42
The Same to the Same
15, Whittington Terrace
Darling, darling,
I hardly know how to breathe for joy! To know that I shall see you, hear your dear voice, hold your hand again! He heard me singing in the kitchen this morning and asked what I was yowling about. I should have liked to tell him. Think of his face if I had said: “My lover is coming home and I am singing for joy!” I said meekly that I was sorry if it disturbed him, and he said in his courteous way that it didn’t matter to him if I liked to hear the sound of my own voice, but the girl would probably think I was mad. I said I didn’t care what the girl thought of me, and he answered: “That’s just the trouble with you. You don’t care. You’re right up in the air.” So I am—so I am! Right above the clouds, Petra darling, up in the golden sunlight, where nothing can touch me. He’s quite right for once, if he did but know it.
Darling, we must be very careful when you come. I don’t know how I shall manage to keep the happiness out of my eyes and voice. But he won’t notice—he never notices how I’m feeling. Besides, he will monopolise you with his precious book. It’s really out at last, and he’s clucking over it like a hen that’s laid an egg. People say to me: “So your husband has written a book, Mrs. Harrison. So clever of him. Fancy a man knowing such a lot about cooking! What exciting meals you must have. Aren’t you afraid he’ll poison himself sometimes with those queer toadstools and things?” And I smile and say, “Oh, but my husband would never make a stupid mistake. He knows so much about them, you see.” That’s quite true, too. He doesn’t make mistakes about things—only about people. He never gets anything right about me—not one single thing. But then he really cares about mushrooms and takes trouble to study them.
I wonder how his first wife put up with him. She was a homely sort of person, from all accounts—the sort that are good housekeepers and mothers and all that. I think, if I’d ever had a child I could have been happier, but he has never given me one, and doesn’t seem to want to. I’m glad of that now—since I met you. It would be terrible to have his child now—it would seem like a sort of treason to you, beloved. Don’t be afraid, dearest. He never touches me—you know what I mean—and I wouldn’t let him. I don’t let him even give me his usual morning peck if I can help it. I don’t refuse, of course—that would make him suspicious at once. I just happen to be busy and keep out of his way. He’s glad, I think, because he always used to grumble at any demonstration and say, “That’ll do, that’ll do”—though he’ll let the cat swarm all over him and knead bread on his chest for hours together. I suppose he thinks a woman’s feelings don’t matter as much as a cat’s!
But I don’t know why I bother about him at all, when you, you, you are the one thing filling my heart. Oh, my darling, my Petra, my heart’s heart! You are coming back. Nothing else is of importance in the whole world. The sun’s shining and everything is happy. I went out to do some shopping today—silly, trivial things for the house—and I could have kissed the bread and the potatoes as I put them into my basket, just for joy that you and I and they exist in the same world together! Petra, beloved, you and I, you and I—oh, darling, isn’t it wonderful!
43
The Same to the Same
15, Whittington Terrace
Petra, oh, my dear!
Oh, darling, never say now that the luck isn’t on our side sometimes. Something even bigger than luck, perhaps. That we should save that last, wonderful evening out of the wreck—so perfect, so unspeakably wonderful—our evening of marvellous love. Just think—that it should be your last night, and that he should be called out suddenly like that, and ask you, himself, not to go before he got back. And even then, if it hadn’t been the girl’s night out, we shouldn’t have been safe. But it was, by such incredible luck, Petra mine.
Do you know, there was a moment when I was frightened. I thought, for a horrible minute, that he had suspected something after all, and had only pretended to go out, and would come slinking back on purpose to catch us. Did that occur to you? And were you afraid to say anything, lest I should be frightened? I was. And then, quite suddenly, I felt certain, absolutely certain that it was all right. We were being watched over, Petra. We had been given that great hour—a little bit of eternity, just for you and me. God must be sorry for us. I can’t believe it was sin—no one could commit a sin and be so happy. Sin doesn’t exist, the conventional kind of sin, I mean—only lovingness
