My Dear Bessie (14 page)

26 September 1944

My Dearest, Dearest One,

I am pleased that
Bartlett's Quotations
arrived. Was it badly knocked about? You do not seem to be as delighted with it as I imagined. Have you seen the Index at the back, you can put your finger on anything with its aid. It had a lot of Shaw, so you should be able to remind yourself of much. Have you looked up Kipling? Read A.P. Herbert ‘When love is dead'. There is hours of sampling to be done, if you will. I don't expect to use quotations with you in those far-off happy days when we shall be TOGETHER. I shall be original if at all possible.

I have just bought one of the long handled straw brooms to use in these parts (60 lire). Had to get a receipt and took the Interpreter along. The lady who sold the broom could not write, but her 13 year old daughter could, and signed her name: Maschia Maria Bruno. Excuse my occasional failure to start the letter off properly. Oh for a place where I can write you fully and privately.

You ask me about the chaps who have been abroad, whether they are depressed as much as a newspaper article says. My comments on this if in full would require to be censored. I have no desire to talk of ‘blooming old newspapers' as though they were benevolent Uncles. Apart from
Reynolds
and a rare exception elsewhere, they are owned by people who would chain my body and cloud my mind for ever. The regulations do not permit denunciations, so how can I say much? ‘I want to go home'
is everyone's chorus out here, although the reasons are not always the same. YOU are my main one.

I love you.

Chris

*
The ‘letter cards' were folded in a particular way so as to contain both a public area visible to all and a private internal space. Chris and Bessie's intimate exchanges were necessarily contained within the latter.

*
A khamsin is a hot, dry, sandy wind.

4

Nuts

28 September 1944

Dearest,

In the last six months (and it is not much more than that since we turned to each other in gladness and relief, for comfort and security), we have seen much of what is in the other's mind. I see you more clearly. I love you more dearly. From having a hazy idea, I have a clearer outline. I have learnt to respect you, I think a little more, because, although there are things to be straightened, there is so much evidence of our mental suitability, and that, whether it is my mind or not that is the clearer, we are nearer each other than we thought. I do not want to think of you as a fool, and I have had no reason to do so during this period. My every glance at your letters tells me of your intelligence. I want you to believe that. I want you to know that I think it. I want to tell you that I am proud of you.

You know that, before I left the desert, I had to destroy most of your letters. I kept a very few, I felt that I must because you
had said so much to me in them. I kept your surface mail of the 1st January – ‘I plonked up the blackout, slightly lopsidedly and with hat over one ear' – ‘I am wallowing … in the past, and having a wonderful time'. You asked me what I had that ‘other blokes hadn't got'. I knew I had nothing, but I knew that you had always thought I had. I can't understand why my reply took 12 days to write, but it did. Yet I really think that 7th February, the day I got your letter, was the day I started wanting you, since when I have grown to want you much more. Remember a letter where you said you were alive between the legs, that you were damp, that I had made you so? I kept that. Because I glory in your dampness, because you make me damp. Because I am interested in your body and between your legs. Remember writing of ‘all guards down', of being attuned to me, of sharing my upsets, of your lower regions aching with desire for me? I kept that.

I stare at your photographs: I don't know how I got on without them. But the day will come, the years will go by, and I shall be at your side, to do your will.

I love you.

Chris.

1 October 1944

My Dearest Elizabeth,

It has been raining hard for nearly twenty-four hours, and things are pretty damp around here. This does not affect me very much at present (my main concern is the dampness of the latrine seat!) as we are in a big house and the rain does not get in, but of course most of us react to weather very quickly, and it is miserable to have leaden skies where once was blue, and to see everyone wet and miserable and bedraggled. I didn't have any mail yesterday from you (though three from home with the good old newsy items about my brother's romance, the wireless breaking down, and so on) and none came for anyone today, so my one hope of cheering up through the general depression has gone. I am having a very easy time just lately and doing some tidying-up and writing around. This afternoon – goodness me Sunday afternoon, but it is no different from others – I have been reading extracts from Dickens in a book
The Younger Characters of Dickens
and it is good to be reminded of Oliver Twist, Squeers and Mrs Squeers, Old Fagin and the rest. The chap who remains in the office with me asked what I was reading. I told him, and he said ‘Piffle – I like a good cowboy yarn.' I need hardly say that his views on other subjects are those of an obedient stooge of the kind produced by reading the
Mail
and the
Sketch
, and that unwittingly he does just what they want him to do. His history is bad, his geography is worse.

I hope you are liking better
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
, for, honestly, I think it is a magnificent collection. My own little
book in which I enter noteworthy things, I have called ‘Barker's Unfamiliar Quotations'. I have entered the one of Goethe's (how do you pronounce his name?), ‘All your ideals –' which you sent me.

We shall not have an easy time immediately I return, because restraint will be necessary. I am hoping you will be able to do something in the way of house-finding before I return, but I know it is difficult. I also hope that when the flying bombs are finally settled you will feel like looking for little things of use in the home. You'll need potato peelers, egg whisks, all sorts of things which if you can get beforehand will save us a lot of trouble and delay. When we first meet perhaps I shall be a little rough, but with your help I cannot fail to improve. I will be what you want me to be. I want your beauty for myself – I want you, I want you, I want you.

I love you.

Chris

2 October 1944

My dear Bessie,

We have so much in common, so much need of each other, so much to say, so much to do, yet all these things are nothing to anyone but us, and we must wait our turn in the long queue of
human beings waiting their chance of happiness. There has been a recent order showing that the War Office is not unappreciative of an angle on the subject. Men who have been separated from their wives for three years may apply for compassionate leave if their wives are over 35 and, being childless, are desirous of having a child. This would suit us fine. The only barriers are (1) we are not married, (2) we have not been separated three years, (3) you are not over 35.

I have been hearing more of the customs of these folk in this village, and it is probably the same all over this part. There is no ‘courting' before marriage. The young man writes his prospective wife's parents. They consent to him coming to tea. They are never left alone, and the first time he holds her hand is when they are man and wife. Some marriages may be arranged in Heaven, but none are around these parts! None of the girls dare be seen talking to men (let alone soldiers), lest they be the subject of gossip. Our chaps are not very happy about feminine availability, although some have had happy moments, though a little expensive.

I met a chap here, eighteen months younger than me, who went to the same school. We had a good talk about teachers and remembered pupils. I have also had a talk with a chap who lives in Leeds. Married a couple of years before the war, one child, been away from England two years. His wife gave birth to a child (by a married man with two children) in June. She asked for his forgiveness, but not unexpectedly, it has not been forthcoming. I have heard many similar cases, or variations on the same theme. It is nice to think we live in a world of constancy and adherence to vows, but we certainly don't. I rather except from this the quarrels
of engaged people, and so on, because they have not achieved moral and legal responsibilities to the extent of the married. Some of our chaps moan about the Yanks at home, but there is plenty of evidence that many Englishmen do not act honourably.

I hope to goodness that I shan't go to the SE Asia Command after this European side is over.
*
Anyone who goes there from here will be very unhappy, although India is only 4 years now, which means I only have another 2 years and 4 months to do to qualify. Does 2 years and 4 months sound very long to you, my darling? Somehow, there are times when it seems not bad, and others when it is too long to contemplate. 850 days! Sometimes it seems only yesterday I wrote my first letter to you. Sometimes it seems that I have been writing you and wanting you all my life.

I love you.

Chris

3 October 1944

I usually smile a bit when I write ‘private and family matters' on the back of this Letter Card, when addressed to you. All that I say
is so very private! And I so wish we were in the same family, and your name the same as mine.

When you ask, in No. 34, received today, for ‘ladles of applause' for your voluntary banishment of my Lady Nicotine, you do not ask in vain. Of course, I am impressed with the stand you are making, of course I admire the way you are denying yourself the queer satisfaction of the leaf, and of course I know that quite directly you feel you are doing it for me, and I, your servant, am pleased with you, proud of you, glad about you. If your appetite for food has improved since you kept in check your appetite for tobacco, I am pleased. I think that food, in the long run, does you more good.

With some of the things you say, I can almost hear you breathing, warm and close by my side. The occasion when you touched me (actually you ‘grabbed' my arm) was during a Week End School held, I believe, Sept 1937. (It was the first we ever held, it was my idea to hold it, and I did most of the work behind the scenes, as I usually have done, although I have also been a possessor of the stage on most occasions.) We got there Saturday afternoon, a lecture I believe, and then all went for a ramble in the evening, some to a nearby pub. Somehow we became detached from the dozen or so other ramblers. It was a lovely evening (I mentioned in an earlier letter how the sun was glinting through the trees). Then you said ‘May I hold your arm?' and held it for just that space of time I required to shake it off. I believe I quickened my step and rejoined the rest. I remember it well; a kind of significantly well, if you understand me. I wonder if you do? I have not suddenly remembered it because I want you now, I have remembered it through the years, throughout my little
adventures. Probably because I made a mistake, because I should have let you hold my arm, because I should have gone on from there, with you. We might have done so much, we might even have done a little on that sun-glinting evening. But we haven't, we didn't, and here we are without more than hopes and expectations (they're great alright), with no real accomplishment.