Eileen Alexander - Love in the Blitz

I’ve done nothing since I left Cambridge but let my melancholy sit on brood – and read crime-stories – the bloodier the better. I’m suffering from an infinite prolongation of the feeling I have in Cambridge when you’re an hour or two late. I haven’t smiled since I left you standing on the station in your white shirt & blue jacket which I could see for such a long time after the train had started moving.

Darling, Colonel Nathan’s peerage makes me feel awkward & embarrassed with Joyce. You see, I think it’s ludicrous – & she thinks it’s Just & Proper. (Of course I didn’t tell her I thought it was Ludicrous – you have learnt by now that I don’t invariably Tell All, haven’t you?) So there’s an Enormous Gap between her Idiom & Mine on the subject – even in jest.

Sunday 16 June Col. Nathan a peer, darling! However the Hon. Joyce will carry her courtesy title with an air – & doubtless (I mean Mrs N (as was) of course) Her Ladyship’s F. H.7 will become more formidable by several inches.

I had tea with Joyce and her mother today. I peered wistfully at the exquisite square inch of tea-butter and, like Marie Antoinette, decided that the common people had better eat cake. I saw the report in the evening paper when I got home. I rang Joyce up to rebuke her for failing to Tell Me All. She said there wasn’t a word of Truth in it – and half-an-hour later rang me up to say that it was now official. Can’t you imagine the Colonel coming home & coyly unburdening himself like a bride announcing that an Heir has been arranged for? How Fantastic!

Friday 21 June Oh! darling, it was fantastically selfish of me to suggest that you should come to London on Saturday – but when it’s a matter of keeping you with me or having you back again soon, I have no morals – I’ve always felt in complete affinity with Cleopatra when she turned her ship round – knowing Antony would follow her – although it meant shame – shame – ever for ever – and she knew it.

Monday 24 June I went to Kilburn with my mother this morning to buy vegetables (vegetables are cheaper in Kilburn, darling!) & now I Know All. You burst open pea-pods & taste the peas & unless they’re a Solace in the Raw, you Reject them – you squeeze cabbages & unless they squeak, you say in a voice of withering scorn, that they Have no Heart – and cast them from you – a lettuce that you can’t stub your finger on is No Good – & when strawberries are two shillings a pound, you lose Heart & decide that you might as well have done your shopping at Swiss Cottage & saved a 2d bus fare.

Tuesday 25 June Oh! darling, things that love night love not such things as these. The sirens started screaming at 1.15. (Sirens are louder here than at Girton Corner.) I got up to see what my parents were doing – and Pa took such exception to my suggestion that we should all stay in bed, that I put on my new dressing-gown, wrapped my eiderdown round me & followed him to our outside shelter. It was a clear, still night and the stars couldn’t have been more sharply focussed if there had been a frost – half a moon & little greyish clouds. We packed into the shelter like chocolate stick-biscuits in a round tin. We sat in deck-chairs – large deck-chairs – & my feet didn’t reach the ground – but Stanley chivalrously stretched out his legs & let me rest my feet on his slippers. We sat quite silently for the most part – the only sound was the rumbling of poor old Wright’s recalcitrant digestion – & occasional bursts of impromptu & heavy jests from Pa. At about 2.30 (the shelter is distempered concrete & as bare as a picked bone, and I was getting colder & colder), I was suddenly doubled up with cramp – (Nurse said nastily that it was due to my being out in the rain on Sunday. I pointed out tartly that there hadn’t been a drop of rain anywhere except on the pavement by the time we got out of the house!). Anyway, I quaffed a sherry glass full of brandy & warm water in one nose-wrinkling gulp & went to bed. The All-Clear sounded at four – but I never heard it – the brandy having done its work – but that was only the beginning of things for my parents & Stanley – because poor old Wright had a heart-attack & they had to summon a doctor & send him off in Mrs Wright’s care, to hospital. So this morning everyone here is a little blear-eyed & vague.

Wednesday 26 June Darling, I’m almost angry with you. Here are the papers all buzzing with vague & terrifying reports of continuous raids on the SW – and no letter of reassurance from you this morning.

I spent a fantastic afternoon with Joan at her crazy school yesterday. The children wear purple shorts and white shirts – the garden is a carefully cultivated wilderness – the school-building, rambling, beautifully furnished, with a touch of arty-craftiness here & there. The staff sits about on tree-stumps Musing upon Life in rather uninhibited clothes. (Joan tells me that the Headmistress, who is nearly 83, and of titanic dimensions, appeared in the air-raid shelter on Monday night in a pair of trousers all tied together with safety-pins – declaring that her zip fasteners had been sabotaged either by one of the children or the staff – and after seeing the school, I can well believe it.)

Joan told me, more in sorrow than in anger, that she had met Joy Blackaby at her interview with the Cambridge County School, & the first thing Joy had said to her was that she’d seen me one day mollocking abandonedly in KP!8 Joan said that in Cambridge of all places there was no excuse for Public Mollocking, because the facilities for kissing & clipping at home were unlimited. I agreed in principle – but I pointed out that in my case, there was a factor which had never entered into her relationship with Ian – Time fear. I said that taking a short-view, she too had often heard time’s winged chariot hurrying near – but that against this – she had a confident feeling of permanence which made it unnecessary for her to hang on to the reassurance of physical contact. Because she has a sense of having all life before her, darling, she never has that terrifying ‘Is he really here?’ doubt – nor the crushing fear that every moment of Solace may be the last. She couldn’t see why I should assume that you’d stop wanting me as a Solace one day. She said that, from what she had seen of us together, our regard for one another was unhurried & restful & built on more permanent foundations than most people’s. I said that mine was – but that you had warned me from the very beginning that yours might not be – but I hoped to God she was right – whereupon she withdrew her censure of my public behaviour, & added that she was sure that, ultimately, All Would be Well.

I got a letter and a Character from Miss Bradbrook this morning. She is serving her country by pounding mangle-wurzels and working for the Hush-hush from nine-till-five every day. Only Miss Bradbrook could have thought of such a Beautiful juxtaposition of labours – turning mangle-wurzels into cattle-fodder – and hearing All – at one fell swoop. She’s a wonderful woman. My Character is on a very high Plane, darling. I’m looking forward to showing it to you. She advises me to get into the Civil Service if I can, because I’ll only be allowed to take up my research where I left off if I’ve been doing war-work in the interval.

Thursday 27 June I have been to Kilburn again for vegetables. Cauliflowers have risen in price, whereas beans have Gone Down. The situation on the Asparagus Market remains unchanged.

I’m seeing the Secretary of the Appointments Board tomorrow to Tell her All. I liked the sound of her voice over the telephone – which is encouraging – voices make a lot of difference. Did you hear the Princess Royal asking us to join the ATS on the Wireless? ‘Over your dead body!’ I replied sullenly. ‘If it’s the last thing I do.’ (Aren’t everybody’s idioms but ours silly, dear?)