Letters From Constance Read online

  By the end of the course we were all fast friends and we went out to lunch at the Old Chesil Rectory in Winchester. It was all so glorious, the days sped by and only now do I find time to write.

  I have been drafted to the West Country. Not to the Doone Valley or the wilder reaches of Exmoor, to the mysterious Somerset Levels or the dancing streams of Dartmoor. This is scrubby, neglected land in which discouraged trees and hedges form random knots, a little patch of earth which no one has ever cherished. Desolation without grandeur. Its one virtue is that it is flat, so the Navy has imposed an airfield upon it, adding its own debris to Nature’s scrapyard.

  If you can imagine a cross between a caterpillar and a snail, you have a picture of our living quarters. There are some twenty of these molluscs, graced by the homely word ‘cabin’, each of which accommodates fourteen Wrens. Seven double-decker bunks group around a stove and the place reeks of defeated attempts to get the wretched thing alight. This is Tess of the D’Urbervilles country, sure enough, the crust of civilisation pitifully thin. Woman’s lot has not notably improved. Tess might well have preferred the turnip field to labouring from dawn to dusk on an exposed airfield.

  This particular airfield has been specially designed to be as uncomfortable as possible for the personnel. The Navy’s word for it is ‘dispersal’, which means that each building is as far away as possible from any other building with which it may share some common purpose. So the ground staff spend a lot of time cycling from one part of the Somerset/Dorset border to another. Naturally, sleeping quarters are dispersed as well, while ablutions are a route march away.

  I am in B camp, which is in a small clearing in a wood. When I joined up my mother said, ‘At least the Wrens are ladies.’ However else one might describe the occupants of cabin 5, lady is not the word that would immediately leap to mind. Long days spent working on the flights have not only toughened, but coarsened, the air mechanics to such an extent that I am told the sailors are deeply shocked by their indelicate language. (Sailors are in some ways as old-fashioned as my mother.) In addition to the air mechanics, we have two messengers from Liverpool who appear to be stitched into their underwear for the duration and a debutante who never washes from the neck down and who dispenses with underwear altogether when she goes out of an evening.

  Finally, we have two lesbians. They really do exist outside the covers of The Well of Loneliness. The cook stewards, who adopt a very moral attitude to this, have obviously decided that all the occupants of cabin 5 are contaminated and thrust food at us with loathing. When we come back from night duty we find they have forgotten to leave any food out for us. For this reason alone we wish that Jill and Hilda would save their demonstrations of affection for more private places. But they persist in holding hands in the queue in the mess and then sit side by side, Jill’s head resting against Hilda’s shoulder, while the stewards gaze pop-eyed with wrath, righteous bosoms swelling above the food trays.

  I concede that I have been spoilt and closeted, that I am an only child and sensitive to boot. I accept that this experience will do me more good than dining at the Berkeley and that I shall emerge from it a wiser and better person, but the fact remains I find it unpalatable. It wouldn’t be so bad if the place were clean, but squalor seems to go hand in hand with dispersal. On a cold morning it is easier to touch up yesterday’s face than to squelch down to the ablutions. Cats abound and get into the mess where they have the pick of the food before it gets on to our plates. Discipline is lax because in these conditions it is not easy to find out what is going on, supposing anyone cared.

  Saturday is different. On Saturday night a dance is held at A camp. Then the ablutions are crowded and irons are taken from their hiding places. Hair may even be washed. Mirrors are tipped against bunk heads and a new face is created for the coming week.

  I went to the ball feeling like Cinderella and had my first success since arriving here. He is a Lieut-Commander, six foot plus and every bit as handsome as Gary Cooper. The officers come late to the dance and stand looking around in a bored fashion to see if there is anything worth their attention. My height is usually against me on such occasions. I was considering taking my leave as I hadn’t danced much when he came to me, straight as an arrow, hands outstretched in a gesture which seemed to say that with me in the room what other choice could there be? I have yet to find out whether this is a habit of his; he does have rather an abundance of charm. Whatever the outcome, my stock has undoubtedly gone up with my cabin-mates. Apparently a two and a half ringer is a real catch. He is taking me to dinner in Yeovil tomorrow evening.

  This is all a bit rubbishy, isn’t it? But you did plead for news.

  On a higher plane, I am reading Howards End on your recommendation and long to discuss it with you. Did you entirely believe in Howards End itself? It seemed false to me, too idealised, not grounded in the mud of centuries (you will see I am now somewhat of an expert on country living). It left an impression of a rambling country house with a pretty garden, like the pictures on calendars; not authentic enough to make me accept that it stood for abiding things. I thought Tibby was the character who rang most true. There! Now you can come at me.

  How exciting it will be if you do manage to get down here in the long vac. As well as arguing about Forster, we might get to the theatre in Salisbury.

  The teleprinter is stuttering into action so I must attend to its demands.

  Much love,

  Constance

  RNAS

  November, 1941

  Dearest Sheila,

  That lost pastiche of The Family Reunion turned up in my gas-mask holder, where I had stuffed my sweet ration and a sanitary towel and where it got horribly mangled. I discovered it as soon as I got back from our Salisbury weekend. It is enclosed with my apologies.

  Certain lines touch a chord in me. ‘I do not want to go through life alone/Journeying from darkness into darkness/Touching no other traveller on the way.’ All is over with the flying instructor; he went the way of Gary Cooper, but not before he had told me that I was a tease, promising more than I was prepared to deliver. The truth is, I have discovered a deep reserve of virtue within myself. Is this unusual or is it more natural in a woman than one is currently led to suppose? It’s noticeable that although promiscuity is rife here, only a few girls seem to get genuine pleasure out of it. The rest are eager to protect their reputation against any suggestion of morality. We have established, by some mysterious, unspoken process, that there are four of us in this cabin who are virgins. We view one another thoughtfully from time to time, wondering whether our number has diminished.

  And you? You have recovered some of your old sparkle, but I get the impression that although you have found Cambridge intellectually stimulating it hasn’t been an entirely happy experience for you. Tell me it isn’t your experience you have put into those lines ‘Then you have not known what it is to despair;/To knock on a door which will not be opened/To ask for that which cannot be given;/You have never followed a guiding star/Only to discover at the end of the journey/That it was all a mistake and there is no stable.’ All doors will open to you. You have so much to give and are prepared to take risks when I would hold back.

  I am rereading The Family Reunion. How fierce you are! I see what you mean about his characters. It is true that as well as being dreary and self-pitying, Mary doesn’t add a thing to the play apart from talking to Harry about their childhood and walking round the table at the end blowing out candles. And the chauffeur is indeed a cross between Bunter and Lob. But I do put in a plea for the poetry. He has such a gift for expressing the kind of uneasiness which lies just beneath the surface of life - ‘The attraction of the dark passage, the paw under the door . . .’. Ugh! And what about, ‘We do not like to look out of the same window, and see quite a different landscape./We do not like to climb a stair, and find that it takes us down.’ There, I feel better now. Nothing like a literary frisson to clear away melancholy.

  Now to the good news
. You remember meeting my one and only friend here, Barbara - she with the mop of flaxen hair and Harpo Marx eyes, whom you found so amusing. She has been drafted to a station not far from Cambridge where she plans to create, by fair means or foul, a vacancy in the Met. Office. It would be nice to see you more often. I have been aware for some time that we begin to speak a different language. But that’s to be expected, isn’t it, our present ways of life being so different? I’m sure we can still find things to do which we shall both enjoy.

  Much love,

  Constance

  RNAS, East Anglia

  October, 1942

  My dear Sheila,

  Audacious, telling the recruiting officer about school and the part-time Red Cross work and neglecting to mention university. But wise? A first-class degree would probably have ensured you a place among all those brilliant people at that most secret of all establishments, Bletchley, and even if the work proved dull, which it’s hard to credit, the company would surely be scintillating. You may think you are sick to death of clever people, but in a short time you will be consumed with a gnawing hunger for intelligent conversation. You will, of course, realise that this reprimand is prompted by pure jealousy. Harpo says I am hopeless on a bicycle and given a small craft to manoeuvre in a crowded harbour I’d be as dangerous as a floating mine. Be that as it may, if there is one category I would prize above all others it is Boat’s Crew.

  Guess who I met in Petty Curie the other day? He stepped out of a bookshop, wearing a raincoat several sizes too large and plimsolls with the toes poking through. What impressed me most was his hair, cut short, curls clustered so neatly round his head I quite expected to glimpse Pan’s horns peeping out. He suggested we have tea. His face, now the shrubbery has been cut back, is all sharp angles and gleaming planes, not a soft surface anywhere. By contrast, Ronnie, my man of the moment, looks as if he is made of marzipan. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage with your Miles. There are rules of procedure which govern most naval engagements.

  I need not have worried since it wasn’t me with whom he was concerned. As soon as we had been pushed into a dark corner by a disapproving elderly waitress, he contrived to get me talking about you without himself ever mentioning your name. I’m sure he is not interested in Edith Evans, but he used her as a means of bringing the conversation round to the weekend we spent in Salisbury. Did you tell him about that awful play? I responded by telling him about the two Poles at the dance who accused us of being cold Englishwomen with narrow hips; and I described how you retorted - all scornful pride and flashing eyes - that you came of a Russian émigré family and shook them out of their tentative disbelief by spitting at one of them. There was something in the way he listened which suggested he was attending to a dominant theme that ran beneath my piping.

  ‘What sort of music do you write?’ I asked.

  ‘How many men have you slept with?’ he replied, as if returning one impropriety with another.

  I said, ‘Sometimes on Mondays and Thursdays; never on early closing day,’ and he said, ‘Nothing you would recognise as a tune.’

  Then, just as I was about to introduce him to Mozart, he said, ‘When I first met you, you said it was your ambition to be in the Navy. So why the Fleet Air Arm?’ Soon we were talking about the few opportunities open to Wrens to get on terms with His Majesty’s ships - for example, boarding officer, boat’s crew. . . .

  ‘Sheila is to train as boat’s crew,’ I said, tiring of this game. ‘But then, I expect you knew that.’

  He gave me another of his odd, inappropriate looks, glinting and amused, almost triumphant, as though we were playing forfeits and I had been the first to mention a forbidden name.

  ‘And you?’ I said. ‘We haven’t talked about you. What are your plans?’

  He blinked his eyes rapidly as if getting rid of a speck of dust. Has it ever occurred to you that he was born with an instant sorting mechanism which deflects all that is not of immediate interest to him so that it doesn’t impinge on his consciousness? I swear he blinked me out of his vision. He looked around for a waitress and a skinny waif who couldn’t have been in her teens zoomed up as if magnetised. She had consumptive pallor and bruised violet eyes. He must have been in the place before, it certainly wasn’t the first time she had feasted those ravenous eyes on him. If she survives she will grow into one of those women with a voracious appetite for self-abasement. Miles, having conjured her up, showed no further interest in her.

  I was cross by this time, so I hitched on my shoulder-bag and prepared to take leave of him. ‘Shall I give Sheila a message from you?’

  He counted out coins with all the reluctance of a thrall forced to pay Danegeld. Then he began to laugh. He looked at me and laughed again, as though I were some comic hiccup in his morning, like a broken flagstone.

  When I was half-way down the street, he caught up with me. He might have come through a rainstorm; his face had been washed of all its mischief and wrung out, wrinkled as wash-leather.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Tell her you’ve seen me. Tell her.’

  ‘Tell her what?’ He was so urgent, I was taken aback.

  ‘How things are with me.’ He was shouting and people turned to stare.

  ‘But I don’t know how things are with you,’ I protested, feeling exposed and stupid.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? You can see, can’t you?’

  There were tears in his eyes. I lost my temper and shouted, ‘But you? How much do you see?’ At which he left me.

  There is something so odd about him. Surely, most of us learn about life from one another. We observe the passing scene and see how we fit into it, note the behaviour of others and think - so this is the way it works, this is how it’s done. Miles, on the other hand, gives the impression that life is something he makes up as he goes along. He is like a giant spider, weaving a web of fantasy round himself I don’t know whether I should have written to you about him.

  Yours in perplexity,

  Constance

  Ealing

  February, 1945

  My dear Sheila,

  I shall miss you sorely. How lucky we were to have those years together in East Anglia.

  Time has flown on this leave. Mummy insists on behaving as if I were being drafted to Ceylon instead of Ireland and many hours have been spent on unnecessary shopping expeditions and the visiting of friends and relatives whom I shall not see again for six months, if ever. She is very distressed. I keep pointing out that even if the Irish do live with their pigs, the Navy won’t expect its personnel to go native. But not only does she load me with preventive medicines, she insists on spending her precious coupons on unnecessary comforts. She is undoubtedly confused about climate, but I’m unable to convince her that in all probability it will be warmer in Belfast. Then there is the fact of there being Catholics lurking at every street corner, murdering innocent Protestants when they are not blind drunk on poteen. I don’t know which of the Four Horsemen she expects me to encounter first. All of which only fuels my eagerness to explore this country so rich in legend.

  You will write often, won’t you? It will seem strange at first, with that stretch of sea between me and home.

  I shall want to hear about you and Jeffery. The last time we were together you asked whether I was shocked. I’m impressed by how brave you’ve been, plunging in while I still run up and down the beach, occasionally letting the water lap over my feet but darting back when I feel the pull of the tide. I’ve noticed when you’re with Jeffery that you have a confidence which I lack, a confidence which comes of knowing how much you have to give. Is it that we can’t tell what is hidden within us until someone has rifled the store? Oh dear, oh dear. Sometimes as I look at my face in the mirror, putting on my cap at that jaunty angle which so displeases First Officer, I ask myself, is this the only misdemeanour for which I am to be remembered in the Women’s Royal Naval Service?

  What I said about all Americans being misunderstood husbands wasn’t meant
to apply to Jeffery. It must be very hard for him, with such an unsympathetic wife yet caring so much for his children. Jeffery has been honest with you, but my American didn’t tell me he was married until we had been going out for three months. I admit that at first I was relieved to get the falling in love business over and done with, the authentic pain, humiliation, disillusion, et al. It’s the sour aftertaste that is hardest to bear. I feel about men as dear Harpo does about lobster, unable to enjoy them because one once did her a mischief.

  It’s time for new experiences. In Ireland I shall devote myself to myth and legend and make pilgrimages to Dublin and Sligo and Innisfree. I might even learn to play the harp.

  I will let you have my address as soon as I arrive.

  Love,

  Constance

  Belfast

  March, 1945

  My dear Sheila,

  It was a grey, blustery day when we steamed out of Stranraer and the ship heaved all the way across like a mortally sick animal

  - we were told it had been used for cattle before the war. I didn’t actually throw up, but I felt as if my intestines had been loosened and were slopping about like displaced cargo. Most of the passengers were soldiers. The Army doesn’t travel well by sea. I huddled on deck as we came into Larne, wet and cold and no longer very expectant. There it was before me, a low coastline, not spectacular but intensely green even on this grey day. It didn’t make much of its fabled charms; it simply rolled out its green mantle like a drapery assistant who knows one will be unable to resist the richness of her cloth. I was in love before I ever landed.