My Dear Bessie (13 page)

We climbed a pear tree and ate what we picked. We ate blackberries, thick upon the bushes. There were lemons on the trees, oranges, pomegranates, limes, walnuts (not yet ripe), almonds, figs, prickly pears (from cactus), elderberry bushes: locusts. Events in the war send me hoping ahead to my hope of early return to home; to you, to your arms, your lips, your bosom.

We met an old man who took us to a couple of fig and pear trees, shook them and told us to help ourselves.

Love

Chris

3 September 1944

My dear Bessie,

No mail came yesterday, but I am, as usual, quite hopeful that some will arrive today. The news about the Allied men in France
is very good, and I hope it leads to the end of the flying bombs. I suppose there is a good chance of them setting up their sites elsewhere, but they cannot again be such a menace.

My decision to burn your letters was the sort of decision one has to make when a move is made. You should witness the heart-searching that goes on, when chaps consider whether they shall or shall not discard books, papers, letters, tables, beds, chairs, lamps, tin cans, buckets, and private kit and excess kit. Slowly, then rapidly as the necessity for doing so sinks in, a pile of odds and ends grows on the floor. It is tossed outside, and if there are chaps staying behind they come along and take what they want. In our little move yesterday I gained a German aluminium ‘Trinkwasser' container. It holds about 2½ gallons of water, and is very light. I have had a private ambition in this direction ever since I first saw one. This one has been used to hold paraffin, but I am washing it out frequently and it will be OK to drink from shortly. Just as the new dress or new suit makes you a little happier in peacetime, so last night, I was a little happy when I went to bed.

Today, Sunday, fifth anniversary of the war, is a strange day here. Thunder and lightning and rain. The rain is nice to be in, but if it keeps on for any length of time, we shall be in some trouble. Tent life after rain is no joke anywhere. There is much that is very enjoyable in the kind of unit that I am in (almost non-combatant in most cases), and after the war when one comes back to streets, trams, houses, every day except Sunday when perhaps a ‘hike' may be undertaken, most of us will notice the difference. Do you get one ‘rest day' a week, or less frequently than that? Do you get
only one Sunday off each seven days, and how do you feel about working on a Sunday? Even in the Army there is always a little difference about Sunday; ‘Reveille' and Breakfast are usually half an hour later, and probably one only works in the morning.

Throughout all this movement, shifting, this war, I think of you and want you. I can sigh for you. I can cry for you, and know that you can hear me.

I love you.

Chris

5 September 1944

I am now having a daily massage for my hips. I omitted it yesterday because the previous day I had had diarrhoea (a result of some grand black grapes) and had to report sick with it. I suggested to the masseur that it would be unwise to do his stuff that morning. I had a day's excused duty, and am on ‘light duties' today and tomorrow, though I am quite OK now. While I was there I saw a chap who was going to hospital with malaria. Yesterday his temperature had been 106! Terrific, isn't it?

I expect you are delighted with the news from the fighting fronts. I hope you are, to yourself, quietly understanding that the people to whom honour and praise is most fittingly given are the dead and the wounded whose efforts have made the successes
possible. The non-appearance of the Flying Bomb for several days is a fine bit of news for all of us out here who are from London. I hope there will be no more.

6 September. Hard luck, I have heard the news since writing the above and learned that you had some Flying Bombs, but I hope there will not be much chance of the Germans launching any more.

I went for a walk in the valley last night, and was delighted to add three more fruits to the list I sent you earlier: apples, damsons, plums. I sampled them all, the plums were jolly fine, although we only saw one tree bearing them. They were grand. When I think of our plum tree at home, the blossom of which is carefully counted by my parents to discover whether we shall have 13 or 14 plums this year, and look at this tree, it makes me wish for a little of the Italian climate over England. I do not want you to buy it, but I should be pleased if, at your convenience and when you are looking in a bookshop on your own behalf, you would have a look for some kind of popular book on Geology.

I love you.

Chris

13 September 1944

Dearest,

I received this evening your LCs: 22, 23, 24, 26 and 27. I was very, very, very pleased to get all these letters after so long a break.

I was a little sorry to discern that you are still uncertain about our future, still doubtful of the depth of me. But I want you (I have warned you) to remember the varying circumstances of my writings, and always take for granted that I LOVE YOU, that I know what that implies, that I know what I am saying, and am determined to keep on saying it so long as you will let me. (Please read that last five lines again [from ‘always take for granted …'], slowly.) I have been leaving the public page blank lately because sometimes I feel it would be a bit of an anti-climax to use it and always I have to bear in mind that there are ‘nosey' people who can see what I am saying if they care to look (chaps playing cards on same table as this).

It doesn't depend on what you look like or whether you can cook or have ever read
King Solomon's Mines
. I love you in my bones.

If my letters stop, will you again wonder about my constancy? If you get only a few words on a LC, or a Field Service Card, will you again be a'doubting and a'worrying? – Please don't. I want my lips to meet yours in understanding, I want to caress you, to kiss your breasts, to put my hot hands full upon your breasts, to squeeze till you cry out. I want to put my face in your bosom, my hands to your loins, then to kiss, then to salute, to meet you there.

I love you.

Chris

22 September 1944

Dearest,

The White Paper on demobilisation, published this morning, is all that is being talked about by our chaps. I think that it might be worse. I have written to Sir E.T. Campbell, my MP, urging him to represent that (1) no scheme shall be allowed to detract from the need for bringing home quickly all men who have spent any length of time overseas, (2) that for such service, one year shall be added to the age, for each two months spent abroad. I don't hope for much from Campbell, but I think it right to let him know the view of most chaps here. He is a Conservative, a supposed poet, responsible for these lines:

‘It is Hitler, the Hun, we are up against,

For all that he does is sinister,

And the best way to put an end to him,

Is to assist Churchill, our great Prime Minister.'

Don't, for goodness' sake, spend more than a couple of shillings on Geology. I should be disgusted if you did, as I shall have the run of the libraries when I get home.

You say my sex (as though I care tuppence about them) have been dirty dogs to women in the past. I am under the impression that men have been ‘dirty dogs' to men, and ‘dirty dogs' to women, and that women have been ‘dirty dogs' to men and ‘dirty dogs' to women. But I think most women are (unfortunately) fairly
content to be regarded as nice pieces of furniture. Honestly, right now, wouldn't it suit you? And aren't you prepared for me to treat you as a piece of furniture at some time or other, despite my high flown equality reasonings? If you are not, then you will probably be shocked. Hope your plums will delight you – next year. Sorry, too, about these flying bombs. I wish they'd finish so that I could have a little more peace of mind.

I love you.

Chris

23 September 1944

I have now finished skimming through the great file of printed papers that Deb sent me. One of the reviews in
The New Statesman
was about three recently published works on Geology.

In my last LC I asked whether you did not expect sometime that I should treat you as a piece of furniture. Really, I think I am bound to do so, though I shall probably try hard not to do anything you don't want. But you can be sure I will occasionally forget and on those occasions expect your forgiveness, which is a sauce, but natural. You see, I want so completely to dominate and possess you. If I were less certain of you I should find my thoughts less riotously arranged, but I know that you await me and have waited long, and I want to fling myself upon you and devour you.

I do not think I mentioned that while in town the other day I went to the ENSA pictures. –
Frontier Badmen
– the only one I remember in it was Diana Barrymore. It was all about cattle selling and more or less rustling. Set in 1869, the gunmen all had automatic pistols that appeared to fire on and on and on. We shared a box (free, by the way) with a couple of Americans, and I felt like an argument about the superiority of US films, but there is a certain barrier between us, and nothing happened. We are like their poor relations.

Here, because there are no real washing facilities, I get my laundry done by a woman about here. The other day she invited me into her living room (there are no passages, one foot over the front door and you are on top of the big double bed). I went in, rather awkwardly, and looked about me – shrine, stone floor of course, pots and pans, but not dirty. On the wall a photo of a male child, aged 2, I should say, nude and front view. Funny way of going on, to us, but I suppose that everything is due to be judged by different standards. I gather that no one out here eats tomato skin. They are thrown away. The main meal seems to be a hunk of browny bread, with tomato pips and juice on the top.

I hope you are well.

I love you.

Chris

Geology For Everyman
– the late Sir A. Seward (Cambridge, 10/6)

Teach Yourself Geology
– A. Raistrick (English Universities Press, 3s.)

Geology in the Service of Man
(W.G. Fearnsides and O.M.B. Bulman) Pelican 9d.