Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Monday 1 March Oh! my darling, I’m rich indeed. Letters 72, 73 and 74 arrived this morning. Of course, darling, I shan’t mention his Social Unreliability to Aubrey. You know, my love, I’ve never found Aubrey unreliable about appointments but I’ve often heard from other people that he was.

  Darling, I do see what you mean about Zionism as an expedient & to that extent I accept it but of course that is not Zionism. Zionism is the movement which strives to restore the Kingdom of Zion as a National Home for ‘God’s Chosen People’, not as a refuge for the persecuted – otherwise Uganda would have done just as well.

  I am prepared to agree with you about the general level of intelligence today but that is because they just haven’t been given a chance. Elementary school education just isn’t education at all because it doesn’t teach you to think, it only teaches you what to think which is a very bad thing. Darling, I shall regard it as an excellent sign if our children spend most of their early youth saying Why? Why? Why? Why? We shall do our best, shan’t we, to answer them truthfully and to give them plenty of loopholes for contradiction?

  Darling, I should have said that Jewish Theology was concerned not so much with preaching morality as behaviour. You said yourself that your father was more concerned with observing the letter of the law than with ethical conduct – & I’ve noticed it in a number of other Orthodox Jews. That’s why I don’t feel in the least as though I’m Letting the Side Down, my dear love, when I acknowledge & even preach my unorthodoxy in Orthodox circles – because I regard Orthodoxy as completely worthless except if it’s practiced as a piece of Historical Symbolism – in the same spirit as the Medieval Mysteries.

  Miss Malyon told me at lunch today that her Intended expected to be back from Washington in the middle of this month – and she expects to be married a few weeks after that. I tried so hard to sound as though I didn’t mind, my darling, but I did – terribly.

  Darling, Kitty quoted an extract from a diary of the period concerning the Duke of Marlborough which read: ‘This day my lord came home from the wars & pleasured his lady three times ere he took off his boots.’ I like that so much, my darling, that I suggest that sometimes, just for a change, when you want to be wanton you should say: ‘Shall I pleasure my little lady?’ because that, my darling, is what it will be and my answer will always, always be: ‘Yes, darling, please.’

  Oh! darling, everything round me feels quite vague & unreal because I’m so wonderfully happy. This succession of letters makes me feel that the lean weeks have been worth while.

  Wednesday 3 March Darling, Joan & Mhairi left hurriedly because the sirens went. (Reprisals for the Berlin raid, I suppose.) The anti-aircraft fire is so terrific now that it’s really terribly dangerous to be out in it, so they dashed away in the hope of getting home before it started. Darling, I was really horror-struck by Joan’s appearance tonight. She was terribly haggard & drawn & looked really old. I wonder what’s the matter. I keep saying to myself, my love, that it’s no use worrying but I can’t help it. She’s taken such crazy risks with her health & I’m afraid she’s beginning to pay for it.

  Saturday 6 March Darling, I’m In Disgrace with Pa. And this is why. At a quarter to eleven last night when I was almost asleep he Burst into my room, jammed on the light and waved an American newspaper in front of my face. There was a sort of Proclamation, my love by a lot of Distinguished Americans about the necessity for having a Jewish Army. I dragged my eyes open, darling, with an immense effort of will because I was still very much under the influence of Gas & said, ‘Splendid’, because that seemed to be the Right Answer as Pa obviously thought he was On to a Good Thing – but then, to my Absolute Horror, darling he started reading the Proclamation (which ran into 9 columns – and the paper was bigger than the Times!!) I said: ‘Look here, it’s nearly eleven & I want to get to sleep,’ at which he Looked Like a Thundercloud & said: ‘How Dare you Speak to me Like That. I don’t feel I ever want to Talk to you Again’ – and Swept Out. This morning he wouldn’t speak to me when I went in to say ‘hello’ before going to work.

  What I hate most, my darling, about living at home is that I have no privacy as of right. My parents very bitterly resent the fact that I like being alone. Pan feels exactly the same. My father is stupid about people and he is kind only when he happens to be in the mood for it – in short, my love, a charming man to meet socially but an impossible person to live with – not impossible for Mum, darling, because she loves him – but impossible for anyone else.

  Tuesday 9 March Darling, letter 88 arrived this morning. Oh! my dear love, I wish you could dream about being Wanton with me instead of all those other Wild Oats. I can only hope that they’re people you don’t know, but don’t tell me – I’d rather not know. Darling, I hope you don’t mind marrying a girl with no Sub-Conscious because I definitely haven’t got one. I never mollock with anyone but you in my dreams. Once Aubrey put his arm round me in a dream as a sympathetic gesture & I was simply Horror-struck.

  Darling, Uncle F’s Amours are a Sordid business on the lowest possible plane. They started at Cambridge – Pa had to Buy her Off at enormous expense to all concerned. The rest have been married women of Shady Repute. I don’t know any details.

  Oh! darling, how typical of Aunt Rachel to let Uncle Jack’s precious manuscripts rot in a cellar. She’s really a hateful woman – The only case I’ve ever known of a person with the face of a Botticelli angel & the personality of the most shrewish of shrews.

  Thursday 11 March Darling, one of the things we were Speculating at lunch yesterday was Germany’s reason for attacking Russia when she did instead of turning on us. Colonel Reitz said that whatever Germany’s attitude may have been then, he hadn’t the slightest doubt as to what it was now and that he could best describe it by telling the story of an English Soldier wounded in the head in the Crimean War. On being asked how it happened, darling, he said: ‘These Russians, they don’t know how to fight. I was charged by one of them Cossacks and I whips out me sword and gives him the Thrust – and instead of giving me the Parry the bloody fool ’its me over the ’ead.’

  Oh! darling, remember that a woman’s mind is different from a man’s. Remember too that I love you & because I can never be angry with you I find it hard to realize that you love me & can yet be angry with me as well. Don’t say you’ll never be angry with me again, my love, because if anger didn’t sometimes sparkle in your eyes like the quick, blue spirit of a lighted match you wouldn’t be yourself and I love you as you are, quick bursts of irritability and all – because, darling, you’re one of the very few people who recover from anger in an instant, without a trace of rancour – & there’s no spirit of malice in it – even at its height – and most of all, darling, afterwards you’re so gentle and kind that I could cry for pure joy when I remember it. Oh! God, I do love you.

  Sunday 14 March Darling, it did surprise me to hear that the mail of most of your colleagues is ‘meagre’. How do they keep in touch emotionally & intellectually with their wives over a long period of separation? Every day brings with it new impressions, new ideas, new sounds & colours & patterns. The tissues of the mind renew themselves every hour. How is it possible to come together again without fear if you only keep in touch sporadically – if there is no continuity in the patterns of your shared thoughts?

  Behind every single one of your letters I can hear your voice & see your smile – sometimes I can feel your arms tightening round my body and your hands awakening the whole range of love from tenderness to passion in my breasts. It’s a miracle, my darling, and I’m grateful to you for it with true and profound humility. You see, my dear love, it’s natural for me to express myself in letters. Almost, it’s my métier – but I know that it isn’t the same for you – and yet you have succeeded in doing it as you have always succeeded in doing everything that could give me pleasure & joy.

  Oh! My darling, you give me so much, so much – it’s not that I’m easily pleased, my dea
r love – I’m exigent & capricious & until I loved you I was discontented & dissatisfied with everything except my work. I ask so much of love, my darling, & I find it all in you. Is it a wonder that I’m jealous & possessive when I have so much to lose?

  For the last ten minutes I’ve been looking out of the window unseeingly & letting the remembrance of our time together soak into my body & my spirit. So many images have flickered across my line of vision darling. Sitting under a tree with you on Hampstead Heath, laughing & eating Lyons’ Charlotte Russe with the cream squelching out of the corners of our mouths – crying and shivering in your arms outside Norman Bentwich’s house – lying back on my bed at Girton Corner with your face smiling above me while I told you that Aubrey’s whole personality was the result of Extensive Living-in-Sin – reading in your arms for hours together in the chaise-longue – skipping along by your side in the sunset at Southport with the sea a-glitter with metallic lights – sitting on your knee at Victoria Road while you read your law-book and ran your fingers idly across my breast so that suddenly & startingly I was excited for the first time in all my life – standing beside you with your arm supporting me in a crowded, jolting train bringing us back from Richmond on August Bank Holiday – lying beside you in the scorching sun by the river at West Drayton. Oh! darling, all that & so much more.

  Monday 15 March While I was having morning coffee this morning with Mr Murray, darling, The Director of Movements telephoned him & he said to Miss Malyon afterwards: ‘Wednesday night or Thursday morning at Euston,’ so I suppose that means that her Solace will be back on Wednesday or Thursday, my dear love. Oh! God, darling, I wonder what I should do if I got a message like that. I expect I just shouldn’t be able to take it in. I should be completely numbed.

  Miss Malyon came in just now, my darling, radiating delight. Oh! my God.

  Tuesday 16 March Darling, I’m sorry I shall have to Disobey you & deny that you are spiritually of coarser texture than I am – you are, as you say, not naturally monogamous & no doubt in another age, my love, you’d have collected a Fine Set of Concubines about you – but, as you so perspicaciously surmised, darling, the first batch would soon have been Lying about the Floor in Dead Heaps & you’d have some difficulty in replacing them because others would be Shy of Taking the Risk. (You should see the Ineffable Smugness of my expression as I write, darling. I think you’d find it necessary to Spank me for being so Blandly Homicidal in intent if you were here.) But some of the finest spirits in the world, my darling, have been promiscuously minded. The man who is spiritually coarse is the one who can’t see the distinction between casual wantonness & love – who can’t see that the difference is greater than the difference between the sun and a 5 watt lamp. You can see and understand & appreciate the distinction, my darling, just as Shakespeare could or Donne. Oh! God, my darling, how can you use the word coarseness in relation to yourself? I have seen an undue amount of sexual coarseness for my years, darling, and I know that yours is one of the most delicate minds & spirits that I know – & of that, my love, I really am a judge.

  Darling, in calling me unreasonable & stupid in my attitude to Pa you are only telling me what I’ve admitted already with shame in a recent letter. It may be illogical of me, my dear love, but it made me tremendously happy to be called unreasonable & stupid by you on that account. You see, darling, in a rather queer way I think I’m fond of Pa, (I know I’m fond of Mum) & I may attack him but I’m delighted when you reprove me for it. Do you understand, darling?

  I didn’t know about the effect on Wantonness of Hashish, darling, nor can I, as you rightly suspected, contribute to the discussion on Wantonness among the Fellahin – but I won’t have you taking Hashish – not even on the Try-Everything-Once principle – besides, my darling, you’re much too clever a lover to need any artificial assistance!

  I can’t write my book on vinaigrettes now, my love, because I’m too busy writing to you, and when I’m not writing I’m reading, and when I’m not reading, I’m working.

  Monday 22 March Darling, Joan has just telephoned to tell me that she was married on Saturday morning. No one was there except Sheila who came from Oxford for the occasion. She didn’t even mention it to her parents until afterwards. Oh! my dear love, it’s the most enormous relief. I could have wished it to have happened otherwise. A hole-in-corner Registry Office wedding isn’t really Joan’s idiom, I hate to think what Mr & Mrs Aubertin must have felt about it, my love. And Joan is the person who is always accusing me of selfishness vis-a-vis my parents! I didn’t believe Robert would ever marry Joan, darling, but it’s typical of him to do it in this way once having made up his mind to marry her at all. Oh! Well, I’m not going to worry any more about it, darling. The really important thing is that Joan should be happy. Maybe Robert will improve with time.

  Estelle rang up last night, darling, to ask me to go with her to ‘Heartbreak House’6 on Saturday evening. I shall enjoy that. Her Forthright & Explosive Reactions will be a joy to watch & hear.

  Darling, Pa has a new word. It supercedes ‘a Fine Bit of Oratory’ in his vocabulary – it is ‘Symphony’. His lectures, darling, are now Symphonies. One of the really Beautiful things about Pa is the enormous enjoyment he derives from himself – and all without a trace of self-consciousness – it’s Wonderful. Darling, I wish you & I were more like him. Life would be a lot easier for us if we were.

  Darling, in spite of my relief at Joan’s marriage & knowing that at least there won’t be a recurrence of the hell she went through a few months ago, I hate the atmosphere of the whole business. I’ve tried to pretend to myself that I don’t but it’s no good. Oh! my darling, if you were here you’d talk to me sanely & wisely & make me see that there’s nothing to Cluck about now & anyway, even if there were, nothing could be gained by it. I was so overwhelmingly grateful for your wisdom & understanding when there was all that trouble about Captain Sims, darling. Oh! God. Come home to me soon, my dear love. I can’t do without you.

  My darling, I came home to find Mum & Pa in a state of great anxiety because they were afraid I’d be hurt & unhappy on account of the fact that Joan had got married without telling me! Of course, darling, it’s true that they don’t know that I have no right any longer to Joan’s confidence but even if I had I shouldn’t have been hurt because, in the first place, I don’t see why she should tell me what she didn’t even tell her parents &, in the second place, if I hadn’t been so bewildered & distressed by the circumstances & manner of her marriage (which I know to be contrary to everything she had hoped & wished for) I’d have been so happy on her account that there wouldn’t have been time to be hurt. You know, darling, I believe I have failed Joan as a friend. At a time when she was unhappy & uncertain all I could find to do was to attack her chosen course of action & to keep away from her when I found I couldn’t shake her resolution – the tragedy is, my darling, that when I tried to make amends I found that there was such a gap between us that I could no longer understand what she was saying – & now I’ve lost my chance & instead of being pleased because she has what she wants or says she wants I can only feel that if she has changed as much as that, I have nothing more to say to her. I tried to remember what she used to be like – while I was buying her wedding present, my dear love, but I could only remember her as she used to be with Ian – absolutely honest, sincere, devoted, highly intelligent & alive with whimsey humour & it makes me want to cry instead of to rejoice. Oh! darling. Life is so hellishly complicated, my love.

  Boysie Sassoon was married yesterday – it was in the Times this morning. As for the thought of Boysie being Wanton, my love. Well! I’d as soon have expected it of Adele. Let us Draw a Veil over that part of the Proceedings.

  Tuesday 23 March I was a bit Alarmed last night, my love, when Pa said with a sudden Penetrating look that he couldn’t see what Joan’s hurry to get married was. You see, my love, she told me on the telephone that she & Robert had intended to get married in June but they�
��d suddenly decided last weekend that there was no point in waiting. If it’s the same trouble as last time, darling, it will be the most shattering blow to her parents & anyway I’ve no doubt that Mrs Aubertin is wringing her hands over the Gossip that has certainly spread over Conington like a Plague with a lot of Impetus from the Village Cats who have anyway always been jealous of Joan’s outstanding success, both socially & intellectually.

  Wednesday 24 March I had lunch with Sylvia today. She was saying that she thought that Joan’s marriage was, on the whole, a Good Thing, even if it finished up with a Divorce because she felt that she couldn’t have stood the strain of another debacle & that the fact of being married will do a great deal to restore the self-confidence that she lost over the Ian business. I think that’s true, darling, & I think, as Sylvia does, that Ian is at the bottom of everything that has happened to Joan since he left. I believe that Joan’s love for Ian was of the same stuff as my love for you, my darling. If you had left before we were engaged & if your letters had been colourless, impersonal & sporadic I should gradually have withered up, my dear love. I shouldn’t have ‘Taken a Lover’ as Joan did but I should have become ill & fretful & selfish & bitter which is just as bad in its way.

  Oh! my darling, I do respect Sylvia’s tolerance & wisdom. She’s so much more like you than like me in her judgements of other people.

  Joan came to dinner tonight, my darling. Robert had gone out to a party & she was to have been alone for the evening so she asked if she could come here instead. The more I see of Robert’s Methods, darling, the more I love you. I know that I don’t need to ask you if you would leave me to go to a party four days after our wedding. She didn’t even have a new dress to be married in, my darling – Joan who so loves new clothes – because Robert said it was unnecessary & extravagant.