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.
Then, darling, the Sirens went – and the thought that I need not go out into the shelter sent me almost crazy with relief. I laughed hysterically and said ‘This is an Air Raid de Luxe’ and I suppose my face must have come alive because Captain Wingate suddenly realized that I was there, and turned to me & started asking questions about Cambridge & what I’d been doing there. I knew I was talking well, dear, though I sez it as obviously shouldn’t, and I told him that my major interest in Cambridge had been the study of love in Arthurian Romance. He asked me a lot of very searching questions – paused over the problem of reconciling the attitude of the church and the nobility to sexual love in the Middle Ages, and then asked me if my research had led me to consider the nature of sexual love – through its manifestations in different ages! I said not very seriously – and he said that he thought the essential pleasure of physical love and emotional love lay in pressure. (Yes, I thought, the pressure of Gershon’s arms and mouth and head and hands – but I didn’t say anything about that, darling!) He said that in the final act of love there was the joy of violation – of breaking down a barrier – but in all the less primitive manifestations of love, (he didn’t use primitive in any censorious way, of course) pressure existed in two ways – actual physical pressure – and the pressure of repressing the normal biological urge – or rather pressing it into new shapes. If the pressure is too hard it becomes painful – but gentle repression can give very great pleasure. (That’s why you and I are on the Highest Plane of All, darling.) He also put forward the theory that all civilized trends were, in their early stages, an attempt to enhance the sexual market-value of the individual. The accumulation of wealth, for instance, in the days of barter, made the owner of fine wares more alluring – and so on. We argued and danced around one another and side-stepped – and then the women went into the drawing-room – and I discovered that Mrs Wingate was a student of Malory – and a girl of very great charm and acute judgement. What a Solace, darling. I talked too fast and too loudly, but I was alive again after a day of hellish weariness – and when they left – intoxicated with the exuberance of my own verbosity, I told my parents I was going to bed and I stuck to it.
Later; Oh! darling, I’m crying – Please don’t be angry with me – I’ve been regretting that letter ever since I wrote it – I’m sorry about the photograph – Please may I keep it? – it’s got a message on the back. In it, my dear love, you are most notoriously abused – you look like one of the Comic Characters from Follow The Fleet – but it’s faintly like you and I’d like to have it. I was ungracious – but I’m so sorry, that it’s inexpressible. The remark about the pullover was meant to be in jest – tearful jest, because I was (and am) in Sorrow – but I’m not surprised it didn’t come across in the right spirit.
Of course you got full marks for Morse – I don’t need to draw myself up to MFH23 for that – I knew you would.
Thank you for not letting your new life drive a wedge between us, darling – I’m only frightened because I love you so much – It’s not really surprising, is it? (I mean that I’m frightened! It would hardly be modest of you not to think the other surprising.)
Thank you for telling me that you were ‘rather irritated by (my) clucking’ at the beginning of your letter – but I had noticed – but please, darling, don’t be irritated with me again. – I can’t help clucking – and my clucks never mean anything. Please say in your next letter that you’re not irritated any more – I knew you were going to be angry – and when I came in from Miss Sloane’s office, I sat with your letter on my knee for well over ten minutes not daring to open it.
Thursday 29 August Hell was let loose in the sky last night darling – and I slept through most of it. The Sirens went at nine and, because I thought it would be uncivil to go to bed so early I sat in the shelter until ten, knitting – and then went up to bed. When I said goodnight to them, my parents were sullenly silent – but I undressed, and in a few minutes I was asleep. Mrs Seidler woke me at two and said ‘Listen’ – and I did and I could hear the bombs crashing quite close at hand – she told me that my mother had spent the whole evening crying piteously – so I went down to the shelter as a Gesture. There were red patches in the sky from fires – and the searchlights criss-crossed like basket weave. I sat in the shelter for half-an-hour & we could still hear bombs and AA Fire – after that things quietened down – and I couldn’t stand the shelter any more – I could feel that suffocating hysteria welling up inside me as it did the other night – and I went back to bed and I slept till morning, neither hearing the All Clear or anything.
Since I’ve been kept awake o’ nights my headaches have started again – it’s as though the bones of my skull had been battered in. My mother says that unless I agree to spending my nights in the shelter, she’ll send me out of London – Lionel suggested Blackpool with a wicked smile – (I’d told them at dinner that the sirens had never sounded in Blackpool since the war began) and after that she said no more.
You know, darling, I don’t think women discuss the ‘unmentionable’ topics, which all men talk of when they’re among themselves. Some of the dirty-minded little perverts at school used to stand in corners and smack their lips over pornographic talks – but they always stopped when I came into the room. Doris collected & retailed stories of hair-raising obscenity – but they didn’t offend – because she was so objective about them. Jean is different – Her conversation isn’t frankly & healthy bawdy in the Chaucerian manner, as I imagine that kind of conversation is among the nicest men, it is unpleasant & suggestive – and I should think hers is the idiom, verbal & atmospheric, of women who do discuss these things – jest – but I think it’s the exception rather than the rule.
I must go now and help my mother choose Sheila’s & Allan’s wedding present. They want an old book. They’re getting married tomorrow at 3 in Audley St (St Mark’s Church) & their reception is to be at Claridge’s.
Please forgive me for clucking & snapping, darling – but suppose you suddenly found yourself in possession of the Kohinoor diamond, wouldn’t your nerves be a bit frayed at the thought that the whole world was striving to take it from you by fair means or foul? I think you would – but I’ll try not to cluck again – I only want to please you.
1 A 1940 propaganda historical drama about a village defying tyranny.
2 Military Intelligence.