt my heart. I’m very, very tired of all this Melodrama.
Wednesday 27 October Darling, I got sent home feeling rill ill at about half-past three so it was a relief to find Mum ready to Surrender Unconditionally. As she produced no ifs or buts my love, I was Magnanimous & agreed to try & remember not to call Pa ‘Pa’ in her hearing.
Thursday 28 October STOP PRESS. My darling, Pan has Done It Again. He’s got the Shakespeare Medal. He has now had the three most impo
rtant English prizes that Harrow can offer. I’m so glad, my darling, and glad too that he has shown himself to be no Dusty Antiquarian but a Humanist of not inconsiderable Parts. And Pan deserves this, darling, if for no other reason than for having stood aside last year so as not to compete against Elliot Binns whose last chance it was.
Friday 29 October Darling, I’m back at work feeling rather shaky but otherwise much better.
My darling, I’ve just come back from a long coffee session with Mr Murray. He’s leaving us on Monday week for – believe-it-or-not – none other than Jean’s Organization. He will be the only Civil Servant in it, my darling, & I gather that his Mission is to bring forth Order out of Chaos. For his sake, darling, I’m glad because he has such uprightness & purpose that I believe he will succeed where others have failed & that will stand him in good stead in the future – but it’s the most terrific personal Sorrow, my dear love, because his friendship has helped me immeasurably in these dark months & I shall not meet with such another. His successor will probably be a man called Campbell from S5. A pleasant enough person, my darling, but of a mediocrity which is positively crushing. I hope Mr Murray is able to take Miss Anderton with him, darling, because if she suspects so much as the shadow of a slight she prickles up all over like a hedgehog. Mr Murray realizes as I do that she has such rare & admirable qualities that no amount of Watchfulness & Circumspection is too much trouble but most people don’t & I doubt if Mr Campbell has enough perception to see what is wanted.
Love in the Blitz Page 49