My Dear Bessie

by Chris Barker

  It is the usual practice to swop our free issue of 50 cigarettes weekly for eggs, 10 for 1 egg. We also get 2 boxes of matches; these also fetch an egg each. We do not get many Arabs round here, but in other parts you can get a live chicken for 40 cigarettes. They may be scraggy things, but I am told they eat well. Of course, all trading with the Arabs is strictly forbidden, but goes on just the same.

  And now away. I am going to have a few busy thoughtful days, as tonight got the job of opposing the motion ‘That woman’s place is the home,’ at the first of some debates I have helped to get going here. Am quite looking forward to it. It’s like old times!

  Good wishes always,

  Chris

  13 March 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  It looks as though Air Mail is wunnerful quick these days, your Letter Card of 5.3.44 having fallen into my waiting hand only a couple of hours ago. You must use LCs more and hang the expense, for if your sea-mail is anything like this LC, I shall be writing you poetry in a few weeks.

  It seems that my frankness has not been without its effect on you. For there you are (I was about to write ‘here you are’ till cruel geography poked me) ready, even eager, to go back seven or eight years to Abbey Wood, and here am I so ready to embrace the project, if not you. How far distance has lent enchantment to the view, and disappointment gilded the scene, only events will show. But I warn you now against any prospect of me doing ‘the honourable thing’, and beg you to note that I have not yet, in my pastime ‘affairs’, done anything dishonourable. If you are hopeful, willing, expectant, it is in opposition to the facts, for I confess myself unlikely to possess in the future much more capacity than to entertain (howbeit brightly) as a rascal rogue, roué or rake. So let there be no hugger-mugger about it. – A kind of ‘Mistakes cannot afterwards be rectified’ spirit must reign as you invite me to change your pound, and, I gleefully hand you £19 6s. and a dud tanner* you are only too pleased to accept. I hope you will understand the metaphor. Euphemisms are so bracing.

  Keep on talking about yourself. I promise that I shall treat you gently. Whatever may be true about men concerning themselves with things rather than people (about which I will write at length later) let you and I consider ourselves: – my Army Book 64 tells me I was born 12.1.14, and that at enlistment I was Church of England; 5 ft 9 ins., 143 lbs., Max. Chest 36 ins., Complexion: Fresh; Eyes: Blue. Hair: Brown! (It doesn’t say I was going bald but it’s the awful truth!)

  I am glad my last letter sent your spirit rocketing sky-high. But please to remember the Fifth of November and what happens to the rockets when their celestial brilliance is ended. They descend to earth, flat as a pancake, so don’t start understudying for the lead in another ‘Punctured Romance’; although I am an old (30 years) hypocrite, and when you say you find me ‘so satisfying’, I cannot help but think of circumstances in which you really would do so. But this is all very naughty and Chris-like.

  Now to exult as I read you again; to write you some more; and consider the promise that is YOU.

  Chris

  14 March 1944

  Dear Bessie,

  I had not expected that my Air Mail letter would travel so quickly, and am delighted that you should already have it, and have spent some time, probably, in reading it. At the moment, and for the present, there isn’t a shadow of doubt that we are both in the same mutually approving mood, and that if we were within smiling distance of each other, we should soon be doing rather more than that. Of course, maybe the safety of our separate distances permits us to indulge in these happy advances. Perhaps we would beat hasty retreats into our shells if we knew that the seeds we are now sowing were due for early reaping. I might be on another planet for all the chance there is of hearing you say the good things you’ve written. But how much I enjoy you, how jolly fine it is to know that you really do understand what I write, when only a little while ago I was saying that I felt like Marconi would have done on the morrow of his invention, had all the world gone deaf.

  If I had the chance, I might do a lot of things, or nothing. As it is I shall remain very polite and become as friendly as I dare without undertaking obligations I have no intention of fulfilling. I am safe from physical indiscretion for a long while, but I am also wanting you seriously to see that while we might have fun (certainly I could laugh heartily at the moment!) at a later date, it would not be so funny for you ultimately. I can’t help being your hero – and I breathe heavily and exultingly at your clear, bare admittance; but please don’t let me make you break your heart in 1946 or 47, when I scurry off with ‘one, two, three, or more.’ If I was a wise guy I would not write you and thus encourage your racing thoughts. I admit to a state of gleaming, dangerous excitement as I read again and again your written words. You fascinate and weaken me, and make me feel strong. Presumably you wrote the same in the old days (in an earlier letter I said I was hazy even about any letters), have I become so much more susceptible to flattery, or is the change due to the fact that I have been away from home fourteen months, and haven’t seen a woman (other than about four on a stage) in the last six?

  Don’t be a man-worshipper, or an anything-worshipper if you would be happy. The main difference, emotionally, between men and women, is said to be that a woman is loyal to one man always, but that a man’s attention wanders more than a little. This sex item is the biggest there is, apart from the instinct to survive, because no one is impervious to it and it controls us always.

  I believe and I deplore that too many people with Left views think they must free-love, be vegetarians, atheists, walk on the wrong side of the road, and so on. I think I have mentioned that one chap of 18 who I met in hospital told me he had ‘had’ 35 girls, several on the first day of meeting. This ‘loyalty’ of the woman has been blown sky-high during this war – one of the chaps here asked his girl why she hadn’t written for six weeks, and she replied she had been busy, didn’t he know there was a war on?! You say that men have a ‘much more powerful nervous force’ – I’m not sure I know what this means, but I am quite sure that a chap in love (while he is in that happy state) feels it as deeply as his lady. Perhaps it doesn’t last so long, but while it does it is pretty potent.

  In your letter-card you say ‘I regret to admit I am feminine,’ and later on, ‘forgive me for being all feminine’ – yet, of course, you know that you are bristling femininity now, quite unregretful and not desiring to be forgiven. You know I am male and for the once attentive, therefore you don’t want to be anything but female. You want your old hero to be your new lover.

  What a pity that they have just given me my mosquito net for my second summer, and not a ticket for an air journey home. I am writing these particular words at midnight 13.3.44 – I could have breakfast with you on the 14th, if only one or two people would co-operate. It might be a little late, but what matter. Here am I, wondering when I last saw you and what you look like. I have an idea, I wish I could confirm by personal investigation. Do you still smoke? – a bad habit.

  Expectant, willing, and compliant as you are, I seem to have discovered you anew. I find you very warm and appetising. I rejoice at our intimacy for the present. I simply wallow in your friendly sentiments which I feel as keenly as if a couple of seas and a continent did not separate us. You have smashed my perimeter defences, I am all of a hub-bub, and as I write my cheeks are red and I am hot. When I finish one letter to you, I want to start again on another, as today. I hope that I shall often have something to comment on, rather than initiate my own discussions. I know this strange unity of expression and understanding cannot last, for I feel just as though I was sitting at your feet. This is bound to peter out sooner or later. You say ‘here’s to the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’

  You are a terrific love-maker by letter. I can but wonder what you are like at it in the soft, warm, yielding, panting flesh. Please pardon the rub-out, and the re-writing hereabouts. Truth is that with the morning I became timid and decided on deletion. Let me go bac
k a few lines, say that I can but wonder, and warmly do.

  I must avoid writing one whole letter slobbering, however pleasant it is for both of us, I must make a pretence of telling you all about our camp. ‘Jeannie’, for example, has had seven pups, two of which have been drowned in order to give her a better chance. She had them on Friday, and on Monday she was racing about after her bête noire – desert rats. The other mother, the sow, has hardly energy to move. At least eight are expected shortly. Our picture on Saturday (luckily I was on duty) was as childish as the previous two I have described earlier. Stars Over Texas. Stage Coach holdups, and pistol duels. We are getting more than disgusted.

  Having interposed that sentence I can return to our new thrilling relationship, to be fully enjoyed while it lasts, and unlamented when it is done. I am ‘all for you, dear’ and the prospect of soaking in you, luxuriously for a while, of touching you where you will let me, from here, is absorbingly, naturally, before us.

  Chris

  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 f
airly 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.