17th August 1936 - Mary to Terrick

Dunally

Aug 17th ' 36


Darling - my conscience has smitten me most horribly all today to think of you trying to keep your eyes open over all the Monday complaints - while I have been sunbathing and doing nothing.  I have thought of you nearly all the time - & wishing I could come & help you.  I don't think I'm as lazy as i used to be, because this having nothing particular to do day after day is much more wearing than tearing about all day at school.

I had a nice letter from Miss Cross this morning - saying she is bathing 3 times a day at Ringstead - and asking how you were.  I have written to Eileen (getting all the news in before you!) saying you would send her a photograph of Hamels - and I've also written to the Shakespeare society saying it has been necessary for me to book up at a hotel for my mother & myself for Sept 11th! I expect I shall have a letter back sometime this week.

Mummy says it will be quite all right for you to come next week - & I may teach you to drive in the car!  So you'd better get your licence before the weekend.  I expect you'll have to go to the L.C.C. building the other side of Westminster Bridge.

I hear that next Wednesday Mummy wants me to take her up to Auntie Bee's for the day - & as there's nowhere she can go in town for the evening I must take her back & shan't be able to see you.  What about Thursday? - or if not, tomorrow (Tuesday)

- Oh I do hope you're not absolutely worn out this evening - and that you go to bed nice and early - I wish I was there to tuck you up - but it's a good job I'm not.

Thank you over & over again for the perfect weekend - I can't thank you nearly as much as I want to - but would you please let me know how much  still owe you, besides about 1/10 for the film - because I know I was a continual drain on the resources - and if perhaps you could wait a bit for it, as I am rather poor, it would be very kind of you.

I don't, even now, know how I can wait until Thursday - but I always was a bit fond & foolish -

Every bit of my love, my dearest heart,

Mary Pleasant xxx

P.S. Mummy wants to know if you can suggest a way of getting an advertisement into a New York paper.

13th August 1936 - Terrick to Mary

35 Nevern Place 
S.W.5


13th August 1936


Dear Heart, 

I have put some life into my pen by dipping it in the red ink that I have.  After the read wears off the moisture seems to produce old ink off the sides of the pen.

I am sitting in a pub having a drink, and surprising you.

While I was in Ostend last week I got a News Chronicle & read an article that I kept for you, & forgot on Wednesday.  Every Saturday an article is appearing supposed to be by a girl who has just got engaged reporting the progress of her engagement.  last week was getting to know his relations.  The cartoon a the top showed the fiance looking rather like me.  Get the News Chronicle this Saturday for the 3rd article.

The bell has just gone for us to clear out.

Paul goes to the Lake District for his holiday this Saturday.  I should like to go to Fort William.  My heart leaps up inside me when I see pictures of the highlands.  It is a queer feeling.  A cottage in the highlands to retire to for rest and quiet with you, overlooking the Bay of Morar and the islands of Muck & Rum.  I have never known a place to affect me in such a way before or since.

Alas that we must die!  Shall I ever grow resigned to the idea.  I am so happy and have so much to look forward to.

Just got back & seen your message, have asked for your number.

Your roses are now perfectly lovely; they are opening wider every minute.

Ha ha! so all is fixed! Cheers! I am so bucked.

If the post is too heavy in the morning for me to go to Belgium, I'll ring you in the lunch hour.

All my love Terrick

11th August 1936 - Mary to Terrick

Dunally

Aug 11th

After Tea

Dearest old thing - this is just because I haven't anything much to do  & I thought I'd better tell you about tomorrow.  If you really don't think you'll be home before 8.  I rather thought I would go & see the Informer at Sloane Square.  I'm starting off with ?? after lunch & going to help her buy a coat in Kensington- then she's going foo to meed Dearlove & I thought I'd leave the care outside 35. and catch a train to Sl. Sq from E's Ct. in time for the film which starts at 4.25. - & the programme should be over by 7.45, so I should be back with you by 8.  But if you have the slightest feeling you may get off earlier, do ring me up before lunch - because I'd far rather wait & spend the extra time with you.

- It was so nice to hear your voice again yesterday - Did you remember to write to your rep at Innsbruck about Helen? because as her mother drove off on Friday she said how kind it was of you - it had taken a great load off her mind!

I spoke to Norah over the phone on Saturday - I've never heard anyone sound so well & full of energy.  The get to the shop at 8.am & serve customers until as late as 10.30 at night - (getting off orders I suppose).  They took £123 on Bank Holiday Monday & £113 last Saturday - altogether they took about £430 in the week!!  They want £2000 more capital from somewhere, so they're selling shares at 6%.  (I bet it's all Norah's money making instincts!)

I should simply love - love - to go to Belgium with you next weekend, but I'm really so poor that I'm afraid it would be rather hair-brained - specially as I probably shouldn't be able to bathe!  Are you absolutely sure you'll have to go?

I can't think of anything more to say so I shall have to stop.

I'm longing for tomorrow so much that I don't think it will ever come.

All my love

"Mary Pleasant Ormiston
"Saunton
"Christchurch Road,
"East Sheen  S.W. 14.

8th August 1936 - Mary to Terrick

August 1936
35 Nevern Place
SW 5
Saturday 1.00 PM

Hello darling -thank goodness your passport was here - all the way up I've been planning what I ought to do if it wasn't.  Thank you very much for your letter - I hope it wasn't absolutely dragged out if you by necessity (but there -you knew I'd think that!)

It feels very strange to be writing to you on your own desk - specially as it was almost exactly a week ago that I came & rummaged around here last time.

The children are going to the "Raj" Regatta at Haliford Bend this afternoon - so luckily no one wanted the car - and the only difference it makes to me, is that I'm missing my lunch.

Joyce Eastman might (it's not very likely) offer to take me down to see Norah with her on Monday - if so I shouldn't be able to meet you - otherwise, if you let me know what train, I expect I could.  So if I'm not there you'll know I've gone to Clacton for the day - & perhaps you could ring up late & arrange what day I can come up.

- Darling I miss you most terribly - it's a permanent "not-being-all there" feeling, which makes me slightly unsociable, very selfish - and want to go to bed early.  You've no idea how wonderful getting your letter was this morning.  

Longing for you to be home again - 

Love

Mary X

7th August 1936 - Terrick to Mary

On the 14.50 Train
Victoria to Dover

7th August 1936


Darling Heart,

This is the first opportunity I have had of sitting down and writing to you.  On Wednesday I met my mother at the station.  She was very weak but much better than I had expected.  In the evening I was working late but I went round to her club afterwards for coffee & liqueurs.  She went to bed at about ten.  Yesterday I had dinner with her & she was already much perkier. She had booked seats for "Love From a Stranger".  If I had known she was going to be as well as that I would have had you up to meet her again.

I have got sixty odd very Polyish Poly clients to take over to various parts of Belgium.  After dropping off most of the party at Ostend I go on with the next to Bruges & then come back to Ostend for the night.

And that  reminds me; will you  do me a great favour? Or if you can't manage it yourself will you ring J.C. Eno's during the morning and ask Paul to do it?

This morning I put my passport into the pocket of my tweed overcoat when it was lying on the bed, but now, on the train, I find it is not there, so it must have gone right through - you know the kind of pocket it is.  If so the passport will be in my room.  I will wangle myself into Belgium but it will save a dickens of a lot of trouble if the passport can be brought out to me, so will you take an envelope to Earl's Court on Saturday, put the passport in it and address it to me c/o The Polytechnic Representative, Hotel Royal Astor, Ostend, and take it to Victoria Station, continental departing platform and hand it to one of our men for the conductor of the 14.30 train (2.30pm) to bring over to me.  Don't of course say that it is a passport.  if you can't do this will you ring Paul & ask him to do it when he gets out of business at 1pm?  It will be a great help if you can and I shall be most grateful.  If Renny were here he could do it easily.

Excuse this writing; it is the train.  I am in a 1st class compartment at the tail end & it is swaying a lot.

Thank you very much for your wonderful letter.  It was the nicest I have ever had.  I do wish you were with me.

I must stop! We are just passing Folkestone race course & it is not far from there to Dover.  I'll post this at Dover.

I am awfully sorry to be a nuisance about the passport, but it is easier to wangle out of the country than into it.

Goodbye dear.  I'll write to you again from Belgium.

your own 

Terrick

5th August 1936 - Mary to Terrick

Dunally Lodge

Shepperton

Aug 5th '36

My very own dearest dear - I can't enclose your photographs because it was early-closing day, but I'll get them done when I go to Richmond next.  I thought this important point wanted explaining thoroughly - so I had better write you a letter - don't you think so too?

This morning when I left you at the station I felt as if you were going a long way away - & that I wasn't going to see you for months - it was all I could do to bear up until I got to school.  Miss X had slept badly, and was a bit grumpy, but we worked like navvies until 1-15, when I felt ready to drop with emptiness - so I went to Grannie's for a boiled egg (and thought of you!) I forgot to tell you that we talked about you v. Philip Wilson Dixon at lunch yesterday with Grannie & Miss X.  Grannie saying how very much she liked you - you had all the push and will to get on that Philip would never have!!! 

I went to sleep this afternoon and have been writing letters for the last two hours.  I have sent Hamels the photographs, with my letter.  I did enjoy it all so much.  Of course (although it sounds a bit Ethel M. Well) I should love even the most awful place as long as we were together - because I think the double haze over everything of loving and being loved hides such a lot of things that would worry one to distraction without it.  But to love and bee loved in perfect places is the ideal - and (as you notice) is almost too much for anyone!

- I long for the time I shall see you next - I long for the week when you come home here every evening - I long for Penzance and having you to myself all day long - and I long with the passionate desire which is either two trite words or a hundred overwhelming emotions, for the time when I shall live beside you in mind every day, and sleep beside you in body every night.

and even with all these longings for the future (trademarks of my animal existence!) I am supremely content (another trademark) to think how wonderful life and you are to me - and it's a slight relief to think that there's more than a 50/50 chance that our offspring will be definitely above "animal" level.  Anyhow if they show any leanings that way they won't be allowed to lean long.

I put my £10 in the National Savings today - that's £30 now. If I left it in 10 years it would be £40 - so do you think perhaps we'd better wait?

Have they worked you off your feet today?  Poor old thing, I expect you're still slogging away as I write this.  Did you meet your Mother? - and how is she?  Perhaps you could find time just to ring me up sometime tomorrow or Friday before you go.  And don't forget to let me know what time you get back, because I might be able to come & meet the train in.  If you have a spare minute to find out the cost of Penzance - or I shall have spent it all.

All my heart & a long long kiss comes with this - your Mary Pleasant  x