Friday
Chiswick
Darling,
A happy birthday to my girl. And ever so many more of them which I can share with you. I’m hoping that you have dropped Dave the hint so that he will have brought a drink to you tonight, just to cheer up things a little for you. For my part, you can buy me a pint when I come home! And I have been thinking that if you buy me all the pints you owe me you will not be able to pay the rent this month. There are several pints outstanding from my last leave, there’s one for not guessing what was in the chocolate box at Xmas, another to celebrate Xmas, another to wish me a happy New Year, and at least one for your birthday. That’s at least five pints and as you know what I’m like after five pints these days perhaps you would prefer me to spend my leave in one of the London service clubs? Please let me know in good time if you think you cannot stand the financial and physical strain of my leave! Stelly-well, my dear, I know you won’t have a very hectic birthday but I do hope it will go off without any undue narks. Do you feel bowed down with age now you are a year older? You will soon be as grey as me! Then what will you do? You know I only regard milestones like New Year and birthdays as little landmarks on the long road I have in front of me to travel with you. Some of them are on level stretches of pleasant roadway; some are at the foot of little and perhaps unseen hills; others, like this one, are on top of little hills of difficulty which we have climbed together. Whatever pleasures or difficulties may lie ahead of us in the future, my love, there is no one with whom I would sooner share the one, or face the other, than my own Stelly-well. Precious, thank goodness for the great and priceless gift of mutual trust and confidence. That, as well as the other secret you mentioned the other day, is one of the cornerstones of our married life. You, I think, did more than I to build that great sense of trust and I’m happy, more happy than you know, to think you are reaping your reward of my deep and abiding faith in you in all things. Perhaps the most difficult subject so far as we two were concerned in the early days of our life was the thorny and vexed question of religion. You know, only too well, the picture I had of people coming round and trying to inveigle you into taking a stand for the church against me. Well, they did come when I was out, didn’t they? But you never failed to tell me, love, that they had been, and what they had said, and what you had replied. Nowadays I sometimes think I failed you horribly in the Alexandra Road days, perhaps from thoughtlessness, perhaps from preoccupation with the very worrying business of getting us a living. But you never once failed me, did you? Many another woman, in the same circumstances you know, would have either yielded to the importuning of their visits or, even had they stood out against them, would never have mentioned the visits. The fact that you did both made me more vividly aware of your loyalty to, and faith in, me than anything else and it was on that beginning, I believe, that we built the policy of trust and confidence which has stood, and will stand, us in such good stead. In those early days, my own sweet girl, you built far better than you knew and my only wish is that I could go over them and relieve them of some of the loneliness – or aloneness – that I know now you felt. I was a very preoccupied young man in those days, wasn’t I? But since then, perhaps since we went to Crosby, we have drawn a lot closer together. And sometimes I think we even owe something to this blinking old war, for it has taught us to value each other even more than we did before. All of which is intended to show that, apart from your deep physical and mental attractions for me, there is a great and abiding faith in you which means an enormous amount to me. You and I will often see things from a different point of view. Now and in the future you may make decisions with which I don’t agree, but always I will have that inner satisfaction of knowing that whatever decision you have made has been made because you believe it to be right. God knows that if all this world had that same faith in their fellow humans then all our troubles would easily be solved.
From all of which, angel girl, you will gather I have not merely a great love for you in the accepted sense, but that I love and cherish very dearly so many of the other attributes you possess. Perhaps this is not the way most people would say “many happy returns” to the one person on earth. But it is the way I want to say it tonight because I want you to have at least another half century of birthdays with me. To whom else could I turn in moments of trouble and doubt with the same implicit faith, not that they would necessarily agree with me but that they would first be honest with me and only secondly would they try to comfort me. My sweet I know I have caused you pain in the past, I know too that it is ten thousand to one that I will cause you pain in the future because we are both human, but I know too that come hell and high water you will always be my own Stelly-well and will stick to me and help and comfort and guide me. So you will see that really, boiled down to their very essence, my good wishes to you on this day are also very selfish hopes for my own future for I find it impossible to visualise a time when you do not march side by side with me.
And now to the contents of the little box. I do hope you will like them and that they will be useful to you. The cigarettes will save you a bob or two I hope, and I hope that they will be a little treat as a “nicer” cigarette than you normally smoke. I only thought, after I had bought it, that as I didn’t get one for you at Xmas you have probably bought yourself a rain hood. I hope not, but tell me if you have. And the scarf will help to keep your neck warm in that brown coat which has no collar. Now with these things you have me all around you from your head almost to your feet and I would have done the job properly by getting you a pair of house slippers but I thought your clothing coupons sufficiently emaciated! I do hope you will like these things which come with all my love on a night when I am separated from you by only four weeks. I have already begun to mark the calendar, you see! If I can squeeze them in, I’ll also enclose my Xmas cards for you to see and the children to play with. I thought you’d like to see them.
And now, angel, I must to my bed for my eyes are like the proverbial holes in the snow! Sorry to be crude. Night night my sweet and all my thoughts are with you today. You know that. I only wish I might have been home but we still have that to look forward to. I wonder if I shall dream of you tonight? Take care of yourself, angel, for I do love you.
Ever your own,
Arthur X
Jan 081943