Fine script tattoo under the bust

The landlady at Seacliff House has finally given up on the damp in the back bedroom, so I have moved my things to the little room above the porch where the gulls wake me at five. You would hate it. The wallpaper is roses the size of saucers, and the bath water runs brown for the first minute. I have never been happier to sit in a draught.

Yesterday I walked to the harbour wall with the old atlas you gave me and found the page Father had marked in pencil. Someone had written a line along the bottom margin in his small slanting hand, be happy where the weather allows, and I copied it onto the back of your last letter so I would not lose it. I am sending it on, though I am not sure it means anything beyond what he meant when he was thinking of Mother at the window of the Brighton train.

Mrs Penhallow saw me reading it on the step and said the tide was turning, and that men always write the thing they cannot say in the margins of books. She is right, I think. I have sat on that wall since noon with the ink smudging on my wrist, trying to decide whether to post this or keep it tucked back in the atlas beside his pencil.

Enclosed, the words, as best I can read them. Post it or don't. I am going down to the water before the light goes.

Love, E.