Numbered 104. Postmarked ELIE FIFE 6pm 18 Aug 39
addressed to Ronald Helme, Esq., 34 Albert Road, Colne, Lancashire
The Manse, Kilconquhar, Fife.
18th Aug. Friday.
My darling Ronald,
What a blessing you are to me. Your newspaper cheered me up no end, and the extracts I read out after I had read threw the paper myself were met with great applause. In fact, Adele thinks you should have gone in for journalism!
Darling I love you and I am missing you so much that I have a continual ache in my inside. Today it is very bad, as I have been shunted out of the attic, and have not now even the comfort of sleeping in your bed, as Mum insisted that the other bed was moved downstairs, as it was easier to take to liets(*). I am sleeping in my old room with Adéle and Marjory, and my clothes are scattered all over the house it seems.
The other big reason for my depression is that Dad is not very enthusiastic about golf lessons, and he heems and haws away about expense and new clubs – and I probably won’t stick to it anyway, sort of thing. He bought John a good driver, and look how much he used it, etc. So it goes on. I can’t both ride and play golf here. And so, I have so far done neither! Mummy is annoyed, and says I have just got to have lessons as it is your game, and we must have some of the same interests. I shall just have to scrape up all odd coppers, and pay for a few lessons myself, and heaven knows how I’ll get clubs.
I must leave you a minute pet, as I have to do some ironing, but I’ll be back in a few minutes –
Here I am back again, and unless I write speedily, I am going to be interrupted again – by dinner. I’m alone in the drawing room. The others are out in the garden disporting themselves in the sun. It is another glorious day, and I wish you were here to share it with me.
I don’t know whether I shall bathe this afternoon or not. I quite enjoyed my bathe yesterday afternoon, but it was a good while before I got warm again. It was a shame you didn’t see me in my posh new costume, though as a matter of fact, I am a little dissappointed with it. (Wrong spelling?) The bustline is wrong. I shall have to try and alter it. It makes me look much more poke outy than I am really.
Oh honey, come and cuddle me. I feel as if I want a good deal of daddying today, and you’re the only one who can do it. The only one I want to do it. Can’t you fly over and see me.
I could just imagine you setting off for Barlick last night : shutting your door, walking across Spring Lane with your left foot turned in, all your troops standing there – you getting into the bus. ‘All your troop’! It sounds like Napoleon, doesn’t it? But Napoleon didn’t love Josephine and all these other dames of his half as much as you love me.
I bought this paper this morning, from one of the old buddys at the post office. It was only sixpence the block, and the smell reminds me of school exam paper.
Here is the car coming in with ‘the boys’ and the old girl, so my peace will probably be shattered. Somehow I just can’t be bothered talking to them these days. As for Granny, I haven’t been to see her today – so she’ll be ticking me off I suppose. She’s been quizzing Marj. about Bill, and Marj. has been nattering her thoroughly.
Well, angel boy, we are in the third week of the month, so it won’t be long till we are home now. I only wish that I was going to have you for longer when I do come home. It will not be long till you are off at camp. It would have been so much better if your camp had been now, and then we would have been able to settle down to our nice quiet ways again.
It’s queer to think of you way back in Colne and me still here. I hope you are getting on O.K. at the office. You will probably be having your lunch now. I keep thinking of what you will be doing. Where will you be going tonight I wonder. Perhaps you will stay in and write a sweet long letter to me. But then, you’re always writing sweet long letters to me; and if you were here I would kiss your head, and if you looked a me with those lovely brown eyes, then I should certainly kiss your lips. And probably I’d blow in your ear for the pleasure of hearing you gurgling.
By the way, honey, I don’t read your letters at table. I read them afterwards – alone. Sometimes in the lavatory! Nor do I leave them lying about. I put them away in my drawer.
Oh darling I love you. Make this month fly. Yours always and always, Kay.
P.S. Mum sends her love, and says there have been no big game hunts since you left.