My Dear Bessie. Chris Barker
Arithmetic, and I am confused (and remaining so) about Morse and Electricity and Magnetism.
I love you.
Chris
12 June 1944
Dearest,
It is a little bit pathetic for you to tell me I am ‘such a lover’, when all I have been able to do is put on paper a few sentences conveying what I mean, but not, surely, the force with which I mean it. You have been wonderful in gathering my intentions, you will be wonderful administering to my needs. Please never forget that I have needs, and that you are my greatest.
It is not much good me trying to tell you that I shall not flirt with hundreds of others. Events will show you.
But for goodness’ sake, go steady on the near-occult. Do not trust your ordinary brain to deal with extra-super ordinary things. I became interested in Spiritualism years ago, but after I had read a book (I think it was Valley of the Mists by Conan Doyle) that made my head whirl with thought and possible happenings, in no spirit of mock-humility, I decided it was a subject which I had better leave alone. My brain was, I thought, too ordinary.
You ask me if I want you to be a modern woman par excellence, and you ‘rather hope I am the least bit old-fashioned’. Well, I am sufficiently old-fashioned not to want you to work after marriage. I want your main job to be looking after me. But, as I have said earlier, I do not want you to go house-mad. I want you to take an interest in other things, and if necessary, join up with people like yourself who may be similarly interested. I have seen (theoretically!) a woman stop being useful to the world upon marriage. I want you to develop, say, something that the circumstances of your working life have prevented you following. I can therefore be, not the bloke who bangs the Harem gate shut, but the one who gives you the chance to do something (quite accidentally); obviously I am marrying you because I am selfish, not because I think a little leisure may make you another Van Gogh.
Don’t rush to the photographer, there’s a good girl. I shall be very glad to have the snap of ‘The Author at Age 20’ – as, my love, one day I shall be very happy to have you.
You amuse me when you say you don’t think managing money is my strong point. (I haven’t got any strong points except those you make.) I expect you will find me a horrible old skinflint, but I hope you’ll agree to have pocket-money, as I shall have it, and that should enable you to be at least independent in little things. In any case, you will be doing the housekeeping, and I shall assist only at your invitation.
If anyone in the Ministry of Labour asks you what your war-work is, you can show them my dark-frowned photo, and you can tell them your trouble with me is only just starting.
I’ve never really asked you, have I – Will you marry me, Bessie (for better or for worse)? There are no good reasons, but the only excuse I can offer is that I will love you always, my fashion. Reply by ordinary LC won’t you?
Thank you, Bessie, for telling me you want to be at my mercy. One day let us hope you will be, and then we shall really meet. You make me feel a little drunk when you place yourself at my command. I so much want to caress you, to lie with you and commune. You do not wonder at my wish to rummage when it is your lovely body that I seek? Do not mistake the depth and the age of my desire to enter you. I want to kiss your breasts till they flame, I want to squeeze them till my roving hands move on to your buttock and hips. I want to mould your loins with my hands and kiss you again and again. I want you to receive my homage, my love, and then I want to come into lovely you myself.
Chris
14 June 1944
My dear Bessie,
Yes, I got those corduroy trousers a few months after the war started, and long before everyone adopted them. When I got them home, my Mother said, ‘You silly young ass, only artists wear them!’ She was approximately correct. They are grand trousers, though, and wonderful material. I am glad about your non-puritan thoughts based on their contents. I already feel accustomed to your bedroom, and I hope you will increasingly know within you that I am thinking of you there. I don’t altogether swallow the explanation for the sag in the spring bed, but we will try and make it worse, shall we?
Do not let the emphasis on the physical make you think for a moment that I under-rate your mentality and intelligence. So prepare for me as though I was an ordinary person, not the Agha Khan.
Yes, my Mother will be a bit of a nuisance to her prospective daughter-in-law. Not because she is mine, but because in-laws are nuisances. But I shall be able to help you where necessary and when the time comes. My attitude in similar circs. would be ‘Blow the lot of them’. I am not over-fond of relations myself.
You say ‘I am so much in your hands’. Would that you were, my dear. I am afraid of losing you. I am so glad the Yank turned out a bit of a wet blanket. I shall try hard to keep you. Forgive me for my constant thought of your flesh. Your body is always before me, and I find my own crying for union, companionship. These gifts which you wonderfully bestow on me are the greatest I could ask.
I can now commence to tell you about my leave. It could have been so much better had you been there: as it was, my brother’s pretty constant attendance was a great nuisance. I could have wept sometimes. I had all sorts of great hopes about buying something in Alex., but in the event, I had to admit defeat. Cloth was tremendously dear, and its despatch under the eagle eye of Herbert, impossible. So I am afraid that all you will get in a couple of months’ time will be a kind of leather shopping bag, with zip fastener. You’ve probably got half-a-dozen, or maybe you wouldn’t be seen dead with one. But perhaps it isn’t a shopping bag. You must tell me what it is when you get it! Anyhow, it’s leather and should be OK for soling your shoes. Next time, please tell me what you’d like, and (if I can get rid of Bert for a little while) I’ll try hard to be perspicacious. What is your shoe size please?
Please have a thought of me.
My love.
Chris
16 June 1944
Dear Bessie,
I am now starting my account of the visit to Alexandria.
In Alex. you can get what you want if you like to pay for it. Two chaps in our party had nights out which cost them £3 apiece each time. They assured me it was well worth it. Almost anywhere you go, little boys, old men, or the women themselves will say ‘Want a woman?’ ‘Want a —?’ ‘Hello dearie.’ I must say that I shudder somewhat at the thought. A boy about 6 in one street invites you to buy a preventative, with as much loud enthusiasm and as little discretion as the chap who sells newspapers at Oxford Circus. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Well of Loneliness and other items are on sale everywhere, but although they are advertised as unexpurgated, judging by the disappointment of a chap in the train who had bought one, they are pretty much like tracts.
Street entertainers are more numerous and original than our own, there are never any singers or bands only. Monkeys and dogs jump through hoops at their masters’ behest. One man has a couple of long batons, which burn at the end. He pretends to swallow them, but only puts them in his mouth, where they go out. A ‘good’ one is, he swallows paraffin (I mean puts it in his mouth), then expels it into the air, putting a match to it. Done quickly, it seems that he is breathing fire … Then he lays back on a great nail-studded board, while his mates dance on him, after which dancing barefoot on a bag of glass is child’s play. All this to the accompaniment of drum-banging and other noises.
One of my nicest afternoons was watching cricket, on matting-wicket surrounded by a fair amount of pleasant looking grass. We had tea as we watched. I had a macaroon.
On the last night I was able to leave the barracks,