Dear Mr Bigelow
Page 26
Now I must get this away. I hope you continue to keep well and avoid taking any more rides in the Dalls' new open tourer – unless you hide under the floor mat at the rear, that is.
Yrs most sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
June 22nd 1957
Dear Mr Bigelow,
First of all, to get it out of the way – I went to the hospital on Tuesday, spent all of three minutes with the specialist, and he patted me on the shoulder and told me to run away. Or words to that effect. So all is well. Apparently I have what the man described as a 'resistant tummy'. Daresay I am fossilising a bit ahead of time. Now I am taking all sorts of horrid tablets I have bought myself, to get rid of the throat trouble. I am still losing a little weight, not much, but a little, and that is a worry and until I have resolved my own mind, the loss will probably continue.
The trouble is: what job to do, and where to do it? There is this local job I have been offered. Then there is utter misery at work just now. My brother is most unhappy under his boss, and this morning in the car I tackled him, telling him I had heard rumours that he intended staying only another two years and then moving elsewhere – was this true? He said it was. Where would he move to? He shrugged, taking both hands off the steering wheel to gesture Gallically as he did so. Abroad, perhaps. So that's that. In two years' time I shall be left here, with a misery of a job, and Mother, and a cheap flat. Eventually, if he goes abroad, I dare-say Mac will marry, and Mother will fade out of the picture one day, and that will leave me with a cheap flat and a misery of a job in a town which is clean, healthy, in pleasant country, but one which I personally dislike very much to work in.
So, today I am racking my brains as to the best for the future. It frightens and dismays me more and more. But if I am to do anything at all about it, it must be soon, while I am still young enough to be able to adapt myself to some other kind of work. Today I am toying with the idea of telephoning my uncle about that tentative job in London about which I heard second-hand rumours last autumn. London beckons me, as you know, a great deal, and I should love to work for somebody I respected for a change. In two years, perhaps the housing position would be a little easier and, if Mac did go abroad, I could get a flat near London and Mother could join me there. But these next two years would be very difficult, with living so much, much more expensive away from home, and home expenses to meet as well, and the car to pay for on top of the rest. But it could be done, and my problem is, should it be done? I, too, would like to go abroad – there was an advertisement for secretaries to the Government of Tanganyika in yesterday's Telegraph, but they are only for three-year contracts, and that might leave me high and dry at the end, if I didn't like it, or it me. And then, too, I have to think of Mother: she obviously cannot be left alone. If Mac goes away, she must either go with him, or come to me. Or I must stay here against the day when she will be too frail to look after herself. So I lose weight, and do you wonder!
Never mind: let's off to pleasanter subjects – but thank you, just the same, for your offer of a second-hand, slightly split, appendix in case I might have any use for same! Is yours pickled in alcohol or did you intend sending just the old ruin all that way by itself ?
. . . We have been reading of your great heat in the papers recently, and I was just about to write to Rosalind and sympathise with her, for if it was 87o here, and 97o in New York, it would be even higher in St Louis – and then I saw a headline in the newspaper about the torrential rains and floods they had suffered in St Louis, so that was that. Do you sit at the bottom of your garden and dangle your feet in the water? Or is a) the sea too far below the level of the garden, or b) your leg too short? I don't, you will notice, put 'or c) are you too dignified?'
I want you to read the little letter I cut out from a paper first, before you read this paragraph. Ready?
Daily Telegraph Press Cutting
Bees can show gratitude.
Some years ago I was bathing off the Belgian coast when I came across a bee swimming in the sea. It was quite obvious it could never reach the shore 200 yards away, so I put my arm under it and it clambered on. I then walked out on to the shore and waited while my arm and the bee dried out in the sun. A dozen people stood round me watching the bee drying itself and straightening out its wings on my arm. After about 10 minutes it flew 200 yards or so away, then suddenly turned and came straight back to me with all the other people still standing round.
To everybody's astonishment it circled very closely round my head three times, then flew away.
V.W.H. Venour, Junior Army and Navy Club, Whitehall, S.W.1.
I asked you to read it because I can't now find the other letter, which appeared a day or two later. This one said, in effect,
I read the other day of a grateful bee, and to show that bees aren't the only insects to show gratitude I am telling you of an experience of mine, with ants. I found an ant one day labouring under the weight of an enormous seed. I picked the seed from the ant's back, and following the insect to its hole in the ground, returned the seed to it, whereupon it grasped it and hurried down to the nest. Imagine my surprise when, a second or two later, a long line of ants ran out of the nest, and forming up on the grass, spelled out 'Thanks, pal'.
And as I cannot think of a better line on which to leave you this week, I will do so now and stroll over in the sunshine to post it.
Yours v. sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
July 13th 1957
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . We had an official form from our landlord this morning, notifying us that our rent is to be increased by about 50%, under the new law just passed. Mother and I discussed it, and then, as we had agreed, Mother 'phoned the landlord and said we'd had this form and thought it was extremely fair and we were very relieved, as we'd felt awfully guilty for years at the low rent we were paying, and restricted to paying by law. There was quite a pause at the other end, and then the landlord said, 'Mrs Woodsford! You've no idea what those words mean to me!' Poor man, I think we must have been the only tenants he has who had not either telephoned abuse, or immediately consulted a lawyer, or rushed over to shout at him in person. Far be it from me to wish that we were paying a rent as high in proportion to our joint earnings now, as we did before the war, but we haven't been paying anything like an economic proportion, and although we haven't, of course, asked the landlord for any repairs or decorations, our hearts have smote – smitten? – us quite a bit. Now we feel better, and so, apparently, does the landlord . . .
Yours v. sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
July 16th 1957
Dear Mr Bigelow,
A midweek letter to console you a little for Rosalind's so short a visit, leaving you high dry and, no doubt, handsome, behind. + Never mind: no doubt you are getting busy for 'Race Week' and all its concomitant social occasions and busynesses. I hope you have better weather for it than is currently plaguing us, for today it is wet, wet, wet and at work we are swamped, swamped, swamped. Damp babies, damp mums, dads with everything about them damp except their language. And, of course, insufficient staff.
There is a cream-coloured flag out in the Bay, flying alongside the buoy that marks the end of the town sewer! I suppose this means Poole is having a Yachting Week, or perhaps Christchurch. Or, who knows, Bournemouth might. Bournemouth suffers from having a wide beach, perfectly safe for swimming, being all sand for its nine-mile curve, but having no anchorage whatsoever for boats or ships, which have to up
+ Second reading suggested the removal of this one word!
anchor and run for safety if any wind at all blows, for they are either blown onto the beach, or out to sea . . . Poole has an enormous land-locked harbour, second only to Rio in size, but very shallow. I haven't been around it myself, only looked at it often from the viewpoint on nearby hills, but it is an extremely beautiful harbour. Mac was there only last Saturday, taking
his 'family' on their annual outing in Bolson's boats. 'Jake' Bolson is the son of a man who started off with a dinghy, and died owning a fleet of ex-Naval craft; a boatyard; a couple of shipbuilding factories, and several other worthwhile properties. But they still put all their pleasure cruisers at the disposal of the crippled children, the orphans and Mac's lot, once every year, and a high old time is had by all.
Last Saturday when he got home Mac said he was one short at the final count, but that one might have slipped behind his back while he was talking to somebody who had come up and tapped him (Mac) on the shoulder. Or, horrid thought, the missing one might still be in the lavatory! We thereupon started telephoning all Bolson's numerous telephone numbers in the book, to ask whoever answered if they had found a small boy locked in somewhere. They hadn't, luckily. Mac asked one child how many free bottles of pop he had drunk, and when it turned out to be six, Mac said he was glad the Bay was so choppy they stayed inside the harbour, and merely cruised around the islands there. He also said one child was showing off a Scout knife, and the ship rolled, and the child did likewise, and narrowly missed gouging out the next child's eye. What fun we do have in our jobs, don't we?
. . . Thank you for your nice letters, too. I look for the postman every morning, you may be sure.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
August 24th 1957
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . My brother has a new girlfriend – probably she's 'one over the eight' – and she lives in a very elegant part of the town, in a house just on the corner of a road we pass in the mornings, on our way to work. So Mac has an arrangement with her: she stands at a window, possibly elegant in a peignoir or other sort of frills – and waves to him, and Mac waves back. But, of course, his sister musn't know about this, so he just puts his hand out the window on his side of the car, and turns it up, and waggles his fingers over the car roof and she sees this as she stands at her upstairs window on the far side of the street from Mac!!!! I met her last weekend: she was quite pleasant, although with a rather better opinion of herself than I thought quite mete to display at first sight. She is nearer Mac's age, which is a change, and I think it quite possible that her awful situation at the moment is playing on his sympathy – she has a hole in her heart, discovered only last year, and the doctors are trying to build her up in strength to enable her to come to America next year to have a very dangerous operation: otherwise she will be a complete invalid in a few years. So apart from being reasonably pretty, and extremely well dressed (very rich father, which helps!) she has this tragic sword of Damesthenes or whoever he was, to make her even more romantic.
I trust you have made your peace with the Dalls by now, which reminds me: I have asked so many favours of Mrs Dall I would very much like to send her a little gift, to thank her for all her help in a more practical way than just by letter. Do you know of any hobbies she has? Or does she collect anything? Don't say 'Yes, Dresden China', please, I just couldn't bear it. Something fairly simple to find. I should be most grateful for your help in this direction.
Mother is – she says – going to win a competition in which the prize is £1,000 and a weekend flying trip to New York: just fly there Friday, and fly home Monday night. If she wins it – and she has been going to for 35 years, now, without quite managing to do it in the present tense – if she wins it, she will give me the trip to New York, so please have that spare room ready, as I should disdain being taken on a sightseeing trip to Radio City on the Saturday, and to Niagara on the Sunday. Waste of time: I'd go and have a look at the Long Island Railroad. Much more interesting, I am sure.
Yours v. sincerely,
Frances W.
Bournemouth September 14th 1957
Dear Mr Bigelow,
The sea within the lee of the pier is putty-coloured, and the top surface is corrugated into small wrinkles on rather large, oily waves. But beyond the pier end, it is deep green and dark blue, in lines, with white horses tossing their proud mains + like mad. In other words, the wind is blowing and the clouds are rushing, and the fall is upon us before we have had summer – for we only had a lovely warm long spring. Summer just went down the drain.
To celebrate the end of a horrid summer, I have had my hair waved again. I went to the hairdressers, and as the man stood behind me, scissors poised, I said, 'You know, I have always wanted to have my hair up, in a bun.' He at once gave a vicious snip at my head, taking a handful of hair away with his cutters, and said firmly, 'Now you can't have one.' So, being thwarted once more (I would love to look fragile and ever so feminine with a big bun) I said airily very well, he could do what he liked with my hair, and I would not grumble. And now I am mutton dressed up like shorn lamb, and only the fact that I can't sing, even flat, stops me being the twin of Mary Martin in South Pacific.
+ well, it's water, isn't it?
Anyway, I wore a lovely new dress (from the usual place!) next day, and knocked the office staff cold. I was emptying something in the big rubbish box behind one of the hall counters in the morning, and the hall man was there doing something with a mop and bucket. He leaned over, and put on the electric light, and said confidingly, 'I hope you don't mind me saying so, Miss, but I do like the hair-cut.' I must say I like it myself, especially at night when it needs no setting, and in the morning, when all I have to do is to run a comb through it (plus a little of those feminine touches which are said to have such a whale of a difference on anything) and, at a pinch, I could manage by running my fingers through it. At this stage, in the blissful honeymoon as it were, I do not think about how quickly it will grow out and need waving again! Or, if I do, I quickly thrust the thought from me under the carpet like a bill . . .
You know, Mr Bigelow, I am beginning to wonder whether Mother's general daftness isn't hereditary, in which case I shiver for myself. My mother's unmarried sister has, at long, long last, been able to find a tiny two-roomed flat for herself, and has moved in, to the accompaniment of dozens of letters to all the dozens of members of the Mould family. We were invited to motor over for a flat-warming, and correspondence has been flying to and fro about the possible date. My aunt gave us a list of weekend engagements she had, the last of which is on the weekend of the 21st–22nd September, so we wrote back and said we'd go over on Sunday September 29th. In the meantime we had a postcard from some cousins who live on the way, saying how pleased they were to hear we were going over on Sunday the 15th and would we call in and see them either going or coming. We wrote them and said it was the 29th. Auntie Ethel wrote and said how surprised she was we weren't coming on the 22nd! And now she writes to say it is just as well we aren't, as the previous engagement she said she had, seemed still to be 'on', so she was looking forward to seeing us on the 27th. (That's a Friday) and by the same post, Cousin Arthur writes to say sorry he won't be home when we call as he is going to Cheltenham on September 38th for a week. I cannot help but feel that the Mould Clan use some special kind of calendar, not related in any way to the Gregorian. The sort of calendar, indeed, that I myself use when calculating when to visit my dentist for my six-monthly attendances. However, we have now fixed the date and have plenty of time to prepare . . .
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
October 5th 1957
Dear Mr Bigelow,
It is now Thursday, midday Thursday, and I am breathing normally again – you know, in-out, in-out and so on. Up to now, I have been going iiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnn-o't with a terrific gust, owing to a little amount of trepidation or blue funk over having to take the Committee meeting this morning, in the absence of my boss. But now all is over; the boys have scattered, nobody bit me, and I even managed to drink a cup of coffee with the others, without taking a chip out of the cup with my chattering teeth. Coffee, I may tell you, is served to the Committee before they get down to business. By the time the meeting was over, I was so cocky I asked if anybody would care to see the n
ewly-decorated Turkish Bath – and the whole lot came. So I described the proceedings to them in my best manner, and they were suitably impressed! I got so self-confident I even invited one Councillor, afterwards, to see the plant, which he had said he wanted to see. Unfortunately for me, all set to give my little lecture on Water Filtration In One Easy Lesson, we bumped into the engineer in the first room we went into, and he took over. However, if he did spoil my limelight at least he saved me from getting into a mess, for the Councillor concerned is a B.A. and Doctor of Philosophy and kept asking awkward questions about chemistry, on which subject, as you know, my knowledge is absolutely nil or even more so.
So now I feel relaxed and definitely reduced in tension so that I can waggle my head (if I feel like it) without the top coming off. And I can concentrate for a while on writing to you . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
October 12th 1957
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . This time, quite casually, in the garden on Sunday, he said to me, 'Oh, by the way – I would appreciate it if you wouldn't talk about Audrey to Mother too much. You know I'm very fond of her; I should really like to marry her but I don't suppose anything will come of it. Her father is a sort of Mr Barrett, and won't allow a man in the house – he wants everything to go on exactly as it is.' So saying, he strolled back to the flat leaving me outwardly serene, and inwardly aghast, so that I have worried and worried ever since . . . Father is very wealthy, and judging by the look of Audrey my brother couldn't keep her in hairdresser's bills, let alone make-up or clothes. Or, Heaven help him, doctors' bills.