Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  Tuesday 2 November I had lunch with Jean today, my love, and I hated it because when I said that I hoped she’d look up Mr Murray & be friendly to him, she said: ‘Remember – I’m in the enemy camp.’ He’s going to have a Rough Passage in that Racket, my darling, & if ever a man didn’t deserve it, he doesn’t.

  Wednesday 3 November I’ve just got back from the morning’s coffee session with new hope. Mr Murray has been talking to a friend at the Egyptian Council who thinks that there may be a lecturing job for me at the Egyptian University. At any rate, my dear love, he’s getting me a form to fill in. It’s the brightest ray of hope so far. I should say, darling, looking back on the tapestry of my life that apart from my dear lord & my parents to whom I owe so much that it can’t be reckoned, I am more deeply indebted to two men than anyone else in the world. One of them is Mr Grose who died before I could justify his confidence in me & the other is Mr Murray. Mr Grose Groomed me for Stardom in the intellectual sphere, darling, with immense patience & care & understanding and Mr Murray has given me wise & disinterested sympathy & help & good sound counsel in the saddest & darkest time of my life. I sometimes think it was a kind of miracle that I should have been taken away from the crude, negative cynicism of Mr Crotch and put under Mr Murray’s care just before you went away. I am aglow with anticipation. Perhaps we shall soon have our honeymoon in Upper Egypt.

  Thursday 4 November This afternoon, Felicity Boon (née Logan) came down from the seventh floor, darling, in a Great State. Her Principal is ill & she’s completely bewildered by the great mass of papers that have been pouring in. She suggested to Mr Murray that I might be loaned to S9(P) for a few days to help her out & Mr Murray agreed, provided that I didn’t mind. I was quite glad of the suggestion, my darling, because it will be quite a pleasant change. I stipulated, however, my love, that I must have my coffee sessions with Mr Murray tomorrow & Saturday (which, alas, are the only two days now left).

  Saturday 6 November I Filched letter 187 from a Reluctant Postwoman this morning. I don’t think much of your idea about Michael Foot, darling. I wouldn’t want to be Beholden to that man for anything. I have seldom taken a more positive dislike to anybody at a first meeting.

  I had my last coffee session with Mr Murray this morning, my darling, and now I feel very sad. He said: ‘You should never have got side-tracked into the Government service – though, as an interlude, the experience has possibly been of some value to you – but it’s been going on long enough. It’s time for you to find your proper level.’

  Monday 8 November Darling, I forgot to tell you a nice little snippet of All about Victor. Some time ago, my darling, with his flair for picking up Picturesque People he met an extraordinary Norwegian girl who is a medical student with several illegitimate children all with different fathers. Perhaps because Victor has a Nice Face, my love, she Bore him Off to a Corner House and sat there with him the whole night telling him the dazzling Colourful story of her life. Victor sat Lapping it Up, darling & was very surprised when she asked if it wasn’t about time they had breakfast. He wrote to Doris, darling & told her about this – she mentioned it to Aunt Annie who Came Over in a Heartly Cluck & said she was going to write to Mum to ask her to Instruct Victor in The Facts of Life and Warn him against Predatory Women. The letter hasn’t arrived yet, my love, but we’re All Agog for it.

  Wednesday 10 November My darling, Joan spent most of the lunch hour saying how perfectly outrageous of Joyce it was to be planning a wedding on the 12 of everything, thousand guest reception scale. I defended her because I am far less shocked by it than by Joan’s own wedding. I feel that the most that can be said of making a terrific splash at a moment like this, darling, is that it’s in poor taste, whereas Joan’s hole-in-a-corner marriage was a piece of unforgivable & selfish brutality towards her parents who were irreparably hurt by it.

  Darling letters 188 & 189 arrived today. I read, ‘I suggest, darling, that if our children called me Pa or Pop (or any other name which you did not like or vaguely suspected that I didn’t like) you would soon enough make a Major Issue of it.’ A hit, a palpable hit, my dear love, because now I see the whole thing so painfully clearly that I feel thoroughly ashamed of myself. If there was so much as a hint, a breath, a soupçon of disrespect or patronage in our children’s attitude to you, I’d go nearly mad with distress.

  Friday 12 November Darling, Mum has just telephoned & she read me a letter that had come for me from Mr Murray’s friend, Mr Blake of the British Consul. He says, darling, that he’s sent my form to Cairo asking if there’s a vacancy for me & that he’ll let me know as soon as he gets an answer. He seemed to think he’d have definite news in a week or two. Oh! my darling, I am dancing barefoot on hot coals & the agony will not abate until I have further and more definite news.

  Mr Murray’s successor will not be Mr Campbell after all but Mr Melville. Pamela’s husband’s report on him, my love, is that he is an educated and cultured man who made his mark in Classics at Cambridge. Felicity says he’s an authority on Spanish Literature. Kitty tells me he’s the father of twins. Mr Ormond says he’s tall & Mr Needham says he’s slightly bald – & that’s All I Know, my darling.

  Saturday 20 November My darling, I rang up Mr Crotch about my NFS21 Call-up and he asked me to have a Chinese lunch with him & discuss the whole thing then. Divorce has mellowed Mr Crotch, darling. Instead of sneering at my love he now treats it with Respect and asked after you with solicitude & said he thought it would be very wise to go to you in Egypt.

  My darling, your little Solace is happy. Deeply & contentedly happy – in spite of the fact that she’s just got back from patrolling a fog blackened street & that her teeth are chattering with cold. The reasons, my dear love, are letters 191 and 193. Darling, do you know what it was that broke down the whole nightmare of the past few days? Two sentences, my very dear love. They were: ‘I’m never angry with you for long, my darling, I love you too much for that. Remember that when you’re down in the dumps.’ Oh! darling, darling, I did remember & suddenly the sun broke through the fog and you were very, very close to me.

  Friday 21 November Miss Anderton & Joan are coming to lunch, my darling. I asked Miss Anderton because she has been terribly at sea & sorrowful since Mr Murray left us & I thought she’d probably sit at home Brooding over one thing and another. (Things aren’t going too well with the Scoundrelly Young Man in Gibraltar either, my love.)

  I’m still Glowing with Solace, my dear love, & today for the first time for months I felt no bitterness towards Joan & we talked pleasantly of pictures & the new house she & Robert were going to have when she has the baby &, with Miss Anderton of Assistant Secretaries in General & of Mr Melville & Mr Murray in particular. Joan had dinner with the Nathans the other night, my love, & Ursula was staying there. It seems she’s going to Burst Upon a Gaping World in Cherry-red velvet and gold slippers at Joyce’s wedding. Ye Gods! Mum thinks I might have been asked to be a bridesmaid, darling, & I suppose I might but I wouldn’t care to share the Honour with Ursula. However, I wasn’t asked & I can’t say I feel very Pained on that account. Joyce & I have drifted very far apart since 1939. I don’t think she’s altogether unaware of the extremely Modified Rapture with which I received the news of her engagement, darling.

  I am looking forward to Horace’s views on Mosley’s release,22 my darling. My immediate response was profound disgust, my love, but Pa says he just can’t believe that the Government would take such a momentous decision without very good reason. He believes that Mosley is dying, darling, & that the Govt. got into a panic lest he should die in Hollyway & so become a Martyr. On the other hand, darling, Gandhi was, as far as we know, a great deal more seriously ill than Mosley and he was not released. I should have thought that Mosley’s following in this country was so small that if They made a saint & a martyr of him it wouldn’t make much odds. If Gandhi died, my darling, he would be (and rightly) a Martyr and the repercussions would be terrific – but not Mosley.
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br />   Monday 22 November I enjoyed my lunch with Horace, my darling, because it always amuses me intensely to see the ease & sangfroid with which he slips into the role of Plutocrat. Whenever drinks are served, my dear love, whether in the Mile End Road Pub or Savoy Bar, Horace slips into his setting as naturally as a Dew-drop slips into the sea.

  On the other hand, my darling, I was saddened to see how deeply Joan’s anti-Alexander Propaganda had bitten into him. I told him, quite lightly, though truly, my love, of the curious impulse I had to turn the notice saying ‘Way Out’ in the corridor in Bush House the other way round. I said, darling, that I supposed it was the result of long repression. (I was referring to the 18 months’ repression which are behind me, my darling, the inevitable repression which comes from being separated from the only man in all the world whom I love or have ever loved or could possibly love.) Horace said: ‘I suppose you mean having to be in every night by 9 o’clock and not having a latch key. Barbarous I call it at your age. Why don’t you Stand Up for your Rights?’ I assured him, my darling, that though Mum worried when I was out late in the blackout she wouldn’t dream of attempting to stop me from staying out as long as I pleased – nor would Pa. I pointed out too, my darling, that I had no incentive to go out at night now & that when you were here, even when my parents were most violently opposed to my meeting you on Sundays & going to Cambridge with you for weekends I had done what I wanted. Horace said a Queer Thing, darling. ‘If Gershon had been a Bearsted or a Montefiore, your father wouldn’t have objected to your meeting him on Sundays or going away for weekends with him.’ I asked him what he meant, my love, & he said: ‘Alec’s a bit of a Snob.’ That is a bad misreading of Pa’s character, you know, darling. He is not a Snob. He has a rather naif love of mixing with the Great Ones & he’s not altogether discriminating about Greatness which in his vocabulary is too often synonymous with worldly success – but he’s no social snob & I know he had no particular desire for me to marry a Montefiore or a Bearsted or any of that Lot, my love. Do you remember that, just before the War, Sir Robert Waley Cohen asked me to spend a fortnight at Honeymead, darling? The whole thing was cancelled by the outbreak of war but it was clear to me – and to Pa, darling, that the invitation was Tendered because Sir Robert thought I was a Nice Suitable Girl for Matthew to meet. I said as much to Mum & Pa, darling, & Pa said: ‘You watch out. Sir Robert is a Purposeful Man when he wants something – but Matthew – well, he may have a Heart of Gold but he’s no Adonis – for that matter he’s no Einstein.’ I remarked, my love, that I’d never seen any signs of the Heart of Gold except in the purely Metallurgic sense & Pa said; ‘No, come to think of it you’re probably right – anyway, you watch out for yourself.’ Pa certainly had no desire to have Matthew for a son-in-law, darling, in spite of his wealth & so-called Social Position. He was disgusted not very long after the accident when Lord Nathan, thinking that you might come to Mean Something in his Life on the slender Evidence that Joyce had asked you to take her to a dance said in what Pa described as an ‘Insufferably Insolent Tone’: ‘Who is This Ellenbogen?’ to which Pa replied with Outraged Dignity on your account though he didn’t love you at the time (but must, I imagine have guessed dimly that I did). ‘A great friend of my daughter’s.’ He was as irritated as I was too, darling, at his Lordship’s Superior attitude to Aubrey. ‘I’d go on my knees for such a husband for my child,’ he said. No, darling, if Pa is any kind of Snob he’s an intellectual snob – & so am I – & I told Horace so. But I fancy that this is more of Joan’s work, darling. To explain my parents’ distrust of Robert, she’d be quite capable of saying: ‘Oh! he was Nobody in their sense of the world, you understand – so naturally they hadn’t a Good Word to say for him.’

  Tuesday 23 November I don’t think I’m going to like Mr Melville. He is behaving like a Tinpot Tyrant to Miss Anderton & the Clerks & yesterday expressed the view to Miss Anderton that Discipline was Very Slack among the Lower Orders of S9. From being a happy Commonwealth, my darling, he’s trying to turn S9 into an Oligarchy. I hope to God I get out of it soon, my dear love.

  Darling Joan has just telephoned to say that Joan Wilson rang her up during the course of the morning. Do you remember Joan Wilson, my dear love? She spent most of her life having hysterics in one or other of our rooms at Girton. It all started with a Sports Car Addict, my love, lots of Brawn & no Brain (but then Joan had very little Brain) who kept Casting Her out of his Life & then Swooping her Back in again – Very Nerve-racking. Then, darling, there was an Embryonic Parson who Cut Across the Fine Upstanding Military Tradition of the Wilsons by being a Conscientious Objector. They went fruit-picking together, my love, but the Glamour of the Raspberry Shade wore off & the Conscientious Objector re-married. However, my darling, she’s now married to an Army Doctor & is (Ye Gods!) a Major in the Army Education Corps. She read English, my dear love, and just – but only just, as Miss Lloyd Thomas was at some pains to tell me – got a Third. Joan is lunching with her tomorrow, my darling, & she’s going to ring me and Tell Me All. As soon as she gets back from lunch. I shall not spare you the smallest detail, my dear love.

  Wednesday 24 November I was Shaken to the Core, darling, when I heard from Joan this afternoon that Joan Wilson was practically running the Army Bureau of Current Affairs. She lectures to lecturers, darling, & teaches them how to instruct the masses in Politics & Sociology. Joan Wilson, my dear love, who, if she lived to be a hundred, could never wake up to the fact that the Poona tradition went out with Singapore. I may not be all that good, darling, but I believe I’ve got a better brain & a more humanistic outlook than Joan Wilson, but Sir John Brown had no job for me in Army Education when Lord Nathan wrote to him about me. Ah! Well, c’est la vie.

  Thursday 25 November My darling, I went out with Joan Wilson expecting to be rather amused by the Girls of the Regiment manner but instead, my dear love, I had one of the most harrowing lunch-hours I’ve ever spent.

  Joan told me, darling, that against the pleading & blandishments of her parents, she had married, on a very short acquaintance, a man who had just divorced his wife. He had expressed a desire for children, darling, from the very first as he hadn’t had any by his first marriage, & she had agreed. After they’d been married about two months, my love, she started being sick in the morning & not being decadent & he examined her and found that she was going to have a baby. A few days later she told him she was feeling very ill & he gave her some pills & said: ‘Take these every two hours’ so she did, darling, but felt no better. About a week after this, my dear love, her husband came into her bedroom & said: ‘I’m going to live in camp from tonight – and don’t try following me about because I won’t have it. Those pills I gave you were intended to bring on a miscarriage but as they’ve failed you’d better go to a London surgeon & have an operation because if you have the child it will be mentally defective & deformed after all the tablets you’ve taken – & anyway you needn’t think I intend to support it.’

  She went back to her father who’s a doctor, darling, & he arranged for the operation. She was in hospital for 7 months & they thought she was going to die, but when her father wrote to the husband telling him about it he got a letter back from his solicitors saying that any further letters about Joan were to be addressed to them. Then he went to India, darling, (this was about two years ago) & Joan has heard nothing of or from him since. It will be 3 years in June since he left her, my dear love, & then she’ll be able, after going through the usual formula of writing to him & asking him to come back to her, to divorce him for desertion. She knows he’s been unfaithful to her, my darling – she says that there were other women even during the three months they were together, but he’s being very careful & she hasn’t been able to get any evidence. What she’s terrified of, darling, is that he’ll reply to her letter asking him to come back to him with an abject apology & a promise that he’ll be with her again as soon as the war is over – which will set her back for years – & she hates & fears him, my
love (and I don’t blame her) and wants to be outside his sphere of influence as soon as she possibly can. Oh! darling, I’m so terribly sorry for her that I feel like crying.

  Monday 29 November You know, my darling, Joan Pearce told me something today which terrified me so much that I could feel the muscles of my mouth tightening & little bubbles of cold sweat breaking out on my upper lip. She said that her Mr Maxwell, being deprived of feminine company during his 3 years in West Africa had built up an idealized picture of her in his mind – & that when he’d met her again he’d discovered that this wasn’t the girl he’d Cherished in his mind’s eye at all. For God’s sake reassure me, my darling, or I shall go screaming mad. I feel very near insanity now. Oh! darling, darling. I try so hard to give you a fair & detailed picture in my letters of myself as I am. I try so desperately not to idealize my motives in my conduct towards Mum & Pa & others. Tell me that I am not misleading you, my very dear love. That you know me as I am, with all my unevenness of mood, my irritability over small things, my intolerance & manifold limitations, my conspicuous lack of physical beauty, and that you still love me. You’re not a disembodied ideal for me, my darling, but the difference between us is that I love your limitations as well as your superabundant virtues because they are a part of you & make you into the person that you are. There is no better or briefer way of explaining what I mean, my darling, than Hamlet’s way – You are a man, take you for all in all, I shall not look upon your like again.