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Capt. J. H. Massey 6th Palestinian Coy. The Buffs Middle East Forces
Letter no. 26 23 Mar 41
My own dearest darling Barbara - I have had your 25th & 26th letters today. The latter enclosed the Dec bank statement & the end of your letter is largely about money. My darling, it is infuriating & heartrending that there should be this misunderstanding, & that you shouldh ave been made to feel so unhappy about it, & after you have been so careful & so wonderfully thrifty. I fell very much to blame for not having anticipated that this might happen, & I should have written you each time I drew anything, so that you would hear from me before the bank statement arrived. As soon as I arrived in Cairo, I put in the first £30 - & I made a pretty big hole in that, by all the things I bought & all my going about. And then when the time came to pay the Hotel bills, Frank's & Rex's money had not arrived, & I had to pay for all three. The only way I could do this was to persuade the Hotel to accept a cheque dated Dec 1st, I promptly had to pay another £30 to Barclays. And then, when I left Egypt to come to Palestine, I thought I would take no chance & paid another 30 in. And now, on March 23rd I have £28 in the Bank, £5 in my pocket, & I do not owe a bean to anybody. I really & truly have not been extravagant, darling - quite the opposite - I am furious to think that you should have felt so disappointed in me as you must have done. As for the continental in Cairo, bed & breakfast was 8/-, special terms for officers, which
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I thought was very reasonable. In this place, there was no room in barracks for the first three days, for the officers - & we stayed at quite an ordinary Hotel, they charged 10/ bed and breakfast. This whole Middle East, or Egypt & Palestine anyway, are revoltingly expensive, & they just seem to be out to make as much money as they can & while the going is good. I can promise you, darling, that I do not subscribe. I do hope my call has reassured you, & that my last letter explaining things arrives before too long. During all my time in Egypt apart from the Cairo leave, left the I.B.D, which is 25 miles from anywhere, twice. And then I went into Ismalia with Frank & one or two people, & we had dinner & a few drinks & came back. I have been in Palestine 2 1/2 months & have hardly been out at all. I have certainly not had a night out or a binge, & I do not expect, or intend or want to have one. I just cannot & do not enjoy these so called gay spots, & on the rare occasions when I have gone out, I have just been intensely bored, rather annoyed with myself for not being in my room writing to you, or reading & overwhelmingly anxious to get away & get to bed as soon as possible. but I'm sure, by the time you recieve this letter all will be understood again - & also the bank balance will be looking very much better. I expect the B.C & V.D cheque was just late in reaching the bank: I don't really think for a moment they will stop paying me - that would be too mean for words, after the way I have worked for them. Unless,
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of course, they began to do very badly, & just had to economise somewhere. Even then I do not believe they would stop it altogether. Peter & Jack have sons in the army - & some of the directors too - so that should act as a certain deterrent to them. And one other thing - £1 a month is taken off army pay, at the source, for Income Tax. I was under the impression that will pay too, was to be taxed at source. Whatever happens, the Incomes must go on - & your ma's money too, of course. Please sweetheart, do not worry again. I am economising very much, & I definately shall not draw out any more money before the beginning of June. I am terribly anxious too, that when the war is over, we have some money, & quite a lot I hope to start a new house, & really be able to decorate it & furnish it as we want it to be, & not, as always before, as our finances have allwed it to be. And if the firm do stop or cut down my money. I will promise you to spend less. Whatever happens, we must have ennough to make a really good start again. I do wish my majority wold come through - that would be good news to cable to you. And as long as it lasted, we could be seeing money fast. IF only that would come, & I get out of this barracks, to some place where field allowance was payable, & at a majors' rate, 1/5 per day extra, I would be able to live on my pay allowance & not touch allowances pay at all. And there is a thing called command pay, which there is a chance of my being paid, in which case, I would even be able to make a profit on allowances. But these are
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4. all ifs & buts, all of which would be v pleasant. But whatever happens, as I gave you in my last letter - as far as pay is concerned I shall not spend more than £3.15 pw - wholly more like £3.00. So that, after the end of May, beginning of June, you can reckon on me taking out of the bank, £12-15 per month. And I will do my very best to make it less than that. I have now given up whiskey. This is not exactly a saving because the beer is rather more expensive. But it seemed to me that whereas 2-3 each evening was not really too much, it might become too much of a habit, & also might begin to increase. So I have just stopped it - & found this perfectly simple to do, so that is alright. In any case, you never liked me to smell of whisky, did you darling? As to potency, my pet, which you mentioned in a previous letter - well, actions speak louder than words, so wait until I come home, my lovely darling, & you shall be the judge. In any case, you did say in your letter, that you did not fear for me, so thankyou darling. I am also trying very hard again, to cut down on cigarettes, & stick to a pipe again or rather, for the first time. I only attempted my pipe some on the ship, when I think the pipeful of ttobacco I borrowed must have been bad stuff. Because I never tried again, & just decided that I did not like a pipe. But, this time I have got hold of some tobacco I like, & really feel that this time I may succeed. I smoked only three cigarettes
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yesterday - & five today. But I have been smoking 20 a day for 16 years now, & so the habit, which is all it is, is going to take a little breaking. I went to a concert, on Wednesday, of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. It was lovely, & I enjoyed it tremendously. The Orchestra was really wonderful, & of course, once again Palestine has gained from the exodus from Germany, & the countries which the Nazis have absorbed & trampled over. The conductor was a man called Singer, who impressed me at times, but not at others. It seemed to rather depend on what was being played, which struck me as being wrong. Surely the conductor has sufficient say in the making ups of the programme, not to have things he is not interested in. Their first thing was King Lear, by Berlioz which meant nothing to me at all, & the conductor & orchestra just wandered through it in lacksadaisical (how do you spell that word?) sort of way, & seemed quite glad when it was over. Then we had the soloist - girl of 15, Ella Goldstein, at the piano, with the orchestra, or course. This was a thing of Rabasteins, & something to do with "D". It was lovely. The girls was marvellous, & a beautiful pianist, but not in the same calss as the few famous men I have heard Moscovitz - Schnokel, Rackmaninoff, Pashman. She played with intense feeling, but seemed to lack technique & finesse compared with these other people. I suppose it is impossible to be first class at that age, on the piano. She had a very ugly style too - which I thought was a pity, because
