My Dear Bessie (2 page)

And then I had a stroke of luck. I had mentioned my book to Fiona Courage, curator of the Mass Observation archive at the University of Sussex, of which I am a trustee. She mentioned the recent arrival of a comprehensive collection of papers of a man called Chris Barker, a pile of boxes that included newspaper articles, photos, documents and many letters – a musty, lifelong stash. I arranged to visit the archive immediately. After ten minutes in a room with the letters I was sure that his correspondence with Bessie Moore was just what I was looking for. Within an hour I was close to tears.

That these were valuable documents would have been evident to the first historian to encounter them. Almost all their letters were handwritten, many dashed off with evident hurry and distress. (The physicality of correspondence is another pleasure all but lost to us now, and one need only look at the manic array of stamps and inscriptions and directions on the outer wrappers to understand that these letters did not enjoy a smooth journey.) Shortly after my visit I was talking to the man responsible for
placing the papers at the archive, asking to use some of them in my book. I expressed the distant hope that they may one day form a book of their own. Permission granted, I selected about 20,000 words from just over half a million, and interleaved them within my existing chapters.

When my book was published a few months later, readers responded to Chris and Bessie with enthusiasm; rather too many said they skipped through the main chapters to discover what happened to the couple next. Shortly afterwards, Chris and Bessie featured in a series of performance events called Letters Live, where superb readings from Benedict Cumberbatch, Louise Brealey, Lisa Dwan, Kerry Fox, Patrick Kennedy and David Nichols won them even more fans. And so, by what I can genuinely claim to be popular demand, here is a fuller account of their story.

What lessons may we learn from their exchanges? First, that the generous intimacy of letters casts a spell like no other. Grand histories have no time for the peevish minutiae of the infested billet or the unfortunate wartime shopping purchase, much less the silent devotion of lowly combatants. But beyond the grand sweep of adventure, it is these incidentals that hold us most: the Larkinesque disappointment of the film show; the jealous sideswipe at a former companion; the corduroy trousers ahead of their time; the cadging austerity that wormed its way into the soul; the way a postal delay brought on by a thunderclap over France could cause a person to fear the very worst.

Secondly, we know that Chris was a breast man. He had all the standard urges of a healthy male in his lustful prime, compounded by desert deprivation. The sexual highlight of the
week was too often a man dressed as a woman in a touring variety show. Chris did not fail to express this hormonal bottling. In my edit – reducing more than half a million words to about 85,000 – the simplest task was trimming the references to Bessie's chest, and his desire to embrace it in a multitude of original ways. One imagines that even Bessie would have tired of this malarkey after a while, although perhaps not. It is clear from her letters that she needed constant reassurance that he was not going off her; moreover, her own frequent references to her anatomy seemed certain to arouse him further. (In the second half of their correspondence, having seemingly satisfied his urges, Chris shifts his lustful gaze towards the purchase of carpets.)

It is also clear that they wrote with far more passion than they could ever express in person. Chris repeatedly regrets being tongue-tied and ineffective during their two intermediate meetings. Their graphic intentions may have gone some way to alleviating the sheer damn dreariness of it all (‘We put up a tent. We take it down,' Chris writes at the war's end with the weight of all the wasted years upon him).

I am certain that for years to come we will read these letters with a sense of wonder and delight. Something magical happens here, as well as something commonplace. The postal service to which Chris and Bessie dedicated their lives in turn rewarded them – and us. In the many years that followed their written romance, the couple lived to tell their tale. But they never told it like this.

What appeals to me in particular is the lack of heroics. Our correspondents are vulnerable, fearful, occasionally pitiful. They frequently berate themselves for their thoughts and actions. Yet it would be hard to imagine a more immediate expression of naive,
rambling and utterly candid engagement. When the war is still, the couple create their own turmoil. When rockets fill the air, their own turmoil becomes an even greater reason for survival. I'm tempted to suggest that, while unannounced in the grand Churchillian speeches, it was for the likes of Chris and Bessie that we were fighting; not so much for the sunlit English pasture as the freedom to unite lovers upon it.

1

A Smashing Reply

5 September 1943

14232134 SIGNALMAN BARKER H.C., BASE DEPOT, ROYAL SIGNALS, MIDDLE EAST FORCES

[Tobruk, North Africa]

Dear Bessie,

Since Auld Acquaintance should not be forgot, and I have had a letter to Nick and yourself on my conscience for some time, I now commence some slight account of my movements since arrival here some five months ago, and one or two other comments which will edify, amuse or annoy you according to the Britishers' war-time diet or whatever you had for breakfast.

The ‘security' advice of a Signals officer that in our travels we should keep our bowels open and our mouths shut seemed not to have been heard by the populace en route for our port of disembarkation. Wherever they were, they shouted ‘hooray', waved Union Jacks and cryptically gave the ‘V' sign.

The behaviour of the troops on board ship was bad. They shouted, shoved, swore and stole to their black hearts' content. I lost about a dozen items of kit, and was able to replace most of it from the odds left about on the disembarkation date by chaps who had first pinched for the fine fun of it. I cannot include my razor in this lot. That was removed from the ledge I had placed it on, as I turned to get a towel to wipe it.

Our disembarkation arrangements were perfect and after a not uncomfortable rail journey we were brought to the above address. I had expected to be parked on a pile of sand, and told it was ‘home', but the depot is a very pleasant place, surrounded by pine and eucalyptus trees and spotted with frequently irrigated earth-gardens where grow wallflowers, daisies etc. The water comes from a tap, and one sits down to meals. There is a church hut, quiet and fly-free, an Army Educational Corps hut, where are excellent books, a good NAAFI
*
(so far as these autocratic institutions can be good) and a cinema.

A little further away is a tent, run by voluntary labour, where refreshments are served (not thrown at one) at reasonable prices, and there is a lounge, library, writing room, games room, and open air theatre, where a free film show takes place weekly, also a concert. There is a lecture one night, bridge and whist another, and a more ‘highbrow' musical evening another night.

Directly I arrived, my brother applied for my posting to his unit, and after two months of Base life I started on the wearying but interesting journey to him. I met him, after a separation of 26 months, and had a fine time talking of home and all that had happened there – the rows and the rejoicing – and in the
evening walked through the sandy vineyard to swim in the blue waters.

Since leaving the Post Office Counter School and joining the Army, a period of twelve years, I had little real rest. I was either actually on the counter or doing some Union work. If I did relax, it was not for long and I was conscious of being guilty. Since joining (or being joined to) HM Forces, I have had a great deal of leisure, and I have spent most of it reading and writing.

Oh, the Pyramids; yes, I have seen them, sat on them, and thought what a gigantic case for Trade Unionism they present. How many unwilling slaves died in the colossal toil involved in erecting these edifices? And how insignificant the erection compared with Nature's own hills and mountains?

I visited the Cairo Zoo, happily in the company of two young Egyptians who were being educated at the American mission. They made the day a success. The cruelty of having a polar bear (noble creature) in this climate, and the effort to console him with a 10 second cold water dip!

Excuse the writing, and confusion of this effort. But it's me, alright. I hope you are OK Nick. It's a long way from our Lantern Lecture on Sunny Spain at Kingsway Hall!

All the best, Bessie.

Chris

14 December 1943

Dear Bessie,

I received yesterday your surface letter of 20th October. I read it avidly as from an old pal, noting that though time has chattanooga'ed along, your style remains pretty much as it was in the days when we had that terrifically intense and wonderfully sincere correspondence about Socialism and the Rest Of It, unlike the present time, when, hornswoggling old hypocrite that I am, the Rest Of It seems infinitely more attractive. Thanks for the letter, old-timer. I am sending this by Air Mail because it will have enough dull stuff in it to sink a Merchant ship.

Yes, I remember our discussions over ‘ACQUAINTANCE' and my views are still as much ‘for' as yours remain ‘against'. I have, perhaps, one hundred acquaintances (I write to fifty) yet I could number my friends on one hand. The dictionary:-

ACQUAINTANCE: a person known. FRIEND: one attached to another by affection and esteem.

You are known to me, and while I have affection for you it does not amount to an attachment.

I am sorry that Nick and you are ‘no longer', as you put it, and that you should have wasted so much time because of his lack of courage. You must have had a rotten time of it, and I do sympathise with you – but are you writing to the right bloke? I'll say you are! Joan gave me my ‘cards' a couple of months back, though I had seen them coming since April, when I got my first letters.

I can quite believe your estimate of the way the London-leave soldier improves the shining-hour. You can understand
chaps who get three or four days leave before a campaign opens, painting the town red, but unfortunately quite a large number who are in comfortable Base jobs have their regular unpleasant habits. When I was at Base our evening passes bore the injunction ‘Brothels Out of Bounds. Consorting with Prostitutes Forbidden.' Where we collected the passes there was a large painted sign, ‘Don't Take a Chance, Ask the Medical Orderly for a –' doodah. The whole emphasis of Army Propaganda is ‘Be Careful', even the wretched Padre at Thirsk, when he said a few words of farewell, said merely that most foreign women were diseased, and we should be careful.

At the Pyramids when I found a preventative on the place I had chosen to sit down on, I thought it was a nice combination of Ancient and Modern! Whoever told you Pyramids told the time was pulling your leg. No iron or steel was used, cranes or pulleys. Ropes and Levers only. Their erection was due to Superb Organisation, Flesh and Blood, Ho Heave Ho, and all the other paraphernalia of human effort.

I bumped back along the desert road, meeting my brother very easily and getting him successfully transferred into my Section. We share the same tent and this situation suits us fine. We discuss everything in common, and have a fine old time.

Much rain lately has made an ornamental lake of the wide flatness; but we have now got grass and some tiny flowers where before was merely sand. I have transplanted some of the flowers into a special patch we have made into a garden. Bert and I play chess most of our spare-time, on a set we made with wire and a broom-handle. There are some dogs about the camp, which
is far from anywhere. No civilians. We have two pigs fattening for Xmas, poor blighters, though I believe the uxorious male has given the sow hope of temporary reprieve.

I hope you hear regularly from your brother and that your Dad and yourself are in good health.

Good wishes,

Chris