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

Hullo dearest…            SECOND LETTER….

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 should 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 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 I  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 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. oDoes it know the tiles wrong? All my love my dearest…. Ever your  David   XX