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Into the Blouse

17 June 1944

My lovely Bessie,

What do you think about us starting to number our letters? It is a good check-up, a missing number is easily spotted. I shall not commence it unless you wish it. I don’t want you to think this is pedantry, but I think we will find it useful. Don’t say ‘Yes’ if you think it is just a silly idea of mine. We number our letters home. Have reached No. 56 this year so far.

I am sorry that the actual start of the Second Front should be such a real stab for your consciousness, and then again, I am not. I want you to be aware of the terrible things that are happening, yet I want to shelter you from their consequences or prevent you looking too closely. Look at my Mother’s jumbled-up homeliness: ‘… your usual two letters haven’t arrived this week. I suppose this invasion is causing the delay, the day before and all night there seems planes about, woke your Dad up, they are going over in hundreds today as well. I hope you were able to get some good shows in and pictures, I shall not go this week, don’t seem right somehow not knowing that poor old Charlie may be lying dead somewhere, it is a worry …’ (and later she again mentions Charlie (my brother-in-law, a sailor), and her thankfulness that we are not involved).

This war, at close quarters, is very bad, but the historians will record it as just another war. Perspective is invaluable. Seek it, be thankful you are not making all the sacrifices, and do all you can for those who are.

I love you.

Chris

29 June 1944

Dear Bessie,

I thank you for the ‘Yes, yes, yes’ acceptance, the honour that you have done me, and the confidence you have reposed in me. I promise to do all that I can, at all times, to forward our union, to work for your happiness and to care for your interests. I shall try hard not to be wilful, unheedful, thoughtless, I shall try to be considerate, kind and helpful, and where I fail I shall ask and expect your forgiveness. I think we can be very happy, and I hope we shall always try.

I hope the flying bombs have been a good way from you. My mother is usually very good, but she doesn’t write very happily at present. I think it is the ‘uncanny’ part of the thing which is worrying her although that is actually its weak point. All we can hope is that their range is very limited and that progress in France will steal their launching bases.

Don’t ever think this feeling between us is ordinary. Always regard it as something big, real, living.

I love you.

Chris

2 July 1944

Dear Bessie,

I am hoping to get at least one letter card from you tomorrow, but will say a few words now. Actually, there is a lot I have to tell you. First there is the autobarkergraphical tale to be told in outline, and then I wanted to tell you about events since I left England in some detail.

My Dad really grew up without any idea of home life. Until he met my Mother he hadn’t any sympathy or kindness shown him. His father was a drunken wretch, his mother died at his birth, having had (it is said) nineteen previous children. He spent some of his time in the workhouse, ran away a number of times, had a really hard life which ‘made a man of him’, but also prevented him acquiring some of the gentler habits which ‘Home’ does induce.

When I think of ‘us’, I look forward to our Home atmosphere, which doesn’t depend on the material things or whether one has Hot and Cold in the bathroom. It depends upon our love, flowing between us, uniting us.

3 July 1944. A smack in the eye for me today, nothing from you. I am wondering about these pilotless planes. I hope you go in the shelter, and do not try and be ‘brave’ by going to bed.

4 July 1944. No mail today. I do hope you are OK. I know you must be seriously disturbed at least. It doesn’t matter about me getting letters, but it does matter about your safety. I trust you will remain safe.

I have never seen a break of seven days between your letters before, although I am beginning to know the terror of these new bombs and the greater job you must have in finding conditions enabling you to write.

I am very sorry for you, I am very proud of you. If bombs constitute your life nowadays, well give me bombs in your LCs as you give them in your conversation to Iris Page. And then, don’t start worrying about my ‘morale’, don’t keep on writing because you think I must have letters. Write my name etc on the outside of the LC, and tell me you love me, inside, and I shall find that eminently satisfactory. Send me a scratch telling me you are safe, don’t trouble yourself with sounding the aitches.*

I do not regard you as lazy, and that is what counts. If you are lazy, I shall shake you up as far as I can. (My brother’s wife left London a week before war was declared. Bert and I went to his second floor flat to clear up for him, and close the place down. An ordinary sized bath had been left by her, half full with all the (used) crockery they had – weeks of undone ‘washing-up’. I took (I don’t remember exactly) over 20 milk bottles down to the front doorstep.) I could not countenance the skimping of household tasks, and I don’t suppose even you would try to frighten me with assertions that you’ll never do them.

I love you.

Chris

9 July 1944

Dear Bessie,

There are more fleas about here than previously, probably because the weather is a little hotter, but by no means as bad as it was this time last year. We have a pinky sort of powder which really smells nasty, and is not liked by fleas, etc. I had been losing a good bit of sleep through these aggravating midgets, three and four a night deciding to bore into me, so that I determined to really shake them. I smothered my three blankets with the powder and put a lot inside the sleeping sheet. I had been in bed for about ten minutes when I started burning like anything in my tender parts. Phew! I had to get out of bed and start rubbing furiously with soap and water. I finally got the burning to stop, and tied a clean handkerchief round that part.

I do not think I will say a lot in reply to your comments; I had better say that now the body acts during sleep, and that I have no wish to consciously assist. I am appreciative of your soothing words and your calm assessments. I do not know whether you do fully understand what a massive weight this particular ignorance has been, but you appear to do so. Sometimes I feel I must burst. I want very badly to burst into you. Perhaps it is a pity that I am not meek and mild in my feelings, because as it is I feel I want to crush you and press myself into you until we are both breathless. ‘Breathless’ – am I not already breathless at the thought of your beauty, that awaits me, that you have told me is mine. The wonder of you, the miracle of this our understanding, is a really breathtaking affair.

Pleased you liked the Alex. stuff. I did not intend you to think that most of the chaps on leave or stationed there got their fun in not-so-pleasant ways. The great majority are good chaps. Understand that I am a humbug, but I shall try hard not to humbug you, I shall try to present myself to you as I am because I do not need to pretend to have the brain of an Einstein or the body of a Fred Astaire, to capture you. Here I am, be-spectacled, bald headed, often bemused – and Hey Presto! there are you, nevertheless all for me. It gives me a grand feeling. I think you will understand that my physical thoughts about you are not very restrained, that they are rather violent and terrific. I like to think you do not mind.

I love you.

Chris

12 July 1944

Dear Bessie,

I heard on the news that the flying bombs left London alone last night. I hope you made the most of it, and got a good night’s rest for once in a while. Do you go in the shelter at night and what kind of a shelter have you got? What happens in the daytime, do you just carry on working? There are so many people to whom this war has brought disaster and distress. One of the chaps in my Section has just learned that one of his brothers has been killed in France. He has another brother there also.

There is something like the cry of a child for its mother in the way my inside cries for you, and then again there is not, there is the just as strong instinct of mating, for in our roundabout fashion, that is what we have come to the threshold of – mating.

You would be glad of the ‘drying winds’ out here. They are terrific. I, too, look forward to the day when you’ll be ironing my shirts. I don’t know how ‘heavy’ I am on clothes. Darned socks, the trouser bottom where it touches the shoe, and frayed cuffs are the only repairs I can think of offhand. You should see my darns nowadays! Great big lumps of wool, but they never seem to hurt me, so they must be OK.

I was delighted to get some idea of your dresses, though it will take me some time to assimilate them. Sometimes will you tell me what you are wearing when you are writing to me? My thoughts raced at your mention of your coral pink blouse (sports). My hands want to insinuate themselves into the blouse, so that they may hold your breasts, hold them tight, tell you all you want to know. And now, could you enlighten me regarding the difference between a ‘(sports)’ blouse and a mere ordinary blouse?!

I love you.

Chris

14 July 1944

You Dear Creature,

Thank you for making today happier for me. It was great to get a new letter, and to discern, feel, bathe in, your gracefulness.

You say you are absorbed by me. I believe you. I have no doubt of it, and I love you for it. I wish I could be with you, to hold you tight and crush you till you cried. I wish I could kiss you fiercely, then tenderly: tenderly, then fiercely.

Bessie, my love, can you send me some little thing, personal to you, that has been very close to you, for me to finger and kiss, sometimes? A little piece of cloth, that has touched you. You could send me a few square inches in your next surface letter. If you think I am an ass, you must tell me so, but I am so desperately in need of you. I want you so much. I think of your breasts, your breasts, your breasts, and my great urge is to hold them and assure you of my love.

Since writing the earlier pages I have had some sleep, and then been forced by chaps not playing at the last minute, to turn out for our cricket team against a South African eleven. I have very little idea of actually playing, though I like the game for exercise. Our side scored 13 (which was terrible, including half a dozen 0’s, of which mine was one). And they declared at 112 for 7, giving us another whack. This time we scored 44, and to my delight, I scored – 1! We had cake and tea, a bumpy ride there and back, and I felt all virtuous for blooming-well turning out at some inconvenience and ‘saving the honour of the side’.

I wish I could be with you to bathe in the wonder and magic and splendour of you. ‘Wonder, magic, splendour’; if it should happen that you read this on a nasty morning after an alarming ‘bomb’ night, you may look askance at these words. But I want you to accept them as illustrating how I regard you, the source of things good.

I love you.

Chris

17 July 1944

My dear Bessie,

I received today your No. 5, and my impression after reading it was that you were unhappy, and I had caused it, a thing I never want to do. Please, my darling, do not get depressed or downcast, sad and sorrowful on account of anything I may say. I do not mean to question you or your conduct.

I assure you that, however discouraged I may be by the world scene, I am not miserable about you and I, and that nothing you have said in any way detracts from my appreciation and love of you; for you to even metaphorically have a ‘suicidal feeling’ is very silly, and right against the facts.

You say that when I am ‘fed up’ with you, you feel cold and stiff and useless. Whenever has a letter of mine told you I am fed up? My whole effort has been to impress you with my hunger for you. And I believe that I have succeeded, I do not really feel that you are seriously thinking I am not perfectly satisfied with you. Whatever emotions I have had about any other person in the past are quite dwarfed by this that I have for you. Do not talk of me leaving you when my one big desire is to come to you, to come to you as your lover, your mate, and take your everything.

I am glad you mention about avoiding people. We certainly must slobber alone. What a wonderful day when we are really together, in the flesh, looking at each other. What wonderful days when I am holding you, mating with you. Of course you are silly for thinking I might leave you. And I don’t believe you think it. You know that you have me now for good. This morning I was looking at some of your ‘old’ letters (they are new and alive to me always now) and saw you say ‘You know that with me you have come home’, and I thought how splendidly true that was. You are my home. My life rests within and through you.

You say you yearn to please me. Well, you can do that by not worrying your head about me and my desert needs. I am much more concerned about bombs on you than anything like getting you to send me anything, even if I needed it! Penguins you can look out for, please: A99 A Book of English Essays. A98 An Anthology of War Poetry. Don’t wear yourself stiff getting them. Give up the chase, if, as is probable, they are now out of print. Remember that I’d prefer one letter from you to the whole of the Bodleian.

I love you.

Chris

25 July 1944

Dear Bessie,