and on the wrong side of the road. The nearly run-over wing commander was very, very mad. Only much effort, not helped by Mickey's merry laughter as she sat in the van, destruction right and left, got her out of being put on a charge.
21 March 1940
In the afternoon Frances and Evans, with the solemn, nervously smiling faces of people who know their expressions ought to be sad, came to say, ‘We came to tell you something dreadful has happened. Oliver's husband has been killed.’ Oliver used to work with me; she's only been married six weeks; her husband was one of the Hendon sergeant pilots. He crashed near Birmingham and the plane caught fire.
Later, I went into our officers' room and reminded Annie that I was having Wednesday off for Barbara's wedding, and Mrs Burley, the Code and Cipher Officer, said she too was going to a wedding on Wednesday. I said it couldn't be the same one and she said ‘Howroyd’, and I said ‘David’, and the whole room shrieked because it is the same one.
After tea: sitting in the Recreation Room on guardroom duty, hearing more details about Oliver's husband, and everybody telling other dreadful accidents.
24 March 1940
Yesterday evening Bridget, Boompsie and I went to a dance at the Overseas Club to meet Canadians. Before I went I knew I was going to enjoy it, despite spots on my face through overeating and not being energetic enough. I had one of my moods when nothing mattered. Anyway the spots were only few and small and make-up covered them.
When we got there a Paul Jones18 was in progress and the end of it found me with an officer: very Canadian, very tight and a very good dancer. While others danced decorously around, we trucked and shagged and said ‘ha cha cha’, all his instructions to me being prefaced with a ‘honey child’. I felt like the whole of Gone With the Wind. By the time the next Paul Jones was over I was somewhat weary and ended that with a young French Canadian soldier who took me to supper and with whom I spent the rest of the evening. He's twenty-two and his name is Gerry. He's not good looking nor very well bred but he's young and fresh and I liked him a lot. I enjoyed it all.
At the end both of us wanted to make a date. I was only able to tell him my address and as he's new to London and doesn't speak much English I doubt if it registered; pity because he was fun.
This morning I was woken by Bridget at 7.30, said ‘what the hell’ and went to sleep till 9.30, when I had to tear to work without any breakfast. I had meant to have a quiet afternoon reading and gardening and having a necessary bath, but Eric phoned up and said he was free till seven o'clock, so I went up to town and we went to the zoo. He asked me out next Friday. I only have a French class, which I could have postponed, but I heard myself refusing. I cannot accept every time he asks me.
That beastly sergeant who wouldn't give the men soft fried bread has been put on a charge for swiping coal; I'm very glad.
28 March 1940
This new diary is much too small but it is all that the shop had. I'm starting it off anyway in proper style with a description of Barbie's wedding. Yesterday, a quarter to two saw me waiting for a bus outside Simpson's in Piccadilly. I was looking very smart and clean with my hair newly set, my buttons shining and I was wearing my Moss Bros best blue.
This part of London was sleek and prosperous with its offices and ‘not-having-to-think-about-having-to-take-a-taxi’ people. The sun was shining on its large solid buildings.
In the church I sat by Beasle, a girl from Shell, and I was hardly seated when the congregation rose and in came the bride. I suppose all brides are beautiful but it was hard to believe that for the last two years I had worked and played and talked and eaten with so wonderful looking a person. I couldn't see them at the altar very well, nor hear David's replies, but Barbara's voice was steady and distinct. Then they went up to the altar and knelt down by it together. I saw them hold each other's hands and I said over and over and over in my head, don't kill David. There was a pause, silent and excited and expectant, when they came out of the vestry and then the organ burst out ‘Here Comes the Bride’ and they came past us, smiling and married.
I was a bit wary about the reception. The one wedding I's been to before had a reception that I hated: I's not known anyone and I was lost and embarrassed and shy. I was grateful and glad therefore when all Barbara's relatives I had met at her twenty-first birthday party came and welcomed me with at least an externally perfect sincerity. After a series of champagnes I began to love everyone present. My shyness melted and giggles replaced it. Peter and another boy and girl and I grouped in a corner and collected all the available champagne and got to that lovely floating stage where everything was very very funny. Occasionally I detached myself and chatted animatedly to total strangers, but I always came back to Peter, the Cunninghams' very nice cousin, and Biddy and Patsy, Barbara's almost-as-nice-as-her sisters.
After my fourth champagne there was one moment when I felt worried because things really were getting rather odd and words slipped about in my mouth. However, I rallied all my will-power and kept Biddy by me, who has a head like a rock even if only fifteen. She and Barbara are very alike, while Patsy and I are the silly ones. Then I formally adopted all the Cunninghams, arranged with them and Peter to go down for a weekend and was led by Biddy to my hat and gas mask. By great concentration I got to Mother's office to tell her that the bride carried a lovely wreath of spring flowers.19
1 April 1940
Coming back here in the Tube last night I thought, ‘This can't be real, I'm dreaming a nightmare, people can't be as ugly as that row opposite me.’ They had faces like drag-coloured plasticine pulled by grubby fingers into grotesque imitations of human faces. I could hardly bear looking at their ugliness. Then other people came in and made it more endurable: a young soldier with a face like a cheerful Walt Disney dwarf, a red-cheeked baby with a head circled with small ginger curls and a woman with a pale face, hollow cheeks and a long lovely mouth.
On Saturday at home it was sunny and I walked over to Esher to change my library book. Weekends are almost the only time I get for reading now. In the weekdays I'm busy living. Books show you so much though. This weekend I had a good haul: A Life of Christ, Lewis Golding's The Jewish Problem and seven plays of 1939, including an excellent one by Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes, and Terence Rattigan's very thin and very empty After the Dance.
Eric has a week's leave this week. I am seeing Walt Disney's Pinocchio and two plays with him. He suggested that we went to see Cousin Muriel: I don't think he likes serious plays very much but he thinks I do.
4 April 1940
Last night Eric and I went to see Cochran's (I thought disappointing) Lights Up. I'm beginning to be very fond of Eric. The trouble with youth is we are brought up to believe in and expect a Romeo and Juliet romance and that comes so rarely. If we were taught to expect nothing romantic from life, if we were only taught to see life intelligently, clear of literature's ideas of love, if we could only have adult contact with the other sex, we would be saved so much disillusion. If only we didn't want eternal love. My only hope is that by the time I get to be thirty I may have gotten rid of moonlight
