Dorothy Sayers - The Documents in the Case

I am going to do some really solid reading now, to try and be more worthy of my darling when the happy time comes. (I must believe there will be a happy time, or I should go mad.) This year of waiting shall be a year of self- development. That will make the desolate days pass more quickly. Goodness knows I shall have time enough, for He never lets me go out anywhere or have any of my own friends to see me. The only people I ever have to talk to are his friends from the office. They talk about bridges and electrical plant interminably. I don’t know how people can live with such petty, dull things taking up all their minds. Sometimes one or two of them have the graciousness to ask me if I have seen the latest play or film, but I never have, and I just have to sit and smile while He says, ‘We’re quiet, domestic people, my wife and I; we don’t care about this night life.’ And if I ever suggest going out, he pretends that I want to be ‘gadding round’ in night-clubs at all hours. I am ashamed of being so ignorant of the things everybody is talking about. Other husbands take their wives out. But no — if I want to stir out of doors, I’m a bad woman — ‘one of these modern wives who don’t care for their homes’. What kind of place is my home, that I should care about it?

I have got that book you were talking about, Women in Love . It is very queer and coarse in parts, don’t you think, and rather bewildering, but some of the descriptions are very beautiful. I don’t understand it at all, but it is thrilling, like music. That bit about the horse, for instance. I can’t quite make out what he means, but it is terribly exciting. What funny people Lawrence’s characters are! They don’t seem to have any ordinary lives, or have to make money or run households or anything. That woman who is a schoolmistress — she never seems to have to bother about her work, one would think it was all holidays at her school. I suppose the author means that the humdrum things don’t really count in one’s life at all, and I expect that is true, only in actual life they do seem to make a lot of difference.

Oh, I do hate this cramping life — always telling lies and smothering up one’s feelings. But tyrants make liars. It is what somebody I read about in the papers calls ‘slave-psychology’. I feel myself turning into a cringing slave, lying and crawling to get one little scrap of precious freedom — a book, a letter, a thought even — and carrying it off into a corner to gloat over it in secret. That is the way in which I am learning to build up an inner life for myself, a lovely, secret freedom, so that the things He says and does can’t really hurt me any longer. The real Me is free and happy, worshipping in my hidden temple with my darling Idol, my own dear Petra darling.

How I do love you! My starved life is full when I think of you — brimmed with joy and inward laughter. And one day, perhaps, we shall come out of the dark catacombs and build our temple of Love in the glorious sunlight, with the golden gates wide open for all the world to see and marvel at our happiness.

Yours, beloved, yours utterly and completely,Lolo

I love to write the name you call me by — the name that is only yours. Such a silly name it would sound to people who didn’t know what it meant. He uses the name other people use — just like an uncle or something. That’s all he is — a sort of Wicked Uncle in a fairy-tale. I can bear him better if I think of him just as that.

42. The Same to the Same

15, Whittington Terrace 18th July, 1929

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!Your happy Lolo

43. The Same to the Same

15, Whittington Terrace August 2nd, 1929

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 and unlovingness — people like you and me, and people like him. I wonder what Mr Perry would say to that. He is just crossing the road now to Benediction, as he calls it. He thinks he knows all about what is right and what is wrong, but lots of people think his candles and incense wicked, and call him a papist and idolater and things like that. And yet, out of his little, cold, parish experience, he would set himself up to make silly laws for you, darling, who are big and free and splendid. How absurd it all is! He preached such a funny sermon the other day, about the Law and the Gospel. He said, if we wouldn’t do as the Gospel said, and keep good for the love of God, then we should be punished by the Law.