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“Then we’d have gone all round the world.” …”Let’s.” “We will some day.” …”Of course, you couldn’t see round, however high you were,” said Roger. “You wouldn’t want to,” said Titty. “Much better fun not knowing what was coming next.”
Dearest Titty,
…I had assumed that being in the same intake and, of course, the same bit of the alphabet, that they would send Nancy and me to the same place—but the Royal Navy works in extremely mysterious ways its wonders to perform, and we’re not even in the same county. Standing there on the platform with my kitbag and thirty other girls I didn’t know, and seeing Nancy’s train steam off in the opposite direction—well, honestly I felt just the way I did that first day after Nancy got the mumps, that winter holiday. I could hardly believe I ought to be a Wren if Nancy wasn’t there too.
So I said “shiver my timbers” to myself a few times and tried not to shiver, and after all it’s a bit easier to cope with these things at twenty than at thirteen (although not as much as you’d think, honestly, don’t you find?). The other girls have mostly turned out to be very nice, and for reasons I can’t say we’re all tall and it’s lovely—you remember how much I used to complain about feeling like a giant in the sixth form? Here we’ve all got to be at least five foot eight, and at last I feel average.
There are even two girls who have been sailing nearly as much as we have, Rawlinson and Holme (we use nothing but last names here, perhaps that’s why they separated Nancy and me, so as not to have two Blacketts). Although for all they call us Wrens we are regrettably inland, as you’ll see from the address. Even so, we use all the Navy words—we sleep in bunks in cabins, not beds in barracks, we cook in the galley and eat in the mess, and when Holme was late in last week without notice, the Chief Petty Officer said to her “Wren Holme! Explain why you have been Adrift!”.
I expect you’ll find this all very silly, but I really can’t tell you about what we do all day (or sometimes all night, depending on the shift), much as I’d like to. Full National Secrets Act stuff. After the War!
My very dear Peggy,
…I oughtn’t to say this but I’m so glad you are at an inland posting and not immediately in peril on the sea. With Daddy fighting German pirates—considerably less honorable than Amazon ones—on the China Station, John somewhere in the Mediterranean, and Roger due to leave Dartmouth any day now, I’ve about as many naval-based fears as I can manage. And now Nancy—I expect you’ve heard from her by now, and knowing Nancy she’ll certainly have managed to get herself a sea posting somehow.
Everyone is being so magnificent—you most definitely included—that sitting here in Broadcasting House wringing my hands doesn’t seem very good of me. By the way, you will be pleased to know that this letter is being written at two ack emma by the light of the moon, in bits and pieces as I firewatch on the roof! I don’t really know what to say these days when people ask me what I do—“typist” is what I usually come up with, but in fact my job is more like part typist, part switchboard operator, part assistant to producer’s assistant, and occasional firewatcher. Quite a few of my predecessors in each of these roles have left, some because of the bombing and others to join up, so whenever there’s a need of some kind someone seems to shout “Miss Walker! Miss Walker! Just a moment, could you?” and there I find myself rattling away at my typewriter or struggling with plugs on the switchboard or saying “Well, Miss Knox, it looks as if we haven’t got a recording of “Morning Birdsong” that I can find anywhere, but we have got one of “English Larks,” would that do the trick?”.
Pause here to actually firewatch a bit. My partner on the roof tonight is Mr. Beardmore, a clerk from the engineering section who talks touchingly of his wife and young daughter when we take our tea break; just now he is keeping a diary while I write to you, so we’re well employed. I’ve enjoyed talking to him a bit about my friend Peggy the Wren and her night shifts on a job she can’t tell me about—it is nice to feel that each of us has someone in mind over the night, although he will be able to go home to his Jean in the morning. Oh well, I don’t expect there are many Wrens with digs in London, unless you were to be posted to the Admiralty?
Susan is still the life and soul of her canteen in Pompey—you’ll have heard from her—and I haven’t any new news from the boys. Bridget sends her love to you and Nancy, by the way—she’s desperate to leave school and do something for the war. If you could take a snap or two in your stylish uniform for her, she’d pin it up in her dormy and moon over it like a matinee idol. (You might spare one for me too.)
PB to TW
Oh dear, I didn’t realize how black my cuffs were with oil until I’d written the first line. I’ve rolled them up carefully now, but I hope you’ll forgive the odd smudge on the paper. (Laundry is such a chore here that I can’t face putting on two clean shirts in one day. War does strange things to a man, as the Wrens say. Don’t tell Susan!)
I enjoy the thought of you rattling about the half-empty BBC at all hours of the day and night, filling all the jobs they’ve got as needed—you honestly can do anything, and think how useful it will be if you decide to go on and make your own programmes. (I keep listening for your voice in the background whenever one of the girls has the wireless on, although of course I know that’s not how it works.)
I’ve enclosed some snaps for you and Bridgie—tell her it’s awfully like school here, with all of us crowded into bunks together and quite a bit of maths to cram too, so she can think of school life as training. If the war hasn’t ended by the time she’s ready to leave, that is.
I’ve heard from Nancy, who sends her love to you and the rest of the crowd. Being Nancy she’s got the nearest thing to a sea posting; she works plotting radar points on a vast map so that the Naval brass can see where all the ships are any time they please. Fifteen-hour shifts she says, but they get forty-eights the oftener for it, unlike us. If she comes up to London on leave, you’ll take her out, won’t you?
Talking of Nancy—you know, it’s very odd. Valentine and Rawlinson and the others will keep turning to me when they’re not sure of something—“Blackett, what do you think we should do?” and so on. First I couldn’t understand why they should think I would know if they don’t, and then I thought of what Nancy would say and tried to answer the way she would. Most often now I’ve got to the point where the Nancy-answer just comes out as if it were me saying it. I mean, it is me saying it, but I think of it as a bit less Nancy and more me.
I’ve often thought how lucky you Swallows are, being four (five, sorry, Bridgie)—far too many ever to be pointed in the same direction all the time. When I look at our Chief Petty Officers now, I realize what a good commander John was, managing all of you with your different talents and characters. Nancy and I were so much a unit that I was almost part of her. …
TW to PB
…I think you and Nancy are very much alike, but not the same person, and both of those things are important. The other Wrens in your barracks, sorry, cabin, don’t know Nancy. When they look to you, it’s because you’re Peggy, who handled the mate’s logistics just (sisterly loyalty: nearly!) as well as Susan did, and commanded the winter expedition. Don’t you think that’s enough reason?
I’m only just realizing, as you say, how good a leader John was. I’m just a civilian typist and I can’t say how it plays out in the real Navy, but he commanded us well because he understood us—what Susan and I would each worry about (usually completely different things, could we have hot tea on hand during a chilly night on deck versus would Peter Duck approve of what we were doing, you remember)—and knew how to give orders that would help us get un-worried while getting the job done, not to speak of getting Roger’s exuberance pointed in the right direction (which most of his instructors at Dartmouth have struggled with!). …
PB to TW
…I know what you mean about John. I think that’s why Nancy can’t let go of the idea of him—not just that he knows she’s Captain Nancy, but that she needn’t keep explaining everything, he understands without her saying and he knows what she needs to hear.
She wrote me the other day that their CO Wren had all the girls gather in the great room one night for a talk, all about men. “You can stop, they can’t, so be sensible—“ Nancy said she’s no intention of getting off with any silly galoot who can’t stop himself when he knows he ought. (I don’t know if she said this to the CO at the time, but I wouldn’t be surprised!)
(Also, about me being Peggy and that being enough reason—thank you. It’s always enough reason, for everything, that you’re you.)
TW to PB
…It’s funny—I know John can’t let go of the idea of Nancy either, but he says (when he can be got to talk about it, which believe me isn’t often) that he knows she’s not keen on marrying, and she’d be terribly unhappy just settling down to run a household and he cares for her because of that, not in spite of it. And of course it all depends on the war too. …
PB to TW
…Nancy might be happy running a household if she were the chatelaine of a medieval castle with hundreds of cooks, laundrywomen, milkmaids, servitors and guardsmen to organize, but perhaps not otherwise! She and I and even mother have talked about that quite a bit, you know, and I can’t decide. Sometimes I think I’d be quite content with a house to keep, but…I don’t know. It would depend on so many things.
I’ve told Nancy that at least she ought to think about writing to John again. Do you think I was wrong?
TW to PB
…Given the way the War is going, I can’t but feel if they are going to regret anything, they might just as well regret writing to one another rather than not doing so. John and Nancy will both do things their own way, of course, and we can but watch, but at the very least they can talk Navy together within the limits of the loose-lips rule.
I was thinking about regrets. If the war ever ends, do you think I could make a go of it as a university student? I’d be terribly old for it, but I’d like to try. Last week we had Tom Harrisson broadcasting (have you heard of him, the M-O man?) about anthropology and Worktown and Sarawak, and I abandoned my typewriter and my awful switchboard plugs and haunted the doorway of the Control Room until he was done. I think I’d awfully like to spend a few peaceful years reading all about the different ways people have of living, and then perhaps go all around the world to see a few of them and learn more, and write them all down for other people.
I was on duty late and am now “sleeping” in the Concert Hall, curled up uncomfortably in my rug on a biscuit mattress across two seats, writing this by torch light and listening to the international harmony of snores being made by our League-of-Nations-esque staff and affiliated persons. I feel rather like an anthropologist already, it’s all so mad here.
Would you like to live in Oxford?
PB to TW
…I think I’ve heard Uncle Jim mention Tom Harrisson; I believe they met in Borneo or some such. I’ll write to him, shall I, and ask him to write you when he and Timothy get back from their latest secret mission? He always asks after the Swallows and Ds anyway, so I expect he’d like to write to you, and he’s always thought the world of you since you saved his book.
Nancy wrote saying she’s had a reply from John—and then put “In haste, love, Nancy” and left it at that! I expect one way or another we’d better leave it up to them.
I should like to live in Oxford. Is there sailing there? I’ve only ever heard of punts on the river. Perhaps we could make regular visits up to the Lake and visit mother on the way, or to the coast wherever your father might be stationed.
It does seem a long time even till the next leave, let alone until the end of the War, whenever that might be. As Nancy used to say, though, even lessonbooks have last pages and all this night sailing we’re doing, you and me and Nancy and John and everyone else, will come to an end sometime and we’ll have a bit of light to see by.
Write again soon.