unsentimental adult.
We had a taxi from Queens Bar to the Savoy and put our feet up on the tip-up seats opposite. Mine wouldn't quite reach.
He said, ‘Put yours on mine.’
‘They'll make your trousers dusty.’
‘It doesn't matter.’
He held both my hands.
‘Curse you.’
‘Why?’
‘For being you.’
‘I can't help it.’
I was stirred and roused so much so that I was unsatisfied and restless for some time after. I wondered what kissing with him would be like.
6 April 1940
Yesterday was one of those unpremeditated evenings that turn out fun. Frances, Mickey and I arranged to go to the pictures and half past five saw Mickey and me ready to go, pacing the pavement impatiently outside the Sergeants Mess, within which sat Frances and company sergeants chatting socially with Our Annie. Beside us in the road was Old Mort (an elderly shapeless WAAF), sitting in the hearse, which is what we have named her utility van, a horrible monster of wood and glass. However, we were not too proud to climb into it and get a lift to Colindale Station once Frances had eventually broken loose.
We found the Classic Cinema and for sixpence had the choice of any seat in the Stalls and two excellent films, one of which being The Wandering Jew. Frances and Mickey ate sherbets and chocolate cushions. I had tooth-ache and just sighed sadly when they passed the bag to each other over me. We approve very much of this cinema: as Mickey said, you even get to go to the lavatory free.
That evening we fumbled through blackout and strange streets in search of a bus stop, then we smelt it – definitely, unmistakably – fried fish and chips! We went methodically down the street smelling each shop, sometimes the aroma was strong, sometimes faint, but the source always eluded us. Finally, defeated and sorrowful, we reached the bus stop. Just as the bus approached I glanced behind me one last time and there was what we wanted. I ripped the other two from the bus, we rushed inside, purchased chips and one piece of fish for Frances, and ate them while wandering lost round Hendon.
When I got back, Beck and Bridget were in the kitchen. We talked about life and love and religion and men and survival of the individual until suddenly it was half past twelve.
10 April 1940
In the event of an air raid WAAF personnel rush to the new steel and reinforced concrete shelters, excepting the Decontamination Squad who huddle in one of the already shaken Booth Road houses.
I have got myself onto the reserve of the Decontamination Squad, a first step to removing myself from it entirely. Three parts of this is ordinary cowardice, the other quarter is my rigid determination to survive and outlast this war. With the Scandinavian invasion, the war is jolted back on us, just as we had almost forgotten it.20 We heard the wireless reports in the Recreation Room after lunch where we usually huddle over the fire, eating Milky Ways, smoking and reading the daily papers provided free for us by the RAF.
I have had to surrender my little room at last. Last night while I was at French class (for the first time I found myself speaking it fluently without hesitation and effort), the others in the house moved my belongings downstairs into the big room with two disadvantages: no privacy and more cleaning. I think and hope they felt a little guilty about it because they lit my fire and made my bed and offered to help me clean up this morning. However, provided I can keep the room from a strange WAAF invasion and get myself some curtains, cushions and carpets, I can make it reasonably comfortable.
13 April 1940
In the morning of Thursday the officer I work for snatched my Daily Express from my hand and said, ‘Hoorah, hoorah! The war will be over in six months. The Germans have done the very worst thing now’ – and a lot more hoorahs. In my heart I don't myself believe it but I spent the morning saying ‘six months of war and three months of cleaning up and I'll be in Paris by next April’.
In the afternoon we went to be inoculated and filed one by one into rugged grandeur's (the doctor's) office, to have our right arms pierced by the tetanus and our left by the anti-typhoid. I had no time to wait and think about it. Everyone else was genuinely indifferent. I didn't look at the needle. I was really quite brave – an improvement anyway on my screaming days at the dentist doorstep. ‘You'll feel awful in the evening,’ previously inoculated WAAFs told me, ‘freezing cold and nothing you can do will make you warmer.’
Accordingly, that evening I built up a colossal fire in my billet, piled blankets high on my bed with a further reserve on a chair, put on several jumpers and got to bed with a hot-water bottle, two aspirins, a box of cheeses, some broken chocolates, four buns and grapes from South Africa given to me by Bridget Prouse. I got extremely hot and soon went to sleep but the great frost came not at all. In the morning, noble to the last, I got up for breakfast. After breakfast I felt very odd and went back to bed. Finally I felt so foul I cast aside my book and unwisely toyed with the remains of last night's food. At lunchtime friends brought me a letter from Barbara. Cheered by that (she's asked me to Wales for my holidays), I tottered, pale and aching, to the Mess to work and on to a Chinese restaurant with Joyce, Mickey and Boompsie and finally feeling better to Bunty's where she and I laughed a lot about old days at school, while Mrs Goldie knitted (until she broke her needle and pulled it all undone) a year-old coat for a yet unborn baby. Eric listened and fed us with chocolates he's brought over with him for us.
16 April 1940
On Monday Boompsie and I, having no money (Boompsie is sharing my room as it is too large for one), lit the fire, turned on the wireless, got out books, mending etc. and looked sadly at two oranges, two pieces of chocolate cake and three tired tomato-flavoured cheeses. Suddenly there was a knock at the door which I, doing a French exercise and cursing, answered. And there stood Joyce with a car and £1. I pulled on my coat over my tattered slacks (my decent pair have been being cleaned for the last three weeks and I am too poor to reclaim them), my blue shirt and my yellow jacket and we drove down to the local fish and chip shop before returning to the fireside with fish and chips and lemonade and ginger beer. Joyce stayed till 11.30 and we laughed practically continuously.
Yesterday after meeting Mother I went on to my French class where Professor Bolitho told me of his love affairs, beginning at the age of eleven and apparently yet unended, with the seduction of a Girl Guide captain as the highlight. I enjoyed hearing it. I enjoyed discussing the varying moral outlooks of English and Europeans. I enjoyed his constant praise of me with remarks such as ‘J' aime les jeunes filles robustes fortes comme vous’. It did me good but after I left him my exit was shattered by the fact that I tripped and sprawled down the first flight of his stairs.
Going from there, I hurried through the rain to Lyons Corner House to meet dear old Margot Ainscough from Shell, in the uniform of an ATS.21 We went from there to the Regent Palace Bar where we discussed the varying lives of WAAF and ATS greatly to the Air Force's favour
