So I Have Thought of You: The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald. Penelope Fitzgerald

piece of metal as a souvenir, but I was not there at the time and so although all the windows in the flat collapsed I did not.

      I am wretched as I have got a pair of red gloves against the winter, as they say, which make me sneeze continually. It isn’t the colour, because my blue ones make me sneeze, too,

      love,

      Mops.

      

      There is a photo of me somewhere, I went into the box-room to find it but a large naval gun blew in the window and I retreated in disorder, but I will find it and send it you though it is horrid.

      

       Long Meadow

       Longdown

       Guildford

      6 October [1940]

      My dear Ham,

      I have not heard any more about Bill, but Oliver and Fred are convinced that he must be a prisoner of war and are doing all they can to find out through the Red Cross and through some mysterious friends of Fred’s in Spain.

      Do tell me some more about Devonshire. I like to hear about all the counties and it seems to me that you visit most of them.

      Our land-mine has been removed, parachute, tassels, and all, without damaging Avenue Close, but on the other hand a bomb seems to have fallen very near Cornwall Gardens. Mrs B., however, has sunk into her hazy September melancholy and not even the return of Oliver from Chequers seems to arouse her.

      We are down in the country getting some fresh air – that means that we all sit indoors, owing to the hurricane outside, and eat too much, and try to prevent the dogs getting on to the sofas or making nests in the Sunday Times. I must soon stagger out, however, and pick some wet Michaelmas daisies.

      In ending a letter from the country I notice that people always say ‘I must rush now to catch the post’ – however, I have already missed the post by several hours, so I must just send my love,

      Mops.

      

       Ministry of Food

       Great Westminster House

       Horseferry Road

       London, sw1

      15 October [1940]

      My dear Ham,

      Thankyou very much for writing and for saying you aren’t going to West Africa, an idea which alarmed me considerably, though if you had really made up your mind to it I would have pretended to like it.

      Similarly, Oliver seems so delighted about going to Egypt that it doesn’t seem worth while saying how unhappy I am about it and Mrs Breakwell, poor Mrs B., keeps pointing at soldiers of all ranks in the streets and saying why can’t he go. I secretly feel the same, but what’s the use, because Oliver is pleased as punch, literally like punch, he is effervescent.

      I have had my brother on a week’s leave. He slept in the passage, and the Danish cook evidently regarded him as a soldier billeted on us and ran the carpet-sweeper over him remorselessly.

      We have had two more bombs on the block, one of them on the show flat, which now has a sign Luxurious Flats To Let swinging over a crater. I think my brother was really glad to get back to the peaceful battery in Scotland. I do love having him on leave but a week is no good at all, a brother should be there all the time like the church and the post-office.

      If you get leave do ring up and tell me how to pronounce Melhuish for I have never known,

      love,

      Mops.

      

       Ministry of Food

       Great Westminster House

       Horseferry Road

       London, sw1

      28 October [1940]

      My dear Ham,

      It is one of my minor ambitions to write as good letters as you do, but short of that I must just say how very glad I was to see you when you were on leave, and I may add that Oliver seemed as gay as a lark when I went to visit him on Sunday at the Duke of York’s barracks, where he was sitting among the ruins drinking a large cup of horrid sweetened tea. Mrs FitzG also came and delighted the sergeant with her furs, pearls and smart black hat.

      I do not believe Oliver is going to Egypt for a month or so at least anyway and I hope this means the end of one cause of misunderstanding. The person most to be pitied is Mrs B.

      I haven’t got another job yet so I am still at the ministry under the shadow of dismissal. Now that I am going however the rest of the staff are rather kinder to me as they have a comfortable feeling of superiority. Perhaps I shall even get a leaving present from them. A cake-stand or the works of John Masefield. How I hate the poem about the tall ship and the star to steer her by! I believe that you oughtn’t to dissipate your hate in all directions but ought to save it for the Germans, but I can’t help it.

      I wish you didn’t always have such horrid billets. I can’t read whether it is a ‘hutted’ or a ‘dratted’ camp. Both, I am afraid. You must start calling it the ‘War House’, by the way,

      much love,

      Mops.

      

       Ministry of Food

       Great Westminster House

       Horseferry Road

       London, sw1

      13 November [1940]

      My dear Ham,

      I have just discovered that I don’t know how to write out B.N.C.^* in full, but hope this will get to you, or at least lodge in the Sheldonian and be found there, or perhaps be handed away next door with the leaflets after the university sermon. You are lucky really to be in Oxford, and although when I left I swore never to be sentimental about it I always am, in fact I feel my soul becomes a positive watermeadow, but if you say you get nothing to eat these memories may not be part of your troubles.

      I have just had letters from both Jean and Janet, independently pointing out how nice you have been to them, at some length.

      I do not remember a saddler called Forty anywhere near George Street. Perhaps you had your historic 4-in-hand fitted out there.

      I looked very closely at the pages of ‘Picture Post’ last week to try and find you in one of the backgrounds of the photographs of Pat Kirkwood visiting Oxford. I didn’t see you. I hoped you might be leaning over a bridge observing one of your 3 silences, or disappearing in a cloud of dust, or rather water, on your motor-bicycle.

      I have heard nothing from Mrs B., and I am afraid the incident of the tinned lobster, with her usual autumn melancholy and Oliver’s departure to Egypt, has made a breach between us.

      My brother suddenly appeared yesterday in the course of taking his men from Aberdeen to Portsmouth, and gave me a sandwich and some good advice. The men, who are all very simple lowlanders, were fascinated by the moving model of Mickey Mouse at Waterloo station and stood open-mouthed, grasping their lunch-money in their hands.

      I hear that Oxford is violently gay and in general suggests those bits in comedy films where you see champagne glasses superimposed on merry-go-rounds to suggest dissipation, so when I come up I do hope you will be able to show me some of it,

      Love,

      Mops.

      

      P.S. By the way, do you ever regret your 30 men? I should really like to know.

      

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