Sunday 8 March 2015

8th March 1935 - Terrick to Mary

2 Earl's Court Square
S.W. 5

7th (now the 8th) March 1935


My Darling Mary,

It is now past twelve o'clock.  I meant this letter to get to you tomorrow morning but I have been out so it will have to catch the first post in the morning.

Yesterday  got a letter from one of the family friends in Wimbledon, one of the girls who asked me to a dance in January, saying she  some friends were going in a party to a dance at a club in Earl's Court on Saturday & would I come.  I wrote that I couldn't.  this afternoon a phone call came for me in the office when I was out to ring up Mrs Dunn in West Kensingston.  I didn't know the name & the fellow who took the message seemed very vague.  I was so rushed in the office that I forgot all about it, only remembering when I got to Hyde Park Tube station.  I tried to ring up from there but found I had forgotten the number, only remembering the name and West Kensington.  I started to look through all the Dunns but found it would take too long.  So I went down the tube, got into the train, sat down & decided to start reading.  I found I hadn't got my book.  I had left it in the phone box!  The train hadn't started so I went all the way up the escalator again.  The book was still there.  I got home at last, and with the aid of my postal district maps & the phone book found six Dunns in West Ken.  No coppers.  I put on a coat, went out, got change & phoned.  I started with the number I thought most likely & said it was T. FH calling, very tentatively.  Fortunately I was right first time.  It was this girl who had asked me to the dance staying with friends in W. Ken.  Could I come to the dance after the Reunion.  No.  Well would I come round & see them.  So I did, it was only the next station & in the end four of us went to "The Little Minister".  I was sorry I saw it with them as it was just the sort of film we ought to have seen together.  Just the right amount of sentiment and nice talk about "true love" etc. Quite a good Silly Symphony too "The Tortoise & The Hare".  Afterwards I had to go & drink tea at their flat & have just got back.  The Dunns are rather nice.

Darling, Paul & Brenda have just bought their house & want to spend Sunday afternoon in going over it again.  Could we go & see it with them?  Paul is very anxious to show it off.

I can't go home after either the Leeds or Bradford Reunions as they can't get me back to the station on a Sunday.

Dear, old thing, are you going to miss any more O.T. lectures? Because unless they are as interesting as Job I shall miss them too.  Will it miss up your grant if I do?  In any case I shall miss next Wednesday's.

You light up my life, dear. Not only just brightening it but bringing out dim corners of it that had never seen the light of day before, that I didn't know were there.  I suppose love does that for everyone.  Though I look at loving couples and cannot believe that they have anything worth giving each other.

I hope I give you as much as you give me.  Babbie in "The Little Minister" in telling him about her falling in love with him says "I knew I could never be entirely unhappy again".  And I know that I have ever been even approaching the slightest unhappiness since I fell in love with you.  The nearest I got to it was at being kept away from you on the Riviera for so long.

But ordinary worries don't affect me at all.  In business if things go wrong I quite surprise myself at feeling so unperturbed  - even for me who am not ordinarily perturbable.  And I know it is because there is something so important elsewhere in my life - You - that these other things seem very small.  In you I am so happy that I don't mind other things going wrong, and in you I could be so unhappy that beside that unhappiness all others are flea-bites.

It's a great life, darling; and all will work out well!

Love me and I'll love you and our three-score years and ten will slip by.  Instead of being a necessary evil to go through and get over they will be a pleasant memory even in the hereafter (assuming one for the sake of argument).  I don't think that life was really meant to be happy and being happy may distract us from paying life the rent we owe it for our room on earth, but still - 

Darling, I love you.

Terrick
             XXX

No comments:

Post a Comment