Eileen Alexander - Love in the Blitz

Wednesday 2 August The train journey from Edinburgh to Inverness (180 miles) took longer than the journey from London to Edinburgh (410 miles) & we arrived an hour late. And the jolting was phenomenal, even for a branch line Scottish train.

But all this was nothing to the 15-mile drive from Inverness to Drumnadrochit. We have an old Ford 8 here which Dad uses for fishing & which has no springs at all, to mention. The road from Inverness to the village of Drumnadrochit is very good, but no surface can soothe the vibrations of our old Ford – and as for the last three miles – from the village to our house – Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘Does the Road wind uphill all the way?’ was inspired by this very stretch of squelching mud – to call it a road would be forever to debase the word.

So I arrived thinking my head was cracked in two & I looked around at the familiar drawing-room furniture with a jaundiced eye – & thought with loathing of five weeks here without electric light – the shrill voices of my family converging on me from every angle – and the eternal gurglings of drain-pipes in the bathroom next door. This is a squat, grey little house – & looks solid enough – but it must be built of twigs because every sound made anywhere in the house can be heard everywhere else. It reminds me of Chaucer’s House of Rumour.1

But, for all this, I feel better this morning – & I look better too.

Thursday 3 August Oh! dear, Gershon, (observe the comma – I am not being forward!) I wish you weren’t so much cleverer than I am. When I first knew you, I was always in a state of waiting breathlessly for you to find out that I wasn’t clever, & erase me from the tables of your brain for ever – then I thought oh: well you must have found out by this time & were kindly overlooking it – but the more I saw of you, the more things I discovered you could do that I couldn’t – you could understand music, and pass your driving test at the second attempt, and play games, & follow the Hebrew in the prayer book without using your finger, & be forward without being impertinent, & sing in the street without being foolish – & all kinds of other things too – but this last display of versatility is too much – you can type as well – and in two colours – and two different sizes! What can I do but say humbly that it’s been an honour to know you?

Are you going to be at Ismay’s wedding or will you be travelling home on that day? (Surely if you wait until the 13th you will be using a public conveyance on the New Year which would be horribly un-kosher of you and put you out of Beth Din2 spitting range for ever!) I shall have a new tooth for that day – (my dentist has promised me most solemnly to have it ready) & it will be my first public appearance since the accident. So if you aren’t there I shall probably cry – but no matter! I was very perturbed to hear that Ismay had chosen a Rabbi not labelled by Beth Din either – How awful! But I feel sure that she’ll give such an air of respectability to her life of sin, that we’ll all be shaking our heads and declaring, in about a year’s time, that we must have made a mistake, after all.

Saturday 5 August On Friday I had a beautiful surprise. The front-door bell rang – in itself an exciting event here – because our nearest neighbour lives three miles away – and few people will venture their lives or cars on the up-winding mud track which is the only means of getting at us. It was Hamish! The fact that Charlotte was with him daunted me for a moment, (he is not at his enchanting best with others, when Charlotte is there) but we got onto a Higher Plane at once, whither Charlotte could not follow us – so she just stood & gaped & put my conversational style down to concussion & Hamish’s to humouring the patient. He was very concerned for you & sent you his regards.

Tuesday 8 August It is charming of you to look forward to my letters with ‘unreasonable impatience’ – that is exactly how I look forward to yours – though I’d never have been able to express it so aptly myself – nor so prettily! There is nothing more to tell you about my collar bone. You knew it was dislocated, didn’t you? If not I can’t think how I forgot to tell you – you must have distracted my attention!

Your suggestion about our being seen together at Ismay’s wedding did not surprise me much, after your startling revelations about Mr Zeigler, D. Machonochie and the Prosecuting Solicitor – but I was mildly shocked to realize that things had gone so far, that we wouldn’t be able to go to a huge reception – and there nod to one another in friendly greeting & perhaps exchange a casual word, without giving rise to whisperings & head-waggings of the kind you suggest. I see that it is going to take us a long time to Live This Down! This is, in its way, a pity, but I think we’ll survive it, don’t you?

I was relieved to read your delicately worded confession that you would be in Cambridge next year – (this is an understatement – but I feel I must learn to be a little more formal and less forward with you, before we meet at Ismay’s wedding, in view of all the inquisitive eyes that will be upon us there).

Saturday 12 August On Monday the family circle will be widened by the inclusion of my cousin Jean & Aunt Teddy, & from then, onwards, we shall have visitors the whole time, which will break the monotony of purely rural occupations a little, I hope. We expect to be in London on September 6th – & on the 15th my parents are going to Paris. They are trying to persuade me to go with them – but I loathe the Channel – hateful, bulging, oily, green horror – and feel disinclined for the French, at present – so I hope to be able to persuade them to let me go & stay in the country with friends until the beginning of term. Pray for me. I am so tired of la vie de famille.

Please write and laugh at me for thinking you are cross with me, Gershon – (if you are angry you can laugh satirically, or sardonically if you prefer it – and if you are not, you can laugh comfortingly – but please laugh!).

Monday 14 August You know, it is a strange thing, but everyone has suddenly started to say kind things about my appearance since the accident. It is rather like the kind of thing which is raked up about the character of the deceased in an obituary notice. Joan Aubertin was in Girton the other day, & she met Maureen Stack & Jo Manton – (d’you know either of them? No? Neither do I – but we know one another by sight). They gossiped about this & that & apparently my injuries were mentioned – and they said they hoped my face wasn’t spoilt. It was such a lovely serene face & reminded them of the Monna Lisa!!! (No, Gershon, they were not mistaking me for someone else – they know me very well by sight.) Joan retailed this in a letter to my father with a sardonic chuckle behind every word – but he lapped it all up & was simply delighted, & came & waved the letter at me.

Because I feel full of the milk of human kindness, I’ll concur in your judgement of Nachman. He bores me & always will – but that, as I think I told you, is because he never laughs at me – it casts no slur upon his character or intelligence. Lois is another matter altogether.

Thursday 17 August I had a letter from Sir Robert Waley Cohen, asking me to spend a week with him at Honeymead, from Sept 15th–21st. He says, graciously, that if I am not well enough to ride I can follow the hunt in the car. (what? what?) (Note the delicate manner in which he assumes that I can ride (as a matter of fact I can – but he has no reason to know that). Obviously all the Best People do ride, & if he didn’t think I was one of the Best People, he wouldn’t have asked me to stay – which makes me laugh a lot – but I think I shall go – it will spare me the threatened visit to Paris – and I shall love writing and telling you all about it. It will be a new experience. I have known Sir Robert and his two sons for many years (they have filled the ground floor of the Great Portland Street Synagogue on Yom Kippur while Mummy & Sophie Tucker & I have been filling the gallery, ever since I can remember) but I never suspected him of this pukkah strain. I shall never be quite the same again.