is a nice ‘taxi’ spirit on the road here) there in a truck which was taking [a man] to hospital with smallpox. I hope I don’t get it!
Coming back to the camp, I found a tortoise, not more than three inches long. I put it in a grassy tin to show my brother; during the three hours it was confined it made ceaseless efforts to get out, and when my brother had seen it, I sent it on its travels again. Once, we despatched one after writing ‘Barker’ in indelible pencil, on its back! A horrible thought is that many of the beetles around hereabouts are the same size.
I trust you to receive me gently and forgivingly, not to expose me to the ridicule of the third party, and let me go quietly when the storm within me has subsided.
Chris
20 March 1944
Dear Bessie,
Life here is not bad if events elsewhere are borne in mind. I should like to watch the ducks in St. James’ Park, but I daresay they themselves get a bit scared at the nightly display of human ingenuity, 1944 model.
In these parts I daresay we take (perhaps I should say, ‘I take’) a greater interest in ‘human’ things than we would do at home. A sow is due to have young – that means a daily visit to the sty. She has them. Before breakfast that day I take my first look at piggywigs four hours old. The camp dog, Jeannie, produces seven lovely little pups. It’s a treat to see them snugly around her and a lark to speculate on their parentage. We once had a cat who had six kittens. The day they were born the presumed father did a bunk and hasn’t been seen since. Of course, he might have gone up in smoke, following contact with one of the thousands of mines still littered around here.
I hope you are OK and fairly happy. If you ever get a chance to come abroad – don’t.
All the best,
Yours sincerely,
Chris
21 March 1944
Dear Bessie,
I was surprisedly delighted to get your LC of 12th, today. It’s a blooming nuisance how other people take such a keen interest in ‘affairs’. The only way of holding them at bay is to tell them nothing. ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive’ my Mother used to say to me. I’ve deceived a little since I first heard that. Accordingly, I enclose a letter you can leave in a bus without giving me heart failure. If you think my friend Ivy (of whom more later) would be interested, what more natural than that you should show it her? Please, please, let my admittance of you to my heart be a splendid secret for us both, to be enjoyed so long as it lasts, and remembered pleasurably if and when it ceases.
You will be replying to letters I haven’t precise remembrance of. A pity, since I very much want your reactions. I want to know whether you are feeling in the same exalted state as me, and I hope you’ll ‘let me have it’ anyhow. I have felt increasingly nervous about your reception of some of my words. I can only ask you to read them as though they were poetry and not regard me as altogether mad. I may be sorry that you will no longer think of me as the ‘strong, silent’ type. But if I gabble now it is because your approach has found me in a weak spot. I must tell you of the feelings that you have aroused, because for the once I am primitive and the respectability veneer is off. It is not easy to write when, at one point, a letter may be censored, and I hope you’ll make allowances. I think you will have gathered by now that I am like a raging torrent, and as you know there is no arguing with such things. I am impatient and intolerant of anything but you, and although I am bound to discuss nonentities and mediocrities, through it all I want you strongly.
Need I say I am waiting to get your next letter and the next, and the next? And that it is good to know you exist.
Chris
PS The other letter can be suitably produced if you get an enquiry – ‘Heard from Chris Barker lately?’ ‘Yes, typical letter’ the reply!
26 March 1944
Dear Bessie,
This war will delay many marriages as it will cause others. I shall either marry quickly (and take the consequences) or court for about ten years, by which time you’d know your future wife as well as your own mother.
Did I mention I’d seen Shadow of a Doubt during the week? It was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, ought to have been good, and for photography and direction, certainly was. (Do you hate or approve Orson Wells – Citizen Kane whirled me round a hundred times, but I believe I bit it, and I liked its different-ness.)
My brother was out on a run. As I walked along in the rapidly fading light I saw a familiar slip on the ground, and picked up – an Egyptian pound-note! I hope it came from an officer but I fear that the wind whisked it from a fellow-other-ranker. I was delighted to find it (‘Unto them that hath shall be given’) as my brother is always finding odd coins, notes, valuables. We share luck, and I happily preened myself as I handed him his 10s. just now. The last time I found any large amount was when I was taken as a 9 year old, by my brother, to the AA Sports at Stamford Bridge (I got separated from him in the Underground – those new automatic closing doors were just coming in – remember the guard at the old trellis-pattern gates?). I found a purse, containing 19s. 11d. and a visiting card. My Mother returned it, and with such a horrible ‘you ought to be thankful an honest person found it’ air, that the poor young girl remitted a 5s. reward to me, almost by return post. I always felt the small fortune was a little tainted.
How do you get on in the Air Raids? I hope you continue to have good luck. If we were together I guarantee we could ignore them, just as I want to ignore everything now, so that I may touch you. And I want to do that badly.
Is your Dad in the PO? Mine retired a month after the war was declared. Pension £1 5s. weekly. Gets about £2 a week for two days’ work in a bakehouse. His trade was baking before he came in the PO, and when he applied for a job in 1940 they asked him how long since he had been in the trade. He said ‘27 years’. They said ‘OK – start tonight.’ One good thing is that he is entitled to bread and cakes, and can bring home bunmen, studded with currants, for his grandson!
Tonight Churchill is speaking from London, and I hope to be amongst those who gather round the wireless to hear his latest estimate of the war’s duration. We all take it very good-humouredly but the language is sometimes lurid.
I hope you are well. I am thinking of you.
Chris
At the back of my mind I have some idea of selling books at a later stage in my life. I would, I think, like to start a second-hand bookshop mainly. It’s not for the money one might make, but only on the basis that books are good things whose circulation must assist reasonableness and progress. What do you think?
13 April 1944
Dear Bessie,
I think we are so near to each other that our reactions to similar occurrences are very much, if
