My Dear Bessie (10 page)

16 June 1944

Dear Bessie,

I am now starting my account of the visit to Alexandria.

In Alex. you can get what you want if you like to pay for it. Two chaps in our party had nights out which cost them £3 apiece
each time. They assured me it was well worth it. Almost anywhere you go, little boys, old men, or the women themselves will say ‘Want a woman?' ‘Want a —?' ‘Hello dearie.' I must say that I shudder somewhat at the thought. A boy about 6 in one street invites you to buy a preventative, with as much loud enthusiasm and as little discretion as the chap who sells newspapers at Oxford Circus.
Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Well of Loneliness
and other items are on sale everywhere, but although they are advertised as unexpurgated, judging by the disappointment of a chap in the train who had bought one, they are pretty much like tracts.

Street entertainers are more numerous and original than our own, there are never any singers or bands only. Monkeys and dogs jump through hoops at their masters' behest. One man has a couple of long batons, which burn at the end. He pretends to swallow them, but only puts them in his mouth, where they go out. A ‘good' one is, he swallows paraffin (I mean puts it in his mouth), then expels it into the air, putting a match to it. Done quickly, it seems that he is breathing fire … Then he lays back on a great nail-studded board, while his mates dance on him, after which dancing barefoot on a bag of glass is child's play. All this to the accompaniment of drum-banging and other noises.

One of my nicest afternoons was watching cricket, on matting-wicket surrounded by a fair amount of pleasant looking grass. We had tea as we watched. I had a macaroon.

On the last night I was able to leave the barracks, and spend an hour with ‘Mohamed Hassan Ali' at one of the Clubs. He gave an ‘Hour of Magic', and picked on me to be his stooge. For half-an-hour, at first rather embarrassed, I was his assistant, up on
the stage. I threw dice, burned £1 notes, tore up playing cards, tied knots in rope, tried to extricate hoops, picked eggs from my pockets. The queerest thing of the lot was when he said to me, ‘Say, come out McTavish' and told me to put my hand down my shirt. From my sweaty breasts came a dear little chick. He told me three more names, and I extricated three more. A bit of hard luck for the chicks, but Egyptians are very cruel to animals, and not much less vicious to their fellows.

With you as my companion, anything would be wonderful. This would have been wonderful too.

Love,

Chris

Chris in Alexandria, 1944

3

Into the Blouse

17 June 1944

My lovely Bessie,

What do you think about us starting to number our letters? It is a good check-up, a missing number is easily spotted. I shall not commence it unless you wish it. I don't want you to think this is pedantry, but I think we will find it useful. Don't say ‘Yes' if you think it is just a silly idea of mine. We number our letters home. Have reached No. 56 this year so far.

I am sorry that the actual start of the Second Front should be such a real stab for your consciousness, and then again, I am not. I want you to be aware of the terrible things that are happening, yet I want to shelter you from their consequences or prevent you looking too closely. Look at my Mother's jumbled-up homeliness: ‘… your usual two letters haven't arrived this week. I suppose this invasion is causing the delay, the day before and all night there seems planes about, woke your Dad up, they are going over in hundreds today as well. I hope you were able to get some good
shows in and pictures, I shall not go this week, don't seem right somehow not knowing that poor old Charlie may be lying dead somewhere, it is a worry …' (and later she again mentions Charlie (my brother-in-law, a sailor), and her thankfulness that we are not involved).

This war, at close quarters, is very bad, but the historians will record it as just another war. Perspective is invaluable. Seek it, be thankful you are not making all the sacrifices, and do all you can for those who are.

I love you.

Chris

29 June 1944

Dear Bessie,

I thank you for the ‘Yes, yes, yes' acceptance, the honour that you have done me, and the confidence you have reposed in me. I promise to do all that I can, at all times, to forward our union, to work for your happiness and to care for your interests. I shall try hard not to be wilful, unheedful, thoughtless, I shall try to be considerate, kind and helpful, and where I fail I shall ask and expect your forgiveness. I think we can be very happy, and I hope we shall always try.

I hope the flying bombs have been a good way from you. My mother is usually very good, but she doesn't write very happily at present. I think it is the ‘uncanny' part of the thing which is worrying her although that is actually its weak point. All we can hope is that their range is very limited and that progress in France will steal their launching bases.

Don't ever think this feeling between us is ordinary. Always regard it as something big, real, living.

I love you.

Chris

2 July 1944

Dear Bessie,

I am hoping to get at least one letter card from you tomorrow, but will say a few words now. Actually, there is a lot I have to tell you. First there is the autobarkergraphical tale to be told in outline, and then I wanted to tell you about events since I left England in some detail.

My Dad really grew up without any idea of home life. Until he met my Mother he hadn't any sympathy or kindness shown him. His father was a drunken wretch, his mother died at his birth, having had (it is said) nineteen previous children. He spent some
of his time in the workhouse, ran away a number of times, had a really hard life which ‘made a man of him', but also prevented him acquiring some of the gentler habits which ‘Home' does induce.

When I think of ‘us', I look forward to our Home atmosphere, which doesn't depend on the material things or whether one has Hot and Cold in the bathroom. It depends upon our love, flowing between us, uniting us.

3 July 1944. A smack in the eye for me today, nothing from you. I am wondering about these pilotless planes. I hope you go in the shelter, and do not try and be ‘brave' by going to bed.

4 July 1944. No mail today. I do hope you are OK. I know you must be seriously disturbed at least. It doesn't matter about me getting letters, but it does matter about your safety. I trust you will remain safe.

I have never seen a break of seven days between your letters before, although I am beginning to know the terror of these new bombs and the greater job you must have in finding conditions enabling you to write.

I am very sorry for you, I am very proud of you. If bombs constitute your life nowadays, well give me bombs in your LCs as you give them in your conversation to Iris Page. And then, don't start worrying about my ‘morale', don't keep on writing because you think I must have letters. Write my name etc on the outside of the LC, and tell me you love me, inside, and I shall find that eminently satisfactory. Send me a scratch telling me you are safe, don't trouble yourself with sounding the aitches.
*

I do not regard you as lazy, and that is what counts. If you are lazy, I shall shake you up as far as I can. (My brother's wife left London a week before war was declared. Bert and I went to his second floor flat to clear up for him, and close the place down. An ordinary sized bath had been left by her, half full with all the (used) crockery they had – weeks of undone ‘washing-up'. I took (I don't remember exactly) over 20 milk bottles down to the front doorstep.) I could not countenance the skimping of household tasks, and I don't suppose even you would try to frighten me with assertions that you'll never do them.

I love you.

Chris

9 July 1944

Dear Bessie,

There are more fleas about here than previously, probably because the weather is a little hotter, but by no means as bad as it was this time last year. We have a pinky sort of powder which really smells nasty, and is not liked by fleas, etc. I had been losing a good bit of sleep through these aggravating midgets, three and four a night deciding to bore into me, so that I determined to really shake them. I smothered my three blankets with the powder and put
a lot inside the sleeping sheet. I had been in bed for about ten minutes when I started burning like anything in my tender parts. Phew! I had to get out of bed and start rubbing furiously with soap and water. I finally got the burning to stop, and tied a clean handkerchief round that part.

I do not think I will say a lot in reply to your comments; I had better say that now the body acts during sleep, and that I have no wish to consciously assist. I am appreciative of your soothing words and your calm assessments. I do not know whether you do fully understand what a massive weight this particular ignorance has been, but you appear to do so. Sometimes I feel I must burst. I want very badly to burst into you. Perhaps it is a pity that I am not meek and mild in my feelings, because as it is I feel I want to crush you and press myself into you until we are both breathless. ‘Breathless' – am I not already breathless at the thought of your beauty, that awaits me, that you have told me is mine. The wonder of you, the miracle of this our understanding, is a really breathtaking affair.

Pleased you liked the Alex. stuff. I did not intend you to think that most of the chaps on leave or stationed there got their fun in not-so-pleasant ways. The great majority are good chaps. Understand that I am a humbug, but I shall try hard not to humbug you, I shall try to present myself to you as I am because I do not need to pretend to have the brain of an Einstein or the body of a Fred Astaire, to capture you. Here I am, be-spectacled, bald headed, often bemused – and Hey Presto! there are you, nevertheless all for me. It gives me a grand feeling. I think you will understand that my physical thoughts about you are not very
restrained, that they are rather violent and terrific. I like to think you do not mind.

I love you.

Chris