1224/5 Shipworking Sections R.E. C.M.F.
No. l95
Dearest,
Two letters from you on Saturday, the 1st. and 3rd. of December and very fine letters they were written with your own pen, and the writing nice and small again. Makes a big difference, that, because I am greedy. It was a nice haul, one from Mother full of fun, and from Bertha, about enquiries for filming some of our plays, and from Gwen, oh, sweetly gwenny. Saith she…”…been to Gloucester to hear a lecture on dehydration, it was interesting. I wonder if you have much of these dried foods…..” Oh dear, yes, we do, have had dehydrated meat and potatoes and cabbage for a long long time, bless us all, Heard about the cargo of 10,000 Yanks in a 5000 ton ship, with 3000 tons of cargo as well? Didn’t sound possible until someone uncovered the tween deck of No. 2 and there were ten thousand yanks, little tiny ones, about one foot six inches high. They had been dehydrated. How? Taken the wind and the er..water out of them and there they were. Shame, Allied Relations Must be of the Best. But there you are. I wander. Sorry. Your good letters…
You had walked, you and your son, to Edwards the Post together and you told me that he is quite a likeable person. Has his own opinions too, you say, and says No No! What happens then? What do you say Yes Yes! or “I beg your pardon, sir!” You and he and Candy called at J.J.H.’s and fetched the Times and a bone wrapped in paper. A nice trio I am sure, oh dear, that in a wintery Great Alne evening with wood smoke as well, I go on making pictures of you three, bless us all.
Mary Hanson. I would like very much to have her but is it fair on her? Mummy thinks I shall be an Established Writer afterwards. I wonder.. That is my wish, it is as a matter of fact, necessary, without any micky-the-mouse, we have got to be. Do you think it makes it more Business-like and efficient having her? Let us make a list of questions.
1/ Does it Help?
2/ Do I need someone or is it (a) a pose?
(b) a ruse to make me work ?
3/ Shall we have enough real work for a first class intelligent girl to do?
4/ Can we afford to pay her what she would get in the open market?
5/ Is her interest in the work and nearness to her home a compensation for loss in money made?
6/ Is she on a good thing, i.e. shall we develop so that it will be in due course an important and worth while job?
7/ Is she prepared to take the gamble?
8/ Do you think having someone there is an incentive and an Aid to Work
9/ Am I better without?
10/ Am I a humbug and she Taken In?
En bref, I say yes, after our two periods of 61 days leave when we Open Up the Shop, she can come, and after all she is able to become one of us, and generally frillip around with us. Your job may develop, who knows? In principle I like the idea and I think she will, as she did, develop our “atmosphere”. If she’s came, as the years pass, she can have a really good job, travel included. But there again, is it practical? It is for me to decide, and I think the answer is this. If she is prepared to share the risk on the future we take, and if she is prepared to follow our fortunes, and If you are convinced that I am not a humbug (and really did go to Africa and Salerno) I am all in favour. The only reason I hesitate is that I want to get my finances on a firm basis, and it is a good thing to keep “overheads” at the lowest. Mary, bless her, is an overhead. She must be reconciled to being my little Overhead. In business it is often foolish to avoid overheads which earn their own keep and more. How I ramble. Yes, I want Mary please, and we’ll make her job one envied of others.
I’ve taken so much space with shop that I’ll make this a double letter. So some more shop. Could you get a drawing block handy, and make jolly swift little sketches of Richard? Do them in various typical and unlikely poses, like some of my letter illustrations? I would then write round them, in the form of imaginary letters from you to me about him. Call it Two Year Old or some such. It could be a hell of a good thing. I’d do the book after, or even at the same time. A dozen or so full page drawings, and a few little twiddly ones. The make-up would be excerpts from letters from you to me, beginning in the earliest days. Actually I’d use what you have said, and touch them up. For example, saying Marmalade would be one. We can interleave a lot cunningly. Only three or found hundred word pieces, with a drawing here and there. Make a damn good Christmas book. Think it over and see what you feel about it. He wouldn’t mind. Get the idea?
Yes, one of these fine days you shall have Purcell’s Nymphs and Shepherds.
Good about the dunhill. That will help a lot. Really, being overseas now is very different to this time last year. We have everything. The Naafi supplies Messes with whisky, and gin, in which I am not interested, and sherry and port, in which I am. We get them at 6/- a bottle,* and we have gilette blades, good soap, Watermans ink, chocolate and sweets and fine food. Its absurd. Part of the end of the war feeling. One feels ashamed.
Fancy the C.Sc. Monitor buying something. Did you send it or did they reprint it from something else? Quite a likely market that, and quite respectable. You do have a lot of bother with all this, I’m so sorry. I should waft them around from here, but it would be so slow for rejects. I’ve sent Bertha an authority to deal for me with the film people if they bite. They sent a bloke to see the show and he was very bucked and went away to report to the Magnates. Whether we shall get anything or two guineas or two thousand and seven and three I don’t know. Bertha is a shrewd Scotch lass in whose business instincts I have much faith. She’d get the producing and the acting fees and me the copyright. I don’t know. A hopeful sign.
You were rose-replanting which is a nice thought, good. And a pair of pointed cut willow stakes from the Mill, good again.
A delicious story about Richard and the Loaf of bread. Helping In the House, eh? I like the animals, and the Raffle you went to. He sounds generous with his biscuits, does Candy come into the circuit? Or is Dickie only generous to the stuffed animals?
Bomb dump at Burton shaking your front door. My dear, do be careful! Oh dear, wish you’d come out here.
I have had my feast of Opera. La Boheme on Friday was glorious and delighted me as always. It is the perfect opera, theme and characters and music and atmosphere all combine so harmoniously, and the lovely tunes have so perfect a pattern to the finale, and its so touching, the well meaning silly bohemians fussing about with cordial and buying a little ginger muff when they should have fetched a doctor and given her brandy and kept her quiet. They let her sing away, and they’re so well meaning and helpless, but they do just what Mimi would rather they did do. She’d have hated them if they’d been efficient and sensible. And she was so absurdly nice about the muff. The key, too, she knew Rodolfo had it all the while from Act 1, and she pretends she didn’t. She’s the nicest artificial flower maker (that’s her story) that ever was. She didn’t come for a candle in Act 1, d’you think she didn’t know the attractive poet wasn’t in the next attic? And that the others had gone out and he was alone? And why did she drop the key in the dark? Hussy. Mimi always makes me sharply aware of all that is lovely in you. And she sings so nicely? and either plaintively, or roguishly. You’d be a perfect Mimi.
Then on Saturday we had good old fashioned Lucia, where there is a fine old chorus (oh, the Italian idea of a lot of Scottish retainers in the middle ages was sweet, the kilts, the tartans, and the funny ways of wearing sporrans!) and when people have a good song they come right down stage, the orchestra plays “till Ready” and they sing. Not all one coherent realistic show like Puccini. But the mad scene was terrific. You know, the famous Galli-Curci voice and flute effort. It was a fine show all things considered. Then yesterday (Sunday afternoon) was Trovatore, again with a big chorus and down stage singing. It is real traditional opera, with duels and crowds and a lot of drama. At the end it is very typical of all this kind of thing. A trio, singing like hell. First a woman about to be burned at the stake. Next to her her son about to be beheaded, and thirdly his lover a girl who has already poisoned herself. It turns into a singing quartette when the bloke what has caused it all comes in and sings with them. Its great fun, this music and story and singing, and colour and grand jamboree of the lot. Dinner is served… Very nice too, tomato soup -real – roast beef baked potatoes and tinned green peas, a duff and treacle and a very fire orange. Vino with it, coffee after and a glass of port. Its a ridiculous life I do wish I could let you share, but its strictly against the law to send Naafi home. Not worth the risk of spoiling a Promising Career.
Colonel, Major Baynes (2 i/c Group) and Cliff (Docks Superintendant) to dinner on Thursday, all the Big Shots. heigh ho!
I must do some Things for you, I’ve an idea of one about Mimi, one about being Posted and maybe one about a journey my staff sergeant made in Egypt to spend a day with his brother. How shall I find themes after the war? Village life or just Things as they turn up? How well are we getting in with Posty or Guardy? Do we do as much as anyone else? What do other people do? Cleverer? Could we work up this style of thing into a column somewhere regularly? Sunday Times? Do they take them because, they are sorry for us or because I’m a soldier away from home or as a Business Proposition? Hard to tell. I don’t know.
You and your son, my son. My love to him, Richard-Dick of Rosemary Cottage. His growing awareness should be a good one. He’d be just as gay though in a cave with you or in a caravan. He probably has very few preconceived ideas and takes things as they come. Does he sleep o’nights now? Bless you both, and Candy.
I love you… Ever David XXX
* PART 2 (No. 196) continued from 195