Scotland…   27th.  April 1942

My Dearest one,
Two letters from you and a dear parcel, with sox beautifully darned and the eggs, stored for the dull evening, tomorrow maybe as I’ve had supper with the Guard this evening being on Picket Duty, and those marvellous bags. Everyone exclaimed with admiration. Just what I wanted,   the right size material, and the designs on them are dear things. I’d never move a stitch, and wherever I serve my country, up the Volta or down the Drain, along the banks of the Zambezi or in the Hellespont, those bags will sail, or be tugged – joke – with me. Ideal things. You darling.

Herewith one hat-band, made by me and used for my first day at this place.     Its got a bit harassed and I thought you’d cope with it in the wash, no rush, or with the others. So sorry it got grubby, it was putting it on the desk.  Also Flight’s price list, given to me with a free hat-band.  He comes here and gets orders and fits cadets out.

The system here is that the first two months we live as soldiers and eat in a dining hall with no cloths and only our good manners makes the difference. But the senior class, the third month, has a mess room of its own with waiters, tablecloths and flowers, and dines as guests of the Officers Mess, and wears battle dress with collar and tie – white tabs, of course, A sort of transition stage between the soldiers mess room and the Officers Mess.  The first day was not bad, strenuous and long, but pleasant. We sit in our lecture room, a curved room one wall, the longest, all great windows, and one superb officer instructor after another comes and lectures, brilliantly and concisely. We started off at a quarter to seven with fifteen minutes P.T. on the Square. Then from 7.5 to 8 we had drill on the Square. Breakfast, and lectures – Tactics, Tactics, weapons, and march discipline and Map reading, and after dinner, Organisation of the British Army and its history (the C.I,) (and his Spaniel) and Tactics and then P.T. for an hour in an old bowling green soaked in sunshine.     I did it, and my ankle was good, even the Horse and climbing a rope and crossing a ravine over a felled tree and down another rope.

We sit in alphabetical order, so I’m next to Tom Davies and next but one to Peter. In the second row, one of the Instructors in the London Irish, a Captain, he’s one of   the Tactics men. He wears a bonnet with a jaunty blue feather bunch in the front.   He’s got a vast immoral cavalry moustache, too. Good fun, he is.

But the work we do ! This morning was a week’s normal work. Pamphlets and precis, typed out, shower on us. But we’ll manage, open ears and an alert mind should do it.

Lovely to hear your voice, and to know about the picture, congratulations,   you dear thing.  Clever lass. And the hen in the letters has developed a grand character, and this evenings brought a lump to my throat, the dreaming hen and the baby chicks. Bless you, you’ll have to be put in a box off the ground and fed hard.

On Sunday we were having High Tea supper in the Drawing room, and I answered the phone when it went, having put the call through at seven o’clock, and Berth held it while I dashed down the wide curved stairs to the library, and took up the connection, there- a tactful idea of theirs.

I had a lovely day. Bertha is wee, grey eyed, quiet but very energetic I imagine at her job. She speaks Scots, but gently only. She’s Eileenish but neater and brisker. Same colouring, grey eyes, triangular sort of face. Her sister Jennie is older, some grey hairs, and plays the piano and makes all the sets and costumes for the theatre. Their father was an architect and a keen antiquary and book collector. Their mother is old and her brain has gone since the father died, and its quite charming she thinks she’s a child and they talk to her like   a child. Her memory’s like a three year old childs, which is sad, she keeps asking the same   questions.  But they are wonderfully patient with her and she’s got a hen that crows when you wind it and a monkey on a stick.  She lives quietly upstairs where the bedroom adjoins.

As for the house, think of a great many books of all kinds, in shelves, cases,   racks and piles, and window ledges and in corners. Round them build a square house of stone, three steps up to the door, a double double-door, with six windows on all four sides and three stories and a flat balustraded roof, built in 1800. Tall rooms with painted ceilings, double doors, a main hall, lots of comfortable slightly shabby furniture, and there you have   it. There are sixty acres to the estate, and 20 of their grounds, all wild Scottish with spinneys and a deep gorge where the Calder dances over great slabs of red coloured rock, Primroses  on the banks, and lots of nooks to lie in and  read in  and to sunbathe  in and I can whenever I like.

I walked half a mile from Auchinraith to the corner and got a bus and had a penny ride towards Glasgow, and got off at Priory Bridge. I saw a stone single story lodge and some gates, and a small – I mean a wee –  laddie idling at the gates. “What house would this be, then ?” I asked him, “Sure, Caldergrave, and what else ?” said he, “Then it’s the house I’d be after wanting,” I said, “and thanks be to you, my bairn.” He said “Aye” and gazed, doubtless in admiration at my knowledge of his tongue. I walked up the drive which wound sedately on, all rather unkempt but lovely with great trees and the Calder to the left down its gorge. Goats in a field, primroses just starting, and the drive wound on.  Then the house, and in front of it a large Ford van, grey with the inscription “Scottish Children’s Theatre” on the side and a gnome. Also a nice wee Ford car. I rang and Bertha came, took me into the Study and we talked and had afternoon tea – she drinks hot water. Then Jennie came down with the Wee Mother, all wrapped up, going out for the first time in months. We went to the Ford and drove through Lowland country for thirty miles to an old old auld auld mill, where Bertha wheedled a sack of oats for her wee birdies, she having eighteen. Jennie and I explored a bit, and they have there the sole pack horse bridge in Scotland, restored by Waddell senior. Its just wide enough to take a pack horse and not enough for a cart. Over the burn where the mill is. We walked along a wildly lovely path alongside the burn, and I vowed to take you its so lovely. You must come up, some how.

Then back by a roundabout route and Bertha took me over the estate, to the old walled garden where 26,000 lettuces are coming up and the tennis court prepared for much celery. We fed the chickens and I told her all about you. Then we explored the Calder and wandered round and round. Then back to supper and your call, and talk of the theatre. I saw some of their press cuttings. They’ve done Command Performances four times, once at Buckingham Palace and three times at Glamis, to the Princesses and all the royal crowd.  They must be good. I go to see them in Glasgow on Saturday afternoon if I can get there in time.

I left at nine and walked home and that was that. Happy cheerful ussish folk, very exceptionally good at their special job and very kind to me.

Good that the rent is paid. Good luck with the rest. Hold the fort till July. I’ll do my best.

My love to you and bless you. Thanks for all you do for me. Now I must read through the notes on todays work. So fare thee well dear one. And in London, if I get I.W.T.  we’ll live at Southgate for weeks on end.  And we may get a week here, who knows.  Its so   important, but so is our home and the meeting of the ends.

Its lovely weather, and we should keep fit with the daily morning P.T. as well as four evening periods a week. Think of me between ten to  seven and five past doing P.T.

I love you, and think of everything as through your and my and our eyes.

Ever your own. . .

Will you try Alcester with my watch, please  ?