Love in the Blitz

by Eileen Alexander

  11

  Twin Compasses

  Wednesday 12 April 1944 My darling, this is my first letter to my husband and I find that I’m so much a part of him – that his voice and his hands and his body are so close to me – that speech – except little breathless whispers in the darkness – seems redundant & out of place. But I want my first letter to be a letter of thanks, my very dear love. It’s no good, darling, I can’t believe we’ve only been married a fortnight. The days have been hammered out like gold to aery thinness beat – to the finest, purest, most delicate spun gold.

  What I had forgotten, darling, was the amazing complexity and range of happiness you could give me. I had forgotten the deep, indescribable joy of watching your face in repose – the merriment of savouring a comedy situation with you – the intricate pattern of a shared experience & then there were the things which I hadn’t forgotten because I had still to learn them – the warmth of your naked body against mine – the irresponsible merriment of wanton playfulness and the solemn sacramental joy of receiving you into my body.

  When I think of that, my dear love, I’m sick with shame at my small, niggardly selfishnesses – bothering your leisure with bickering at Dicky, having the fire on when you’re sweltering, tidying up after you like an over-industrious crossing sweeper – it is as idiotic really, darling, as Pan following horses in the road to lay in a store of mushroom fertiliser!

  This is going to be my first whole day away from you since we got married, darling, and I Can’t Take It. On the other hand, I find the familiar drabness of the Ministry, the dreariness of the files, as so remote from the life & joy inside me that they have no longer any power to drive me to irritability and despair. Still no news of a transfer to another Branch.

  Friday 14 April Jean came to dinner yesterday evening, darling, and Laid her Intentions in regard to Square before Mum & Pa. Having grown fond of him of recent months, my love, they took it Very Nicely & Pa Applauded Jean’s resolve to buy a house in Chelsea. (I wish all my friends wouldn’t go spoiling the market for us, my love – it was my idea in the first place.)

  Friday 15 September It looks, darling, as if Providence has decreed that the last meal we ate together is to remain with me and sustain me and Sebastian and/or Kate (herein after known as Sebastian for the sake of convenience) until our second breakfast.

  Friday 29 September My darling, although I have realized that this time our separation was to be a short one, it has still been a time of constant and nagging unhappiness. Whenever I opened a room door and didn’t find you sitting in the room I had a sort of cramp in my heart. Whenever I did anything or read anything or wrote anything or had an idea about anything I wanted to talk to you about it & felt hurt & frustrated because I couldn’t. I need you, my darling, in the way that one needs one’s limbs or one’s lungs. I don’t just miss you at odd moments as I might miss Aubrey or Victor or Hamish – I’m just incomplete & disintegrated without you.

  Tuesday 16 January 1945 My darling, as in accordance with a Whispered Word of Motherly Advice from Mum, I have just Anointed my Bubs with surgical spirit by way of putting them through a Toughening Course in preparation for the impact of Sebastian/Kate’s gums. I naturally came over All Wistful for my very dear lord whose presence (and assistance) would have turned this rather tedious operation into a joyous mollock.

  Thursday 18 January It seems, darling, that yesterday evening while I was out, Alida rang up in great Agitation to ask if the Ambache’s had any daughters! It seems that Aubrey has been staying there again & she Scents a Rodent. Victor looked very knowing at this, & revealed that Nachmann had told him that Papa Ambache was Plugging Aubrey like mad & that he appeared to be Getting Somewhere.1

  I felt so awful at 4 o’clock today that I collapsed on one of the chairs in the kitchen & wept – whereupon Mrs Clark wagged a Roguish finger at me & said: ‘Ah! You’ll have to have separate rooms after this, Miss Eileen,’ & I felt, my darling, as though someone had poured rancid slops over me. Even now, darling, I feel I need to wash myself all over with strong disinfectant to get rid of the taint of that remark. There’s something so horribly obscene about referring to the joy & peace & contentment of our bed in that way.

  Tuesday 23 January Jean & Square are getting married on 15th February, my darling. Any chance of your getting away for their wedding? Oh! darling, lay it to thy heart. Jean is moving into her house on the 1st (she has to put in a fortnight’s residence in Chelsea before she can qualify to get married in the Town Hall) & Aunt Teddy is moving in with her – very rash, darling. I wonder if she’ll ever be able to get her out once she has moved in.

  Saturday 27 January My darling, I’m more than a little surexciteé this evening & I somehow don’t think I’m going to sleep very well.

  First of all, my dear love, there were your letters 11 & 12 which came unexpectedly (I was sure the weather was going to Do the Dirty on Me) & went to my head like wine. Then, my dear love, there was a telephone call from Nachman to say that he’d just had a cable from Suzy telling him of her engagement to Aubrey. All roseate & aglow with love as I was, my darling, because of being brought close to you by your letters, it was a particularly piquant pleasure to know that Aubrey’s Suit had prospered. I rang up Alida, darling, & we were All Girls Together for hours & hours & she read me Aubrey’s letter which touched me so much that I nearly cried, my dear love, because he said that, although he had known Suzy for a long time she had, ‘for reasons he could not go into’, been uncertain of her feelings towards him until recently – & he went on, ‘I wish you could be here at this most exciting time,’ which, for Aubrey was saying a good deal. They’re going to be married in April, darling, & oh! I’m glad.

  Tuesday 6 February Pa lunched at the Bank with Anthony Rothschild yesterday, & Churchill’s brother Jack was there. The talk turned on Winston’s prodigious memory & Jack said that it was not always reliable & cited a rather recent entertaining episode, love.

  Winston let himself into No. 10 a week or two ago &, while he was taking off his coat, he noticed a man waiting quietly in the hall. ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Are you waiting to see anyone?’ ‘Yes,’ answered the man. ‘I’m waiting to see you.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ said Winston, ‘you – er – know who I am?’ ‘Certainly,’ the man replied. Winston got more and more confused. ‘D’you know,’ he said, ‘I’m sure we’ve met somewhere before – Yes, yes, I have a very good memory for faces – Let me see now – Yes, I’m sure I know you.’ The man could Take No More of This, darling. ‘Well, you ought to,’ he said curtly, ‘I’ve been sitting in your Cabinet for 18 months.’

  Monday 19 February [Hampstead Nursing Home] My darling li’l Kate2 has just left me with a grunt which I interpret as meaning that she considers la pension bonne et pas chère. Oh! but it was good to have you, even for so very little time, my dearest love. I wish you could have seen my baby at my breast before you left, my love. She is at her most Engaging then – & it’s then that I realize with a little pang, darling, that she really does belong to us & that we made her out of our love – & then I love her, my darling, as I never believed I could ever love any little baby (but I still think she’s an ugly little thing all the same).

  Monday 12 March Darling, I’m too depressed to do anything but brood. Is it very childish of me to feel burdened by all this flesh? This intolerable deal of fat means far more to me than just 3 stones of flesh. It brings back the unhappiest time of my life – when I was a more than podgy child in Cairo & morbidly sensitive about it & pretending not to Give a Damn. Still, darling, Nurse & Sister & Masseuse & Mum & Pa all think I’m getting thinner, whatever the scales may say, though at the moment my bottom billows so. Whenever I move it’s as though a breeze were causing a sort of tremor on the sea of flesh that follows me about.

  Tuesday 13 March My darling, do try and be here by Sunday repeat Sunday. You see, love, that’s Aubrey’s wedding day & Alida is having a Slap-Up Luncheon. Alida is very relieved that I’m coming, dear
, because she felt that Aubrey’s marriage would be a Hollow Mockery followed by a Long Life of Sin (the idiom, I do confess it, darling, is mine, not hers) unless I went to her party & Blessed his Union.

  Kate is being taken to St John’s Wood on Sunday morning, darling, to be Spat on by the Beth Din in the person of the Rev. Swift. Now, my dear love, in the general run of things I never feel very near God in St John’s Wood Synagogue but I did feel very close to Him when we were married there & so I want you to be with me when I go there for the first time with the li’l soul we have made out of the joy of our bodies & the intimacy of our minds & spirits.

  Sunday 18 March Oh! darling, how I wished you could have been with us today. Semiramis broke down on the way here, darling, so the day started with a mild flap but Pan sallied forth with a spanner & soon all was well.

  In the synagogue there was a white & silver canopy erected on the dais in front of the Ark – for a wedding I suppose – & old Swift led us under that (I was carrying Kate in my arms, darling, & I’m bound to say that in her lace robes, with a peach-bloom on her cheeks from sleep and her little mouth pressed she looked mightily like a rose) and gave me a very lovely prayer to read all about being led out of pain & travail into joy. Then Pan took Kate up to the Ark, darling, & Swift opened it and said an English blessing over her & Mum pressed a fiver into his hand & that was that, except that I promised him another fiver from Us & he Beamed so that I could see that he regarded the ceremony as Cheap at the Price.

  Our drive to Harrow was uneventful, darling, & the scenery was alternate rows of plum tress in full blossom, which in the distance looked like a delicate, misty sunrise and houses battered & ruined by Wee Twos. Dicky soon joined us, darling, & I will say for him that he looked swooningly ’andsome – ‘like a film star’, Nurse, who hadn’t seen him before, said.

  The party was a terrific success, darling. Mum & Pa gave Alida a 22lb salmon & that with the turkey, provided the centrepiece. There was a wedding cake with the words ‘Aubrey-Suzy 18. 3. 45’ in peach-coloured mock ice cream. Mrs Halper wasn’t there, darling, because she was indisposed with an attack of Acute faribl – the cause, darling, was, In All Innocence, Mum. Mrs. Halper was in a White Heat of Fury because Alida had asked Mum & not her to Lay on the Wedding Feast. However, darling, we all thought that the party was much nicer without her & I said so to Alida who was in a bit of a shock about it & she said: ‘Thank you, darling, you’re such a comfort. Tell me now, do you think Aubrey is a Virgin?’ Well, my love, your guess is as good as mine, so I said stoutly that I was sure he was – you or I would certainly have known if he hadn’t been & she said: ‘Now isn’t that lovely, darling?’ and I agreed that it was & that was that.

  Pa made a nice, modest little speech, my love, about what a Good Thing Aubrey was and what a Lovesome Thing (Got Wot) Suzy was and it was Clear to All that he was Deeply Moved & so was Alida who wept freely in a Welter of Tchehovian Mother-love. In fact, darling, it was all Very Beautiful & would have embarrassed Aubrey acutely so it’s just as well that he was several thousand miles away at the time.

  One incongruous little touch, darling, was the snapshots of Aubrey & Suzy mollocking rather primly in front of the camera & Aubrey looking more than mildly discomfited. ‘I don’t think I like them very much,’ Alida confided doubtfully. ‘Aubrey is wearing such a foolish expression, don’t you think?’ and he undeniably was, darling. The light-hearted mollock is Not for Aubrey, darling. He needs something a good deal ceremonious.

  Saturday 24 March Darling, it is apparently normal among Academic Women not to Dirty their Nappies as babies. Mum says I never did & Mrs Turner assures me that Jennifer never did – so you may permit yourself to be wholly pleased that Kate never does.

  Darling, I don’t want to end this letter without telling you that I love you more & more every day, my dearest love, & that our wedding day is the most precious date in my life – it always will be, darling – because on that day I felt (and it was an unforgettable & most wonderful experience) that you and I were standing together in the presence of God & that we were joined together in his sight. On that day & always since I have loved you, my darling, I worshipped you, & the vision of Absolute Good that I somehow have Through our love, with my body & my mind & my spirit – & it will always be so until death us do part & perhaps even after that. Thank you, my paragon of men, for making me so blessed – and I don’t think it fanciful to believe that it is because of the deep & wonderful serenity that you have given to me by being my dear & gentle & loving husband that Kate is such a remarkably contented little soul. Oh! my darling, I can never, never show you how much I love you for all This – All I want in life, dear love, is to please you & make you happy. Please let me do that always – always.

  VE Day, Tuesday 8 May My darling, I gave Mum & Pa little Wee presents this morning – nothing much – to mark the end of the war. You shall have more records as your little Wee present, my very dear love &, when you come home, all the love that is in me, which, like the milk in my breasts, increases in direct proportion to the amount that is drawn away from me.

  Yesterday Jeanne came to tea & told us that her father & brother had been at that camp where 4,000,000 people have been killed since 1941 – & the vivid picture in my mind of those terrible newsreel pictures of the Concentration Camps rent my heart as she spoke.

  Hamish is on his way home, my darling. He may be back by now for all I know. It will be good to see him again.

  Today. My dear love, I feel like Verlaine’s poem: ‘Il pleure dans mon coeur comme il pleut sur la ville, Quelle est cette langueur qui pénètre mon coeur?’

  My darling, I had no stomach for the Victory Celebrations today because you weren’t with me. If you had been, love, I’d have set aside all my qualms & war-weariness & the memory of the living skeletons at Belsen & Buchenwald & gone with you into the milling crowds & with your protective arm about me, I’d have felt thankfulness & relief welling up inside me in great bubbles. As it is, my darling, I have ventured no further afield than Finchley Road where there was so little sign of rejoicing that I was reminded of Eliot’s:

  Where are the eagles & the trumpets?

  Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps

  Weeping, weeping multitudes

  Droop in a hundred ABCs.

  So, my darling, you see I have hovered on the outer fringe of Victory today & I shall not be at peace until you’re home with me again.

  Now, darling, I can hear the pop of fireworks & distant singing – & Pa & Mrs Wright, with Pan, who arrived home wholly unexpectedly on Under-the-Counter leave, have gone off to See the Town.

  Saturday 16 June My darling, I’ve just had a most terrible shock in the form of a telephone message from Joan. She’s leaving Robert. I don’t know any details – just that she cried most pitifully & kept on repeating that it wasn’t her fault. I don’t care what she’s done, darling, or how unwise she has been. I’m so hurt for her. I’m going to see her in a few minutes – because I can’t bear to let her go away without seeing her. She is hoping to get a job at Oxford or somewhere & have Susan with her. I can’t write any more, darling. This is such an unspeakable tragedy.

  My darling, Joan’s is a pitifully sordid little story. After she’d finished feeding Susan, Robert urged her to come back to London & get a job. When she arrived, my love, she found that Robert had struck up an acquaintance with a man called Hughes with whom he was always going out – mainly to Ivor Novello musicals & other out-of-character plays. (Robert, darling, is nothing if not a highbrow) Robert told her that Hughes got free seats for these plays & that as he was alone in London he felt he couldn’t refuse to go to them with him. Joan never met Hughes, my love, but with her Flair for Higher Truth she got to know him quite well in spirit & even psycho-analysed him for Robert – explaining this or that peculiarity or inconsistency in his character – & of course, darling, she made a terrifically Good Story of Hughes to all Robert’s friends to th
eir acute embarrassment because they all knew that he was a myth.

  Anyway, love, about 6 months ago Robert suddenly told Joan that Hughes was really a Welsh typist at the Ministry of Supply called Blodwyn (characteristically enough, darling, when Joan told Celia Roberts about all this Celia breathed a sigh of relief & said: ‘Oh! Blodwyn, well then you have nothing to worry about. If it had been Bronwyn you might have had cause for alarm, but Blodwyn is the traditional Comic Character’) & that he was going to take a room in Bloomsbury & live with her & he hoped Joan would wait for him. Joan did wait, darling, for six months, hoping day after day that he’d come back. They met quite frequently & Robert entertained her during lunch or dinner or whatever it might be with marvellous theories about it all. If marriage jogged along in the conventional way, he was wont to say, the fact that it held together didn’t matter a fig – on the other hand if it could stand the strain of a thing like this, then it would have real substance. The man really is a Sadist, darling, as I thought originally & I’ve never known anyone with such a passion for having his cake & eating it too.

  Now, my love, Joan has reached the point where she just can’t stand the strain any longer. She hopes & believes that Robert will come back to her in the end – (though I think she’d be well rid of him myself, darling, because even if he does come back the whole thing will start all over again with someone else in due course) but meanwhile, darling, she’s going away to prepare herself for the possibility that he may never come back & to make a new life for herself & Susan.