Letters to a Sister (12 page)

I am seeing Middleton Murry to-morrow, a pacifist who says stop the war; I shall get out of him his alternative to war or surrender, if he has one. But he is too snakey to be pinned down, I think. I wish I knew how much there was in that American article on invasion. I am a disbeliever in invasion myself.
⁷⁰
Much love. Take what care of yourself you can in the circs. I have just been told on the telephone that Regent's Park is ‘black with crashed enemy planes'. I must go and look, but fear they will be like the ones round Liss—a milkman's dream.

Your loving

E.R.M.

Flat
7,
8, Luxborough St, W.1
Wednesday evening [11 September, 1940]

Dearest Jeanie,

... I hope you aren't having as noisy a night as we are. It began just as I got home, and has got worse ever since. I never heard such a deafening & continuous pounding. It sounds, of course, in Luxborough St and Paddington St, but they are apt to sound closer than they are. The house rocks—but I read to-day that houses can rock a lot without harm. I went down for a bit and cheered up Mrs Gresty
⁷¹
, and advised her to spend the nights in a shelter for the present. I do hope
both that you aren't getting it badly too, and that you won't have to go out to-night after those wretchedly ill-timed babies. I hope they all get christened Siren and Air-Raid, to punish them.

Thank you both
so
much for the 3 eggs. If I had known there were 3 I wouldn't have taken them all, you can have none left, but it is wonderful to see 3 eggs together, almost a miracle;
one
is remarkable. I daren't cook one yet, as it is better not to turn the gas on while bombs are about, I believe, but later in the night, if these pests should recede, I shall. I think they are revenging themselves to-night for the Reichstag and Potsdam,
⁷²
which perhaps we should never have touched, it is like throwing stones into a hornets' nest—oh dear, this is
too
much I must get my wax balls. I enclose a box of these, I find them a great help (pick the fluff off first). I am expecting my ceiling to collapse, and the furniture from the flat above to come through on to me…. How fantastic life has become. I wonder if London will soon lie in ruins, like Warsaw and Rotterdam. I hear planes hurtling down, I think—I wonder where. It will be interesting to know to-morrow. I rather wish I was ambulancing to-night.

Thursday.
After all most of the noise last night was our naval guns, rushing about on lorries and roaring continuously. I hope they'll go on, though it quite prevents sleep. Margaret has just rung up to know how we both are getting on. Letters take a long time.

Very much love.

E.R.M.

… Oh dear, the night attack has just begun.

Monday [23 September, 1940]
⁷³

Thank you so much for your card—almost a miracle, for it left Romford early this morning and reached me this afternoon. I meant to write before this and thank you for the lovely night on Friday. I missed some big smashes close here, which must have made a great noise. They did last night too. I am getting a burying-phobia, result of having seen so many houses and blocks of flats reduced to piles of ruins from which the people can't be extracted in time to live, and feel I would rather sleep in the street, but know I mustn't do this. However, to-night is one of my ambulance nights, when I sit in a nice dug-out (when not out driving).... I know a pacifist who makes it his war work to go round the tubes spraying the shelterers with disinfectant in the night—very brave….

I think faith in tables is important.
⁷⁴
I think I shall put my mattress under one sometimes. There is a ruined block of flats near here where the bath is hanging upright over the street; I keep thinking, suppose one was having a bath when the bomb fell, what a scene it would be! I hardly dare undress. I feel like an R.C. nun about it….

Much love.

R.

Thursday [26 September, 1940]

Dearest Jeanie,

I had a great stroke of luck to-day. I went to Selfridge's again (really about something else) and they told me they had just unearthed 3 more Lilo mattresses from their bombed dept., so I got one. This is really lucky, as they told me yesterday they saw very little prospect of getting any more,
and anyhow not for several weeks…. Mrs Gresty thought it a good idea for me to sleep in the passage under the stairs on bad nights, so I will try it to-morrow night.

Last night here was less bad than the one before, I think, but a lot of fire-bombs & fires (also, I gather, in Berlin). From one head-line in a newspaper I thought Quisling had been dropped on us as a bomb; it read ‘Quisling dropped'.
⁷⁵
It would be marvellous if he was, one night….

I have been offered another Home from Home, by the Gollanczs, in Berkshire, any week-end I like, or any other time. People are
very
kind. But I much prefer Romford, of course; tho' I would like to see the G.'s sometime, he knows all there is to know and a bit more, so I might spend some Sunday there. But as to burialphobia, I don't think I shall have it under the stairs; in fact, it is already wearing off, and may have been a passing disease, induced by seeing too many ruins.

The German press says it will now ‘hack us to mincemeat', and that Churchill is a fiend in human shape—but he has been that for ages, of course, and they should think of a new thing….

Your loving
E.R.M.

... I enclose
Christian News Letter.
⁷⁶
Now he is off on dancing.
⁷⁷

Saturday [28 September, 1940]

Dearest Jeanie,

Thank you
so
much for sending me that lovely cape. I shall certainly wear it, and it will be most comforting below the stairs, but I shall count it yours, and return it you later, as you may easily have need of it in bed if ill…. [The] Lilo... is v.g.; I pump it up by mouth, as there are no pumps that fit it, the Lilo pumps having long ago been sold out. I took it to the ambulance station on Thursday night, blew it up, and put it ready for use on the floor, but after all we had a v. busy night, and I went out with an ambulance from 10 till 4 a.m., so never used it. Bombing was v. bad all round that night; I attended an incident in Camden Town—two fallen houses, a great pile of ruins, with all the inhabitants buried deep. The demolition men worked & hacked away very skilfully and patiently, and we all encouraged the people inside, telling them they would be out in a short time, but of course they weren't. There was a mother and a crying baby, who were rescued at 10.0 next morning after I had gone. I drove to hospital another mother, who had left two small children under the ruins. I told her they would be out very soon—but they never were, they were killed. The demolition men are splendid—we passed milk down to the baby, and water for the others, and the men kept saying to them ‘It'll be all right, dear. Don't you worry'. They are very nice and matey. I like their way of calling every one (including the ambulance women) ‘mate'. So polite, too. One of them was using some language about the bombs that whistled round, when his companion saw me just behind and said ‘Look out, lady here', and he said ‘Sorry, Miss, excuse my language'. I assured him I felt the same way myself. They are, of course, so used to the job (every night) that they can throw it off when they are relieved, and think about other things—I suppose it is all in the night's work to them. Perhaps it will be
to me sometime, but I am still an amateur at it and it rather gets one down. One wonders all the time how many people are at the moment alive under some ruin, and how much they are suffering in body and mind. But it doesn't do to think much in these days, or to start wondering what ‘There were a few casualties' covers. Last night I was at home, and took the Lilo down below stairs, and slept a lot, right through the All Clear. There is much less noise there than upstairs. I was very warm in my sleeping-bag on the Lilo. I do hope you too got some sleep. Was it bad round you yesterday? Planes seem to have crashed down all about South England in the afternoon raid. And South-East bombing this morning. We saw a flight of bombers passing over here yesterday afternoon, but nothing dropped near here till night. Yes, Dakar has set us back badly. De Gaulle obviously misjudged.
⁷⁸
The Senegalese will be badly affected by it….

Very much love.

R.

Thursday [3 October, 1940]

Dearest Jeanie,

I got a bus at once, and rode to Aldgate in 45 minutes. A very ugly ride, of course—
how
dismal East London is! Very few ruins to be seen; I imagine they are more by the Docks. You see many more on the drive through the City, on the 25 bus—these are really impressive, far more so than the East End, though so much less is said about them, perhaps because they are more damaging to our business life. It makes slow going, as there are so many diversions because of craters. I haven't had so good a view of them before. I was home by 11.0.

Thank you so much for the night, in your perfectly-appointed house, where the visitor's life runs on oiled wheels and the visitor is a pampered drone lying on a soft warm couch and waking to news and breakfast, and everything found but beer, as one used to say to servants. It makes a very light spot in the week, particularly of course seeing you, as I am not only out for comfort and physical pleasures. The
Christian News Letter
is getting much too physical, I consider; this cult of digging and of physical training is more medical than Christian. I shall drop it if it goes on like this much longer.

It looks like being misty again to-night, and we hope for another quiet night. I shall be at the ambulance, where some people get bored by a quiet night and having nothing to do but sit and wait for calls. And if one could be called out to incidents of smash, fire and flood without casualties, as I was the other night, it would be very nice, of course.

Very much love, & to Nancy.

E.R.M.

Wednesday night, 9.45 p.m.
[between 9 October and
27
November, 194°]

Dearest Jeanie,

I had a most odd journey home from Liverpool Street. The Central London tube was so crammed with thousands of shelterers that I couldn't get near the platform at all, so pushed my way out again, with some difficulty, and took the Metropolitan as far as Moorgate Street, where I had to change for King's Cross. At King's Cross, where I got out, I found a raid had begun and the station was locked so that I couldn't get out, so I had to take a train on the Northern line and get out at Euston, from which I got a lift in a taxi half way home and walked the rest, among bombs and guns
and flashes that lit my way. When I got here I found Luxbro' House deserted except for a policeman guarding the door, and a note from Mrs Gresty the caretaker for me, to say they had been advised to evacuate, because of the bomb nearby. So I am here alone for the night, hoping that if the bomb goes off it won't break my windows, which I have opened top & bottom. I have been sitting on the stairs by the street door for a time, talking to the policeman and giving him a drink of sherry, which I always keep in the flat for people who drop in. He says he is ‘scared blue' very often, and so are all the police, firemen, wardens etc. I think he was glad to stand in the doorway and not outside in the street, as the bombs have been falling very near. There are obviously some more fires somewhere. As Mrs Gresty and the others below are away, I half think of taking a mattress down below the stairs and staying there till the fury abates a little. It probably makes no difference, but one feels more comfortable there, and that, as we agreed, is the main thing. The policeman says they are certainly attacking this district rather hard just now—perhaps for the B.B.C., or the Telephone Exchange, or the line of stations between Euston and Paddington.

It was a pathetic sight to see the shelter crowds in the Tube, dossing down so uncomfortably for the night, sitting leaning against a wall, sometimes with a baby in a suit-case (open, of course). I suppose it is the warmth that brings them there instead of to the shelters. The policeman said he thought there was danger of people's nerves giving way badly, if this goes on much longer. That would be a great disaster, and could make things very difficult.

I expect you have the same horrid zoomers over head that I have (or others like them); sometimes he shuts his engine off before he drops his bombs; the policeman says that is caddish, and perhaps it is, but it is difficult to discriminate in this business, so much of it seems pretty caddish—or rather barbarian, that is an apter word. I do hope you will get some sleep to-night. How appropriate that Xmas card of
mine is just now—the one about the scare-fires, I mean, and the watchmen….

Thursday [afternoon, after lunching out].
Another night over: Luxborough still stands. But London is more and more a devastated area, and bicycling to Soho to lunch, diverted at every street by ruins, craters, and ropes, took an incredible time. I must get back now to see how the bomb is getting on. We had a lot of close ones in the night: some more in the High Street, Manchester Square, the Wallace Collection, and other streets near, including nice little Paradise Street by the public gardens opposite me. I think I shall pack some books etc. in a case, it might keep them safer in case of a cataclysm; a few pictures too. Goring says London will be razed to the ground like Warsaw & Rotterdam before they've done; but Warsaw and Rotterdam hadn't got our A.A. or Spitfires…. Very much love. It
was
nice seeing you.

Your loving
E.R.M.

Half the big Oxford St shops are now bombed. What will Aunt Mary do?

Flat
7,
8, Luxborough St, W.1
24 November, [1940]

Dearest Jeanie,

… Gilbert Murray says
all
the machinery for political and economic federation after the war is in the League. I lunched with him on Thursday; he was very nice, and had his private sugar in a lozenge box, for our apple tart….