CALDERGROVE HOUSE
SUNDAY 5/7/42

My Dearest,
Your registered letter with the Marriage Lines, – dear blessed document, so dry and matter of fact, so rich and essentially poetic in effect – and the Birth Certificate, the Insurance Receipt and the letter from Mrs. Matthews. Yes, that is a nice letter the neatest little thirty two guineas I’ve ever seen. Eight scripts of 800 words at four guineas each is a wow, higher rate than the swagger short story papers, and fun to do.  You can certainly help a great deal with dope. I’ve got the Livingstone stuff all ready and directly this ADVENTURE is done – I hope it will be this evening, I’ll get that one done. But as in all these things, the celebrated meeting with Stanley is of infinitesimal importance and can get ho mention.

That’s the difference between the Peaches of this world and us. We must keep little things like this contract ticking happily over if we can.

Kathleen has bought the three nursery rhyme scripts, and only wants the bedtime one changing from verse to prose, with which I don’t agree but say nothing about that. So that is  that.

I chose a pair of shoes yesterday in Glasgow, after all your trouble and kindness in posting shoe parcel after shoe parcel. The brogues are too patterned and too light for Square work, the town shoes too thin and ladylike and the old brogues too battered. The brogues and the light shoes will do for social occasions but I chose a pair of really grand thick storm-welted grained leather shoes from Scotts yesterday and I’ll buy them next Saturday.    You want weight and strength for parading. You’ll agree.

I’ve found some thing out. The 10.10 from Glasgow gets in at seven thirty or something, but I can catch a train at Motherwell at 6.10 which changes me at Crewe. It will get me to Birmingham either at 3.05 or at 520 in the morning, which would mean the best part of another night in bed, with you. Therefore, though this train will be crowded and even Firsts may have to stand, even though we fight again at Crewe and even though I walk up from New Street, I’m catching it. I shall therefore be there in the early hours, in time to go to bed, and to wake and dress with you, bath, breakfast and idle and make love. Its an exhilarating thought, that extra batch of precious hours. If its inconvenient to go to D’s you could take a room at the Queens Hotel and I’d join you in it. Expensive, but nice.

At D’s we’d have to make an  appearance at a reasonable hour I suppose, to see Frank before he went off,  though D wouldn’t mind us not turning up until ten or so. What d’you think ? We shan’t have to be too late because of our shopping, your shopping, rather, in Birmingham. I expect D’s would be the more sensible. Double beds, there anyhow. You’d have to leave the key in a prearranged place for me to get. You couldn’t wait up, its not certain whether we let the connection at Crewe there’s only twelve minutes between the trains and mine may run late, it being the crowdest time of all and the crowdest train.  Unless you came up to Crewe and stayed at the station hotel there. We could book a room and meet in it. I get to Crewe about half past twelve I think.  You could meet the train then. What’s the fare to Crewe ? Could you find out ? Praps its silly and wiser to go to D’s, leave a key hidden, and go to bed and know I’ll be there before you wake up.  Only explain which is your room    or leave a trail to it, bits of white string on the door knob or something. The Crewe idea is a nice one though. Still, the other’s more sensible. I may have to walk up from the station, but its not much of a walk. Time marches on anyhow.

Now as for doings, my doings. It is now half past two and I’m here for the afternoon and evening, dear folk that they are.  This morning I got up at 8 and had a shower, and after breakfast, worked at dinner-dance arrangements and did my laundry and some cleaning, had a hair cut, too. Then at eleven we rehearsed the show and the scripts I wrote on Thursday went off well, and the show will be all right.  I’ll be rehearsing it all next Sunday I fear. Telephoning may be difficult, maybe I’ll ring on Monday instead, yes, no ?  You can go to Church, then. Yesterday morning was restful and lectury, and in the afternoon Peter and I went to Hamilton, I left the Samuel to be altered, and we had our photographs taken for our identity cards. Then down to Glasgow and booked seats at the Theatre Royal, 2/- ones, and I chose shoes, and Peter bought pants and things, and then I went, no, a cup of tea next, then I went to the station and train hunted to get to you earlier and was lucky, I hope, dear you, and then to the, North British Hotel and arranged with the Manager for the seating and the drinks and the menu and so on. Then to the Strand and steak and chips and coffee, then to the theatre for Humperdinck at his most charming, Hansel and Gretel was delicious, shattering in its effect on me. I had you in mind, and visions and sensations crossed and recrossed my enchanted mind. You must see it with me, it is so very naive and lovely and delicate.

Then to Wendey’s for coffee and chocolate biscuits and home and here I am.    What about Friday I didn’t write then or did I ?  No I came here and wrote violently for the revue, various twiddly things and two major ones. They seem to go all right.

Why this yearning for Clopton Tower ? Are you overcrowded at Great Alne ? It could be loveley, there, and I too would like to be alone more with you, but for now we’ll just play with the idea. Anywhere is heaven, to my way of thinking, in your company. I do have my feelings, and I have my thoughts, and I know how the very look of you makes my blood race and my self ache. That tilted nose, your gay zestful glance, and the scent of your hair, smoothness of your arms and soft lovingness of your body, it all makes up that Nameless Essence which all music, all poetry, all art and all human spirit seeks to express. This war brings us separation which is bitter, and our separation may in the fullness of time be wide and long, but I shall be able to do my job the better for knowing that you are there, courageously patient, with the more difficult of the two jobs to do, and you stand for everything that we fight for, for, despite all the clever sayings about economic wars, political wars and Industrial wars, these are mere labels, and for us simpler folk it is a fight that everything which you typify for me shall live on.

So although I am dumb when I am with you, and although I’m an ordinary sort of a fellow, I am a poet and a dreamer and a creator when I think, as I constantly do think, of you.

And in a handful of days we shall be together, and for part of that time alone together. You, and I.

Bless you, dearest, and speed the day of our reunion. Ever your own . . .

Ever your own . .