Also by Simon Garfield
Expensive Habits
The End of Innocence
The Wrestling
The Nation’s Favourite
Mauve
The Last Journey of William Huskisson
Our Hidden Lives
We Are at War
Private Battles
The Error World
Mini
Exposure
Just My Type
On the Map
To the Letter
Published in Great Britain in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street,
Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books
Letters copyright © Peter Barker and Irena Souroup, 2015
Introduction and selection © Simon Garfield, 2015
Afterword © Bernard Barker, 2015
Epilogue © Irena Barker, 2015
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 567 0
eISBN 978 1 78211 568 7
Typeset in Minion Pro by Cluny Sheeler
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
George Bernard Shaw
Contents
Introduction by Simon Garfield
7: Error of Judgement Regarding Salmon
Introduction
In the autumn of 1943, a 29-year-old former postal clerk from north London named Chris Barker found himself at a loose end on the Libyan coast. He had joined the army the year before, and was now serving in the Royal Corps of Signals near Tobruk. He saw little action: after morning parade and a few chores he usually settled down to a game of chess, or whist, or one of the regular films shipped in from England. His biggest worries were rats, fleas and flies; the war mostly seemed to be happening elsewhere.
Barker was self-educated, a bookish sort. He fancied himself as the best debater in his unit, and he wrote a lot of letters. He wrote to his family and former Post Office colleagues, and an old family friend called Deb. He wrote about the local food and customs, and the occasional trip away from camp with his brother Bert. On Sunday, 5 September 1943, he found a spare hour to write to a woman named Bessie Moore. Bessie had also been a Post Office counter clerk, and was now working in the Foreign Office as a Morse code interpreter. They had once attended a training course together at Abbey Wood in south-east London, a time she recalled with greater fondness and precision than he did. Before the war they had written to each other about politics and union matters, and about their ambitions and hopes for the future. But it had always been a platonic relationship; Bessie was stepping out with a man called Nick, and Chris’s first letter to Bessie from Libya regarded them as an established couple. Bessie’s reply, which took her several weeks to compose and almost two months to arrive, would change their lives forever.
We do not have this letter, but we may judge it to be unexpectedly enthusiastic. By their third exchange, it was clear to both of them they had ignited a fervour that would not easily be extinguished. In under a year, the couple were planning marriage. But there were complications, such as not actually seeing each other, or remembering quite what the other looked like. And then there were other obstacles: bombs, enemy capture, illness, comical misunderstandings, disapproval from friends, fear of the censor.
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