Eileen Alexander - Love in the Blitz

Allan unexpectedly got his calling-up papers for September 12th and he & Sheila are getting married by special licence tomorrow week.

Lord N. has asked us to the lunch on the anniversary of the outbreak of war (Sept 3rd, in case you’ve forgotten, darling) to hear Eden.17 It should be interesting – only if you’re in London then, I shan’t dare to tell my parents I’m not going. Oh! Damn – I’m clucking already at the very thought.

Saturday 24 August Darling, If I sound querulous (and I am going to sound querulous) you may deduct 20% for Saturday – but the rest is real. Your twopenny snap is damned awful – and I wish you’d never sent it to me – (especially as you’re wearing a jersey under your tunic which wasn’t knitted by me. Yes, I do notice everything) because now I know you’re in the Fighting Forces – and I’ve been crying ever since I had your letter – it makes me feel ill – and the thought that you are only going to write to me twice a week – because you’re too busy being convivial with your fellow Air-Craftsmen isn’t much of a Solace. Oh! darling, please don’t be angry with me for saying this – but do you remember how often at the end of last year & the beginning of this, I used to be in Great Sorrow at some of the things you used to say in jest – and you used to explain that you were just absent-minded and that most of the girls you knew didn’t mind flippant remarks in that strain. You won’t be likely, will you, my dear love, to get into the way of making that kind of remark, through casual contact with girls who don’t mind them? I’m frightened, darling, frightened that the new idioms & new values of military life will make you impatient and bored with mine. Please don’t be bored with me, dear. (Pause – for more crying.)

I’m afraid this is a very Great Sorrow, darling. I’ve had three cigarettes in rapid succession & they’ve had no effect whatsoever. What has actually happened is that the solace of our time together while you were in London has lasted until today – and it’s only worn off now because I’ve suddenly realized that you’re in a new environment – among new people – and wearing new clothes. (Perhaps I’ll feel a little better when you’re dressed in my pullover, dear.) These strange men with whom you live and play cards & go to dances frighten me, darling. You’re starting a new life in which I have no part. What do you talk about? Oh! darling, is all this going to ‘iron wedges drive and always crowd itself betwixt’?18 Please, dear, let me have a long letter on Tuesday and another on Saturday, and a little reassuring one on Thursday. You’re so far away and I can’t do without you – Indeed I don’t want to. Does anyone want to go on living without a heart or lungs?

Pa has read & approved my letter to Lord Lloyd’s secretary. Something ought to happen soon. Bernard Waley Cohen told me yesterday evening that he’d got a high administrative Civil Service job – and he hasn’t even got a degree.

Miss Fox is away on holiday and I’m going to Answer the Telephone & Be Efficient for Miss Sloane all next week.

I met Nurse’s YF19 last night. A wisp of straw, darling, but quite inoffensive – though he’s neither here nor there.

I wish you were here to mollock with me in Air Raids. I don’t mind Air Raids if I can mollock while they’re in progress. As it is I just Brood Savagely – & knit.

This is an unsatisfactory letter, dear. But if I were to have to do without you – why then let Rome in Tiber melt & the wide arch of the ranged Empire fall20 – oh! God, I hope they give you leave soon.

Sunday 25 August There’s no place in the world where one is so suffocated by Family as in an Air Raid Shelter. I pretended to go to sleep in an endeavour to Escape – but there they were – Everywhere. Nurse, who hadn’t bothered to see that the children had rugs – lay back on pillows – enveloped in an eiderdown – and Relaxed. (She’d obviously been reading the Women’s Papers which tell you to Lie Back, Drop your Lids, and Relax completely whenever you can, or you’ll get Wrinkles – I have wrinkles.) I’m getting a very severe attack of Emotional Claustrophobia, darling. It’s not pleasant.

Tuesday 27 August God! darling, what a night. Hell has no terrors for me anymore. As the sirens shrieked, I called on Duncan & went, quite good-humouredly into the shelter, thinking that having a warning at 9.15 might mean an undisturbed night. I knitted quite happily for about an hour and a half – and at quarter to eleven, Mrs Seidler turned out the shelter light & I tried to sleep, dear. We could hear the dull thud of AA21 fire and the spattering of machine-gun bullets – and close overhead the thick chugging of aeroplane engines. It was an oppressively hot night and the only sound apart from war-noises, was Pa’s ear-splitting snore. By midnight, darling, I felt that I’d rather die slowly of wounds than live in a room with Pa and Dicky. It wasn’t a reasoned loathing, darling, it was just intense & hysterical & suffocating – the spiritual equivalent of the stale and thick air of the shelter. Then Pa said something nasty about Nurse, who had been caught in the raid – & his tone implied that no-one should stir from the house in these times – and I got up & said quite quietly that I was going to bed. Then, darling, the trouble started. Pa said that if I moved he’d go out into the night – (I knew it was only histrionics but I dared not take the risk of its being genuine for my mother’s sake). I said he was a damned bully – and stood in the doorway, watching columns of sparks scattering outwards in the sky – and after that, I sat on a cane chair by the door until the All Clear sounded at four. I didn’t get to sleep till about five – and now I feel infinitely old & tired – & so bitterly resentful of my father that I feel it would make me physically sick to be in the same room with him. Oh! darling, I wish you were with me – though even if you were here I can’t see that we would have anything but Sorrow under this new martial law notion of Pa’s. Darling, I’m sick & sullen – & I’ve only had two hours sleep – I’ll write more later. Oh! I’d trade a kingdom for a laundry basket, if only I could get away from my father for ever.

Oh! darling, I could have done with a letter from you today – but I expect the mails have been delayed by the air-raids. It isn’t that you’re angry with me for the letter I sent you on Sunday is it, my dear love? Oh! please don’t be angry with me. Your affection is the only thing of worth that I have in this turmoil – Don’t take it away from me.

Later: Darling, I’ve just come home to find a letter from Lord Lloyd’s secretary, saying that Lord L. is going to write to the Central Register asking them ‘what exactly has happened to your application’. This is heartening news and a step towards achievement.

Wednesday 28 August Darling, I had a very queer experience last night. We had a small dinner party which I hadn’t even bothered to mention to you because I’d no reason to suppose that it would be anything but dull – and anyway I expected to be too tired to take any interest in anything. Our guests were Col. & Mrs Fred Samuel, Joyce, Herman and a Captain & Mrs Wingate,22 whom I’d never met before. My parents met them a few nights ago when they were dining with Mrs Gestetner & had liked them so much that they’d asked them to dinner. He has rather a nobbly face, with a strikingly intellectual forehead and a sullen mouth – she is twenty-two (she married when she was seventeen) and her eyes and face are alive with light and intelligence.

During the early part of the dinner, everything went as I’d expected. I was sitting between Herman & Capt. Wingate and I exchanged a few desultory & apathetic remarks with them – but mostly, I just sat back in a coma.