My Dear Bessie (8 page)

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 to 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