Eileen Alexander - Love in the Blitz

I’m so exhausted by this avowal, Gershon, that I feel as if I’d had a baby – limp & wan & panting! I am, I mean – not the Baby!

In the evening Norman Bentwich came to sherry. He has a job in the Ministry of Information. In the event of London’s becoming a besieged city, his job is to Keep the Population calm with Soothing News-bulletins. Horace, if he knew of this, would Snort and call him an Eye-wash-monger – I feel. Horace & Norman were at St Paul’s together – they are no Solace to one another on any plane whatever. Norman Wilts visibly at the mention of Horace’s name – Horace Seethes at the mention of Norman’s – it is all very Intense & Concentrated.

This morning Mrs Seidler suddenly arrived here – she is coming to live in London. My parents are thinking of offering her a home with us, (She wants to live with a family as her husband is likely to be interned any day, and she has no friends in London) but Pa wants to think over the position before actually suggesting it to her.

Please write to me more often, darling. On the days when I don’t get a letter from you, I feel like a Gothic Ruin in an 18th century landscape – an empty shell, overgrown with the tangled ivy of Desolation – which sounds very picturesque – but as a matter of fact it isn’t.

Monday 1 July Darling, I’m in Solace – so please don’t answer my questions in yesterday’s letter – because I don’t want to be in sorrow all over again. Thank you.

Wednesday 3 July Oh! please let’s get this Intentions question settled in your next letter, darling. It’s no good being stern about ‘troubled sleep’. Last night I didn’t sleep at all, because I thought I was going to hear the Awful All this morning.

I had rather a Harrowing afternoon, yesterday. Joan & Ian came to lunch. It was their last day together before Ian left for Nyasaland10 – and during & after lunch, we all Glittered with Synthetic Gaiety – then after coffee, Ian said he’d have to leave at 4.30 for Croydon where his people are staying – and Joan went upstairs to put on her hat & she sat down & cried & cried & cried. Then she went into the bathroom to wash her face – & remarked that she’d better see Duncan while she was there – when we suddenly became Aware of a Strange Man on the Windowsill. (We found out afterwards that it was the Gardener trimming the hedge.) It was so fantastic that it broke the Tension & we laughed hysterically for at least ten minutes.

Then they went off to the Portuguese Embassy to get a visa for Ian for Mozambique – & at 4.30 I met Joan at the Cumberland. (She asked me to have tea with her somewhere detached & noisy – & it seemed the ideal place.) She behaved, darling, with marvellous dignity & courage. I have the most tremendous respect for her – perhaps more than for any of my other college friends. I wish I were more like her – & I know that, at the end of three years, she & Ian will resume their relationship as though he’d never been away. Their love is Serious, Complete & of a Certain Magnitude – and after Sorrow there will be Regeneration.

Nurse is a fool. I was trying to make Joan & Ian laugh at lunch (and succeeding, darling) by telling them how Sheila explained to me the other day that Allan failed in his Tripos because he would insist on sticking too close to the point. (I’d stick to it too, if I only had one point – I’d cling to it as a drowning man clings to a straw – wouldn’t you?) & Nurse, to whom none of my remarks were addressed, snorted & said: ‘I think you spend your whole life saying nasty things about the people you call your friends.’ Joan & Ian just stared at her coldly & my mother said ‘Well, I’d rather see her laugh than cry.’ Nurse gave us all a Comprehensive Dirty Look – and subsided. My idiom is so much Bessarabian to Nurse (Is there a Bessarabian language, darling? It doesn’t really matter – but I thought I’d like to know).

Friday 5 July I came home, wilting, to find Joyce waiting for dinner. She was looking very soigneé in pill red – & we had a pleasant evening talking of you and Mr Mosley (who is, after all, a close relative of Sir Oswald!11 – but his branch has Cut Oswald Off – so that, says Joyce rather uncertainly, is All Right). She described the absurd procedure of Lord Nathan’s investiture with insight & wit. (Joyce has the Right Stuff in her, hasn’t she, dear?)

Negotiations are almost complete for the transfer of Mrs Seidler from the Turner ménage to ours. I think she’ll be rather a Solace. Mr Turner rang me up last night. He’s joining the family in Devon today – They’re leaving for Canada from Liverpool in about ten day’s time. (They haven’t been told the exact date, of course.)

Did I tell you Jean’s Wonderful Private Information about Cambridge & the Fifth Column? ‘Cambridge is Full of the Fifth Column,’ she said portentously in a Sinister Whisper. ‘I am Privately Informed that whenever an Air Raid Warning is sounded – All the lights go on’ – then, when I seemed unimpressed she added, by way of explanation. ‘To help the Enemy planes to find their Way About.’ (Capital letters Absolutely Everywhere, darling!)

Saturday 6 July Joan doesn’t know what to do this vac. She wants some kind of job, I think. We are considering trying to find something to do together, as soon as I hear from Lord Lloyd & find out what my position is with regard to the Civil Service.

Yesterday, I was able to collect quite a considerable parcel of jewellery to send to the Red Cross. I found I had a lot of gold bangles and lockets & trinkets which could be melted down for their metal value & I sent, as well, a diamond & sapphire bar brooch – a brilliant brooch and a seed pearl & lapis lazuli necklace.

In the afternoon my parents took me to Christie’s to see the things that people had sent. The jewellery was rather staggering – colossal diamond necklaces – and superb single-stone rings – as well as smaller things running the whole aesthetic gamut from Horrified Sorrow to Extreme Solace.

Monday 8 July Good morning, my dear love. Thank you for your letter. You’re right, you know – my mother in her twenties was very much the sort of girl you describe. Leslie H. B. realized this when he said ‘If I could meet a girl who was what you must have been at twenty, Vic, I’d marry like a shot’ (His idiom – not mine). And the look he gave me as he said this – spoke volumes for my inadequacy.

I’m more grateful than I can say, darling, for your just and generous summing-up of the situation. It seems to me that if I make up my mind to be a little less inadequate as a Solace – it will be something to keep me busy – & I think that, in future, if I’m busy, I shall be well, and that will be a Solace to you, won’t it? You see, now there’s nothing organically wrong with me. It’s just that my mind is being pounded down ceaselessly with the fear of not seeing you – & the endless hammering tires me so much – that by the end of the day, I do feel ill. The Victorians called it a decline, dear, but stronger women than the milk & water heroines of Victorian fiction have suffered from the same thing. After all, Lady Macbeth’s madness dated from the time when ‘my lord went into the field’.

I’m going to learn to be useful. (You’re right, darling, I can be useful – but it bores me.) Furthermore, if, at any time you want me to dance with you, I shall. (But you wouldn’t really like to dance with me, would you, darling? No? Thank you.)

Nevertheless, my dear love, although, now, I know exactly what you want from a Real Solace, I shall try to be more like the girl you want. (Not as an affectation, dear. (Heaven forbid!) What I want to do is simply to make use of certain characteristics ‘that I have of my own’, which aren’t developed at all because I wasn’t interested in them – but they are there.)