My Dear Bessie
Page 23
I am in a shocking mess: there is such an Eldorado on the old doorstep, I have little money, bags of ambition and no YOU to help. My eyes popped out of my head at the sight of carpets!
I love you.
Chris
11 February 1946
My Darling Beautiful Wonderful and Lovely Wife,
Today came No. 30, to tell of your arrival, and that you are now the mistress of 55 Ellesmere Drive, in Sanderstead, County of Surrey. My very sincere congratulations on all that you have done, leading up to this historic (for us) occupation. You really have achieved something; you are such a refreshing contrast in action to the wibbly-wobbly faint-hearts who wave to opportunity as it passes. Do not trouble to deny your capacity. Do not claim to be the Greatest Wibbly Wobbler of them all. Your protestations of what you call ‘female weakness’ laugh at you. My darling wife, how proud I am of you!
I got Bert to address the envelope with my ‘note of welcome’, because I had to get him to post it to be sure of arriving in time, and I fancied that my writing on an envelope which had been posted in England would wantonly cause you to think I was there.
I enjoyed your ‘no stove, no current, no fuel’ and ‘then they started to turn up’. I hope the coal turned up OK, and that you haven’t used up the whole three months’ ration (say) in three days. I am glad you met a wonder-workman (I bet he got at least five shillings!), a good man. The electrician seems to have also been helpful. What a thing it is to be an attractive young woman!
I love you.
Chris
Their first home: 55 Ellesmere Drive
15 February 1946
Dearest One,
Today I broke into your three pounds and paid £1 4s. 6d. each for two carpets (brown and mainly red, I thought OK for your pink bedroom idea). I shall await your comments before buying anything further in the carpet line. For £7 10s. I could have purchased a set of three (1 large, 2 small) carpets, pink, of very good quality. This morning (as a result of scrounging in the drawers at the Sergeants’ Mess last night) I sent you an electric light switch, bedside pattern. Hope you can utilise it, thought they might be unobtainable in UK.
I shouldn’t worry too much about the knitting. I believe one of these South African firms specialises in the provision of all required for a brand new baby. Much can be got out there that isn’t easily got in UK.
I love you.
Chris
20 February 1946
My Darling Wife,
I was pleased to read you had someone coming to lay the lino (was it any good?), as I had imagined you wrestling, cobra-like, with it and having a job with it. A pity about the wireless connection, I hope you can get the rooms swopped, or some other arrangement, without too much trouble. It is certainly awkward as it is. Also, I don’t like knitting etc. in bed too much as it is usually easy to catch a cold that way.
I am very pleased you received the full 12 tins of tomatoes. I hope to send you more as I get money. I should think you could eat three tins a week very easily. I wonder why the kitchen tiling has to come down, hope you can get it done soon.
Thank you for what you say about never thinking me vulgar. I want you so much (and also I want so much of you, if you understand that) at times, there are so many things I want to do.
I am very pleased you mentioned your bias against Make Do And Mend Lectures. I’ll do what I can to avoid over-painting that particular picture, though now you must keep a careful watch that I don’t suggest that leisured ease and unending comfort are your lot!
I read that 70–80,000 of the 300,000 wanting telephones are in the London Area. Although still a luxury, I certainly think it would be potentially very useful to you and that is why I suggested you try to get one. How about writing to SE Area Manager (if it is SE) and quoting your condition as a reason for priority?
I love you.
Chris
2 March 1946
My Dearest,
Today I have acquired a pail (enamel), but have not had a lot of time to attend to it. I have only been able to clean it up a little, but have packed it pretty well and it should arrive OK. It is not cracked (at present) and I think you will approve its addition to your ‘cleaning materials’, when you get it. I have also sent you one 3 lb tin of marmalade (Palestine, but described on the outside as Italian) and one kilo of peas (they appear very small; cost 2s. 3d.). I have also sent your Dad about 300 cigarettes which I hope (very much!) he gets safely.
I am glad the carpet arrived at last, and that you think it jolly good. What I would like you to tell me is could you get one like it in England, and if so, how much?
I note you have done a lot of paint washing, stair washing, etc. I cannot say you are doing too much, but I rely on your good sense not to be scared of allowing even yourself to think ‘I ought to do more, but I won’t’.
A good idea to chop the bedspread up. You are a genius! Can I send a bedspread from here? Really, I am dying to do so, but I want instructions re colour and quality. There are grand ones available at a little more than a £1, but specially fine ones at around £2.
I deplore the sliding episode on the Italian rug. I can assure you that unless I feel safe when I tread around at 55, polishing will cease forthwith.
I hope you find a dentist alright. Most desirable that you get these jobs done while you are feeling fairly normal, isn’t it?
I do not want you to write more than you have done of things of the flesh. Generally I too have avoided thinking along those lines. It has not been so difficult as before – I don’t know why –but occasionally I get my fits of wanting YOU, the whole of YOU, the everything of YOU, and your letter must have arrived at the same time as one of my fits. Please don’t use any words that don’t come from your heart. Please carry on as you have so well done up to the present. It will only make it worse if you feel you have to write like that. We so much, so fully, understand what we are missing in mutual support. For me, it is completely, revealingly, warmingly, devastatingly lovely and wonderful to be loved by you. I know you feel all that I feel about YOU. I cannot really say I long to do anything. I just want to be with you. And if I cannot, then I am happy only when I am writing to you and reading your lovely writing, or when I am posting parcels which will feed you or please you.
I hope the crawfish suits you. The salmon was 2s. 8d., a tin, and I should like you to tell me if it was any good, when you open a tin. Glad you are laying in stores for a siege.
My darling, I love you.
Chris
* A gas water boiler.
* Their new home at 55 Ellesmere Drive, Sanderstead, near Croydon in south London.
12
In My Arms
3 March 1946
Dear Bessie,
Today has been very bad. It has rained heavily and the wind has blown violently. It stopped for a little while as we were leaving Naples, and it was lovely to see daffodils on sale from stalls, and, as we came along the Autostrada, the white and pink of the almond blossoms, a grand sight. When we came back (there was no air mail) we had orders to move down into the last billet remaining to the unit, and so we had to bring everything on board the truck in a hurry and come here.
And NOW, another chap and I have our beds in a passage 14 feet long by 3 feet wide. (As I write I have my back to one wall and my feet on the opposite one.) You can imagine how it is perhaps. I dunno. You are a civilian, after all, and the ways of the Army are (thank goodness) hardly civilised. When we got here, no one had any plans for us. In the Sergeants’ and Officers’ quarters there are many spare rooms. Here, in this position of a Fascist millionaire’s villa, there is nothing but this passage. When we first set eyes on it, it was filled with about two hundred half-pint beer bottles. I cleared those out, moved a lot of old bric-a-brac, and then discovered that a dog had used the place as a lavatory.
And now our anxiety is whether we are on guard tonight. The RSM was going to tell us dinner time, but they have the usual civvy-dressed ATS* girls as guest
s of sergeants, etc., and he hasn’t shown up; ‘Blow the men’ is the almost invariable motto of our superiors. The other night, a Capt. Lockett here brought a woman into the billet at 11 o’clock and she hadn’t gone by 7 a.m., when the guard went away. It is all done so brazenly. How can chaps like that (and there are many amongst the Other Ranks as well) want to get home? I was amused by one of our cooks (he looks a harmless paternal type). He used to have a woman sleep with him nightly at the old billet. Last night she slept with him here. He said: ‘If the Colonel can have his wife here, I can have mine’! If a man got caught, he would get about 3–6 months.
I am afraid this is not a very personal letter. But I am very disturbed and upside-down and balancing on the edge of a ha’penny. When I get somewhere settled, I hope I shall be able to write better.
I love you.
Chris
The weather may change, my billets may change, but there never is or will be anything variable about my affection for you. You are everything to me, everything, and I can never have enough of you. I don’t know how ever I should have felt had you not found yourself willing to accept me.
6 March 1946
My Dear Bessie,
The hours of work here [at the Army Post Office, redirecting letters] are very easy, 8.30–12.15 one day, and 2–4.45 the next. We look after the mail of our own unit, but also help with that for other units who have not got representatives. It is quite a rest cure; there is a break for tea in both morning and afternoon. The food is much less and far inferior to the type I have been getting. But I shall not starve, and that is the main thing.
I have been thinking: what do you think your chances are of convincing your doctor that I am necessary to your health within a short time? If you could plead successfully, I feel that I might get a compassionate posting to UK; and I’d like you to consider whether you could act the distraught wife before the doctor. Your age, the war, the Greek business, might help the case. If it came off, I should have no bad conscience. Hundreds are getting out with far less reason. And having done three years abroad, I do not feel I am shirking anything.
Yes, we will have wallpaper one day. It can be bought out here, too. I’ll try to enquire prices.
I love you.
Chris
9 March 1946
My Darling Bessie,
I feel like a weary traveller who plods on knowing that if he stops for a rest he will find it hard to get going again. That is a strange thing to feel, I know. But I am so fed up with this writing business, it is such a hopeless method of expressing anything at all. I think I am beginning to understand something of the mentality of people who write once a month. I am really very cynical, disgusted and bitter about what is happening to the Army in this demobilisation racket. I have the most immoderate and passion-full thoughts, and writing to you regularly at least keeps me on the rails and forces my expressions into civilised jargon.
I am ‘down’, very far down about this. I despise those running this demob affair, I despise myself because I am cowed by the circumstances. I hate the people around me, so much of an Army pattern. I hate horrible lavatories which smell and get blocked up and no one cares. I hate being in a room with five other men, none of whom want the window open at night. I hate myself for being ‘touchy’, being susceptible. For me, my darling, I am afraid, these are not ‘struggling days’, I have ceased struggling. I have succumbed. There is no need to refer to this in reply. I shall have been pushed by the pendulum, before your letter arrives, into an easy acceptance of another five months in the Army, another five months without you.
I am sorry about the peaches. What did they look like? Mildew or black, or what?
Was very interested to read about the trouble you are now having in doing your corset belt up. If only I was with you to help, to watch and take an interested hand in things.
I have written this in about half-a-dozen places and in a dozen pieces. Sorry, but will try to do better tomorrow. Forgive my anti-Army observations. I feel better now! Already!
I love you.
Chris
10 March 1946
My Darling Bessie,
Glad you enjoyed Brief Encounter. I expect the tear-shedding was good for you. It’s all this bottling-up which is half of everyone’s troubles nowadays.
Regarding curtaining, I want you to do a little thinking and let me have a list of the things still required, as I suggested in my miserable letter yesterday.
Re. decorating, I expect it will be years before we can have wallpaper for all rooms. The Paper Control is still strict. Shall I do the cream-distempering the first or the second week of my leave?
If nightgowns, or anything, were surplus to your needs, I would not mind you selling them, you know. No need to get cluttered up with things you don’t want. But I feel that you will be leaving our warm bed more than once, to do a bit of child-pacifying, and that you’ll need two nightgowns.
Your mention of ‘thickening up, losing my waist, beginning to bulge’, about which I commented earlier, made me wish, so much, that I could be with you, to eye you, to estimate with you, to consider how things are going with you. Perhaps to suggest that you walk a slower walk, and do not run for buses.
I appreciate that you have to go out to post letters. Is it very far? It’s a good idea to keep in as much as possible. You must have done a lot of knitting to produce a cardigan.
I love you.
Chris
17 March 1946
Dearest One,
I am really delighted that the folding stool arrived OK, and not a little surprised. Painted a pastel shade, it will be an asset. I was glad to get the news that the lemons and the sardines had also arrived.
I am sure that there will not be any war for years yet. One very good reason why there will not be ‘war with Russia any moment’ is that USA has the atomic bomb and would use it quickly if Russia attacked her or us, and it is unlikely that Russia’s researches have yet borne fruit, atomically speaking. Even were the Powers of equal strength (and wars only occur when the two sides are about equal yet feel they have an advantage over the other), I do not see there is anything to fight for yet. Russia will do nothing, militarily, to stop our wicked Capitalist machinations, and we are in no state to stop USSR’s unique methods of colonisation.
Please, I am not horribly tired of packing things. Thank the Lord I can do something to help you, something to show I always have you in my thoughts. And when I send you camp beds, electric fittings, folding chairs, I am no less than a Dicky Bird gathering twigs for the nest. A good feeling, my darling Mrs D.B.
I love you.
Chris
19 March 1946
My Darling,
On Sunday, Doug Taylor [old friend from Post Office days] and I went to the Museo-Aquario, not greatly different in appearance from most other aquariums that I have been to, glass panels and the twirling, circling occupants, unconscious of your interest. We went to the octopus exhibit and there was none to be seen. ‘Aspet!’ (‘Wait’) called the keeper, and goes behind the scenes and prods the water to chase out the poor octopus. Then we came to the anenome (if that is how it’s spelt), which were floating gaily around. ‘Aspet!’, and back behind he goes again, to prod away and give us a remarkable exhibition of the anenome withdrawing into its tube or shell, away from the danger it discerns. The prodder was disgusted with his one cigarette reward, but that was all we gave him.
I have just been out, and accidentally met a chap called Scott (late 30 Wing) whom I imagined to be up in Udine, Northern Italy. He explains that he has been sent to Naples on leave (although not officially as this is not a leave area) to be with his fiancée, an Italian girl of 18, whom he first met 7 weeks ago. He has set in motion the machinery to marry her. You will get the complete picture of him when I conclude with the information that his young lady in Scotland (to whom he is engaged) expects him home in a fortnight.
I love you.
Chris
26 March 1946
I have been thinking very seriously whether I should tell you the next bit of news. But I have had to come to the decision that you must be told. But, before you read on, I do want you to keep a very tight hold on yourself, particularly on your optimistic faculty.
Well, Deb wrote me yesterday, and enclosed a leaflet issued by the Mets Branch. It says that the PO have now agreed ‘to … ask for the release of a considerable number of men from the Forces under Class B’. I should not be surprised if the Ministry of Labour agreed to the PO request. I don’t know what procedure is adopted, but if this, if that, and if the other, you can see what might happen. I was thrilled and hopeful yesterday, and I can’t say I have quite sagged back yet. For one thing, it is a step forward for the PO to ask for Counter Clerks, and indicates that there is the chance, there is a straw to clutch. But, my darling, I don’t want you to get clutching it too hard. Nothing may happen for a month – and then – who knows? Or nothing may happen for six months!
I am sorry about your ‘bee-on-a-date’ state, I’m sure you are facing up well to the combined efforts of Janet – C. and the separation from me. I wish to goodness I could tend your toenails! I’m afraid I should kiss your toes whenever I got the chance, for I too want so much to be with you.
Darling Bessie, I hope the weather will keep on improving, and this period of separation will be made less unbearable for you. Know always that you are in my mind, that you are everything to me.
I love you.
Chris
27 March 1946
My Darling,
I don’t think we need too much to fear the extent to which Janet – C. will modify our actions, and in any case there is no chance at all that our child will come between us. At the moment Janet – C. is waiting off-stage; I don’t know what I shall think when he/she makes her bow, but I feel like telling any infant of ours that neither of us are going to be martyrs to anything. I am very sure, my darling, that our feelings for each other will continue as now, we shall love each other more and more and more – but I am sure we shall be lovers first, not just now, but always.