Brittain, Vera, Diary, 22 August 1915

00000298-9.jpg
Description: 
Diary of Vera Brittain

Tabs

Case Study: 
From Youth to Experience: Vera Brittain’s Work for Peace in Two World Wars
Creator: 
Brittain, Vera
Source: 
diary
Date: 
22 August 1915
Collection/Fonds: 
Contributer: 
McMaster University Libraries
Rights: 
Vera Brittain estate; McMaster University has a non-exclusive licence to publish this document.

Identifier: 
00000298-9
Language: 
eng
Type: 
image
Format: 
jpg
Transcript: 

again." So we went, & when I asked what point there was to showing me the same thing twice, he said "Oh! only an excuse to get you to come out with me." He also took me to see the tennnis court, which is surrounded by a path & has a summer-house at one end, all of it hidden by bushes from the road. (It was from here Mrs. Leighton heard the officers of the 4th Norfolks conversing about Roland.) The tennis court could scarcely be recognized by that name now, for it had been disused all that sad summer, & was more like an oblong plot of incipient hay.
We intended going for a walk & went through the gate out on to the heath behind the house, but there were so many nurses and prams on the more public parts, & so many couples "Sunday afternooning" on the less, that we soon gave it up as impossible and returned to the garden. He fetched two chairs out of the summer-house & put them very close together at one end of the tennis court, where though right in the open we were quite hidden by the surrounding bushes from both the road & the house. But in spite of the nearness of our chairs he attempted no form of caress except to put back the hair from my eyes with a very gentle hand when the wind blew it over my face.
It was enough to be near him -- in fact that means so much that any further sign of demonstrativeness hurts me and I could not bear it to happen often. I suppose anyone who had seen us sitting there would have though we were exchanging endearments quite foolish & meaningless to anyone but ourselves, but as a matter of fact we were talking quite impersonally on our old subject of the possibility of a future life. We keep on discussing it & never get any further, and that afternoon was no