Free My Dear Bessie by Chris Barker

we will try and make it worse, shall we?
    Do not let the emphasis on the physical make you think for a moment that I under-rate your mentality and intelligence. So prepare for me as though I was an ordinary person, not the Agha Khan.
    Yes, my Mother will be a bit of a nuisance to her prospective daughter-in-law. Not because she is mine, but because in-laws are nuisances. But I shall be able to help you where necessary and when the time comes. My attitude in similar circs. would be ‘Blow the lot of them’. I am not over-fond of relations myself.
    You say ‘I am so much in your hands’. Would that you were, my dear. I am afraid of losing you. I am so glad the Yank turned out a bit of a wet blanket. I shall try hard to keep you. Forgive me for my constant thought of your flesh. Your body is always before me, and I find my own crying for union, companionship. These gifts which you wonderfully bestow on me are the greatest I could ask.
    I can now commence to tell you about my leave. It could have been so much better had you been there: as it was, my brother’s pretty constant attendance was a great nuisance. I could have wept sometimes. I had all sorts of great hopes about buying something in Alex., but in the event, I had to admit defeat. Cloth was tremendously dear, and its despatch under the eagle eye of Herbert, impossible. So I am afraid that all you will get in a couple of months’ time will be a kind of leather shopping bag, with zip fastener. You’ve probably got half-a-dozen, or maybe you wouldn’t be seen dead with one. But perhaps it isn’t a shopping bag. You must tell me what it is when you get it! Anyhow, it’s leather and should be OK for soling your shoes. Next time, please tell me what you’d like, and (if I can get rid of Bert for a little while) I’ll try hard to be perspicacious. What is your shoe size please?
    Please have a thought of me.
    My love.
    Chris

    16 June 1944
    Dear Bessie,
    I am now starting my account of the visit to Alexandria.
    In Alex. you can get what you want if you like to pay for it. Two chaps in our party had nights out which cost them £3 apieceeach time. They assured me it was well worth it. Almost anywhere you go, little boys, old men, or the women themselves will say ‘Want a woman?’ ‘Want a —?’ ‘Hello dearie.’ I must say that I shudder somewhat at the thought. A boy about 6 in one street invites you to buy a preventative, with as much loud enthusiasm and as little discretion as the chap who sells newspapers at Oxford Circus. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Well of Loneliness and other items are on sale everywhere, but although they are advertised as unexpurgated, judging by the disappointment of a chap in the train who had bought one, they are pretty much like tracts.
    Street entertainers are more numerous and original than our own, there are never any singers or bands only. Monkeys and dogs jump through hoops at their masters’ behest. One man has a couple of long batons, which burn at the end. He pretends to swallow them, but only puts them in his mouth, where they go out. A ‘good’ one is, he swallows paraffin (I mean puts it in his mouth), then expels it into the air, putting a match to it. Done quickly, it seems that he is breathing fire … Then he lays back on a great nail-studded board, while his mates dance on him, after which dancing barefoot on a bag of glass is child’s play. All this to the accompaniment of drum-banging and other noises.
    One of my nicest afternoons was watching cricket, on matting-wicket surrounded by a fair amount of pleasant looking grass. We had tea as we watched. I had a macaroon.
    On the last night I was able to leave the barracks, and spend an hour with ‘Mohamed Hassan Ali’ at one of the Clubs. He gave an ‘Hour of Magic’, and picked on me to be his stooge. For half-an-hour, at first rather embarrassed, I was his assistant, up