29th October 1935 - Mary to Terrick

O.V.S.
Tuesday


Darling - thank you for your letter - I haven't had one from anybody at all at breakfast time for 3 weeks!  It was lovely to sit on my bed and relish it.

I shall be longing to hear about Paul's job tomorrow - if anything else has happened!  - It would be wonderful if you could both walk off from the Poly into £300 a year.

I have just phoned Jack & he says he'll bring the car up to Richmond for us tomorrow - which will save us a lot of time - won't it? - It may be left at school or in the station yard - so I'll meet you in the yard (District side) at 1.45p.m having had lunch - Jack's going to put the projector in it - so I hope he locks up!

- Oh - it'll be marvellous if it's fine.  I'm longing for it.  Today is such a lousy day.

- I met Mrs Eriksen yesterday (who's apparently to have a first-born) -  she says Carlton is coming down to the Shakespeare on Thursday week - so I shall miss that lecture instead of this week's as I had thought of doing.

- Miss X is just about to take the 5 of us to Tilly of Bloomsbury at the Richmond Theatre as F. Hoppe's farewell party - That'll mean bed at midnight once more! It's a great life!

- It's a good job we continue to love each other in spite of everything.  I hate to think of the egotistical little beasts our children will be - Perhaps a crêche would be better - 

All my love

Yours

    Mary P.
              xxx

28th October 1935 - Terrick to Mary

35 Nevern Place
S.W.5


28th October 1935


My Darling,

All to-day I have felt so sleepy I could hardly work at all.  I saw Renny this evening and apparently he was just the same  We must have over-eaten yesterday .  It has been a very sleepy day: 61 in the shade and I have been sitting in thick clothes next to a blazing stove.

No news from Oxford.  Also there was at first a little snag about my getting away on Wednesday but I think it is O.K. now.

We had a lovely weekend.  I now look forward to the day I can take you out to a dance in your blue evening dress and earrings.  You look just like what, in my least Communistic moments, I have always wanted my wife to look like, seated at the opposite end of a long dinner table gleaming with mahogany and silver, with our guests on each side, being gracious and entertaining and admired by all the company.

K.W. is getting his film tomorrow.  Could I get the projector & "Out for a Row" & "Keeping Cool" on Wednesday and give them back to you on Thursday?

I have just written home & told them all about the rise and the job in Oxford.

Paul was very bucked about his rise, but May has put him onto a job at £300 a year that he believes he can get because one of the firms that do our printing is to do the choosing (it is an advertising job) & they like him very much.  There is only one other candidate!  I do hope he gets it - & that I do too, so that e both leave together & give the Poly a jolt.  I should think that Paul's chance of getting his job was better than mine for the Oxford one.

I must stop now, dear, and get on with my new story.  It is the ghost one, about the girl who came to the house that her own ghost was haunting - or rather, as it turns out, her ancestor's ghost.

Just now you are a the British Drama League expressing sound ideas and generally distinguishing yourself.  See if there isn't, among all those things advertised in the hall, some group that you could get into that would be useful.

I love you very much.  You are very good for me.  It is just as well we can't get married now.  You need to break me of all my bad habits before you marry me.  It'll be more difficult afterwards.

Goodnight, darling.

from your

Terrick

       who loves you.

15th October 1935 - Mary to Terrick

O.V.S.

Tuesday


Dearest Ticky

I am sitting on the floor in Miss Olsson's room waiting for the kettle to boil on her gas-ring - as I am in dire pain & feel it would be wise to bathe my arm.  It is sill they way I get these things in awkward places.

I wanted to write to you yesterday, but couldn't gather my wits together enough to start.  I've got such a lot to talk about, and I do love you so very much and it would be so nice to have getting married to look forward to - but I suppose I can't talk about it all here, and I can wait until I see you tomorrow.

Did you get that booklet of flats for me? - and have you got lots & lots of jobs at £400 p.a. offered you?

I know it's very silly wanting to get married so badly - specially as I said I wouldn't until I was 25! - and of course I do, in my heart of hearts, realize it would be quite out of the question until we'd got £350 - £400 a year.  But it's all your fault I'm so excited about it - and there's no harm in working it out and pretending - is there?

It was lovely on Sunday - thank you so much for it - It was the sort of day I can always look back on hen I want something specially nice to think of.

The children were very good on Monday & we all enjoyed Cadby Hall - Mummy & Jill came too which made it nicer - but I was very tired in the evening - & missed my B.D.L. class, as I was alone in the house until 8.15.

I do hope it's lovely at the Dorchester this evening - thank goodness we hadn't arranged anything together for tonight - as I couldn't have gone because of my arm.

I've just got a good plot for a play I must tell you tomorrow a propos of conversations overheard this evening.

Tomorrow I am lunching with Mummy, Jill, Auntie Marianne & Helen Attlee at Derry & Toms - I don't know whether we shall do anything afterwards, but I'll be at Nevern Place by 6 anyway  plus knitting!

Darling - I'm very very sorry I'm such a hussy - of course I know it's wrong - but it seems to be one of those things which is wrong in theory - but exonerates itself in practice.  The one thing that really haunts me, is the fear of shocking you so much that you'll never love me any more - and I think perhaps every time you say we mustn't, something inside me gets a bit - just a little bit - frightened - especially when I feel it's been my fault.

- Very dearest dear - just at the moment I really velieve I love you too much ever to do anything you thought was wrong.

- So keep me good!

Your

    Mary Pleasant
                            xxx

P.S. Shall certainly vote Conservative - heard odious Labour man expounding coarse views in low and vulgar manner - I think dignity counts for a lot in this world (of the right kind)

7th October 1935 - Mary to Terrick

O.V.S.

Monday


Darling - Dearest Dear - and Best Beloved (as this isn't going to be a long one I can afford to be extravagant without fear of reiteration) - 

Here is 24/6. - don't look aghast, and raise your eye-brows or crease your forehead - because I'm going to explain it in a minute - 

10/- is instalment on projector - eight days overdue - and only paid now under fearsome pressure of thought that the "police" might be involved if I didn't!

4/6. I owe you. 5/- minus 6d for syllabus - (which I must remember to pay for) - and thank you very much for putting your hand in your pocket so readily - I'll try not to do it very often - 

And the last 10/- (God guard my banking a/c) is for Paul's present - I had to send it to you now, because it might possibly have departed this life by Wednesday - none knowing less than I, where it had gone.

I am writing off to that Dramatic school tonight - but I don't suppose they'll have evening classes.  Have you asked about the B.D.L. course yet? - Try and wangle us in cheaply - I'm sure you could.

- I had a most amazing & vivid dream last night that it was my wedding day - only the church was so big that the relations were miles away in the background - and I couldn't get near the altar because of three men cleaning the organ, which was in pieces everywhere - and I spent the whole dream running backwards & forwards talking first to Mummy & then passing the time of day with these men - and tying & untying the bow of my long white frock which was cut in the pattern of my blue nightie - waiting for you - After ages and ages of waiting I woke up and was very cross - but I seemed to half go to sleep again and you were there, patting me on the shoulder, but I was a bit annoyed because, instead of looking at me, you kept on swearing at the men cleaning the organ! It was very strange.

- I'm longing to show you how I've altered my navy blue evening dress - it's most successful, I think.  I can't wear anything underneath it and it's skin tight - & I look magnificent!! - I put it on before I went to bed last night and wished you were there.

Miss O (Patricia) & I are going to pictures tomorrow night - to see Ralph Lynn & T Walls in "Fighting Stock" - I've never seen them!

- Must stop - for any reason you like to imagine.

- This is far more than you deserve - but I couldn't stop - & I loved your letter this morning.

It's a tremendous life - although it's such a long time till 5.30 Wednesday.

All my love for ever & ever

Mary Pleasant
               xxx

6th October 1935 - Mary to Terrick

Home

7 p.m.


Darling - I don't seem to be able to settle down to anything - everybody's playing bridge - my feet are frozen and I'm very tired (having done nothing all day!) - It's just in moments like this one, that everything would be entirely the opposite if you were here.  I should feel wide awake - you could rub my feet for me - and i should feel like doing heaps of things instead of leaning back in a chair, all by myself with everybody all round me, thinking about you (which can be very bad for me).

I was going to try and work up some enthusiasm to knit - but you are too much with me for that.

We've seen more of each other in the last few weeks than ever before (except for Schwaneberg) - and I suppose it's natural that the more I have the more I want.  You give me just that complete feeling, by being in the same place with me - that I have wanted so often ever since I was at school.  I used to work myself up sometimes in to contemplating jumping from the dormitory window! - and often into running home to get warm again - I don't work myself up quite so much now I'm grown up - but the thoughts that used to run round & round then, are still there - you know - "Why are we here?" "Where are we going?" "What are we?" - Government, Love, War and Death!

But gradually, in the last two years I've thought about them differently - because you're so sensible - I know you think about things like this too - but you look at them as causes & effects - and you reason things out and learn about them.  When I worry now, I think of writing to you or coming & seeing you - and it makes me laugh, because you wouldn't give my worries two thoughts sometimes - you'd roar with laughter - or tell me it was just what everybody else worried about! (I love you when you tell me I'm just like everybody else!)

But nowadays - if you walk into a room - or meet me in a street - or sit beside me in a theatre - or if I walk into your room something from you seems to come into me, which it's almost impossible to explain.

- Something in me which is always stretched tight as a protection against everything else in the world, suddenly loosens itself and I feel safe & peaceful and supremely content.  That's why I feel so much better when we part again - because my string has had a rest!

- Darling - I love you more than I ever believed I could love anyone - and deeper - you go to the very roots of me - and it's all the more wonderful because I know the "super" far outshines the "sub" - and the "human" is as sure as socks!

This is stupid - & I must catch the post.

But it's rather difficult to explain verbally to someone why you want to be near them always - and do and think things with them - and try things with them - and sleep with them - 

So I thought I'd get it off my chest in writing - because I've got it rather badly tonight!

- I haven't enough self-control really, have I?

- But you love me - so I must be all right in some ways!

Your Mary
                XXX

6th October 1935 - Terrick to Mary

35 Nevern Place
S.W. 5

6th October 1935


Dear Little Mary,

I am sitting by my radiator very happily writing to you.  Happy partly because I am writing to you, and partly because I have done a satisfying day's work.

One short story ready for typing and another, "Minter's Conscience" nearly ready.  There is one thing lacking to the first and that is a title.  I can think of two: "The Portent" and "A Secret from the Dead", but neither of them is very good.  I started the story sometime about 1930 and have added bits at intervals of about a year ever since, but I had no idea until today how it was to end.

I have another idea for half of a plot, the first half.  the setting is the Midland Hotel, Morecombe Bay (under some fictions) and placed at Fort William.  At lunch time on a fine sunny day at the height of the season a young man rushes into the reception office with his eyes rolling, and declares that his bedroom is haunted!  What do you think of that?

I have worked out the plot for a good way but not yet as far as the end.

The other day when I was in the room where Miss Seamans (Managing Director's Secretary) & Miss Saville (Edie's successor as General Manager's Secretary) work.  The latter was entering up the times of arrival in the morning and told be that I had been late twice in the last fortnight.  I said: "Lack of interest".

Miss Seamans expressed surprise and asked why.  I told her: not enough money and no prospects.  She said: perhaps they'll create a position for you.  I laughed at the idea and I think this provoked her to say more than she meant to, because she went on to say that "she thought" that the branches in the provinces were going to be extended that I ought to get a branch manager's job.  From the way she said it I am pretty sure that she wasn't talking about what she thought might happen, but what she knew was being contemplated by the Man.Dir.

I pretended not to notice this & tactfully conveyed that any such prospect would immediately restore my interest.  I wonder very much what is afoot and in the how-near future it may come off.

I'll find out how much we pay the branch managers.  I think it is £300 to £350 a year plus commission amounting to another £100.  Their offices consist of themselves and a girl, who gets about £1 a week.  Work in the winter is practically nil.  We might run a branch between us.

Have you sent me 10/- in your letter?  The instalment should have been paid yesterday. If you haven't it doesn't matter.  They'll wait a few days.

I am looking forward to dancing with you again.  The last time we danced together was at the Eden Hotel, Berlin, wasn't it?  And the time before that was at the Preussenhof (I don't think that was the name) at Stettin.  Magical days!

It is funny how I get to love you more and more when I thought at Nice that I couldn't possibly love you more than I did then.  To survive an absence of nine months when it was only in it's initial stages it must have been very strong then, so you can imagine what it is like now.

It is right that after my frivolous record I should have had to wait some time before I can marry you.   Just to give me a chance of proving to myself and everybody that it is the real thing this time.  Even my mother who always joked about my hotel-like heart doesn't doubt it now.

I enclose a cutting from "The Observer" that may interest you.  it might be worth writing to.  Perhaps they have evening courses.

Good night, darling.  I am looking forward to your letter in the morning, so I don't feel as though I have to say Goodbye till Wednesday.

All my heart.

Your

Terrick