Hope you, anyway, are redressing the balance by enjoying yourself and fine weather, too.
Yours sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
August 16th 1958
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Oh dear! Please don't go getting the wrong idea – I didn't send you that marmalade jar minus lid; it was a gift Rosalind bought for you in Italy, I believe, and left behind in the turmoil of the French Farce. So I brought it home with me intending to give it to Mrs Beall to carry back, and then Rosalind wrote and said could I post it to you, so I did. I understand Rosalind has the lid . . .
The other day I wandered around the Sales in my lunch hour, and bought a length of pale brown wool cloth for my mother, with the intention of making her a dress for her birthday. On reaching home and showing it to her, M. tossed her head and would have none of it, saying it was so thick she'd never be able to stop wearing it, for fear of catching colds, and she didn't need a new dress and for Heaven's sake why did I keep spending my money on her . . . . . . about here, I went out, a bit depressed, and Mac followed to say I didn't have much luck with the things I bought for Mother did I! Quite brotherly, he was, all of a sudden. Well, next morning M. had evidently had a change of mind, because she was all smiles and said she still didn't want a dress, but did I think I could make a coat for her – a summer coat?
So obligingly I went out and bought a pattern for a coat. Saturday evening I cut it out, and all day Sunday, morning, afternoon, and early evening, I made it. Finished up by making a beret in the same material, and Mother went off to dinner in the evening wearing her new coat and beret-hat and looking delightful! She is like a cat with two tails – or was it a dog? I forget . . .
Thank you, in turn, for your nice letters of August 6th and 11th. I see from the latter that you say at the recent Race Meetings you felt, compared with the other committee members, 'dead and buried'. Now Mr Bigelow, a lecture is coming up, so duck if you wish or take your punishment like a man, if you prefer. So old, indeed, as to feel that way? Really, Mr B. you know full well you may be old, but you are not elderly, and years are but man-made means of telling time. You may be buried in Bellport and its surrounding towns, but your mind ranges over the whole globe, via books and letters and interests: you continue to be old, if you will (and please do!) but so long as you don't act elderly, there will be no complaints from this direction. When Mrs Beall complains because her private bathroom is ten feet from her bedroom, and pays insurance so that every winter when she gets a bad chest cold she may go into hospital and be coddled; when she won't eat any toast except that actually made at the table so that it's piping hot and soggy with butter; when she doses herself with pills to keep her weight down, and overeats excessively because she has reached the age where she feels she ought to indulge herself (!) . . . . . . then you might say she was elderly . . . End of lecture from somebody currently feeling 110.
. . . And now, from one young soul to another (whatever our respective years) in slightly shop-worn cases,
Au revoir until next Saturday,
Most sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
September 27th 1958
Dear Mr Bigelow,
Now, if I break out into French from time to time, you will know it's all baloney and swollen-headedness, because I got on so very well indeed at the first lesson. I fear it's after, say, the third lesson my speed will reduce to normal, at which (in learning a foreign tongue, anyway) a snail in throes of rigor mortis could beat me with ease. However, we shall see. The teacher has, to my surprise, a particularly elegant French accent. To my surprise, because his English is covered with a patina of Cockney, or some local accent very similar. As a Cockney myself (though I hope to Heaven not with a Cockney accent!) I always thought it was especially difficult for us to get our tongues around French. Perhaps, as time goes on, we shall discover this teacher spent his early years in French seminaries . . .
Something I forgot to tell you about my holiday: it made me chuckle, and perhaps will have a small effect on you. As you will remember, I took the car. You probably won't remember because I've never told you, but we garage our car in a small lock-up garage behind a house on the other side of the road. While I was away, Mac needed a car for business, so Audrey insisted he took the Jaguar, and you know what they are – once around the gasometer – twice around the Jag. Well, Mac fussed and fiddled, turned and reversed, turned again – and eventually got the Jaguar pointing in a dead straight line with the open doors of our lock-up. From there, it was easy, and he got into the garage with an inch to spare on one side, and an inch-and-a-half on the other. He sat and rested on his laurels for a few minutes, then with a sign of relief started to get out. Ah – you've guessed it, you horrid thing – he was more than an inch-and-a-half thick, so couldn't get through the open door. A bit of brain-searching, and he decided to get out through the sunshine roof. He told me he had even gone so far as to remove his shoes, so that he wouldn't scratch the paintwork, when it occurred to him to wonder how he would get back in the morning. In the end, he left the huge thing outside all night, and when Mother remonstrated with him, said calmly, 'I hid it behind a large lorry.'
Quick News Flash! I went downstairs on Thursday to pick up the mail, lying on the doormat, and came up saying it wasn't much – a reminder to Mac that his driving licence was due to be renewed, and a bill, and a typewritten envelope for Mother. This I gave to her in the kitchen, and came out to harry my brother a bit, it being a trifle late. Suddenly the kitchen exploded!! Out burst Mother, waving her letter in her hand, and crying, 'I've won! I've won!' When we calmed her down a trifle it appeared she had won first prize in a local competition for a recipe for tomato soup. I remember typing it out for her about five weeks ago, and a covering letter explaining that it was a recipe she had used, as a new bride, over half a century ago, to cheer her mother-in-law up when she was feeling ill or out of sorts. Then the newspaper printed items saying they had had so many entries, the result was being postponed a week. Then we forgot all about it, it was so long ago. And now our dear clever little mum has won it! She is to get a complete set of aluminium saucepans with coloured lids, to be presented at home next Monday. As we left, she was flying to the telephone a) to tell her sister, and b) to make a hair appointment. Mac said to me, 'We'd better get cracking over the weekend, wiping a bit of dirt off the kitchen'. I remarked, sadly, 'and to think Mother has had that recipe in her memory all these years, and we've never even tasted the soup at all.' True, soups are Mother's strong cooking point, but here we are, after all these years, discovering hidden depths in our Mrs Malaprop . . .
Currently I am engaged in reading Stendhal's Rouge et Noir and loathing it. Perhaps it is a work of genius; perhaps it is the best French psychological novel ever written, I wouldn't know. I know only that the characters exasperate me, they are so stupid. Do you notice, I even punch the keys of the typewriter extra hard, I get so mad when I think of them. I keep it beside my bed, and read a little each night to make sure I do my daily stint. Honestly, I'd almost rather learn French irregular verbs . . .
Now to rush home, change into something dirty, and rush back for painting class. Nice; nobody will ask me to use my brain or my memory.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
November 1st 1958
Dear Mr Bigelow,
When we were very small children, on Boxing Day we all used to go to the pantomime at Wimbledon Theatre, taking practically the whole of the front row of the dress circle for the family, visiting kin, and our special chums. One year, Mac was ill and had to stay at home with the maid, and as a special compensatory 'treat', when he was better, Mother and Father took him up to town to see the pantomime at Drury Lane – the theatre in the whole of the British Isles for a Christmas pantomime at that time. Now, of course, My Fair Lady is there so pantomime will be ousted. However, this was back in the twenties, and the pan
tomime, from all accounts, was something specially out of this world and Peggy and I never heard the end of it. Very fed up with the Drury Lane pantomime we got over the succeeding years, I can tell you.
And now, all those years later, the same thing is being repeated on a smaller scale, and Mother is the culprit, if that is the right word. Mrs Fagan (mother of Audrey, Mac's girlfriend) is buying a new television set, and was furious when she discovered the firm would allow her only £5 or £10 on her old one, depending on the price she paid for the new one. Mac, thinking the deal had been closed, said, 'Well, if they will give you £10 for the set against this new one, I'll give you £11.' And Mrs F., discovering that Mac wanted a set for Mother, was delighted and immediately said she'd give it to Mother for Christmas!!! So now we have a television set in the living room on top of everything else, and if we buy so much as another ashtray there will be only one thing for it – we'll have to move to a bigger place.
To continue with my tale. The television set isn't yet connected (this afternoon the firm is due to come and do the work) but on Tuesday morning, leaving for the office, I heard Mac tell Mother when it was going to be fixed up, and remarked that it was a pity, because had it been put in on Tuesday Mother could have seen the historic occasion of the Queen opening Parliament. So Mother promptly goes to the grocer for her daily shopping, and moans a bit, and discovers that the grocer has had a television set himself for the past week – so he invited Mother in to see the programme. She does, and believe me, we shall go a long time before Mother lets us forget she saw the Queen, and we didn't. She has now adopted a most delightful air of proprietorship over the television programmes, purely on the strength of having seen that one, and goes around making gracious comments on the planning, arrangements, photography, comments, and everything else about it. Mac and I are hugging ourselves for glee! What she will be like when she can sit and watch the darn thing all afternoon every afternoon, before I get home, I fear to imagine. I think she will have a lovely time, though, and am so happy for it. For my own part, I have always been sorry not to be able to see such historic events – or sporting events, perhaps – on the television screen, but it has always gone against my Scottish grain to spend £60 (which I haven't got, anyway) just to see something for perhaps an hour a week, with the possibility of wasting many more hours a week looking at third-rate stuff just because the wretched thing is there, and one feels one must watch it to get a better return for the outlay . . .
Now for the post: I have watched the postman for days but there has been no letter from you; perhaps there will be one this evening when I get home, or perhaps I shall, after all, have to change postmen. The last one gave much better service.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
December 13th 1958
Dear Mr Bigelow,
What to write about this week? The probable fiasco of my talk to the 40 Thieves' Wives. In other words, the Bank Managers' Wives Club. When I said yes, I would give them this talk, the date was so far ahead it was like the millennium, interesting but unlikely in our time. But now it has arrived like a dental appointment . . .
The Talk went off, I thought, quite well. True, I got hardly any laughs, but that might have been either because, in my nervousness, I went full speed ahead and all ears had to be bent in my direction to keep pace with me at all, so that nobody had any time to spare for a giggle; or, it might have been that my little jokes weren't as funny as I thought they were. The only real guffaw I got was when I told the assembled 46 females (ough, what a collection!) that in 1862 Turkish Baths were recommended for, amongst other ailments, 'enfeeblement of the mind', and told them that if any of them felt they came in that category, to come along for a Turkish Bath and we could find them plenty of company. Still, they were very attentive, most complimentary after-wards, and by the Grace of God I knew one woman there – worked with her for three years during the war, but never knew her husband had gone so far ahead as to be a Bank Manager, even of a very little branch of a small bank! However, I think half the staff must have dropped down dead, and he got the job, so his wife rushed from a Literary Lunch to a Turkish Bath Tea merely in order to hear me, bless her little heart. Oh yes – they nearly stung me 2s.6d. to come in! All the women were paying a shilling, so I queued up, not seeing anybody who looked like the couple who shanghai'd me into doing the talk, and when my turn came, said to the woman at the desk, 'I'm this afternoon's victim.' 'Well, that'll be 2s.6d.,' she said. I looked a little blank, so she kindly repeated it for me, saying, 'Visitors always pay 2s.6d.' I was getting my money out, but thought I'd better put her right, and of course on my announcing, as perhaps I should have done at first, that I was the Invited Lecturer, followed Collapse of Secretary. They gave me a pound box of chocolates in the end, which was very nice and will come in handy to give to somebody else for Christmas!!!
. . . The rain is simply tippling down, and a good part of it is tippling through my office window, where an old ragged towel is fighting a losing battle to stop it running over the tiled sill, down the wall, and onto the parquet floor where it leaves a little white rivulet of stain in the morning. And, of course, I must needs make an appointment to have my hair done tonight, so that it will be all out of wave by the time I get, damply, home afterwards. Had to get it done now, in readiness for the party at the Fagans next Friday . . . I think I've been asked a) to help wash glasses, and b) to keep Mrs Fagan company while Mac looks after Audrey, and her young sister Wendy looks after the 30 other guests. I refuse point-blank to buy an evening dress for the occasion, so shall probably feel horribly out of everything, and having taken my stand on that, am being equally firm (and broke) and not buying evening or even afternoon shoes, but wearing a pair of beige summer sandals. The heck with them – I shall do the washing up in the kitchen where nobody will see me, and for the rest, will curl up on the settee with my feet under me, or as much of them as will go under me, my feet being somewhat on the large size. English understatement, classic example of.
Now, au revoir until next week, and in case next Saturday's letter doesn't arrive in time, here is another wish that Christmas will be, if not gay and merry, happy and contented for you, which is a much, much better wish than any hilarity might be.
Yours most sincerely,
Frances W.
BOURNEMOUTH
December 20th 1958
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Monday evening this week . . . rather in fear and trembling, Mac suddenly announced to me privately that he was getting engaged on Friday. In fact, that he was engaged, but the announcement was being made at that party to which I had been invited 'to help with washing the glasses'. So there you are; I have been happily taking it for granted the status quo would continue indefinitely, and all the while other people have been equally happily, no doubt, engaged in planning otherwise. Audrey is to undergo an operation early next year, or never, for she will not much longer have the strength to survive it, and even now it is a matter of 50/50 odds, poor soul. Mac says they have become engaged because Audrey needs all the support she can get in this time, and he feels he must give it her . . . 'if it should come to marriage,' he went on grimly, while I held my breath to stop myself from laughing. Engagements usually come to marriage, don't they? I thought that was the whole idea. But from the way Mac said it, it sounded very much as though he were saying . . . 'if it comes to the worst, we can always have the bad tooth out.' He also told me what he could manage (he hopes) in the way of a financial help for Mother, and what he had planned about the car, and said, casually, '. . . and I would live there.' What, not live with us, and commute to and fro his wife's home? I am astounded! After all, he could spend 3 days with us and 4 with her, and alternate each week . . . I can only imagine he was so terrified of my reaction he didn't really know what he was saying. Poor man, I had no idea my opinion mattered so much to him, and I am afraid I was so shocked – not shocked, but it was such a shock – that I wasn't as
sisterly and affectionate as I should have been. Never mind, I'll ask him to stop at the Fagans' on the way home this evening, and pop my head around the door and say 'Hallo, Sis' to Audrey, and all will be well.
Later: it wasn't really quite as easy as the last paragraph suggested! We stopped at the Fagans', I rang the bell, Audrey came rushing to answer, and I said, 'Hallo, Sis, nice to have you coming into the family,' and gave her a hug. I then thought I'd go even further, and apologised for not having telephoned my felicitations the night before, when Mac told me, but said I was so surprised I couldn't even move! Audrey looked a bit chilly, and remarked that she didn't see why anybody should be surprised, as she and Mac had known each other for eighteen months. I didn't make any further comment, thinking I had done enough harm even by being surprised!
To be honest, I can imagine people being surprised for two reasons. First my brother has been a very gay butterfly and his girls have changed with the seasons because, perhaps as a result of being a prisoner all those war years, at the slightest suggestion that anyone is trying to pin him down, attain a position from which to have any control over him, he shies off like an unbroken colt. The other reason is Audrey's health: for a girl with a hole in her heart, tragically destined to a life of invalidism, to get married, might be thought surprising by some people. By me, for instance. However, I don't know the whole story and it may well be, as my brother says, that they are getting engaged now so that he can give her support in her coming operation, rather than wait to see how she gets on and then announce their engagement. Certainly Audrey seems to be able to order my brother about with a good deal of success already. He told Mother yesterday morning, and I believe she was very pleased about it all, although today she is a little nearer earth as she has apparently been thinking things over. I gave her some money last night for a new dress for the engagement party, and this morning she returned it (all that means is that I shall go out and buy a dress for her today, instead of leaving the choice to her) and she also said, à propos of (apparently) nothing whatsoever, that she didn't think it was at all necessary to buy her a refrigerator, because they were so expensive and she didn't really need one . . . . . . bless her, we aren't going to be as poor as all that.
Dear Mr Bigelow Page 30