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Authors: Jeremy; Gavron
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raining outside. We sit in silence, the rain coming down. âI do so still miss Hannah,â she says.
Autumn 1953
Dear Tash, So far this weekend has been a real âexperienceâ. Jill and I arrived in Cambridge at about eleven am on Saturday and I waited for Sonia who was of course half an hour late. The town was in an uproar. It was poppy day and everyone was out collecting in fancy dress. Lorries with St Trinian girls, Everest snowmen, in fact everything under the sun.
Sonia has quite a nice room but she hasnt alas (like me) got any fatter, though she swears she eats all day long, as do everyone else! We had lunch in hall which was lousy, and then struggled through the crowds again to see Sonia in a play. On the way I first met Trevor, who was standing on a wall shouting in a very Trevorish fashion, and then I met Jeremy who has invited me to tea with him today. Sonia only had one line â but she was excellent and showed great signs of talent. Then alas we had an enormous tea, and after went to a revue done by St Johns â it was lousy. Then we went with Michael P to a party. He seems very keen on Sonia! At first I felt very lost, but then I got talking to a rather good looking boy called â K!! who must be about twenty three he is in his third year, writes for Varsity, he invited me to lunch today. I also met a boy I had seen at Shirleyâs very intelligent and rather ugly called David. He invited me for a drink at 12 today.
I am now at home having left PARADA at 1.30 pm because I was too tired to stay any longer. I went for the drink at Davidâs & had an enormous gin and French which made me quite dizzy. Then he and K took me to an enormous lunch at an Indian Restaurant during which K said he would be in London on Tuesday & would ring me in the evening and probably take me to Casa Pepeâs and then to a Jazz Club, which sounds very interesting but I have my doubts as to whether heâll ring me. He has lovely eyes.
I looked all round Cambridge. Its very lovely, there is an immense atmosphere of repose in the vast courtyards and along the river banks with the weeping willows. But Iâd hate to be there! Newnham is vile it looks like a gas works and all the men utterly despise Newnham and Girton. I had tea and supper with Jeremy who for the first time I feel quite natural with. He is very nice, but thoroughly debauched, and, so he says repressed! He tried to kiss me, but I wouldnât have it! Apart from the fact that I am dead tired and horribly fat life is quite pleasant.
Four
ONE LATE SUMMER WEEKEND , Susie comes down from Edinburgh with a suitcase of my grandparentsâ papers. From my memories of sorting though their house, I donât expect there to be a treasure trove of Hannah material here, but I am still disappointed at how little there seems to be: a folder of early poems and drawings, reports from her primary school, some photographs.
Of the usual teenage paraphernalia of diaries, letters, schoolbooks, photographs like those Shirley showed me, there is no sign. Though Hannah spent five years at boarding school, there are none of the letters she must have written to her parents. Unless Hannah got rid of her teenage things when she left home, they must have been discarded either by my grandparents or my father. Suicide not only ends a life, it changes how that life is remembered. The happy, hopeful times are refracted through the end, invalidated by the act of the death.
Most of the papers are my grandfatherâs unpublished typescripts. He published half a dozen books, as well as hundreds of articles and essays, but these are various attempts at a memoir. To my grandfather, though, memoir meant recollections of his times, the people he met, rather than his own personal life, and there again seems to be disappointingly little about Hannah.
It is a relief, though, after the turbulence of the past weeks, to hear my grandfatherâs familiar wry voice in my
Autumn 1953
Dear Tash, So far this weekend has been a real âexperienceâ. Jill and I arrived in Cambridge at about eleven am on Saturday and I waited for Sonia who was of course half an hour late. The town was in an uproar. It was poppy day and everyone was out collecting in fancy dress. Lorries with St Trinian girls, Everest snowmen, in fact everything under the sun.
Sonia has quite a nice room but she hasnt alas (like me) got any fatter, though she swears she eats all day long, as do everyone else! We had lunch in hall which was lousy, and then struggled through the crowds again to see Sonia in a play. On the way I first met Trevor, who was standing on a wall shouting in a very Trevorish fashion, and then I met Jeremy who has invited me to tea with him today. Sonia only had one line â but she was excellent and showed great signs of talent. Then alas we had an enormous tea, and after went to a revue done by St Johns â it was lousy. Then we went with Michael P to a party. He seems very keen on Sonia! At first I felt very lost, but then I got talking to a rather good looking boy called â K!! who must be about twenty three he is in his third year, writes for Varsity, he invited me to lunch today. I also met a boy I had seen at Shirleyâs very intelligent and rather ugly called David. He invited me for a drink at 12 today.
I am now at home having left PARADA at 1.30 pm because I was too tired to stay any longer. I went for the drink at Davidâs & had an enormous gin and French which made me quite dizzy. Then he and K took me to an enormous lunch at an Indian Restaurant during which K said he would be in London on Tuesday & would ring me in the evening and probably take me to Casa Pepeâs and then to a Jazz Club, which sounds very interesting but I have my doubts as to whether heâll ring me. He has lovely eyes.
I looked all round Cambridge. Its very lovely, there is an immense atmosphere of repose in the vast courtyards and along the river banks with the weeping willows. But Iâd hate to be there! Newnham is vile it looks like a gas works and all the men utterly despise Newnham and Girton. I had tea and supper with Jeremy who for the first time I feel quite natural with. He is very nice, but thoroughly debauched, and, so he says repressed! He tried to kiss me, but I wouldnât have it! Apart from the fact that I am dead tired and horribly fat life is quite pleasant.
Four
ONE LATE SUMMER WEEKEND , Susie comes down from Edinburgh with a suitcase of my grandparentsâ papers. From my memories of sorting though their house, I donât expect there to be a treasure trove of Hannah material here, but I am still disappointed at how little there seems to be: a folder of early poems and drawings, reports from her primary school, some photographs.
Of the usual teenage paraphernalia of diaries, letters, schoolbooks, photographs like those Shirley showed me, there is no sign. Though Hannah spent five years at boarding school, there are none of the letters she must have written to her parents. Unless Hannah got rid of her teenage things when she left home, they must have been discarded either by my grandparents or my father. Suicide not only ends a life, it changes how that life is remembered. The happy, hopeful times are refracted through the end, invalidated by the act of the death.
Most of the papers are my grandfatherâs unpublished typescripts. He published half a dozen books, as well as hundreds of articles and essays, but these are various attempts at a memoir. To my grandfather, though, memoir meant recollections of his times, the people he met, rather than his own personal life, and there again seems to be disappointingly little about Hannah.
It is a relief, though, after the turbulence of the past weeks, to hear my grandfatherâs familiar wry voice in my
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