My Dear Bessie (5 page)

15 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

I suppose that Spring out here has the same effect on a young man's fancy as it is popularly supposed to do at home, because I sent you a LC on the 13th, an a.m. Letter on the 14th, and here again, for the third day running, I am putting pen to paper to
relieve my rushing thoughts, which are all about and of you. Unfortunately we only get one green envelope and one LC a week, but the latter is censored in the unit and therefore not suitable for my purpose. We only get one of this LC type monthly, and here I am spending two months' supply in three days. What does your Father think of your several letters, and do tell me that it is still you I am writing to, and not you, plus Iris, plus Cliffie, plus –?

For goodness sake disregard everything I have said that sounds the least endearing. This is a fever that I have which makes me hot and dispossesses my mental faculties whenever I think of you, which is more and more often. It is irrational, illogical, nonsensical. I am hopelessly lost in contemplation of YOU – and I last saw you – when? Yet I have heard from you – applauding, approving, invigorating. I feel a King. I think I made a mistake about you years ago and I rush to make amends – yet I cannot rush physically to you though I positively ooze appreciative emotions and impulses.

Tonight I have to speak for fifteen minutes in that ‘Woman's Place is the Home' Debate. I should be deciding what I am to say, and how. But here I am, improvidently assuring you of my poor surgings. In a month or two, I may revert to brusque bonhomie. For the present I am entirely ‘gone' at the thought of you being in the same world. You suggest in your LC that men are less emotional than women. I, at least, am as emotional as you. I revel in your sentiments, I return them in full. Whatever the reason, for whatever the period, at this moment, you have me. To be sensible, I should withhold all this, to avoid your inevitable later disappointment. But I simply cannot.

I was quite OK before I got your first letter. I was rational, objective. But now that you have my ear – I must give you my heart as well! No doubt it is wrong, certainly it is indiscreet, to blurt out such things when the future laughs that only present conditions make me like this. But I am like this. I am always consulting my diary to see how soon you will get my letters, wondering how soon I will get yours. I feel that you are doing exactly the same, and share my upset. I can't do anything without wanting to put my hand out to you, to touch you. I know you would encourage me. I find you wonderful, you delight me and thrill me and engross me. But as I said earlier, disregard these purely Spring emotions. I might mean it very much today, but it is tomorrow that matters in such affairs, and I am certain to revoke a dozen times in the long tomorrow. This is a real sane note to end on, as I sit here, hot-faced and desirous, ready for you as you are ready for me.

I am but a miserable sinner!

Chris

19 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

Here again to greet you, four letters in four days – and really wanting to write four each day. Stupid and silly, but since my thoughts are
around you and I am pulsating still, I am going to follow Oscar Wilde's advice ‘The only way to resist temptation is to succumb to it'. Really, you should reply to me that I am an ass, and that you have been kind enough to burn my words before I want to eat them. But I am sure that you won't, and that almost for certain you are down with the same ailment, wanting me the same as I want you.

I want to say I'm sorry for Abbey Wood and the opportunity I missed. I want you to say you're sorry I'm miles and time away from you, that you fully welcome me, and glory in my present affected state. I warn you of the transient nature of my emotions. I cannot say I love you, because tomorrow I shall be sorry for doing so.

Do not tell me anything you do not feel. And of what you feel, please tell me everything. Discard dignity and discretion and live knowingly. Tell me what you think, in your letter that is not liable to be censored like this one. You delight and thrill and excite me. I want to touch you, to feel you, to possess you.

Now to the impersonal part: The Debate took place OK. Everyone was there, forty in all. The proposer was a decent chap, a Scottish signalman. His seconder was a Major, mine was a Lieutenant, jolly good chap, also a Scot. I had heard that my opponent was a good speaker, and I had wondered if I would fail to shine. I need have had no doubts. He had written his speech word for word and read it from the paper, which he held in his hand. I've a bad memory, and at present, anyhow, I am more concerned with the possibilities of you. After the almost grim speech of my opponent, I just got up and sparkled. I made them laugh when I wanted them to. I just had them in my hand. I had to stop at fifteen minutes, but I could have gone on for fifty. Imagine
how cockahoop I was – I was far and away the best speaker there. After all this – and we were overwhelmingly argumentatively superior – the vote ended 35 for 5 against. In other words, man's deep prejudice was undisturbed by argument.

This afternoon I visited our hospital, some fifteen miles off. At an exchange a couple of hundred miles away there was a chap with a very high-pitched voice, just like a nagging wife; I had not heard him for a couple of days, and on enquiring his whereabouts was told he had collided with a grenade. So I thought I would pay him a visit and cheer him up. He was very lucky, and only got badly sprinkled with shrapnel. No fingers or hands off. He is said to be 17 years old. He looks 15. I got a lift (there is a nice ‘taxi' spirit on the road here) there in a truck which was taking [a man] to hospital with smallpox. I hope I don't get it!

Coming back to the camp, I found a tortoise, not more than three inches long. I put it in a grassy tin to show my brother; during the three hours it was confined it made ceaseless efforts to get out, and when my brother had seen it, I sent it on its travels again. Once, we despatched one after writing ‘Barker' in indelible pencil, on its back! A horrible thought is that many of the beetles around hereabouts are the same size.

I trust you to receive me gently and forgivingly, not to expose me to the ridicule of the third party, and let me go quietly when the storm within me has subsided.

Chris

20 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

Life here is not bad if events elsewhere are borne in mind. I should like to watch the ducks in St. James' Park, but I daresay they themselves get a bit scared at the nightly display of human ingenuity, 1944 model.

In these parts I daresay we take (perhaps I should say, ‘I take') a greater interest in ‘human' things than we would do at home. A sow is due to have young – that means a daily visit to the sty. She has them. Before breakfast that day I take my first look at piggywigs four hours old. The camp dog, Jeannie, produces seven lovely little pups. It's a treat to see them snugly around her and a lark to speculate on their parentage. We once had a cat who had six kittens. The day they were born the presumed father did a bunk and hasn't been seen since. Of course, he might have gone up in smoke, following contact with one of the thousands of mines still littered around here.

I hope you are OK and fairly happy. If you ever get a chance to come abroad – don't.

All the best,

Yours sincerely,

Chris

21 March 1944

Dear Bessie,

I was surprisedly delighted to get your LC of 12th, today. It's a blooming nuisance how other people take such a keen interest in ‘affairs'. The only way of holding them at bay is to tell them nothing. ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive' my Mother used to say to me. I've deceived a little since I first heard that. Accordingly, I enclose a letter you can leave in a bus without giving me heart failure. If you think my friend Ivy (of whom more later) would be interested, what more natural than that you should show it her? Please, please, let my admittance of you to my heart be a splendid secret for us both, to be enjoyed so long as it lasts, and remembered pleasurably if and when it ceases.

You will be replying to letters I haven't precise remembrance of. A pity, since I very much want your reactions. I want to know whether you are feeling in the same exalted state as me, and I hope you'll ‘let me have it' anyhow. I have felt increasingly nervous about your reception of some of my words. I can only ask you to read them as though they were poetry and not regard me as altogether mad. I may be sorry that you will no longer think of me as the ‘strong, silent' type. But if I gabble now it is because your approach has found me in a weak spot. I must tell you of the feelings that you have aroused, because for the once I am primitive and the respectability veneer is off. It is not easy to write when, at one point, a letter may be censored, and I hope you'll make allowances. I think you will have gathered by now that I am
like a raging torrent, and as you know there is no arguing with such things. I am impatient and intolerant of anything but you, and although I am bound to discuss nonentities and mediocrities, through it all I want you strongly.

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.