My Dear Bessie (30 page)

Re Deb, of course carry on as usual, I hadn't ever thought of you doing anything else. Didn't you know that trying to discuss rationally an irrational point is a feminine foible? Darling, you have made me feel coolly detached about Deb by saying ‘who are all these other people, what are all these other things?' So don't worry anymore. I felt the same myself, we belong, the rest doesn't matter.

So sorry to have caused so much upset, but so glad to have you say all the things you have said, I adore you. Yes, I am yours, yours alone. We are hungry for each other, oh so very hungry, for everything you have to give me. Your hands, your arms, your lips, your body, the smell of you, to know again the exquisite magic of being so very close to you. When I imagine hard, I can feel your hand on the top inside of my thigh, why just there I don't know, but that spot is what I can recapture sometimes, just your hand there, so vividly your hand. Don't you think that odd, it's quite a feeling, and always the right leg. Did you rest it there most, or something?

I guess I haven't felt that ‘calmness of spirit' since Greece, it came home to me then how easily I could lose you, just like that, and I haven't been able to erase it from my mind, it impressed me too deeply. I thought then, can this happen to us, it can, we were lucky.

Lick for me, rise for me, yearn for me, go on wanting me, always – need me, need me, need me, feel my pain, my misery, for we are one.

Your hand in my blouse, on the tip of my breast – sweet delight – wonderful man.

I Love You.

Bessie.

26 July 1945

My Dearest Bessie,

There was plenty of excitement here today. I came back from giving a lecture on the Cooperative Movement at about 12 o'clock, and got the news that there had been 20 Labour Gains in the first 61 seats declared. After, at each hour, we crowded around the wireless to get the latest figures, doubting yet hoping that ‘the people' had given Mr Churchill the right to retirement, and the Labour Party instructions to proceed to secure a fair share of the world's goods for all who work. At the time of writing, 7 p.m., the Labour Party has a majority of 160 over all other parties and is bound to be called by the King to form his Government. It is a great surprise to me, and gratifying in the extreme. Not only because Labour now has the chance to repair some war damage,
but because the Tories lied so viciously to retain office, with Beaverbrook the biggest story teller of them all.

I suppose now that everyone will expect the Millennium, miracles overnight, the immediate Heaven. Personally, I am advising chaps to take it easy and expect little or nothing. It will take years to modify the existing private interests, especially in face of their opposition.

All the chaps here voted Labour, and always have been Labour. That's the impression! A sort of Boat Race night.

I love you.

Chris

27 July 1945

My Darling, My Dearest,

Let me say another word about Deb.

If you had a regular man correspondent in the same relationship as I am to Deb, I should probably curse his luck, but how, in face of what you tell me of your love for me (which I absolutely believe) could I entertain any serious ideas? He would be your pal, not your lover. You say I threw in a lecture with my observations on Deb. I expect to be lecturing quite a bit, remembering questions and discussions can always follow a
lecture. When I say I want you ‘entirely', ‘wholly', ‘completely', I do mean it. Because I believe that you possess all that I want – an honesty of mind, an interlocking temperament, a superb body. Oh, I know and I am glad, that you are a living, breathing woman, but what can I do about Deb, other than what I have done, carried on as usual. I am at your feet, content to be there.

I want you to understand and be uplifted by the awareness of my body's urgent need of you, I want you to feel (not just while you are reading, but always) my primitive urgings, my great mental and physical desires around you, my unbounded affection, my complete devotion.

Oh, these miles are bad, I need you. I am hungry for you, hungry for your body, your body, your body. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

Will reply to the rest of your letter tomorrow.

I love you.

Chris

28 July 1945

My Darling,

I have today won a draw for a ‘Victoria League' parcel, and in a couple of months, all being well, you'll get one. They are 5s. each,
and contain something like a pound of jam, a pound of sugar, a tin of fruit, or something like that. They are moderately worth winning in the draw. I believe they come from Victoria, Australia, as a kind of help to people in England.

I am glad you are not opposed to the idea of Sanderstead. It is very important that you don't breathe a word anywhere. I have hopes. Some hopes. (You know how in these times the securing of a place is dependent on about ten things going as you want them.) This is one of those cases. There is a chance. With Wilfred actively pursuing the matrimonial idea, you must be prepared for him to live at 27 with his bride. This is inevitable, and would effectively eliminate any hope we might have in that direction. I can quite believe that your Dad could get £2,000 for 27. But it would be folly to sell unless a better place had already been secured. I am sorry you can't be told more at present.

The housing situation is now very hopeful, long-term view, as Labour will not dally on this, if on any other issue. But even in the next five years sufficient houses cannot be built to overcome the shortage. We shall certainly be in a tight spot, unless we do ‘strike lucky'.

The thought of being in a house, alone with you, with closing the front door and taking you to me as I wish, is a tremendous thought for me to have. It seems impossible, yet one day such an event will occur.

I didn't go into Bari today, as I took on the job of colouring the map of UK we had supplied to us, showing the constituencies. Almost all Southern England is blue, and almost all Northern Scotland. In the scattered areas, the Conservatives have still got their
supporters. It is up to the Labour Party to show them, by 1950, that they are best served by the representatives of the working people.

I LOVE YOU.

Chris

30 July 1945

Dearest,

What a rotten hound I feel, what an unthinking thing for bringing all this reproach on you. I don't know what I can do about it. Nothing now. You chide me about Deb, and I feel displeased. I say so, and you ask forgiveness. And I now ask for yours. I really don't know why I must insist on being right, and of needing that you be quite above human feeling. I want you to think, if you can, how I can avoid doing this again. For, there can be no question that when I wrote I knew I would upset you, and I must have wanted to upset you, just to squeeze out of you some expression of regret. But had I just passed your Deb remarks by, you might have thought more that I was more interested in her than I am. What sort of method can we adopt, so that if we disagree upon something the other has said, we can say so, but not go into details. How can I mean a damn thing I say if I go out of my way to cause you distress by saying I am distressed. I love you and yet I
hurt you. What an abject distasteful specimen I am. To the misery of our separation (which you do everything to lessen for me) I add half-insults and gratuitous doubts.

Please, please, don't tell me your life has been misery but for our five weeks. I am appalled at that statement, devastated by the anguish of that cry. Can you not modify it? Remember how you must have felt when you got that first sea-mail letter of mine in September 43, and of when you came home and read the second letter with hat cocked over your eye? And of the hopes I aroused in you, and you aroused in me. How magically we claimed each other and proudly granted everything we had. You only imagine that ‘the rest is misery'.

My dear Bessie, I think I have told you twice already (I know I have done it once) that my fear about marriage related to the fact that I might get killed in a battle. There is not now very much likelihood of that, as I am fairly certainly not going to Burma. Therefore, only your agreement stands between me and my ambition – to have you for my wife. So, I do ‘visualise it' for my next leave – when I get it! I visualise confessing personally to you that I have been a hound over this incident, of asking and receiving your pardon.

Saw Japanese Suicide Planes on British Movietone News yesterday. Deadly. Came out 5 minutes after Boyer and Fontaine's
Constant Nymph
had commenced, as it was very bad sound.

My darling, I am a hound, I am sorry. I love you.

Chris

2 August 1945

Dearest,

Yes, the election results are a bit of a shock. I hadn't noticed that Hampstead, of all places, had gone Labour. You are supposed to be cut off from the world in your Italian village, but you still remain better informed than most. I am a bit amazed at your ability to supply information on anybody I seem to mention. How is it done? I am really more than a bit amazed, generally speechless.

My indigestion is still awful. I don't think it's ‘chewing', I fear it's nerves, though how it happens I don't know. It reminds me of when I first started work. I had been in for 3 civil service exams and matriculation, what with that and the upheaval of starting work I had 'orrible indigestion for goodness knows how long. I thought I had grown out of such things, but it doesn't seem like it, does it?