Fortunately neither Chump nor Baynton spoke German, and the officer in charge had no idea Tosh was a fluent conversationalist in that language. As it was, he kept shooting agonized glances in our direction when the whispers became too penetrating. Tosh and I were almost in hysterics with suppressed laughter at his facial expressions. “What’s that they are saying?” Chump kept asking, and he would say: “Oh, they are wondering what kind of uniform the ladies are wearing,” or “They are admiring the big fur gloves Miss Smith has and saying how warm they must be in this weather.” It was killing, in view of the actual remarks. Finally, just as a young man had glued himself to the cage near Tosh and was treating her to the most passionate glances—a prisoner called Von Someone opened the piano, an order was ripped out, the men took their seats on the benches and the concert started, to my relief. It is something of an ordeal to sit in a cage and be stared at by hundreds of men who haven’t seen a woman for months. The iron bars seem less iron-like as the seconds pass. It is not the safest feeling in the world.
The concert was excellent—or we were ready to be amused by anything. The pianist in particular was good, although Chump called the officer-in-charge a liar when he said he was the Paderewski of Germany. In a minute, Chump said, he’d have the Kaiser on the platform doing a song and dance. The officer was furious; he was very proud of the talents of his prisoners. I wish I could have understood the comic recitation, Heinrich Fliegenbutton, which amused Tosh more than the prisoners, who received it much in the resigned manner that Mother adopts when Father tells his pet stories at dinner-parties—whereby I gathered they had heard it on many weary occasions. The elocutionist, said the officer-in-charge, was a former head waiter at the Savoy. “Oh, make him Von Hindenburg,” pleaded Chump, but the officer-in-charge ignored him. Queer, one never speculates on a waiter being an enthusiastic amateur reciter off-stage, so to speak, particularly a dignified head waiter in a first-class hotel, but I suppose we all have our little weaknesses.
Baynton kissed me on the way back. It was not a Platonic kiss, either. When I ticked him off he said: “Have a heart, old dear, I’m going up the line to-morrow. I’ll probably be dead mutton before I get a chance to kiss another girl.”
So I let him kiss me again. I have never looked at it in that light before. “I wish we could spend the night together,” he whispered just before we parted. I was just about to ask if he thought the remark worthy of a gentleman when it struck me as being silly. Silly to accuse a man of being ungentlemanly when he is practically sentenced to death. Instead I kissed him of my own free will and wished him a speedy “Blighty.” To my astonishment I wasn’t in the least shocked by his proposal. How one’s outlook changes!
·····
We arrive back to find tea in full swing. Commandant has not discovered our absence, either. Cheers. Everyone is feeling better after the rest. Tosh and I tell the adventure to our gang in whispers.
“Mentally undressing us,” chuckles Tosh. “Poor old Smithy’s face—if you’d seen it. Beetroot.”
“Poor wretches,” sympathizes Chutney; “and I’d like to let Mrs. Bitch loose among them.”
We shout with laughter at the idea.
“Tantalise them with your buxom charms, Tosh, if you must, but don’t torture them by giving them Commandant. Talk about punishment duty!”
We shout with laughter.
“How disgusting you all are!” says Etta Potato. “I’m sure the prisoners weren’t thinking horrid things, Tosh. They’ve all got sisters of their own.”
“I hope they don’t look at them in the same way, then. Isn’t Etta Potato sweet, girls? The one and only virgo intacta in the convoy.”
There is a yell of indignation. “Here, what about me?” “And me?” “And me?”
“Children,” says Tosh, “you may be virgo, but I’m blowed if you’re intacta.”
“Nothing will convince me that all men are so—so animalish,” insists Etta Potato.
I think of Baynton. Rather like Roy Evans-Mawnington—the clean English boy type; . . . to look at Baynton you’d never think . . . “I wish we could spend the night together.” . . . Oh, damn, why not? Why not? Why not get something out of life before . . . you, Nellie Smith, a virgin, thinking these things, after the sheltered way you’ve been brought up, after . . . if there had been a chance, would you? . . . I don’t know, I don’t know—I might be dead and buried to-morrow, killed in an air-raid, smashed up in an ambulance, anything. . . . “I wish we could spend the night together.” . . . Oh, damn, what does virtue matter—a little thing like chastity? . . .
“Where are you going, Smithy?” asks Tosh.
“Must see how The Bug is,” I tell her.
·····
The Bug is not in our room. Out on emergency duty, then? I rush back to the board. Her name is on the top of the list, crossed out. My relief is painful. What an idiot I am! I return slowly to the bedroom to carry out the decision it has taken me weeks to make—cut my hair off. I cannot bear the filth and worry any longer. What Mother will say I do not dare contemplate, but as I will probably never get leave it seems futile to worry. I get The Bug’s scissors and begin to snip. As I snip I think of Baynton. I feel sorry we are unlikely to meet again. Into the newspaper goes my hair. Would Baynton like me with short hair? What a fool I am! What will happen to Mother’s story of me and Trix now?
The deed is done. I burn my hair in the chamber and examine myself in the mirror. Not bad. Makes me look about sixteen. Something quite pleasant about the feel of short hair. Boyish. Tosh thinks it will become quite a universal fashion, but I don’t agree. It isn’t feminine enough. Women will never adopt a mode that isn’t essentially feminine. I suddenly see three letters on the bed—Mother, Roy, and Trix.
I honestly believe Mother writes one letter, makes several copies and inserts the date when each Tuesday comes round. Every letter is an exact replica of the last. She always has a cold and is always “carrying on,” and she is always being appointed to a new committee, and she must always close because she is going to a most important recruiting meeting. Oh, here is something fresh. The new maid Jessie has just gone to a home to have a “war baby” at the expense of the War Baby League. One must help the war babies, mustn’t one? I think of poor little Tanny, who was turned out to fend for herself three years ago in a similar situation. There wasn’t a war on then. Well, out of evil cometh good, if only temporary good.
Roy—going up the line to-night—no date—why don’t people date their letters?—he will write again soon—if anything happens to him good-bye and thanks for the photograph in uniform. . . .
Written at least a week ago. I open Trix’s letter slowly.
Not well at all—general depression—trying to get leave—Jerry gone to the trenches again—fed up, every time you get to like anyone off they go to the trenches—trying to get leave. . . .
Trix depressed. Who is Jerry?
The exhilaration caused by the concert and Baynton goes, leaving me empty and with a ghastly feeling of impending beastliness. Something is going to happen. I know it. Where is The Bug? Back in the canteen yet?
The Bug? The drivers stare at one another. Isn’t she in? Isn’t her ambulance in? Someone rushes out into the yard. The Bug went out at two—the first emergency duty—to Number Three with a parcel. Tosh swears loud and long. Do they mean to say Commandant sent that sick child out, woke her up to take a parcel. . . .
The Bug’s ambulance is not in the line.
“Coming, Smithy? I’m going out hunting.”
As we circle the convoy on Tosh’s ambulance Commandant comes out. “What does this mean, Toshington?”
“Go to hell,” says Tosh.
·····
It is an hour before we find The Bug’s ambulance on the hill leading to Number Thirteen. The Bug is nowhere to be seen. We search the hill on foot without result. Better get back and report, organize a search party, says Tosh. I drive The Bug’s bus back.
Rubbish,
insists Commandant, the girl is not lost—somewhere without permission. All the same, I can see she is getting the wind up. Any driver who wishes can search; mind, Commandant is not ordering anyone—purely a case of volunteers. The whole convoy immediately volunteers for the search-party duty. Very well, says Commandant, everyone report once an hour at the station in case of a convoy.
We report once an hour.
Seven o’clock—nothing.
Eight o’clock.
Nine o’clock.
Ten o’clock.
The search party has grown. Officers and orderlies from the camps have joined in. The district has been scoured thoroughly. There is no sign of The Bug. It is a clear moonlight night with a full moon, and searching is comparatively easy. Sick at heart, not daring to voice our feelings, we start off once more.
Eleven o’clock—nothing. We turn in at the station yard for the fifth time.
And on the stroke of eleven a convoy and an air-raid are signalled simultaneously.
CHAPTER VII
“AMBULANCES!”
Commandant’s whistle blows.
The station rocks about me, up and down, up and down, like a ship coming up on the crest of a wave and sinking again into the hollows. I am sick with cold fright.
“Lights out!”
Mechanically I sit up straight behind my steering wheel. Mechanically I switch off the lights that I have been using against orders in my efforts to find The Bug. The ambulance rocks up and down. I am watching myself from a distance, suspended in mid-air over the radiator front. Look, that’s Nellie Smith sitting there—that white blob of a face with terrified eyes, that’s Nellie Smith. Someone’s put her in charge of an ambulance. That white-faced blob is going to drive an ambulance of helpless men through a rain of dropping bombs. . . .
Ploo-oop? Crash.
The first bomb. A long way off. The convoy rounds the curve. Won’t be here for ten minutes, says a voice, a wavy up-and-down voice. It is talking of the aeroplanes, not the convoy, because the convoy is coming in the station now. I watch the white blob called Nellie Smith from the radiator. Quite calm. You wouldn’t think she was dying of fear—wondering how long one can live when one’s heart has ceased to beat at the thought of having to drive an ambulance of wounded through a rain of dropping bombs.
“I say, what a rag!”
The girl in the next ambulance said that. She is one of the heroines the papers write about—smoking a cigarette in the face of danger. Talking to Nellie Smith. Nellie Smith begins to laugh hysterically—giggling and laughing hysterically to hide that she is dying of cold fear from the heroine with the cigarette.
Ploo-oop! Crash!
“It’s this sod of a moon,” says a stretcher-bearer resentfully.
A round reddish moon, hanging low in the sky. Somewhere where there isn’t war lovers are walking beneath it, softly beautified by its rays. A lover’s moon, not a moon to enable men in aeroplanes to drop bombs straight and sure. There must be some mistake. That’s why Nellie Smith is laughing.
“Here, take a pull at this.”
A stretcher-bearer hands Nellie Smith a flask.
Ploo-oop. Bang!
The convoy pulls in, lights out, a dark, creeping, stealthy thing, quietly, as though afraid the enemy will hear the chug-a-chug of the engine.
Ploo-oop. Bang!
Nearer that time. Every time nearer. Why did I drink that brandy? It was easier when I could watch myself. My lips are dry. I am panting for breath. I can hear myself breathing in loud uneven spasms.
Ploo-oop. Bang!
A shell-shocked man begins to run senselessly up the platform, shouting madly. Three orderlies run after him, overpower him, push him none too gently into the nearest ambulance and lock the doors on him.
Ploo-oop. Bang!
The heroine next door laughs. A pretty tinkling laugh. A lovely flash, wasn’t it? Quite near, too. She is loaded. Still laughing, she drives off. In the moonlight her teeth gleam. The laughing heroine the papers idolise.
The bombs are dropping faster now. Every one a little nearer. Soon they will be over the Hill of the Witch’s Hand, then the cemetery, then Number Thirteen. . . .
Up and down, up and down, why are the stretcher bearers waving the wounded up and down?
It will be my turn to go in a minute. A sitter is being hoisted next to me—not very bad, only a broken arm—jolly, laughing, like the girl who was smoking a cigarette. . . . “They follow me about, mate,” the sitter is saying; “fair love me, do them there bombs, can’t leave me in peace. . . .” Up and down, up and down, he is waving up and down. . . .
“Loaded. Six stretchers and four sitters.”
Brake off. Clutch out. Gear. Gas. I am not doing it—it’s doing itself somehow . . . crawling to the station gate. . . .
Ploo-oop. Crash!
“Gordamighty”—the sergeant is talking—“that was just beyond the Witch’s ’And—what load?”
I cannot answer him—my lips are dry—they are sticking together—I cannot go out of the gate—I cannot go out of the gate towards the dropping bombs—
“Six stretchers and four sitters.”
Who said that? It wasn’t my voice, that queer cracked whisper.
“Number Four,” says the sergeant.
Number Four. Number Four. Number Four. That is where I have to go with my load of wounded men. Five miles along the open road. First to the right, on past Number One, turn left then, left again and then straight on. Number Four.
Ploo-oop. Crash!
“I can see them distinct. Look.”
The sitter can ‘see them distinct,’ he says. I cannot look. Number Four. Five miles along the open road. First to the left. The sitter is counting the enemy planes. I can hear them now, the whirr of the engines. The sitter thinks they will discharge their cargo before they get into the camp. Flash. I saw that one myself; it hit the hillside. The sitter has never seen the bombs so thick. Like rain. Ah, our planes are up now. No need to get the wind up. Far safer here than in a trench. If they hit an ambulance it will be a ruddy miracle. He apologises for the adjective. Once they drop one bomb and miss you, the next will clean pass over, ten to one; it depends on the speed they’re travelling. . . .
The bombs are getting nearer.
A picnic after the trenches . . . the night he was hit . . . he goes into a long description of the bombardment that ended in his broken arm. Survived an eighteen-hour bombardment to trip over someone’s boots head-first into a trench and break his bleedin’ arm. Funny that. His pal Arthur would have enjoyed the joke if he’d been alive. But he wasn’t. It was old Arthur’s boots he’d tripped over. Not meant to stop one, and that’s a dead cert. . . .
The bombs are getting nearer.
What is it I fear? Not death. No, I only wish with all my heart I were dead and safely out of this hell. No, I do not fear death. Then what? I do not know. The dying, perhaps. I have seen men die so dreadfully. Oh, God, if there is a God, let me die swiftly and mercifully. Let me be here one second not thinking of dying, and the next. . . .
Ploo-oop. Crash!
Surely there is no sound anywhere as sickening as the sound of a bomb dropped from the air. A flattening sound, as though the sky were jealous of the earth and was determined to wipe it out of existence. Each time a bomb drops I see myself under it, flat, like the skin of a dead tiger that has been made into a rug with a little nicked half-inch of cloth all round the edges . . . flat, all the flesh and blood and bones knocked flat . . . useless to tell me I would be wiped clean out of existence as though I had never been . . . I still see myself like the skin of a dead tiger that has been made into a rug with a little nicked half-inch of cloth round the edges. . . .
Ploo-oop. Crash!
I laugh. The sitter tells me I have pluck, laughing like that. He’s got four girls himself, the youngest four, the eldest twelve. He would rather have daughters than sons. Fine girls every one of them. His missus makes every stitch they wear; oh, a good woman and
a better wife, his missus. . . .
Number Four, Number Four, NUMBER FOUR.
All the time they unload me the bombs are getting nearer. Silence except for the bombs. Nearer every time. Not so many now. All beaten back but one machine, a nurse says. I look up. One solitary plane. Sisters and stretcher-bearers whispering, hastily removing the wounded inside to that thin inadequate shelter of canvas, none of them afraid like me, coward, coward, coward, waiting to be flattened into the skin of a dead tiger that has been made into a rug with a little nicked edging of cloth. . . .
“Right.”
Off again.
The bomber is nearly overhead. I can see the bomb leave the carrier. What an age it is dropping! I am out on the road. Half a mile ahead is another ambulance travelling at top speed towards the station. From Number One. Who is it? Commandant, of course. She always takes Number One. Yes, it is sure to be Commandant. All this I think while the bomb is dropping.
Ploo-oop. Crash!
That was near. Behind me, a few fields away. The next one will get me . . . the sitter said it would be a miracle if a bomb hit a moving ambulance . . . but the next one will get me . . . it cannot help it . . . they are dropped at regular intervals according to the speed the aviator is travelling . . . he is right over my head—his engine is drowning the sound of mine . . . he’ll get me, he’ll get me, he doesn’t know me, he doesn’t know me . . . he has no personal grudge against me . . . it doesn’t seem fair for him to flatten me into a tiger skin with a little neat half-inch of nicked cloth round the edges. . . .
I tear along . . . I must get away, I must get away before he drops the next bomb on me. . . . Commandant is ahead . . . I am gaining on her. . . . If he must flatten out someone, let it be Commandant. . . . Oh, God, if there is a God, let the next bomb drop in the ambulance ahead . . . let it be Commandant . . . don’t let it be me . . . don’t let it be me. . . .
Ploo-oop. Crash!
A flash of flame. My ears are deafened, but he has missed me—he has missed me. . . .
Oh, God, something has happened to the dark blob that was Commandant’s ambulance . . . it is in the ditch . . . it has swerved into the ditch . . . the bomber has gone on . . . the next bomb has fallen . . . making for the station—they say the enemy want to wipe the station out . . . but Commandant’s ambulance is lying on its side in the ditch. . . .
Not So Quiet... Page 10