am sending you a few copies in order that you can see what a hotch-potch of old news and English newspaper rubbish it is. It has frequent typographical errors, and is very unreliable. It puts the wrong headlines to news items, and is more amusing than informative. Once it said the Aga Khan had come fourth in a horse race, another time that Somerset had declared at cricket 1301–7.
I am not sorry you did not join the WAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Air Force], because most of the chaps seem to regard uniformed women as uniformly willing to be pawed about. One of the girls in my district used to push her breasts into my stomach (it seems that she was a little short! – anyhow, I used to feel it was like that) and hold my arm, every time she saw me. This was around 1937–39, not in the younger days, when I thought, like most youths, that I was handsome. Anyhow, this girl joined the WAAFs shortly after war was declared. And I don’t think it was patriotism.
It is the usual practice to swop our free issue of 50 cigarettes weekly for eggs, 10 for 1 egg. We also get 2 boxes of matches; these also fetch an egg each. We do not get many Arabs round here, but in other parts you can get a live chicken for 40 cigarettes. They may be scraggy things, but I am told they eat well. Of course, all trading with the Arabs is strictly forbidden, but goes on just the same.
And now away. I am going to have a few busy thoughtful days, as tonight got the job of opposing the motion ‘That woman’s place is the home,’ at the first of some debates I have helped to get going here. Am quite looking forward to it. It’s like old times!
Good wishes always,
Chris
13 March 1944
Dear Bessie,
It looks as though Air Mail is wunnerful quick these days, your Letter Card of 5.3.44 having fallen into my waiting hand only a couple of hours ago. You must use LCs more and hang the expense, for if your sea-mail is anything like this LC, I shall be writing you poetry in a few weeks.
It seems that my frankness has not been without its effect on you. For there you are (I was about to write ‘here you are’ till cruel geography poked me) ready, even eager, to go back seven or eight years to Abbey Wood, and here am I so ready to embrace the project, if not you. How far distance has lent enchantment to the view, and disappointment gilded the scene, only events will show. But I warn you now against any prospect of me doing ‘the honourable thing’, and beg you to note that I have not yet, in my pastime ‘affairs’, done anything dishonourable. If you are hopeful, willing, expectant, it is in opposition to the facts, for I confess myself unlikely to possess in the future much more capacity than to entertain (howbeit brightly) as a rascal rogue, roué or rake. So let there be no hugger-mugger about it. – A kind of ‘Mistakes cannot afterwards be rectified’ spirit must reign as you invite me to change your pound, and, I gleefully hand you £19 6s. and a dud tanner* you are only too pleased to accept. I hope you will understand the metaphor. Euphemisms are so bracing.
Keep on talking about yourself. I promise that I shall treat you gently. Whatever may be true about men concerning themselves with things rather than people (about which I will write at length later) let you and I consider ourselves: – my Army Book 64 tells me I was born 12.1.14, and that at enlistment I was Church of England; 5 ft 9 ins., 143 lbs., Max. Chest 36 ins., Complexion: Fresh; Eyes: Blue. Hair: Brown! (It doesn’t say I was going bald but it’s the awful truth!)
I am glad my last letter sent your spirit rocketing sky-high. But please to remember the Fifth of November and what happens to the rockets when their celestial brilliance is ended. They descend to earth, flat as a pancake, so don’t start understudying for the lead in another ‘Punctured Romance’; although I am an old (30 years) hypocrite, and when you say you find me ‘so satisfying’, I cannot help but think of circumstances in which you really would do so. But this is all very naughty and Chris-like.
Now to exult as I read you again; to write you some more; and consider the promise that is YOU.
Chris
14 March 1944
Dear Bessie,
I had not expected that my Air Mail letter would travel so quickly, and am delighted that you should already have it, and have spent some time, probably, in reading it. At the moment, and for the present, there isn’t a shadow of doubt that we are both in the same mutually approving mood, and that if we were within smiling distance of each other, we should soon be doing rather more than that. Of course, maybe the safety of our separate distances permits us to indulge in these happy advances. Perhaps we would beat hasty retreats into our shells if we knew that the seeds we are now sowing were due for early reaping. I might be on another planet for all the chance there is of hearing you say the good things you’ve written. But how much I enjoy you, how jolly fine it is to know that you really do understand what I write, when only a little while ago I was saying that I felt like Marconi would have done on the morrow of his invention, had all the world gone deaf.
If I had the chance, I might do a lot of things, or nothing. As it is I shall remain very polite and become as friendly as I dare without undertaking obligations I have no intention of fulfilling. I am safe from physical indiscretion for a long while, but I am also wanting you seriously to see that while we might have fun (certainly I could laugh heartily at the moment!) at a later date, it would not be so funny for you ultimately. I can’t help being your hero – and I breathe heavily and exultingly at your clear, bare admittance; but please don’t let me make you break your heart in 1946 or 47, when I scurry off with ‘one, two, three, or more.’ If I was a wise guy I would not write you and thus encourage your racing thoughts. I admit to a state of gleaming, dangerous excitement as I read again and again your written words. You fascinate and weaken me, and make me feel strong. Presumably you wrote the same in the old days (in an earlier letter I said I was hazy even about any letters), have I become so much more susceptible to flattery, or is the change due to the fact that I have been away from home fourteen months, and haven’t seen a woman (other than about four on a stage) in the last six?
Don’t be a man-worshipper, or an anything-worshipper if you would be happy. The main difference, emotionally, between men and women, is said to be that a woman is loyal to one man always, but that a man’s attention wanders more than a little. This sex item is the biggest there is, apart from the instinct to survive, because no one is impervious to it and it controls us always.
I believe and I deplore that too many people with Left views think they must free-love, be vegetarians, atheists, walk on the wrong side of the road, and so on. I think I have mentioned that one chap of 18 who I met in hospital told me he had ‘had’ 35 girls, several on the first day of meeting. This ‘loyalty’ of the woman has been blown sky-high during this war – one of the chaps here asked his girl why she hadn’t written for six weeks, and she replied she had been busy, didn’t he know there was a war on?! You say that men have a ‘much more powerful nervous force’ – I’m not sure I know what this means, but I am quite sure that a chap in love (while he is in that happy state) feels it as deeply as his lady. Perhaps it doesn’t last so long, but while it does it is pretty potent.
In your letter-card you say ‘I regret to admit I am feminine,’ and later on, ‘forgive me for being all feminine’ – yet, of course, you know that you are bristling femininity now, quite unregretful and not desiring to be forgiven. You know I am male and for the once attentive, therefore you don’t want to be anything but female. You want your old hero to be your new lover.
What a
