It does seem that loving him has not paid off like I thought it would, Tilde. I find it has saddled me with a version of myself that I had nothing to do with. How exactly did that happen? I wish he would be a little bit more part of the family. It feels like Owen and I are the family, and Jo is some kind of satellite who orbits us from a distance. The restaurant requires long, late hours. He sleeps through the mornings and is then up and shaved and off. I know this is the way of men, and this is the contract—bringing in the money etc., home fires tended—but I do not believe the arrangement is conducive to conjugal happiness.

Is it like this for you? Does Frank talk to you, in depth and about things other than rotary hoes and sheep feed? Does he listen? Or does he just assume that everything’s alright?

I know it’s prying of me, but if you let me know your own experiences, I might have better material with which to judge my expectations—whether I’m being fair or not, or complaining over nothing.

Owen gets bigger and bigger and has no teeth in the front and guzzles chocolate milk as though he is determined to get his bones as full of calcium and sugar as possible. He is a joy and an annoyance and, sometimes I think, my only real friend.

Love Veda x

† † †

10 FEBRUARY 1967

Dear Tilde,

I am very glad to hear Frank is, as I expected, the model husband—though I also suspect you to be the model wife, which makes everything easier on everyone. If only I had inherited some of your calm and measure. What was mother’s comforting saying? That I always go ‘headlong into catastrophe’. Well, it is very apt. As a child, it threw me into such sterling company as Anne Shirley and Katy of Ohio. But as an adult I discover it is something that the Annes and the Katys have long outgrown and only Veda has stayed true to. And perhaps I was never as lovable as Anne or Katy in the first place.

Jo is taking me out, as a present, to cheer me up. We’re going to the theatre, would you believe? He is making me dress up—has even sent me into town to go shopping—and has taken the Saturday night off, and we are going to the Palais Theatre to see Eartha Kitt (do you know her?) and are then going dancing. (God forgive me, can I even remember how?)