Sunday 6 December Carmel Eban, as you may or may not know, my love, is reading English at Oxford, but with such Excessive Detachment that it might as well be Applied Mathematics. Whenever I see Carmel, darling, (which isn’t very often, I must admit) I think of Mrs Murray’s old lady’s Sampler: ‘I have been afraid of many things, most of which never happened’ & it gives me courage. As I’ve often told you, my darling, Carmel was a Bogey in my life for years. I thought of her as a female counterpart of Aubrey, my love, & as such a Dangerous Rival – especially as it seemed to me that her Brief Contact with the Stage must have given her that Flavour of Glamour & Wild-Oating which was so patently & painfully lacking in me, my darling. I have travelled a long way since then, darling. Now you are let loose among all the Sirens of the Gorgeous East & I’m not afraid. (But I stopped writing then to Touch Wood, all the same! I’m afraid I’m a Superstitious little cluck really, darling, though I always pretend to myself & everyone else that I’m not.)
Monday 7 December Darling, I met the postwoman on the way to the ’bus this morning and, with Magnificent Nonchalance, she Handed me Letters 47, 48 and 49 (Parts 1 and 2), with the result, my love, that I’m quite sick with nervous excitement & happiness.
Now about Bosoms, darling. I have seen dozens of my contemporaries in their baths, and none of them have firm or resilient bosoms. (Even Sheila, who has a really beautiful body, my darling, hasn’t the sort of bosom that you see in Lilliput.) I’ve discussed this subject impersonally with doctors & some of my friends, darling, and it’s generally agreed that except in the case of ballet dancers and professional athletes, the muscles of a woman’s breasts begin to slacken between the ages of 18 & 21. You’ll notice, darling, that in most magazine photographs the women are either lying flat on the ground or have their arms above their heads but because I love you so much and because I would do anything in the world to give you pleasure, I’ll do deep-breathing & arm stretching exercises every morning & evening in the hope that it may have some effect.
How typical of Said to try & polish your carpet slippers with Cherry Blossom, my darling. He hasn’t changed at all since I saw him last.
With the 9 letters I had from you today, darling, I got one from Aubrey. It’s a masterpiece of Spacing, darling, Never was so little said in so many square inches of paper – but it was as beautifully phrased as it was beautifully spaced – so I didn’t mind. He tells me of his third pip and says: ‘I believe that it was done in deference to my conveyance which always carried me with an aggrieved air, as though I was Beneath Its Station. Now the proprieties are appeased.’
Darling, I’ve been leaving your thoughts about what Dr Minton said to me till the last because I wanted to answer them very fully. (Mum has just been getting Agitated because she says I ought to be resting instead of writing, but I know it’s best for me to be talking to my dear love.) Oh! my darling, how could you believe that I could possibly laugh at you? I do understand your feeling of frustration with all my heart, my darling. I understand that you can’t help feeling at times that you’ve been cheated of something that other men have known, but is it wishful thinking on my part, darling, that you’re going to have something that those other men have not known – something perhaps less usual & commonplace & that is your first complete sexual experience with a woman who loves you with all her heart & with all her soul & body and who lives only for your pleasure & your happiness, my darling. Your guarantee of fidelity is the best that I could possibly want, my very dear love, for it grows out of the great unselfishness & tenderness for which I love you more every hour, every minute. I’m glad, my love, that ‘there is a substitute for sexual intercourse’, which can give you some measure of relief. You see, darling, I have grown to understand, through my great love for you, that you have physical needs which must be satisfied but I can’t think of any relationship with another living person as being simply a satisfaction of a physical desire. Darling, it would be impossible for you to ‘be with’ another woman without comparing the experience in some way with our experience together & that is what I couldn’t bear. Do you understand, my darling? It’s not so much a moral question as an intensely personal emotional one. Darling, you are keeping to your chosen path finely – all the more finely because you are so splendidly honest morally with yourself & with me.
Tuesday 8 December The Shadow of Impending Aunthood was across Aubrey’s brow, darling as he wrote the letter-card which reached me yesterday. Why, he asks, does his sister Do These Things, without consulting him first? – and he asks with more than a faint note of plaintiveness in his voice.
It may comfort you to know, my darling, that Miss Bradbrook & your Rival (?!!) C. S. Lewis are at Daggers Drawn. He told an unkind little story about her (not by name, of course) and Peter Rabbit in one of his books & she’s never forgiven him. (He was her Tutor, darling when she was Researching at Oxford. When I saw him for the first time I said to Miss Bradbrook: ‘I never expected him to be like that. He looks like a Prosperous Publican.’ ‘He is like a Publican,’ she said unkindly. ‘Exactly like a Publican.’ But it’s no good, my darling, she respects his intellect as much as I do & as any medieval scholar couldn’t fail to do since he has written the finest piece of Medieval literary criticism of our time & perhaps of all time.
Thursday 10 December Darling, you mustn’t misunderstand my ‘sang-froid’ about the promiscuous adventures of men like Leslie & Henry. I accept it, my love, without critical comment because I assume (& I hope I’m right in assuming it) that the women they associate with have the same kind of attitude to that sort of thing as they have & are therefore not hurt by it. I accept it too, because neither of them has any emotional commitments. What I can’t accept is that a man or a woman should love someone & be loved by them & yet mollock or be wanton with another – because in those circumstances someone is going to get hurt. (I could accept it in your case, my darling, though it would be unbearably painful, because I love you so much that your emotional & physical needs are more important to me than my own.) But Victor is the only man I know who has lived with a woman whom he didn’t love without losing his emotional idealism & in his case there was special extenuating circumstances. Perhaps you know cases where it isn’t so, darling, but I don’t. Physical relations with women where there is no love breed cynicism. There is nothing in the world so cynical, so joyless & mechanical, darling, as most of the marriages in Egypt. Oh! I do love you, my darling. If all the women in the world loved their Solaces as I love you & if all the men were like you there would be no cynicism – no promiscuity – no adultery. Darling, I don’t believe that wantonness outside marriage is wrong – I know it wouldn’t be wrong for you & me to be wanton before we were married – it’s wantonness without love that I most passionately hate – and infidelity. Oh! darling, I wish you were here. The terrible aridity of everything everywhere when we’re not together terrifies me. It’s horrible and inescapable.
Poor Basil, darling. As he says plaintively in the long & nostalgic letter I had today, he has Fallen upon Evil Days. Life on an island in the Bristol Channel just isn’t his cupper tea, my love. He bandages a finger here & lances a corn there & for the rest of the time Hankers after the Bustlings & Mutterings of a Synagogue on a Friday evening.
Darling, occasionally, at set intervals, the Establishments people think it’s about time Kitty Thorpe was Moved. (She’s been in S9 ever since she came into the AM 2 years ago) so when they propose a Branch wot she doesn’t like the idea of she says: ‘Very well, I’ll go, but if you send me there I shall have a baby,’ so they always decide that Discretion is the better part of Valour & leave her where she is.
Friday 11 December Darling, Miss Malyon is a fool! I noticed when I took Mr Murray his coffee that she was reading Turgenev & I asked her if she was interested in the Russians. She said she didn’t know much about them but Tchekov puzzled her because all the people always behaved in exactly the opposite kind of way from herself. I suggested, darling, that
she should read The Brothers Karamazov & she said that she’d read Crime & Punishment but had found it Depressing. I said that I didn’t see how a book could be depressing when it was a study of complete regeneration through suffering (which is the essence of great Tragedy, darling, & tragedy is never depressing. It is only when nothing is resolved, when the windows aren’t opened & the atmosphere of suffering is still stifling at the end, as in Measure for Measure & Troilus & Cressida that depression comes in at all). This seems to me so elementary, darling, that I can’t understand how anyone who read English for 3 years can be so obtuse. However, there it is. Mr Murray listened to our conversation (which I’m afraid, darling, tended to be rather Unilateral) with obvious amusement. I could see him thinking: ‘There’s Eileen Alexander up against something she can’t cope with at all & doesn’t it make her irritable.’
Joan & Robert hadn’t very much to say tonight, darling. Joan has got fatter & Robert looks very tired & almost middle-aged. Robert’s ex-wife is living in London & is going to broadcast with Vivien Leigh in The School for Scandal on the first Sunday after Christmas. Joan & Robert spend a lot of time with her, darling, & it struck Joan as irresistibly comic that the other night at a rather Drunken & Riotous Theatrical party, their host kept introducing Robert and Mrs Ex-Robert to everyone as husband & wife & Joan as the wife of someone she’d never met in her life before. I don’t know if something has gone wrong with my sense of humour at all, darling, but it didn’t strike me as even mildly comic.
I’m not looking forward to Joyce’s party tomorrow, my love. Joan & Robert are going too & we’re wondering whether we’re going to get a Real Meal or just a Well Bred Snack.
Saturday 12 December Darling; First Impressions of the Party before I’ve had time to Embroider it in my sleep. A Captain Norman Hoptoph, who said he had known & liked you (I should hope so, my love!) at Cambridge & who was now doing Psychological Tests in the Army said he wished you hadn’t had such an Inferiority Complex about yourself as a psychologist, darling, because you had struck him & everybody else as an ‘extraordinarily brilliant chap who just wouldn’t listen to anyone when they told you so’. (A nice man, darling. I Warmed to Him at once.) We had a terrific argument about Philosophy & Sociology & he said that in trying to Reform the World you had to take into account the fact that the average level of intelligence was very low. I said I wasn’t prepared to believe that & he said he knew it was. Then the Devil got into me, darling, & I said: ‘Your Intelligence Tests told you, I suppose?’ He said he had got that impression from them so I said: ‘Do you consider that there are any other Criteria of Intelligence besides Tests? Would you say that it was not possible to get a First at Cambridge for instance without being Intelligent?’ He said he would certainly say that – so I said: ‘Well, suppose I told you that I’d had a first at Cambridge but that I’d been doing intelligence tests regularly every 3 months since the age of 5 and had never got more than 5%.’ He looked stunned, darling & said that they must have been Wrongly Administered or Something. I said Not at All – the Most Eminent Psychologists in the World had agreed that my intelligence was that of a youngish age & had found me Very Interesting. At that point, my love, Bernard announced that the Taxi was ticking away & I left Joan (who hadn’t been in on it before) to carry on the argument. (I hope she didn’t give me away!) Actually, darling, I only did one Intelligence Test in all my life. I don’t remember whether I distinguished myself but I don’t believe I did. I was Harassed by the Time Limit I remembered & very Bored by the questions which seemed to me to be leading Nowhere. And now I’ve gone and given Captain Hoptoph the impression that you’re going to marry a girl of sub-apiary intelligence. I wish I didn’t Warm Up to a Good Story quite so enthusiastically, darling.
Darling, I’m not very happy because I was going to go to the pictures – & then Mum pointed out that it was the day of National Mourning for the Jews – but she pointed it out so Censoriously that I said Defensively that I was going anyway. Oh! darling, I hope it’s not callous of me. I don’t feel callous about the sufferings of the Jews or any of the other suffering peoples of Europe – but I don’t see that much could be gained by sitting at home & brooding on it – but now I think I oughtn’t to go & yet I don’t see what good it could possibly do not to go. I’m in a dreary enough frame of mind as it is. And my parents have just had a terrific scene over Bridge & after considerable Storm Effects, Mum has Stumped Upstairs to bed – I hate my parents to quarrel, darling, & Bridge seems such a bloody silly thing to quarrel about. So there’s thunder in the Family Air & I made an Ass of myself at Joyce’s party.
Sunday 13 December I feel dizzy & exhausted & enraged with Pa who stayed in the morning room till 3.30 this morning in a Pet with Mum over Bridge – so, of course, she didn’t get any sleep. He’s like a child, darling – like Dicky in fact. Mum has been mildly annoyed with him about something for a week or two (I believe it’s over smoking! He’s always Vowing to cut his smoking down to 10 a day & then he Consumes his 10 before dinner & if someone deals him a good hand at Bridge or the 8th Army advance 100 yards in the 7 o’clock news or someone in Parliament says something Complimentary about the Beveridge Report, my love, he says: ‘Vic, darling, you’ll let me have an extra cigarette to celebrate that won’t you?’) so she’s been rather Distant with him – you know, the Do-What-You-Please-I-Have-Ceased-To-Care Line, darling. He hasn’t said much about it, but I could see that he was very hurt & the whole thing Flared up into a First Class Row at the Bridge table. It may be a good thing, darling, because it should clear the Air & make them both feel better.
You know, darling, I’ve never approved of Mum’s view of a woman’s function in a love-relationship. She’s very proud of having kept Pa dangling for years. She says that that is what made him ‘respect’ her – and occasionally she reverts to the coquettish Genre even now combined with more than a touch of masochistic martyrdom & it makes me very angry – but Pa is much worse. (Oh! my God, he’s just gone into the bathroom, darling, saying: ‘I’m not saying a word.’ That is always a prelude to a perfect flood of Ciceronian invective!) He behaves exactly like Dicky on these occasions. He’s not happy until he has everybody crying & wishing they were dead – & after hours of Hell, he & Mum have a Terrific Reconciliation & he says: ‘Have you got a nice chocolate, darling,’ & they’re both delighted with themselves – and only I am left with an after-taste of nightmare for weeks afterwards. It used to make me ill when I was a child, darling, but in the last few years I’ve forced myself into some measure of detachment & I’ve been helped by the realization (though it’s rather a bewildered realization) that, in a queer way, they almost enjoy these scenes which, incidentally, have been much rarer in the last year or two – so much rarer that I was beginning to believe that my parents were growing up at last.
Five minutes later. Darling, it happened exactly as I said – Tears all round – Ciceronian invective – Beautiful Reconciliation – Reminiscences about their Happy Times together – with one slight variation – Pa wound up with: ‘Let’s hurry up & get dressed so that we can have a nice cupper coffee.’ Darling, if I weren’t so shaken I’d laugh.
You know, darling, Joan is trying very hard to show Robert to me in a very flattering light. Last night, every time he made some trivial remark in a flippant vein she laughed exaggeratedly & said over & over again: ‘You know Robert never fails to amuse me – even after I’ve known him all this time & should be Indifferent by now.’ (What I’d like to know is why on earth she should be Indifferent after she’s known him 6 months? I’ve known you 4½ years, my darling, & I get less Indifferent every day.) And when he got up to get a cigarette she said: ‘I don’t know what I’d do without Robert to fetch cigarettes for me.’ It gave me quite a pang, darling. There was a time when Joan didn’t give a tuppenny damn what anyone thought of her friends & now she’s striving almost hysterically to Put Him Across. I hardly know her, my dear love.
Thursday 17 December Oh! My love, I’ve
just had a most fantastical interruption in the form of a telephone call from someone in Public Relations to say that as a result of an article in the Daily Star about a dog who had been on operational flights over Berlin & Northern France & Belgium & who was now ‘grounded’ – & very Narked about it, they’d had a letter from the RSPCA asking for details of the instructions governing the carrying of dogs in operational aircraft! (I wonder, darling, whether they’re annoyed because the dog in question is being Thwarted or whether they think he ought never to have been allowed up at all.) I referred them to KR’s,11 darling which says that dogs & cats & ‘other canine or feline animals’ mustn’t be carried in Service aircraft. Mr Murray & I were much amused, on coming across the passage quite accidentally one day when we were looking for something quite different, to note that snakes, crocodiles, boars, bulls and rabbits could apparently be taken on operational flights with Impunity!
There are Plans Afoot to dislodge Aunt Teddy but I don’t suppose they’ll have the slightest effect – but, I shall, of course, keep you Informed of Progress.
Saturday 19 December Darling, yesterday was a very distressing evening. I got home to find Pa Muttering Gloomily to Himself: ‘I’m feeling very ill,’ Mum very tearful, Aunt Teddy trembling violently & the colour of a bowl of porridge. Then Jean came & mingled her tears with the rest – and I was achingly sorry for everyone – for my parents because they hate being unkind & yet felt that unless they made some sort of stand they’d be saddled with Aunt Teddy till Doomsday – for Jean because if she did have her mother to live with her she’d have not a chink of privacy – not a moment of peace. Aunt Teddy is incapable of letting anyone else live their own lives, darling – but sorriest of all for Aunt Teddy because she hasn’t a single interest in life & she’s acutely conscious of the fact that she isn’t wanted anywhere. When she came in to me crying piteously & gave me the vinaigrette she’d bought me for Christmas I felt quite ill with pity, darling, & I cried too. Oh! dear. Poor Soul, darling, for all her faults she’s a pathetic, lonely creature &, in her queer way, I think she’s really fond of us. She’s going to Gerta’s today, my darling, knowing she isn’t wanted there either. Oh! darling, I’m so unhappy about all this. God, how I wish all human issues weren’t so hellishly complicated.
Love in the Blitz Page 36
