1224/5 Shipworking Sections R.E. CM.F.
No. 182
Dearest,
Your second pencilled letter of the 27th. came this morning and made the day and me happy. Bless you. It was about the whist drive and the furniture and Shepherds Yard. Yes, maybe Shepherds Yard is not our sort of place. But it would be better than Rosemary; yet we’d better wait until we have settled down to post-war conditions and made sure that our income can rise to whatever the new place needs. Yet a larger house needn’t cost a lot more, I suppose. As to furniture, I know we need more. We’d better use our post-war credits, the few hundred pounds we shall get, in buying at country house sales. Its a difficult problem because we have two lots of furniture anyhow to come in the ripeness of time. Kettering and Southgate. Some of it, anyhow. But we’ll cope. You shall have a goodly parlour to shine in. Its essential. I wish I could get furniture home because with a three ton truck and a carpenter and four sappers I can furnish a house in excellent style for nothing, in the Forward areas! Those chairs we filched from the Salvation Army have done us proud. Bless us all. As to houses I quite fancy the Jeavonry one, I’d like to be on their definite list you can say so to Norman, or Shelfield House. We’ll pay well and care for it well and be regular in our habits. Shelfield would be the best. Nice for Dickie, because a small boy must know the joy of the feel of a horses shoulders between his bare legs, no sensation is finer. It is movement and mastery and kindness and beauty. Howsoever, wait and trust, and keep your ears open. The future is so full and rich, with you and our Dickie to plan for and with. There shall be a room, too, called Christopher’s room. And you shall have bees and there shall be geese and some marching ducks. Need the money, that’s all. But Anthony must have planned this war to clear our overdraft and give us a lump sum at the end to start on. There will be the gratuity and the six weeks leave on full pay, so we shall have a start. And a book done, if possible, and a niche made for writing on in will help. We’ll see.
Went shopping this morning with Allan, and bought my and your Mothers’ Christmasses, little tokens mark you, and if a boxlet comes to you with them in, hide it away and keep them, to post my mothers and to hand your mothers for Christmas day, oh and a coral necklace thing for Mrs. Anderton. The limit of my Christmassing. Allan bought his engagement ring from a jeweller I know, who discreetly produced it (it is not permitted to trade in gold here). An 18 carat gold ring, small and antique, with a good little emerald and four tiny diamonds, very well done and only 3,600 lire – £9. Really pleasant. A good thing. We are going out on Sunday, to Sant Eremo, where this family lives. Fun.
All goes well here. We are in the new mess, after an upheaval of moving. Its a pretty little villa near the camp, a long drive, formal between stone balustrades, a little hall and a dining room one side and Anti-room the other. We’ve knocked a hole in the wall and are putting in a brick fireplace. Six bedrooms and a long roof room for the batmen. I have a nice little piccolo room all to me, with a desk, bed, chairs and dressing table. We are laying on water ourselves, a bath and hot shower. There is garden, market garden, all around, carefully kept by one Pietro who has a plain wife, two odd dogs, a sheep with two lambs, a goat, two pigs and five hens. All nice and Baa-y in the mornings.
The colonel complimented me today on the way the company is bucking up, which is some compensation for the scandalised chatter which I suspect goes on behind my back internally. So that’s that.They’re very friendly and see, I think that its only reasonable-ness. Bless us all.
Yes, I’ll work in the Boot if you like, why not. Unless Dickie wants to go there. Is he really beautiful? One can forgive much to a good looking person, For the third night I’ve dreamed of him, but last night wasn’t so good, he was fifteen and gawky and very superior and diffident and kept on going out of the back door and standing about in the garden waiting for me to go out. You were so nice about it. Matronly with a lot of cameos on you. A cross between Mrs. A. and Miss Dolbin. I don’t know!
My contacts of other days are very useful now; I know Cliff well and he’s Dock Superintendent, – employer of us as it were, and Group wallahs, and Fawcett who is Camp Commandant, and Allan and other coy. officers, and its a great help. Sort of being able to Christian name the contacts. And I’m learning to let others do the work, and be content with carrying calmly a permanent sense of responsibility. If others make mistakes in this set-up I have to answer for them. So one lets them act but watches like hell they don’t let one in for anything. A new outlook on the job. Altogether delightful. One of our men wants an interview because he wants to send money home to his village, he’s got a new baby. Its two years since he was there but he’s not very good at nature and I’d be the last to open his eyes. Great is the simple outlook on life. Saves much fuss. He’s that proud, wanted one for a long time and now…. Good precedent, anyhow, really.
How soon the end comes. Please send the papers still, I love them. I’ll look for the Lebanese/Syrian article in the Spectator. How Is your Mum? My love to her. I must send a Thing. Lazy of late.
My love my love, and bless that chatty mobile son of ours. Has he grown any dimensions yet? Or is it a secret! I love you. David X