Morningside, Liverpool
[first pages missing]
Wendy’s rash had practically disappeared this morning, so I told her to tell Miss Ellis that I thought it was a fruit rash. Miss Ellis evidently said that “your mother’s probably right” or words to that effect.
This singing business amazes me. It seems we have been raising a prima donna! I thought yesterday’s grand success was a fluke of some sort, but today three classes had singing together in the hall. The ‘champs’ of each class sang solo and then our Wendy was brought to the front and according to her “the teachers said I sang nicer than any of them and some of them were awfully big!” So there must be something to it, though I still can’t see it myself. Perhaps it is that all children of this age ‘sing’ in this same monotonous way, and the teachers are able to pick out the ones that might develop something like a voice. Well, it just beats me.
Despite your soulful rendering of ‘Danny Boy’ and less respectable ditties, singing was about the last talent I expected to find in one of our children. It’s the Breen coming out in her, that’s what it is!! But seriously, love, I’d give anything to see Wendy singing in front of a hallful of children! I still can’t believe it’s true.
Now that’s all the news of the children and the only other news of me is that I’ve finished making the marrow jam and it seems very nice. I didn’t make last year’s mistake of overcooking it. Shall I risk sending you some in a tin? That last experience has scared me. This lot produced about four and three quarter pounds. Next time I’m going to experiment by adding a pound of apples. That should make it set much more quickly and there won’t be so much loss of weight. I should be able to scrape up enough sugar in about another three weeks. Unfortunately it’s not a very economical jam from the sugar point of view.
By the time you’ve got this far in the letter you’ll be thinking that I’ve forgotten on what day it will arrive. No, I haven’t forgotten, darling, only I wanted to be rid of the more mundane matters before I mentioned it. That being done I’ll say many happier returns, darling. I’ve always been glad that no one seems aware of our anniversary except ourselves. That’s how it should be, for it doesn’t mean a thing to anyone else but us. It’s our own day, precious, and in future years we’ll have a whale of a time every anniversary to make up for the ones we’ve missed. Through your peculiar work hours and my habit of child-bearing we’ve never had a chance to do this day justice, have we? Still, it’s always meant a lot to us for I think we’ve both been aware that each passing anniversary has brought us closer to each other.
From the time you cast your evil eye upon me at Marjorie Smith’s party, my life with you has fallen into definite sections, each one drawing us closer together than the last one. First there was the ‘courting’ period – days when you used to drag me away down dark passages in Bootle Town Hall and have your will of me; or walk me for miles while you laid down the law; or just find a sheltered spot in the sandhills in the dear dead days when they weren’t bristling with barbed wire and A.A. guns – an ‘Echo’ to lie on, your glasses in my hat, one more evidence buried in the sand – dear love, if I shut my eyes I can recapture the whole atmosphere of those nights. I can hear the river and feel the sand running through my fingers as we lay smoking the post-coital cigarette! How difficult it was to have to remember mundane things like last buses. But there was always tomorrow when we would meet on business footing – “Will you see to this Miss Gregson?” “Certainly, Mr. Johnson!” Not a flicker of the eyelid to reveal that we had lain in the sand the previous night and would do so again at the first opportunity. We were pretty hot, weren’t we, although I say it myself.
But I’m rambling – I do love to linger over those first days when we were learning to know each other and I was learning to love you and trying so hard not to! It seemed to me at first the ideal relationship. We suited each other sexually, we enjoyed each other’s company. Neither of us wanted to sentimentalise it, neither of us wanted marriage. But after a while I was dissatisfied. I suppose a woman always is when she finds a man isn’t falling for her! Do you remember when I said “I’m not just a body to you, am I?” I had begun to feel that anyone could have filled my position with you, only I happened to be obliging. There were times when I could have choked you for your refusal to fall in love with me. But there were good days too, when I was thoroughly happy with you, content that you only wanted me, and that you did like to be with me quite apart from shagging me. And as we began to know each other better I began to think that perhaps some day you might love me a little bit! And then in a little gnat-infested lane in West Kirby you leaned me against a wall and said “Have you ever thought about marrying me?” I didn’t take it too seriously but it was pleasant to turn the notion over in my mind.
After that came black days. You left the ‘B.T.’ I saw you but rarely and when I saw you, you shagged me with a sort of bitterness and promptly left me again, like a man eating his dinner and rushing off to his business. Then one night you told me you weren’t going to see me again for six months. And the same night you raved about Dr. Somebody’s daughter and when I looked at you a trifle suspiciously you said “Lord, you don’t think I shagged her, do you? You couldn’t touch a girl like that.” Wow! Not very tactful, love! You hadn’t worried about touching me! That gave me to think. It seemed the virtuous ones were right. I had made myself “cheap” and here I was being cast off for six months for “business reasons”. But it seemed funny that business reasons should crop up at the same time as another girl. I came home and cried a bit and painted my bedroom and tried to stop loving you. Six months seemed a long time and I hadn’t much faith that you’d want me at the end of that time. But I was wrong. The six months lasted exactly two weeks when you popped up at a dance in Litherland and bore me away from Norman to his great annoyance and my huge delight!
But you weren’t very nice to me in the days after that. You were bitter with the world and you seemed to vent it all on me. How often I wished for the strength of mind to break away from you! At last after a night when you’d been particularly abominable I made up my mind that I’d have to finish it and get over it as well as I could. The next date you made with me I came to meet you with every intention that it would be the last time. And, just as if you knew, you were angelic to me. For the first time you spoke about marrying me seriously. I’ve always been glad of that – that you did think about marrying me long before you had to! That night settled it. I was happy after that. You still didn’t admit you loved me but I stopped worrying about it. I just knew that I was in love with you for always and would have to make the best of whatever you felt for me.
Some time after that the “courting” period ended and the “crisis” stage began. Poor old Wendy! Sometimes I look at her, so sure of herself, and think of the days when her life was in peril.
Queer days those – planning for Shrewsbury and planning for a hurried marriage at the same time. I remember one night at a pub in Woolton – we settled all our crises in pubs! – when you were making a layout of a Shrewsbury’s Children’s page, and a list of the first essentials for finding a house, all on the same piece of paper! How I relied on you in those days. You were an angel. You were the one sure thing then.
The next stage was the Alexander Road period. I’ve never pretended that was a particularly happy time. There were too many things to get used to – house keeping, new relations, complications with my own relations, religious persecutions – and you. That last remark sounds nasty but I don’t mean it like that. All I mean is that when you start living with anyone, even when you love them as I loved you, you have to start getting to know them all over again. And then there were things that you couldn’t appreciate – like having no money of my own, and being lonely for the first time in my life. I used to stand in the evening watching the lighted buses go past, thinking of nights when I had to rush round to those dances and of the friendly noise at Limedale. I suppose all these things seemed worse because I was ill all the time before and after Wendy was born. Sweetheart, I’d love to write “Our first home – how happy I was!” But it’s no use pretending – I was just damned miserable.
But I loved you, darling. I had that though I think it was the one time since I’ve known you when I might conceivably have stopped loving you – not through any fault of yours, but just that it is harder to love when you’re conscious of nothing but your own misery. I think I let you down then. I mean that I kept too much unhappiness shut in. I didn’t tell you about it and so didn’t give you a chance to make things better. I was so scared that if I started moaning you might stop loving me, for I thought that at last you did love me and it was such a new and tremendous delight that I was frightened to breathe on it.
Then for the second time our life was turned by your putting me in the family way. The Morningside phase began and still goes on, for the fact of your going away hasn’t somehow started a new stage in our lives. Four years we’ve been here and three of them have been war years and yet I’ve been so happy darling. It seemed that when we came here we came together at last, with no reservations.
We’ve travelled a long way in our eight years, haven’t we, sweet? Yes, I know it’s only six years today, but our marriage only marked another stage in our relationship. We started off as two young people so sure of themselves and their world, and here we are sure of nothing except each other – but so terribly sure about that.
After six years in most marriages I think the gilt’s worn off. Not for us, love. I love you a thousand times more than the day I married you and am a thousand times more sure of your love. And we haven’t just grown used to each other. The longer we have lived together the more we have seemed to gain of that romance which we so haughtily cast aside when we first started to know each other.
I don’t know what I’ve been trying to tell you in all this long rigmarole – unless it is that I have loved you more deeply as each anniversary has come along.
My darling it is past midnight. I had no idea it was so late. I must stop telling you how much I adore you or I’ll be here all night. Oh, sweetheart, I do love you.
The enclosed is to get a couple of extra pints to celebrate this auspicious occasion! I know you don’t want me to send you money, but please don’t be cross just for this once! It’s only to make the day a little bit different for you. I’ll be all cut up if you tell me off about it. I love you, angel, I love you.
Always your own,
Stella
Sep 111942