work, and that I must see that I do hold onto you, and please, please, please, do hold me tight. 18–30 are different ages, but I am happier that you loved me first when you were nearer the former age. I know that I am not the victim of a desperate, blind, unloving grasp. I shall keep on saying I want to feel you, and I want you to know that my desire is no less than yours, nor ever will be. My head is on your breasts, my hands are about you.
I love you.
Chris
18 April 1944
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU
Dear Bessie,
I have just stuck down a Letter Card, and I must straightaway carry on writing to you, around the subject of yours of the 8th April.
Our association in the future depends on your ability to put up with me and my defects, not my ability to put up with yours. And that if we are spending much of our time regarding the other as a bed mate that is a very natural thing, since we are likely to be in that position before too long; I hope it doesn’t mean we are very lustful, but if it does, it doesn’t stop me wanting to tell you how I stiffen and ooze as I read your words and imagine you writing them. I am your servant and your master at once. I will command you and be commanded by you. Your breasts are mine.
I do not feel very happy at the thought of the practical difficulties in the way of setting up house after the war. Every shark in the commercial world will be up and about.
Unfortunately I used to donate most of my money to various ‘good causes’ and I did not start to save until the end of the war in Spain. I think I had about £75 when our own war started; I did not increase this until I joined the Army. At the end of last year I had (my Mother told me) a mere (for my purpose) £227. I think that I am adding to this at about £2 10s. a week. I do not know what will be required. I don’t think there’s much doubt that we will be old enough. Incidentally, I think that engagement rings are jewellers’ rackets, and that marriage is more properly transacted at an office than mumbo-jumbo’d at a church. I am sorry you don’t already know my views on this. You will have to be told sometime.
Can you see that it is gradually dawning on me that you are too good to be missed? Do you observe that I am refusing to bow to my own change-ability? Will you tell me that we may be together really one day, and you will hit me if I start wanting to go?
I am in the permanent state of hoping for letters from you, but I must have flushed my delight an hour ago, when I was handed your LC dated 1st, but postmarked the 3rd. The last three letters had come to me via my brother, and I have been annoyed. He has got an ‘idea’, I feel sure. I had to eat tiffin and delay reading you until I went to work. But now I have done so four times so far. Oh, I do desire you! Oh, I am not really alive except in you, and through you.
Certainly let us mention marriage. Consider me as the one you will be with always from this day, if you want me and will chance it. You are right about it being ‘heavenly’ – but oh hell, angel, you are a long way away! Bessie, Bessie, Bessie, I want to be with you.
I love you.
Chris
18 April 1944 [Second letter]
Dear Bessie,
I think that I will now start to tell you something of myself and family from the Year Dot to the present day. I think this is necessary because I want to (it is very difficult to write – all I want to do is tell you I LOVE YOU) marry you very soon after I return to England, and I want us to do most of the talking through the medium of our letters. There is a lot more to tell you, and I hope to do so. Deb knows much of my history as a person; I want you to know as much as anyone, if only so that you shall never be party to a conversation and be at a loss about it. You won’t remember everything, and I am not certain how I shall proceed. But I think it is desirable. Your time is much more precious than my own, but I hope that you, too, will give me an abridged ‘something’, so that when we do, wonderfully, finally meet, we shall know more about each other than could be obtained by a contemporary or current correspondence.
We have met only comparatively little in the past – and I expect I discussed the weather as much as possible! Some of the things I tell you will not be news, one of them you will need to spend a little time (at least) thinking about, and all of it I hope will be of real interest because it is about me. My ignorance of you can be judged by the fact that I don’t know if the B.I.M. stands for Ivy, Irene or Itma, I don’t know your birthday, or your birthplace. I want to know your food dislikes, if any; if and what you drink; whether you still smoke; how you housekeep or if someone else does it somehow. Please, please, please, tell me of and about yourself, so that I may breathe you in, and wallow in news of you. For by now you must have serious doubts of your ability to escape marrying me, and wondering what the Dickens you have done to deserve it. Please regard me as a serious challenge, your confidant now, your mate when you give the word, your ‘lawfully-wedded husband’ if you will.
I think I can make a start on my career now by telling you that when I was born, my Father was 34, a Postman, and getting about 25s. a week. The family was increased to six (I have two brothers and one sister), and had to move from rooms in one part of Holloway, N.7., to a four roomed house in another part. It came under a Slum Clearance scheme when I was 13, and we were rehoused in a 5 roomed house on the London County Council Estate at Tottenham, until I was 26, when we moved to our present place at Bromley, which my brother owns. I am the baby of the family. My sister is 33, my second brother, ARCHIE, is 36, my eldest, HERBERT REDVERS (Bert, after a Boer War General!) is 38. Dad is 64, Mum, 62. My early memories are few. I remember digging big holes in our back yard and lining up for the pictures. I don’t know how much you recall of the last war? I remember the great fun of making cocoa after we had come back, seeing the R33 (which I thought was a Zeppelin); wanting to be a ‘Spethial Conthtable’ when I grew up; my Dad, a strange, awkward, red faced man, coming home from India.
Things here (I’ll leave The Story of My Life II till later) are about the same, except that today we have gone into Khaki Drill which is much nicer than Battle Dress, and can be washed anytime one wants. I am playing chess as usual and Bridge at night when possible. I’d like to creep away somewhere and do a bit of hard brooding about you, but I have to go through the motions of behaving normally, like you. Whatever I do I am conscious of the fact that you are in the same world, and it is a pretty great thought to be getting on with, rather overwhelming at times. I hope the time we are away from each other will not seem too painfully long, and that before 1999 we shall be able to TELL each other what now we can only think.
I love you.
Chris
25 April 1944
Dear Bessie,
This will be in pencil because it is the only writing material I have with me at present, as like an ass I forgot to bring my pen with me.
This afternoon a dozen of us had a truck to the sea, by a different route from that we normally walk. It was a terrible (and enjoyable) ride
