My Dear Bessie. Chris Barker

       28 April 1944

      Dear Bessie,

      Tell me of your clothes. Tell me of your room, the furniture, so that I can better imagine you, more easily come to you when you are alone.

      Throughout the years, I have remembered the Abbey Wood sun glinting through the trees that you and I were under. It is my one real physical memory of you – I know that you are not a toothless old hag. As I kick around here thoughts of your body excite me, thrill me, but I want you to understand that our minds are the things we have to keep together. If either of us cheat, it is no good.

      You say you’d like to be vamping me ‘right now’. I wish you were. Although I suppose I would soon be telling you that life was a serious business and we must ‘behave’. I hope you realise that in marrying me you will be the wife of a man who believes in ‘wearing the trousers’, but not his wife’s skirt as well. I do not want you to be terribly, terribly, terribly anxious to ‘obey’. I believe you and I will get on well together and bring the other great joy, not of the physical kind only, but of the mind.

      My autobiographical details seem to have been neglected. I suddenly dropped the idea under pressure of telling you that you are lovely.

      But I will potter along for a bit now. I was never christened. My mother had a lot to do at the time, it was somehow overlooked! Now she is very keen that I be ‘done’ but I am quite pleased with my status. I believe that if a child dies without being christened he must be buried in unhallowed ground. That makes me very keen to rebel against the rubbish of that dictum.

      I went to Drayton Park (Highbury) LCC School. I was probably a very ordinary pupil but good at English. I never won a scholarship despite parental ambitions. When I had done very badly at Arithmetic once I had to stand up before a class. The headmaster said that a chap with a noble forehead like mine should have done much better. I was elected Editor of a new venture School Magazine, but somehow never got out an issue. I left too soon. I remember, at an Armistice ‘treat’ when I was very young, putting a banana in my pocket to ‘take it home to Mum’. When I got home the banana was just pulp. I had the usual fights, during playtime, and before and after school. I supported Cambridge, The Arsenal, and Surrey. (I got these from my eldest brother who has been a big influence on me throughout my life.) I only remember having one ‘good hiding’ from my Dad when I was about 11. I made a swing, tied one end to the mangle, and smashed it completely when it fell down under my weight.

      I started in the PO as a Boy Messenger at the Money Order Department on Mch 8 1928. I enjoyed the experience. It was good to be earning money, and I spent most of my pocket money on second-hand books. I was elected Editor of the Messengers’ Magazine too late to publish an issue, as I left in November 1930, when I started at the CTO [Counter and Telegraph Office]. The first girl I ever went out with was a Girl Probationer, whom I took to see Sunny Side Up, one of the first ‘talkies’. I took out several other Girl Probationers, but I can’t recall quarrelling with any of them. I was Secretary of the Cricket Club, but my highest score was 16, and that must have been unusual or I shouldn’t remember it. I played little football. I must have been poor. I was ‘Junior boy’ for nine months, and had a terrible time being dragged all over the kitchen by my seniors, ‘ducked’ in the water, and generally leg-pulled with. One of my jobs then was to clear away the Controller’s (O.J. LIDBURY, he has got on since then) tea tray. I remember still the pleasure of drinking the creamy milk he used to leave.

      That is enough for this episode. We’ll carry on later if you can stand it. Please try something similar on your own account, as I am very keen to learn about you, very anxious to get an insight into your history. Do you know French, Shorthand? Understand if you can, how much I want to know all there is to know about your past, so that I can better gather you. Just at this moment, I want to rummage around you, run my hands over you, your hair, your breasts, your arms, your loins, your legs.

      I love you.

      Chris