Susan Mavis asks to be remembered to you. Do you remember Susan? She is now Mrs Gordon Bridie, and lives in Malvern, and, it seems to me, has a life of solid-gold luxury. She came to dinner after seeing My Fair Lady at Her Majesty’s Theatre and was most surprised to find me at the helm of the newest, most fashionable restaurant in Melbourne. She herself, she says, is a practising watercolourist. (She does not call herself an artist, so I imagine she must be a painter of decorative wall-hangings for spare rooms, nicely framed in neat little gilt frames.) Anyway, she is now wife of Gordon Bridie, architectural historian and founder of the Melbourne Gallery. Old money, but good taste. She was dressed in the most beautiful Hal Ludlow gown, still has her perfect button nose, and elegant figure. Gorgeous, maddening creature. No children. She said this in a sad little whisper, so I am guessing this is not from a lack of trying. Gordon-Bridie is a patrician gent, thirty years older than her, but affable, gracious—like a fat old uncle who spoils you terribly and pays your school fees. Liked him immensely. She is still exactly as we knew her at school: still capable of flexing a claw when you least expect it. I told her you were fantastically happy, had simply a glut of children, including one absolutely beautiful daughter just married (that was churlish, was it not?). And she told me about her house in Malvern, holiday house in Portsea, and the ‘lovely little flat’ they have just purchased in Nice. Grrrr. Anyway, she is now properly remembered to you, and I should be perfectly happy to meet with her again, now I know the score.

Send me a lovely gossipy letter about you and yours, will you? I am home on my own much of the time now, having finished at the restaurant. I wasn’t needed anymore—well, I was needed more by Owen. But after the excitements of the late-night world, I’m rather ruined for going to parks and talking to other mothers, pushing swings and making sure children aren’t clouted in the face by flying see-saws … it is tedious beyond description. I entertain Owen by popping him on the grass in the front garden with some dirt and a spoon and some water and saucepans and letting him get as muddy as he can, while I gaze and potter and write a word or two, and snatch poisonous plants out of his grip. (It is a fabulously lush garden, just brimming with poisonous flora.)

What I’m saying, in my usual longwinded way, is I’m missing the company of a working life, and I need to live vicariously through you and your busy flock of childer and tireless rounds of country life, good works, tea parties, sheep auctions, etc. & etc.

Love Veda x

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18 MAY 1962

Dear Tilde,