The girl who had been an R.S.M. and was now a teacher said:
“I know what she means. I feel it too. We were all in it together and working for the same thing. We may have had our personal likes and dislikes but it would never have occurred to us to do one another down. Quite the reverse, in fact. We built up a sort of collective friendliness. I think that feeling was perhaps stronger among soldiers than A.T.S., but we had it all the same. Once you’re a civilian again you realize the difference. It’s cut-throat competition and every woman out for herself. I am conscious of it all the time, even in my profession. It’s a pity, but I suppose it can’t be helped.”
Prudence said:
“My brother said exactly the same thing—only less politely!”
“So did Helen Townsend’s husband,” Laura mused.
“Helen Townsend?” Geraldine asked. “Have you seen her lately?”
“Yes, we live in the same village.”
“She was at the War Office with me for a short while,” Mary Summers said. “What’s she doing now?”
“Her husband’s back from the Far East. He’s our local doctor.”
“She had a handsome Commando boy friend in Scotland, if I remember rightly,” Prudence Wain said laughingly.
“Faithfulness was unfashionable during the war,” Jill added, maliciously.
Laura said hastily:
“He was an old friend of the Townsends. His family live in the village too. Helen’s terribly happy now Gyp is home.” She wondered why she bothered to defend Helen. These other women did not know her well and would probably never see her again, so no harm could come of their casual chatter. She remembered again seeing Brian and Helen at that hotel in Dumfries. Helen was supposed to have been on leave in Oxford at the time. She hadn’t seen Laura who was having tea in the back lounge. Or had she? Laura was never quite sure about that. And had Helen and Brian been lovers? They must have been, but you could never be certain. It wasn’t like Helen. And yet why should she have been in Dumfries when she’d left an Oxford leave address with the unit?
The others were still chattering.
“Do you remember Jane Belmont? She’s married now.”
“Peggy had her baby last November.”
“Doreen took a scholarship for Oxford.”
“Old Mother Gardiner stood for Parliament and damn nearly got in.”
“Ma’am Fellowes married her Yank and has opened another branch of her business in New York.”
It went on and on and, quite suddenly, Laura felt desperately tired. Everybody but herself was married or doing something interesting. Only she was left out and lonely. She could have wept for the years snatched from her life. Years of hard work and happiness with the promise of something exciting just ahead. A lovely phase of her life which peace had cut short, leaving her instead just those number of years older.
Did any of the others have the regrets she had? Perhaps Helen Townsend did. But then Helen had compensations: her home and Gyp.
* * * *
There’s nothing nicer than one’s own home on a wet winter day. I have always felt that, but I am particularly conscious of it today.
I love this room because I have helped to make it. There is nothing spectacular or expensive about it; the chair covers are old and the carpets well worn and the furniture squats unobtrusively in familiar corners.
I never get a feeling of frustration when I visit other people’s homes because I prefer my own. I prefer the colour and the shape of my room, and the way the fire draws and the set of the curtains against the rain-drenched windows. There is a great deal of rain today, but here I am warm and secure.
Gyp may be back for tea—he generally is—and I shall be glad to see him. Even this room is not a good place to be alone in for very long, it is too full of thoughts. I am always thinking when I should be feeling and feeling when I should be thinking.
It was strange when Gyp came back. He looked almost as I’d known he would except that his hair had begun to thin above his brow and was a little grey on each side; and his skin looked burned up and yellow. It still does. He was thin and taut and, mentally, a little out of focus. I remember we went to London to buy him civilian clothes and on the buses he would pull out a handful of silver and coppers and say to the conductor, “Take what you want, I don’t understand these coins.”
People in the hotel would talk to him about the election and housing and education, and he would answer, quite politely, with a faintly puzzled look in his eyes, as if he didn’t really know what they were trying to say. He told me at the time that he’d forgotten the jargon, and then he apologized. I asked him what jargon and he said:
“Civilized talk. It doesn’t mean a damn really. I’ve been talking and thinking in a different language for too long. Never mind, I’m adaptable.”
I think he still feels like that at times—a foreigner in his own country. I was like that, to a lesser extent, when I left the army. How much more must he have felt lost after those years in the East. I try to remember that all the time. Gyp seemed too brittle a person to endure great hardship, and yet that is what he has done and it hasn’t broken him. But he is different.
No doubt we are both changed. Perhaps it is as obvious to him as it is to me. I can’t help wondering what he really feels and yet I can’t ask him. It is something he must tell me first—in case the change is in me only. Perhaps it is because of Brian that I am sensitive for both of us.
I don’t think of Brian these days. I have neither seen nor heard of him since that night at the Cock and Pheasant. It is strange the way life can parcel itself up so that past vividness becomes a dimness that is barely recognizable.
I am with Gyp and we are happy in our fashion, glad to be together again and bound by things like this room and his job here and the circumstances of the moment. Gyp has come back to me and his presence has ceased to be a surprise. He is the same Gyp and, now that he has been home for a while, he is almost indistinguishable from the man who went away in 1940. He is companionable and secure; but I am married to a stranger.
I can explain that to no one, but it is true. I am a little dazed, for to have such intimacy with a stranger makes me feel rather abandoned. I have never been promiscuous, but if I had I think I should have felt this way. I am in love with nothing and with no one. I feel and I think, but at no time do the two processes blend to produce that state of fulfilment which must exist for true happiness.
I hear the front door opening and the sound of voices. Gyp has brought someone back to tea. I ring the bell which will tell Jenny that the doctor is home. Jenny is the ex-Wren who used to work for the Watsons until she could bear Mr. Watson no longer. Laura does not begrudge me her services now, because domestic workers are becoming plentiful again, but Mr. Watson will never forgive me for taking Jenny over. Gyp can’t believe that anyone could seriously be called Jenny and have been in the W.R.N.S., but that is her name: Jenny Cookson. Gyp always calls her Jenny Wren—never Jenny.
He comes into the room and Michael Cross is with him. Gyp likes Michael. They seem to have a lot to talk about. That is something new about Gyp, he is always happy talking to people like Michael and Peter Gurney and Dick Cobb and even Laura Watson—ex-service people. Before the war he wasn’t fond of talk; he was almost unsociable, irritated when visitors to the house didn’t leave punctually, jealous of our solitude. Now the house is always full, neighbours can come in at any time of the day or night and Gyp is pleased to see them. I don’t mind and sometimes I feel closer to Gyp when there are other people round us.
Gyp says:
“Hello, darling. Where is Jenny Wren and the tea, or are we early?”
“You are early, but I’ve rung and there are muffins.”
I turn to Michael: “Michael, I am full of guilt, I promised your mother a recipe for baked rabbit in cider and I’ve completely forgotten to take it round.”
Michael laughs easily:
“Don’t worry, Helen, I’m sure she’s forgot
ten too. She’s up to her ears in a new series of articles on the resettlement of the resettled or some such post-post-war scheme. An entirely new venture!”
I like Michael Cross because even when he is being facetious he is kind. You can see his kindness behind his deep set eyes and slightly crooked mouth. He has a strange face that you can see through, a brittle expression. You have the feeling that you would know at once if he were hurt or pleased, and that it would be quite easy to do either.
Gyp is fussing about the tea which Jenny has brought in and soon we are smearing our fingers with margarine from the muffins. It will be nice when, one day, peace brings us enough butter.
It is Gyp’s day off from evening surgery, so that we do not hurry. It is wonderful what a good log fire and a sense of leisure can do to people. Leisure is still a novelty and neither Gyp nor I have quite got used to it yet. There is all the difference in the world between off duty time in war and spare time in peace.
We have finished tea and pulled chairs nearer the fire. Gyp sits on a pouffe closest to the fire. I don’t believe he has really been warm since he came back from the East. He leans back against the inglenook and stretches long legs across the hearthrug. He is thin, like an underfed horse, and the firelight flickers in the hollows of his cheeks and eyes. But he looks wiry and tough and in many ways stronger than Michael whose rounded face is pale and still has the uncertainty of youth in its lines.
“Tell me,” Gyp says, drawing up his knees and leaning towards Michael, “tell me . . .”
I wonder yet again at his hungry curiosity. Ever since he has been home he has been acquisitive of facts and figures that happened whilst he was away. His lust for knowledge of what he has missed devours him. It is as if he’d been put to sleep for five years against his will and now he must catch up, replenish that part of his mind which stores important impressions. But he has not been asleep. He has lived those five years just as I have. I know little of medicine and less of the tropics. When he talks about the fighting and disease of the Far East I am fascinated. But he mentions them very seldom. His real interest seems to be in what has happened in England.
However, it is Michael’s book he is talking about now, not the war in England. Michael says, self-consciously:
“All this must be terribly boring for Helen.”
“Is it, darling?” Gyp takes one of my hands in his.
“You know it isn’t; both of you.” I smile at them.
“Helen has brought the knack of not being bored to a fine art since I’ve been home,” Gyp laughs and continues, “actually she’s one of those rare women you haven’t got to bother about boring because she’s too intelligent.” He squeezes my hand and hunches himself into a more compact shape on the pouffe.
He is between me and the fire. Because I love him, I wonder why he must always be the screen between me and warmth. And I suddenly see Brian there by the fire, too. But he is standing up leaning back against the mantelpiece and firelight is playing over my face and body, warm and caressing.
Gyp has moved to the chair pulled up for him between Michael’s and mine.
“You looked cold,” he says in answer to my unspoken thought, and I wonder whether he is just very intuitive or what?
Michael’s voice is light and quick, but Gyp’s unemphatic tones seem to punctuate the conversation with an urgency that is unnecessary in the peaceful setting of this room. The rhythm of their voices beats on my unreceptive mind. But I am interested—I will be interested—in what they say.
Michael is writing a book. It is eating him up a little. Gyp is interested because it is a book about ex-service men and women. As a newspaper man, Michael is sick of the glib reporting novels which sold so well during the war. His novel is to be different. It must be fictional, imaginative, and yet at the same time an accurate representation of the post-war set-up. The reporter in Michael is adamant on that point and the artist in him is distracted. It is his first novel and very important to him.
Gyp is interested in an entirely different way. He believes that there are two groups of people in England: those who fought and those who did not. He sees sharp division and almost active dislike between the soldier and the civilian. Michael doesn’t agree. He says that the average service man was only a civilian in fancy dress which he discarded with as little thought as an old pair of shoes. Gyp argues that the ex-service man has a justifiable grudge against the civilian and is not getting the deal suggested to him by the education wallahs and the ABCA pamphlets.
“Neither is the civilian, for that matter,” Michael protests, “it’s as chaotic today in civvy street as it ever was during the war. Security from bombs and V-weapons isn’t everything. They’re all in it together now, civilians and ex-service blokes; same hopes, same scares, same struggle. There’s no animosity between them. In any case your soldier knows quite well that his pal in the factory had the war at his front door for a good many years.”
“I agree, but you’ve forgotten the big difference: your civilian had his front door—blitzed and blasted as it may have been—but your soldier was hundreds of miles away from his. You’ll never convince me that the soldier’s going to forget that. I saw too much of what separation can do. The nervous strain of not getting news from home—or getting the wrong sort, distorted by well-meaning busybodies, no doubt. Most chaps could put up with discomfort, dirt and danger. What got them down was uncertainty, and the appalling feeling of impotence. You can’t pop back a thousand miles on your off-duty day just to see how they’re getting on at home. All you can do is sit down and write a letter which you know isn’t going to get anywhere for a hell of a time and, by then, you may be dead—or feeling much better!”
Gyp stops speaking and gives me one of his funny, sideways smiles. Is he talking about himself? Did he feel like that or is he describing what other men told him? I have a sudden longing to put my arms round him and hold his head close against me until he relaxes and can speak naturally. My heart sings with hypocrisy at the thought.
Michael says:
“You’re off target, Gyp. I’m trying to get the picture now, not as it was during the war. I’ll admit you’re right about the soldier overseas, and the airman too; and you could feel pretty far away in a bomber over Berlin even though you might be home for eggs and bacon in the morning. But today, now they’re out of it, the men are civilians again, citizens, whatever you like to call them. They’re not a little race unto themselves as you’re trying to make out.”
“I think they still are,” Gyp is rocking himself backwards and forwards in his chair. “I think they have a strong urge to band themselves into something worthwhile again. A soldier is toughened and perhaps coarsened by war, but he is purified in battle. I can’t describe it exactly, but there is a sort of exaltation and selflessness about a chap who’s just missed death and maybe seen his pals killed. And that spirit—if you care to call it that—pervades the whole business of being a soldier.”
“But it doesn’t make a man a soldier for the rest of his life.”
“I’m not so sure.” Gyp says slowly. Michael twists the signet ring on his left hand.
“But, Gyp, you’re trying to make out that the experience of war, from the fighting soldier’s point of view, so affects him that he might as well go into a monastery or a lunatic asylum or anything else that segregates him physically and mentally from the rest of humanity. I just don’t believe it.”
“No, I’m not. I’m only saying that having experienced the unselfishness of battle, he’s noticing the difference now—and disliking it. He’s reacting against the competitive, self-seeking everyday existence which is civvy street. He’s bitter about it and on the defensive, and he wants to surround himself with fellows who feel the same way. He doesn’t put it into words but what he means is that having come up against real greatness, he’s got a taste for it. He wants to sun himself again in the brightness of impersonal endeavour; the shoddy and second rate don’t satisfy him. That’s why he and all his pals ar
e searching for something that’s going to bring that brightness back.”
“You mean a leader?”
“Or an ideal.”
“It smacks too much of dictatorship for me.” Michael stretches himself and goes to look out of the window. “What do you think, Helen?”
I watch the firelight making strange patterns on Gyp’s face and the reflection in his eyes, and I know that Michael has not understood him.
“Yes, what do you think, Helen?” Gyp repeats and it is his familiar, teasing voice again.
I feel inadequate. What can I, who sat in England, know of the men who spent years abroad? My war was drab with rules and restrictions, broken by intervals of escapism on leave. I was not conscious of real greatness. And yet, when I listen to Gyp, I feel response vibrating within me.
“I think,” I begin hesitatingly, “I think that you’re both right in a way.”
They laugh softly and Michael says:
“Oh, Helen, what an admission of weakness!”
“But I do,” I repeat more strongly. “I know what Gyp means and there’s nothing fascist about it. But I believe very few people felt like that. Those who did can’t forget, and to them life must be disillusionment now. But they’re the minority, the few individuals who were different, more receptive than the rest.”
“The mystics of the army?” Michael raises an eyebrow.
“No. Just the real people, the truly sensitive.”
“And the rest?” Gyp asks.
“The rest are like me, civilians in fancy dress who never disassociated themselves from the families and friends they left at home. I think, at times, we got near to the spirit Gyp was talking about, but not near enough. And we have forgotten so quickly. We have picked up our lives where we left them. The interim period of war has already become something rather difficult to remember clearly.”
They look at me as if I were something they hadn’t seen before, but their eyes are not unkind, only disbelieving.
“I don’t suppose,” Gyp says, “that women ever react the same way as men. Perhaps it’s just as well. Let’s have a drink.” He goes to the cocktail cupboard and mixes a shaker of dry martini. “Well, here’s to the book anyhow, Michael. When’s it going to be finished?”
Wine of Honour Page 8