Unmarried men were going, had gone. They would soon get Darrington. God, God, God, God, God. Why hadn’t he gone? Why didn’t he go? People’s faces—“O Mrs. Darrington. It’s so funny. You’re the only woman here whose husband isn’t . . .” Isn’t? God. But it was true. Guns. Guns. Guns. Thank God she had suffered to the sound of guns and the baby wasn’t . . . dead . . . not born . . . still born . . . but it didn’t matter. “Darling but—you—don’t—care—any—more.”
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“Jerrold, but I do care.” By a super-human effort, she lifted her face to his and smothered under his kisses, she went on with it, “yes, I do care awfully,” for what did it matter? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t real and what she was doing had no reality, no meaning. It was one with drab walls, walls of drab men that stood between her and—guns, guns, guns. But Darrington would go soon, would go to France soon, so that she could lift up her face to his and let his arms (khaki arms now) hold her close, close, “being away from you has made the difference. I see what you are now, have always been.” She would have to go on with it, no matter what might happen for his arms were khaki arms now and soon he might be dead, dead—what a relief. No, she mustn’t think things like that. Had she thought it? No, she hadn’t thought it. She had never thought it. “You’ve made everything so lovely here. I never realized how huge the room was. Dinner was so charming with the white wine.” White wine? Where had it come from? White wine. Delia had sent her some white wine, saying she looked peaked, Delia being heavenly, everyone being heavenly because of Jerrold being in Khaki, they were being nice to her though everyone was gone. Did they think she wanted another baby? Were they being nice to her hoping she might have one? Was there nothing else in the world? Men and guns, women and babies. And if you have a mind what then? But there were men with minds, must be men with minds, feeling as she did and it wasn’t so bad, now Darrington was in khaki. Going to France soon. She must keep up. “Where did the white wine come from?” “O Delia sent it, delicious Delia, done up in uniform, hateful meetings—” but she mustn’t be horrid about Delia. They were all busy, all the pretty drawing room turned into a red cross section and she knew she ought to have gone on making swabs but it was so horrible, not seeing swabs but what they were meant for, and talking, how they gossiped and Delia working so hard. Poor Delia something had gone out of her. Delia however hard Hermione might try to think it, wasn’t the same. She had lost her soul somehow in this mess, this work room, this lint, this cotton wool. But no. It was Hermione who was horrid. How horrid to hate them, all the women who went on talking as if they were enjoying it, and the worst of it was one felt they were enjoying it. It was horrible of her not to but how could she help it? How could she help her vivid mind not seeing? Her mind had been trained to see. Cultivated. For just this horror? Women talking, picking cotton, making bandages. O God, don’t they see what they’re making them for? Am I the only coward? But I’m not. I had a baby, I mean I didn’t—in an air raid. I know what pain is. They don’t know. They can’t see. But for Delia’s sake (delicious Delia) one must go on, go on, done up in a dust cloth and an apron, with one’s nun’s face. But she wasn’t a nun, all the rest had clean faces, her face wasn’t clean. It was smudged with gun-powder for she had been under fire—wasn’t a dressed up nurse, was a real casualty. “O Mrs. Darrington, we hear your husband—” What had they now heard? But they hadn’t. They had mixed her up with someone else. Her husband wasn’t better, wasn’t worse. Her husband was just the same thank you. She had unwittingly said the right thing. They thought Jerrold was wounded, then someone whispering and they let her alone for they had found out that she had had a baby in an air raid just like Daily Mail atrocities. Novels were right. Even newspapers. She had had things happen in true journalese style, she Hermione who had drawn music from people, who was a child, they had said then, a spirit. Where was that? Who was a child, a spirit? And when had all that happened? Jerrold had gone back now. Hermione had gone back now to the Red Cross Unit that was Delia Prescott’s great drawing room . . . where Walter had used to give concerts . . . where gold gauze had been the first Liberty gold gauze curtains Hermione had then seen, where Delia had always had wedges of winter hyacinths in the round sort of marble basin in the other little room off the big room where the tables were crowded now against the room wall. Jerrold had gone back. Hermione had gone back . . . Delia was resting by her. “O is that you Delia?” Must talk to Delia about something else. She couldn’t go on hearing their callous appraisal of how someone “took” something. People all “took” things like that. But she hadn’t. But they didn’t know she hadn’t, she would go on pretending. But she might get across to Delia. Delia, delicious Delia, who wasn’t (nobody could accuse her) delicious in that fawn-mud uniform. “Delia.” “Dryad.” Dryad. She would scream simply. Delia had forgotten herself. She had called her Dryad. People now didn’t call her Dryad. She had been Dryad in the old days before the earth opened and left part on one side, part on the other.
Thank God at least she was on this side of the chasm. She hadn’t thank God, gone (as Jerrold wanted her) to America. “Jerrold was mad wanting me to go to the States.” “Poor Jerrold.” Why did Delia say poor Jerrold. “Why did you say that Delia?” “I don’t know. After all he is in it and there’s George out of it. I can’t know how he does it.” “But George is American.” “That doesn’t matter, Dryad. He’s here with us.” “But we’re American.” “That makes it twice as hard, people sneering (and they’re right) about the dove-cote.” “Yes they’re right, but it isn’t our fault, America’s not in it.” “They make us feel—it—is—” Delia must work five times as hard as anybody, Americans must suffer five times as hard as anyone else to show—to show what? An American. What did they mean by that? They said it so often nowadays. “Lady Prescott—” Delia tired to death trailed her weary khaki across to another table. Lady Prescott’s unit. Delia.
Henry James died of it, their great American, and they said Americans didn’t care. Didn’t care. Some didn’t. But when they did, O Gawd, as George used to put it. George. How could he go on wearing the same spotted speckled mosaic of cravats? But poor Georgio. One never shoved anyone into it, couldn’t. Not even Darrington. Guns, guns, guns, and how small they looked like a little pack of hornets, so near and so small, a whole flotilla of little planes this time and how brave of them. How low they were flying, people talking of poisonous gas and people straining upward and all in the daylight, you couldn’t say they weren’t remarkable, extraordinarily brave, extraordinary super-human courage to fly low over London in full noonlight. And the crash that followed and would follow and all of us blinking up into a lead-grey light that was the full noon glare, how could they do it, and all of us really marvelling that they were so brave really, English people, so surprised, all of us were so surprised that noon seeing them fly so low. We all said they must be “us,” we all said hearing the stifle and the low growl, “no, it’s them.” We all marvelled saying “baby killers,” watching one, two three, all flying in a neat formation. “Those beasts. Baby-killers.” Yes, that was true. How odd that the most blatant of journalese should be true, the most banal and obvious things were now true, the war had made things like that true. Hermione had never read, listened as little as she could until this became true. “Baby-killers.” The most obvious and low level of horrors, O Gawd, and prose and poetry and the Mona Lisa and her eye lids are a little weary and sister my sister, O fleet sweet swallow were all smudged out as Pompeii and its marbles had been buried beneath obscene filth of lava, embers, smouldering ash and hideous smoke and poisonous gas. Was London still there? It was hard, would be hard to find it. Some of them might be left, there might be an afterwards and then some of them would get to work and dig, dig deep down and unearth all the old treasures. There was no use remembering the treasures, the cold, sweet uplifted arm of some marble Hermes, the tiny exquisite foot and bird-like ankle of some Aphrodite. Those things were being buried and all they could do was to watc
h, to stand in little groups and knots and after all with the volcano belching its filth over them, they were all one, must be all one, fear, terror, the obstinate courage that refused its terror made them one, facing bright hawks in an odd grey poisonous noon that swooped and swooped and we all said, “it can’t be them, it’s us, it must be, flying so low,” but it was them, insinuating themselves, what courage, what dastardly beauty of destruction. “Baby-killers.” Gods, men, flying high, flying low, “ours” were as brave of course, better, braver, better altogether, but not so tight, not so hard, not so devastating in their cruel cynicism. Baby-killers. Little Willie, big Willie, newspapers making all life on one level, but how could we help it? How could we help it? O thank God, I’m here, didn’t go back to America. How could we help it. “Delia.”
“What darling?” “How can you—go on—with—this? You’re looking more and more ill. It’s killing you.” “It—has—killed—” O God. Hermione was forgetting. So many were dead. She had forgotten that Tony whom she hardly knew was out of it, “gone west,” but he was away so much, the house always seemed Delia’s property and Delia was above suspicion though people had a way (as people did in those days) of a little pitying Delia. Women would, of course, Delia being so beautiful, so chaste in that odd American-Greek manner in spite of what people said, when Americans were like that, they were high and pure and divine and Delia was like that and Lillian Merrick was like that. Tall and cold, new England, that was another name for a transplanted England that was more English than England, more Greek than Greek. Delia was like that. Lillian was like that. Hermione had forgotten Tony, there were so many Englishmen (had been so many Englishmen) like that and Tony was so often in Africa and so often he was running across to France. France. Tony was in France for good. Hermione had forgotten Tony. “Delia?” “Darling—” But what could she say to Delia? She couldn’t now say chuck it, they’re exploiting you, they’re killing you, they’re beasts, devils, they are more cruel than the wasp-devils who fly low over London and at least have their courage, their panache, what are these devils? Nothing. They don’t even have children for the other devils to kill. We are in it. Killing and being killed. Who are these? Obscene rows of suppressed women, not women, but some of them have lost sons. O, don’t let me be cruel. I am so muddled. Poor Tony. “I never—knew—Tony.” “He was like that, Hermione. No one ever knew him. He said I was aloof and—” “Cold, Delia?” “Cold, darling. Yes, how did you know?” “It’s the sort of thing they say.” “They say, Hermione?” “I mean—Jerrold.”
3
O put it on, put it on, how funny I look, like a doll now. I am a doll but it will amuse him. He said Merry Dalton was so “cute,” he said cute like that not knowing it was so silly, so full of silly school-girl silliness to an American. English people picked up American words, used them in such an odd way, “cute.” He said little Mary Dalton looked “cute” and Mary (they called her Merry now) was setting the pace for everything. Poor Merry. Hermione had suddenly got across to her, saw her in one tremendous instant. But it was wrong Merry sympathizing with the Irish (though she was half-Irish) it was all wrong. But one was so tired of this disciplined death, this row of people one loved gone, all gone, nice people who did the right thing gone, one might as well find out how the others lived, for one couldn’t believe that Delia’s, that Lady Prescott’s red-cross section represented the whole of life. Being good, being good, rolling, unrolling lint until her fingers ached and she knew she would go mad but anything was excused when one’s husband came back, “no. I won’t be here for another ten days, five days, three days, (what was it) my husband is due across.” Husband. Husband. But this wasn’t a husband. One might as well sleep with a navvy from the street only there weren’t any, they were all soldiers, but this person was as strange, more strange to her than Captain Ned Trent whose father had been the General Trent of Ladyburg and Captain Ned was an Irish rebel and had reacted from the right thing to this extent, the police might call at any moment and it was all going round and round and round. “You are more beautiful than Merry Dalton,” he had said, “but you haven’t her charm.” Was that it? Dash eau de cologne across black lidded eyes, make up, funny thing, how different she looked, it didn’t look right, she looked hectic, ill with the bright stain but the others did it and Jerrold said she must brighten things up, make things hum, it was his last leave, he was sure it was his last leave. The old house, the big room, faster, faster, they could dance, pull the rug up, they could dance 1918, they could dance. 8,8,8. It was nineteen eighteen. 1918. Let them dance. Darrington had his commission now. Let them dance. It was bad form, shocking. Really Merry shouldn’t have brought old Trent. Everyone knew what he was up to. It was shockingly bad form but he was such a gentleman. Yes, he was a gentleman like all the others, like Tony Prescott but he had got tired of good form and his father at Ladyburg and he was kicking up a little bit of a row and they couldn’t shoot him because of Ladyburg and Darrington only a lieutenant really ought to be saluting and how funny for Trent was a real officer and a gentleman throwing bombs at the English in Ireland, not getting shot, all very complicated, can’t shoot him, his father Trent of Ladyburg. Boer War Captain, a real soldier beside whom all this was bluster and obscene belching of volcanoes and ash and O God it was funny the taste of it, taste and smell, might as well sleep with a corpse as sleep with Darrington. The red made her eyes darker, brighter, make the red make eyes brighter, dark, dark rings, fatigue, looking dissipated, just fatigue, O God, might as well sleep with anyone as sleep with Darrington. Over the top and the best of luck. They were dancing. Merry had her little head thrown back and Jerrold bent and kissed her. You let them kiss you. They would be going back. The boy in the corner had lost his arm but he was still in uniform. He was wild and shy by turns, had never seen anything like this, Darrington had brought him, seemed puzzled, they seemed ladies but couldn’t be, couldn’t be, ladies don’t dance—that—way—But he adored Darrington. Darrington had brought him and this was Darrington’s wife—widow. She had almost said for Darrington was dead. If only there was someone she could tell about Darrington, would the boy know? She wanted to get to someone, make someone understand. The boy wouldn’t understand. Even the war and the lost arm and the terrors of the trenches would never change him, there were nice women and there were women who weren’t nice. But he must change. She must change him. Hermione wished she hadn’t made up, wished she had her own pallor to confirm her, wished she could get to the boy, reach him, put her arms about him, pull his tired head on to her shoulder, be a mother, a god, a saint. She wanted to cry, O look you are real, the others—but the others were real too. You couldn’t call Lady Prescott’s war-workers real. You really couldn’t. Merry Dalton whom she had always hated was more real than that. Merry was real since she had found her name, since Captain Ned Trent had found her name, Merry, for them. Irish, half Irish. You can’t go on for ever being English. Let her rip. God. Let her burn. Troy town. Over the top. Over the top. Troy town and Delia a sort of Helen, Delia preserving Beauty. Let Delia preserve Beauty for Hermione was tired of beauty, tired of herself, of being reviled, she would fling in with the rest, see, feel, see, hear, Captain Trent said she was as beautiful as Merry and he loved Merry. All going. All gone. The boy leaned forward and lit a cigarette with a child ennui from the smouldering ash of pretty Louise Blake who had suddenly appeared, a friend of a friend of a friend—pretty, was she? Hair drawn tight up from squint oriental eyes. Looked as if she might be a magazine ad for some arcane scent, Fleur d’orient. She was Fleur d’orient. “I’ve found a name for you at last, Louise.” “What—ever?” “Fleur—fleur d’orient. Florient. It’s a name of a powder I think.” “I don’t want names of powders.” Louise was a little hurt. She did so look like an advertisement of some rather obvious slightly risqué powder or scent. American. Something had flooded something, the river no doubt their studio, everybody had pneumonia and bad drains. Louise had come through the floods and the drains with the mo
st chic of pre-war prettiness. All of them looked odd now, different beside Louise with her pre-war chic. How could Louise manage? How could anybody manage? Were they all like that or like Delia? Hermione wanted to be like both. Had to be like both. She was younger than Delia. Delia couldn’t understand exactly.
Now looking at Louise, Hermione wished she hadn’t made up, couldn’t do it like Louise. Louise must really help her with some clothes. She was tired of the old old gold and green that swept away from her shoulders. For a breath her body would be bare. Half a league—half a league—half a league—Captain (pre-war) Trent had known that, known all about it. They said he had heat wave, sun stroke, wouldn’t shoot him but the police were after him, all the same and Merry, poor pretty Merry (why did one now like her?) had taken him on—taken him in— But could it matter? Hiding him. Pre-war romance. There is romance. Dance for the candles flicker, the boy with one arm leans forward. Louise tilts back a dark head. Florient.
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