It finished:

The first time I have felt mentally at ease and physically happy for two years. The whole of nature so immense and friendly that one both sinks and realises one’s personality in touch with its entity.

It is easy to see the influence of his father on Peter’s self-conscious work at this age. I have left out enough of the overblown description to make it possible to read – just.

Latymer sent Peter to try for an Oxford Scholarship at Christchurch and he was astonished but overjoyed to hear that he had been awarded one. It was for a small amount of money but Kent Education Committee agreed to top it up with a loan to be repaid after graduation. When he rejoined the family in Bexleyheath he found that, under Arthur’s inexpert management, the new business was not doing well. The slump still meant that people were not spending money on advertising. Peter found it difficult to kit himself out with a few suitable clothes in which to go up to college, generally called “The House”, where thirty-two members of his year had titles. Somehow, it was more or less managed, and in October 1933 he went up.

1933–34 He had been much influenced by his history teacher at schools who was a Marxist, and he soon joined the Student Communist Party – and fell in love with a St. Hilda’s student two years older than he was, Peggy Moxon. Peggy was tall and also a Communist, sturdily built, well dressed, also reading English and blessed with a glorious head of red hair which she wore long. By her last year and Peter’s first they were together, jointly leading the Student Communist Party and running the October Club. Life was almost perfect – but not quite. Arthur’s business finally failed in 1934 and the family went bankrupt. Peter sent his scholarship money home to save their furniture. And Peggy was also being courted by an older, richer and cleverer student, Arthur Wynn, who already had two first class honours degrees and was on his third. He had been studying in Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933 and had married the leader of the Young Communist League there so that he could bring her out of Germany and so save her life. Peter said she was a terrible woman who used to throw plates, and the divorce was going through. Peggy was quite unable to make up her mind which of the
two, Arthur or Peter, she loved most.