Love in the Blitz Read online

  Sunday 1 October Your lyric outburst over my photograph was prettily written – but did you really like it? More and more people here seem to like it less & less – but, if it meets with your approval, I don’t give a damn. (I’m getting very independent in my declining years.)

  Now let me sketch the evolution of my attitude to ‘darling’ for you. I think it will cause you to smile – but if perchance introspective anecdotes of this kind (and I am much given to them, I know) bore you – you have only to say so, and I shan’t tell you any more.

  Go back a little in time to almost the eve of my Tripos, when I came out of retirement to go with Joyce and you & Aubrey to the Irish Plays. On the way home, as you may or may not remember, we had an altercation about the relative merits of the words ‘ostentatiously’ and ‘ostensibly’ in a given context. The altercation extended itself onto paper – and the last document in the case was a treatise by you on the subject, written on scribbling paper and handed to Joyce in Synagogue for delivering to me. Joyce gave me this erudite work, when I went to call upon her, the next morning – and, as she was interested in the controversy, I read her what you had to say. All went well, until I got to about the third page – and then I faltered and stopped – and then went on reading – omitting the word which had given me a shock. Joyce was quick to notice the pause, and wanted to know the cause. ‘How dare he,’ I answered obscurely, d’une voix mourante. It took her between 30 & 45 minutes to extract the reason of my distress from me – and when she did, her explanation of the phenomenon was not encouraging. ‘I expect it was just a slip of the pen,’ she said!! I must hasten to explain that at this time, I was living in a state of perpetual terror that my immoderate regard for you must be apparent to everybody – particularly you – and my interpretation of your use of ‘darling’, was that you had said to yourself, ‘Oh! well if it amuses her to be treated like a poppet, I don’t really mind one way or another,’ and had forthwith written it down. I couldn’t explain all this to Joyce – with whom I had spent hours, in the still watches of the night, protesting that I hadn’t any out-of-the-common preference for you at all – so I just sat at the bottom of her bed, crying piteously – and, of course, she was now more firmly convinced than ever, that I was quite mad.

  Ye Gods! Was there ever such a transformation. Now, I don’t mind telling you, I not only tolerate ‘darling’ – I like it! Of course, the first time I used it myself, I was shocked to the core. My pen hovered over the page for an eternity, and when I did write it down, I blamed it all onto the war-suspense, and assured myself that, of course, it wouldn’t happen again!

  At this point you will doubtless look very wise, and say that what has happened to me is that I am becoming almost normal. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s the story, for what it’s worth!

  Y’know, Gershon, sometimes I get into a wild panic at the thought about how much you know about me. Your photographic picture of my defences, must be almost as complete as the Allies’ picture of the troop concentrations on The Siegfried Line. T’aint ’ardly decent – and think of all the damage you could do, if you felt so inclined.

  Tuesday 3 October Horace has a lot of very pungent things to say about the political situation. I know they are pungent because I am able to detect a thickening and quickening of the pen-strokes whenever the words ‘Russia’ – ‘Germany’ – or ‘Chamberlain’ occur. Unfortunately, his writing, like Lois’, is quite illegible – so I can’t tell you what they are. This is a Great Sorrow to me because Horace is un genie manqué (I mean this absolutely seriously) and anything he says is worth pondering over. It was he, you know, who got me my first. He told me a story about himself and Henry James which I reproduced in my essay on Henry James in the Tripos. Unless you know Horace, it is impossible to believe the story – so the examiners said (with some truth) ‘This girl has imagination’, and gave me a First at once. (But don’t tell anybody, please, Gershon. I like the outside world to think I’m clever. There’s no point, though, in trying to deceive you – everything there is to be known about me – you know already.)

  Wednesday 4 October This is my last night in my solitary Clunemore double-bed. (I use the word ‘solitary’ graphically – not regretfully.) We’ve been here two months – and a more unpleasant two months I’ve never spent in all my life. Thank God for the accident:

  a.) because it gave me an excuse for retiring to bed when I was tired of family life, which was often.

  b.) because it kept the children quieter.

  c.) (and by far the most important of all.) It amused you to write to me often. I have often wondered whether, if there hadn’t been an accident, you’d ever have written to me at all. I have never made up my mind on this point.

  I really am too tired to write any more, Gershon. My next letter will be from London. The first thing I shall do when I get there will be to write to you (G. No?) The next will be to go to the pictures – and the rest to have my tooth mended. What a busy girl I’m going to be!

  Friday 6 October We had a loathly journey. I’ve never travelled at night on English trains before – and to think that once I used to grumble at Wagon Lits! I just didn’t know when I was lucky.

  In a moment I am going to see my dentist. I’m frightened out of my wits.

  Evening: The dentist was foul. He gave me a cocaine injection, and drilled for two hours – long after the numbness had worn off – and now all I have the energy to do is to lie in bed and cry weakly.

  Joyce and I pranced round the shops in a girlish way after lunch. I haven’t been inside a shop since the accident, and I bought myself a beautiful gas-mask case as a gesture.

  Monday 9 October It is very strange to be back in London again. I have shopped – braved the black-out with my father to see I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany7 – which I thought lacked co-ordination, and was far too documentary – besides, Miss Steele is very plain, I think, which, aesthetically, makes a difference – besides which, I don’t like her voice – and I have met Prince Axel of Denmark at a lunch party. No! he was not Prince Hamlet, nor anything like his illustrious forbear – the only thing he has in common with Hamlet is the potentiality to say with truth: ‘I’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.’ If example is a satisfactory method of instruction – he would. Never have I seen a man shovel down so large & miscellaneous an assortment of alcoholic liquors. It was all very instructive. Today, I am seeing Mr Back (the surgeon) and the eye specialist. If they give a satisfactory verdict – then it’s Cambridge for me on Thursday afternoon.

  It was unsubtle of you, dear, not to see that, if I have never been serious about anything else in all my life, I am serious about not wanting to be married. Mr Kean, who hardly knows me at all, realized that I was frightened of erotic love (of which, everyone tells me, there is a certain amount in every marriage) and you, who know more about me than is good for either of us, don’t seem to realize that that is the most serious obstacle to marriage which could possibly exist – and it’s not that I don’t know anything about it either. Practically speaking, of course, I don’t know anything about it – but otherwise I do. From the ages of 11–20 (inclusive) I brooded over a morbid and depressing infatuation for Gerta’s cousin/young man. I did not like him – nor was I amused by him – but he was very attractive and exciting. It was not until I met him by accident in the theatre, at a performance of the Three Sisters,8 after which he took Jean & me out to coffee, that I realized that he’d bored me excruciatingly for years. (His comments on ‘The Three Sisters’ were as banal as they were insensitive. Silly ass.)

  I shall not write to you again before we meet – (unless I owe you a letter before then). I don’t like my mother’s caustic comments – though she doesn’t mean to offend me – besides, there’s a lot in what she says (by implication). You think so too, don’t you.

  Monday 16 October [Girton Corner, Cambridge] You’ll be gratified to hear, darling, that Miss Bradbrook has told the Board of Research Studies (by
letter) that my Literary Judgement is penetrating & accurate.

  I’m feeling quite clever today – so if Mr Bennett gives me half a chance when I see him this afternoon, I’ll ask him what he thinks about supervision. I dare do all that may become a girl, who dares do more is none.

  Sunday 22 October I’m very sorry I was so querulous this afternoon, darling. So sorry, in fact, that I’d probably have cried if Aubrey hadn’t been here. (Poor Aubrey!) I was fantastically tired & I had a headache – but that was no excuse. It was an impossible way of returning your kindliness & hospitality – (pause for a semi-tearful brood on the whole thing).

  You can come & see me any evening you like, if you like, provided you telephone and/or write and say you’re coming. I now have no sherry, coffee, squashed-fly biscuits, nor any other form of sustenance to offer you, (except Sanatogen, of course, you can have lots of that) – only me, trying hard not to look like Lois – and probably not being able to think of anything to say – so if you’d rather stay at home or prowl about on your Quest for Her – you may. I shall understand.

  Monday 6 November I skipped out of bed this morning just as though I’d never had a headache in my life. The red streaks of dawn (is dawn red? I’ve never seen it, so I wouldn’t know – but popular fiction has a tradition to that effect) were just appearing in the sky. Clutching my dressing gown about me and pushing wisps of hair out of my eyes, I tottered downstairs and found your letter (in a carefully disguised hand – which I recognized at once) side by side with a very fat one from Sheila. I opened yours first – and, darling, the photograph is the concrete embodiment of the Platonic idea of a photograph of you. It is not flattering – it is ideally and triumphantly Right. This morning (because nobody is coming to see me today), it is sitting on my dressing table. I don’t think I’m going to be able to do any work – so perhaps there are advantages in les convenances, which dictate that I should keep it out of sight when I have visitors! Thank you for taking so much trouble over it – it was worth waiting for.

  Sheila’s letter was Beautiful, too. She lives in a welter of Air Raids and domesticity. She ascribes her engagement to Allan’s whirlwind courtship, when he spent a week in Edinburgh prior to being called up. There was nothing to do but court, she says, social life in Edinburgh being practically at a standstill. Not, mind you, but what they’ve often courted before – but, (in case you’d forgotten) there’s a war on now – so everything is different. She is a little worried about Hamish & Charlotte who are now practically indistinguishable in looks, voice and ideas. They remind her of Paolo & Francesca,9 she says. Their spirits have mingled and they are One. (Don’t misunderstand me, Charlotte is, in every sense of the word, a nice girl and Hamish’s intentions, though undefined, have been strictly honourable from the first.) This is the old Sheila – and I’m very happy at having re-established contact with her.

  Tuesday 5 December My dear love, I have News for you. I am going to have a job at the War Office, in the vac, as assistant to Public Adorer No. 1, and so I shall be in direct contact with Leslie for a whole month. I shall come to London by train from Middleton every day. Isn’t that Beautiful? Ma told me, all casual-like, on the telephone this morning. I was strook-aback.

  And, darling, now that I’m such a Personage, you will come to tea at four on Thursday, won’t you? After all, an hour one way or another won’t affect your work much, will it? – but oh! the difference to me!

  Thursday 14 December I’ve had a most fantastic day, darling, which is a Good Thing, because there’s been no time for my imagination to sit on brood (a lovely expression, I’ve always felt – and from one of my best-known plays too).

  Miss Sloane introduced me to her underling – a Miss Fox, whose underling I am to be (and damn me if she isn’t a fully fledged Public Adorer as well! This thing is becoming a cult – but I’m pledged to it now and there is no escape10).

  Then Miss Sloane said, ‘I think Mr Hore-Belisha wants to see you,’ and she flung open the double doors – and there I was in his room. That was at three – at three-five he’d already found out why I love Malory – at 3.10 he was asking me what position the Jews held in Mediaeval Society (if any) and at 3.15 – I was giving him a lecture on Chivalric Love Poetry, and religious mania as exemplified in the ‘Book of Margery Kempe’.11 He just sat and nodded all the while – and then he sighed and said, ‘My dear, you must come in and read me some of these things. I feel like the child in Robert Louis Stevenson’s fable – everyone laughed at him for playing with toys – and so he put them away in a cupboard, saying that he’d play with them again when he was grown up and no-one would dare laugh at him, then – and then he forgot all about them. You have opened the cupboard for me, and I have caught a glimpse of the things I had forgotten. Please come and read to me sometimes.’

  It was very beautiful, darling – and then the crash came. PA No. 1, who had been standing by chafing all this while, now bustled busily forward. ‘Certainly, certainly,’ she said briskly, more in anger than in sorrow, ‘Eileen will be glad to read to you when we’ve got rid of this war – but you’ve got to see the Prime Minister in five minutes – and you put off Lady Dawson of Penn,’ (Leslie here interjected irritably, ‘Damn the woman’ and PA No. 1 looked as shocked as a PA can permit herself to look) ‘so as we could go through the points of your interview together’ – (glowering at me) ‘and we haven’t.’ Whereat she seized me by the shoulder and pushed me out – shutting the door with a determined click. Not So Beautiful.

  However, my work is to consist of filing his letters from constituents (y’know – Mr X has rheumatism – and Mr Hore-Belisha did say at the last election that he’d be pleased to help and advise his constituents – and someone said horse-embrocation was a good thing – what did Mr H. B. think – and so on) and also to help Public Adorer to compile a War-File – of all his successes & failures and speeches, and all the nice comforting things we’ve done for the troops – bein’ an uncle to them and all that – you know.

  I ought to be doing this now – but as this is my first afternoon, Miss Fox is being kind to me and letting me have an hour off to write a Very Important letter which must catch the evening mail.

  Nor marble nor the gilded monuments of War Chiefs shall outshine this powerful claim, Darling.12

  Saturday 16 December Leslie said good-morning with a sardonic chuckle, and said he hoped I was finding my work under Miss Sloane as inspiring as Mediaeval Literature – and turning to Miss Fox, he asked her, whether she had noticed that the office had definitely acquired Tone since they’d got a future University Don to do their odd jobs. He then grumbled at Miss Sloane for telling him he was dining at the Admiralty when he wasn’t, and then wandered back into his own room, calling vociferously for his mid-morning pills, and some hot whisky and milk to wash them down with!

  Sunday 24 December It occurred to me on Friday, Gershon, that there was One Person in my life of whom you know nothing – namely Duncan. Now all my friends except you know about me and Duncan – and it is not Right that you should be kept in ignorance any longer. (Hamish knows, Victor knows – and of course Joyce & Jean & Sheila know – even the Outer Circle, like Ismay & Joan Pearce know – true Aubrey does not – but that is difficult, as you will readily understand when I tell you All.)

  You see, when I say to any of my friends suddenly in the middle of a conversation, ‘Excuse me, I must see Duncan’, they know that in another idiom this would read ‘Please teacher, may I be excused’, and they smile kindly, for Duncan is beloved of them all – and they also are liable to desert me for him, at any moment of the day – and this is how he came by his name.

  As I have often told you, in Drumnadrochit I live next door to the bathroom (and Duncan) and, when we have a house-full of people, there are often battering queues of devotees waiting outside his door (true, we have a Poor Relation established in the garden – but few people care to venture out into the blast on cold mornings to see a mere lateral b
ranch of the family) and one morning, when there were more banging than usual on the bathroom door, I found myself murmuring absently ‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking’,13 – and of course from that time forth Duncan it was and is and ever more shall be.

  Merry Christmas (but don’t tell your parents I said so) and Happy New Year, Darling.

  Saturday 30 December What you’ve had to put up with from your grandmother is just nothing at all compared with what I have had to suffer from my brothers. They want vociferously to know which I prefer, you or Aubrey. Lionel is sure I prefer you; Dicky thinks it’s Aubrey. They asked me all sorts of personal questions about you both, to which I replied primly & non-committally. ‘Which of them has nicer teeth?’ Dicky asked. I said you both had mouths full of orient pearls. ‘Which has most teeth?’ Lionel wanted to know. I said that, as far as I could tell, you both had the same number. They obviously felt at this point that a deadlock had been reached – then Lionel brightened. ‘Has either of them any gold fillings?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Gershon has two.’ Lionel positively glowed. ‘My dear,’ he said (he has a paternal way about him). ‘Mind you, I’m not urging you to marry money, but times are hard, and two gold fillings should be looked upon in the nature of an investment.’ With that I left the room but I heard the two of them discussing you & Aubrey’s chances from the next room. ‘When I was in Cambridge at half-term,’ Dicky said lyingly, ‘I went into Aubrey’s rooms and found him kissing Eileen’s photograph.’ Lionel gave a hollow laugh. ‘When I was last in Cambridge,’ he said, ‘I went into Eileen’s room and found Gershon kissing Eileen!’ ‘Good God!’ said Dicky in awe, ‘Did you?’ ‘Certainly I did,’ Lionel answered – and then there was a shuffling outside my door – and Dicky burst in to ask for confirmation!!! I was very cryptic, and he went away uncertainly scratching his head. Do your young brothers behave in this unseemly fashion, darling?