8 May

8 May 1920

2 Portland Villas, Hampstead - London

[. . .] My darling I'd like to be on a mountain top with you & all the searchlights of the earth might play upon us!
‘Heavens.' Monica almost clutched her head. How incredible men were! Was it possible she really loved him? How could she love a person who talked like that. What had she been doing all these months - ever since that dinner party when he had seen her home & asked her if he might come & see her afterwards. I want to come & see again your slow Arabian smile. Oh what nonsense! And she remembered how at the time a strange thrill unlike anything she ever had felt before had made her almost faint....But now -
    Coal coal coal
      And
    Old iron old iron old iron
Sounded from below - it was all over. Understand her? He had understood nothing. That ringing her up on a windy morning was immensely immensely significant. And it was the end. Anger, her strange bedfellow, slipped away. She felt empty and cold. When Marie came in later to take her to her bath she said:M. replied he would be in the vestibule at half past one if Madame changed her mind. And Monica said - No, carnation, not verbena. Two handfuls Marie.
A wild white morning, a tearing rocking wind. As she waited for the maid to thread a ribbon she looked through the window at the hurrying people below. In the flats opposite a little grey nurse with a red nose flopped a perambulator down the steps and a woman like a pillow tapped the grime of the window & waved her hair pins to the baby. Monica almost found herself nodding her head, too. Idiot. She turned away. [. . .]  [KM Notebooks, section dated 1 May 1920.]