by John Masters
The admiral’s tone hardened, ‘You remember when you first came, I gave you a formal warning, in the presence of Captain Buller here, who made an official note of it.’
‘I remember, sir.’
‘In view of Captain Leach’s reason for asking that you be posted away from Penrith, don’t you think it is unwise for you to associate with a known homosexual such as Wharton?’
Tom said, ‘I am sorry, sir … he is my friend. When I am with him I am always in uniform, as you ordered.’
He waited. Let them do what they would, or felt they must. He missed the sea, the sailors, and the comradeship of the wardroom; but in himself, he was a much happier and better functioning man. He could not have earned the head of the Division’s commendation as the man he used to be – he would have been too much on edge, worried about himself and his nature.
The admiral said, ‘This is a warning, Rowland. We can’t dismiss you, or court martial you, merely for associating with an actor … why in the name of God isn’t it an actress? … but the D.N.I.’s people will watch you more closely. That’s all.’
Tom said, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ wheeled round and marched out and back to his office in the Anti-Submarine Division.
Alice Rowland lay in the hospital bed, staring at the open window, and the heavy outline of the trees beyond. The humped bedclothes covered the basket that protected the short stump of her left leg, making her body seem that of some strange and monstrous animal … well, that’s what she was now, after all. She felt far away, partly because every bone in her body still throbbed and ached, partly because she was almost due for her morphine injection, of which she was having two a day to deaden the pain of the shattered and separated thigh.
The ward sister came in leading a dumpy woman of middle age, simply dressed. Alice stared at her – who was this? The sister said, ‘Here’s a friend to visit you, Miss Alice.’
The woman said, ‘Mrs Cowell, miss … Dave’s wife.’
‘Of course,’ Alice said. ‘It was so dark in that room, wasn’t it?’
‘I can only stay a minute, miss. I wanted to come and tell you how sorry we are about it … your leg. Dave said I must come, but I had to come for myself, too … Do you think it would help if Dave came to see you?’ Her eyes were big and anxious. ‘I wouldn’t mind, you know. I mean, things is different … All that matters is you getting well. So, if it would help …’
Alice put out her hand – ‘Thank you so much, Mrs Cowell … I think I’d better not.’
The ward sister returned with another visitor. This was a young woman in expensive clothes, a rather short green dress, green suede shoes, and a wide hat with a gallant ostrich feather. The late sun shone through the auburn hair piled under the hat, and caught the glint of her green eyes. The sister said, ‘The Marchioness of Jarrow, Miss Alice.’ Mrs Cowell slunk away with a murmured, ‘Goodbye, miss.’
Alice stared, and then said, ‘Florinda, of course!... You look so beautiful.’
Florinda sat down in the bedside chair – ‘I thought of bringing you some flowers, but they’re supposed not to be good in a hospital.’
‘I think they’re nice even if they do drink some of my oxygen,’ Alice said.
Florinda said, ‘How are you, Miss Alice? Seems such a long time ago since you gave me a big doll for Christmas when you were staying with Squire …’
‘Oh dear,’ Alice said, ‘you were … eleven, I think. I remember wondering whether you would think yourself too old for dolls.’ She looked surreptitiously at the clock. When would that doctor come? She hated the sting of the needle but afterward … ah!
Florinda said, ‘Hope you’ve had nothing but good news from your family, miss.’
‘So far,’ Alice said. Tom was safe in the Admiralty, but one could only hope, and pray, for Quentin and Guy and Boy – and soon, Naomi.
‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ Florinda asked. ‘Anything you want? I can easily get it in London, whatever it is.’
And can afford whatever she wants, Alice thought; she was a good tactful girl, with natural taste.
‘Nothing, thanks …’ except morphine, she added to herself. Florinda rose from the chair. ‘I have to go back to London … Fletcher’s going to have dinner with me before he catches the leave train for France … Don’t forget, Miss Alice – anything I can do …’ She waved her hand and walked out of the private room without looking back.
The sister came in again. Now, Alice thought, surely … ‘Mrs Merritt,’ the sister said. Stella came in, and Alice eyed her as closely as her condition and anxiety allowed. She looked tired – beautiful, of course, Stella could never be otherwise – but not at peace. She was, let’s see, seven months pregnant, for the baby was due in mid-October, and would be the Governor’s first great-grandchild. It was a shame that Johnny would not be here to see his baby; he was in France with the American Army, Stella had told her, but had not yet been sent into battle.
Stella sat down in the chair Florinda had just vacated, and said, ‘I passed Florinda coming out – Florinda Gorse.’
Alice said, ‘She was here.’ She was getting fidgety, her fingers playing with the coverlet. ‘How are you? You look tired.’
‘I am, a bit. The baby seems so heavy sometimes …’ Her voice trailed away as she yawned. She blinked, stared at Alice and mumbled, ‘The doctor said I wasn’t to stay more than five minutes.’
‘The doctor? Where is he?’
‘In the next room … He said he’d be coming along.’
Alice lay back. Soon! Stella said, ‘Johnny was in a place called Chaumont, but he said a group of them were going to our area – the British – any moment, to learn about trench warfare. Then, he said, he’ll probably be sent back to America to become an officer.’
‘Good,’ Alice said. ‘Will he be coming through England on his way?’
‘I’m afraid not. The American ships are landing at Brest and St Nazaire, and going straight back from there.’
The door opened and the doctor came in. Alice began to roll back the long sleeve of her nightgown. The doctor came to her bedside and said, ‘No need for that now, Miss Rowland. Only one nasty needle a day for you now, and soon – none!’
She tried to jerk herself upright – ‘I’m supposed to have two injections a day! You ordered them yourself!’
The doctor glanced at Stella and said, ‘That’s true, Miss Rowland, but now, well, the pain is less and we are going to taper the doses down to nothing over the next ten days.’
Alice heard herself screaming, ‘I must have it! I can’t stand it … you promised … where is it, where is it?’ She burst into uncontrollable sobbing.
The doctor’s face was grave. As her sobs subsided he said, ‘Miss Rowland, morphine is a very dangerous drug … as are all drugs … cocaine, opium, heroin, all of them. They are habit forming, and we do not like to give them to any patient for more than a few days at a time in case the patient becomes addicted. In your case … do you hear me?’
Alice nodded miserably.
‘In your case, the addiction has obviously come sooner than we expected. We had to take the risk because of the extremely serious and painful nature of your wound. But we must now treat you as an addict. You shall have your two injections a day, for a week – but progressively smaller … then one a day, for three or four days. After that we’ll discontinue the morphine altogether. You will have some not very pleasant withdrawal symptoms – pains all over the body, sweating, shakes, insomnia. I shall give you Luminal to help you sleep, and aspirin for the pains … or, if they become very bad, codeine.’
Stella listened, sweating. It was like a broken gramophone record. Aunt Alice – a drug fiend – from having been given the stuff by a doctor. She herself now knew the majestic ecstasies and power of her own drug, her own mind. Could it be possible that Aunt Alice, mousey old Aunt Alice, could be experiencing the same?
The doctor said, ‘We shall need your co-operation, too, Miss Rowland. Between us, we’ll
set you free. Sister, bring me the syringe and ampoule, please.’
Set you free, Stella thought. What if Aunt Alice didn’t want to be set free? As she didn’t … but the baby? She got up abruptly and left the room, without saying another word.
Lady Helen Durand-Beaulieu was walking back from Walstone to High Staining, having posted a parcel to her brother, Captain Lord Cantley, with the Coldstream Guards in France, and another to Captain Charles Rowland, with the Weald Light Infantry; bought some stamps, and listened to some gossip from Miss Macaulay the postmistress. Probyn Gorse sidled up alongside her, appearing from heaven knew where. He touched the peak of his old deerstalker, murmuring, ‘Afternoon, milady … Been shopping?’
‘Sending off parcels, Probyn,’ she said.
‘Look a mite peaky, milady. Hope you’re not coming down with the fluenzie.’
‘Oh no, Probyn, I’m quite all right,’ she said. She had been sick this morning, and her period was a week overdue. There was a strong chance that she was carrying Boy’s baby. A few days would confirm her hopes for sure, or dash them.
Probyn said confidentially, loping along beside her at a pace that somehow kept easily abreast of her long strides – ‘This is just between you and me, milady, what I’m going to say … There’s a certain young woman in this village is going to come and see you soon, if she’s in trouble – she don’t know for sure yet, if you know what I mean.’
‘I understand,’ Lady Helen said.
Probyn continued, ‘She doesn’t know where to turn, ’cept you. She trusts you …’
Helen racked her brain. ‘It must be Hetty Watkins,’ she said. ‘She was my maid for a year when I came back from finishing school.’
‘No names, no pack drill,’ Probyn said mysteriously. ‘What I mean to say is, if she comes, you can send her to see my Woman. My Woman ’elps girls in trouble.’
‘It’s against the law,’ Helen said.
‘’Course it is,’ Probyn said with a touch of asperity, ‘but the law is a ass. We don’t have no truck with the girl’s dad, but my Woman will help her. So tell her, if she comes.’
‘I will,’ Helen said. Probyn touched his cap and turned away. ‘Give my regards to Mrs Gorse,’ Helen called after him.
‘When I get home I will.’
‘Where are you going, then?’
‘Fishing.’
‘Oh dear, not on Father’s water, I hope.’
‘I’d be ashamed to, with the keepers his lordship has now.’ Probyn disappeared into the hedge.
Helen walked on. Hetty Watkins, pregnant. Poor Hetty.
She started. Poor Hetty, indeed! Probyn’s mysterious young woman who might be in trouble was clearly herself, Lady Helen Durand-Beaulieu. Had he guessed that she had fallen in love with Boy, and made love with him? Or did he know – by watching, perhaps? He had come into the Arms that evening after the cricket match, and left before they did. It was possible … it was probable. She felt indignant. Then she began to laugh. Hadn’t that Italian princess showed her a Renaissance medallion of a satyr enjoying a nymph while Pan scattered rose petals over the two of them? Probyn was a sort of Pan, and so sacred a rite as theirs that first night really should not have taken place without a priest to bless it.
And, of course, Frances Enright had been an altar boy, deliberately keeping Carol Adams back in the Arms.
But she was not going to use Probyn’s Woman’s services, no, thank you. She paused in her stride. Well, perhaps she could, not to rid herself of Boy’s child, but to give it birth in dignity and secrecy. Then she herself would raise it until he could come and claim them both. She set off again striding longer and whistling ‘Greensleeves’ with unladylike energy, praying for the moment to come when she could feel the life moving in her womb.
Virginia Rowland and another young woman worked on their knees, on padded sandbags, with brush and pail of soapy water beside them, wet cloths in their reddened hands. In an hour the cold cement floor of the mess hall would be spotless, first swabbed down, then scrubbed by hand. Then their Deputy Administrator would come round and say, in her upper-class accent, ‘That’s well done.’ Then she’d take Virginia aside and say, ‘You really ought to accept the Senior Unit Administrator’s offer to send you to administrative school. You are, after all, a lady.’
Virginia kept swabbing, inching forward on the sandbag. Nothing would make her agree to become an administrator, or even a Forewoman, and leave girls like June Adkinson, working here beside her, and join with those who had power over them. She’d been miserable as a girl – she could admit it to herself now – fat, no good at games, no good at work, a disappointment to her parents. Only her moments with Guy had been happy. Her stroke became slower as she thought of him, in his R.F.C. jacket, with the two medal ribbons … already! And the blue eye and the brown, both smiling at her.
She sighed and scrubbed faster. She’d never be like him, even in so far as a woman could be; and if you weren’t like Guy, or Naomi, or even Stella in her own way, being upper class was just a lot of restrictions, denials and … rejections. This was the place for her. She thanked God for the war, which had given her the power to break away, and a place to go to. She whispered to herself ‘Sorry, I don’t mean it – about the war.’ Then she thanked Him that she was here, scrubbing floors in Aldershot, a worker of the Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which had taken over the duties and most of the personnel of her old unit of the Women’s Legion.
Beside her, June said, ‘Tha’s daydreaming, Ginnie. Look, tha’s missed a bludy great patch of the cement, there!’
Virginia smiled and went back over the place June pointed out. June was from Wigan, and had worked two years in the cotton mills before the war offered her, too, an escape. For the first year of their service together she had heaped all kind of scorn on Virginia – for being a lady, for her accent, for her general lack of knowledge of anything practical … but recently she had changed completely, and appointed herself Virginia’s best friend and protector.
She said now, ‘An’ you’re not using t’regulation broosh. Old Basin Tits’ll ’ave your blud for that.’
‘I lost it,’ Virginia said.
‘Sum bitch stoal it, more like. You get on with t’work an’ I’ll get you a broosh from t’stores. Lansbury there owes me summat.’
She got up and went out, returning five minutes later with a new, official floor brush. She smacked Virginia’s behind before kneeling beside her. ‘Tha’ needs a bludy keeper, Ginnie, that’s t’truth.’
They worked on, steadily and efficiently, with little speech. At four o’clock the bugles blew; and at five Virginia was free for three hours. Her Deputy Administrator checked her out of the gate of the collection of tin-roofed Nissen huts, surrounded by barbed wire, and said, ‘Remember, Rowland, back before eight, sharp!’
Stanley Robinson was waiting for her outside the cinema and at once bought tickets, and they went in together. She sat, as always, on his right, so that once the house became dark, he could hold her hand. The lights dimmed, their hands met and folded, the giant images flashed on the silver screen, the pianist began to pound out ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee.’ Mack Sennett and the Keystone cops raced across the screen from right to left on bicycles; there was a fight; they rushed back in a Model T Ford; a locomotive appeared, steam and smoke pouring out of every valve and joint; the car raced it to a level crossing, marked by a swinging lamp and crossed planks on a pole … They laughed till their sides ached, their hands always locked.
A newsreel followed the Mack Sennett … our Boys in France … a destroyer crew waving from the deck as the ship docked … A German Gotha aeroplane, or rather the smashed pieces of it, on a hillside somewhere in England, soldiers staring at it … the Queen opening a bazaar … the King visiting a Convalescent Depot … Guns firing somewhere in France … The grip of his hand tightened and he muttered, ‘Those are 18 pounders, my guns.’ She returned his grip, understanding what he was feeling.
Afterwards, in
the street again he tucked her arm under his good elbow and she said, ‘Stanley! We’re not allowed to show affection in public. Miss Charnley would give me fourteen days C.B. if she saw us.’
‘Some say good old Basin Tits,’ Stanley muttered.
Virginia squeezed his arm. The unspoken second half of the saying was ‘Some say fuck old Basin Tits.’ The girls of the W.A.A.C. knew all the swear words the men did, and more, and used them when no superiors were about; or, when they lost their tempers, used the words to the superiors’ faces. Virginia sometimes used the words herself, but it made her feel warm that Stanley should keep his language decent in front of her.
He said now, ‘We’ll pick up some fish and chips and eat them outside the Queen’s Arms, with a bottle of beer, eh?’
‘That’ll be lovely,’ she said.
Outside the pub they sat on the grass in the fading light, eating off the stained newsprint in which fish and chips were always wrapped, licking their greasy fingers, smiling at each other. At last, ‘Half-past seven, Stanley,’ she said. ‘I must go, or Miss Charnley …’
Stanley rose unwillingly, then helped her up. They disposed of the paper in a dustbin and walked slowly toward the W.A.A.C. hutments at the lower end of Aldershot. A hundred yards from the knife rest, now pulled aside, that marked the entrance, and at night was pulled across to block it, he stopped. This was the first place he had kissed her – the first place and time she had ever been kissed.
She turned up her face, waiting for the kiss. He said, ‘Will you marry me, Virginia?’
She said, ‘Yes. When?’
He said, ‘I’ll remind you again I’ve not the education I should have. My father’s a corporation dustman in Leeds, you know that. And yours is a colonel … even though you are speaking less la-di-da the last few months. Your mum and dad’ll be proper ashamed of you.’
‘I want to speak like you and June and the others,’ Virginia said.