My Dear Bessie (24 page)

I hope you will not let the lack of news in the next few weeks make you worried. I shall soon be writing from Italy to you, trying to convey all you mean to me, all you are. I very much hope you will soon get some rest from the rockets, and that the Germans will collapse and assist my return to you, which will probably be not so long as we fear. Perhaps a year, possibly less than that.

I do not think we could have come any closer these last weeks, without making the parting unendurable. Regard, or try to regard, my visit as a link between the days of letters when we were finding each other, and these days when we know how great
is our mutual dependence, how much we depend on each other for life itself. You know that I love you and will always love you. I am pledged to you. I am yours. You are mine. I want you.

I love you.

Chris

10 April 1945

My Dear One,

I do not feel in a very good state for writing at the moment, as the ship has been rocking a good deal, and I have succumbed once to the irresistible urge to be sick. However, Bert himself has been seedy and a great many other faces here have turned yellow above their Africa Stars, and I am in good company. We have now got ourselves onto a pretty good job aboard ship, each morning ten of us have to clean out the Ship's Hospital. It gets us out of other jobs, like Mess Orderly, Guards, sweeping the decks, so Bert and I get on happily with our three baths, the lavatory pedestals, and similar number of wash basins. I am not too keen on doing the Scabies bathroom, but never mind. Three weeks ago, when I was a temporary gentleman, the chap in Lyons' ‘wash and brush up' washed out my wash basin, now I am doing the same.

Tonight there is a Sing Song for Other Ranks. One of our officers has asked me to do 50 words on it for the Ship's Newspaper they are starting. I told him I was out of sympathy with such things, but would let him have the item, though I would not go myself. I have just written the few words required and hope to hear the others shouting their heads off, so that I can mention a few tunes ‘sung'. Very rarely does anyone start any educational or informative activity on ship. They assume that all we wish to do is laugh like healthy young hyenas. And ‘they' are probably right.

You are putting your clock forward tonight, so you will be in advance of me for awhile. Reveille is 6 a.m. on ship, but we do not rise much before 7, and then I think of you still slumbering.

All the lads are buying hundreds of cigarettes, at 50 for 1s. 8d., and feeling happier the further away from home they get.

I hope you did not weep too much (if you did weep). And, if ever you do so again, let it be only at the hardness of our separation, never in despair of our future meeting and life together. I have become more than a little woebegone at our post-war hopes of a home, by ourselves. The figures lead me to think that it will be ten years before we get the chance to choose. I expect you will have to be discreet in what you say to your Dad, but it seems to me that we shall be forced to live at 27 after I return for a little while, in order to prospect for a place. When the war is over I know you will buy what you can to ensure we do not have many troubles in equipping our own home, and, if you can manage, to start house purchase (I know it is an extremely tricky business, but you could write to Estate Agents, and Simpson, Palmer and Winder, Southwark Bridge Road, SE1 would help you legally, and
fairly.) Shall I write my Mother telling of our plans, and asking her to let you have what money you want? As you know, I have £350, and you nearly the same, so we could raise £700 for a first payment, if Simpson's counselled it.

Took my shirt and trousers off last night for the first time, a great treat, as one gets very hot and sticky sleeping in clothes below decks. The nervous ones are now all breathing freely again. Strangely, I have hardly thought of submarines during the voyage, although I had been fairly apprehensive whilst on land on leave. I think the feeling wickedly arose from the thought that, had we been hit, we might have got back to England as survivors' leave!

We got two bars of chocolate at Glasgow, and have also had four on board including Fry's Sandwich variety, which I expect you'd like. Sorry I can't share with you, as you did with me. I am waking up four or five times during the night, but very quickly going to sleep again. Several times I have thought I was still at home, and once when I woke like this I put my hand out as though to touch you. I shall always want you, always love you.

Chris

11 April 1945

I am now once again in Italy, and everything is going as expected. I shall be leaving here shortly, and shall not be very sorry, I fancy.
The dust is everywhere (much as the sand was in the Desert), and it makes us dirty and thirsty.

If I say or write a thousand times before we meet again, ‘I love you', I want it always to come to you as a fresh, vigorous affirmation of faith, of deep feeling of my need of you, my desire for you. We are so much strengthened now by our meeting: I have seen you, your eyes when you looked at me – and I hope you've seen, and will remember, my eyes. I think I shall have to write to you rather differently from my 1944 items. I am now too much aware of you, too moved within me by the knowledge of you and the fact that now we are one. We now do know what we mean to each other. I think correspondence is going to be more difficult in the light of this, and I know (it is wonderful to be so sure) you will forgive me for my faults where they occur.

It is appalling to think of not seeing you for a year – if that be the period. ‘Making the best of it' will be a hard job. I shall try to be humorous where I can be, but I shall not be surprised if you cannot laugh. And I keep on thinking of all the things I might have said to you, the things we should but didn't discuss. I think and think what a fool I was. But I suppose it was the character of the leave, all this recent upset and complete shock, that made me afraid, indecisive, careful, cautious, diplomatic, wasteful. What else was I? But yet it was wonderful, it was LIFE with a capital L, it was – YOU ARE – so much better than I have imagined. We needed such a meeting to make real our happy state, to be really certain we were indispensable to each other, to be really sure that our lives are joined for ever.

We are in the shadow of some mountains at the moment, and this makes it very hot, for the sun here is full and certain. (Didn't
we
have grand weather?) We have spent today at the Quartermasters, and are now ‘Compleat Soldiers', a horrible melancholy. We each weigh a ton. It was grand to travel lightly, but those days are over. This is not a pleasant place, as they incline to treat you as a ‘rookie'. I must finish this in ‘Five Minutes', the man in charge has just said, so must conclude now. I am eager to get your letters. I expect they await me at my new unit. My thoughts are of you. Very much. I know that yours are around me; I feel the protection of your love. And I want you.

I love you.

Chris

14 April 1945

Dearest,

When I got your four Letter Cards yesterday after a day's travel in a truck on dusty Italian roads, it was not unexpected, but it was still the most wonderful thing that I can hope for. For goodness' sake don't picture me as a strong, silent man, patiently awaiting his turn to go home, happy meanwhile to do his bit. I am not strong, I am weak – as weak as you are. I resent our separation,
our living apart. And I resent and violently object to it, inside me, very, very much more now that we are so certainly suited, so confirmedly assured by our brief meeting.

You say I exceeded your expectations. You must know that, high as they were, you exceeded mine. I am glad, too, that we now have these joint memories of being together. You say I am a wonderful lover. May I say it's wonderful to love you and be loved by you. May I say how thrilled and wonder-struck I was by your sweet reception, your lovely welcome. No, I want you to keep all my photographs, and I hope I shall be able to send you more.

I don't think you a ‘silly gink'. I do know that you
are
intelligent. Don't say I am flattering you, or that I am deceiving myself, please. Wasn't it almost unbelievably wonderful to be in each other's company! I am sorry I was below par, and rather dazed throughout, and that you yourself had been going through a bad patch. The decision not to call up the over 30s disgusts everyone here. It makes it harder for us to be released.

Glad your vapour rub is now settled (myself, I think it went away of its own accord, irrespective of Iris's advice). I am mightily impressed by what I have seen of you, and I love you more and more, it seems, with every day that passes.

I love you.

Chris

15 April 1945

Dear Bessie,

I am glad you have signed for your leave, and hope that when the time comes the weather will keep as fine as during my visit. I hope you manage to get good digs in Devon. There will be a great rush this summer, and a great harvest for the landlady.

I shouldn't worry any more about the war against Germany. It won't go on all the summer, as you fear.

I hope you manage your Spring Cleaning without any broken bones. I am sorry I am not there to assist. But, who knows, next Spring I may be parading with the Hoover for your inspection. I hope so.

I am glad that you solved the Problem of the Missing Grapefruit. Here we are lucky in an abundance of fruit and fresh vegetables. (For example, today we had potatoes, cauliflower and carrots, in addition to Yorkshire Pudding and mutton.) The food here is good all round, in fact. If I worried about nothing else I should be quite happy.

I hope you are well, and not too busy.

Love.

Chris