1021 -Docks Operating Coy., R.E. CM.F.
No. 109
DEAREST,
Hooray, a letter! Yesterday actually but I have been so busy writing a Thing that I didn’t write. Now I have a quiet sunny Sunday evening at the dock with little on and I can write and then maybe do some more Thing. Your letter brought us up to date to the 23rd. St. George’s Day and Shakespeare’s birthday and death day. I have every day ticked in my diary so nowt is missed which is good. You had been nosing into Dickie’s correspondence and read that I “heard from you occasionally”. I was being funny, but a sort of a Dickie-me joke that poor Mummy wouldn’t see. Actually my missis writes better, more often and more completely than any soldier’s son’s Daddy I know, and I have no complaints only a great feeling of thankyouness for the goodly letters. I’ll have to tell Richard to lock his mail up. Heaven knows what you might read if he left them lying about. Stop being Silly, David. Then you told me of the Ride to Alcester so his Highness has been out of the parish, and he liked it, you say, and looked about him. What a vast world he must think it is, seeing Alcester. A perfect beginning of the idea of a Town. Sort of a Noah’s ark place to begin with. Did Candy go to visit Mrs. Taylor because she was asked or just to call or to be parked or to keep Mrs. Taylor out of mischief. And Granny-Annie to the Knoll. And you and Richard to Alcester what a to-do. And Candy sat in the back, like Mrs. Throckmorton, splendid. I suppose in the end I’ll sit in the back, Dickie drive, you in front with Candy on your knees. I’ll have the “Young Lady Of The Moment” with me, that’s what I’ll have. Ha Ha (Joke) (as Sappers say in their letters.)
Fitz still goes about selling Dickie’s stock then. I do wonder a lot and say to myself, Dickie at six, now, what shall we do, and we talk and do things and go places and so on. Sometimes Its ten, the maximum, sometimes, 1 and whatever is the least Mr. Churchill can arrange for. Good about the eleven more cubs, very good. Whoof. But about Dickie, and you and me, you have no idea how I wonder and think, and fall asleep thinking and then dream of you both again. Perhaps you can imagine. Because I have a quite frisky imagination and I know you well and me, and the rest, the missing Ingredient which is Dickie’s own, I have to imagine. So I think a lot, and look at your drawing, the new one hasn’t come yet, and think a great deal.
I have been busy these past two days on a Thing, a 5000 word story which will either be quite unusually good or else just a flop. It is for now called Portrait of Piero, but may change. I have to finish it this evening, work at it and retype it onto airletters and send it to you. The idea is for the BBC to read it one evening after the news. It’s serious, a problem, an Italian boy of a sensitive imaginative kind who grows up a Fascist and with all their things, – I’ve got all that dead accurate from talks and reading papers and youth manuals and schoolbooks, and then suddenly finds everyone saying the English are all right after saying dreadful things. What is he to think? How is he to continue? See the idea, but its not possible to explain it so briefly. If the BBC hate it, I don’t know what to say, its too serious for magazines such as there are and two long for anything else. However there it is. Or there it will be unless I scrap it all. But it is fun doing it, and I hope it first is finished to reach you and secondly is approved by you.
That Mother of mine has been poorly bad I see from her letter, I am sorry though I sensed and expected it, I wish she would really take care of herself, and when she does come shut up the house and let the men fend and really have a rest with you. Travelling being so very difficult I know you can’t possibly get to Kettering with Dickie, it would help if you could for her to see him. But she promises to get better soon and come, may it be soon, poor dear she works so very hard and all because I’m rather an unuseful son and ought to have arranged things differently. Mind I don’t let you and Richard down the same way. I often worry about myself.
So Christopher, the good man, has been mowing the lawn and talking about cricket to you. He is a good man indeed, I’ve written to him today, slightly moral I fear. Oh, in re the Christopher, Liddle wrote today saying if and when Mrs. Suffield writes he’ll remember my letter and my commendation of her son. He says the school is in fine form, 8000 no, 800 strong and boarders on the increase. I have some Mauritian stamps from Urcoq for him too, coming via you via seamail. The picture must be on its way now, oh dear, I do hope it makes it and that you aren’t too upset. The corner nails are screws.
And I dream of you o’nights, and always think of you and the Orsachiotta before I go to sleep and on waking. I imagine all sorts of things, driving back from some place alone and rounding the corner by the Capp and thinking of you and he and Candy at home with supper ready, I even think out sudden stories for bedtime. Am I a very foolish man? Is it wrong. It is sweet pleasure. Fond, that is me. And your letters are so dear to me, so very dear. I know how hard it must be to find the time. Never mind sending plenty if needs be, but never overtax yourself on my account. I don’t deserve much, and you are so bountiful with eveything, life itself.
