Love in the Blitz

I was on my way home to change for dinner with Joyce, when the second warning went. I took shelter at Hyde Park Corner – and knitted again. When I got to the point when I had to measure what I’d done – I enlisted the help of four old charladies (all girls together, y’know) and they rewarded themselves for their assistance by Telling me All – inveighing darkly against ‘Them’ the while. ‘They’ are the bloated plutocrats who own offices, carpeted in rich Persian carpets which have to be swept and cleaned without so much as a ’oover – O’ course it’s the ’ousekeeper – She takes the money. Very Sinister, darling.

Then there was a ’bus driver off duty. He was musing on the Queerness of the Passenger breed. ‘Last winter,’ he said, ‘I was drivin’ along an’ I sore an old gel lying frozen in the snow. My pal & I, we got aht and started rubbin’ ’er feet & ’ands – and we gave her a drop o’ spirits & she came rahnd “It’s Orl Right Muvver” I sez – “Muvver?” she says. “How dare you call me Muvver, young man. The name is Miss Sylvester.” Blimey, I sez to myself – That’s torn it. But my pal, ’e looks at ’er thoughtful like … “Miss Sylvester” he says, y’ought to be ashamed o’ yourself, old gel.”’ He had his wife & children with him & he was telling us what a Good Thing Education was. He drew himself up to HFH14 and said he had won a Scholarship to a Secondary School – but he hadn’t taken it.

Dinner at the Nathans was uneventful – except that the Col. asked Pa & me to one of his Wednesday lunches at the Dorchester, which ought to be interesting. Joyce sends greetings.

I went in to call on my parents this morning – and Pa greeted me with the words ‘And what does Lord Nathan think about the war?’ & suddenly, darling, my patience snapped. I’ve heard nothing but war from Pa for months – a handful of clichés – an alternation between that gloomy optimism which Victor used to find so trying, and the ‘if we have to take refuge in Canada …’ strain.

I said nastily: ‘I never discuss the war with anyone.’ Then he gave me a dirty look & said ‘No, I suppose you prefer to discuss your love affairs with the Nathans.’ I was so angry that I felt as if someone were sewing up the corners of my mouth with a needle and thread. I didn’t answer though, and he said that he was ‘fed up’ with my behaviour and he never wanted to speak to me again. I said – thank God for that & would he kindly stop bellowing at me now – whereat he leapt out of bed & left the room – & I haven’t seen him since. The whole thing is so damned sordid that I’m sickened by it, darling. – N’en parlons plus.

Bless you for your letter. Thank God you’re not fit for the Air – I hope your inoculation didn’t hurt too much. I have a phobia about injections. They make me feel iller than any other sensation in the world. It’s the jab of the needle wot does it.

Sunday 18 August Lionel & my mother were hovering around me all morning – palpably sent on a mission of Reconnaissance – and, if necessary, of Appeasement by Pa. The Actual Peace Negotiations started while I was in my bath. My mother sat on the marble edge Appealing to my Better Nature. Lionel stood at the door – declaring that he had been authorized to say that Pa had Meant no Offence – and had Spoken in Anger – and was Very Sorry. I decided that you’d want me to Come Off It, darling – so I did – and it was really just as well – because it’s difficult to register Unflinching Aloofness in the confined space of an Air-Raid Shelter – and Pa was Genuinely in Great Sorrow for what he had said.

Pa is giving a lecture on ‘Egypt & the War’ at the Royal Empire Society on September 17th. It ought to be good. He spends his days at Chatham House & the Egyptian Embassy researching frantically. Darling, with all these warnings, my mother thinks I ought to have a siren suit – I saw a Rill Red one at Jaeger’s when I was buying your wool. It’s a terrific Solace – but I’ll have to wait for it until my mother gets some more money from Egypt.

Tuesday 20 August Good morning, my dear love. Nurse is going to be married – her intended is an RAF Sergeant – She’s welcome to him – I only know his voice & the back of his head – and neither are a solace to me on any plane whatever. She expects to be married in three weeks’ time – to go away for a week’s holiday & then come back to us. She’s in Great Solace and all Dewy. It was all Decided in an Air Raid Shelter and is Obviously Very Beautiful.

I went reluctantly to Leslie’s office yesterday & when I got there Miss Fox told me that He was coming in to work that afternoon. When he came in, he asked Miss Fox whether Miss Sloane had arrived yet. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And Miss Alexander is here too.’ ‘Oh!’ he said, with what seemed to my sensitive ear a marked absence of enthusiasm – but a few minutes later he came in and looked over my shoulder at photographs of himself – and fulsome press accounts of ‘Our Popular War Minister’ and, simulating confusion very prettily said: ‘I’ve never seen any of these – but this kind of work isn’t quite in your line is it, my dear?’ Then he left me – but in an instant he was back. The office is really a small residential flat & the room where I work must have been the bedroom, because there’s a washbasin in one corner and a bathroom within. Now as the bath is crammed to the brim with press-cuttings, darling, the only reason anyone ever has for going into it is to commune with Duncan, as the vociferous plug stridently testifies. It is impossible to be Bashful about Duncan in that office – so Leslie decided to Brazen It Out. ‘The lavatory,’ he said with Elaborate Unconcern, ‘is in There. Do you mind if I use it?’ ‘Not at all,’ I said Graciously. I wonder what would have happened if I’d said it would be a Great Sorrow to me? I shall Never Know, now.

Later in the day, I heard him rating Miss Fox soundly for only providing dry biscuits for my tea. She came in all chastened to ask if I’d like a doughnut. ‘No, thank you,’ I said mendaciously – and – when she went back to report – he positively exploded – ‘Of course, she’d say “no thank you” – what else could the poor girl say in the circumstances. She’s good enough to come all this way to help and all you can give her is a handful of water-biscuits. I never heard such nonsense – Don’t let it happen again.’ And when I left, he expressed Great Sorrow at my not yet having a job: ‘Tell ’em all to go to Hell – and go back to your books where you’re appreciated,’ he said. So you see, darling – I’m not In Disgrace with him any more.

Wednesday 21 August Lionel & Dicky, on hearing of Nurse’s engagement, asked wistfully when I intended to Follow Suit. Lionel thought Antony Ellenbogen would be a nice name for my first-born. Dicky favoured Winston S. Eban! Lionel said oh! no, the country would be Overrun with Winstons in the Coming Generation – besides, I was, after all a literary specialist though, of course, Dicky couldn’t be expected to know All the implications of ‘Antony’ – Dicky (who had thought Lionel had chosen Antony as a compliment to him – Dicky’s name is Anthony) shrunk from his F. H. to normal & withdrew from the Discussion. Lionel added that Eban was a trivial little name. He, for his part, preferred the Rich Resonance of Ellenbogen. (What then would he say of Kazen Ellenbogen if he Knew All, dear? One day, I must Tell him.)

Darling, while I was in my bath the other day a Great Sorrow Swept Over me – sorrow that you & I had never mollocked on your sofa at King’s. What a waste, as my Grandmother said when she was sick as a result of over-eating at Dicky’s circumcision party. (He was circumcised on the Day of Atonement.) ‘What a waste’ was a favourite expression of my grandmother’s.

Joy Blackaby has just written to me saying, ‘Whether it’s love or the motor accident you’re certainly a pleasanter person than you were’! Look what you’ve done for me, dear.

Thursday 22 August Thank you for your letter in Morse, darling – but don’t do it again. It has a stultifying effect on your style. Lord Nathan did Pa & me much honour at the Dorchester Lunch.15 We were at the same table as his mother & brother & Mr Oppenheimer. I was sandwiched between Pa & Mr Oppenheimer – who was all Gracious Civility. He said he couldn’t see a trace of the accident – and told me coyly & In Confidence that he was dining with Fanny that evening. I will encounter Darkness like a bride, his look seemed to say – and hug it in my arms.16 Sir John Anderson was dull to yawning point, but he told one nice story about an Anderson shelter. He was investigating the damage at Croydon last Friday & he came to an enormous bomb crater in a working-man’s back garden. The man pointed to a few scraps of shattered metal at the bottom of the crater and said rather shyly ‘That was my Anderson Shelter’. ‘Oh!’ said Sir John – rather fatuously, as he admitted, himself – ‘You weren’t in it then?’ ‘No,’ said the man, ‘The warning sounded too late for me to be able to get there.’ He also told of a mother who turned angrily to her fifteen-year-old daughter who was quietly reading in the shelter and said: ‘Shut that book, Mary & pay attention to the air-raid.’

Allan unexpectedly got his calling-up papers for September 12th and he & Sheila are getting married by special licence tomorrow week.

Lord N. has asked us to the lunch on the anniversary of the outbreak of war (Sept 3rd, in case you’ve forgotten, darling) to hear Eden.17 It should be interesting – only if you’re in London then, I shan’t dare to tell my parents I’m not going. Oh! Damn – I’m clucking already at the very thought.

Saturday 24 August Darling, If I sound querulous (and I am going to sound querulous) you may deduct 20% for Saturday – but the rest is real. Your twopenny snap is damned awful – and I wish you’d never sent it to me – (especially as you’re wearing a jersey under your tunic which wasn’t knitted by me. Yes, I do notice everything) because now I know you’re in the Fighting Forces – and I’ve been crying ever since I had your letter – it makes me feel ill – and the thought that you are only going to write to me twice a week – because you’re too busy being convivial with your fellow Air-Craftsmen isn’t much of a Solace. Oh! darling, please don’t be angry with me for saying this – but do you remember how often at the end of last year & the beginning of this, I used to be in Great Sorrow at some of the things you used to say in jest – and you used to explain that you were just absent-minded and that most of the girls you knew didn’t mind flippant remarks in that strain. You won’t be likely, will you, my dear love, to get into the way of making that kind of remark, through casual contact with girls who don’t mind them? I’m frightened, darling, frightened that the new idioms & new values of military life will make you impatient and bored with mine. Please don’t be bored with me, dear. (Pause – for more crying.)

I’m afraid this is a very Great Sorrow, darling. I’ve had three cigarettes in rapid succession & they’ve had no effect whatsoever. What has actually happened is that the solace of our time together while you were in London has lasted until today – and it’s only worn off now because I’ve suddenly realized that you’re in a new environment – among new people – and wearing new clothes. (Perhaps I’ll feel a little better when you’re dressed in my pullover, dear.) These strange men with whom you live and play cards & go to dances frighten me, darling. You’re starting a new life in which I have no part. What do you talk about? Oh! darling, is all this going to ‘iron wedges drive and always crowd itself betwixt’?18 Please, dear, let me have a long letter on Tuesday and another on Saturday, and a little reassuring one on Thursday. You’re so far away and I can’t do without you – Indeed I don’t want to. Does anyone want to go on living without a heart or lungs?

Pa has read & approved my letter to Lord Lloyd’s secretary. Something ought to happen soon. Bernard Waley Cohen told me yesterday evening that he’d got a high administrative Civil Service job – and he hasn’t even got a degree.

Miss Fox is away on holiday and I’m going to Answer the Telephone & Be Efficient for Miss Sloane all next week.

I met Nurse’s YF19 last night. A wisp of straw, darling, but quite inoffensive – though he’s neither here nor there.

I wish you were here to mollock with me in Air Raids. I don’t mind Air Raids if I can mollock while they’re in progress. As it is I just Brood Savagely – & knit.

This is an unsatisfactory letter, dear. But if I were to have to do without you – why then let Rome in Tiber melt & the wide arch of the ranged Empire fall20 – oh! God, I hope they give you leave soon.

Sunday 25 August There’s no place in the world where one is so suffocated by Family as in an Air Raid Shelter. I pretended to go to sleep in an endeavour to Escape – but there they were – Everywhere. Nurse, who hadn’t bothered to see that the children had rugs – lay back on pillows – enveloped in an eiderdown – and Relaxed. (She’d obviously been reading the Women’s Papers which tell you to Lie Back, Drop your Lids, and Relax completely whenever you can, or you’ll get Wrinkles – I have wrinkles.) I’m getting a very severe attack of Emotional Claustrophobia, darling. It’s not pleasant.

Tuesday 27 August God! darling, what a night. Hell has no terrors for me anymore. As the sirens shrieked, I called on Duncan & went, quite good-humouredly into the shelter, thinking that having a warning at 9.15 might mean an undisturbed night. I knitted quite happily for about an hour and a half – and at quarter to eleven, Mrs Seidler turned out the shelter light & I tried to sleep, dear. We could hear the dull thud of AA21 fire and the spattering of machine-gun bullets – and close overhead the thick chugging of aeroplane engines. It was an oppressively hot night and the only sound apart from war-noises, was Pa’s ear-splitting snore. By midnight, darling, I felt that I’d rather die slowly of wounds than live in a room with Pa and Dicky. It wasn’t a reasoned loathing, darling, it was just intense & hysterical & suffocating – the spiritual equivalent of the stale and thick air of the shelter. Then Pa said something nasty about Nurse, who had been caught in the raid – & his tone implied that no-one should stir from the house in these times – and I got up & said quite quietly that I was going to bed. Then, darling, the trouble started. Pa said that if I moved he’d go out into the night – (I knew it was only histrionics but I dared not take the risk of its being genuine for my mother’s sake). I said he was a damned bully – and stood in the doorway, watching columns of sparks scattering outwards in the sky – and after that, I sat on a cane chair by the door until the All Clear sounded at four. I didn’t get to sleep till about five – and now I feel infinitely old & tired – & so bitterly resentful of my father that I feel it would make me physically sick to be in the same room with him. Oh! darling, I wish you were with me – though even if you were here I can’t see that we would have anything but Sorrow under this new martial law notion of Pa’s. Darling, I’m sick & sullen – & I’ve only had two hours sleep – I’ll write more later. Oh! I’d trade a kingdom for a laundry basket, if only I could get away from my father for ever.

Oh! darling, I could have done with a letter from you today – but I expect the mails have been delayed by the air-raids. It isn’t that you’re angry with me for the letter I sent you on Sunday is it, my dear love? Oh! please don’t be angry with me. Your affection is the only thing of worth that I have in this turmoil – Don’t take it away from me.

Later: Darling, I’ve just come home to find a letter from Lord Lloyd’s secretary, saying that Lord L. is going to write to the Central Register asking them ‘what exactly has happened to your application’. This is heartening news and a step towards achievement.

Wednesday 28 August Darling, I had a very queer experience last night. We had a small dinner party which I hadn’t even bothered to mention to you because I’d no reason to suppose that it would be anything but dull – and anyway I expected to be too tired to take any interest in anything. Our guests were Col. & Mrs Fred Samuel, Joyce, Herman and a Captain & Mrs Wingate,22 whom I’d never met before. My parents met them a few nights ago when they were dining with Mrs Gestetner & had liked them so much that they’d asked them to dinner. He has rather a nobbly face, with a strikingly intellectual forehead and a sullen mouth – she is twenty-two (she married when she was seventeen) and her eyes and face are alive with light and intelligence.

During the early part of the dinner, everything went as I’d expected. I was sitting between Herman & Capt. Wingate and I exchanged a few desultory & apathetic remarks with them – but mostly, I just sat back in a coma.

Then, darling, the Sirens went – and the thought that I need not go out into the shelter sent me almost crazy with relief. I laughed hysterically and said ‘This is an Air Raid de Luxe’ and I suppose my face must have come alive because Captain Wingate suddenly realized that I was there, and turned to me & started asking questions about Cambridge & what I’d been doing there. I knew I was talking well, dear, though I sez it as obviously shouldn’t, and I told him that my major interest in Cambridge had been the study of love in Arthurian Romance. He asked me a lot of very searching questions – paused over the problem of reconciling the attitude of the church and the nobility to sexual love in the Middle Ages, and then asked me if my research had led me to consider the nature of sexual love – through its manifestations in different ages! I said not very seriously – and he said that he thought the essential pleasure of physical love and emotional love lay in pressure. (Yes, I thought, the pressure of Gershon’s arms and mouth and head and hands – but I didn’t say anything about that, darling!) He said that in the final act of love there was the joy of violation – of breaking down a barrier – but in all the less primitive manifestations of love, (he didn’t use primitive in any censorious way, of course) pressure existed in two ways – actual physical pressure – and the pressure of repressing the normal biological urge – or rather pressing it into new shapes. If the pressure is too hard it becomes painful – but gentle repression can give very great pleasure. (That’s why you and I are on the Highest Plane of All, darling.) He also put forward the theory that all civilized trends were, in their early stages, an attempt to enhance the sexual market-value of the individual. The accumulation of wealth, for instance, in the days of barter, made the owner of fine wares more alluring – and so on. We argued and danced around one another and side-stepped – and then the women went into the drawing-room – and I discovered that Mrs Wingate was a student of Malory – and a girl of very great charm and acute judgement. What a Solace, darling. I talked too fast and too loudly, but I was alive again after a day of hellish weariness – and when they left – intoxicated with the exuberance of my own verbosity, I told my parents I was going to bed and I stuck to it.

Later; Oh! darling, I’m crying – Please don’t be angry with me – I’ve been regretting that letter ever since I wrote it – I’m sorry about the photograph – Please may I keep it? – it’s got a message on the back. In it, my dear love, you are most notoriously abused – you look like one of the Comic Characters from Follow The Fleet – but it’s faintly like you and I’d like to have it. I was ungracious – but I’m so sorry, that it’s inexpressible. The remark about the pullover was meant to be in jest – tearful jest, because I was (and am) in Sorrow – but I’m not surprised it didn’t come across in the right spirit.

Of course you got full marks for Morse – I don’t need to draw myself up to MFH23 for that – I knew you would.

Thank you for not letting your new life drive a wedge between us, darling – I’m only frightened because I love you so much – It’s not really surprising, is it? (I mean that I’m frightened! It would hardly be modest of you not to think the other surprising.)

Thank you for telling me that you were ‘rather irritated by (my) clucking’ at the beginning of your letter – but I had noticed – but please, darling, don’t be irritated with me again. – I can’t help clucking – and my clucks never mean anything. Please say in your next letter that you’re not irritated any more – I knew you were going to be angry – and when I came in from Miss Sloane’s office, I sat with your letter on my knee for well over ten minutes not daring to open it.

Thursday 29 August Hell was let loose in the sky last night darling – and I slept through most of it. The Sirens went at nine and, because I thought it would be uncivil to go to bed so early I sat in the shelter until ten, knitting – and then went up to bed. When I said goodnight to them, my parents were sullenly silent – but I undressed, and in a few minutes I was asleep. Mrs Seidler woke me at two and said ‘Listen’ – and I did and I could hear the bombs crashing quite close at hand – she told me that my mother had spent the whole evening crying piteously – so I went down to the shelter as a Gesture. There were red patches in the sky from fires – and the searchlights criss-crossed like basket weave. I sat in the shelter for half-an-hour & we could still hear bombs and AA Fire – after that things quietened down – and I couldn’t stand the shelter any more – I could feel that suffocating hysteria welling up inside me as it did the other night – and I went back to bed and I slept till morning, neither hearing the All Clear or anything.

Since I’ve been kept awake o’ nights my headaches have started again – it’s as though the bones of my skull had been battered in. My mother says that unless I agree to spending my nights in the shelter, she’ll send me out of London – Lionel suggested Blackpool with a wicked smile – (I’d told them at dinner that the sirens had never sounded in Blackpool since the war began) and after that she said no more.

You know, darling, I don’t think women discuss the ‘unmentionable’ topics, which all men talk of when they’re among themselves. Some of the dirty-minded little perverts at school used to stand in corners and smack their lips over pornographic talks – but they always stopped when I came into the room. Doris collected & retailed stories of hair-raising obscenity – but they didn’t offend – because she was so objective about them. Jean is different – Her conversation isn’t frankly & healthy bawdy in the Chaucerian manner, as I imagine that kind of conversation is among the nicest men, it is unpleasant & suggestive – and I should think hers is the idiom, verbal & atmospheric, of women who do discuss these things – jest – but I think it’s the exception rather than the rule.

I must go now and help my mother choose Sheila’s & Allan’s wedding present. They want an old book. They’re getting married tomorrow at 3 in Audley St (St Mark’s Church) & their reception is to be at Claridge’s.

Please forgive me for clucking & snapping, darling – but suppose you suddenly found yourself in possession of the Kohinoor diamond, wouldn’t your nerves be a bit frayed at the thought that the whole world was striving to take it from you by fair means or foul? I think you would – but I’ll try not to cluck again – I only want to please you.

1 A 1940 propaganda historical drama about a village defying tyranny.

2 Military Intelligence.

3 Andrew Weir, 1st Baron Inverforth (1865–1955) created and headed the firm of shipowners in Glasgow.

4 From ‘Gerontion’ by T. S. Eliot (1888–1965).

5 From the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343–1400).

6 From Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 66’.

7 Full Height.

8 King’s Parade, a street in the centre of Cambridge.

9 From ‘The Dedication’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

10 Ian Nance joined the Colonial Service in Africa, before serving in the Abyssinia campaign with the King’s Own African Rifles.

11 Sir Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) was a British politician and later leader of the British Union of Fascists.

12 At the beginning of the war the government had set up the Central Register to process the thousands of temporary civil servants that Whitehall was going to need.

13 Officer Cadet Training Unit.