Fri 2-Nov-56: Louvre, bought chicken. Out with Jon Williams.
Paris
Sat 2am
3 Nov ‘56
Darling Dorothy (I can’t build on that).
You cannot be more alone than when you have sat down in a strange city and you wake up and you don’t know where you are. But you still have to find your way out without maps, or anyone to help. What makes it worse is to come across a tram shed full of people who are asleep on the concrete floor & you leave 4 Francs for their grog in morning. I am, at last, up in front of a fire at 31 Quai des Saint Augustins. Give one the pip wouldn’t it? Please take no notice of my terrible state of thing. I am useless till I come home. I have had bloody Europe and all its stinking problems. Poor Roley has to go to Hungary – and a worse revolutionary correspondent you would go far to meet. He hates the idea – but I have introduced him over the phone to Robert Edgley, so perhaps he will not feel completely abandoned.
My very loved girl, I either write as I am or not write at all. I’m sick of gawking at bloody buildings. You can as far as I am concerned shove the whole lot up – for a gum tree. They say there are plenty of eucalyptus in the south of France and may be beautifully true – but since when do you pay £20 to look at a stick from the bush when you know that within 3 weeks you’d never get away from them again in your life? Don’t you dare be upset because I am writing in a screw ball mood. It is the time when I need you & wish so much for a few words. Even if they are all wrongly associated and you are perhaps disappointed. But I am not getting any screwier – or more alcoholic – just that I show it more to you. I think a little more of that slushy guff would be in order. Coming from you – I could take it. To tell the truth, I would like, very much, if I could get a letter on the 20 or 21st Nov asking me to get back to the rest tout suite. Nevertheless, I can assure you that I can get on without letters. (But not much!) (I have had many happy affections – many letters from you – since I have been at Roley’s place. It is the only really place I have had a letter.) You are a bloody dear little girl, and I am just beginning to be very greatly in love with you and even if any villainous opportunities arise I never can take them because my thinking of you and your loyalty makes my fred look like a very cold piece of Graham. And I mean that mug! You are my woman, & women! Trouble is, I keep thinking too keenly about it all & what’s more, I am really not kidding, when I say I’d like to be home. I hope you miss me as much as I miss you. I am fairly simple in my tastes. I hope it is warm enough, when I arrive, for you to be wearing a nice pair of scanties, or none at all! Bold, bad, boy! Don’t take much notice of me. Oh what hypocrisy. You indeed take a fred well[?] If the curse is on I don’t care one damn – And I know you are willing anyway. That lounge gives me the first thing – when out of the blue – you became, my wife.
Later – This is a love letter and I am sending it to you because I love you and you have to take me as I come! I love you very much, indeed now, And don’t forget, to remind me, when I am your horrid friend, Bill XXXXX your husband man