Advertisement in last night's local newspaper: '1933 Singer 8 for sale. Runs like its namesake. Brakes squeak more than prodded politicians. Clutch fierce as a Sergeant-Major. Better downhill than up. Got £39 to spare? Phone Wareham 54.'
And that's all for now. Be with you again next Saturday.
Very sincerely,
Frances
BOURNEMOUTH March 20th 1954
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Short of arsenic, what can be done with my brother?
You remember my interim report on Hesperus? Well, that was sent on Wednesday morning. That evening Mac and I dolled ourselves up in overalls and old gloves and things and went to work again. We finished the first coat of cellulose, and had time to do the second coat on the bonnet (the first having been put on there a day or two earlier). About eight o'clock, not being able to see any more, we came home and scrubbed most of the skin and some of the cellulose off ourselves. Mac said he was going out – and did, by way of the back door which leads to the shed in which he keeps his bicycle.
Next morning it was wet, so I rose early and dressed in a hurry and tore over to put some wax polish on the finished bonnet of the car, so that it would not suffer in the rain. To find that the paint was spotted all over with wet drops and that, as fast as I wiped the paintwork with a dry cloth, so the paint came off along with the water. My brother had only taken it straight out – in the rain – the night before, within half an hour of the paint being put on! Now he is sulking in an injured innocence fashion because, when he asked when I was going to help finish the painting I replied that I wasn't. Sometimes I wonder why God made men; given a tiny bit of common sense I'm sure He could have so arranged matters as to make them redundant.
Oh – I collected my Civil Defence Ambulance Section uniform last night. Look absolutely smashing in it. Only thing is, I can't move. The blouse-top fits around me, and so do the trousers, but they meet only with the greatest difficulty, and at the slightest movement on my part there appears a wide strip of me around the middle. The only thing I can think of to do about it is to wear a bright cummerbund, which should cheer up the Civil Defence Unit considerably. The material is a very dark grey thick heavy stuff, and so scratchy I was advised to wear stockings under the trousers and can see myself being their first genuine casualty – a bad case of the itch!
I have been on a sort of semi-diet this week: instead of having a scrambled egg – one – for my midday meal, I am having fruit. Keeping off sugar and sweets and cakes and biscuits, but enjoying a hearty meal in the evening, as usual. The result is that my measurements seem much the same, but my weight has gone down 6lbs since the beginning of the month, when I started by cutting out sugar. Now isn't that just too bad? What's the good of losing weight if you don't lose size as well – one might as well be H. G. Wells's character, who lost weight and ended up crawling around under the ceiling, he was so light, and still looking like a bloated slug, he was so fat. So far as I can see, the only result of this careful eating is that I feel d-mn hungry!
. . . How very disappointing for you and Rosalind to drive all that way to look at the late Theodore Roosevelt's old home, and then find it closed! I know the feeling . . . . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances
BOURNEMOUTH
March 27th 1954
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . We, Mac and I, discussed the advertisement for Hesperus this week. Mac wanted to know whether I thought '£75 or near offer', or '£70' would be better. I said as we would be delighted with £65 I thought the latter was more likely to attract buyers. It was agreed that '£70' would appear. So Mac puts in an advertisement saying '£80. Nobody has nibbled!! . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances
BOURNEMOUTH
April 24th 1954
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . One afternoon over Easter weekend, when I wasn't working, Mac and I walked to Wimborne with a friend. How the friend manages it I have never discovered; she cycles to work each day, and her work is sedentary, but at weekends she thinks nothing at all of a 15-mile walk in an afternoon. Now Mac and I think nothing at all of a 15-mile walk in an afternoon, but we aren't thinking on quite the same lines. Wimborne is about eight miles from home. We had walked one mile, in single file (all there was room for) along the pavement, with a bumper-to-bumper stream of cars running alongside, when I revolted and refused to do so any more. So there we waited for a bus which took us another mile or so along the route, to a point at which we could leave the road and do the rest of the walk through green fields and pastures new – to Mac, anyway – and under lovely budding chestnuts and alongside large black and white cows. Also, alongside a river for part of the way. Very pleasant, with the sun strong and the wind blowing half a gale in our faces.
'Never mind the wind,' said the friend, 'it'll be at our backs on the way home.' I looked back at Mac's face, and what I saw made me giggle. Dorothy asked why I was laughing but if she were as stupid as all that I wouldn't be bothered to tell her!
In the end we reached Wimborne, and found there was fifty minutes or more to go before the first bus back. We sat for a while on a bench in the village square, only I was sitting next to one of the oldest inhabitants and he was making a valiant effort to win the world's spitting contest, so I soon gave up the unequal struggle between my tiredness and my nausea, and went and stood at the bus stop, first on one leg and then on t'other. Dorothy, apart from being cross at losing half her walk, was also annoyed because both Mac and I complained our backs were broken in the lumbar region! According to her, a little eight-mile stroll would put all that right.
And now, of course, you are waiting to hear about The Pippin. This friend asked, while we were walking, whether I had thought of a name for the new car, and on my saying yes, I had, Mac put on a long face and said pompously, 'It was all very well naming Hesperus, and I realise that it was a suitable name, but there is no need to give a nickname to a car which is not a wreck.' I said meekly that I thought of calling it 'The Pippin', and the little face lighted up like a Christmas tree candle!
Anyway, as I expected, he came motoring round to my office yesterday – yes, we only finally got the thing on Friday, and even now it has to go back for two lines to be painted on the body – at midday, unable to wait until five to show me the car. I went out to see it, Mac's face being all screwed up with anxiety until he noticed how pleased I was with the Austin. It really is a very nice little car indeed, and looks as though it's just come, not off the assembly line, but off the workbench where it has been made by hand. When I tell you that the clock goes, you will realise it must have been very carefully looked after in its life. As we walked around it admiring and exclaiming Mac suddenly exclaimed a bit louder than usual, and ran back to the other side of the car. He then clapped one hand to his forehead and said a few rude words. Apparently he had taken somebody out before he came to me, and while they were bowling along there was a loud noise, which obviously couldn't have been the car after its long and arduous going-over by the car dealers. But it was! And we are now minus one chromium-plated wheel hub . . . . . . typical of our motoring experience, what?
Now to finish off: I hope this reaches you before Thursday, so that you won't think I've gone down the drain. Never think that – if I were flat on my back with double pneumonia and three broken arms, I'd drop you a postcard with the pen held between my toes, whenever Saturday came round . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances
BOURNEMOUTH
May 1st 1954
Dear Mr Bigelow,
When patience runs out, manners are a very thin veneer indeed. Or so I have found this week, under somewhat trying circumstances, and goodness knows how soon (it's Wednesday now) it will be that the veneer will crack.
For on Tuesday, as I ushered a traveller out of my office, from around the corner came another figure – it was Dr Russell from Canada, who announced that he had arrived and was come to live permanently in
England. Well, so long as he lives well away from Bournemouth, I don't mind where he lives for, as I hinted above, I long ago ran out of patience with him.
In the meantime, he has been hanging around either at the office or at home, and behaving in his usual manner, with, as I said, a resultant strain on my politeness. After all, if within a space of four hours you were to say eight times to me, 'Were you surprised to see me?' – and that remark was usually pushed bang in the middle of a sentence somebody else was saying, wouldn't you rather expect the person of whom the question was asked to start giving you variations of answers, just to make a change? After a silence lasting five years, Dr Russell cannot realistically expect me to take up exactly where I left off (and I'm sure he would not like it, for I remember being very angry with him last time he was over here) but, just the same, the minute he manoeuvres me alone, he starts looking soulful and saying 'Nori, what's wrong? What's the matter?' Well, Mr Bigelow, my private opinions and my soul are my own, and I will not discuss them at the whim or the insistence of any questioner in the world, if I don't feel so inclined . . .
Anyway, finally we had a sort of a row, which I thought did little good at the time, but apparently it was borne in on that man that his presence was not as overwhelmingly welcome as he imagined it would be, and on Friday he rang up and said he thought it a good idea to push off to London. I said I thought it was a good idea, too, and goodbye and there we were. He also telephoned Mother and asked what was wrong with me. Mother, flying to the defence of her chick, said there was nothing wrong with me. So Russ said well, what had he done? And Mother, being quite his equal, retorted it was less what he had done and more what he had not done, and wasn't it time he realised one had to work to earn people's friendships, or to deserve them.
He is now out of my hair, off my conscience – except that I don't like to think of him going off all hurt and huffy – and once more I am breathing normally and looking normal, too! On Wednesday, knowing I was faced with a tête-à-tête all evening I was so sick with apprehension that the staff started asking what was wrong. It's no good trying to continue a broken friendship with somebody who affects one so heavily, and I don't believe anybody has the right to inflict his emotionalism on other people to the extent that Dr Russell tries it. He wears out every-body around him, and then sails on to wear out somebody else. Well, he can sail as far on as he wishes . . .
Now I must get back to work: my boss is away this weekend so naturally everything has gone wrong, and I've even had the police in and out of my hair these last two days over an unpleasant event I reported which would have to happen when the boss is away. Eight years I've been here, but it waits for his absence! Just like events.
So au revoir until next Saturday.
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
May 5th 1954
Bonus Day
Dear Mr Bigelow,
How very unlike yourself you sounded in the letter I had yesterday: I hurry to send you an 'extra' to tell you to cheer up. All sorts of things are worth doing, so you get that negative idea out of your noodle. It's well worth sitting in an easy chair with a cat on your knee; it's well worth watching birds; it's well worth eating a good meal; it's well worth watching the seasons change. It's well worth writing to me. It is well worth looking forward to Rosalind's visits, and then looking back at them until it is time for forward-looking again.
Really, Mr B. I am surprised at you! Kindly refrain from such pessimistic perambulations in future.
Anyway, on its way to you, and due to arrive in a few days after this letter, is a funny book I thought you would like to read. Called Doctor in the House it has recently been made into a very amusing film, though that isn't as funny (in my view) as the book. Perhaps, if it arrives before Rosalind, you can chuckle over it together.
I was trying, as tactfully as I know, to suggest to my apprentice-boy that he should take lessons in English, the other day. Or, failing evening classes, he should read and read and read – good books – in order that his written English might become improved by precept. Reading will do it, but it is a long way round. Anyway, he affirmed that he did read, 'Honest, Miss Woodsford, I get a book out of the library every week, and I read everything that Kipling writes.' I was delighted to hear it, and asked which book he liked best – Soldiers Three, or Plain Tales from the Hills, or perhaps Stalky & Co. By this time it became obvious from the blank face a foot or so above mine, that Peter didn't have the slightest inkling what I was talking about. So I stopped my catalogue, and said, 'You did say Kipling, didn't you?' 'Yes, Kipling – you know, the man who does the butterfly stroke.' Education, where is your aim? In the meantime I get little notes from Peter, 'Mr Brown wonts for towle. Can he hav them?'
You didn't mention in your letter exactly when Rosalind was likely to visit you . . . I may write Rosalind myself tomorrow or Friday if there is time but anyway I hope you both enjoy yourselves terrifically, and don't you start worrying because you 'can't do much for her'. I'm quite, quite sure Rosalind is absolutely content to stay Chez Bigelow when she visits you, and am certain she doesn't always want to go dashing around here and there, having parties in all directions, and fetes and fireworks and so on. A nice cuppa tea and me feet up, is some people's idea of Heaven, and I'm positive that at times it is equally Rosalind's ideal, and one you can easily supply. Cheer up. And stay cheered. Them's orders, Sir.
Frances W.
PS Thanks for the sketch of Angel Face. I would know her anywhere!
BOURNEMOUTH
May 22nd 1954
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . What a lot of fuss everybody has made over Roger Bannister! Personally, I had never heard of the mile-in-four-minutes before he did it in less . . .
Sir Bertrand telephoned me last night: I was just about to go out, so didn't hang on talking long and got him off the line when the three-pips (to indicate three minutes) came along. He giggled a good bit, but apart from telling me his new address, and where he had been staying and what doing ('Have you got over your dismay, Nori?' was every other sentence but I ignored that and merely answered the alternate ones) he wasn't too much of a nuisance. I had an idea he rang when he did to get invited down for the weekend, but I didn't bite, having things to do. As he has been staying in an hotel, and is moving to another soon, I imagine he hasn't got invited to stay or live with any of his London friends. Poor Sir Bertrand! Shouldn't be such a bore, should he? . . .
In the paper this week, reported from Australia: The Queen and the Duke watched a log-chopping contest, and afterwards the Queen said to the winner, 'You must be so fit!' 'My oath,' replied the burly Aussie, 'I could lift a bl—dy ton!' 'Here,' protested the Duke, 'tone it down a bit.' 'Well,' said the Australian, 'I could lift a bl—dy half-ton, then.'
And that's all for now. I hope you have had Rosalind to visit you, and enjoyed every minute (as I know you would) and are now counting days to the next visit.
Very sincerely,
Frances
BOURNEMOUTH
May 29th 1954
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . On Thursday this week, as it was a more or less fine evening, the Civil Defence class was held out of doors. More or less out of doors. The two instructors put the casualties in a specially built 'bombed house' in a field, and then the three competing teams had in turn to rescue and attend to them. The house has two downstairs rooms, one of which has the ceiling down, and half a staircase with newel post and other posts in the most awkward positions, as we found to our cost. There is no roof or upper storey, and the sky appears in unexpected quarters. It was a very heavy evening, with millions of flies and gnats about, and we made 'phewing' noises at the smell of pigs nearby until somebody remarked that it wasn't pigs, but that the town's Sewage Disposal Farm was just across the hedge. After that, we all dashed into the long grass and picked clover to hold under our noses, in spite of the remark a Town Hall man made that there is less sickness in the Farm staff th
an at the Town Hall.
Now after Thursday, Mr Bigelow, I am of the firm opinion that dragging 'unconscious' bodies about on stretchers, over and under and around bomb-damaged houses, is no job for women. Next Thursday I shall either be a victim myself, or sit on a chair and look on, for I am quite certain my muscles will not, by next Thursday, have grown back onto the bones from which they were wrenched last Thursday.
I don't know which team won, but we didn't do very well from all I could see – I was Ambulance Attendant, which meant I was sent with the driver to fetch the ambulance, run it up to the nearest point to the house; prepare the stretchers with blankets, bring them into the building, load the patients on, take them out, put them in the ambulance, and drive them off to the 'hospital' ten yards down the lane. When I got into the room with the first stretcher, my team were milling around the first patient who was sitting with a complicated fracture of the ribs. I con-soled myself later, when I saw Team B tip her off the stretcher into the road (accidentally) and Team C with the fracture on the left side and the bandages on the right side.
On Wednesday, I had a refresher lesson on the ambulance, driving up and down side roads at enormous speeds (for me) and reversing into gravel pits by use of rearview mirrors only.
Dear Mr Bigelow Page 18