Look! It’s working ….
BETTY DEAR
I LOVE YOU
RED
LETTER 111: TO BETTY, 17 JANUARY 1966
Dear Betty,
Until I saw you in the street this morning, I hadn’t realised it was my birthday. It was sweet of you to appear so unexpectedly, and to wish me many more, and to offer me flowers for my desk. I could have kicked myself afterwards for not taking your flowers after you had taken the trouble to bring them, but they would have been too great an embarrassment. It was a lovely thought, and I spoiled it for you. I’m sorry, Betty, really I am. In fact, I didn’t behave at all well this morning. I was unkind. I had much on my mind. A cloud has settled on me and I can’t get rid of it.
Your card, and J and A’s [Betty’s daughters], are the only ones I have received, but Miss Thompson (typist) brought me 20 cigarettes and a box of matches, and Mr Duff bought me a blackcurrant tart which was a beastly thing to eat and squirted all over the desk and my clothes and dripped on the carpet. I went to Blackburn on Saturday morning (never did your bedroom light shine more brightly!), spent the afternoon with Doris [Snape], and came back very disturbed. Things are not all right with the business, and I may have to go over again. I told her about you, up to a point, and this was a bad mistake.
Yesterday I sorted out many old photographs, and have put some at one side to show you next Saturday. I tried to sort myself out a bit, too. It was a poor day. I was still disturbed about my visit to Blackburn.
Miss Thompson typed FELLWANDERER for me over the weekend, and I will let you have a copy next Saturday and would value your opinion as to its impact on lady readers. There is a letter today from Molly Lefebure, agreeing to read and criticise it from the point of view of a professional writer. Donald James, Librarian, has agreed to look through it for obscenities. And the fourth opinion, I think will have to be Mr Firth’s, representing the man in the street. I ought really to ask Mr Griffin, but he talks far too much.
Thank you for your charming letter this morning. It did me good to read of your simple faith in me, after a weekend of doubts in myself. I am so glad about the blanket: it must take my place for the time being. Already I am jealous of it!
I have had two ‘backwords’ for the Old Folks Treat and cannot make up my mind about inviting Margaret and yourself. I seem to have got myself into a mood when I cannot make up my mind about anything. I think I had better not. It isn’t really convenient for you, anyway, and may not be at all for Margaret. I have others I can ask.
Thank you, too, for the supplementary birthday presents. I will bring these on Saturday so that you can tell me how they work. You’ve no idea how my heart sinks when I see the word DIRECTIONS.
I am missing you terribly, Betty. It isn’t so much that I want my arms around you; I need your arms around me. Today I feel just a bit that circumstances are getting me down, but I’ll be alright by Saturday. If I’m not, Upper Long Churn Cave will cure me, for you can’t take worries into caves, and if Upper Long Churn Cave doesn’t, you must. Perhaps all I need is happifying, and only you can do that for me. It’s been a long long time to have to wait, Betty. Maybe I love you a little too much. I can no longer manage without you.
Your equipment for Saturday should include a hatpin!
With all my love,
X: today
X: tomorrow
X: Wednesday
X: Thursday
X: Friday
Red
Oh golly, I can’t wait!
LETTER 112: TO BETTY, FEBRUARY 1966
Monday afternoon
Betty, my own and only-ever sweetheart,
I know how you feel, love, because I feel just the same way. I too am obsessed. I too am hungry for an experience. I too want the companionship of my beloved all the time. I too find Sunday a day of no hope. I know when it dawns that it will be a blank. Every other day has its prospect of a meeting, by chance or planned, but never Sunday. I gaze up the valley and think of the last time and the next time: the last time with tenderness and the next time with eagerness. I am empty, and aching, and wanting you; but happy. As long as I know there will be a next time I shall always be happy.
Cindy is in worse case. She is staying in for a week or two and being courted zealously by a white poodle from Underley called Pepi, who appears every morning soon after daylight with his tail wagging and waits patiently through out the day on the doorstep, going home at dusk with his tail drooping. His is, however, a great optimist and most faithful in his daily attendance, and Cindy is tremendously excited.
I love you as you love me, Betty dear, and cannot tell you how much, but I long for the time to come when I can show you, and then you will know.
Saturday was wonderful, every moment of it. I loved the delightful intimacy (non-technical) of the bus journey, with all the other passengers intent on going about their business and paying no attention at all to their two fellow-travellers intent only on each other. I think Mr James [Donald James, Kendal Borough librarian] would permit the word ‘cocoon’ (of happiness) in this instance, although of course he wouldn’t understand and would completely disapproved of our secret caresses – on a public transport vehicle, too! The very idea! But you are so sweet: I must keep touching you and cannot help myself. The iron discipline is melting away.
LETTER 113: TO BETTY, 14 MARCH 1966
Betty dear, I am terribly and wretchedly sorry for behaving so badly. The very last thing I ever wanted to do was to cause you any distress at all. You must believe that.
But things have gone tragically wrong. I ought to be right on top of the world, but find myself suddenly in the bitterest depths. I am in bad trouble, and must find a way out of it myself. Nobody can help me in a positive way (although I wish someone would show me how to fry an egg!) and, in the circumstances, you least of all. Thank you for your kind letter, but please do not try. You can help only by being there when it is all over.
I am grateful for six months of the most wonderful happiness. I was not entitled to this, and now, for a time, I must pay for it.
I am too confused in my mind to explain anything yet and sorely troubled by a conscience I had forgotten I had. I feel like a man who has been betrayed, but in fact know I have been caught in my own betrayal.
There have been dark passages in my life before, but I have always emerged in the sunshine. This will happen again. In the meantime you will not hear from me; but, Betty please, you must trust me to do what I think is right.
Red
What had suddenly gone wrong? From his reference to trying to fry eggs, it looks as if he is on his own – so presumably Ruth, his wife, has left him. It would seem as if she has found one of his love letters from Betty, or some kind neighbour has reported spotting them together somewhere.
He decides to bash on with his Pennine Way research and agrees to the offer of a lift to Buxton from another female friend, Mary Burkett, who became Director of the Abbot Hall Gallery in Kendal in 1966, and thus had quite a bit of official business with the Borough Treasurer. He is not in any way romantically attracted to her, but it shows that he had can and does have female friends, all perfectly respectably. So much for any gossips.
LETTER 114: TO BETTY, 18 APRIL 1966
The Palace Hotel, Buxton, Derbyshire
Thursday night
Dear Betty,
I am in room 72 in this very palatial establishment – and guess who’s next door in Room 73? Yes, you’re right. Destiny has played another of her tricks. It’s Miss B. I can, and will, explain everything when I see you.
The drive down was OK – no touching, positively! – but we ran into bad weather, mist and rain, before arriving here at 9 o’clock. Prospects aren’t too hopeful for tomorrow.
Wish you were here
After several weeks of not meeting, communications start again with Betty, and arrangements to meet her. AW is still on his own but his son Peter has returned on leave from Bahrein.
LETTER 115: TO BETT
Y, 21 JUNE 1966
Wednesday evening
Betty dear,
Thank you for your nice long letter, love. It was sweet. Even the written lines were decidedly friendly; what lay between them, unsaid, I hope I interpreted correctly.
I have read it over and over again. With the family united once more, these will be happy days for you, shortened though they are, unfortunately at present, by your hospital duties. Three brilliant women under one roof, each scintillating in her own sphere! A home of erudition and scholastic attainment, of academic study and learned conversation (or do you throw things at each other?). To think I so nearly became a paying guest! What field of knowledge I have denied myself! What intellectual discourses I have missed! What a barren desert is my life now, and how it might have flourished under the tuition and example of three lovely goddesses of wisdom! (or do you bicker?). Betty love, you have much to be thankful for and much to be pleased about. You have more than repaired the damaged past. You have built something finer out of the ruins. I wish I could have helped and been more, much more, than a late witness.
Of course I will be in a seventh heaven of delight to see you on Friday. I have often vowed to myself that I would go to the ends of the earth to see you and it seems odd that I should now suggest that Orton is too far. In the short time available to you, I mean. Tell you what, love: I will be at Fox’s Pulpit, if I can find it, from 2.45 to 3.45, reaching it by road from the Sedbergh bus at Black Horse; the easiest way for you would be by Appleby Road, Docker Garths, Lambrigg road-end and Firbank (narrow but surfaced road). There is a bus back at 4.15, so you could be home in good time, by 4.30. But if you find it is inconvenient after all, or if Jane wants you with her, please don’t try to come. It would be O.K. with me. I want to visit Fox’s Pulpit, anyway.
Peter was over to see me on Saturday, and has been here again yesterday, all day, and today, morning. He intends to come tomorrow and Friday, so I have had to tell him I shall be away both days. He has brought a tape-recorder and is building up a library from my records, which will make his visits frequent. His appearances are not likely to follow any pattern, and there is no prospect of a love-in yet. He has hired a car (110 pounds for 10 weeks). On the 25th of this month a friend is coming up to join him, a youngish man I have met and like, and I have suggested that he can stay here with me: I have found some more blankets. The ulterior motive, not yet disclosed, is that he can pay for his keep by Hoovering the house.
AW then thinks of a really clever cover. An American fan called Ade Meyer, a wealthy widower, who has been reading the Pictorial Guides from the beginning, is coming on a visit staying in Grasmere, and wants to have a walk with AW. How perfect it will be if Betty comes along as well, a harmless threesome of middle-aged persons, walking the fells …
LETTER 116: TO BETTY, 23 JUNE 1966
Dear Betty,
Your letter today did me a world of good, and I must write and thank you for it. I feel much better in my mind after reading it, and re-assured. I need to see you and I need your advice, and there is little time to lose. I am troubled, but not so troubled that I cannot see a way opening ahead to a fuller and better experience of life.
Saturday is definite; it must be. Mr F. is back at work and has promised to help with his car. Ade is still keen, and will pick me up at 9.15. Please be ready at 9.25. You will need your boots.
See you then, love
Red
The walk with Ade and Betty goes well, and they do it again, as Ade seems to get on so well with Betty. AW hopes they will all be friends. In fact he encourages Betty to have a walk just with Ade. Meanwhile he is taking the first stages in getting a divorce from Ruth.
LETTER 117: TO BETTY, 27 JUNE 1966
Monday
Betty dear,
The days I spend with you are the happiest I have ever known. They are, to me, like days on parole from prison; days in the sunshine after long confinement in the darkness. Saturday was such a day, a wonderfully happy and (in spite of everything) carefree twelve hours. The unpleasant things didn’t seem to matter while you were with me, and I could forget them. You are a constant delight to me. Perhaps it was as well that Ade was with us. If we had started loving each other at Cauldron Snout, or in the Moss Shop Shelter, or in the black sinister gorge (all likely places) – ! we were late enough as it was.
I shall always associate you with Upper Teesdale, and for me there is sadness in the thought that our work there is ended: but I hope we shall go again, the two of us, and walk again amongst the flowers. Promise!
I want you to go out with Ade, as much and as often as you like. He is hard work at times, I know (he reminds me of an old St Bernard dog), but really a delightful man and I greatly admire his determination and independence. Quite obviously and understandably he is fond of you. He is a stranger in a strange land and has need of friends. Yes, please go with him, and make him happy – up to a point (there must be no sprigs of heather sticking in your jumper when you come back to me!). Show him your home, your daughters, Krishna [Betty’s cat]…. Besides, I have the idea of suggesting a pact – that the three of us do the John Muir Trail together in 1968, and I’m serious about it. For you and me this could be a heavenly holiday. But it depends on how well you and Ade get along during the next few weeks. It depends on nothing else. The barriers are falling.
Mr F. has been in. He was greatly impressed by High Force. Mr F. wants to come with us again, definitely. Super, being with three men, you said.
I cannot solve the mystery of the letter of last November, which is now deepened because I was quoted as mentioning Jim by his full name (i.e. surname). The man who came to see me said that the solicitor had the original, and this appears now to have been a trick. The whole business mystifies me. Your suspicions must be right. Somewhere I have been careless. Perhaps it was because this particular piece of evidence was so tenuous that, having mentioned it, it was not brought up in discussion again. However, thank goodness you are not involved. You are much too precious. I would never do anything to cause you distress.
Thank you for your letter. I have today spoken to the Lancaster solicitor on the telephone. He sounds very nice. He will start the ball rolling by asking JrB to submit a draft agreement, incorporating their client’s wishes, and then I will have to go to see him.
I had better not see you again until 9.30 July 9th, love, desperately though I want to. If I do not write again before then assume that everything is going smoothly, and please, please, do not worry. My own initial anxiety is turning into profound relief.
Go out with Ade, and be in high spirits. Remember (if you like the idea) that you are working for an adventure in the High Sierras for us. How proud Ade would be to play host to us in his own territory! I enclose the map of California. Take this with you and let him show you where he lives.
Oh Betty love, just think ahead a year ….
Red
LETTER 118: TO BETTY, 14 JULY 1966
Kendal, Thursday
Dear Mrs McNally,
I said I wouldn’t write, but you must have known I would have to. I think I did, too. The days are so long and empty, the nights so lonely and troubled. I am only half a man when you are away from me, and half a miserable wretch prey to all sort of fears and apprehensions. You cannot know what a comfort to me you have become, but it is no longer a comfort that satisfies me across a distance: you must be near. Your letters help, and I must thank you for finding the time to write. I didn’t fully realise that Ade had become a problem to the extent that you are now really disturbed about him. I am sure he will want to talk about you next Saturday, and I will make it an opportunity to give him advice such as befits my seniority in age and my longer friendship with you, but of course I must do this without letting him suspect that you have already confided in me. I’m sorry things are going awry. Leave it to me to straighten them out. You won’t need to do or say anything. Was the parting caress in the car last Saturday staged for his benefit, or mine? On Thursday, feelin
g rather miserable, I thought I may as well go down to Lancaster and make myself completely so, which I did. I will tell you about this visit, on the 23rd. I found your name (twice) in the Gazette report, and felt very proud!
I now have the photographs of you and Ade on the High Cup journey last Saturday and a fortnight earlier. These are good, but there is unmistakable devotion in his eyes as he looks at you in two of these pictures and an obvious urgency in the need for me to talk to him. He must be stopped before he too begins to wonder what it would be like; it would be cruel to let his thoughts carry that far. Two other pictures are very good indeed – how bonny you are! – and from these I am having enlargements made for both of you. I will let Ade see them all next Saturday and then send them to you on Monday with news of the day’s events. On the office photograph now enclosed, Miss T is on the right of the front row, and prim and proper as always.
Next Sunday I shall devote all day to the drawing of Fowl Ing House, and have it ready for your return. The evenings this week are being spent gradually working up-river from Middleton, on paper, in a state of mind excited by memories and a lot of maudlin sentiment. You are walking ahead of me as I trace the path through the meadows and along the riverside. Sometimes you stop and wait for me. I remember, with misty eyes, every awkward stile, the place where we rested (if rest is the word). The places where you vanished into the bushes. It is a tortured pleasure to do this, with you so far away … Betty love, when I am gone you must go back there often and walk amongst the flowers again. If there is any sort of after-life at all, it is there, by the Tees, I will come back to you.
Put me out of my misery. Have a good time. Don’t worry about anything here. Now just look out of the window and along the busy street – and think of the lonely moor around Maize Beck, and poor Ade stuck in the bog, and the little cave we found when, for a minute, we were alone and hidden from the world. And make your choice.
The Wainwright Letters Page 20