Eileen Alexander - Love in the Blitz

I’ve cried so much during the last week that I really begin to feel, as Shelley would say, like a cloud that has outwept its rain!6

Actually, of course, I am fussing disquietingly about very little – what on earth does it really matter whether I go back to Cambridge or not? At this moment I see it as a life or death question – but once a decision is made, I’ll get used to it. Oh! I shall get used to it shan’t I, Gershon? Instead of being secure & pampered, I might have been a Central European or German Jewess, mightn’t I?? – and then I’d have had something to cluck about. This happy thought, instead of restoring my sense of balance, only adds humiliating self-disgust to my other discomforts. I wish you were here – and you could shake me until my toothless gums rattled together – it’s the only fitting treatment for me.

I had a letter from Miss Bradbrook. All the double sets of rooms are being converted into single bed sitting rooms (poor Joyce!) – and Miss Bradbrook says they’re living like pigs. It must be pretty bad, for her to notice anything because, in the ordinary way, she has a Soul above Space – but there you are – the war has changed a lot of people.

I may say that this photograph business has caused a terrific stir in our ménage. ‘Why do you want to have your photograph taken?’ asks Aunt Teddy, rudely & inquisitively. ‘What on earth do you want a photograph of yourself for?’ says nurse – adding more kindly, ‘It’s not like you to want to be photographed.’ ‘Is this quite the moment to be photographed my dear?’ says Pa. ‘Of course you’re looking more like yourself, and we haven’t had one of you for some time – but …’

My mother, who is the only one who knows why I had it taken, smiles kindly, although she thinks it forward, if not improper of me to give a photograph of myself to a MAN (other than Pa, of course). She might be less kindly if she knew the shocking spirit of barter in which the whole transaction has been carried out – but she doesn’t. I tell my mother more than you tell yours, – but not everything.

Saturday 23 September I lay in bed alternately musing and reading the book of Job. (I do not like the Day of Atonement service. I always read the Bible instead.) The only diversion which occurred during the morning was a letter from the Mistress (in reply to my letter to the College Secretary). She has investigated the matter of lodgings herself. I am to live at 130 Huntingdon Road, in a smallish single room (but who cares?) and she personally guarantees my comfort and safety – and Dad, purified by starvation, and intimidated by her august and brisk intervention, says, ‘Yes’.

Oh! Gershon, I am so happy (always bearing in mind that no man should be declared happy until he is dead) that I’m even prepared to admit that (in a non-erotic way, of course) I love you better than my country. (Does it matter which country?)

I am sorry to have to tell you that Aubrey also seems to have noticed that I love you better than my country. (It pains me that my most intimate feelings, however non-erotic, should be so patent to you both – but, no matter, I shall learn resignation in time.) I am led to this conclusion by the fact that in an eleven-page letter, yesterday, he devotes four lines of verse to the war and five pages to you.

He did not owe me a letter, Gershon, – he just caught sight of a reproduction of the Monna Lisa on his wall, (he spells his ‘Mona’) detected a facial resemblance between us – and so wrote me eleven pages of profuse strains of carefully pre-meditated art. (In a post-script he says delightedly: ‘Something really wonderful has happened – Gershon came in while I was out, saw my Mona (sic) Lisa and stuck a label on saying “Eileen” I swear that we have never discussed it before. So you see how I am proved right by the highest authority available. Who better could distinguish a genuine Eileen from a fraudulent reproduction?’)

SUNDAY 24 September Pa is leaving us today with the children. Mum & I still don’t know what day we’ll be leaving for London – but I’m writing to the Mistress to say that (war-work permitting) I’ll be in Cambridge on Oct 7th.

Monday 25 September My mother looked at the enclosed photograph, shuddered, and said, ‘My dear’, in a voice charged with meaning, and then handed it back to me in the manner of one lifting an earwig out of the soup. This was not encouraging, so I showed it to Gerta. She smiled and said, ‘you do look a hap’. Aunt Teddy glanced at it and said, ‘It’s a good likeness – but not flattering’, and if ever a voice implied that a good likeness of me was a painful sight, it was hers.

I think that, insofar as it doesn’t show my scars, my pink chin, or the bump on the bridge of my nose, it’s not too bad, considering the material upon which the unfortunate photographer had to work.

Tuesday 26 September There is now a further hitch in regard to my proposed return to Cambridge. The rooms which the Mistress so kindly offered me, have been let to somebody else – so chaos is come again. I’ve wired to Girton for advice, and I’m waiting to see what happens. Pa is seeing everyone in London, and has suddenly woken up to the fact that Drumnadrochit is a backwater. I think he will send for us soon.

Wednesday 27 September Nurse has come back from London – oh! dear, our peace is shattered again. Of course the first thing she did was to demand to see my photograph and, when I showed it to her, she giggled noisily – slapped me heartily on my sore shoulder and said, ‘I think you’d better have another one taken – he photographed the uglier side of your face by mistake.’ Nurse has taken the place of Lois as Hate No. 1 on my (at present) narrow horizon.

My father phones my mother twice a day – and writes to her twice a day – and, when the telephone rings, or the postman comes, she goes all pink & kittenish! They really ought to know better at their age – and after 24 years of married life, too. Anyway, I’m hoping to cash in on all this love, by getting away from here, very soon – so love on, my girls & boys, love on – and don’t, on any account, mind me.

Thursday 28 September No letter from you by the first post, Gershon! Only nine pages from Aubrey, who is now an Intelligence Officer in embryo. I quote a vital passage from his letter below, to show how interviews with the recruiting board should be managed. Please learn it by heart & say it over to yourself every day before breakfast. Here it is: ‘… then there was the moment when a decrepit doctor with creaking joints asked me to take off my spectacles and read the letters on the board. “What board?” I asked innocently staring straight at it. This disability disqualified me from a Commission in the Observer’s Corps. Some capacity to distinguish an ally from an enemy is apparently regarded as an indispensable asset in war.’ Be as blind as you possibly can, Gershon, when your time comes. Aubrey’s account of his interview with the Recruiting Board has made me realize, (tardily perhaps) that there’s a war on, and that you may be called upon to go forth and get yourself killed in a dirty dug-out in France. I don’t mind telling you, that this is a possibility which I find singularly unpleasant to contemplate. It may be eccentric of me – but there it is.

Pa has just telephoned from London to say that he’s been appointed to a job in the Treasury as an expert in International Law. I gather that he starts work at once – so he probably won’t be coming back to fetch us after all. This means that he may be able to afford the rooms he and my mother originally chose for me in Cambridge – but everything is still very uncertain – he could give us no details over the phone as the appointment is still a secret – and I’ve no business to be telling you about it.