1021 Docks Operating Coy. R.E. C.M.F.

Dearest,
Postie is making up for lost time!  Last night when I got back from the docks at half past eleven there was a letter lying on my bed, posted on the third of March, and then today, Sunday, came another posted on the 7th., last Tuesday, five days ago.    It makes us ever so near to each other. Grand letters too, though the first was henless. You owe me a hen, please. I can’t get on without them. Like little John I’d like to stay with you “forty days and forty nights”.   What a sweet remark. Your descriptions of him are splendid and the shrewd comment on the quality of his clothes is good too. So important to be dressed well when you’re young, inculcates taste and an appreciation of quality. But you will do him a power of good, even if he doesn’t aspire to the sweet and final sanity of doing nothing all day in the woodshed with a penknife!   Johnny has just come to take me to a Unit rugger match, so I’ll go, because it is fitting that I do.    Its four in the afternoon. I’d like to stay writing in this warm restful room, but I shall like the rugger and one should go.    I’ll see you later and write on.   I’ll also take the two letters and re-read them.   I’ve been writing all day, a sketch called The Sapper’s Dream (Home as he imagines it and as it is) and a handful of black outs, shades of the Fantasticks which I suffered only because it made Frank happy and thus, D, who is, as you say, indeed a lovely lady.    She must look entrancing in a furry cap.   Here we go, arriverderci…  (Italian). Here we are back again. Truly the British are surprising. See it through the eyes of one amazed Italian nondescript civilian.   Bari Stadium, a large reinforced concrete arena of seats, all battered by disuse and misuse and with one bomb dent on the main stand, and the oval of the ground a space of unmitigated soft mud, once grass, onto which the rain drives slantingly.   All is drip and drench. And desolation.    In drive two army lorries one jeep and one P.U.  Out get thirty and more British soldiers, in shorts, stockings and football boots and a clutter of officers and lookers on.   With an oval ball, in the mud and rain, in high glee these strange northerners play violent and rough football, rolling about in the mud, and making shouts of glee and delight.   Very odd.   We won three-nil, a blustering try by Johnny being the only one.   A good time was had by all.    Bless us.   We must be a kind of herringfolk.

I’m going to read War and Peace, but time is limited with these shows, work and all this and that, howsoever it will be nice, yes no. Johnny goes on leave next weekend and I follow him- therein I’m clever, for, if my posting comes through these next two weeks to the Army broadcasting I’ll not be away and if it doesn’t I’ll have a nice week in the reliable Spring.    Over to the other side, of course.

Your dear letters, so very nice they were.    Its horrifying to think of a child of five being made to keep a diary.   Does Bobby?   Its one of the most difficult things in the world to do.   And to do it at five. Nice for the parents, of course, they can read it and see Thoughts of a Child, and a fine memento when the child is old enough to rebel as he surely will, but its as bad as making a child learn to play the violin when it hates it. Worse.    Its ghastly. Oh dear, Dickie will have no such upbringing. Its so selfish of Bobby and Kay.   Dreadful woman, ginger hair stuck up at the back and a coat with the arms flapping, cloak-wise.    But I am not fair. You are so brilliantly sane, and they are brilliantly insane.    I fear they are complacent too, and that’s the greatest sin of all.

Has Mary Hancox been reading about penguins?   The licked stone on Dickie-Dudgeon’s pram is a proposal in St. George’s Island.   What dowry? Avery would look so nice in top hat and tails as the Bride’s father and Uncle Jack (Scarf) Hancox would be a magnificent great grandfather, with a whole clutter of ancestors already laid on.

Its a great relief to me that you like the idea of the picture, though I’m not a Mona Lisa.  Lanave has bought paints in tubes, from Milan, big fat tubes and lots of them.   He squirts about twenty six on the palette round the edge, blacks and blues, then yellows, greens blues and so on and two kinds of white, bigger swodges.   He has a dozen brushes in his hand, one in his teeth and another two dozen on the ledge of the easel. He has a further fifty on a side table and even then goes and hunts a special one from holes and corners.  Two palette knives and a dinner knife and an old pen-knife.   A little pot of turps on the palette and a bottle of it on a table and two jars of liquid on the painting table.   He looks at you for a long while and then, as he starts, shoots looks at you and at the photo pinned to the other side.   He concentrates a lot and mutters to himself.   Wears a little cloth cap and has a thick matted back moustache like a nice little doormat to his mouth.   Has glasses and looks over them a lot.   A bit like Will Hays only shorter and tubbier.   He is very polite.   Peter thinks the portrait absolutely splendid, Johnny says it makes me too young, Jimmy says the mouth is wrong, Lanave says it is coming along nicely, I’m neutral. Wish you were here.   Lanave gets his own way, don’t worry.

I’m sorry you were starved for letters, you poor dear I know what it’s like, but the last letter spoke of two on the Monday and two on the Tuesday so that was all right.    I shan’t shoot poor Michael, and he’s nice to bring his Mother to see you.   You must always have your Court, I’ll encourage it…over to the next this is a double one, see you in a minute.

SECOND LETTER….

Hullo dearest…
As I was saying, you must have your Court, and Bobby and Michael and Ronnie and all of them adore you for your niceness and understandingness. And the homage of young men is your due, the more you have the better. You must go to dances, for the sake of everyone else, so if the Finnimores ask you again, go, and with my blessing.   And tell me all about it.   Do, I would be happy to know you were there.   You can wear some Italian token, a little bit of Mussolini, and shew them.

Fitz’s bill is grotesquely inadequate, it covers some Malaria too I should think, Malaria, headaches, a baby and queries about choking!  All for seventeen guineas.   Do thank him.    So Richard is paid for. Goody. I don’t go without things – you sweetly told me not to, but I don’t buy things.   Cigarettes and tobacco are nearly all free and the few I do buy are at 8d. for twenty.    I don’t drink, messing is shilling a day, and we have theatres and cinemas free when I go which is rarely.    I don’t play cards and clothes are issued, so I have hardly any expenses.   Now I have stopped pestering you with presents, for my own selfish gratification, and to balance the portrait, I spend nothing really. So all is well. The account will slump when my past eight months drawings debit into it but will mend smoothly as the months pass.   And there’s 4/6d Med. Allowance to go into it as well, in place of the old Field and Colonial allowances. We should manage and don’t go without good shoes and a new coat when you need them.   For the sake of Richard’s reputation and for the Young Men if nowt else. Glad you liked the scarf.   There is only some hairdressery things to come, oh and a pair of yellow gloves for the Spring. They’re en route and the mountaineering nails and a little bottle of Olive oil.

Poor darling, all upset when Bobby did the Daddy act with John, I’d be equally upset, I see your vision and know how it must have hurt.

The new hair style sounds good, oh dear, I d like to see it. You always look good, but the best style is down the back, rippling, as you sit at the dressing table in the bedtime scene.   That I see very clearly. Very.

A sheaf, two sheaves, of Times cuttings came yesterday, and I thank you. I take them to the Dock and read them when everything is going ahead nicely. I’m on all night tonight, eleven to seven then a nice hot bath, breakfast in dressing gown and to bed till one, swing section of the show rehearsal at two, Lanave at three till five, Italian lesson at six and dramatic section from seven to nine when as Duty Officer I go to the camp to sleep!  So we go on.

Once more I see Dickie-Doolittle is clamouring for the pen, a dubious omen.   Your writing went delightfully defensive.    I could almost picture the scene.   He may think you sit up too late in bed writing and be trying to get you to go to sleep.   But you do go to bed early now, yes no?   Yes, of course.

Your poor dear, when the scented Spring evenings come and sawing of wood and garden-fence voices are heard in the evenings. And when the birds are busy and farmers are out in the fields and Jim is seen about the bottom of the garden. It’ll be a difficult time for the both of us.    But there we are and there it is and here I am and there you are and all these will become superimposed on one place before very long.    Some people went home a little while ago, they’re there now so I can say so and we were all very jealous, but St. Anthony knows best as they had fourteen days leave and then moved off to the Far East. One does at least know where one is here.

I had an airgraph from little David Wilson the other day, yesterday and one from Anne Maxwell, she remembered that evening before the war and says “I can still smell the garden and Betty’s coffee”.  It was a memorable night for some reason or other.   She had a BBC gloom about the future the poor dear.  Such a friendly kindly note.  I was amused to see that the rather forbidding and nearly moustached McQueen had captured an M.P.    Life is odd.    I expect she’ll still do BBC things in Schools. But Lloyd Williams is out, Anne Bourdillon is out and she may be.   Who will go in?   Ah.  I must call with my bag right at the beginning of afterwards.

Mother’s visit will soon come to pass, she is so thrilled about it. I hope she rests well and tires neither herself nor yourself. She’d love your baby if it were black and a monkey, and as it is gracious and pink she’ll go bats.   You are clever with him, making him such a nice gentleman. I look often at the pictures and every night and morning at the drawing in its frame over my bed.

Tell Mother Anne I love her. And Frank Suffield at Norwich. Ho ho.   He may hop over after a bit, you see. Beach Balloon section. I know.  And Annie with a brace of black ones.  Poor Annie she is always exposed.   Candy hasn’t been in the news lately, does she fare well and hold unthreatened her place in the domestic scheme of things. I could have her out here except it’ll be hot soon and she is not dressed for the climate.

Bye bye, dearest, I know how you feel at times, I do too. But write and I‘ll write and remember and think of the future and give my love to Richard Dickie Dodo and Candy and all of them.    I like the 19th. Century it is safe and stolid and definite and so calm. Does it know the tiles wrong?   All my love my dearest…