Letter To An Unknown Soldier

Bernardine Evaristo, Writer

Mallerton Mews, Barlage Common, Summer of 1969

Our Billy (or should it be Betty?),

Oh give over, what you need is a frock, some lippy and a bit of powder to take off the shine. A nice handbag wouldn’t go amiss, neither. I went down to Paddington for the last time yesterday and wanted to tell the gawpers come to pay homage to you, That’s Our Billy and he were always trying on Mother’s best dresses when she were working late at Gallsworthys and Father was passed out in the parlour after hitting the gin.

You could get away with it when you were five but fifteen year later, it’d become a bit of a problem, and not just because you’d grown to twice the size of Mother. That’s why Our Napoleon were always trying to have his wicked way with your legs. He couldn’t tell the difference. Nor, I’m sorry to say, could you.

I know I was your younger sister but I felt so protective, worrying about where it were all going to end, not thinking you’d die fighting a pointless war that took an entire generation of our men. I never married, Billy. Too many women, not enough men, and I were never one of the lookers. Closest I ever got to a man was you.

Turns out you weren’t alone in your predilections, neither. These days some of them are quite brazen and they’ve got this thing called, very rudely, the Sexual Revolution. Women want equal rights to men but I thought, Our Billy wanted the equal right to dress like a woman, which rather defeats their argument. From what I can tell, it just means women have the freedom to wear skirts that show off their front and back bottoms. Disgusting. You wouldn’t want to walk upstairs on a bus behind one, Billy, or rather, you probably would - to get tips about ladies’ underwear. Some of the lads even wear flowery trousers and blouses. You’d be in your element.

What I think is this, they can keep their equality when it comes to blowing each others’ heads off. There was another big war after your one, Billy, which took all our lovely young boys again. They brought in these coloureds to replace them and starting going on about ‘race harmony’, which at first I thought was about the fights that break out at the annual egg and spoon race at the village fair. I don’t like them, the coloureds, and I never want to speak to one, neither.

Sometimes I pop into Middleton’s Department Store, yes, still there on the high street, and peruse the dress racks, wondering what you’d like.

I’ve been given six months, Billy. It’s those cigarettes Father gave us as nippers to keep our chests clear until we couldn’t stop. It’s going to be a terrible death, just like his. Like yours was, I suspect.

My last thoughts will be of you prancing around the house pretending to be the mistress of it. I never laughed so much again in my life.

Yours, in this life and the next,

Ethel

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