Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

Did I tell you that Aubrey’s sister was reading English at Oxford? It came Over her in a Wave one night – She’s an Impulsive Girl is Carmel Eban. Aubrey does all her Latin – but she has to wrestle with Anglo-Saxon alone. Aubrey is living in a Whirl of Zero-Hours. He’s had three already. His next is Thursday. He’s coming to dinner tomorrow evening and I’m hoping he’ll tell me that it has been postponed again.

  By the way, Nurse’s baby and I are getting terrifically matey. He loves my red Siren-Suit – and stares at it ecstatically. He’s growing rounder & rounder and he now has at least three expressions (ecstasy, for food and colour – vacuity, and purple rage) and when he’s asleep he snores lustily and looks exactly like a bishop. I’m rather attached to him.

  Tuesday 18 November I got this term’s Girton review yesterday my love, and it tells me that Miss Bradbrook is now a Temporary Administrative Officer at the Board of Trade. What a beautiful thought, darling. I can imagine her sitting on her bureaucratic desk with her knees humped up, showing six inches of primrose knicker and saying, in her Thin, ethereal voice: Oh! dear, what a lot of files … There doesn’t seem to be any muscle somehow in the imagery of this minute – and the Symbolism is all confused … it’s all so esoteric and technical … they don’t seem interested in the texture or depths of the sea – it’s all flat and concrete – a sort of arterial road – the ships are just large lorries – how sadly unlike Conrad.’14 (I’ve just tried to ring her up at the Board of Trade, but she’s in Bournemouth – I forgot they had a Branch there. Oh! woe. Joan & I had hoped to take her out to lunch.)

  Friday 12 December Darling, I came home to find a message from Sheila that Hamish has been missing since Monday – with 9 other fighter pilots. Oh! darling I’m stunned and bewildered with a stifled drowsy unimpassioned grief – I have a dull headache and a to-hell-with-everything feeling – and I’m haunted by a picture of Charlotte sitting in their flat waiting for him to come home. Oh! God. I don’t suppose we shall hear for months whether he’s been taken prisoner or killed. I think he’s dead. He had an aura of death about him when we last met. Oh! my dear love, I hope I’m wrong. Hamish was one of the gayest, happiest, whimsiest friends I ever had.

  Oh! Darling, I can’t believe it – I can’t. It’s queer, my love, but it all feels very remote – because you’re so close to me that I can see everything else through the wrong end of a telescope. Nothing can hurt me very much now – but the outlines are sharply and cruelly defined at the end of the telescope.

  Sunday 14 December Joan and I met Sheila in Surbiton yesterday evening, darling. We all went to Kingston and ate baked beans on toast in the Regal Cinema to the strains of dreary incidental music off accompanying the film They Dare Not Love, or something equally impassioned. We all talked rather brightly and nervously and we all felt like Hell. They can’t find out anything about Hamish because the whole of his Squadron was lost, and so there was no one to make a report. On the whole, though, Joan and I were a little happier after we’d seen Sheila because she has such an enormous fund of good sense and resilience.

  Darling, my mother has just telephoned to say she’s had a cable from Pa in Cairo. She was sobbing with relief – The best she’d hoped for was a telegram from some dreary outpost. I’m so glad, darling.

  Monday 15 December Darling, the maddening unhurriedness of AI is wearing me to a shadow. S7 have promised to ring Mr Parsons as soon as your papers come through. If he bothers them any more they’ll begin to get Suspicious. When I do hear, darling, I shall probably know where you’re going for your training and where they intend to post you after that. I gather that eight people were selected for Commissions (Intelligence) A & SD on Wednesday and there are a lot of formalities to be gone through before their papers reach S7 for final action.

  SECRET. Darling, I couldn’t bear to wait any longer so I asked Mr Crotch to investigate for me. He went and saw someone very exalted in S7 who put through an urgent enquiry. You have been passed by your Board – but before any action is taken you have to be cleared from the Security angle – (You haven’t any subversive activities that I Wot Not Of, have you, my love? No, I thought not) and they haven’t even made the usual enquiries yet. The High Personage told Mr Crotch that some people were selected in August and haven’t been Commissioned yet – but he thought that as you were selected for a semi-technical job they might speed things up in your case. Darling, if this letter were to Fall into the Wrong Hands, I should be Severely Shaken up for a gross breach of Professional Confidence – so Guard it well – and don’t be surprised if there’s a long time-lag before you hear anything.

  My mother has just telephoned to say that Victor is in London for a fortnight, and that he’s having an exam at the Admiralty in a few days time. He’s having dinner with us tonight – He isn’t staying with us because he wants to learn more about Life in a Seaman’s Hostel, and he probably has an eye on the odd Wild Oat – (My mother is a hospitable woman, darling, but Wild Oats are in Short Supply in our house). But, on second thoughts, I’m probably wrong. Last time Victor and I exchanged Girlish Confidences, he never wanted to see (or sow) a Wild Oat again.

  Wednesday 17 December Darling, I’m going to be a Godmother – Ismay has asked me to become the Spiritual and Intellectual Patronne of her Child – because ‘Charles & I both feel that we would like our child to have a godmother of whom we are both so fond’ which I think was an Uncommonly Civil thing to say, don’t you, darling? And how I shall de-prim that child, darling. I’ll get rid of all its Social Inhibitions by putting it onto the Bawdier bits of Chaucer in the teething stage. Darling, it shall be to me what the mouse was to Lavoisier or the Guinea-pig to many another scientist. I shall Experiment on it – and if it’s a success, I shall bring up our children on the same lines – What a unique opportunity my love. Of course, if it turns out to be exactly like its parents I’ll know I’ve been Pursuing the Wrong Line and start all over again. Poor Ismay, she little knows what a Cuckoo she’s invited into the Nest.

  But, jesting apart, darling, I’m really rather touched at having been asked.

  Darling, have you heard that they’re not going to make gold wedding-rings any more? I am Torn between Fear of Hubris and the urge to suggest that you should buy a gold wedding ring for me while you can and keep it in safe storage for Future use. I loathe platinum and jewelled eternity wedding rings, darling.

  Thursday 18 December Aunt Teddy has gone to a Nursing Home with a Boil in some remote and unmentionable zone. (I can’t find out its exact location. She is not averse from showing it to her intimates with a sort of gloomy pride – but she won’t talk about it.) I always said Aunt Teddy would only leave us when she was carried away in a hearse, darling – If, for hearse, you read ambulance, I was right again, my dear love.

  Jean is back from Torquay, and she has promised to try and find out about the Future that is being planned for you by the Mighty – in greater detail – but she’s in a mood of Great lassitude and may do nothing about it for days.

  Monday 22 December Victor’s interview at the Admiralty yesterday was successful and he is going to an Officer’s Course at Greenwich shortly.

  Darling, it was a nice lunch – Sheila told us of her Lurid Experiences in Air Raids. We sat Enthralled. She made her voice all tense and breathless and we couldn’t stop listening – She ought to write it all up. She really has a marvellous gift for narrative. ‘Everybody, including Allan, lay flat in the road, but I couldn’t bring myself to it – I couldn’t …’ breathless pause … ‘I’d just had my grey suit cleaned …’ ‘And when we came out of the shelter at dawn there were rows and rows of pure white cart-horses tethered to the railings in the grey light …’ She has heard, through Allan’s bank, that he is in Ismailia – so I expect Pa will hear from him soon.

  Darling, Elizabeth expects to be Thrown into prison as a Conscientious Objector. We asked her where she lived today – as we can never get in touch with her – She fumbled vaguely in her bag and then sai
d: ‘Oh! dear I’ve left it at home.’ (Meaning her address.) She’s getting more like Miss Bradbrook every day. It’s truly wonderful.

  Tuesday 30 December Darling, I’m in bed with a week’s sick leave. (Influenza.) Oh! my love, what a terrific Solace that would have been if you could have been here on leave at the same time.

  Darling, I wish I hadn’t been Testy on Sunday evening when you were asking me about the machinery of your commission – It’s just that I felt so ill and cold, my dear love, that I didn’t realize that you were talking about something which was immensely important to both of us – I just wanted to rest quietly against your arm and look up at your face and have you bend and kiss me every now and then – I wanted to be warmed by the warmth of your body and to be comforted.

  Pan15 was more pan-like than ever yesterday. (I’ve thought of yet a third reason for his name. When he moves it is as though all the cooking pans had fallen from their appointed places, with a sudden and terrifying crash.)

  Wednesday 31 December Darling, a very happy New Year to you. Perhaps in the New Year of 1943 & 44 I shall lean across our bed and rest my hand on your hair and kiss you on New Year’s Day. I feel so close to you now, darling, that it’s almost as though you were here.

  Did you hear Churchill last night, darling? Oh! darling, the gramophone is a wonderful invention, because it can record for posterity the rich Overtones of Implication and Significance in the PM’s voice when he said: ‘The French General’s told the Cabinet that Britain’s neck would be wrung like chicken’s within 3 weeks.’ (Rich pause.) ‘Some chicken’ … (Further Pregnant pause) ‘Some neck …’

  David rang up last night to tell me that Sylvia had started work at the Treasury on Monday and that they were going to be married – in Edinburgh – on February 9th or 10th. As you know, they wanted it to be in Oxford – but I gather that there were Parental Fireworks because of What the Congregation Would Say and David & Sylvia decided that Dr Daiches16 might have the satisfaction of seeing one of his children married after his fashion. Poor David, he’s going to have to submit even to having his name in the Jewish Chronicle – I could feel the Vibrations of his Squirms even in the bakelite of the telephone receiver! (Thank God, darling, that Pa, far from objecting to our being married in Cambridge, will probably go all maudlin on us with Fruity Satisfaction.)

  I expect to be allowed up today, darling, but the doctor says I must stay in the house until my chest clears – at the moment it’s tightly and wheezily obstructed.

  1 A play by J. M. Barrie (1860–1937).

  2 Hamlet, Act I, scene ii.

  3 Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, scene ii.

  4 Hamlet, Act V, scene ii.

  5 As You Like It, Act III, scene ii.

  6 A novel by James Hadley Chase (1906–85).

  7 Macbeth, Act II, scene ii.

  8 Sir Edward Wilshaw (1879–1968) was chairman of Cable & Wireless Communications from 1936–47.

  9 Viscount Margesson (1890–1965) was a British Conservative politician.

  10 In September, Lord Beaverbrook had attended with the USA representative the First Moscow Conference, pledging British aid to her new ally.

  11 Director of Military Operations.

  12 A port on the coast of what was the Gold Coast, and is now Ghana. During the war Alec Alexander carried out various government jobs, including lecturing for the Ministry of Information, Enemy Aliens tribunal work on the Isle of Man, and unspecified business in Egypt.

  13 Dudley Danby, private secretary to Lord Lloyd.

  14 The Polish-British author Joseph Conrad (1857–1924).

  15 Pan was a new pet name for her brother Lionel.

  16 Dr Salis Daiches was the de facto Chief Rabbi of Scotland.

  January–May 1942

  If the old year had ended in a glow of happiness for Eileen, it was a bleaker picture abroad. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had been followed within days by the loss of HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales, and the new year only brought with it fresh failures, with reverses in the North African desert, Malaya and, on 15 February, the worst disaster in Britain’s military history – the surrender of Singapore and 80,000 British and Empire troops.

  It was not just in the Far East that British power had proved illusory – before May was out Japanese forces would also take Burma and stand poised on the border of British India – because the news was no better from the other major theatre of war. The heady days of victory over the Italians now seemed a distant memory, and as Tobruk and its garrison of 33,000 fell into enemy hands and Axis forces advanced on Egypt, Alexandria’s cannier shopkeepers began to build up their covert stocks of Rommel and Hitler photos.

  For Hitler, though, the desert campaign had never been more than a sideshow, and it was events on Germany’s Eastern Front that were shaping the future course of the war. In the early weeks of the summer Operation Barbarossa had achieved spectacular success, but by the beginning of 1942 – to the jubilation of Eileen’s plutocratic fellow-travelling friends – the German advance had been driven back from Moscow and Hitler denied the quick victory that everyone had feared.

  It was not only that arch-enemy of real and imagined fascist fifth columnists, Horace Samuel, who was aglow at Russian heroics, because ‘Everything’, as Eileen told Gershon, was ‘Russian now’. At Cambridge, Eileen had steered a wide berth of anything that smacked of political earnestness; but as she took her bath to the sound of ‘My lovely Russian Rose’ on the wireless, ate ‘Charlotte Russe’ at the Lyons Corner House or had her lunch with Joan in a Russian sandwich bar in Oxford Street, she found herself part of an improbable national consensus that stretched from Churchill and the Daily Express at one end of the Russophile spectrum, to trade unionist leaders, munition workers and the Communist Party at the other.

  There were also other new allies visible in London now – Canadians like Joan’s new man, Captain Sims, and ‘nice Americans in chocolate brown tunics’ – but the only tunic Eileen was interested in was Gershon’s new officer’s uniform. She had spent a large chunk of Air Ministry time in December desperately pulling strings on his behalf, and on 1 January her cousin Jean phoned from Bletchley with the news that after a successful board, and subject to his MI5 vetting, Sergeant Ellenbogen of Y Sigs was now Pilot Officer Ellenbogen, attached to the Intelligence Directorate.

  For Eileen, too, a transfer within the Air Ministry was imminent – from S2 to S9, the Secretariat Division for the Air Member, Supply and Organisation Department Bush House, Aldwych – and with it would come one of the richest friendships of her war. Gnawing away, though, at her new-found happiness and confidence was the knowledge that Gershon would soon be going overseas. She had always known at some level that he would be posted, but knowing it intellectually and emotionally were different things. As the date for Gershon’s embarkation approached, the bleak prospect of a long separation lay ahead.

  8

  Separation

  Thursday 1 January 1942 A happy new year to you, my darling. I’m sorry to part with 1941, though – it was a Vintage Year in happiness for me – particularly the last half of it, my dear love.

  Darling, Miss Bradbrook is coming to London tomorrow and Joan and I are taking her out to lunch (Whoops of Solace).

  Oh! my very dear love, Jean has just telephoned and I have the best possible New Year present for you. Your Commission is Through – Darling, I’m crying with happiness.

  You mustn’t breathe a word to a soul – I am not even telling Joan – It will probably be several weeks before you hear anything – but now it is only a matter of weeks and not of months as we feared.

  Tuesday 6 January Darling, Norman Bentwich hasn’t left for Palestine yet. He telephoned my mother this morning to say that he was an RAF Officer and that he’d be working in England for a time before being sent overseas. He said he’d get in touch with me at the AM. Norman as an RAF Officer is a Beautiful and Incongruous thought, my love. Perhaps you and he
will Find One Another in the same section – I’ve no doubt that his job is Intelligence.

  Saturday 10 January We’ve just seen an announcement in The Times about Marcus Rueff’s death. (He has been missing for months.) It is now known that he died of wounds in Libya. I was very fond of Marcus – I knew him best during the gloomiest days of my adolescence (between the ages of 16–19) and he always listened kindly and sanely and humorously to my morbid introspections and told me that I’d be alright once I got away from home. (In which, it turned out, he was perfectly right, darling.) He was a cultured and unpedantic humanist – with a passionate interest in printing and binding. I used to think he might grow up into a second William Morris.

  I’m reading Defoe’s Moll Flanders. It is very funny – because Defoe was a dirty old man who pretended to be a moralist. Moll Flanders is a zestful and roistering account of the life of a 17th century whore – but in his preface, Defoe is at pains to point out that although her amorous adventures are the liveliest and most entertaining parts of the book – nevertheless it is the end which treats of her Deportation and Conversion which the reader should mark and digest most carefully! The old hypocrite.

  Monday 12 January You know, darling, the intellectual development of Pan & his generation is much more seriously affected by the war than ours. That generation is genuinely war-minded – actively war-minded – not, like ours, resigned to war because it is inevitable. Sigmund & I were talking, the other day, of the Significance of these new youth training movements. We agreed that the regimentation of adolescents in their leisure hours was a sinister development of Government Policy & was far too like total-fanaticism to be healthy. Oh! darling, if the war goes on much longer we’re going to lose sight completely of the ideal of the free development of the individual during its intellectually formative years. What an awful tragedy.