A love letter from Scotland at Christmas time

Fraserburgh
Friday, 28 December 1951

Dearest Sarah,
This will most likely be the last letter I will write you before the New Year comes in, and as the year draws to a close, I have been turning over the events of the year and reckoning whether it has been a good one or not. Well, it started out as a very normal year until 13 January when it took an immediate change for the better. That, of course, was from the moment I met you.

And Sarah, I am very grateful to you for giving me this chance to make a new home for myself. If I succeed in making a spot for you and me somewhere then I will really be able to call it home again, no matter where. I am a bit of a dreamer but this is one dream I intend to work at with everything I have.

In the meantime, it looks as though the year is going to finish on a dismal note with regard to our long looked for reunion. I just can’t understand why the Immigration Department has taken my fare but has no idea when a passage will be available.

Well, Sarah Darling, as I just had a bath before starting this and it is getting late, I will finish for tonight and perhaps write a bit more tomorrow. Here in Scotland, taking a bath during the winter months becomes almost an ordeal which none but the most Spartan types would dare attempt. It takes a good night’s sleep between piles of blankets and surrounded by hot water bottles to recover the lost body heat . . . which I am about to do, so goodnight until tomorrow.

Monday 31 December
DARLING—I FEEL WONDERFUL! IF ONLY YOU WERE AT HAND, I WOULD GIVE YOU THE BIGGEST HUG AND KISS THAT I POSSIBLY COULD!

This afternoon I performed one of the most pleasant duties I have done for ages in sending you a cablegram with my sailing date. Especially after the earlier tone of this letter and I am glad you will receive the cable before this letter. Yes, I had a reply from the Blue Funnel Line this afternoon in which they said they would like to help me in view of the good service I gave them and have offered to allow me to work my passage out on the Diomed due to sail on 30 January. The Diomed is not one of our new class vessels, unfortunately, and will take quite a few weeks longer to get to Aussie than the four weeks the Hector class takes. When the letter came from Blue Funnel, I was scared to open it at first and now I am wishing I had written to them long ago. I am also very pleased not to be a passenger as I will have my work to do all day which won’t make it so long. The only time I want to be a passenger on a ship is when I take you back to Scotland with me for a holiday.

I would love to see your face when you open that telegram. It will be my New Year’s gift to you and I feel sure that I couldn’t have sent you a better one. For me it is a grand tonic . . .

Today is the last day of the year, Hogmanay Day, we call it. We didn’t have a white Christmas. It was white in a way, but with frost and not snow. The Christmas celebration was in the evening, when my cousin Mary held a family gathering. We dined with all the lights out and candles burning on the table. She loves to entertain and is a good hostess. I will close now and I am very happy at being able to send you the good news of my sailing date. I will be thinking of you when the New Year comes in, both at your time and ours, and will wish you every happiness and prosperity for 1952 and for the future. I love you very much and miss you,

William

Williams's story is in this month's Encounters.

Original full-length version of The Sixty Miler by Norma Sim published by Murdoch Books Pty Ltd, Sydney Condensed version © Reader’s Digest Australia