1021  DOCKS OPERATING COY.,  R.E.   CM.F.

DEAREST HEART,
A letter again, posted on the 18th. with DICKIE’S DAY which enchants me, and a lock of hair which gives me emotions unexpected and indescribable.    Its lovely hair, and it curls and its delicate and so tiny and soft.    Now I have something indeed.   And the little drawings are grand.    Its a busy day he has, – and other people around him indeed.    What a day.    And rain water for face and ears!    Candy is probably secretly scoffish about that.  She would use honest lick. But then you women all do have different ideas.   Rainwater, indeed. Not Asses milk?    But it does sound nice.   Can I have a ration when I come home?    Or is that a hopeless principle to expect?   We are dressy certainly.    Gee whiz., what a queue there would be outside the bathroom if we were all at home, and if he used the bathroom.   And its all right about the bars of the stove.    Be warm, the pair of you.

I’m glad the first parcel has come, the sandals weren’t what I wanted, I wanted svelter ones.  I’ll find some.  Leather here is poor so real shoes are no good, better at home, but they go in for sandals a lot.    Like some with, wooden soles?    They’re the mode here, because of the leather scarcity.    I bought all those things in Castellammare, where we were for a month, where the Jackdaw was in the Piazza.  The toy, Rapheal, came from Sorrento where I went shopping. The boxes coming are from Sorrento, your’s and the Docs. I’ve not seen any other animals worth sending but I’m watching out.    Jack has heard that one of his parcels has arrived and his .wife had to pay ten bob duty.    Did they sting you?   Pay from the bank if they do, from my money. I hope the succession en route doesn’t get you in for a pile of duty. But never mind if you do, the cost is cheap here. Someone has a box which has arrived damaged, I hope mine doesn’t.   And Washbrooke’s wife with admirable candour has suggested that when they sold him the stockings they “must have seen him coming”.    But there again I think he got his from a different source. If they fail, then take the wish for the  deed.

We had seats for the concert on Sunday you remember.    But it was so lovely a day that the O.C. decided to assault Vesuvius, and Jack and Peter decided for the volcano. But I decided to stick to my first decision and went to the concert, thinking, rightly, that I’d be nearer you with the Fifth and some opera than with a volcano.  It was a grand show. And Allan and I are taking a car on our first free fine afternoon and going up.  The others reported it as an awe-inspiring experience. You drive well up and climb with a guide for an hour and ten minutes.  Very steep, very rough and very hot.   At the end you walk on a hot pie-crust which rumbles beneath your feet and the crater explodes with great whistling puffs every now and again and sends a shower of sparks and flame and smoke high up.    Larva bubbles about like great twisted ropes and if you spit on the rock it sizzles up and all that.   All sulphurous and volcanic and a good view. But interested though I shall be, things of nature don’t really “get” me. I remember a mountain in Wales and a Sunday.

This afternoon I went out with Allan after lunch to help him buy stockings for his beloved Ruth.   After a while I was overcome with a nausea for the scene and fled home to my room.   What got me down was the shabbiness of everything, the shoddy shops, the slouching Italians, the worse slouching Americans, who ate and drank and sloped and slapped about.   I yearned for a British suburb even, with tidy gardens and clean houses and clean people and slow policemen stopping to speak to a tabby cat on a wall, and efficient postmen, and clean busses and good pavements and drains and gutters and sewers and all that goes to make life lovely.    I’m better now, but indeed, what know they of England whom only England know. These Italians squeal so and sqwawk and wave their hands and talk too much and together, and wear raincoat-like cloaks and are so like Bobby’s Kay.  Ineffectual and bathworthy. Poor dears, they’ve been misgoverned for so long, and bombed to blazes by the R.A.F. and now they are leaderless and overrun, and one must be fair. I take a revolver at the docks to our brave cobelligerents who fly from their work when any Flak goes up, laughed at by our chaps and Pioneers. But we’ve only had German bombing, not the R.A.F. which is as different as chalk to cheese. The German float vaguely about and drop bombs, the R.A.F. come in countless droves and drive and aim and smash their bombs home, ignoring flak and fighters. I am very pro-R.A.F. and engage in violent argument any superior fool who blahs about Brylcream or Glamour.  But even though these Italians have had medicine we shall never have, they are craven.

Phoof!  an outburst.    I’ve been looking at Italian 1940 magazines with ghastly pictures of Churchill as a Jew, the Royal Family proved to be jews, and everything decent about us and ours mocked savagely.   As these papers had a very large sale, I am dubious about the race.    In a few years time I shall produce these things if necessary to keep us from getting sentimental.    But may he I’m misjudging them all, and anyhow, the Neapolitans are always awkward and always have been.   They hissed Caruso off the stage which is courageous if it is trying of them.

Enough. This evening I went to the Italian Class at the billet where thirty of forty soldiers sit three times a week under a charming Italian woman and learn. She teaches well, slowly and patiently and now I can make little sentences …Ella ha una scamera larga …not camera, its room. Io ho un padre e una madre. Noi abbiamo una tavola alta..questa camera ha due finistre e tre porte, and so on.   And you are…La mia Fidanzata…my sweetheart. To Dickie you are “Mia madre”.   Your aunts are Gli Zii, which is so expressive.    Anyhow, I wanted to get the syntax right as the vocabulary isn’t difficult.

I’ve sent you another article today, called “FRATERNISATION’ For the Post-Guardian-Spectator circuit.

A new Censorship ruling has come  out; and campaigns can be discussed two weeks after they are over and places visited can be mentioned, but not present locations not moves. As for campaigns you guessed we were at Sicily, the Pachino peninsula one, right in the front row of the stalls at H hour on D Day and the same at Salerno, which was a bigger show.   We were in the middle there. After that, we stayed on the beaches, until we hopped up to Casetellammare and then I went to Salerno itself with H/Q itself and then from Castellammare we came here.  There wasn’t much battle to go into about the North Africa one, I know a lot of people who were there. Sicily was all right after the first two days. Salerno had a longer run. Now we are static Base Troops and lead a life of luxury and comparative plenty. It was all quite an experience. Oh we shot over to Tripoli, to get ready for the Salerno show, hence the camel. But to more important topics.   Dickie will get the idea that Teddy is always there and when he does grow up to such adult appreciativeness he’ll find, I think, the Perfect Companion in Teddy.  After all I was four when I first had Teddy or when he first had me.

Oh, what about the doctor’s Bill, shall I send a cheque? Is it better taste?   We don’t want him on tick, so that Fitz can take him back again in a plain bag, or by plain stork. Through no false vanity, but merely because you liked it, I’d like to read the sonnet we did.   Could you put it on an A.M.L.C. for me, with a real letter as well, so that I’m not disappointed? Letter from Auntie-Edie and Mother, jointly and from Mr, Scott, busy being a fireguard and a treasurer.   He was a friendly soul. That tiny curl of hair shall not  leave my pocket, in my wallet under my identity card and photograph.    I don’t think anyone has ever sent me a finer present nor a more treasured one. A shipload of parcels from Italy, with the rarest art treasures would be insignificant compared with that,   may I never take it for granted.

It is superb, this perfection of motherhood, of yours.  I can see that in ministering to our son you are not only fulfilling your instinctive duty and natural desires, but ministering to all that the child signifies to us, to you and to me.   He is a fortunatus, with so sensitive and sweet a mother.   He will be loving and lovable, inherent in him from his mother’s nature. It is all so genuine, so natural, so inextricable a combination of the primitive and the superbly rational, this love of ours and this care and zeal of yours for our son. A son, too.

Mother writes always of him, and is so excited about your letters and your descriptions and your goodness to her, you fail in nothing.    She asks that she be there when I return, and surely she shall.    How wise I was, how wise St. Anthony was, to make things so fall out that I waited until you of all women came along. Whatever I shall be of good it will be your credit.

We live happily here, well and gay and of good cheer, and we all have you at home in our minds, but I, I honestly think, more than any.  I am so sorry for other men.

Take care of yourself, be happy, live in tranquillity, and be content with your son.   He is doing his best to make up for his father’s absence. I’ll repay him, zoo, engine workshops, even a shipyard if he likes. And he shall frisk on the sands at Langland Bay and I’ll not be snifty ever.   He shall play at Assault -landings and we will sleep in a tent on the sand, if he is pleased. That’s a lot to promise.

Bye bye my dearest, La mia fidanzata, kiss il mio bambino and blessings on la mia madre-in-law-Annie.    Time will pass, and we shall be together.
Ever your own…
David