Dear Mr Bigelow

by Frances Woodsford

  I have a shrewd suspicion that my brother is incurably romantic, and this early-Victorian father, coupled with the heart business and the glamorous blue eyeshadow, emphasising the invalidism, has played on his sympathies and feelings to such an extent that he sees himself as a knight errant rescuing fair maiden from wicked uncle (or Frightful Father).

  My problem is this: Mac keeps talking about jobs in Rhodesia and Nyasaland and so on, presumably with the idea of marrying the gal and carrying her off on his snow-white steed. Do I help by going off to London and getting a job there and, Heaven help me, persuading Mother to come up with me if I can find anywhere within my pocket, to live? And so leave Mac on his own, with the incentive to launch out for himself. Or do I just sit pat, and await events? If I do, and nothing comes of this marriage business, I suppose I just sit pat again until I am too old to do any launching out for myself. I cannot, try how I may, visualise my brother getting up early and cleaning the grates and pre-paring the breakfast because his wife is an invalid. It just isn't within the realms of possibilities. Nor can I see Audrey, who is quite a pleasant sort of person, getting down to life on Mac's salary . . . but maybe I'm not being kind nor sympathetic enough. I am all mixed up.

  It would obviously be impossible to live with my brother after he married (if ) and certainly I would not keep a job and run a home for him if I had also to look after his semi-invalid wife. But the trouble is, that in our family we have always looked after each other, especially so where Mac is concerned. Another point which worries me is that if I do go away, from what she said last time the subject was broached, Mother wouldn't come with me, but would stay on in the flat by herself. This inevitably leads to the question, what would I do if she was taken ill? Oh dear, oh dear: no sooner do I pull myself out of one slough of despond than another looms before my feet. Don't think I am grumbling about all this, Mr Bigelow, for I am not: it's too important for a grouch, it really does worry me; and I know it's important because Mac is treating me as though I had to be consulted on every point and my wishes considered all the time, something which is quite abnormal for that young man . . .

  Most sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  November 2nd 1957

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  What, in spite of the date, a birthday gift did I get from Bellport today!! Never have the seven floors of Beales* been so disrupted, I am sure, as they were today in my lunch hour, when I tottered around, practically drunk with delight, and chose my presents from you. Everybody was most kind and helpful, and chased me all over the building as I did one thing wrong after another, all due to the fact that, as I pointed out, I had never had a birthday gift like this one before, and must be allowed, and expected to mess their organisation up a trifle. So they beamed, and said of course and how wonderful for me: in fact, they seemed to enjoy it almost as much as I did. This is a list of the enormous variety of presents you gave me, and how you knew exactly what I wanted, I shall hardly ever know:

  * Editor's note: Mr Bigelow had sent a gift of credit to be spent at Bournemouth's department store.

  First, I had decided, as I told you, on a wristwatch. Then today I decided against it, as it seemed to be more fun to spread the gift over different ideas, and not keep to one thing. And it would have had to be one thing, for while I quite liked the very cheap watches, I should not like to waste your money; and those a step above the very cheap ones I disliked intensely; and the step above that would have taken all the cheque, and that, as I said, I didn't wish to do. So first of all I went to the linen department, and hummed and ha'ed over the blankets, green and yellow, thick and honeycombed, with and without satin bound edges. In the end I fell for an extremely thick and fluffy pale green blanket, with satin edge and a big bow to show it was a present. That was No. 1. Then I picked out a feather quilt in Paisley pattern in green with peach. Then I tottered downstairs to the jewellery counter, where you gave me a lovely shiny black, round powder-compact, with a tiny circle of marcasite flowers in the middle. No. 3, that was. Next I chose a marcasite ring: I liked most of all an oval black stone with a surround of marcasite, but it only fitted my little finger and I don't like wearing rings on that one. So I picked out, instead, one all marcasite on silver, with an intricate effect of slender strands woven in and out and over and under each other. They tried to get me to buy what they said was a cocktail ring (why, I don't know: it was an eternity ring masquerading under an alias) but it was so big it would have done very nicely for a knuckle-duster, and I don't move in that sort of circle.

  Next I moved over to the cosmetics counter where I frivolously bought a bottle of pale cream-coloured mud – you put this on to hide the fact that your skin is naturally putty-coloured mud – and some lip stuff and powder, and a little black and white case to hold all this neatly in my handbag.

  After this, weakening slightly, I went to Gloves and chose a pair of black kid lined with wool, for the winter. And finally, after adding up all the others and doing mental sums in a sort of daze, being bumped into by the other shoppers, I went back to the blanket department and added a large flannelette blanket. This is for Mother, and I'm sure you don't mind, but I wanted her to share in my good fortune, and my brother was already accounted for as he will have my discarded quilt and a travelling rug which your green blanket replaces . . .

  Yours most sincerely and overwhelmed,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH December 7th 1957

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . Quite casually, as we were going home on Thursday (applications have to be made in December or forever hold thy peace) I asked my brother if he'd applied for regrading (one way to get an increase in salary). He said no, because he wasn't at the top-rate of his present grade yet. Had I? This, because I had said I would do so, back in the summer when I was working around the clock. No, of course I hadn't, and the letter had to go before the Committee the very next morning. So I dashed something off that evening, and put it on my boss's desk. He was much taken aback, and very dismal about my prospects, but cheered up a bit when I said I would neither resign, nor sulk, if I was turned down as I fully expected to be, as I never could put my heart and soul into such a letter in the middle of winter, when I wasn't earning my salary anyhow. And, in the event, the Committee were apparently all in favour of it, and of me, and all sorts of nice things were said about yrs trly (which I am not supposed to know about, but heard in a roundabout way through friends at court) and I shall either get a £30 rise next spring, with another £20 the following year, all of which would count as salary and for pension calculations in the event of my living that long; or if the Establishment Committee – a real tough body of men – turn it down, I am to put in for over-time pay, which I know would come to more that £50 a year anyway. So either way, I shall be much better off next year. This is certainly being my year, isn't it?

  First of all, I had that enormous birthday present. Then I had my aunt's fur cape, which has this week come back from the furriers made up as a stole, and looks a million dollars and quite unlike me. I just drip silver-fox like Peggy Hopkins Joyce only without so many husbands. One of these days, the occasion to wear the fur will come along, and then a few pairs of eyes will be knocked out of focus, believe me. I am not at the moment sure about hay fever, never having worn silver fox before, and getting a bit mixed up with hair in mouth, hair on tongue, twisted around back teeth, tangled with my eyelashes, and inhaled into my nostrils. However, with a bit of practice I shall grow a longer neck and that will take me out of the danger zone.

  Then on top of all this, the Committee business. All I need to finish off the year, is to win a Football Pool and become, overnight, rich enough to wear the fox fur every single day, just for popping down the road for cat-fish.

  And the police sent me three canvas-boards to paint on, as I still insisted on 'being stubborn and silly' (their words, not mine) about not taking money for what help I give them on the occasion of their annual swimming
gala.

  I can't for the moment think of anything else anybody has given me, not even a high-sign or the glad eye or the go-by, but if I do before the end of this letter, I will add it to the list. Quite a formidable list of nice things, I am sure you will agree . . .

  Yours most sincerely,

  Frances W.

  BOURNEMOUTH

  December 14th 1957

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  . . . We had our first carol-singers this week. A reasonable government, some few years ago, passed a regulation forbidding the singing of carols before the first week in December. Up to that time, the trend was, go around collecting for Guy Fawkes' night, and immediately that is over, swing into your carol-singing. Anyway, I was at home after dinner, and the radio was on and Mother was banging away in the kitchen and the cat was snoring, when suddenly there came this singing from outside the front door. Loud and clear it was. It is quite difficult for carol-singers to make themselves heard in our upstairs flat, especially when our radio is going, but this lot could be heard halfway to Dorchester.

  I got some money, and after a verse or two, trotted downstairs and opened the front door to give it to the singers – and there, with his little mouth almost in our letter box (the better for the sound to carry) was a small urchin of no more than nine years. Singing away at the top of his voice, with his little red gloveless hands in his pockets! Usually, we get so many little groups, that we make a rule to give twopence each, but I had gone down with sixpence, expecting at least three small boys. And here was one single little singer, with all that power! I gave him the sixpence, and congratulated him and said he'd do well because even without a brass band to help him, one could clearly hear his concert. He wiped his little nose with the back of his hand, tucked his sixpence in a spare pocket, put his hands back, and rushed off to try the next house. Mother was annoyed: apparently when she was young the carollers gave you some more singing when you had paid them; nowadays, what with automation and time and motion study, the minute they are paid, they're off. Could it be that most carollers have little faith in the voices they throw at one?

  Thank you for your letter (Dec. 3rd) from which you sounded more cheerful, and more spry, than for months past. I was very glad to read it, but I took your remarks, about Devonshire cream making you sick, with a grain of salt which you may imagine quite spoiled the taste. However, I hardened my heart and refrained from rushing another order to Devon for cream for Christmas for you, as you will no doubt go to a dozen or so (nothing much) cocktail and other parties, and if you don't, at least I must look out for your figure, sire.

  There's been a spate of writing in the newspapers this week, on the theme 'Don't be nasty to the Americans'. Nobody I know has been particularly nasty that I know of, so I can only imagine the snide remarks about the rocket were made by newspaper people being clever with words, for the sake of cleverness and without any consideration for the effect of their wit. We most of us feel that America did give too much optimistic publicity to her efforts beforehand, but that is no more than you feel yourselves; and the nasty shock to the nation as a whole is much too important to be sniggered at. So take no notice of the news-papers: they just love stirring up ill-feelings, as you know. There has, on the other hand, been a certain amount of – I won't say anger, because it wasn't heated, but dismay is perhaps better – dismay at the news, quite unexpectedly wangled out of the Prime Minister, that American 'planes are flying over England in practice, with atomic bombs in their racks. That is an uncomfortable feeling, for coming right now, the assurance that nothing can go wrong doesn't altogether have the reassurance it might have had, had nothing gone wrong in Florida.

  And now, this week, I will indeed wish you a very happy Christmas, and a very happy New Year with no repetition of last year's hospital todo and kerfuffle. From the newspapers I fear your prophecy as to snow has been more than fulfilled, but just the same I hope it didn't handicap your visit from Rosalind, nor stop you going out and about whenever you fancied.

  Very Happy Christmas, dear Mr Bigelow,

  Most sincerely,

  Frances W.

  1958

  Mother and Mrs Fagan;

  Christmas decorations at the Baths

  BOURNEMOUTH

  February 9th 1958

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  I was particularly glad to see your letter (Feb. 2nd) this morning, for as I told Rosalind in a letter I wrote her yesterday I had a horrible feeling amounting almost to certainty last week that you were ill. And lo, when Rosalind's letter arrived, and it was dated the day I had this foreboding, she put in it 'a year ago today they "dug into" Father'. So you see, I was psychic 365 days late, which I daresay is a most unusual gift although not too useful. If only I could be psychic a year ahead – know which horse would win the Derby in 1959, say – that would really be something. But alas I am only human, and when a lady came to see me one day this week to discuss having a course of Turkish Baths, and asked me what the weather would be like on Friday, as she would not wish to have a bath if it were fine out of doors, I had to admit to not knowing, and she obviously thought I was no good at my job.

  Reading your letter, with the description of your full punchbowl, all I can say is that I am not surprised one guest left her hat on the floor and has not yet remembered about it – I am more surprised it wasn't left on the floor with the owner still in it, after that potent punch. What do you call your particular brand? The Joe Louis Punch? If said hat owner still hasn't remembered where she was on the Night of December 28th, by all means toss it eastwards and I will go looking for a cocktail party at which to wear it . . .

  We now come to work, in the car, these days by such a circuitous route we must burn up an extra gallon or two of petrol on the way. This is to enable my brother first of all to wave at Audrey, still the Big Love of His Life. We then go down her road for two blocks, and with luck, another girlfriend (oh, way down the list, this one) will be getting break-fast in her kitchen and she too waves at us, and vice versa, as we go by. We then turn at right angles and come back into the road we first thought of, and stop bang on a bus stop (the bus gets furious) to pick up one or two sisters who wait there. If the sisters aren't there, we give a lift to a girl in, of all things, a parma-violet teddy-bear coat whose name we do not yet know, but whose pretty face (and coat) attracted my brother's attention some days ago. We already have one girl, usually in a bright orange coat with lipstick to match, whom we pass near our home. My brother never seems to notice any tall dark and elegant men waiting for buses; eyesight faulty, no doubt . . .

  Now I must get to work: have to eat some lunch, go out and collect a repaired brooch, buy a very cheap waistcoat to embroider for my brother in the faint hope he might like to wear it, and then get back before I am snowbound again.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Frances W.

  PS No, the yachting magazine has not yet arrived, but I will let you know immediately it does.

  PPS Does not my handwriting get worse and worse?

  PPPS No need to answer PPS! I know!

  BOURNEMOUTH

  February 22nd 1958

  Dear Mr Bigelow,

  Last week on my final visit to the dentist, I told him that on considering his argument of the week before, in which he claimed that as some interesting people of his acquaintance wrote very dully indeed, it followed that dull people wrote very interestingly, I had come to the conclusion that his logic was faulty. You may remember, I wrote to you about this last Saturday.

  Mr Samson was visibly shattered; first that I should be so brash as to consider him faulty in any way, and then that I should be so rash as to say so! At least I restrained myself until all the drilling was done, knowing that on my last visit only the corners are scraped off and polished with emery powder or something like it. He was, in fact, so taken aback by all this that on Tuesday this week I received the following letter:

  . . . . . . Although Aldous Huxley may be no final authority upon our recen
t discussion, a quotation from his 'reason and rule' at least supports my argument (Had it supported yours I probably would not have sent it to you!). Writing of the artist, Georges de La Tour, who was, he says, a 'visionary', he ends thus:

  'it must be added that, as a man, this great painter of God's countenance seems to have been proud, hard, intolerably overbearing and avaricious, which goes to show, yet once more, that there is never a one-to-one correspondence between an artist's work and his character.'

  Anyhow, if it doesn't 'go-to-show' you, it is just another arguing point when next you wish to delay the threatening drill.

  How's that for an insult? As though I bring up all my best arguments for so low a reason, when all I need do is keep my big mouth shut and I get the same success with less wear and tear on the brain. I replied, taking two lunch hours to compile the letter so that it would simply bristle with shining logic, and from my characteristic kindness, gave him one point for honesty (as vouchsafed by his remark about not quoting Huxley, had it been in my favour) and subtracting one point for the iron mould clearly on his character from his nasty crack about delaying tactics. I must say I, in turn, was shaken, for I know that Mr Samson is a very busy man indeed, and to write even a short note by hand (and what a hand! took me hours to decipher it) must have been a chore.

  We have been reading in the newspapers, and hearing over the radio, of your terrible weather. I was trying to visualise a snowdrift 15 feet high, as we came to work the other morning: it seemed to spread right over the store windows up to the next floor; and as for having a snowfall of 58 inches – words fail me. I do hope you had plenty of food in store, and are able to stay snug indoors until the weather is more amiable, and the drive is clear. What a pity Rosalind didn't visit you a week later than she did, then she might have been snowed in with you, and you would have the pleasure of her company that much longer.