by Chris Barker
* Citrine was General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress.
7
Error of Judgement Regarding Salmon
28 March 1945
Dearest,
We arrived at Kings Cross at 1.30, got in the train, stretched out on empty seats, and more or less slept until 9.30, when we changed at York. We had another change at Edinburgh. I thought of you walking down to Charing Cross. We had tea, and shaved in hot water, and are in the Camp for tonight.
I hope you will not let the lack of news in the next few weeks make you worried. I shall soon be writing from Italy to you, trying to convey all you mean to me, all you are. I very much hope you will soon get some rest from the rockets, and that the Germans will collapse and assist my return to you, which will probably be not so long as we fear. Perhaps a year, possibly less than that.
I do not think we could have come any closer these last weeks, without making the parting unendurable. Regard, or try to regard, my visit as a link between the days of letters when we were finding each other, and these days when we know how great is our mutual dependence, how much we depend on each other for life itself. You know that I love you and will always love you. I am pledged to you. I am yours. You are mine. I want you.
I love you.
Chris
10 April 1945
My Dear One,
I do not feel in a very good state for writing at the moment, as the ship has been rocking a good deal, and I have succumbed once to the irresistible urge to be sick. However, Bert himself has been seedy and a great many other faces here have turned yellow above their Africa Stars, and I am in good company. We have now got ourselves onto a pretty good job aboard ship, each morning ten of us have to clean out the Ship’s Hospital. It gets us out of other jobs, like Mess Orderly, Guards, sweeping the decks, so Bert and I get on happily with our three baths, the lavatory pedestals, and similar number of wash basins. I am not too keen on doing the Scabies bathroom, but never mind. Three weeks ago, when I was a temporary gentleman, the chap in Lyons’ ‘wash and brush up’ washed out my wash basin, now I am doing the same.
Tonight there is a Sing Song for Other Ranks. One of our officers has asked me to do 50 words on it for the Ship’s Newspaper they are starting. I told him I was out of sympathy with such things, but would let him have the item, though I would not go myself. I have just written the few words required and hope to hear the others shouting their heads off, so that I can mention a few tunes ‘sung’. Very rarely does anyone start any educational or informative activity on ship. They assume that all we wish to do is laugh like healthy young hyenas. And ‘they’ are probably right.
You are putting your clock forward tonight, so you will be in advance of me for awhile. Reveille is 6 a.m. on ship, but we do not rise much before 7, and then I think of you still slumbering.
All the lads are buying hundreds of cigarettes, at 50 for 1s. 8d., and feeling happier the further away from home they get.
I hope you did not weep too much (if you did weep). And, if ever you do so again, let it be only at the hardness of our separation, never in despair of our future meeting and life together. I have become more than a little woebegone at our post-war hopes of a home, by ourselves. The figures lead me to think that it will be ten years before we get the chance to choose. I expect you will have to be discreet in what you say to your Dad, but it seems to me that we shall be forced to live at 27 after I return for a little while, in order to prospect for a place. When the war is over I know you will buy what you can to ensure we do not have many troubles in equipping our own home, and, if you can manage, to start house purchase (I know it is an extremely tricky business, but you could write to Estate Agents, and Simpson, Palmer and Winder, Southwark Bridge Road, SE1 would help you legally, and fairly.) Shall I write my Mother telling of our plans, and asking her to let you have what money you want? As you know, I have £350, and you nearly the same, so we could raise £700 for a first payment, if Simpson’s counselled it.
Took my shirt and trousers off last night for the first time, a great treat, as one gets very hot and sticky sleeping in clothes below decks. The nervous ones are now all breathing freely again. Strangely, I have hardly thought of submarines during the voyage, although I had been fairly apprehensive whilst on land on leave. I think the feeling wickedly arose from the thought that, had we been hit, we might have got back to England as survivors’ leave!
We got two bars of chocolate at Glasgow, and have also had four on board including Fry’s Sandwich variety, which I expect you’d like. Sorry I can’t share with you, as you did with me. I am waking up four or five times during the night, but very quickly going to sleep again. Several times I have thought I was still at home, and once when I woke like this I put my hand out as though to touch you. I shall always want you, always love you.
Chris
11 April 1945
I am now once again in Italy, and everything is going as expected. I shall be leaving here shortly, and shall not be very sorry, I fancy. The dust is everywhere (much as the sand was in the Desert), and it makes us dirty and thirsty.
If I say or write a thousand times before we meet again, ‘I love you’, I want it always to come to you as a fresh, vigorous affirmation of faith, of deep feeling of my need of you, my desire for you. We are so much strengthened now by our meeting: I have seen you, your eyes when you looked at me – and I hope you’ve seen, and will remember, my eyes. I think I shall have to write to you rather differently from my 1944 items. I am now too much aware of you, too moved within me by the knowledge of you and the fact that now we are one. We now do know what we mean to each other. I think correspondence is going to be more difficult in the light of this, and I know (it is wonderful to be so sure) you will forgive me for my faults where they occur.
It is appalling to think of not seeing you for a year – if that be the period. ‘Making the best of it’ will be a hard job. I shall try to be humorous where I can be, but I shall not be surprised if you cannot laugh. And I keep on thinking of all the things I might have said to you, the things we should but didn’t discuss. I think and think what a fool I was. But I suppose it was the character of the leave, all this recent upset and complete shock, that made me afraid, indecisive, careful, cautious, diplomatic, wasteful. What else was I? But yet it was wonderful, it was LIFE with a capital L, it was – YOU ARE – so much better than I have imagined. We needed such a meeting to make real our happy state, to be really certain we were indispensable to each other, to be really sure that our lives are joined for ever.
We are in the shadow of some mountains at the moment, and this makes it very hot, for the sun here is full and certain. (Didn’t we have grand weather?) We have spent today at the Quartermasters, and are now ‘Compleat Soldiers’, a horrible melancholy. We each weigh a ton. It was grand to travel lightly, but those days are over. This is not a pleasant place, as they incline to treat you as a ‘rookie’. I must finish this in ‘Five Minutes’, the man in charge has just said, so must conclude now. I am eager to get your letters. I expect they await me at my new unit. My thoughts are of you. Very much. I know that yours are around me; I feel the protection of your love. And I want you.
I love you.
Chris
14 April 1945
Dearest,
When I got your four Letter Cards yesterday after a day’s travel in a truck on dusty Italian roads, it was not unexpected, but it was still the most wonderful thing that I can hope for. For goodness’ sake don’t picture me as a strong, silent man, patiently awaiting his turn to go home, happy meanwhile to do his bit. I am not strong, I am weak – as weak as you are. I resent our separation, our living apart. And I resent and violently object to it, inside me, very, very much more now that we are so certainly suited, so confirmedly assured by our brief meeting.
You say I exceeded your expectations. You must know that, high as they were, you exceeded mine. I am glad, too, that we now have these joint memories of being together. You say I am a w
onderful lover. May I say it’s wonderful to love you and be loved by you. May I say how thrilled and wonder-struck I was by your sweet reception, your lovely welcome. No, I want you to keep all my photographs, and I hope I shall be able to send you more.
I don’t think you a ‘silly gink’. I do know that you are intelligent. Don’t say I am flattering you, or that I am deceiving myself, please. Wasn’t it almost unbelievably wonderful to be in each other’s company! I am sorry I was below par, and rather dazed throughout, and that you yourself had been going through a bad patch. The decision not to call up the over 30s disgusts everyone here. It makes it harder for us to be released.
Glad your vapour rub is now settled (myself, I think it went away of its own accord, irrespective of Iris’s advice). I am mightily impressed by what I have seen of you, and I love you more and more, it seems, with every day that passes.
I love you.
Chris
15 April 1945
Dear Bessie,
I am glad you have signed for your leave, and hope that when the time comes the weather will keep as fine as during my visit. I hope you manage to get good digs in Devon. There will be a great rush this summer, and a great harvest for the landlady.
I shouldn’t worry any more about the war against Germany. It won’t go on all the summer, as you fear.
I hope you manage your Spring Cleaning without any broken bones. I am sorry I am not there to assist. But, who knows, next Spring I may be parading with the Hoover for your inspection. I hope so.
I am glad that you solved the Problem of the Missing Grapefruit. Here we are lucky in an abundance of fruit and fresh vegetables. (For example, today we had potatoes, cauliflower and carrots, in addition to Yorkshire Pudding and mutton.) The food here is good all round, in fact. If I worried about nothing else I should be quite happy.
I hope you are well, and not too busy.
Love.
Chris
16 April 1945
My dear private and family matter,
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. – Don’t just read and pass on. Please read this reiteration carefully and hear me saying it. Blow me, I am mournful at the thought of our distance. It seems so absurd, so wrong, so impossible that only a little while ago we were together and now we are apart. We were settled down to writing to each other, before, but now – what can I write? I can’t help having a cheated feeling, and not much interest in anything else but you. Before, I loved you, my idea of you. But now, I have seen, heard, touched, smelt the living warmth and flesh of you. I was moved by you, and inside me still there’s the new kind of knowing whirr which newly and more strongly unites us.
Guards and parades cause me to worry very greatly. If they occur (Guards) once every ten days, I shall spend five apprehensive days preparing and five days recovering. We had our first real parade today, up at 6, frantic preparations, and passed off OK as far as I was concerned. The inspecting officer checked each of us for some error we were supposed to have – collars undone, medals awry, belts too high or too low, and so on. But although I am terrorised and find it an ordeal, he was not ungentlemanly, and that was most welcome. We had about a half-hour’s drill afterwards, not with our rifles, which we simply carried (and nearly broke our arms), and although I was always on the wrong foot, my misdemeanours went undetected, and my life of crime continues.
On Saturday, I saw Thank Your Lucky Stars (Eddie Cantor, E.E. Horton, Bette Davis), a lot of nonsense, badly projected. The religious influence in this country is sickeningly real and obvious; it is maddening to see the priests walking along the streets. Yesterday we went for a walk, down the road which leads to the nearest town. We said ‘Bonner Sarah’ (that is the pronunciation) to four women sitting on a wayside seat. They were chanting hymns, replied similarly, and then continued chanting as we walked on.
I think of you getting up, going to the station, getting to Charing Cross, walking back from Park Lane in the evening. I try hard to imagine the grandness of you, at long distance. I hope you are not feeling too bad, my darling, my love, my dearest. I’m not so good, myself.
I love you.
Chris
28 April 1945
My Dearest,
I returned to camp yesterday evening, after having had a very nice little run-round. Within a couple of hours, along came the mail, your arms were around me, and I was with you.
One subject in your letter cards I must comment on. The question of being ‘afraid’. If you read my LC from Greece again you’ll see in what connection I used it. I was afraid of marrying you, not because of my ‘trouble’ (which you rate low, and anyhow is your responsibility now), but because, at all times mortal, in war, man takes more risks than usual. I do not want to marry until I am sure that only natural causes (including your cooking!) can separate us. Lying on my stomach in the dark cold night, with the ELAS banging away at us, I realised with clarity that we have no automatic assurance of life together until both wars, German and Jap, are over. I do not want to leave a widow (perhaps with a child) behind to mourn me. It is bad to mourn at all, but it is (in my understanding) much worse to mourn as a wife than as a sweetheart.
Marriage provides certain conveniences, but I do not think they were large enough to make it worthwhile for a month. As you say, we are together, anyway. I wondered if I should marry you, and you should marry me, in order ‘to be sure’ of each other. But the more we were together I thought (I was right?) I saw you understanding that you could be sure of me, and that you knew I believe in you as absolutely essential to my future. Four of our Section chaps married this leave. I do not see that now they are any closer to their wives than I am to you. Marriage would have perhaps been a conventional act. But I rather ponder whether it isn’t a greater achievement to love one another as we do without having any legal tie. I hope you really have no regrets about not being Mrs Barker just at present. I have spent about 25,000 miles on the sea this war, and been under fire for 30 hours without hurt. I think I shall return OK, and I shall return to you, as fully and completely as if we were married.
I know that this separation is worse for you. I cannot convey by words the mounting need for you, the extra rottenness of being apart, the greater unbearability of separation, the growing love, the ‘more and more and more’ tumult that rages now that I have seen and touched and approved you in person. To think that we have touched! What luck I have had, to awaken to you at last, and to find you still ready. I hope you will find the time pass quickly – already it is nearly five weeks since we parted – I know that you will remember the way I have looked, and the enchantment we experienced together when our flesh touched. I think of you, and try to reach you, always.
I love you.
Chris
28/29 April 1945
Dearest,
You say I said enough while on leave. I am disgusted how little I said, about ourselves, and about my impressions of ‘life abroad’ and the Army. I am not very happy about my deficiencies as a sweetheart – I think I teased you too much. I should have been on my knees before you, confessing my utter dependence on you, imploring your interest though I may seem to have it, telling you always that without the hope of you, I should starve and thirst. I could have been so much more eloquent, yet my stutterings satisfied you. I am sorry we wasted those five nights at Bournemouth, it seems to be beside the point that there will be many many more.
I am sorry about the error of judgement regarding salmon. I’ll catch a whale for you on my return journey.
I hope you are getting on alright with your spring-cleaning. Personally, I think far too much is made of this event. A properly run house would be ashamed to admit it needed a really good clean-up once a year. It is a suburban blight. But you enjoy yourself, don’t mind me.
I have the same ‘you have always been there’ feeling, too. I seem to have grown up with you, and loved you since we first met. Certainly I have strong upon me the happy thought that you
‘always will be there’. The future, once the war is over, lies entrancingly before us.
Have I said something wrong about sleeping bags? I am not wanting to have a solitary wedded life, of course I’m not. Re single beds, I was thinking earlier (you know how we write letters to each other with each passing moment, and how we forget the ‘really good’ things, when we come to pen and paper) that I would suggest to you that if your sheets on your present bed wear out in the next year, it would be a good idea to buy double to replace them, then the sheets would be OK for our own bed. Of course I want to spend all my time as physically close to you as possible, just as I am happy at our mental closeness. Really, didn’t you think that toward the end of the leave we had settled into such a good understanding? I am sure you could fit into a sleeping bag, but it would be a tight squeeze – a grand tight squeeze I daresay!
I am glad you are going to my home. Mother and Rosie have mentioned you phoning, in their letters. I am very unhappy at my Dad’s condition. My Mother is having a very bad time. My Dad is complexity itself. I hope he pulls through his difficulties, which I believe are more mental than physical, poor old boy.
No, I didn’t notice a lot of complaint from you about your cold. We can’t have two martyrs in the family, and as I also make a fuss of any ailment, am afraid you will have to be the tough one! I say, what a pity I didn’t apply that vapour rub.
Don’t think I have the slightest objection to ‘Darling’. I think I cautioned against its use when third persons were present. Probably I was shy. So do, please, call me anything you like. I shall like it, too. Sorry the picture frame wasn’t a success.
Last night I was on guard, and thought of you sleeping peacefully, while I patrolled the almond trees and listened to the barks of distant dogs, and the ‘perlip, perlip’ and ‘whirrip whirroo’ of the birds around here. A feeling was with me that distance doesn’t matter.