My Dear Bessie (9 page)

Dear Bessie,

I am writing this in ‘Alex.' The first leave I have had in 16 months. You can understand that I am a little elated to be my own master – be
it only for a little while. We only have one military function to perform, i.e. salute every officer we pass. I salute them with great gusto, believing the while that my act is another nail in Hitler's Coffin!

27 May. I am now in the new, clean, bug-free billet, and am enjoying the change from the desert. Have had many fine ices, ice drinks, and meals hastily cooked and nicely served. It is nice to drink tea from china cups and see the whole of the face when one shaves.

The clothes of the people here (‘Europeans') would make you go green with envy. Very fine cloth, well made. I have yet to see a pair of trousers under £5, prices are very high. There are many clubs here, and some are really fine, in leafy, green, quiet surrounds. Have had some swims, but the facilities are not so good as I had expected, as the sea wall prevents bathing too near the central part of the town. Have been on a ‘sight-seeing' tour with the YMCA, this morning, but it was not very good, some of the alleged Roman wall-scrawlings looked to me very much like 1944 daubings.

Have had a number of photographs taken and I think some are like me. We must have a lot done, as my Mother wails that my eldest brother is looking so old, and we have to keep on having photos done till we get one which says the reverse. Will send you copies later. There are many luscious ‘come-hither' types around here. I must tell you the whole yarn later on. I have bought a ‘Swan', but as you can see by the bad writing, the nib is not very suitable.

Strawberries are 2s. a lb. here, potatoes 6d. a lb. I am looking forward to getting your letters upon my return. For me that is the
only ‘snag' of this leave. I hope you fully realise just how I feel. My apologies for this very poor effort. My brother is a foot away!

My love.

Chris

11 June 1944

My dear and lovely Bessie,

How can I start to reply to the seven letters that awaited me when I arrived here, the two that came the day after, and the one I received yesterday? Shall I reply to them chronologically, or in order of importance?

These letters of yours are just like an English river running through green fields, clear, refreshing, bright, confident. You come rippling down at me, surround me with your beauty and your meaning, and just as I am thinking ‘that was wonderful', you come to me again to say that you still are.

So will you accept my humble thanks (you make me feel humble) for these many evidences of your feelings, and allow me to commend you on all the fine, small writing you did. Don't try to make it any smaller or you'll ruin your eyes.

The story of my return from Alexandria is a sorry one. I will leave all the other leave details till I have replied to your other
letters, but I must tell you this. We did not last out the third week, but on the Wednesday had to en-train. I awoke in the barracks with a bad headache (I never have headaches usually) which persisted throughout the train journey which lasted the usual 24 hours. My brother had to cart all my kit about, while I carried only the rifles. Arrived here I saw the Medical Corporal, went to bed, had tablets, slept a little. Following day saw the MO [Medical Officer] who gave me a good general examination and said there was nothing wrong with me. He excused me duty. More tablets and bed. The following day I only had a pretty bad ache around my eyes, again excused duty. Today I am somewhat cloudy in the eye-region, but expect to be bunged on the switchboard any minute.

By the way I have a typewriter, Underwood (cost me £14 14s. in 1938). Would you like to have it, if so I'll try and think out a scheme. I could get £25 for it any day I think, but it is more useful than money and is just lying about useless at home.

I am glad you like the second-hand bookshop idea.

I am sorry about your gumboils. I should leave your private (acquisitive) Dentist and pay at least one visit to the Dental Hospital at Leicester Square, which is concerned with saving teeth, not making money through extractions and dentures. Don't have your teeth out before you need do, and without seeing the Dental Hospital. They are good people. I shall make some lighter remarks in a later letter. The enclosed photos (most grim) show some of my teeth fairly well. I lost two on my right, upper, through private dentists. You do want me to tell you, here, that I love you though you be molar-less? I do!

I give you my glad sympathy at your efforts to abate the smoke nuisance. You are a good girl, Bessie. We are now getting 50 Players/Gold Flake weekly out here. Pity I cannot send mine to you.

I must again say I don't want you to think of me as a superior. Of course I kid myself I have a sharper perception of some (maybe unimportant) things than most others. But you are better than me at French, Algebra, Arithmetic, and I am confused (and remaining so) about Morse and Electricity and Magnetism.

I love you.

Chris

12 June 1944

Dearest,

It is a little bit pathetic for you to tell me I am ‘such a lover', when all I have been able to do is put on paper a few sentences conveying what I mean, but not, surely, the force with which I mean it. You have been wonderful in gathering my intentions, you will be wonderful administering to my needs. Please never forget that I have needs, and that you are my greatest.

It is not much good me trying to tell you that I shall not flirt with hundreds of others. Events will show you.

But for goodness' sake, go steady on the near-occult. Do not trust your ordinary brain to deal with extra-super ordinary things. I became interested in Spiritualism years ago, but after I had read a book (I think it was
Valley of the Mists
by Conan Doyle) that made my head whirl with thought and possible happenings, in no spirit of mock-humility, I decided it was a subject which I had better leave alone. My brain was, I thought, too ordinary.

You ask me if I want you to be a modern woman par excellence, and you ‘rather hope I am the least bit old-fashioned'. Well, I am sufficiently old-fashioned not to want you to work after marriage. I want your main job to be looking after me. But, as I have said earlier, I do not want you to go house-mad. I want you to take an interest in other things, and if necessary, join up with people like yourself who may be similarly interested. I have seen (theoretically!) a woman stop being useful to the world upon marriage. I want you to develop, say, something that the circumstances of your working life have prevented you following. I can therefore be, not the bloke who bangs the Harem gate shut, but the one who gives you the chance to do something (quite accidentally); obviously I am marrying you because I am selfish, not because I think a little leisure may make you another Van Gogh.

Don't rush to the photographer, there's a good girl. I shall be very glad to have the snap of ‘The Author at Age 20' – as, my love, one day I shall be very happy to have you.

You amuse me when you say you don't think managing money is my strong point. (I haven't got any strong points except those you make.) I expect you will find me a horrible old skinflint,
but I hope you'll agree to have pocket-money, as I shall have it, and that should enable you to be at least independent in little things. In any case, you will be doing the housekeeping, and I shall assist only at your invitation.

If anyone in the Ministry of Labour asks you what your war-work is, you can show them my dark-frowned photo, and you can tell them your trouble with me is only just starting.

I've never really asked you, have I – Will you marry me, Bessie (for better or for worse)? There are no good reasons, but the only excuse I can offer is that I will love you always, my fashion. Reply by ordinary LC won't you?

Thank you, Bessie, for telling me you want to be at my mercy. One day let us hope you will be, and then we shall really meet. You make me feel a little drunk when you place yourself at my command. I so much want to caress you, to lie with you and commune. You do not wonder at my wish to rummage when it is your lovely body that I seek? Do not mistake the depth and the age of my desire to enter you. I want to kiss your breasts till they flame, I want to squeeze them till my roving hands move on to your buttock and hips. I want to mould your loins with my hands and kiss you again and again. I want you to receive my homage, my love, and then I want to come into lovely you myself.

Chris

14 June 1944

My dear Bessie,

Yes, I got those corduroy trousers a few months after the war started, and long before everyone adopted them. When I got them home, my Mother said, ‘You silly young ass, only artists wear them!' She was approximately correct. They are grand trousers, though, and wonderful material. I am glad about your non-puritan thoughts based on their contents. I already feel accustomed to your bedroom, and I hope you will increasingly know within you that I am thinking of you there. I don't altogether swallow the explanation for the sag in the spring bed, but we will try and make it worse, shall we?

Do not let the emphasis on the physical make you think for a moment that I under-rate your mentality and intelligence. So prepare for me as though I was an ordinary person, not the Agha Khan.

Yes, my Mother will be a bit of a nuisance to her prospective daughter-in-law. Not because she is mine, but because in-laws are nuisances. But I shall be able to help you where necessary and when the time comes. My attitude in similar circs. would be ‘Blow the lot of them'. I am not over-fond of relations myself.

You say ‘I am so much in your hands'. Would that you were, my dear. I am afraid of losing you. I am so glad the Yank turned out a bit of a wet blanket. I shall try hard to keep you. Forgive me for my constant thought of your flesh. Your body is always before me, and I find my own crying for union, companionship. These gifts which you wonderfully bestow on me are the greatest I could ask.

I can now commence to tell you about my leave. It could have been so much better had you been there: as it was, my brother's pretty constant attendance was a great nuisance. I could have wept sometimes. I had all sorts of great hopes about buying something in Alex., but in the event, I had to admit defeat. Cloth was tremendously dear, and its despatch under the eagle eye of Herbert, impossible. So I am afraid that all you will get in a couple of months' time will be a kind of leather shopping bag, with zip fastener. You've probably got half-a-dozen, or maybe you wouldn't be seen dead with one. But perhaps it isn't a shopping bag. You must tell me what it is when you get it! Anyhow, it's leather and should be OK for soling your shoes. Next time, please tell me what you'd like, and (if I can get rid of Bert for a little while) I'll try hard to be perspicacious. What is your shoe size please?

Please have a thought of me.

My love.

Chris