Wednesday 21 August Lionel & Dicky, on hearing of Nurse’s engagement, asked wistfully when I intended to Follow Suit. Lionel thought Antony Ellenbogen would be a nice name for my first-born. Dicky favoured Winston S. Eban! Lionel said oh! no, the country would be Overrun with Winstons in the Coming Generation – besides, I was, after all a literary specialist though, of course, Dicky couldn’t be expected to know All the implications of ‘Antony’ – Dicky (who had thought Lionel had chosen Antony as a compliment to him – Dicky’s name is Anthony) shrunk from his F. H. to normal & withdrew from the Discussion. Lionel added that Eban was a trivial little name. He, for his part, preferred the Rich Resonance of Ellenbogen. (What then would he say of Kazen Ellenbogen if he Knew All, dear? One day, I must Tell him.)
Darling, while I was in my bath the other day a Great Sorrow Swept Over me – sorrow that you & I had never mollocked on your sofa at King’s. What a waste, as my Grandmother said when she was sick as a result of over-eating at Dicky’s circumcision party. (He was circumcised on the Day of Atonement.) ‘What a waste’ was a favourite expression of my grandmother’s.
Joy Blackaby has just written to me saying, ‘Whether it’s love or the motor accident you’re certainly a pleasanter person than you were’! Look what you’ve done for me, dear.
Thursday 22 August Thank you for your letter in Morse, darling – but don’t do it again. It has a stultifying effect on your style. Lord Nathan did Pa & me much honour at the Dorchester Lunch.15 We were at the same table as his mother & brother & Mr Oppenheimer. I was sandwiched between Pa & Mr Oppenheimer – who was all Gracious Civility. He said he couldn’t see a trace of the accident – and told me coyly & In Confidence that he was dining with Fanny that evening. I will encounter Darkness like a bride, his look seemed to say – and hug it in my arms.16 Sir John Anderson was dull to yawning point, but he told one nice story about an Anderson shelter. He was investigating the damage at Croydon last Friday & he came to an enormous bomb crater in a working-man’s back garden. The man pointed to a few scraps of shattered metal at the bottom of the crater and said rather shyly ‘That was my Anderson Shelter’. ‘Oh!’ said Sir John – rather fatuously, as he admitted, himself – ‘You weren’t in it then?’ ‘No,’ said the man, ‘The warning sounded too late for me to be able to get there.’ He also told of a mother who turned angrily to her fifteen-year-old daughter who was quietly reading in the shelter and said: ‘Shut that book, Mary & pay attention to the air-raid.’
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,