My Dear Bessie (4 page)

This afternoon I was just going off to sleep when my Sergeant woke me and (despite my protests that I was on night duty tonight) told me I must report at 3 o'clock for the ABCA (Army Bureau of Current Affairs) Spelling Bee. I went along there and suggested it be abandoned in favour of a discussion on ‘strikes in wartime', and we did discuss strikes, fairly interestingly. The strange thing about most of these affairs is that so very few people can open their mouths to any effect in public. I am always congratulated on my contribution and looked at with greater respect afterwards by my companions – this ‘Gift of the Gab' as it is called, is a dangerous thing for the welfare of the people. I am very suspicious of good talkers, very attentive to the stutterer.

From the pictures, I had intended going straight to the other farce out here,
The Egyptian Mail
, our daily newspaper, and
The Egyptian Gazette
, its Evening (which we do not get) and Sunday consort. I am sending you a few copies in order that you can see what a hotch-potch of old news and English newspaper rubbish
it is. It has frequent typographical errors, and is very unreliable. It puts the wrong headlines to news items, and is more amusing than informative. Once it said the Aga Khan had come fourth in a horse race, another time that Somerset had declared at cricket 1301–7.

I am not sorry you did not join the WAAFs [Women's Auxiliary Air Force], because most of the chaps seem to regard uniformed women as uniformly willing to be pawed about. One of the girls in my district used to push her breasts into my stomach (it seems that she was a little short! – anyhow, I used to feel it was like that) and hold my arm, every time she saw me. This was around 1937–39, not in the younger days, when I thought, like most youths, that I was handsome. Anyhow, this girl joined the WAAFs shortly after war was declared. And I don't think it was patriotism.

It is the usual practice to swop our free issue of 50 cigarettes weekly for eggs, 10 for 1 egg. We also get 2 boxes of matches; these also fetch an egg each. We do not get many Arabs round here, but in other parts you can get a live chicken for 40 cigarettes. They may be scraggy things, but I am told they eat well. Of course, all trading with the Arabs is strictly forbidden, but goes on just the same.

And now away. I am going to have a few busy thoughtful days, as tonight got the job of opposing the motion ‘That woman's place is the home,' at the first of some debates I have helped to get going here. Am quite looking forward to it. It's like old times!

Good wishes always,

Chris

13 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

It looks as though Air Mail is wunnerful quick these days, your Letter Card of 5.3.44 having fallen into my waiting hand only a couple of hours ago. You must use LCs more and hang the expense, for if your sea-mail is anything like this LC, I shall be writing you poetry in a few weeks.

It seems that my frankness has not been without its effect on you. For there you are (I was about to write ‘here you are' till cruel geography poked me) ready, even eager, to go back seven or eight years to Abbey Wood, and here am I so ready to embrace the project, if not you. How far distance has lent enchantment to the view, and disappointment gilded the scene, only events will show. But I warn you now against any prospect of me doing ‘the honourable thing', and beg you to note that I have not yet, in my pastime ‘affairs', done anything dishonourable. If you are hopeful, willing, expectant, it is in opposition to the facts, for I confess myself unlikely to possess in the future much more capacity than to entertain (howbeit brightly) as a rascal rogue, roué or rake. So let there be no hugger-mugger about it. – A kind of ‘Mistakes cannot afterwards be rectified' spirit must reign as you invite me to change your pound, and, I gleefully hand you £19 6s. and a dud tanner
*
you are only too pleased to accept. I hope you will understand the metaphor. Euphemisms are so bracing.

Keep on talking about yourself. I promise that I shall treat you gently. Whatever may be true about men concerning themselves
with things rather than people (about which I will write at length later) let you and I consider ourselves: – my Army Book 64 tells me I was born 12.1.14, and that at enlistment I was Church of England; 5 ft 9 ins., 143 lbs., Max. Chest 36 ins., Complexion: Fresh; Eyes: Blue. Hair: Brown! (It doesn't say I was going bald but it's the awful truth!)

I am glad my last letter sent your spirit rocketing sky-high. But please to remember the Fifth of November and what happens to the rockets when their celestial brilliance is ended. They descend to earth, flat as a pancake, so don't start understudying for the lead in another ‘Punctured Romance'; although I am an old (30 years) hypocrite, and when you say you find me ‘so satisfying', I cannot help but think of circumstances in which you really would do so. But this is all very naughty and Chris-like.

Now to exult as I read you again; to write you some more; and consider the promise that is YOU.

Chris

14 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

I had not expected that my Air Mail letter would travel so quickly, and am delighted that you should already have it, and have spent some time, probably, in reading it. At the moment, and for the
present, there isn't a shadow of doubt that we are both in the same mutually approving mood, and that if we were within smiling distance of each other, we should soon be doing rather more than that. Of course, maybe the safety of our separate distances permits us to indulge in these happy advances. Perhaps we would beat hasty retreats into our shells if we knew that the seeds we are now sowing were due for early reaping. I might be on another planet for all the chance there is of hearing you say the good things you've written. But how much I enjoy you, how jolly fine it is to know that you really do understand what I write, when only a little while ago I was saying that I felt like Marconi would have done on the morrow of his invention, had all the world gone deaf.

If I had the chance, I might do a lot of things, or nothing. As it is I shall remain very polite and become as friendly as I dare without undertaking obligations I have no intention of fulfilling. I am safe from physical indiscretion for a long while, but I am also wanting you seriously to see that while we might have fun (certainly I could laugh heartily at the moment!) at a later date, it would not be so funny for you ultimately. I can't help being your hero – and I breathe heavily and exultingly at your clear, bare admittance; but please don't let me make you break your heart in 1946 or 47, when I scurry off with ‘one, two, three, or more.' If I was a wise guy I would not write you and thus encourage your racing thoughts. I admit to a state of gleaming, dangerous excitement as I read again and again your written words. You fascinate and weaken me, and make me feel strong. Presumably you wrote the same in the old days (in an earlier letter I said I was hazy even
about any letters), have I become so much more susceptible to flattery, or is the change due to the fact that I have been away from home fourteen months, and haven't seen a woman (other than about four on a stage) in the last six?

Don't be a man-worshipper, or an anything-worshipper if you would be happy. The main difference, emotionally, between men and women, is said to be that a woman is loyal to one man always, but that a man's attention wanders more than a little. This sex item is the biggest there is, apart from the instinct to survive, because no one is impervious to it and it controls us always.

I believe and I deplore that too many people with Left views think they must free-love, be vegetarians, atheists, walk on the wrong side of the road, and so on. I think I have mentioned that one chap of 18 who I met in hospital told me he had ‘had' 35 girls, several on the first day of meeting. This ‘loyalty' of the woman has been blown sky-high during this war – one of the chaps here asked his girl why she hadn't written for six weeks, and she replied she had been busy, didn't he know there was a war on?! You say that men have a ‘much more powerful nervous force' – I'm not sure I know what this means, but I am quite sure that a chap in love (while he is in that happy state) feels it as deeply as his lady. Perhaps it doesn't last so long, but while it does it is pretty potent.

In your letter-card you say ‘I regret to admit I am feminine,' and later on, ‘forgive me for being all feminine' – yet, of course, you know that you are bristling femininity now, quite unregretful and not desiring to be forgiven. You know I am male and for the once attentive, therefore you don't want to be anything but female. You want your old hero to be your new lover.

What a pity that they have just given me my mosquito net for my second summer, and not a ticket for an air journey home. I am writing these particular words at midnight 13.3.44 – I could have breakfast with you on the 14th, if only one or two people would co-operate. It might be a little late, but what matter. Here am I, wondering when I last saw you and what you look like. I have an idea, I wish I could confirm by personal investigation. Do you still smoke? – a bad habit.

Expectant, willing, and compliant as you are, I seem to have discovered you anew. I find you very warm and appetising. I rejoice at our intimacy for the present. I simply wallow in your friendly sentiments which I feel as keenly as if a couple of seas and a continent did not separate us. You have smashed my perimeter defences, I am all of a hub-bub, and as I write my cheeks are red and I am hot. When I finish one letter to you, I want to start again on another, as today. I hope that I shall often have something to comment on, rather than initiate my own discussions. I know this strange unity of expression and understanding cannot last, for I feel just as though I was sitting at your feet. This is bound to peter out sooner or later. You say ‘here's to the beginning of a beautiful friendship.'

You are a terrific love-maker by letter. I can but wonder what you are like at it in the soft, warm, yielding, panting flesh. Please pardon the rub-out, and the re-writing hereabouts. Truth is that with the morning I became timid and decided on deletion. Let me go back a few lines, say that I can but wonder, and warmly do.

I must avoid writing one whole letter slobbering, however pleasant it is for both of us, I must make a pretence of telling you
all about our camp. ‘Jeannie', for example, has had seven pups, two of which have been drowned in order to give her a better chance. She had them on Friday, and on Monday she was racing about after her bête noire – desert rats. The other mother, the sow, has hardly energy to move. At least eight are expected shortly. Our picture on Saturday (luckily I was on duty) was as childish as the previous two I have described earlier.
Stars Over Texas
. Stage Coach holdups, and pistol duels. We are getting more than disgusted.

Having interposed that sentence I can return to our new thrilling relationship, to be fully enjoyed while it lasts, and unlamented when it is done. I am ‘all for you, dear' and the prospect of soaking in you, luxuriously for a while, of touching you where you will let me, from here, is absorbingly, naturally, before us.

Chris