Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Wednesday 29 July Oh! My dear love, damn Malaria. I want you so much to be well so that you can fill your life with new activities and experiences – so that you are always alert and laughing. (I’d give a King’s Ransom to hear your laugh now, my darling, and to see your smile.)

  Darling, d’you remember the time (on the top of a Girton Corner ’Bus) when you were so shocked because I said three-quarters seriously, that I wished you had some sort of illness which would keep you with me always? Well, today I almost wished that you could have malaria 3 times so that they’d send you home. Almost – but not quite, darling, because malaria is a beastly clinging disease if you get it more than once.

  Thursday 30 July I forgot to tell you last night of a Fantastic conversation between Sheila and her C/O. It went as follows:

  Sheila (very Well-Bred) ‘May I speak to Section Officer Ffinch-Close?’ (That really is her name, darling, believe-it-or-not.) ‘Hullo? This is Kilpatrick, Ma’am. I’ve had my interview, Ma’am. Quite satisfactory, Ma’am – but I have to report to Air Ministry again at 0900 hours in the morning, ma’am – my pass expires at 11.59 hours, ma’am – Kilpatrick, ma’am, – yes, ma’am, thank you ma’am.’ Then she put the receiver down & said: ‘What a fat little fool that woman is!!!!’ Oh! the Duplicity of woman, my dear love.

  Darling, Sheila says that one of the most Frustrating things about being separated from Allan is that he never answers her letters sentence by sentence. You will answer mine when they arrive, won’t you, darling?

  Saturday 1 August I had a long & rather emotional letter from Basil, this morning, darling. He says that his stay with us and his talks with Joan & me have made him feel very strongly the lack of all the advantages of having been at one of the ‘parent universities’. (Talking about parent universities, darling, my MA arrived this morning. Much Handsomer than yours!! Very large and be-waxed and be-ribboned. But I’m still glad you got yours first. I wonder why. Queer, isn’t it?) Basil says he has written you a long and ‘very intimate’ air mail letter. Oh! dear, I feel rather embarrassed by proxy, darling.

  Sunday 2 August Darling, Victor is here for lunch. He says he’s heard from some friends who have escaped from France that there are two bodies of French opinion – pro-British and Anti-British. The Pro-British say: ‘Pourvu que ces Braves Anglais gagnent …’ The Anti-British say: ‘Pourvu que ces cochons gagnent …’

  My mother has Retired to Bed in a Sulk, darling, because I won’t stop calling Pa ‘Pa’. I think she dislikes it so particularly because she senses a note of contempt in it – but it’s not really contempt, darling, it’s just simply that it’s a name which suits him particularly well.

  Tuesday 4 August Darling, I have at last Impressed Pan. (You have no idea, my love, how difficult it is in some families to impress younger brothers!) He was talking about types of aircraft and I tossed off a few half-remembered facts that I’d seen in documents which were Secret then but are Secret no longer and he thought I was No End of a One. The fact that I wrote Shakespeare, darling, carries no weight with him at all, but when I give him 2 years-out-of-date information about the Climbing Power of Hurricanes or the speed of Spitfires he is Speechless with Admiration.

  Darling, I’ve just decided that Resilience in food when Carried to Excess, has its Disadvantages. I’m writing in Fuller’s and I’ve just finished eating a lamb cutlet and when I applied the edge of my knife to its back it Bounded Away from it as though it thought it was still in the meadows where it had lately Gambolled – and it scattered peas all over the table as it ricocheted coyly off the plate. I went in Hot Pursuit and when I finally captured it, crammed the whole of it in my mouth (which wasn’t difficult, darling – it was a pathetically exiguous cutlet) and swallowed it whole. It was rather like swallowing a squash ball but, Comforting Myself with the thought of its protein content, I Took Heart.

  Wednesday 5 August Darling, Dr Minton has just been to see me, He says I shall have to stay in bed for a week on a milk diet. It’s nothing to worry about, my dear love. It’s just the shock of your going away & anxiety about Joan & Pa’s return & one thing and another that’s roused my damned ulcer a bit – and I’ll have to look after it as a preventative measure – so please don’t be concerned about me, my darling, by the time you get this I shall have forgotten I was ever ill.

  Thursday 6 August I got very cross with Joan last night. She hasn’t been feeling at all well lately so while Dr Minton was here he examined her and said that her trouble was anemia due to excessive loss of blood as a result of the remains of a cyst on her ovary. In telling me about it she said: ‘He hurt me terribly when he touched my ovary.’ ‘Oh!’ I said innocently. ‘Did he prod it with a pencil – That’s what he did to my ulcer place & I yelped like anything.’ She looked at me queerly & said: ‘You can hardly conduct an internal examination with a pencil.’ So, darling, as a matter of Academic interest I asked if it were possible to examine a virgin internally and she said of course it was and asked me what I understood by a virgin. I said vaguely that I supposed a virgin had some sort of skin inside with a hole in the middle – and she said, Good God, she was sorry for you, having to cope with anyone who knew so little about herself – to which I replied Indignantly that I knew quite a lot really but that all the books I’d read took it for granted that the reader knew exactly what the term ‘Virgin’ meant. Then she went on to say that, for a successful physical relationship a woman must know something about her anatomical make-up. I said nonsense – that my physical relationship with you was completely successful – and she said, I couldn’t have had any real physical relationship or I couldn’t be so ignorant. I said that I thought it was possible even to be wanton without registering any anatomical details – because when one is in a state of erotic excitement with the person one loves the emotional & the physical are so closely bound up that at the same moment as one is, in one way, more conscious of one’s body one is in another least conscious of it. She just looked Superior & said that if I chose to regard sitting on your knee as a physical relationship, I was welcome to it – and, as I was not willing to discuss the matter with her in any detail, I dropped it – but, dammit, darling, I’m not going to allow myself to be given an Inferiority Complex about my Capabilities in Physical Love. You’re satisfied with me, aren’t you, my darling, and as our relationship develops you will teach me all that it’s necessary for me to know? You’ll be satisfied with that arrangement, won’t you, my very dear love?

  Saturday 8 August Darling, I was looking idly through the Jewish Chronicle this morning when I suddenly saw an obituary notice on Ram Nahum.4 He was killed in the raid which smashed up the Union, darling. It will be a great sorrow to Victor, darling. They were at school together, you know, and were very great friends. It seems only the other day that we met him in Bridge St with Sheila Matthews, both of them looking incredibly scruffy. Oh! My love, I’m sorry. (Not that I ever really knew him, but he was one of the most familiar figures in Cambridge – one of the landmarks.)

  Captain Sims came and sat with me for half-an-hour this afternoon. He’s looking very lost and desorienté since Joan ‘took up with’ Robert. I do think Joan has become utterly unscrupulous with men – quite regardless of their feelings, darling. It’s as though she were paying them back for Ian’s treatment of her. Poor Joan.

  Sunday 9 August Aunt Teddy has an enormous pimple on her nose, darling, and it has done nothing to Sweeten her Character – but she has, nevertheless, gone out to dine with Jean (She’s taken to eating potatoes in Large Lumps. Lord Woolton said they weren’t fattening – at least not as fattening as some things. Joan & I think she’s the vainest woman we know.)

  Monday 10 August By God! darling, I wish I could rid myself of this turbulent mail-consciousness. It’s absolute Hell. I say to myself, don’t worry little girl, you’ll get letters, telegrams & airgraphs all in good time – but it doesn’t help, darling. The truth is that I’ve been spoilt, my love, because the mails were quite inexplicably r
egular for the first month after you’d reached your destination. Oh! darling. I’m glad you can’t see me now. Wisps of hair have broken loose from my plaits and are straggling all round my face – I’ve got on an ancient pair of pyjamas with an enormous hole in the seat and a button missing half way down the front. (What’s the good of having a button missing with you thousands of miles away from me, my darling?) I am Distraught.

  Tuesday 11 August Darling, you should see Aunt Teddy’s nose. It has swelled to a Great Fiery Bulb – a veritable Belisha Beacon. When I look at it I am reminded of Falstaff’s observation about Bardolf’s nose, which was that had a flea walked across it, it would have seemed a Damned Soul burning in Hell Fire. Last night Aunt Teddy was clucking because we had no buckets of water about the house. I suppose she feels that if her nose suddenly catches fire (and it looks, darling, as though it were about to Burst into Flames at any Moment) there will be nothing with which to extinguish it before she is Consumed Utterly.

  Victor & I were talking about really great women last night, darling, and Victor observed that most of them had been childless. He cited Queen Elizabeth, Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf. He thinks that if a woman has a high creative output, darling, then she can’t bear children – because the bearing of children is such a tremendous emotional & physical upheaval that it’s bound to detract from their power to create in other directions. Perhaps there’s something in what he says, my dear love. What do you think?

  Dr Minton is very pleased with me. He says I may get up & go out today. I’m to be X-rayed tomorrow & on Thursday I’m going back to work. And, darling, alas! I’ve got to eat more so as to keep my gastric juices busy – Oh! I hope I don’t get any fatter. (Actually, darling, I’ve lost rather a lot of weight.) Joan is having injections, darling, to stimulate her Ovaries. She has a theory that Dr Minton has given her these injections because he thinks she’s Undersexed! Well, I suppose everything is possible.

  Darling, you’ve heard of Mr Morris, one of Joan’s Principals, haven’t you? Well his wife is a temporary AP in the Ministry of Information and the other day she had to prepare & deliver a BBC travel talk (as practice – it was not sent over the air). She decided to give a talk on a visit to Russia. She described how she crossed the frontier on a Student’s Pass and went on the Land as a Female Welder, Grade III. Everyone was enormously impressed and her Principal said to her afterwards that she must have been in Russia about the same time as himself. On Questioning her Closely, however, he discovered that she’d never been in Russia at all! I love the Female Welder Grade III touch, darling, don’t you?

  Joan thanks you for your kind messages – but she says it’s no good asking her not to be rash – Caution is not in her Nature.

  By the way, darling, you must get hold of and read C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. They are absolutely magnificent. He is undoubtedly one of the very great men of our time.

  Wednesday 12 August Darling, I want every detail, however trivial. I want to know why you smiled when you were crossing the road to my father’s office – what you thought about when you were lying in bed with malaria – what everyone you see says to you and what you say to them – what sort of a room you have in your new quarters – everything, darling, I’m insatiable. Darling, thinking aloud on paper must become second nature to you – it must, my dear love – otherwise you will seem infinitely far away and it will break my heart. I was devising Tortuous Schemes for being with you again in my bath (don’t misunderstand me, dear, I mean that I was Devising Schemes in my bath) today. I thought that perhaps I could persuade my parents to go back to Egypt to pack up our things – and then I could get transferred to the AM in Cairo and you could get some leave & we could be married. Oh! Darling, I wish something could be done. Please don’t be angry with me for saying this, my darling. I know you have work to do – I don’t expect you to post long letters as often as I do – but I know you will understand – you always understand. That’s one of the reasons why I love you so much.

  Thursday 13 August Darling, Anthony Eden has an Aunt and his Aunt has a home. It sounds innocuous enough, doesn’t it? But don’t be deceived, my love. Anthony Eden’s Aunt is a Woman of Character. She wants us to have her House & she spends her entire time Hawking it Round government Departments. Today, (Mr Murray being in Hospital about to be Bereaved of a Wisdom Tooth) I interviewed her – and, darling, she said: ‘Have you any papers about this?’ I said yes & outlined the position. ‘I want to see them,’ she said. My God, it was a Bad Moment, darling, but your Alarmed Little Cluck Wriggled out of it rather well, I thought. I looked Very Reserved & Dignified and said: ‘Miss Talbot, there is nothing in those papers which you could not see – but may I put it like this, watertight privacy of papers in government departments is essential in order that every case, however open and above-board, may be discussed with the utmost frankness & freedom between Heads of Divisions. This freedom is an essential part of our Democratic Administration – and if Private Persons have access to papers concerning themselves or their property, this freedom is destroyed. I am sure you would not like that to happen.’ She lapped it up, darling, and went away like a lamb.

  Joan is in the Throes of more emotional Complications – she’s had two long letters from Ian from Sierra Leone which makes it quite clear that his attitude was entirely due to the fact that he didn’t want to rope Joan into a life which he looks upon as something very like Hell. Darling, Joan’s life is like one of those electric toasters that keep shooting out pieces of toast which Hit you in the Eye. I wish I could help, darling, it’s awful to stand by and see her like a ship in a black storm driven I know not whither.

  You know you were saying the other day in one of your letters that one seldom saw the Gorgeous East as one imagined it, my love? Well I saw it like that – once – it was when Ismay was staying with us in Cairo – but that’s an Irrelevant – not to say Incongruous detail. The King wanted to raise some money for some charity (I forget what) and so he persuaded one of his Aunts to lend her palace for an evening party. It was a wonderful palace, darling, built in the form of four corridors at right-angles to one another enclosing a courtyard with a lake in the centre. The courtyard was hung with the most wonderful opalescent brocades and there were small tables everywhere covered with scarlet velvet gold-embroidered cloths like the one I had at Cambridge. Do you remember, darling? There were no electric lights, (It was a very bright moonlight night, darling) only huge candles – heavy Turkish silver candlesticks – Tall, many-branched monsters towering above my head. All the Palace entourage, darling (and they seemed to run into thousands!) were dressed in Turkish costumes, heavily embroidered and jewel-studded and the Princesses, who had a sort of open box to themselves, all wore white chiffon draperies with great emerald, ruby and sapphire embossed brooches in their turbans and cascades of diamonds on their fingers, wrists and (oh! Woe to have to bring in a Homely Note, darling) their Uniformly Substantial Bosoms. A wide parquet bridge had been built across the lake for the cabaret and dancing – and the buffet, darling, piled high with bowls of iced caviar and mountains of iced stuffed vine-leaves, aubergines, courgettes, and artichoke hearts – and wondrous silver dishes of water-melons, mangoes, peaches, apricots and Alexandria Grapes. (I’m writing this in Fuller’s, darling, and my neighbour has just said to her companion: ‘Anyone who reads Freud must be potty’ …!!) And there were Pashas, swarms of them – rotund-bellied and crimson-tarbouched jostling like blades of corn in a cornfield. It was a good thing I’d had supper before I went! At one point during the evening, darling, I turned round to admire a beautiful carved-gilt-framed Louis XVI mirror above a very richly carved gilt side table – and there was Noël Coward, in tails & an impeccable white tie with his hair linoleum-smooth, swinging his legs and surrounded by a host of fresh-faced, organdie-dressed Embassy daughters. He looked incredibly urbane, ultra-sophisticated, aggressively European – and he was saying: ‘But, my dear, what an exquisite set-up,
perfect in every detail – Divine organization!’ And the Illusion was shattered, darling, and I have never been able to recapture it.

  Mr Murray & I were talking about Gandhi today and saying what a damned scandal it was that the popular press was tonguing him as a traitor and a coward. Oh! darling, why doesn’t someone say: ‘This man is a Saint, but history has taught us that Saints are born far ahead of their time and therefore the world is not yet ripe to follow his teaching. We cannot accept his doctrine because he is speaking for generations far more civilized – far more highly developed than our own. He is a visionary who can only see far into the future and who knows nothing of the present. Let him go his way in peace …’ It is the visionaries, darling, who lead the way forward, but it is the practical men who prevent it from falling into chaos. There is a place for both.

  Sunday 16 August Joan has just been in to report on a long conversation she’s just had with Pan on the subject of Aunt Teddy. It started by his Sighing Heavily and saying: ‘You know, Aunt Teddy has a Beautiful life – She needn’t even listen to Family Rows unless she wants to.’ (There was a full-dress Drama over Dicky last night, darling, but I won’t bore you with the details. It was just rather sordid and very noisy.) Joan then told me in Parenthesis that a few weeks ago, when David & I were discussing Philosophy after dinner, she noticed that Aunt Teddy Switched Off her instrument in the middle. Oh! darling, how Humiliating!