1021  Docks  Operating  Coy.,  R.E.  C.M.F.
No. 128
(Franked 19/6/44)

Dearest:
TWO letters yesterday and one for Peter from you, dated in the beginning January 1943 but he thinks it is 1934 and posted in June. He was so pleased as who wouldn’t be at letters from you? Your letters were exciting and full of things.    The chicks coming out, even sort of tabby ones, you Juggins.   And won’t Emily get at them? And the Picture had arrived in its special case by G.W.R. lorry from Alcester.    I must write and tell Lanave.   He is nice. And you like it, I imagined you’d be overcome and a bit upset, because it is a reminder I should think. But so long as Dickie’s great grandchildren like the picture of their fathers Grandfather that is all right. You have it in trust for yourself for Dickie.   Apart from the portraiture his craftsmanship’s good, isn’t it, and the background is brilliant I thought.    I watched him doing that and it looked so odd, just wodges of unlikely colour.   Are you hanging the picture?  And where? Over the fireplace in the sitting room is the only place I can think of, and then I can watch the people go by and the mill lorries and Uncle Jack. It will be interesting to hear people’s comments.  I wonder If the Beare’s will be hurt, their Leonardi di Birmingham portrait is so bad, and Lanave is so good,  He liked it much himself, you know.    I promised him I’d exhibit it some time and Jimmy will do the same.    Its a great relief that it has arrived safely and is now yours in perpetuity. Bless us all. Jack Lawrence will be interested to see it when he knows its there.    Bless us all.

I have mastered the difficulties of this job now and the machinery runs smoothly on well lubricated wheels and I have a quiet peaceful watchful time, it all my baby.  But not much time yet, Peter and Jimmy and I did go to dinner last night at the Giardino degli aranchi and took a couple of bottles of wine with some tasty steak.    This evening I sit at our swagger window overlooking the trim expensive courtyard and the trees beyond and the bay, while Peter and Allan are out along the coast road and Jimmy writes to his wife who is overcome by her picture too, and everyone else is out.

Don’t fuss if there are postal gaps, its not always easy to get letters off, and I do feel guilty if you have to go a few days without mail.    I’ll do some things too, and write to Miss McGrath, thanks for Peters message that its a she and not a he I thought it was Duncan McGrath.   You can cut the Ciro one for the Post if you like, by taking out a whole middle wedge of it about the history of our times. I’ll do another Postal Guardian circuit one very soon, promise. Bertha has written for another play and says she’s rich and can pay more baubles than in the past I’ll try for the sake of the annualness of it all.

Anna Maria loves me a lot, she sent me roses and smiles and Beppino is her brother aged four and   Ferdinando is three, she herself is a dignified and ladylike eight.  They live in the flat over ours. I have a new interest in little boys of two three four now, though I have always admired and respected their sagacity and freshness. But In sort of training for   Richard Dickie-Dido I cultivate their acquaintance and Anna-Maria and I just fell in love with each other with a sort of inevitability over the children.    We parted sadly, she giving me a postcard picture of herself sitting in the sand with the children, endorsed touchingly and I giving her a box of marzipan and a kiss.   Her Father is a plump bottomed little man who is a doctor of political economy, her mother is, I believe, honest but somewhat dressy.

From Christopher a charming letter, reporting most satisfactory progress at school and at cricket, and friendly and really quite fluent with a new rounder style of handwriting.   His spelling is much better and he is quite eloquent and affectionate.   He likes me, I think, which is a rare compliment, because he is, as you say, a person of the best type.    I’d like to be the agent for helping him to a sensible and sane outlook.   His letter was genuinely newsy, too, cricket, school, you, Dickie, his sow and the rabbits, weather, holidays, invasion, cricket out here, matting wickets, topic after topic competently and flowingly handled.   He’s all right, tell Marjorie, as much wits as the next man and good taste and good manners.

The thought of my image, precursor to myself, being safely in your our home is a blessed thought. Jolly good and comforting.   Do you pop in and see me at odd moments?   I bet I like looking at you. It is the sort that follows you about, isn’t it. Candy wouldn’t recognise it I expect.      I had a box of a hundred good cigars given me by an American Colonel yesterday and another this afternoon sent by a U.S.A. Staff Captain with another colonel’s compliments.    They are blokes I liaise with, and they’re overwhelmingly friendly.    They are decent, and in a queer way, respectful to the British out here. Sort of wistful about not being a colony perhaps, no not exactly, but most nice.   Dear me, the end.    Dear love, my picture is a token.    I follow.      Bless you and thank you…