Darling Pol

by Mary Wesley

  I love you, do not be afraid.

  M.

  Authors’ Club – 3.6.57: 7.30am

  … I am too early for them so I have come back to my bedroom …

  The Times was delightful. I got there at 5, and ‘as it was my first day’ I was allowed to go home at 10.30. At 9 or so we all retired to the canteen for half-an-hour. I had two mutton chops piled with peas and potatoes and a cup of tea for – I think – 2/9d. The colleagues were helpful, and I was able to read the whole of the Otto John trial in the cuttings book besides mastering the elements of the trade which vaguely came back to me …

  Father Mangan whom I also saw (and who gave me absolution in his room then and there) said God is better than A.A. [Alcoholics Anonymous] and much better than psychiatrists … I do think that the need to communicate weekly, or more often, is a very strong inducement and a great help. I didn’t feel this so much at home but without you I now feel it and MUST take communion each Sunday which deters certain obsessions (sex) and irresponsibilities (drinks). So cheer up; but I will do the others, and I’m getting Straussfn5 free, it seems. He was tres chic with semitic grey waistcoat and chains etc. and very friendly.

  Nat is the new Chairman of the Liberal Party, by the way, and most keen and understanding on the Jacko casefn6 and Mental Report … He is also moderate – seeing that he is one of the Heads of the Evangelical Church (he knows Dibelius and Niemollerfn7) – and has written decent pamphlets on ‘Romans’ as he calls us. I’m going to get him together with Woodruff?!fn8

  Thornworthy – 3.6.57

  … Found a delicious printing works – would fit into your study – at Morton who are going to print us writing paper. The old owner too busy reading the Western Morning News and too deaf to attend to me he said, but a nice young man did. I stopped to ask a man where the butcher was and before I could open my mouth he cried, ‘For God’s sake tell the butcher we’ve killed the pig and to come and fetch it!’ Meekly I did …

  The son of an Italian professore at Milan is coming. I referred him to Mario Praz … If everyone comes who is supposed to there are now far too many. It will be interessant where they all sleep.

  A wail from Thorafn9 – don’t breathe it – her gentleman who is fifty and safely married has declared himself. I wrote her a very sharp letter on the declarations of safely married men and gave her the push to get rid of him before he gets rid of her, which will help her morale and her reputation. Very glad about Johnny. He is so literal that he will probably do just exactly what you say. I pray so. I expect you have saved his life …

  co Mrs Sloan

  75 Grove End Gardens

  Abbey Road, NW8 – 3.6.57

  … The room is nice, the Abbey Road traffic is less than 20 yards from my nose. All I can say is it’s better than Whitehall Court which had Charing Cross bridge and steam trains as well …

  Please send me £10 as the Times are subtracting MAXIMUM tax and anyway I can’t get any money until Thursday week. I’ll return the £10 then, sans faute, and I have not been extravagant … we can’t have Hughesfn10 more than one day a week next year; we’d save £100 … Rent of £250, as it is, is uneconomic …

  I’ve been trying out various routines: today I went to London Library, quiet but dirty and crowded tube …

  I live for your letters …

  Now about that priest … He refused to accept the position and nearly refused me absolution and gave me THREE ROSARIES to say and advised me to go to Farm Street. Fr Mangan said the only sensible thing he’d told me was to go to Farm Street! But I was afraid, glimpsing automatic excommunication (if I were refused absolution). Fr Mangan said not. If one refuses, go on to the next one! I said according to our consciences and against our instructions we’d made love for a few weeks after 5 weeks’ sexlessness. He thought five weeks very good. As I’d cursed the priest, and fallen into despair (not drink), he gave me absolution again. He is a fine, brave man …

  Thornworthy – 4.6.57

  … I laughed for hours over your confession. Just like a Frenchman! How nice about Nicky Charles. Nice too that Father Mangan consoled you and very nice that you met Eric Strauss, that the Times were agreeable, in fact your news cheered me. We have good friends.

  I too feel the need for communion but I am choosing to confess in the rush hour at Torquay when it will be Whit Saturday and hope to avoid 105 HM’s [Hail Marys] though I would not mind. Did I tell you that when I sat so boringly for the painter last autumn I said my prayers? I found it a very good way for stillness though the Catholic painter exclaimed at intervals that I was drooping.

  The reconnection with Nat Micklem must be lovely …

  Ann Ruegg [a neighbour] came to supper and cheered up quite a lot. Three nice nieces came to have coffee afterwards. Apparently Marjorie has been with the Rueggs nineteen years except for four years during the war when she was ‘lent’ here [to Thornworthy]. Lady W.fn11 constantly interfered with her work and on one occasion screamed at Marjorie who was laying the table ‘I seem to be doing more and more of your work’, to which Marjorie replied, ‘You will soon be doing it all, My Lady.’

  The Boy from Madagascar is coming for six weeks on July 30th. Monsieur his father wrote a very nice letter. The geese contrary to my fears are most popular chez the Wallers but have discovered that if they sit outside the hall windows they can listen to all the fascinating telephonings, so they sit riveted, gazing in through the window – Animal Farm …

  I am now in the position to pick and choose my pg.’s. They are nearly all boys but the Ruegg girls have promised to come and play tennis with them. They say the court is quite alright and that they played on it last year … a lot.

  Frau Bentinck also has the pg.’s but charges I think less than me. Next year I shall charge more and work less hard.

  Viva your book. I’m afraid for you for the noise. I was noticing last night how excessively quiet it is here which makes you the more vulnerable. Pills?

  I love you and miss you. You may be irritable but you have cause – you are tender my love and I dearly love that!

  I must take the little dogs out. There are sighs, groans and nudgings. I alarm myself to get up, and do so at 7.30am, getting back into bed it is true with my breakfast …

  Thornworthy – 5.6.57

  … Alas I read your letter when the postman had gone so I shall trot down to Yeo and just pray you get the cheque in time to cash it tomorrow. I have no car, it is at the garage. Feet will do. Douglas at the P.O. says it is fatal to express letters, delays them no end!

  Don’t worry about the cross French priest. Even Tom has popped from one box to the next in the Oratory and we were warned this would happen …

  OK for the ten pounds but must have it back as you say Thursday week because of the wages. My first lodger arrives July 1st and then I can start paying my way …

  A propos the French priest, it seems to me we undertook to love God not the French priest and if loving one another and consoling one another are not according to the preaching of Christ I will eat my hat salted with the technicality of unmarriage in the eyes of the church. When I was very worried about lapsing into loving, we know what Father Mangan said. He’s our spiritual advisor damn it …fn12

  With all my love,

  M

  London NW8 – 11.6.57

  My darling,

  I left you with a pang, and I wondered if one’s ability to feel pain decreases with age … I was ‘glad to feel sad’ because I love you …

  Times is a long stiff pull until you are used to it (if you ever are) … Card there from Bridget, suggesting we meet tomorrow. I hope to gigolo a lunch out of her: maybe see Patrick, whose American inamoratus (masculine) has arrived …

  Here I am at my table. My hostess is clean, but even here dust drifts and settles; traffic ROARS. I don’t know if I can stand it …

  My book is a problem (the ‘I’ narrator method is failing me) but I have more faith now that I know what truth I want to tell (not just ‘wr
ite a book to make money’). This applies even to a funny book. I think I can do something true and funny by September …

  I have much faith in your heroic enterprise, because I feel you have just the gifts for it … I’ll see G. & Thring about an extra pupil … and I’ll write eventually to Bowra and Livingstone, too.fn13

  All my love, you have helped me immensely …

  Thornworthy – 12.6.57

  I went and suffered at the hairdressers’ where they said of Pebble – ‘That dog has been coming in for years and years!’ …

  I love you most dearly my darling. I think that now you have realised at last, after a lifetime of trying to persuade yourself and others to the contrary, that you are a naturally good person your books will flow. A lot more Rouge et less Noir. Pour moi tu es presque toujours Rouge. Je t’aime and Billy shall prove it to you.

  M.

  Afterthought … I wrote a note to Miss Varwell. I would have visited her but she is out for the day. She won’t fuss if she knows it is coming and the rebate will pay rent and rates. I can pay bills from the pg.’s as I go along. I have soothed the coal merchant! Mr Jeffreys had been saying ‘No cheque, No coal’ to Miss Jeffreys but I put a stop to that! [The boiler at Thornworthy was coal fired and had to burn all summer to heat the water and the cooker].

  I am quite determined not to let pressure of money fluster me and now we are dealing with it as best we can I don’t see why it should.

  London NW8 – 14.6.57

  I was much relieved to get your postcard. I had been gloomy and bewildered all yesterday – WOUNDED in fact that the Old Girls should (I now see) dislike and distrust me; as they must if they think I’d take advantage of them … Quelle betise! Please tell them we are broke [but] we’ll pay up …

  I’m also much relieved, having begun my novel – new version. It must be funny and invented. I knew that. But I didn’t see how. Now I’ve found the approach, torn up the pages I read you and written a very funny and original first page … I mean to finish it in 12 weeks. Above all, I am enjoying writing it – in this new style. It is a STORY …

  My book is a tribute to your heroism … Best wishes for a happy weekend with Toby, and give him lots of love …

  Thornworthy – 15.6.57

  Got home at 2.30 this morning to find all the stoves out and your letter about the rent etc. Stoves soon lit and have slept sound-lessly – I hope – six hours. Toby gone off to the lake … and we are going to swim this afternoon and tomorrow. The weather is broiling hot …

  There is nothing fundamental to worry about. I told Dick [Dick Waller, their landlady’s nephew] what you did not, that a. To let this house at all it has to be done up and have money spent on it and b. That although it has been on all the agents’ books for a year there has never been a nibble. I also said that Hughes was a bugbear and Mrs Hughes indispensable to his aunt and mother but not to us, so he will have registered that point …

  A good day at Bryanston [for Toby’s school speech day]. The Lark transformed by Christopher Fry was very very good.fn14 The Platts-Millsfn15 in good form and we supper picnicked with the Sternsteds by the river first. Were kept awake by police pickets looking for the escaped prisonersfn16 all the way home armed with photographs of two nice young men ‘in prison overalls’. I had seen them thumbing a lift, in other clothes, on my way up to Bryanston but said nothing …

  Thornworthy – 15.6.57

  … Very nice letter from the Bismarck mother, the boy isn’t coming but coming next year with a sister, and a very nice letter indeed from Monsieur Hanhart (who telegraphed) who says thanks for trying to put him off, but he and the boy are determined he shall come! So I now have the right number of little dears – seven – one replaces another … Two are paying eight guineas and all the rest ten. As they are all French or Belgian except Beine Schachtfn17 I expect Roger and Toby will improve their French.

  Toby is displaying great charm and beauty, good manners and thoughtfulness – pour que ca dur!

  … Yesterday was very tiring but very enjoyable. John P-M said, ‘We are thinking of moving out of London because of the cost of living.’ ‘To Moscow I suppose.’ ‘To Sussex,’ pursing his lips. (Joey is being sent to Moscow with a youth party for 3 weeks of the hols.) …

  London NW8 – 16.6.57: Trinity Sunday

  … I have been to mass and slept and slept! Driven mad by the noise I have decided to move to Glyn’s slum on Thursday morning (40 Warwick Avenue W9) which I went to see yesterday. It is squalid but quiet. (Alwyn is engaged to an artist who draws on TV Children’s Hour.) So that is that. At least I shall be able to sleep and work.

  I saw Nancy yesterday, too. She is fed up with her job, is 49, finds life meaningless, and Susan Hibbert told her she had spiritual possibilities. Susan also wisely said that she had replaced God by ‘Jack’, who has now got his divorce … but certainly won’t marry Nancy. That of course is the core. She needs turning inside out. I told her firmly a. not to think of giving up her job b. to become a Catholic. She is not at all drawn to the sort of church-going she was brought up to. I rang Mangan today, and she will ring him up tomorrow. I think this may be a very good thing indeed (or a failure). She admitted having grown or turned away from us, and ‘as soon as she heard we’d become Catholics felt she’d come home to us again’.

  Mass was in the most hideous church I’ve ever seen, which made people look like Belsen warders and wardresses. Very elaborate and hideous.fn18 Nevertheless, as moving in its essentials as ever, and I lit a candle each for you and Billy.

  I am just recovering from having my Dublin Review article returned (in proof) yesterday as unintelligible. The best thing I’ve ever done! Am I a genius after all? It is a blow and perhaps I am partly to blame …

  The Times people are very nice to me, send me away early, say I am ‘doing all right’.

  I can’t wake up. Blazing sun right in this window.

  All my love,

  Eric

  Thornworthy – 17.6.57

  Boiling hot here. We fried like bacon all day yesterday at Tarn Teign. Toby goes back tomorrow teatime … [He] and I are brown as can be – between swims Toby caught a lovely trout in the river and lots of little ones which were replaced in the water. He is very well but lost as he has the abroad bug, wants to go to Italy, Austria, France etc. Good, but I’m glad I have my Bill. Don’t forget Thursday is Corpus Christi [a holy day of obligation when Catholics were required to go to mass]. I shall be going in the evening to Okehampton …

  London NW8 – 17.6.57

  Dearest Owl,

  … I am feeling irresponsible and carefree, as it is QUITE impossible to work here. Traffic roars, sun beats in, and the old lady of 75 below, of Czech origin, plays the same twiddly piece from 10 to 1 every morning.

  So I am sure my decision to live in a QUIET slum is right, and I am looking forward to being alone in a large, dreary room … I shall dust the room, and make my own breakfast and bed. Glyn will be there for company. He is, unconsciously, very funny indeed. He is so glad Alwyn’s fiancé is British – and not some ghastly central European.fn19

  Mangan was spare in greetings, but I daresay it’s all he can do to get to the telephone … I have become quite reliable at The Times and was entrusted with the ‘lead’ story – the weather, all over Europe! As you see, my ambitions are modest. I feel as if I had suddenly become sane. I feel empty.

  I had better do some work.

  I am reading Jane Austen, who is even more detestable than I imagined. The English ideal; class-conscious, money-conscious, sexless and Refined.

  I will say that for the Catholics I saw yesterday, they all looked like murderers.

  No drinks, no women … no cigarettes and damned little company! It’s alright if I work, and I like London in summer …

  Thornworthy – 18.6.57

  Not Owl please! My love,

  I am glad you are not feeling too hot … Quiet is more important than anything. Jolly unquiet here this morning with a swarm of
bloody bees moving into the top attic, Hughes thundering about in a veil and Mrs W. and I replacing baby swallows in their nests while the coalmen bring the anthracite [smokeless coal]. Boaty [Toby], who has always shown grown up tendencies, has gone off to the lake to fish. He goes from Exeter this afternoon. Olive Hepburnfn20 now has cancer of the liver and will die. Nothing to be done. Sennan is the nearest and best beach … Boskenna very rocky and anyway we can’t go there anymore.fn21

  If Father Mangan sounds terse on the telephone it is because he has a phobia about the doorman listening to his conversation. If this letter reads cross, which I see it does, it is that Hughes is driving me mad. ‘Are you there, madam?’ every minute. ‘Have you got a torch?’ ‘I’ve fallen through the ceiling.’ ‘You can’t alter bees’ minds.’ Whatever next? …

  That blasted old Schacht has not yet told me when his child is coming so I have refused fifteen children now for her. Thora says the Hohenzollern is the future Kaiser and that the family ‘keep very dark’ and ‘nobody knows them’. I have heard no more anyway and am full up …

  Everyone grumbling here at the lovely lovely weather …

  If we can shove Nancy over the brink Billy will have one Catholic godparent as I told her …

  London NW8 – 18.6.57

  11am – In the traffic

  Dearest Pol,

  I am less enervated this morning … Clang go the milk bottles, bang goes the bus, crash go the gears; but I think my novel may be quite funny.

  Before me is your letter. You must be delectably brown, so prepare yourself for mortal sin. Which shall not prevent me from taking communion tomorrow. I am quite clear about this. Take it or leave it. Let us enjoy life …

  The novel is about les English as seen by a Frenchman … It is about how love grows without being logically defined or even consistent. It is about the insanity of Common Sense and the idiocy of trying to defeat it, by reaching out for the Absolute. All this, quite simple in the classical manner of the English comedy. (Much as she annoys, Emma entertains me. Real Woman’s Mag stuff. It holds the reader because it tells the story day by day. That is what I am trying to do.) …