3rd January 1933 - Terrick to Mary

186 Haverstock Hill
Hampstead
N.W.3.

3rd January 1933

My Dear Mary Pleasant, 

I am so glad you wrote to me.  Although I tried to seem amused over the phone, I did so want you to explain.

I had gathered the time I came to your house before Xmas and also, and especially, at your dance last Thursday, that you had a good deal of coquetry in you.

With my criminal record it certainly never occurred to me to criticise you for it.  But I admit I was rather shocked at what Paul said.

Then I decided that it was poetic justice and that I was only feeling what I must have made lots of girls feel in the past.

And in the end I found that though I might think differently about you, I felt about you just the same as ever.

But now I understand and I ought to have known it all the time.

We both seem to have a good effect on each other.  I hope you like feeling good; some people don’t.  It is partly through you that I am mending my ways.

I had an affair with the girl who was the antithesis of you, and I broke it off on the Sunday before Xmas, partly because I had found at Fort William that with two so different girls writing to me, it was your letters I looked forward to, and you to whom I enjoyed writing.  She was a nice girl and I felt a rotter at jilting her.  I resolved then that I wouldn’t flirt any more, except with confirmed flirts, and I wouldn’t’, if seriously keen on a girl, tell her so until I had really had time to know her – because I was so changeable.

That Sunday night when you were motoring me back to town (just before I wrote to the girl) and on Thursday night at the dance, I nearly contracted lock-jaw in restraining repartee inconsistent with my resolution.

And last Sunday night that sigh in the car that I told you, truly, was for my bad qualities was induced by the fact that I knew that I was going to relapse directly we got to your house.

And you see, the reason why I asked you help me patch up my resolution is that I don’t want to be my old self with you.  If you don’t quite make me feel I am good, you make me feel I want to be.

I know when I read this letter through I shall find it perfectly sickening.

I am sure I do not seem “obviously experienced” to you, because I don’t act or feel like it a bit.  I feel as though I am your own age.  That was a bit of your blarney, or, if you prefer, your coquetry.

Isn’t it a curse about the 8th and 12th? Thursday must be wangled somehow.  I think I can manage it.

The South African is a fellow called Foster-Towne and he is staying at the Strand Palace Hotel.  He wants somebody to go about with him until he leaves for Paris on Friday.

If he insists on having someone for Thursday evening I’ll try and palm Paul off on him without the Poly knowing.

I am very glad you wrote and told me all about your disreputable character.  You are a dear!

I like you terribly; and am looking forward to seeing you again on Thursday.

Love from 

Terrick xxx