My Dear Bessie (33 page)

6 September 1945

My Wonderful Woman,

I posted letter 50 earlier today because I had to be sure that you would be getting the earliest possible answer to your letter saying you knew I was due for leave sometime.

I ought to explain how the leave is given. They take chaps in order of seniority of overseas service. When October 10 arrives, my claims have to be considered, and if I am the senior (2 yrs 8 months) I go. Actually, I have just spoken to a 2 yrs 9 months chap who has not yet gone. Whether I go in October or later depends on the number sent, but anyhow it is quite clear that it is only a matter of months before I am homeward bound – although blow me, it will be hard coming back. There's one good thing, though, no other separations we shall have are likely to be as long as our first. Six months is about as much as we shall have, I think. I very much hope so, too, for I have been away from you far too long already. My darling, you were lovely on leave, I was – I am – delighted with you. A good thing this time is that you won't have the worry of considering if I may change my mind upon sighting you.

To proceed to other points in your letter (though I don't want to, for all I am saying is ‘She knows. She knows. She knows').

Glad you think Mum is a little better. Please see her as much as you can. It is important, more so than before. It'll tire you and try you, but please do this.

Regarding the 28 days, I feel that purely because of the need to demonstrate my kinship with Mum, we should try to spend most of our time (apart from that fourteen days when I get you ALL TO MYSELF) at 161 [the Barker family home], that is, sleeping there and visiting 27 (reverse procedure to that you suggested). It is not likely to be so convenient, but there are obvious reasons for it. Let me know your views, please.

I hope we can get somewhere fairly private – where going to bed early can be accomplished without askances.

I love you.

Chris

9 September 1945

My Dearest,

We are stopping the night in the lofty tree-filled park which is the Transit Camp, Naples.

I am familiar with the road run to Naples, having done it several times before. This is a wonderful run and is reminiscent of some of the Scottish trips. As we ran through the villages there is the usual unceasing activity – almonds drying, being shelled, maize drying, tomatoes strung up outside the houses also drying; a girl walks along with half-a-dozen turkeys, a boy with a pig, adults bare-legged and -footed wait at the fountain for water then carry it away on their heads, three or four horses labour under a heavy cartload of stone, as we stop boys come along to ask for ‘biscottys' as they call them (biscuits). My driver is in charge of the truck, and more or less in charge of me. I wouldn't take an order, but I can't give him one, so am more or less compelled to tacitly agree with his actions. He gave three people a lift as we passed through a village near our Camp, but later would not stop for anyone – Poles he hates, the coloured American he regards as a black illegitimate, ordinary Americans he won't help, and so on. He told me before we started that there was a good ‘racket', picking up a load of grain in one village, and dropping it at one miles away (you might get as much as £2 10s. for such a service, he said. I bet it's to avoid tax or something).

Well, he stopped on the road and took aboard an elderly woman, shrivelled as are most old Italians, and a girl aged about 19. He had agreed to take them and their two bags of grain to a village about thirty miles away, in return for (he explained to the young Italian) ‘a little love'. Well, this is a serious offence, no passengers are permitted. About five miles down the road he asked me (so casually) if I wanted to have the girl? I told him ‘no thanks' and a few more miles along he stops and says we will
have a ‘brew up', so while I make tea, the old woman goes in one direction and he and the young girl disappear in the bushes in another. About ten minutes pass and he returns, to give me a detailed account of the copulation – not satisfactory to him. The girl returned, the old woman, and off we went again.

I LOVE YOU.

Chris

19 September 1945

My Darling,

It seems a long long time since I heard from you. I cannot understand your pathetic little ‘No letters, no letters, none at all', as I have written daily and will always do so, though (as I have explained) it may be that my letters must be curtailed – against my will – on occasions.

Please don't tear up your letters to me – send them. Put a pencil through them if you like, to show the undecided state you are in. But please, please, please, send me what you think.

I am very glad that Mum paid 27 Woolacombe a visit again and I hope you can continue them. I know that she is extremely pleased that (as it seems to her) others are interested and ‘want' her. I know how I should feel if you didn't ‘want' me. That is
how Mum has persuaded herself to be over Bert's legitimate if precipitate declarations. (The news in her letter to you that she has burned all our letters is a big disappointment to me. I had such a lot of anecdotes hidden in my letters home. All my Army antics. It's a cut at me.)

Am glad you received the knife and scissors. It is a ladies' knife, is it not? Glad you did not pay duty. Bert paid 8s. for two knives I sent him (one for him and one for Archie), a blooming twist.

And all the time I am thinking of you: your new photo in my pocket: the hairs on a piece of paper which says ‘I love you': your preciousness, your real wisdom, your gentleness.

I love you.

Chris

22 September 1945

Dearest,

I do not feel very happy at the thought of your self-made misery, yet how can I administer a corrective without being much blunter than I wish? What I am continually sorry about is that you cannot spread inside you the idea that I love you and that NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. Regardless of what popular novelists may or
may not say, I do not feel that I shall be equal to the task, or even willing to perform, spectacular exhibitions at regular intervals to persuade you that I love you. My wish (at 31) is to settle down in mutual confidence and trust, and share both our joys and sorrows, so that our joys may be doubled and our sorrows lessened in the process. I rather think that it must be my Mother who is the cause of your present ‘struggles', and this is a particularly obvious case of where I am impelled to pursue a course by circumstance rather than choice.

If you think and think about something without reference to me, you are failing in your obligation to trust me and my desire to help you. I do not say we do not require education in the ‘US' way of looking at things, but I do feel you are holding on much too tightly to your right to fret and worry on your own. What am I for, if not to help? PLEASE do not think I am ‘hurt' ‘by all this'. All I am doing is to try to help you out of your chronic independence of thought. My love for you is strong, and you must learn to use it. From now on, try and write me all about our leave, and say what you want rather than you suppose I can judge better. There are many things in which we must take equal part. How we spend the 28 days? If ‘you and I' was all that need be considered, I should suggest going away for 28 days and spending every moment of every day saying ‘you're lovely'. But, of course, that can't be done.

Mum. Your Dad. A few friends. Bert has asked me to see Mrs Wicks if possible, and so on. So what we have to decide is what we will do, not what we want to do.

It is not possible to disregard others. When we think of them we shouldn't let them upset us.

My Darling, My Dearest, let us try harder to understand each other and the meaning and application of our love.

I love you.

Chris

23 September 1945

My Darling,

I am inclining to the view that you really ought to give up the South Kens job when I have departed, and really take a rest, as complete as possible, so that you can have a physical and mental free-wheel for a time, and concentrate on our future life together, which is now a near thing.

About concentrating on ‘our future life together', I mean that you could do some unhurried thinking, some cool reading and so on, about housekeeping. I am not suggesting it is wise to ‘swot' how to make a bed, but I mean as regards getting things together, or preparing a list of the things we would need. Do you think we could get a little booklet in which we could insert items we want, to get the ‘bricks and mortar' going? Although we may need to live in someone else's home, I think you would agree that we should acquire our own ‘wherewithal' as early as practicable. I enclose an idea for you to think about. I suggest we prepare for a two-roomed establishment, with kitchen-scullery (I know it is
not ambitious), draw up a list and cross out the item when it is acquired. I have inserted your possessions that I remember and my own, except that in my case I recognise that they are not quite what you want. I hope you agree with my wish to press ahead with the preparation of a list with a view to the acquisition of things as they become available and reasonable in price.

It would be pleasant, no doubt, to have bags of money and buy all that was required without trouble. But we must get down to this one day, and I think it not too soon, now. We can do a lot of these things by letter, and I hope we will. (For example, we could discuss what we think of buying some kinds of secondhand things, and so on.)

Unbelieving though you may sometimes be, contrarily though I may occasionally appear to act, you are my life, my all. I see the future with you, and there is none without you.

I LOVE YOU.

Chris