My Dear Bessie Read online

  I think of your breasts more than is good for me. I am sure you are not entirely disinterested in the fact that I have hairs on my chest. Then we start wondering other things. Where shall we live, do we want children; how about your age. You tell me you have £85 10s. in the POSB [Post Office Savings Bank] without knowing I am just writing you that I have £227.

  Thank goodness you did not send me a cross. Really, I am scornful of such things. I have no patience with its religious intent, and I know very well that the gold-cross-laden women at home wear them as no more than lucky charms. They probably forget that Christ was crucified. I hope you didn’t seriously think of sending me any such thing. I must risk hurting you, my love – I hope you aren’t RC [Roman Catholic]. I’ll say no more for the present.

  Can you understand how I burn at the thought of you, and stretch my arms to enfold you?

  I love you.

  Chris

  28 April 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  Tell me of your clothes. Tell me of your room, the furniture, so that I can better imagine you, more easily come to you when you are alone.

  Throughout the years, I have remembered the Abbey Wood sun glinting through the trees that you and I were under. It is my one real physical memory of you – I know that you are not a toothless old hag. As I kick around here thoughts of your body excite me, thrill me, but I want you to understand that our minds are the things we have to keep together. If either of us cheat, it is no good.

  You say you’d like to be vamping me ‘right now’. I wish you were. Although I suppose I would soon be telling you that life was a serious business and we must ‘behave’. I hope you realise that in marrying me you will be the wife of a man who believes in ‘wearing the trousers’, but not his wife’s skirt as well. I do not want you to be terribly, terribly, terribly anxious to ‘obey’. I believe you and I will get on well together and bring the other great joy, not of the physical kind only, but of the mind.

  My autobiographical details seem to have been neglected. I suddenly dropped the idea under pressure of telling you that you are lovely.

  But I will potter along for a bit now. I was never christened. My mother had a lot to do at the time, it was somehow overlooked! Now she is very keen that I be ‘done’ but I am quite pleased with my status. I believe that if a child dies without being christened he must be buried in unhallowed ground. That makes me very keen to rebel against the rubbish of that dictum.

  I went to Drayton Park (Highbury) LCC School. I was probably a very ordinary pupil but good at English. I never won a scholarship despite parental ambitions. When I had done very badly at Arithmetic once I had to stand up before a class. The headmaster said that a chap with a noble forehead like mine should have done much better. I was elected Editor of a new venture School Magazine, but somehow never got out an issue. I left too soon. I remember, at an Armistice ‘treat’ when I was very young, putting a banana in my pocket to ‘take it home to Mum’. When I got home the banana was just pulp. I had the usual fights, during playtime, and before and after school. I supported Cambridge, The Arsenal, and Surrey. (I got these from my eldest brother who has been a big influence on me throughout my life.) I only remember having one ‘good hiding’ from my Dad when I was about 11. I made a swing, tied one end to the mangle, and smashed it completely when it fell down under my weight.

  I started in the PO as a Boy Messenger at the Money Order Department on Mch 8 1928. I enjoyed the experience. It was good to be earning money, and I spent most of my pocket money on second-hand books. I was elected Editor of the Messengers’ Magazine too late to publish an issue, as I left in November 1930, when I started at the CTO [Counter and Telegraph Office]. The first girl I ever went out with was a Girl Probationer, whom I took to see Sunny Side Up, one of the first ‘talkies’. I took out several other Girl Probationers, but I can’t recall quarrelling with any of them. I was Secretary of the Cricket Club, but my highest score was 16, and that must have been unusual or I shouldn’t remember it. I played little football. I must have been poor. I was ‘Junior boy’ for nine months, and had a terrible time being dragged all over the kitchen by my seniors, ‘ducked’ in the water, and generally leg-pulled with. One of my jobs then was to clear away the Controller’s (O.J. LIDBURY, he has got on since then) tea tray. I remember still the pleasure of drinking the creamy milk he used to leave.

  That is enough for this episode. We’ll carry on later if you can stand it. Please try something similar on your own account, as I am very keen to learn about you, very anxious to get an insight into your history. Do you know French, Shorthand? Understand if you can, how much I want to know all there is to know about your past, so that I can better gather you. Just at this moment, I want to rummage around you, run my hands over you, your hair, your breasts, your arms, your loins, your legs.

  I love you.

  Chris

  2 May 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  What more elevating thought, what more useful can this page serve, than to contain a list of the books I have read since I have been out here. I should very much like you to tell me what books you happen also to have read on the list.

  Science in Everyday Life – Haldane

  While Rome Burns – Woolcott

  How Russia Prepared – Mr Edelman Dachau

  For Those Few Minutes – Eric Gill

  Carry On, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

  Lord Jim – Conrad

  De Valera – Penguin

  Victoria the Great – Edith Sitwell

  Literary Lapses – Steph. Leacock

  A Life of Shakespeare – Hesketh Pearson

  Black Mischief – E. Waugh

  Mr Moto is So Sorry – J.P. Marquand

  Sherston’s Progress – Siegfried Sassoon

  Confessions of a Capitalist – Sir E. Benson

  I have read plenty of other stuff, not worthwhile recording as it was unexceptional. If you have not read them, I should like you to get [these] from the library (not buy) as I should like to know that you had read them.

  I hope I used up the public part of this letter card in a useful fashion. I did not like using another of these LCs so soon after the last, but it is about the only way I can rush to tell you what a lovely silly thing you are.

  I have to end this now in order to catch the post (it goes daily here of course), but I hope that you are getting to realise and appreciate that you and I are ‘us’ and ‘we’. Maybe we are only just beginning to feel that vital identity of interest, that significant attachment to the other’s person that will enlighten and enliven us in the days ahead. But everything has to have a beginning. Don’t you worry about any end. Sigh for me, want, desire and need me, as I need you, my dear.

  My love,

  Chris

  9 May 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  I sent you a LC in reply to your near-lament at the absence of mail. If you must have ‘nagging worries’ as you call them, please let them be around the prospects of my return by Christmas (oh, oh, oh, what a chance!), the chances of a house, the helluva job getting things will be. Please don’t conceal your ‘naggings’, please do tell me everything about you (oh, Bessie, I love you!), please continue to trust me.

  Yes, I agree that the body-beautiful is overrated, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to see you in puris naturalibus (I bet you have to look that up. I did!), to drink in your glory, to put my hands on your non-flat bottom, (Bessie, I love you!), to forage around you, to rove over you, to subdue you, to possess you.

  I’ve never had a Turkish bath. I should think that the sun out here has a similar cumulative effect. Will be glad to get your account of the process; will you go again?

  Deb had told me you would be visiting her again, and seeing the American Communist. (I am afraid I have written Deb very little and somewhat forcedly since her refusal to reply to my arguments about my Mother-fixation.) My first reaction is – thank Goodness you haven’t fallen in love with him! It would shake me considerably t
o think you were bound for Alabama or Tennessee. Please don’t fall in love with anyone else, my dear. Please let me be the future recipient of your favours, and maybe, the future target for your rolling pin.

  The other night we had a very amusing 12-a-side ‘Spelling Bee’, Signals versus RAF, won by the latter 64–38, as the RAF have a different if not better type of chap as a rule. I was very successful with the words I was asked and ‘I don’t want to swank’ (an expression made famous by myself in the Junior Section days) and scored 7 of our points, the most of any. Like an ass, I spelt the flower CHRYSTANTHEUM. I must have been thinking of my second name; we were each asked 5 words, I gained the others through correct spelling of words RAF couldn’t manage. My brother was poor (he never could spell) but others were worse.

  Do you get a glimmering of my delight in you, my need for you, my love of you? I wonder.

  Chris

  17 May 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  A lot of good things have happened to me lately. Today, after what has seemed a long, long, time I have received two LCs from you, thus terminating any doubts that I had that you had been bombed, or run off with an American, which seems the modern equivalent of the ‘fate worse than death’ lark.

  Good Thing No. 2 is the news that I should be commencing leave on the 22nd, and should get seven clear days in Alexandria, bathing (which is nothing new but nevertheless delightful), eating excellent food and ices, drinking all the milk and minerals my stomach desires, and looking, once again, at houses and paved streets, young children and trees.

  The third Good Thing is that this week I am doing an easy job, not telephone operating, which enables me to write in peace (I wrote five letters today and have ten more to do, such has been my inertia of late) and sleep at night (tonight is the first time I have had five consecutive nights in bed since November.

  Now to your letters and our love: Where did you go for leave, and with whom? (I imagine, Iris.) Tell me all about it at your leisure please. Please prepare for about a fortnight without letters while I am away. I shall try to write if there are facilities, but remember I am chaperoned.

  Did you understand that my fellow sitter in the photo, the ‘chap named Barker’, was my brother? He is a fine chap, sorry you cut him to pieces.

  Congratulations, before I inconsiderately forget, on the really good efforts you are making at small writing, I hope you’ll maintain the standard.

  So your Dad knows … It couldn’t be avoided. It was inevitable, and perhaps desirable. But do keep on holding him to practical silence. If your brother Wilfred tells any of his pals, the secret (for what it is worth) will be out within a month. You had better tell him, but urge him to treat it as a whisper. I think it is better to keep our state shielded for the present, but no doubt we shall have to talk later. But I want to tell you something first, and I can only do so in my own time. If you feel I should write your Dad, let me know and I’ll do as you say. I always remember ‘God gave us our relations, but he left us to choose our friends’.

  I feel very relieved that you are not RC, and that the cross had no real significance, and that at least we shall not fight over religion, the cause of so much fighting. I am an agnostic, but I have ‘C of E’ on my identity discs (usually I do not wear them, but I shall do so next week in case I get slugged).

  One day I shall actually see you. One day we shall really be together. Then we shall really begin to live, and our education will have begun. I hope you really have got an appetite (the other chap in our tent never eats a dinner, only a sweet) but anyhow I’ll give you one. You’ll never get an easier bloke to cook for if you live to be a 100.

  I don’t remember calling you a ‘flapper’ but I expect I thought it was justified. My dictionary tells me it means ‘A young girl, not yet out’. It sounds as though I was right, don’t you think? Anyway, we are now both flapping wildly at each other in a pretty successful endeavour to persuade the other that this is ‘it’. One day I shall come to you. I shall take you and you will be glad. Together, we will rejoice.

  I love you.

  Chris

  A photo strip sent to Bessie in 1944

  20 May 1944

  My dear and lovely Bessie,

  Today there came your LC of May 10th, to tell me that Iris (but oh no, not Lil Hale!) was now aware of our altered state. It doesn’t worry me at all, and I fully understand the difficulty of concealment. Probably I should have told you to tell Iris, as there is no doubt that she would have divined something. However, I don’t think it will be long before I get a letter from someone commenting on the new alliance. You can think the position ‘safe’, but nothing travels faster than a shared secret. But please do not accelerate the publicity if you can help. If you can’t help it, well, I haven’t it in me to rage at you. I just would prefer you to keep it dark.

  One thing that I really do want you to guard against is ‘sharing’ me with anyone, whoever it may be. For goodness’ sake don’t quote any ‘funny bits’ I may rise to in my letters. Please do not refer directly to anything I say, recognise that this emotion I feel is for you, not for anyone else. So don’t quote me. If you think a thing I have said is worth repeating, do so as though it was you who had thought of it. I do not want that to read the least bit unpleasantly, what I intend expressing is my desire to come to you direct and fully, and stay with you, not dispersed. On other occasions you will find I am a jealous and selfish lover who demands the un-demandable. I shall snarl at appropriate intervals to suitably impress you. I am not afraid of the interpretation you will give to any act or thought of mine, but I do not want an audience of two nor desire the help of anyone else. Do not expect others to share your view of my virtues, please do not try.

  You say if you lose me you will have lost all. Nonsense. First, I am not ‘all’. Second, you are not going to lose me through any act of mine. I am going to hold onto you as tightly as I can – a sort of death-grip!

  No, I should not wish you to go out to work, though I should resist you becoming a home-tied, house-proud drudge. I don’t know about children. I am glad you don’t sink to the bottom upon entering the water. I can’t swim very well, you know, but I can keep afloat and I have confidence. We shall swim together one day. I’ll ‘find you lazy’ you say. You’ll have to improve, if you are, but I don’t suppose you are. If you are, I’ll shake you. (Aren’t I horrible?)

  You must understand how I ache for you, want my light-brown arms to enfold your white body, my hands to forage around, my body to give you its message, my whole being to dominate you yet be subject to you. I want you to receive me. I want to pierce you and be part of you. I want to tell you that I love you.

  Chris

  25 May 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  I am writing this in ‘Alex.’ The first leave I have had in 16 months. You can understand that I am a little elated to be my own master – be it only for a little while. We only have one military function to perform, i.e. salute every officer we pass. I salute them with great gusto, believing the while that my act is another nail in Hitler’s Coffin!

  27 May. I am now in the new, clean, bug-free billet, and am enjoying the change from the desert. Have had many fine ices, ice drinks, and meals hastily cooked and nicely served. It is nice to drink tea from china cups and see the whole of the face when one shaves.

  The clothes of the people here (‘Europeans’) would make you go green with envy. Very fine cloth, well made. I have yet to see a pair of trousers under £5, prices are very high. There are many clubs here, and some are really fine, in leafy, green, quiet surrounds. Have had some swims, but the facilities are not so good as I had expected, as the sea wall prevents bathing too near the central part of the town. Have been on a ‘sight-seeing’ tour with the YMCA, this morning, but it was not very good, some of the alleged Roman wall-scrawlings looked to me very much like 1944 daubings.

  Have had a number of photographs taken and I think some are like me. We must have a lot done, as my Mother wails
that my eldest brother is looking so old, and we have to keep on having photos done till we get one which says the reverse. Will send you copies later. There are many luscious ‘come-hither’ types around here. I must tell you the whole yarn later on. I have bought a ‘Swan’, but as you can see by the bad writing, the nib is not very suitable.

  Strawberries are 2s. a lb. here, potatoes 6d. a lb. I am looking forward to getting your letters upon my return. For me that is the only ‘snag’ of this leave. I hope you fully realise just how I feel. My apologies for this very poor effort. My brother is a foot away!

  My love.

  Chris

  11 June 1944

  My dear and lovely Bessie,

  How can I start to reply to the seven letters that awaited me when I arrived here, the two that came the day after, and the one I received yesterday? Shall I reply to them chronologically, or in order of importance?

  These letters of yours are just like an English river running through green fields, clear, refreshing, bright, confident. You come rippling down at me, surround me with your beauty and your meaning, and just as I am thinking ‘that was wonderful’, you come to me again to say that you still are.

  So will you accept my humble thanks (you make me feel humble) for these many evidences of your feelings, and allow me to commend you on all the fine, small writing you did. Don’t try to make it any smaller or you’ll ruin your eyes.

  The story of my return from Alexandria is a sorry one. I will leave all the other leave details till I have replied to your other letters, but I must tell you this. We did not last out the third week, but on the Wednesday had to en-train. I awoke in the barracks with a bad headache (I never have headaches usually) which persisted throughout the train journey which lasted the usual 24 hours. My brother had to cart all my kit about, while I carried only the rifles. Arrived here I saw the Medical Corporal, went to bed, had tablets, slept a little. Following day saw the MO [Medical Officer] who gave me a good general examination and said there was nothing wrong with me. He excused me duty. More tablets and bed. The following day I only had a pretty bad ache around my eyes, again excused duty. Today I am somewhat cloudy in the eye-region, but expect to be bunged on the switchboard any minute.