My Dear Bessie (31 page)

Perhaps the circumstances are excusable, but when I shall recover from this business I don't know, makes me get rather fed up with myself. I must phone your home tomorrow, for they will wonder what has happened to me. I don't like to admit to not feeling up to scratch, but guess I shall have to before long. Thank you, very very much, for the ‘Victoria League' parcel, it sounds a spot of the right stuff. I shouldn't say anything about it to your Mum unless she should ask, I think it best.

My goodness, I am glad you abandoned the idea of not writing for a week because of our misunderstanding. I should
have been in a fine state, makes me quiver to think of it, think of my poor old digestion.

I do wish I could be a bit more like you, you remember detail and always somehow comment on the right things. It makes me feel hopeless, you know. You satisfy me so much that I don't feel you get it back from me in full measure.

I won't breathe a word about Sanderstead, just keep my fingers crossed and hope.

To come back to the Labour Government. I do think they should make a good job of it, I do think they have more brains to work with than the Tories. When you compare the two, Labour show up rather well, don't you think?

I wonder how our leave is getting on. I do think your commanding officer is a bit thick, surely you should be entitled to some compensation for being POW. It wasn't exactly a picnic.

Goodnight Darling. I Love You.

Bessie

2 August 1945 [Second letter]

My Dear One,

Please do mention marriage to my Mum just as much as you want. I have already (some time ago) told her I shall be marrying
you a few days after my next return home, and although she did not reply, I know this was because I had already conveyed this state to her previously. I wish I could write you quite frankly on this point; but I do want you to avoid giving Mum any kind of impression that she will be left alone because of the married lives of her several children.

Had a busy day today. Up early and spent the whole morning on the range, firing the rifle. I believe the total possible, in about 25 rounds, all different styles of shooting, was 100. The top man got 66, the bottom 12. I was next to bottom with 22.

You need not feel anxious about how the Labour Party will manage, I think. They certainly cannot do worse than the Conservatives, as you say. But I am sure they will do very much better. Most of the Labour members are experienced in the school of life and socially competent to deal with its problems. I think the Tories are in for a shock in about three years, when our initial conservative reforms give way to more sweeping ones. The only thing that can confuse us is the little jealousies of the Big Men, and I rather think that Attlee's ordinariness is a guarantee that some of them will be held in check.

There is some scheme of a week's leave; I believe it starts after this month's leave has been had by all the lads. That's where I come in. But it may be much later than this other. And I want to get to you now, as soon as possible. But I should be home by August 1946 (3 yrs 6 mth) on my Python,
*
as it is called. You say the
Express
is prophesying the end of the Japan war by the Autumn. They are,
as you suppose, notoriously unreliable. According to them, King Edward VIII would not abdicate; there would have been ‘no war this year or next year either' in 1939; and the Conservatives are in power in Parliament now.

Regarding letters, we'll leave it as it is. I am not reluctant to reduce your one source of contact with me. And certainly I don't want you to ‘hate it, hate it' through any action of mine. But, I really would like you to write me rather less, because I believe you are doing too much. All your many letters only increase your ‘tenseness', as well as more practically take up your time. I want you to take me in your stride. Every other day, at the most, twice a week at the least. Five times a fortnight is what you want to aim at. I think you will find the tension relieved a little by this. And – and shall I suppress conveying my physical thoughts? It doesn't do me good, really, I think. The thought of you stirs and pulls me too much for my physical quietness. Half my time I spend physically raging for you. The other half I spend between the blankets.

I think you are very brave about your teeth. I should say you'd got roughly ten times the guts that I have.

I want to be just what ‘kind of a man' you want. I want to be everything to you, now and always. I didn't want to laugh at your ‘I want to get married'. I wanted to put ‘Me, too' by its side.

You are beautiful.

I love you.

Chris

3 August 1945

My Darling,

You say you haven't thought seriously about leave or marriage because the fear of disappointment is too horrible to think about. Don't, then, worry about any such thing as disappointment. I know that I shall marry you. Can't you just make that break, and know, too?

You say that marriage to me is your one ambition. That is my position too. It is my one wish above anything else, it is my one desire. I want to bring you relief and myself be relieved. I want to come to you and love you, come into you and stop with you, warm you and keep you warm. I want to be everything to you. I want you always to have the same high, undeserved opinion of me as you have now. I want the increased communion of our minds, the greater understanding of each other. And I want for myself the dear flesh of you, I want the wonder of your body, the magic of your breasts, the happiness of being with you, near you. If you do not hear the plain deep cry, my vitals to yours, it is not because I do not thump and bump and shake and tremble at the sheer beauty you are to me, the wondrous loveliness of your body, the delight of your hands.

It has just come over me – the thought of us being married, together, naked, alone. How I want to traverse your flesh everywhere with my lips. How I want to place my hands, my lips, my everything, to the vital vibrant spot. To be lost completely in you, to be entirely, absolutely a part of you. I hope you are right about your ability to learn to obey, because I have probably the
makings of a real Victorian in me, as I believe you once discerned. I shall be doing a lot of ordering about unless I use my brains. Query: will I, and can you take it?

Don't ‘hold out on me'. Let me have you, every bit of you that I can.

You are wonderful. I love you.

Chris

6 August 1945

Dearest,

This is a very brief note, as I am about to start for Rome. We stop in Bari for the night and then have a day on the train.

As I finished yesterday's letter, I discovered that Bert had come back to camp. He left here this morning on his first stage homewards. By the time you get this, he may be home, as he is almost certainly being flown. But do not tell Mum, she is nervous. Although on guard it was good to be able to see him go, smiling, homewards.

Sorry your digestion is still troublesome.

More as soon as possible.

I love you.

Chris

8 August 1945

My dear Bessie,

This is a brief and formal note to let you know that I am now in Rome. We arrived at 8.30, and are not free to leave until about 3 o'clock, by which time the CO will have given us a lecture, telling us how many VD cases, and so on. I have spent the last hour having a shower and handing in my dirty clothes. Last night, I made myself comfortable on the floor of the train compartment with another chap, while two chaps had the seats, and two the racks, both seats and racks consisting only of their wooden slats and not comfortable. I am rather tired from the journey, and my old bones ache a bit, rather naturally. Brigadiers do not travel this way. The Rest Camp is 7 miles from Rome, through which I have only just travelled by truck at the moment. It is a former hospital, a very large one.

There is a large Italian staff, and the girls are (rather expectedly) ‘fresh'. Some of the chaps sickened me by calling out to many of them. The journey through the hills was laborious and punctuated by many stops, where poor little Italian children, bare-footed and clothed only in the merest of threads, happily caught the bully and bread with which we were abundantly supplied. Usually prostitutes work the trains, are hauled aboard at one station and set off many miles down the line. I don't know if it happened this time. The scenery is really wonderful. I hope we can see it ourselves, together, one day.

Let me end by saying I love you and that whatever I may see this week, it will be less valuable because I see it by myself.

I love you.

Chris

9 August 1945

My Darling,

It is already clear to me that all my efforts at description will fail to convey to you anything but a tenth of what the parts of Rome I see are like. The buildings are tremendous, and many. The statues are magnificent and everywhere. The shops are full of good (manufactured) things of life, and they range from the car to the cosmetic. I saw a pair of shoes at £22 10s.

The people are not so different as I had been led to expect. They are more friendly than in Bari, but this may be because they know more English. The clothes of the Romans, particularly the women, are quite easily superior in fashion and variety to those in London. I cannot say about quality – most of the material used by the young is what is naughtily described as diaphanous. The beauty of the Roman girls is a bye-word throughout Italy. Many of them are indeed splendid sights. They freely use beauty-aids, do not wear stockings, but colour their toes, easily seen through the fact that most wear sandals. I should think there are many prostitutes here; as we came out of the theatre last night, there were many beauties walking singly. Two people invited us to a ‘Clean
Bedroom – Respectable' – but I rather feel that maybe their idea of respectability is based on Tiberius or some such humanitarian. Two women we saw ‘giving the eye' rather disgusted us – one of them was soon to be a mother. Seeing these places under wartime conditions is a disadvantage.