Wednesday 24 July Darling, my remark about your last letter being ‘distant’ wasn’t a rebuke. There’s no need to apologize. All your letters are a Solace, whether you have any news or not. The tone of patient exasperation in this letter (I mean your letter, which I’ve just received) is more than justified. I try not to cluck, darling – but it’s no good. I know that I’m adding to your irritation at a time when you’re already restless & irritated. I know that you’d come & see me if you could – That’s the real reason why I’m such a hopelessly inadequate Solace. What you want is sympathy & amusement – and all you get is cluck. Damn you, Eileen, you’d be much better dead. (I’m not suggesting that you think this, though you well might – but I do. I’m sickeningly angry with Eileen Alexander. She hasn’t any balance or any control. She professes to love you & all she can do is worry you. She’s egocentric and a fool – and oh! so ludicrously inept. Tell her once & for all time, to let you alone, darling, and find a Solace worthy of you – a solace who will make you laugh & feel light-hearted & young when you see her, who has life & colour & charm, not one who can only cry & clamour and look pale, not one who would see you ill rather than away from her.)
Monday 29 July I had a letter from Aubrey on Saturday. He goes around the countryside in a car (with or without Attendant Sergeant – It All Depends) ostensibly engaged upon Detailed Reconnaissance – but really drinking Gallons of tea beside the Wye. He’s in Great Solace. Pte Nightingale is sure he (Aubrey) is winning the War – Aubrey is not so sure – but he finds Pte Nightingale’s devotion & loyalty (In Spite of All) Very Beautiful. (All this is, of course, my idiom – not Aubrey’s.)
I hope you’ll find the work interesting in the Air Force, my dear love. It isn’t dangerous, is it? Oh! please God don’t let it be dangerous. Darling, it would be so humiliating to be in Grade II (feet) that I’m almost glad you’re ineligible for Special Duties. Grade II (eyes) is an Intellectual Grade – All the Best People are in it – It’s an honour to be in Grade II (eyes). But Grade II (feet). Oh! no, dear.
Wednesday 31 July My mother & I had a very dull day with Ismay & her mother at King’s Langley yesterday. We looked at the new house that they’ve bought. It has a lovely garden – but nearly all vegetables. Talk about dig for victory – what with the Girl Guides & the Canadian Soldiers Club – and the fruit-bottling – and the sock-knitting – they’re winning the war with a purposefulness unparalleled. It’s all very Disconcerting.
Tuesday 6 August I had a long letter from Joan Aubertin this morning. She says her sister, Alice, solemnly assures her that Chamberlain may not recover from his operation – which was an attempt to put guts into him! (Alice’s idiom – not mine.) She hasn’t heard from Ian again – and she’s had her eyebrows plucked. She says the effect is a Terrific Solace – but I can only say, what a sorrow. She was knitting me a square for my blanket – but the dog got hold of it – it’s Alice’s dog, she says defensively, as though this was enough to exempt her from All Responsibility – but, on the other hand, it was her knitting – ah! Well.
I’m lunching with Pa & Mr Gisborne at the ‘Cheshire Cheese’ today. I gather the food is good but Beefy – but it was a favourite haunt of Dr Johnson – and I’m going there in search of Resolution – the Resolution to Write – a quality which the Great Cham of Literature had, above all others. (A wonderful man, Dr Johnson – the greatest prose stylist of all time.)
Pa & Mr Gisborne talked war across the table & I just sat steeping myself in the Atmosphere. Of course, the place has been exploited – The menus are distinctly Ye Olde … in Gothic lettering with deckle-edging – and there’s an iron grid sentimentally protecting the step worn down by Dr Johnson, Charles Dickens & others. The café was rebuilt in 1667 & hasn’t been touched since. It’s down a tiny alley off Chancery Lane in the city & it has a wrought iron sign over the door. The fact that the shop opposite assures all comers in heavy white enamelling that it sells All Birth Control Appliances, illustrates the profundity that Time Marches On – but otherwise you’d never suspect it. The rooms are low and square with flagged floors covered in saw-dust – and heavy oak panelling & benches – leaded glass, old pewter, and framed playbills, 18th century newspapers, and great mugs of clay pipes everywhere.
Wednesday 7 August I’m very tired, dear, – I’ve done nothing all day but go with my mother to the butchers to help her buy several miles of miscellaneous sausages – and take my shoes to be repaired. I woke up this morning with a great Longing upon me for tripe & lemon sauce – I mentioned this to my mother who said hesitantly that she wasn’t sure that it was Kosher. We rang up Mrs Greenberg to find out what she had to say about it – but she wasn’t very helpful – she said it wasn’t on her Forbidden List – but that she’d never seen it in a Kosher butcher’s shop. We approached Mr Rubenstein in some trepidation, and timidly put the question to him – He emerged from an Outsize in Bowler Hats, and stood for a moment bemused and blinking in the sunlight. He murmured something about having to get a Certificate for it – and any way they weren’t issuing it since the war – but the major problem still remains unsolved – and to whom should I turn in my bewilderment but my solace? Tell me, darling, is tripe Kosher or is it not? Everybody Hedges so, when confronted with this seeming-simple question that I begin to believe that it must have some Awful Mystic Significance – like the Question in the Fertility Rites of Antiquity. If it has any such Significance, you will know it. (After all we know Everything between us, don’t we, dear?) So Tell Me All.
Thursday 8 August Miss Sloane rang up this morning to ask me if I’d like to become PA No. 2 again for a time – if I had nothing better to do – I said I had nothing better to do (and I said it more in Sorrow than in Anger, darling) and promised to call at Leslie’s Office on Monday & do what I could.
Oh! and one other news item before I go to sleep. Lord Lloyd’s secretary phoned Pa to ask whether I’d got a Civil Service job yet. Lord Lloyd, he said, was particularly anxious to be kept informed. This may mean nothing or it may mean a great deal. I’m not banking on it as a Great Hope, but it’s encouraging, isn’t it, dear? I’ll never say another word about Lord L. He’s really been extraordinarily kind in the matter.
Saturday 10 August Pa & I had Words this morning – because neither of us were smoking. He said I did nothing but sit in my room & write letters – He hoped I was proud of my War Effort, he added acidly. I said that I only stayed in my room to Keep Out of the way of his Incivilities. My mother intervened soothingly and there the matter ended.
Darling, please don’t start your letters ‘Dear Eileen’ – I always feel as though you’re about to Congratulate me on the birth of my third son, or ask me to dinner to meet your deceased wife’s sister – such an interesting woman, you’d have so much in common – or offer me a ticket in the House to hear your Budget speech – or ask me to return that book I borrowed from you in ’86 – and I always miss the Solace of the first page, because I’m busy adjusting my mind to the queer convention which moves you to start a letter to me in the same terms as you would start a letter to your grocer – ordering a pound of tooth-picks. Plunge straight into your letter, darling, please, and then I won’t have the disconcerting feeling that you’re writing ‘Dear Eileen’ to gain time – & thinking ‘What on earth shall I say to her today?’
I came back home from the cinema to find a long & Beautiful letter from Aubrey waiting for me. He says he despatched one to you by the same post. Don’t I get your friends to write to you, darling. Aubrey is Running His Regiment. He is being Exploited & Overworked by the High Command. Aubrey has Told Me All. He has unburdened himself to me in what some people might call a Big Way (only that’s not my idiom). ‘Now you’ve got me pouring myself out,’ he says & goes on to describe the Company Commander as ‘an elderly commercial traveller with a nauseous accent, no knowledge of war but an expert grasp of cross-bow tactics picked up as a subaltern at Agincourt, periodically