by Chris Barker
I understand, by the way, that soldiers with a year to do in Italy can have their wives out here, as the Colonel is doing. So that if I had a year to do, it might have been worth considering (though what a hole this is!). The wives get Army rations and so on, and I believe the Army finds them billets, too. Your remarks on this may be interesting, so please let’s have them.
I hope for mail tomorrow. I must hear from you, to tell me you are alright, to hear about the ‘smashing’ dinner you’ve just cooked …
The time is passing; I hope now only for our next meeting, our always-togetherness.
I love you.
Chris
22 December 1945
My Dearest, Loveliest, Wonderful-est One,
Today was THE DAY – sixteen letters (marvellous, kind, warm, human, real, sweet, delicious, joyful, you-ey letters) arrived, one direct to 6 AFS, thirteen forwarded on to me from 4 AFS since my leave, and two old ones (good nevertheless) sent while you were still a spinster and I a single man. I also had another 20 letters – what a difference reading yours, delighting in the real beauty, the warm sympathy, the grandness of your nature – and all these others. I’ll send you some of the more interesting ones later on.
I am in a terrific whirl at the moment, because such a confrontation of your wonderful expressiveness has to be allowed to sink in. Not all the paper in Italy is sufficient for the quantity I want to write you. Although I got your letters at 10 a.m., I had to rush around until 1.30 p.m. before I could start reading. After reading I had a busy afternoon on redirecting mail. So I have only read you once. Tomorrow afternoon I will read you more and more and more.
Janet – Christopher? struggles, asserts, demands first mention. Probably at this date you already know; I can still only speculate. I shall reserve my comments until you write me again. I want to be everything to you. I love you and I need you, I love you for what you have said about this possible event. You are everything to me and the world is a wonderful place because you are in it.
The Christmas present for Mum: whatever you did, OK by me. I thought we had said we’d let it slide. I have only had occasional stabs of sorrow at the thought of her self-made miseries. Please do what you think is best, and don’t fear at any time that I shall wish anything different. Another thing, if, say, Mother or anyone ever refers to something about me that you didn’t know, say if you wish that ‘Oh yes, he told me’, or something like that. What I intend to convey to you is your complete right to do as you will, and my complete faith in you.
Yes, I have ached like you. It was wonderful being so close to you for so long. It was breathtakingly joyous. Being away from you is grim, being in the Army away from you is grimmer. But we have plenty of grounds for hope, plenty of reason to suppose that we shall meet again before next winter. I hope I can write you less critically and sound as near to you as I feel and know I am.
I appreciate the way you write of our bed, our room, our bottom drawer. My darling. I am so pleased you are happy about me. In my first leave I was too self-contained, this time it was grand to brim over.
Please do continue with your domestic details if you can. I am most interested in your dinners, your appetite and all that you do. You may bore yourself with a recital of your house-cleaning, but you won’t bore me, because I imagine you brandishing a duster and wielding a Hoover – and imagining you is the most happy occupation I can have till I meet you.
Your ‘ums’ spoke plenty, don’t worry about that.
I am sorry to hear about the FLU, but suppose you had to have it. Hope it wasn’t too bad – don’t go out of doors when you’re not well if you can help it, there’s a good girl – and that you are OK now.
Yes, it is a job with the whistling. It is an unconscious barometer. I stop short when I think of your horror, but I am by no means cured.
I love you.
Chris
23 December 1945
My Darling,
One of your letters today told of your visit to the doctor. I am disappointed as you are that he could not say definitely. You would think he would say why you had missed. Your symptoms are interesting but not conclusive. I suppose you will have to grin and (literally) bear it, although perhaps you could see another doctor if you felt like it. We are both so know-nothing on this that I am not happy about the doctor’s statement about it not being broken not mattering. I should think it would be less easy for an exit (an entrance to the world). But I suppose he knows best. Am glad the hospital seems to present no difficulties. I think we should say nothing until you are certain. I have no doubt you think that, too. I hope that everything goes as you want. If it doesn’t, well, we have plenty of time. As things appear, it seems I should be home within the eight months, with any luck. If it does transpire that we are to be parents, you can be sure that I am sorry that only you can possibly endure the pain. You can be sure that this addition is OURS, a physical sign of our mental togetherness. I should like to write for the rest of the evening, and try to say all that I can to encourage you in the event of it being true, or in the event of it failing. But I cannot, I must push on to another subject.
Sanderstead: Business deals with relations are notoriously awkward, and usually more savage than normal deals. I think £1,000 a great deal to ask. Could we enquire the original price (was it £550?) and say we will pay only 50% more (i.e. £775 if it was £550)? Would it be worthwhile getting a Valuer (Simpson, Palmer and Winder, 1 Southwark Bdge Road, SE1 would help) and stand by his opinion?
Payment: I believe we have a little over £1,000 at the moment. (I have £315 in NSC [National Savings Certificates].) Addition like Income Tax rebates, and Army Gratuities, should raise another £100. I believe you are saving about £1 10s. 0d. a week. If it reaches that stage, get the cash by crossed warrant, NSC and POSB, and send me a form to sign for the £315. Simpson, Palmer, will probably act for us both reasonably. Legal costs will be about £15, I believe.
I feel like a millionaire buying a mansion as well as like a little boy buying his weekly sweets.
Look after the stamps I am sending you. They are really very nice and when I get home I will put them in books.
Just room to say – what a woman you are!
I love you.
Chris
’Tis Christmas Eve 1945
My Darling, Wonderful One,
You may be interested and amused to know that the yellow mepacrine tablets we take as anti-malarial precaution are considered to render a man sterile. Reason: about twenty married men of 30 Wing came from the February leave, and none had any children as a result. This time (mepacrines not having been taken) three are ‘certs’ (they say – blowed if I know how they can tell) and two are (as it is put) ‘sweating’. It is actually three, but of course I have said nothing.
Yes, I should get out as regularly as you can, for fresh air and exercise. A walk for twenty minutes daily is all that you need in poor weather. Try and keep indoors when it is rainy or very windy.
You seem to have made some reduction in your cigarettes. I hope you keep it up, but I shouldn’t distress yourself.
While not opposed to four children, I suggest you see how No. 1 treats you, before we adopt it as a policy! It is a great test of endurance for you when the time comes. I shall have no ‘say’ in this. It is up to you and it would be unfair for me to suggest we have anything contrary to your wishes.
Please don’t ‘flop’ if it isn’t, my darling. We have tons of time ahead, and you must usefully occupy yourself in some way else.
Which pullover did you wash, the khaki, or the smashing light brown from Meakers?
I would like to consume one of your ‘meat puddings by guesswork’. I could perhaps send you a good spaghetti recipe, but that’s about all.
I love you.
Chris
Christmas Day 1945
My Wonderful Wife,
I will continue replying to your letters.
I do like short pants with buttons, please. Were not the mat
ches handy? Please send the Statesman weekly if you can, ordinary paper with a piece of string to keep it together. Address in margin of paper, and only ½d. stamp. I like hearts better than liver, although I am quite content with liver for a change. A good deal depends on how liver is cooked, I think, more than other meats. Glad you had another go at the batter pudding, and it was approved. I am a very lucky man.
Does the ‘peculiar sick feeling’ affect one so early? What I wonder is, what about the chance of it forming in the passage, as it suggested in that book. Have you had time to look at the book at all?
Again, the house. The more I think on our chance to get it, the more thrilled I am with our luck. ‘Get it if you can’, I feel like urging you continually. It’s a front door of our own, it’s a place, it’s our castle! It appeals to me a lot. It means security, independence and a place to think of. It means making a start.
The travelling is a bind, but it is NOTHING compared with the joy of having a place, especially one that you like. And if we had a child, a good open-aired spot would be most useful.
I can understand your concern over how I shall find Civvy Street, and I must say I am disturbed at reports of chaps who have just left the Army, being so dissatisfied with it. I think it must be true that civilians (late Army) miss the travelling. I think (as I write the page is wet all over with orange juice, as we have just been out, picked a dozen oranges from a tree, and started to throw them at each other, splashing all over the walls) all men want to climb mountains. The Army gives them that rare chance. If you find me wanting to climb mountains, I know you will be able to lead me to a nearby eminence. I think that, if the conditions were there, I could leave the Army and carry on in the ‘Mets’ Branch as though I had not seen the Pyramids, swum the Suez and had Vesuvius as my neighbour. But my old life has gone and I have no regrets. I expect that Army life is like an illness, which you notice when you have it and forget when you are cured. But I really believe I am a better man as a result of my Army life – the minor rackets in which I have engaged are transient, unmarking.
I have been amazed, disgusted and sometimes frightened by the Italian manifestation of joy at the Christmas festivity. The silly lot let off fireworks – I suppose this is the first time for five or six years. They started the 23rd, and we had them again last night. Continuous. And very, very loud. They put our English (even pre-war) fireworks completely in the shade – and I’d sooner be in the shade. The people are mad. It has been one terrific bang after another.
We drank ‘The Loyal Toast’, plus ‘The Cooks’, today. Before I drank my little drop of Vermouth, I said ‘MY WIFE’.
I love you.
Chris
PS I have just had a word with a chap who lives only a couple of stations nearer London Bridge than Sanderstead. He says the fare is only perhaps 2s. return and not the 3s. I had imagined. Which would be a big help to us. The mile and a half walk to the station, or longer, would be nothing to a man with my energy.
29 December 1945
My Darling,
Vesuvius was not visible today when I looked out of the window on waking. Often the top is obscured by clouds, but today none of it could be seen. And it is very near. Thrillingly near, I think. We are as near to it as Ben Nevis is to Fort William. I am not going to say I shall climb it when the good weather comes, because I am hoping for plenty of scene-shifting during the next six months. But should I be here when the evenings are light, I shall certainly try to go up it a little. A truck takes one to a hotel used by tourists in peacetime in about twenty minutes. This is halfway up, and in a couple of hours one can stand on the edge of the crater (now quite large because of the 1944 eruption), and take a quick look down it, where it is red and hot. Sometimes great billowings of smoke are visible, other times just little frisky cigarette wisps. Really, I look forward to contemplating its hugeness.
At any rate it has saved me harping on the house, which I am rather barmy about at the moment. Perhaps it could be a better house, nearer a station, and so on. But it is a house, and it means we shall have a real home of our own. An invaluable asset in these days. Before the war, it perhaps was not so much to get excited about. But I do feel, now, it is a big thing. I shall be very pleased to hear you are the owner, and (as you once said in a letter) that you are mentally putting up the curtains.
I wonder how much a baby costs (in money; there are many tears!) in the early years? I should think the Income Tax would be reduced to practically nothing. ‘If’, we shall have to write to the Board of Trade to find out what coupons are available, and so on. You are going to have a busy time in front of you, ‘if’. And it won’t be only for eight months, either!
I love you.
Chris
* Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.
† The legal Regulation 18B came into force early in the war to detain those deemed hostile and dangerous to the defence of the realm.
11
Serving Hatch
3 January 1946
My Darling Wonderful One,
I will be at your side next Christmas, my darling. I am sorry we have had to spend this one apart. I was sympathetic about your four-hour struggle with the duck.
Be careful, when scanning the ‘demob news’ in the papers, NOT to get your hopes anchored to a date, or to have much faith in a prophecy. I hope to be out in June. I may be out rather later, perhaps several months later. So don’t get a fixation on June, just take a little interest in it.
I am doing far less whistling though I still cannot bottle myself up entirely. Also I have said ‘female dog’ several times of late, and instantly regretted it.
I told you the Christmas pudding would turn out well. I am sorry to hear that you have a cold again. Try and eat plenty of vegetables and what fruit you can. I don’t suppose you have started to take Cod Liver Oil and Malt yet, but I should get a big bottle if I were you. I am very concerned about your pain and your danger. It seems great whatever anyone may say. But it has to be, and I hope I can get stoical about it. (Those USA films of anxious fathers in posh maternity homes will have nothing on me! – Oh my darling, lovely one.) It is very desirable that I get home when you most need to have me, and I hope I can do it. But it is going to be a narrow squeeze.
The people who say Australia for the Jews’ are merely sidetracking. Libya and Madagascar are also amongst the lands mentioned. I don’t know the answer to the Palestine question, but I know that mentioning other places isn’t the answer. Anyway, surely some questions have no answer?
I don’t really think that ‘bringing up baby’ will be so very bad. All sorts of people do it, some moderately well. It will stop us ‘gallivanting about’, but I have no doubt there’s a lot in the successful marriage depending on children idea. Of course, it also depends on the married couple! I am certain that we will be OK, though you’ll have to tell me when, what, why and how to do the various fatherly tasks.
I love you.
Chris
7 January 1946
Wonderful One,
Congratulations on your acceleration, initiative, independence, resourcefulness, and absolute perfection. I wish I could have carried you over the threshold of OUR HOUSE. May you always be happy there, and may I be joining you soon.
I love you.
Chris
7 January 1946 [Second letter]
My Darling, Wonderful Wife,
I couldn’t help but admire your infinite resource and initiative, and all the ability and capacity you have displayed.
£1,000 does seem a lot. As a matter of fact it is a lot. But I never thought I would start off married life in a house of our own, did you? We have been fortunate in acquiring the cash, and I think that the place will suit us fine until Janet – Christopher perhaps starts going to school. You have no idea how pleased I am you describe it as a ‘nice little house’.
‘How am I doing?’ you ask. How can I say? There aren’t enough words of praise, only my hug, my look, could tell you
how proud I am of you, thrilled by your efficiency and competence.
I love you.
Chris
8 January 1946
My Wonderful Wife,
When the chance occurs, I would like you to tell me about the house. Two rooms and kitchenette downstairs, three rooms (?) and bathroom upstairs? I suppose the lavatory and bathroom (is it at all tiled?) are together? Have you got your eye on the nursery-room? Is it a very small house? How do the rooms (particularly kitchenette) compare with 27? Is there an air of cheapness about it, as there used to be about some of the £600 houses they built at Welling before the war? (I don’t think there can be or you would not have said ‘nice little house’.) Is there any Ascot, Geyser,* or anything? Why not write to Hoovers and ask them to put us on their waiting list? What is the garden like – as big as 27? Is it horribly weedy, does it have vegetables? (I advise employing a man to do the digging, if they can be obtained, like Aunt Elsie did.)
Don’t do any gardening yourself, will you? You have so much to do, you know. Remember to rest occasionally, whatever you are doing. I am as disturbed about your food as much as anything, and you must tell me what you propose to do about it, please. Can I send anything to help. How about soap? I could send a good bit if you wanted it. At the moment I have four bars of Sunlight soap weekly. Would you like them? You are bound to become friendly with some of the neighbours. There is no reason why real friendship should not develop, but do not forget all the tales about neighbours.
Haven’t I heard there’s trouble getting prams? If you do any painting, don’t breathe it in, you won’t get lead poisoning or Painter’s Colic, but it may upset your digestion more.
I wish I could have seen you put the key in the door, my darling, my dearest one.
I love you.
Chris
9 January 1946
My Wonderful One,
It is semi-detached isn’t it, on the 27-161 model. I think Bert said once there was room for a garage, but none there – I suppose like 27. I think I’d like to get a hut out in the garden or something. I don’t know why. I want to acquire a set of carpentry and household tools, as I said on leave. Saw, plane, chisel, as well as the old hammer (an instrument used for bashing one’s own nails and fingers).
