Feb 10/17

Dear Mother

Thanks to many rumours about mails not leaving till much later than usual this week, I have at last been caught with about 5 spare minutes to catch the mail in! So sorry, but it can’t be helped. I have had really quite a frivolous week, though I spend a whole heap of my time in office somehow, & have the afternoons off from about 4 onward. I have had some tennis & dinner parties, & have dropped in to one or two lunches with friends, which is always so much nicer than any of these horribly formal shows.

I have been very busy all day and being very bored in office about 4.30 this afternoon I rang up a lady friend on the ‘phone to have a talk with her. She is a Mrs Kaye, wife of the Chief Censor out here, rather a nut in his way. She’s a cheery soul, & reminds me awfully of Bunchie, both in her face & cheeriness & general manner all round; quite a tonic on a dull day! Anyhow we have now arranged to go to “the Scamps” (sort of dud follies) on at the theatre tonight, so I have asked myself to dinner at the Kayes and the evening should be a cheery one. I fancy most of Delhi will be there, so it ought to be rather fun.

We’ve had a fair amount of rain lately, but there are distinct signs that the cold weather is over, though it is by no means yet. Still the early morning air seems to have lost its freshness & bite, & before we leave here it will be really rottenly hot I expect, & in tents too it will be ghastly. We have had preliminary orders to be ready to move, I don’t know where to, but we shall be going off somewhere before the end of March. However stick to Cox & Co as they will always find me.

I think there is still more reason to be optimistic now about the war, & I sincerely believe that the crash will come this year. Internally she must be in a bad way, & externally she is hemmed in. Her submarine campaign is a real danger while it lasts, but I think we can trust the navy to cope with that all right. But I think everything points to a collapse, or at anyrate a jolly good chance of one.

I must fly. So sorry for this scribble love to all

Yr loving son

Ted

Mary Margaret “Mollie” Kaye, Sir Cecil Kaye’s daughter, and author of The Far Pavilions

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1453069/M-M-Kaye.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._M._Kaye