My Dear Bessie

by Chris Barker

  I am on my way; to our life together, to the place you bring, the coolness you mean; to the security of your bosom and the warmth of YOU.

  I LOVE YOU.

  Chris

  1 May 1946

  My Darling, I am yours.

  I am starting this note in what for some is the Eternal City – after having taken eleven hours to get here. I have just had my breakfast, egg and bacon, a slight wash, and am ready for the next stop half a dozen hours later. 150 miles in 11 hours is hardly speeding, but why worry, every mile is one mile nearer my darling wife, my lovely Bessie.

  We are hoping not to spend too long at Milan, as from May 2nd troop trains do not go through Switzerland, but use Austria instead. This may mean we shall be hurried through Milan, or maybe we shall be sent on to Bologna and thence to Austria. In any case, I really think that within a week I should be home (that is, on the Wednesday).

  Unless there are fogs in the Channel or some blooming thing, I shall be with you in seven days, I think. That still seems a long, long way off, but, my dear and lovely one, it will soon pass. When you get this, with any luck, I shall be arriving in Calais (if that is where they send us).

  I’ll get into whatever clothes you put out, and be transformed quickly. I hope you have a nice lot of jobs wanting doing – that is something I badly want to do – any jobs you might otherwise have had to do yourself. Tomorrow – MILAN!

  And now it is tomorrow. I am at Milan, and scribbling quickly to possibly catch the day’s post before I go to breakfast. It is only 7 a.m., so anything may happen today.

  Darling, Darling, I love you.

  Chris

  4 May 1946

  DOVER

  My Very Own Dear One,

  My boat arrived here at about three o’clock today. We leave here at 8 o’clock in the morning for our Depot. I expect to arrive at Thirsk at 8 p.m. Sunday. If they get speeding on Monday (that is ‘today’ for you, my dear dear reader), perhaps I may be home for Tuesday. I don’t know. We can only hope for the best.

  Although tomorrow night I shall be 200 miles away, tonight, my dear one, I shall be only fifty from you, and at last on the same ‘lump’ of land. That really is progress! I feel sad and anguished that I didn’t get to you today, but the Army doesn’t consider people.

  Everyone here looks fresh and healthy, and well-fed. There is a good deal of bomb and (presumably) shell damage, and little seems to have been done to mend it.

  Darling, I love you so much. Perhaps you’ve got my telegram by now and know I am near you. Darling, tonight we will be able to go to sleep knowing each other’s location more than we have done for months. I shall like that.

  Lovely, warm woman, I am not very far away.

  Dearest, I love you.

  Chris

  5 May 1946, Posted 7 May

  Dearest,

  I have now arrived at Thirsk, waiting an hour at the station in a bitterly cold wind.

  I am very sorry I raised your hopes with my ‘possibly Tuesday’ – now it seems ‘possibly Thursday’. I fret at the delay, as you must do. But I am afraid we must both be as good as possible. PLEASE don’t try meeting me at the station, or anything like that, I might be on any train or may come a different way. I shall come as soon as I can.

  The food we have eaten in England so far has been plentiful – cheese, sausages, margarine, bread, and also wholesomely cooked. There is hot and cold water in the taps here, and after going to the lavatory one pulls a plug. Home comforts!

  Will continue this tomorrow, when I sincerely hope I shall have much more to say of my date of arrival. Am going to bed now. My darling, soon, soon, soon, I shall be going to bed with you.

  I hope these last letters of mine are not getting on your nerves. I know they have many defects. But somehow, I do want to keep on writing, saying something, to keep in contact. If I knew earlier what I know now, I could have asked you to write me here. Oh why must there be this final maddening delay?

  WIFE, WOMAN, BESSIE, I love you.

  Chris

  6 May 1946, Posted 7 May

  My Darling, Wonderful Wife,

  It should be Wednesday morning when you get this. WITHIN TWENTY FOUR HOURS YOU WILL BE IN MY ARMS. I have heard definitely today that I shall be out of the Army Wednesday night, so, my dearest, that will be your last night of alone-ness, and today your last day without me to make demands on you, in person. LOVELY, ISN’T IT?

  Put the alarm clock on for 6.30 when you go to bed tonight (Wednesday), as I shall be along as early as that. WE SHALL BREAKFAST TOGETHER TOMORROW (Thursday) MORNING (I hope you sleep well tonight!).

  I shall send you a telegram today (Wednesday) telling you ‘THURSDAY BREAKFAST’, and when night comes, I shall be on my way TO YOU, TO YOU, TO YOU, my Darling, Dear and Precious One.

  When you get up, try and put a drop of hot water on, so that I can have the bath, please. Then a little breakfast (how about sausages and tomatoes, or toast and tomatoes), and I will WASH UP FOR YOU! Prepare for the deluge …

  My telegram will come from York, but I have to return to Thirsk afterwards. We go there only for our civilian clothes, then must retrace our steps after release! Army madness.

  DARLING, DEAR ONE, WE REALLY ARE NEAR NOW. WITHIN TWENTY OR SO HOURS, WE SHALL BE TOGETHER, HAVE EACH OTHER.

  I probably will make this the last letter. The post for ‘Lunnon’ goes from here at 3.30 in the afternoon.

  DEAR,

  DEAR,

  DEAREST

  Bessie,

  I love you.

  Chris

  7 May 1946

  My Darling,

  Well, everything is going well now, and I have all the definite information needed. I shall be home for breakfast on Thursday morning.

  Let us only have a light breakfast (for me), as I shall have been travelling and my stomach will be a little upset I dare say. Then, too, let us have only a light lunch that takes little time to prepare, and postpone the ‘real meal’ until the evening. Shall we? Then there will be no rushing about and we can take things as easily as we like. I don’t suppose you will want to start showing me Croydon until Friday. I hope not, as I do, do want to have you to myself entirely for a little while. I suppose we shall be bound to plan a little bit, but I would like to have a nice three weeks’ glide, a drift along, if we could manage it.

  Darling, tonight I spend my last night in the Army. Tomorrow I spend the night in the train. As you go to sleep Wednesday night, think of me speeding along the rails towards you, sleeping this final separate sleep. And remember that when you awaken in the morning, it will be to hear my voice and see me.

  Dearest, Darling, Only One, thank you for all that you have been to me through these years, and be sure we shall overcome with our love any difficulties there may be later on. I can never be as good as you deserve, but I really will try very hard, and I know you will help. We shall be partners, collaborators, man and woman, husband and wife, lovers.

  I love you. I want you. I need you. ALWAYS.

  YOUR Chris

  * Auxiliary Territorial Service.

  Afterword

  by Bernard Barker

  I was born thirteen weeks after my father stepped through the door at Ellesmere Drive and was named after my mother’s iconoclastic hero, George Bernard Shaw. My brother Peter followed in 1949. We became characters in a post-war story and for almost sixty years were unaware of the letters, romance and drama that had brought us to life.

  This changed on a visit to my recently widowed father in 2004. He held out a small blue box and asked: ‘Shall I throw these away, or will you take them?’ They were his war letters. He said no one should read them until he and my mother were both dead. Following his instructions, I waited to open the box until 2008.

  I pulled out the tightly folded bundles and found 500 individual letters written in a clear, faultless hand on thin blue airmail paper or on NAAFI headed notepaper. I read the half million words over a period of several weeks and immersed
myself in a wartime world of love, longing and frustration.

  I was in the desert with my dad as he recorded the death of pigs and rats; I was with my mother in London braving bombs and rockets. Through their words they were animated again in my mind – energetic, passionate, clear-sighted, wise and loveable.

  I decided to create an archive and to include the war letters with the other papers I collected from my Dad’s house when it was sold. Katy Edge, an administrator at the University of Leicester, agreed to type the correspondence.

  I sorted and edited the documents and prepared a detailed inventory. We arranged to deposit the results in the Mass Observation special collections at the University of Sussex.

  Bessie in the garden at 27 Woolacombe Road with her two sons Bernard (standing) and Peter

  My parents’ letters describe dangerous adventures as well as lonely tedium, and express the love that grew from their experience of war. I began to ask whether the lives that followed, domestic and child-centred, were an anti-climax, marked by a retreat from passion and the sparkling language that made it.

  Dad did not think so. In 1946, with the army behind him, he was delighted with his new wife and son and revelled in his house and garden. He was pleased to be back on the post office counter.

  Mother was less settled; after the death of her mother during the war she felt responsible for her brother and father. She was dismayed by their unconvincing attempts at housekeeping at her family home in Blackheath, London SE3. Dad seems to have understood her feelings. So the new family moved in with the old, with Mother to look after us all.

  Grandfather sold the Blackheath property to our parents in 1947. When Peter was born, he decided the house was too crowded for comfort and left to join his sister in Surrey. Mother and Dad lived at 27 Woolacombe Road for the rest of their time together.

  Mother’s brother Wilfred remained, to become an inhibiting presence in his sister’s marriage. But Uncle Wilfred’s shy, gentle and indulgent nature provided a marked contrast with Dad’s energy and austere taste. As a toddler I became the centre of loving attention, with four adults available to talk, read stories and play games.

  I have family seaside photographs from the late 1940s, with Mother holding Peter in her arms, and me at her side. My father’s lack of Post Office seniority meant that our holidays were taken in early spring, from March onwards, and our photos tell a story of shivering, windswept beaches on the north Kent coast.

  Mother was the constant presence in our young lives, cooking all the meals and greeting us home from school. When we were ill with chicken pox, measles or mumps, she would push two armchairs together in the lounge so that we were not alone upstairs.

  She believed in the fundamental importance of education and its role in the development of individuals and their society. She taught us to read (a slow and frustrating process in my case) and had us recite the tables while our teeth were brushed and our knees washed. Later she used First Aid in English and mock IQ test papers to improve our verbal reasoning scores for the eleven-plus.

  Mother’s grammar school education made her useful with homework, especially when we were at secondary school, but tensions would rise as I struggled with algebra and French.

  An insomniac herself, she put us to bed very early. We would bounce on the bed, unable to sleep in the evening light and would peep between the bedroom curtains to see the parents working in the garden and our uncle nursing his newly purchased moped, an NSU Quickly.

  Mother was passionate and occasionally combative. At times she saw herself as oppressed by the men in her family, including her sons, and promised to argue with us, however successful and well-educated we might become.

  She read eagerly all her life, especially philosophy, history and detective fiction. Mother admired writers who did justice to the courage and ability of women, and was devoted to Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Rudyard Kipling.

  Bessie and Chris on Blackheath in the early 1950s

  Dad was a tireless figure, always busy with household tasks. He was slightly built, never exceeding ten stones, but seemed mightily strong to us, a vigorous, sweat-encrusted engine turning clay soil in the garden. He had a voracious appetite for weeds, dug potatoes and followed instructions on the location and care of Mother’s precious plants.

  Eggs were rationed, so he kept chickens in the back garden and had to cope with escaping birds, broody hens, coccidiosis and a huge volume of droppings. He found the cure for feather-pecking: ‘It was Stockholm Tar, a very sticky, smelly substance which I applied liberally to the feathers, realising too late that it should have been applied only to the wounds.’

  He would tackle the washing-up urgently, rushing us to the rhubarb and evaporated milk before the plates were clear. But Dad enjoyed food, especially the particular favourites he liked to prepare, including the burned pancakes that he called flapjacks, and tinned salmon with grated carrots.

  Compared with Uncle Wilfred, who built us wooden battleships and gave us cricket bats, bricks and soldiers, Dad did not seem well equipped for child’s play. Once he came home early from work to declare ‘I’m all yours’ but none of us knew what to do next.

  Later he said his thinking had been strongly influenced by Mrs Sydney Frankenburg in Common Sense in the Nursery. She advised against over-stimulating your children. So our parents gave us books (Arthur Ransome, Robert Louis Stevenson, H.G. Wells) and left the toys, games and sports to our benevolent uncle.

  Dad was enthusiastic about his work on the counter and was a keen supporter of the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW). He served at various branch offices, including Shoreditch, and was in charge of 493 Cambridge Heath Road before becoming an overseer in the Western District.

  Dad attended fewer union meetings than before the war but wrote over 250 articles for the Post between 1954 and 1967. His ‘Counter Chronicles’ provided a humane and witty perspective on the life of the Post Office clerk.

  I can see our dad at his Olympia typewriter in an upstairs bedroom, tap-tapping in search of the right word or phrase. In ‘Promotion Prospects’ (1957) he reflected on his own career: ‘There are three stages of Post Office man. He joins; he is promoted; he retires. Certain incidents occur before or after these events, but all that matters is concerned with his arrival, his ascension, and his departure.’

  Our parents’ close partnership could be a problem for us when we wanted to negotiate over TV viewing, homework, pocket money or bedtime. They were indivisible. Even when irritated frowns appeared, they never argued. You could not win.

  Mother’s passions became more evident when we were both at school. She was engrossed by the garden and grew a tremendous variety of plants. She would lift the head of a hellebore and exclaim ‘Look, look at that!’ as visitors stared at its intricate beauty. At the age of 40 she embarked on a career as an artist.

  She began with watercolour and oil copies of painters like Rubens and Pissarro. She travelled to Paris and fell in love with Cézanne, Monet, Matisse and Picasso. She visited London galleries, attended adult education classes and scouted Charing Cross Road for books with illustrations of her favourite paintings.

  She gathered flowers from the garden and strove to capture their beauty in a particular light and painted her own Cubist bullfight in the style of Picasso. She knitted a stair carpet (80,000 knots, eight yards long, two feet wide) that became a character in one of Dad’s articles: ‘It has become steadily heavier, more bloated, comfortable-looking. Now it spends all its time rolled up on the divan and is persuaded away for its feed with difficulty, pampered monster of my wife’s creation that it is.’

  Mother and Dad were both active in the local Labour Party and joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) when it seemed that humanity was preparing to blow the planet into dust and ashes. They took part in the Aldermaston marches and remained active in the peace movement all their lives.

  In his early seventies, Dad appeared at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp with his wa
r medals on his chest, not fully understanding that the protest against cruise missiles was for ladies only. Mother’s CND badge, fastened to her knitted hat, was in her bedside drawer when she died.

  But Dad was more consciously political than Mother. He was an avid newspaper reader and understood the radical causes of his time through the pages of the Daily Herald, the News Chronicle, the Manchester Guardian and the New Statesman.

  He threatened not to attend if his sons were baptised, and he insisted that despite success in the eleven-plus examination, we should go to a new comprehensive (Eltham Green) rather than a local grammar school.

  This was a controversial decision. Friends argued that our parents were sacrificing us for their principles. Instead Peter and I flourished in an atmosphere of educational experiment where everything seemed possible. We both progressed to study history at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge.

  As we grew up, we became aware that our parents were unusual, even remarkable. Their energy and almost eccentric disregard for convention posed a formidable challenge – as well as an amazing stimulus – for their friends, their children, their children’s friends and eventually their grandchildren. As visitors entered the house they would be greeted with ceaseless questions that drew them into urgent debate about politics, religion, philosophy and the meaning of life.

  After promotion, Dad became a keen traveller. Family holidays migrated from the north Kent coast to France, Italy, Yugoslavia and Switzerland. His pre-booked restaurants, trains and hotels were meticulously organised, but on one occasion we arrived at Victoria to find no sign of the agent who was supposed to deliver the tickets. Dad took charge of the party and talked our way from London to Ljubljana on the strength of his reservation for dinner in the restaurant car of the Simplon-Orient Express. At every border wheel-tapping and ticket check we trembled, but Dad’s fluent English seemed to outfox the continental inspectors who were unsure what to do with him or us.