Come back, chick, come back!
Red
… 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd,
AW, alas, had never told Ade that he, AW, was romantically involved with Betty, so the inevitable happened …
LETTER 119: TO BETTY, 18 JULY 1966
Sunday evening
Betty dear, this letter will be the most difficult I have ever written. I won’t like writing it, and you won’t like reading it. But, after yesterday, there are some things that must be said, and quickly. I am sorry to have to say them in a letter, when you have no chance of immediate reply, but you happen to be in Dublin and I am sat here in a lonely house, with a heart turned to tears, and cannot wait until I see you again.
It concerns Ade and yourself, of course. Nothing I say must lead you to think that I have changed my opinion about Ade in any way. He is the most generous, most considerate man I have ever known. A gentleman, as I always wanted to be – and never made it. Nor have I changed my opinion about you. You are the sweetest woman in the whole world, and always will be. Yet yesterday Ade and I came near to having a blazing row. As I expected, our Saturday walk was all ‘Betty this’ and ‘Betty that’ (except that I do wish he would say Betty and not Beddy!) and at first I was wagging my tail, mightily pleased, because there are so few people I can talk to about you and because compliments about you always make me feel so proud. But then he went on to tell me about his more personal relationships with you – the late evenings you had had together, the telephone calls, the places you had visited in his company, your calendar of future engagements – and I could feel my innards shrivelling up. He was brutally frank and open about everything, brutally so only because he did not know my feelings for you and may also have assumed that you may have mentioned these events to me anyway already. Betty, this affair has gone much further than I imagined from the very little you have told me. With pleasure he reported that after Dufton (‘I don’t want him to come home with me’ you said) he was with you until 11.35. In the car coming back you will remember that he mentioned the ‘beautiful ladies’ who were joining him on the following day. Guess who they turned out to be? How stupid I was about that! Why didn’t you at least tell me? It was no kindness, if that was your intention. I wouldn’t have been hurt. I would have been happy for you, and pleased about it – but not when you are being deliberately secretive. We have never had secrets from each other before. That is what hurts.
Our main discussion was on the seat provided by Mrs Lewis on the summit of High Pike. (I was going to take you there one day, remember?) Ade told me all his plans for you, more that he has yet told you, and certainly more than you have told me; and he told me of other arrangements made with your knowledge and consent. There is Place Fell and Sharrow Bay, a family party, the day after Cross Fell, Blencathra at your request. You are to have dinner with him at the George, Keswick. He intends to see you, or at least speak to you, every day during the remaining seven weeks of his stay. He is going to insist that you visit San Francisco this autumn. He has suggested you have a few days with him in London. Oh Betty love, why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to find out like this? What is going wrong between us?
I don’t object to what you are doing (because I asked you to see him as often as you wanted, and make him happy), and can’t (because in Ade lies your best chance of happiness). But I wish you had told me. I was shocked into silence. He didn’t know, but his words were slowly killing me. I had no idea you and he had become so close.
He has wonderful plans for you, and is absolutely convinced and absolutely sincere. He told me his financial position, as though I were your guardian instead of merely a cast-off lover. I gave him my consent. A really wonderful new life is being offered to you, by a generous man who loves you. You should accept it.
I ought not to be in the picture at all, not even in the background. The solicitors are meeting on Tuesday next to consider figures that will leave me 5 pounds a week to live on (after meeting commitments such as tax, mortgage, etc) plus what I can get from my books (they may want some of that, too). And smoking costs me 2 pounds! There is clearly no future for me and certainly none for you with me.
Saturday was a bonny day, but Ade took all the sunshine out of it for me. After hearing him, how could I tell him that I loved you more than he ever could, that I had known you in dreams long before we ever met? Nor could I tell him of my own troubles. I had very little to say all the way back. There seemed nothing I could do but tell him I would pull out of the trinity, leaving the two of you to sort yourselves out. This I did when we got to Grasmere, and he was dreadfully upset (still not realising why) and in fact we spent the evening in the car park at White Moss (of blessed memory), arguing about it.
I’m sorry, love, but it seems the only thing to do. I am desperately unhappy – the past week has been wretched, with you out of reach, and the next will be worse. I am so terribly alone. Last night I had no sleep at all. I feel like a sinking ship after everybody has left it.
Ade will tell you the story. He is visiting you on Friday for a ‘late night’ if he is not allowed to collect you in Liverpool. I have said, only after much persuasion and only after he had threatened never to see either of us again, that I will turn up on Saturday for Cross Fell to explain to you what I feel. But really there is nothing more to be added, except thanks for all you have done for me and for giving me the happiest days of my life. Please don’t ring me on Friday. There is nothing I can say over the telephone, and in any case Ade will be with you all day if he brings you from Liverpool.
I enclose the photographs. Ade has ordered more enlargements. He wants me next Saturday to take a picture of him kissing you, so you see how impossible things have become. He may get his kiss, that’s up to you; but it will certainly not be recorded on my camera.
Please don’t worry. I will see you on Saturday at 9.30, as so often before, but for the first time I shall not be looking forward to it. I will bring the drawing of Fowl Ing: I have been working at it since 8.30 this morning and will finish it before then. As for the Pennine Way, I don’t know. The spark has gone.
This is a hateful thing to do to you, I know. But I am hopelessly in love with you, and ‘hopelessly’ has now become he operative word. I ache for you, but it would get worse, not better, if we carried on as before. I have one satisfaction, the way things have turned out – that I never kept my promise. On my dying day I will still be wondering what it would be like!
Sorry, love, sorry
Red
LETTER 120: TO BETTY, UNDATED, JULY 1966
I didn’t bow out very gracefully, did i? I’m terribly sorry now. I had a rough bringing-up, and the grittiness still comes out at times.
Betty, you don’t have to reply to a letter that should never have been written. If I do not hear from you at all, I will get the message, perhaps better than if you tried to tell me.
Let’s end it romantically, as it started, please, love. Let my farewell present, very appropriately, be this record of the theme music from Dr Zhivago. Please play it when the house is quiet, and mark well the words, for these are the words I wanted you to hear from me. I was clumsy and cruel. So try to forgive me.
With all my heart, dear, I hope you find the happiness you never found with me.
Red
However, Betty wrote back at once, telling him not to be so silly. There was nothing between her and Ade. AW was just imagining it was more serious than it was.
LETTER 121: TO BETTY, 22 JULY 1966
Friday morning
Betty love, your reply filled me with remorse, but did me a world of good. I didn’t mean to slap your face so hard. I have been so terribly lonely without you. An age has passed since Bowes Moor. All week I have been distressed, heart-broken, that our friendship should end so unhappily. It has needed Ade’s intervention to teach me that I could not face a future in which you had no part. I love you, and only you, and always shall. If you had to take a whip to me you could not al
ter that.
I am sorry for some of the things I implied in my letter. I was always a bad loser. But last Saturday I was given the impression that you had encouraged Ade in his hopes, although you had led me to think differently. Betty, it was a nightmare experience. I was having to listen to the last things I wanted to hear, and there was no escape. He was so confident, so possessive. He had asked you to get a divorce, and then all you had to do was sign on the dotted line. It was as easy as that.
I don’t blame Ade. In his position, I would have been in a seventh heaven of delight, too, and wanting to enthuse about you to others. Ade is a go-getter: it is his training, and a national characteristic. But I have since had misgivings. He is offering you wealth, security, servants, good social contacts, city amenities. Think hard, love. Isn’t this where you came in, twenty years ago? Please be very sure of yourself, and please, please don’t make the same mistake again. Don’t be hustled into a trap. Don’t be taken for granted. If you want to consider him seriously, play for time. Ade could not give you the sort of love you need, as I could, but the trouble with me is that I have so much love for you and so little else.
Sweetheart, I didn’t want to believe that you could forget so easily the pledges we made to each other last winter. I didn’t want to believe that your thoughts were now all of San Francisco and no longer of Kirkcarrion, or that our plans of a cottage by a stream were not really important. And I just couldn’t believe that the unexpected final caress in the car a fortnight ago, about which I wondered, was a Judas kiss. You could never do that to me!
Perhaps I could have a few minutes alone with you tomorrow? I will not stay in your company long, having no wish to witness Ade’s courtship. You could drop me off at Orton Scar, and I will have a walk along the limestone edge to Asby and Appleby, and return by bus. You and Ade will want to talk, and make arrangements for Sunday.
I shall be with you an hour or so after you receive this letter, and it will make me a lot happier to see your sweet face again. But let it be smiling, Betty, not sad, so that I can think, at least for a little longer, that I have not lost you after all, and that our love for each other is still running pretty high (mine for you is in full spate!). Tell me with your eyes what your lips may not have a chance to say.
Red.
Over the summer, all three continued to meet and go for walks – as AW had still never got round to telling Ade that Betty was his chosen one. Then on 3 August, Betty rang AW at work to say that Ade had proposed …
LETTER 122: TO BETTY, 3 AUGUST 1966
Wednesday
Arising out of your telephone call today –
Betty love, listen. You are worrying your pretty little head over a problem that does not exist. A man has offered marriage. You do not love him. You know, and I know, that you never could. Why can’t you see the answer as clearly as I do, or as Laura would? It must be no. It cannot be anything else.
You confuse a simple issue in your mind by thinking that I am involved. Love, I am not. Your answer to Ade has nothing to do with me. I am separate from it. My own misgivings arise from your muddled thinking. You are giving me the impression that if I say yes, your answer to Ade will be no. and conversely, if I say no, your answer to Ade will be yes. From what you tell me I am sure you are giving Ade the same impression. You are driving some sort of a bargain, and showing little sense about it. The shrewd, mature, intellectual woman is behaving like a silly schoolgirl. Remind me to smack your bottom on Saturday.
Ade is ready to settle for marriage without love. He has suffered a rebuff (which he is not accustomed to) and his instincts are in revolt. He had a business arrangement, all planned, and it has collapsed. No, of course he won’t like it. He wants a wife (preferably, but not particularly, you), and just see if he doesn’t get one within the next year or so. And then you lecture me about his strong moral fibre! Snap out of it, love. Send him home to his Jewish mistress. Moral fibre, indeed!
You must tell him that the more he persists, the less you like him. You must tell him, the next time he parades his worldly possessions before you, that you are not on sale to the highest bidder. Just close your eyes for a minute, and picture the slobbering old fool smirking at you at bedtime, not one night, but every night. And me in a lonely bed at the other side of the world. You would end up screaming. You must be crazy, even to think of him. Remind the man of his noble resolve not to come between us. You see now what it was worth. Moral fibre, indeed!
I am not offering you love. I am giving it to you, as I have for the past thirty years, and I always shall: I can’t help it. It is you I want, not any woman. Just you. More than love I cannot promise. You must trust me. When you persist in asking for assurances, you make me doubt, not myself, but you.
When you are in Keswick tomorrow night, and Ade is showering his gold and frankincense and myrrh on your lap, spare a thought for me slaving away (I wish I could say in a garret) on the Pennine Way – I shall be in the vicinity of the sinister limestone gorge where my heart was crying out ‘Betty, please’, not knowing then that the man who was spying on us was your new lover – and remember that I am working not for my future, but ours. It may only be a small cottage, and there may not be much to eat, and the rickety bed will squeak like mad, but, oh Betty, it will be a place with so much love in it that it will flow out of the windows and up the chimney and lose itself in heaven. Spare a thought, too, tomorrow night, for Kirkcarrion. My memory is better than yours: for me, Kirkcarrion means ‘for ever’.
Oh golly! Sometimes I even wish I didn’t love you so much. But not really. I love to love you. I want you to love me the same way. Just for the love of it. Now off you go to Keswick. Let Ade see the lovelight in your eyes, and let the doddering old clown know it is not there for him.
You are a funny little thing. All winter you profess your affection, and show it, and then when a man walks past with his pockets bulging and gives you a wink you wriggle out of my embrace and go after him and I have to get to my feet, exhausted by your attention and pull you back. Hold me close for ever, you said. Yes, I will, but do stop trying to break away!
Your bedroom light, on at 8.30 this (Thursday) morning, would tell me you remember Kirkcarrion, and send me to work happy and assured.
Red
It would seem that Ruth at this stage had not completely gone, but was returning home from time to him. But then she did leave – and he was left to look after himself, all alone.
LETTER 123: TO BETTY, 8 SEPTEMBER 1966
Thursday afternoon
Betty dear, please do not see me or ring me tomorrow (Friday). There has been another hysterical outburst at home and a stated intention of leaving me on Saturday of this week. I am very worried about these latest developments, and am finding myself in a situation I cannot control. I know very well that in these circumstances I should ask you to cancel our Saturday arrangement, but I want to see you so much and tell you what has happened. There is nobody else I can talk to. If you think it better that we should not meet on that day, don’t come and I will understand. There is a danger of becoming implicated. Circumstances on Saturday morning may prevent me from turning out myself, although I desperately want to get away from events for a few hours. If anything should happen tomorrow that makes it clear that I shall not be able to keep our rendezvous, I will write again tomorrow.
LETTER 124: TO BETTY, 12 SEPTEMBER 1966
ON LIVING ALONE
Well, of course, my spirits took a nose-dive as I watched you drive away through the rain. I felt bleakly that you were leaving me forever, leaving me in a sea of troubles of my own making. I was depressed, and frightened. Yours was the hand I wanted to hold, and I no longer could. You had gone. There was a bus waiting for Settle, and so I went to Settle and had a meal big enough to last me until Monday in the dining-room of the Golden Lion, where you and I dined last November after a visit to Haworth. Out in the street I ran into Harry Robinson and wife (alibi!) and another woman (which I suppose is all right if your wife i
s present). Rather oddly, they had been doing the Settle-Carlisle railway journey, and return. I was in a bad state of mind on the journey home, naturally, and extremely apprehensive as I approached the house. Surprisingly, the lights were on and the lady of the house in residence. Supper was served and nothing was said.
I had a wonderful night’s sleep, for which you must take full credit. You are a clever girl. You’ve got the know-how, somehow! Nothing had gone from the house. A busy day’s work had been done. In addition to the week’s washing, the summer curtains had been taken down and the winter ones put up. The television set had been moved to its winter position, nearer the fireplace. Everything was neat and tidy.
This morning I carried on with my book (Wyther Hill to Middleton) while a busy morning’s cleaning and cooking was going on. I had an excellent dinner, and returned to my book. The dinner plates were washed up and put away, and Cindy prepared for going out. THEN, at 1.30, she announced her departure to her new home in Kentmere and there ensued a fairly rational conversation, at last. She has rented School Cottage, just by the church, for a few months, furnished, at the reasonable rent of 3 pounds a week. The cottage is the converted school-house and very attractive. Peter will stay there when he comes. I offered to pay her 10 pounds a week while she is there (which she accepted, and protested it was much too much) and gave her 40 pounds for the next four weeks. Her intention is still to go to Blackburn to live, and I then asked whether she would say how much a week she would want from me then, after I had retired. Would she not agree a figure with me now, and save all the unpleasantness and expense of solicitors? Yes, all right, 7 pounds. All right, I said, 7 pounds. We are to inform our solicitors accordingly, but ask them to leave the matter in abeyance until she has discussed her position with Peter.
The Wainwright Letters Page 21
