Things like that make me feel I am an imposter as a mother. Surely other mothers pay better attention. Is it like that for you, Tilde? I hope Owen can’t tell!

I have hardly enquired about Frank’s work, or Marigold’s nuptials. You must send back big, thumping letter full of detail and laughs,

Veda x

† † †

21 DECEMBER 1961

Dear Tilde,

Happy Christmas to you! We are in Hawthorn! For the purposes of play, Owen now has a big front garden behind a big safe fence with a big fat tree to climb, and I have private use of a light-filled room where I have set up a desk and my papers. The room is next to the ‘nursery’ (this is a small antechamber connected to our bedroom, where Owen sleeps). We have a little Xmas tree that shimmers amongst all our unpacked boxes, and are feeling delightfully, frugally festive.

Thank you for your account of M’s wedding. Did my platter arrive unbroken? I assume it did. Or perhaps you would not tell me if it didn’t. Never mind. My platter is the least of their concerns, or yours.

Jo is resuming management of La Coccinella in Little Collins Street. It will be a step up from 123—which turned out, upon finalisation of the sale, to make us a nice little profit.

I encourage Jo in his ventures, because he seems to have a business head on him. God knows where he got such skills. Again, I say, I trust him. Isn’t that a fabulous thing to say about one’s husband? It makes me almost content to be a wife.

Meanwhile, I have had another rash of rejections. I think it is wise to describe them as a rash: it helps me see them as a temporary disfigurement rather than a permanent affliction. I had thought these last poems were un-rejectable. I really did. I’ve compared them to others being published—I do believe I’m knowledgeable about this, I believe I can identify what is good and what is not—and I really felt they stood up well. The crafting was good, the metaphors new and fresh, the ideas contemporary. So it was trying to have them come back to me, like barbed little boomerangs, accompanied by slight comments that told me nothing beyond ‘no’.

Actually, it is more than trying, getting these letters. It is crushing. It makes me feel that, no matter how very hard I try, the world doesn’t want what I have to offer.

But I am also enough accustomed to it to know that in a few days, the hurt will rub off and I’ll feel back to myself again. I’ll spring back, as they say.