Wednesday
Aberdeen
Angel Girl,
This is not intended to be a long letter as I have just finished letters to Eric and Lilian, and to Mother, acknowledging their card and also the communal £1 which was sent for my birthday. I daren’t leave those until the weekend because even now it will be almost a week from the time I received their greetings before they get my letter. Before I do anything else, there are one or two things I want to mention straight away.
(1) I have heard blancmange etc is going on the “points” system. Do you want any more? I believe there is a sweetened blancmange substitute. Do you want that or not? Let me know as soon as possible.
(2) Good news about the fiver. Will you take enough from it to send this cable: “Haslett, Dhariwal, India. Many thanks. Everyone fit. Love, Arthur.” Do that as soon as possible, will you?
(3) Can you send me £2 straight away. My old class is having a slops day and I want to order myself a suit, as well as get some odds and ends. I’ll try to get you some towels. Do you want tooth brushes?
Now that, I think, deals fairly fully, if somewhat abruptly, with “business” matters, but I wanted to get them dealt with as all need immediate attention. Just one other thing: I got 62% in the S.B.X., which is an improvement. At the moment I’m dropping a lot of marks on figures so I’ll have to attend to those in the next week or two and then I’ll be better off. Anyway, I think it’s a bit better and, in the end, it might be ALMOST worth going down a class for that extra peace of mind. Let’s hope so.
Now, about this other business with Mother. I know I shouldn’t say “don’t take any notice of her” for I know it’s not quite as easy as all that, but try, for my sake, just to let it all go over your head. So far, precious, we have proved ourselves capable of holding ourselves aloof from the ordinary attempts to create ill feeling between us. I think we can keep that record. You see, in one way, it really IS simple. Why? Because, my darling, we were lucky in that we learned very early in married life to trust each other explicitly. In that lay our early strength. Now we love each other very dearly. Just how dearly I realise more and more each day. Just to get back to Mother for a moment. The letter she sent on my birthday was rather scrappy and I half-sensed an antagonistic note in the few lines she did write. I seem to be able to catch the atmosphere in which letters are written and she may have been boiling this matter up at that time. Her great trouble is that she has so little to do and we – or rather you, just now – are the only members of the family within reach. All the free time she now has, after an active life, seems to be concentrated on introspection, in the course of which she gets everyone in an absolutely “foreign” perspective and she also develops a very warped historical sense so far as the family is concerned. She must hold long introspective conversations with other members of the family, irrespective of whether they are in her “good” or “bad” books at that particular moment. Then, again, she seems to know that I write, or used to write, quite long letters to you, while those I send her are very scrappy! She’s probably jealous.
That deals with Mother. Now to you and I! What a subject, if only I DARE let myself go, but if I did I should probably end up by shedding a pint of blood, for that is the mood I’m in tonight. Do you know why? I have been harking back once more to our early married days. Do you remember writing recently that I didn’t love you so much as you loved me? That possibly was true, but oh! my darling! Since then! What probably made me begin to love you was that you never did – and never have – exercised that obviously possessive attitude so many women adopt and which all men hate. Because you did not try to flaunt your “ownership”, I began to get closer and closer to you. When I saw wives toe-tapping outside the Press Club while fellows swallowed the last of their drink before hurrying out rather like schoolboys, I began to compare their wives with mine, and myself with them. That, I think, was the start. Your trust and faith that I DID belong to you was one of the foundations on which our deeper love was built, and in the early days we did have to take each other on trust such a lot, didn’t we, when we had so many difficulties to face. Remember how often we said, in effect, and to pretty well everyone, “Well, are you for or against us?” And, if necessary, we can do it all over again. My darling, I never knew anyone could mean as much as you mean to me. While I have you, and the children who are partly you, to hell with anyone else. My darling, I’m so completely yours – and you know it, you conceited hussy – that nothing else in the world matters. My darling, I own you body and soul. Heaven and earth can yield nothing better for me. I trust you so completely because I know that whatever you do you will do believing I think it right and that, my sweet, is a tremendous thing for any man to think – that no action affecting both our lives would be done by you if you thought I believed it to be fundamentally wrong. Now, in face of all this, do you believe I trust you?
But that is only one side of the picture. There is another side too, as you may have guessed at some time. I have just a slight affection for you, too. You say you get an almost physical pain sometimes. My love goes even deeper. I have told you before I’d swing for you, and so I would! Angel girl, the things you can do to me at long range are unbelievable. Sometimes I almost stop breathing when I think of you. Oh Stelly-well, the bedroom’s empty just now – for a wonder. What wouldn’t I give to roll on to the bed with you just now. If only you could be here making the bed and I could take you by the heels and throw you on to it! And to feel you snuggle up against me while one hand caressed your left breast and the other slid gently over your own – no, my own – incomparable bottom beneath my lingering fingers. Darling, I must stop, this is madness for us both. Night night, my own dear girl. I won’t write you again like this for a long time. It’s not good for either of us, but – like other things! – it just welled up tonight.
Precious I adore you more and more each day.
All my love,
Arthur X
Jun 171942