My Dear Bessie Read online

  Need I say I am waiting to get your next letter and the next, and the next? And that it is good to know you exist.

  Chris

  PS The other letter can be suitably produced if you get an enquiry – ‘Heard from Chris Barker lately?’ ‘Yes, typical letter’ the reply!

  26 March 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  This war will delay many marriages as it will cause others. I shall either marry quickly (and take the consequences) or court for about ten years, by which time you’d know your future wife as well as your own mother.

  Did I mention I’d seen Shadow of a Doubt during the week? It was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, ought to have been good, and for photography and direction, certainly was. (Do you hate or approve Orson Wells – Citizen Kane whirled me round a hundred times, but I believe I bit it, and I liked its different-ness.)

  My brother was out on a run. As I walked along in the rapidly fading light I saw a familiar slip on the ground, and picked up – an Egyptian pound-note! I hope it came from an officer but I fear that the wind whisked it from a fellow-other-ranker. I was delighted to find it (‘Unto them that hath shall be given’) as my brother is always finding odd coins, notes, valuables. We share luck, and I happily preened myself as I handed him his 10s. just now. The last time I found any large amount was when I was taken as a 9 year old, by my brother, to the AA Sports at Stamford Bridge (I got separated from him in the Underground – those new automatic closing doors were just coming in – remember the guard at the old trellis-pattern gates?). I found a purse, containing 19s. 11d. and a visiting card. My Mother returned it, and with such a horrible ‘you ought to be thankful an honest person found it’ air, that the poor young girl remitted a 5s. reward to me, almost by return post. I always felt the small fortune was a little tainted.

  How do you get on in the Air Raids? I hope you continue to have good luck. If we were together I guarantee we could ignore them, just as I want to ignore everything now, so that I may touch you. And I want to do that badly.

  Is your Dad in the PO? Mine retired a month after the war was declared. Pension £1 5s. weekly. Gets about £2 a week for two days’ work in a bakehouse. His trade was baking before he came in the PO, and when he applied for a job in 1940 they asked him how long since he had been in the trade. He said ‘27 years’. They said ‘OK – start tonight.’ One good thing is that he is entitled to bread and cakes, and can bring home bunmen, studded with currants, for his grandson!

  Tonight Churchill is speaking from London, and I hope to be amongst those who gather round the wireless to hear his latest estimate of the war’s duration. We all take it very good-humouredly but the language is sometimes lurid.

  I hope you are well. I am thinking of you.

  Chris

  At the back of my mind I have some idea of selling books at a later stage in my life. I would, I think, like to start a second-hand bookshop mainly. It’s not for the money one might make, but only on the basis that books are good things whose circulation must assist reasonableness and progress. What do you think?

  13 April 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  I think we are so near to each other that our reactions to similar occurrences are very much, if not exactly, the same. So that you know the excitement I felt when I saw your handwriting on the LC my brother handed me. There was one from Deb and another from Mum; and, of course, I had to read these first. And I could read yours only once, and then had to put it in my pocket, while my poor old head tried to cope with its contents as far as I could remember. You have come at me with such a terrific rush of warmth, and I am so very much in need of you.

  Well, I washed and made my bed (it was six o’clock before I received your letter) and fidgeted around. Then I thought, ‘I must read it again before I sleep’ – so I pushed off to the latrine (where the humblest may be sure of privacy) and read your words again. The comic expression ‘It shakes me’ is true in a serious sense about this deeply thrilling state of well-being that you have caused or created.

  How impossible to sleep with thought and wonder of you hot within me! As I toss and turn and wriggle and writhe I think of you, probably doing the same. Isn’t it blooming awful? I know that if I think of you, I will not sleep; yet I keep on thinking of you, and get hotter and hotter. Phew! I could do with a couple of ice-blocks around me. Finally, to sleep. Up in the morning, my first thoughts, of your nearness and your distance from me.

  Unfortunately there is no likelihood of my early return. I must be another year, I may be another three or four. Relax, my girl, or you’ll be a physical wreck in no time. Regard me as what you will, but don’t altogether forget circumstance, distance, environment.

  Since tiffin I have played a game of softball; had a haircut from a chap brought in specially to lighten us; five games of chess; dinner, a game of netball – scoring a goal though my side lost 5-3 (a lucky goal), then pictures (Three Stooges and Andrew Sisters in How’s About It?)

  As I was saying, relax. Take it easier. In the film tonight there was a crack, that the state of being in love was the happiest way of being miserable. So be miserable happily, don’t look over your shoulder too much; enjoy what is, so far as you can. I am a born worry-er myself, but feel I could be all that you wanted me to be. Probably more important, I know that you are what I want, not in any limited sense, but in all. I want to confide in you. I want to creep into you. I want to protect you.

  You spoke of yourself being ‘guilty of slobbering’ – it’s no crime, I’m proud of it! If your incoherent babblings mean what mine do, it’s jolly good. Regard me as a promise rather than a threat, and pick holes in me where you can – so that I seem less regal! Remember we are both in this together, and that it has somehow occurred undesignedly, unrehearsed, because we had it in us. During the day I simply lap you up and cause trouble at night. ‘Engulfed’ describes my state, too, a rather floundering, uncertain one. I am sorry I cannot relieve your ache.

  I wonder what you look like (don’t have a special photograph taken). I know you haven’t a bus-back face but I have never looked at you as now I would. I wonder how many times I have seen you, and how many we have been alone. Now my foolish pulse races at the thought that you even have a figure. I want, very much, to touch you, to feel you, to see you as you naturally are, to hear you. I want to sleep and awaken with you.

  Let me know if you think I’m mad. When my signature dries I am going to kiss it. If you do the same, that will be a complete (unhygienic) circuit!

  Yours,

  Chris

  * Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes; a social club and general store.

  * The Post Office training course in south-east London where Chris and Bessie had their first opportunity to get to know each other.

  * Entertainments National Service Association; the troops soon renamed it Every Night Something Awful.

  * Sixpence.

  2

  More Than Is Good For Me

  15 April 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  I received today your letter dated 1st March. It has taken such a long time to come and I have felt so disappointed and unsettled at its repeated failure to arrive during the last fortnight, that this may explain my dis-satisfaction as I reached the end. I am puzzled by some of the things you say. Perhaps I should amend dis-satisfaction to ‘unsatisfaction’. I hope you understand the feeling.

  I will attempt to reply to your paragraphs and tell you what I cannot fathom as I go along.

  You ask ‘Where shall we end, Chris?’ Well, I dunno, but I’m sure it won’t be very dreadful. It might be a great adventure for both of us. I have an idea, but I am not wearing my planning trousers.

  Emphatically, I agree that most of us want to love and be loved. Tell me, please, what your reaction is to a marriage where one party is not imbued with one-hundred-per-cent enthusiasm for the other, but marries perhaps for companionship and the wish to avoid loneliness. Do you think she is playing the game?

  If my brot
her asks me why I am getting letters from you, I shall tell him that we are engaged in an interesting correspondence about life. If he asks (and he won’t – but your questioners might) if I am proposing to court you, I shall laughingly deny it, as you (I hope) will do the same.

  So I may write as I feel – would that I could! These words would burn the paper and scorch you. (If you get ashes one day when you open the envelope, you’ll know that’s what has happened!) You’ll recognise my tantrums as they occur. Trouble is that you’ll forgive me before, during and after my stupidities. It will be wise for you to commence the development of (or acquire) a critical faculty regarding me, otherwise I am going to be one big unredeemed disappointment for you.

  I cannot write you daily but I do think of you hourly. You set all my senses humming, and make me sweat. I want to feel you. I want to go with you to a quiet place and tell you with my body what I can only half say in words.

  Yours,

  Chris

  16 April 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  There are a couple of points in your letter which I did not reply to, and will do so now. Dictionaries – although I am what people call ‘a good speller’ I found when I came away from all my reference books that I was very shaky on some things. So when I was in Cairo I bought a small dictionary. I add to my vocabulary as I can, otherwise I should speedily relapse into baby talk. I have always investigated and made a note of unfamiliar words, and I also enjoy learning the exact shade of meaning of all words. It’s no good me telling you anything about quidnunc; you will look it up in a dictionary one day and remember it the better. Perhaps when I give my delightful new-found words an airing I ought to mark ’em with a star?

  This afternoon, with great speed, I received your wonderful Letter Card of April 8th. How I long to be what you think I am, and bring you all you desire. You can tell me no more than you have already done, yet I need you to keep on telling me that I am essential to you, as you, my dear, are indispensable to me. I thrill to you. You write about my ‘powers of self-expression’ – I have none without you.

  You will notice an improvement in my last two letters. It is becoming clearer to me that you are my life’s work, and that I must see that I do hold onto you, and please, please, please, do hold me tight. 18–30 are different ages, but I am happier that you loved me first when you were nearer the former age. I know that I am not the victim of a desperate, blind, unloving grasp. I shall keep on saying I want to feel you, and I want you to know that my desire is no less than yours, nor ever will be. My head is on your breasts, my hands are about you.

  I love you.

  Chris

  18 April 1944

  I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU

  Dear Bessie,

  I have just stuck down a Letter Card, and I must straightaway carry on writing to you, around the subject of yours of the 8th April.

  Our association in the future depends on your ability to put up with me and my defects, not my ability to put up with yours. And that if we are spending much of our time regarding the other as a bed mate that is a very natural thing, since we are likely to be in that position before too long; I hope it doesn’t mean we are very lustful, but if it does, it doesn’t stop me wanting to tell you how I stiffen and ooze as I read your words and imagine you writing them. I am your servant and your master at once. I will command you and be commanded by you. Your breasts are mine.

  I do not feel very happy at the thought of the practical difficulties in the way of setting up house after the war. Every shark in the commercial world will be up and about.

  Unfortunately I used to donate most of my money to various ‘good causes’ and I did not start to save until the end of the war in Spain. I think I had about £75 when our own war started; I did not increase this until I joined the Army. At the end of last year I had (my Mother told me) a mere (for my purpose) £227. I think that I am adding to this at about £2 10s. a week. I do not know what will be required. I don’t think there’s much doubt that we will be old enough. Incidentally, I think that engagement rings are jewellers’ rackets, and that marriage is more properly transacted at an office than mumbo-jumbo’d at a church. I am sorry you don’t already know my views on this. You will have to be told sometime.

  Can you see that it is gradually dawning on me that you are too good to be missed? Do you observe that I am refusing to bow to my own change-ability? Will you tell me that we may be together really one day, and you will hit me if I start wanting to go?

  I am in the permanent state of hoping for letters from you, but I must have flushed my delight an hour ago, when I was handed your LC dated 1st, but postmarked the 3rd. The last three letters had come to me via my brother, and I have been annoyed. He has got an ‘idea’, I feel sure. I had to eat tiffin and delay reading you until I went to work. But now I have done so four times so far. Oh, I do desire you! Oh, I am not really alive except in you, and through you.

  Certainly let us mention marriage. Consider me as the one you will be with always from this day, if you want me and will chance it. You are right about it being ‘heavenly’ – but oh hell, angel, you are a long way away! Bessie, Bessie, Bessie, I want to be with you.

  I love you.

  Chris

  18 April 1944 [Second letter]

  Dear Bessie,

  I think that I will now start to tell you something of myself and family from the Year Dot to the present day. I think this is necessary because I want to (it is very difficult to write – all I want to do is tell you I LOVE YOU) marry you very soon after I return to England, and I want us to do most of the talking through the medium of our letters. There is a lot more to tell you, and I hope to do so. Deb knows much of my history as a person; I want you to know as much as anyone, if only so that you shall never be party to a conversation and be at a loss about it. You won’t remember everything, and I am not certain how I shall proceed. But I think it is desirable. Your time is much more precious than my own, but I hope that you, too, will give me an abridged ‘something’, so that when we do, wonderfully, finally meet, we shall know more about each other than could be obtained by a contemporary or current correspondence.

  We have met only comparatively little in the past – and I expect I discussed the weather as much as possible! Some of the things I tell you will not be news, one of them you will need to spend a little time (at least) thinking about, and all of it I hope will be of real interest because it is about me. My ignorance of you can be judged by the fact that I don’t know if the B.I.M. stands for Ivy, Irene or Itma, I don’t know your birthday, or your birthplace. I want to know your food dislikes, if any; if and what you drink; whether you still smoke; how you housekeep or if someone else does it somehow. Please, please, please, tell me of and about yourself, so that I may breathe you in, and wallow in news of you. For by now you must have serious doubts of your ability to escape marrying me, and wondering what the Dickens you have done to deserve it. Please regard me as a serious challenge, your confidant now, your mate when you give the word, your ‘lawfully-wedded husband’ if you will.

  I think I can make a start on my career now by telling you that when I was born, my Father was 34, a Postman, and getting about 25s. a week. The family was increased to six (I have two brothers and one sister), and had to move from rooms in one part of Holloway, N.7., to a four roomed house in another part. It came under a Slum Clearance scheme when I was 13, and we were rehoused in a 5 roomed house on the London County Council Estate at Tottenham, until I was 26, when we moved to our present place at Bromley, which my brother owns. I am the baby of the family. My sister is 33, my second brother, ARCHIE, is 36, my eldest, HERBERT REDVERS (Bert, after a Boer War General!) is 38. Dad is 64, Mum, 62. My early memories are few. I remember digging big holes in our back yard and lining up for the pictures. I don’t know how much you recall of the last war? I remember the great fun of making cocoa after we had come back, seeing the R33 (which I thought was a Zeppelin); wanting to be a ‘Spethial Conthtable’ when I gre
w up; my Dad, a strange, awkward, red faced man, coming home from India.

  Things here (I’ll leave The Story of My Life II till later) are about the same, except that today we have gone into Khaki Drill which is much nicer than Battle Dress, and can be washed anytime one wants. I am playing chess as usual and Bridge at night when possible. I’d like to creep away somewhere and do a bit of hard brooding about you, but I have to go through the motions of behaving normally, like you. Whatever I do I am conscious of the fact that you are in the same world, and it is a pretty great thought to be getting on with, rather overwhelming at times. I hope the time we are away from each other will not seem too painfully long, and that before 1999 we shall be able to TELL each other what now we can only think.

  I love you.

  Chris

  25 April 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  This will be in pencil because it is the only writing material I have with me at present, as like an ass I forgot to bring my pen with me.

  This afternoon a dozen of us had a truck to the sea, by a different route from that we normally walk. It was a terrible (and enjoyable) ride , but worth it, although I found it too cold to dally long in the water. Our way was through the usual shells, burnt-out vehicles, bits of guns, and odds and ends left by retreating armies. Needless to say none of us were very pleased to discover a bleached skull on the beach, only pausing to wonder whether it was one of ‘theirs, or ours’.

  A pity that today I got your LCs of 12th and 14th BEFORE TIFFIN. After I had read them I wanted ambrosia and nectar, not dehydrated potatoes and corned beef. Consequently I ate little. I have heard that it is pretty serious when your appetite is affected. This is my first experience and I’ll not give it the upper hand.

  The smaller your writing gets, the better I shall like it, please.

  You say that I am sweeping you off your feet, ‘such a terrific love’ you don’t really think it has happened to you before. My dear girl, it has not. I address you as your future husband.